Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5)

by William Peter Grasso

  He still didn’t get it.

  And a stupid wanker, too, she said only to herself.

  “I’ll make it easy for you, Lieutenant. We’re going to feed them and let the medics check them over. After that, we’ll transport those that don’t need to go straight to hospital back to proper quarters at the resettlement camp. Any questions?”

  He still looked confused. “But we’re kinda spread thin, ma’am, between cleaning out that secret warehouse and this place. I’ve only got one empty deuce-and-a-half, ma’am…and there’s dozens of these people.”

  Bloody hell, Jock was right…MPs really are the dimmest of the lot. Even their officers.

  “Then we’ll have to use that truck as a shuttle, won’t we, Lieutenant?”

  “Oh…sure…okay, ma’am,” he replied. He lingered uncomfortably for a few moments before hurrying off, finally realizing his presence was no longer required.

  The prison camp—there was no other term for it—reminded Jillian so much of the Japanese POW camps where she’d lost a year of her life. Tin-roofed huts with screens for walls, hemmed in by a tall, barbed wire fence, could have been created by the same evil architects the Japanese had employed. Fifty-two fair-skinned, painfully thin men and women—European and Eurasian—were confined here:

  All less than thirty years of age, Jillian reckoned, although they look at least a decade older. That’s what happens to you when you live without hope.

  They’d been rescued from the Japanese…only to be enslaved and slowly starved by some bad-seed Americans.

  She gazed beyond the ramshackle structures to a far corner of this fenced-in hell and saw the small crosses perched atop low mounds of earth. She tried to count them but couldn’t; her tremors of outrage became too much to control. It was all too real and personal, a terrifying memory being replayed on a stage where no such horror should ever happen. Sinking to her knees, she began to sob:

  And we call the Japanese bloody barbarians…

  There was a hand on her shoulder. Jillian looked up to see one of the women standing over her, helping her to her feet. There was something so familiar about her…

  That red hair! She was the female prisoner we saw being marched across the road when we first arrived. I’m sure of it.

  It was hard to tell who was comforting who as Jillian and the red-haired woman stood in each other’s arms.

  “I heard you speak,” the woman said, her English heavily accented by a lifetime in the Dutch East Indies. “You’re Australian. Is it the Aussies who come to save us this time?”

  “No…it’s still the bloody Yanks, I’m afraid.”

  The woman’s response was in Dutch. The words were lost on Jillian but their invective tone was not.

  Jillian’s gaze was still on the graveyard. This time she finished counting the crosses—eleven—and added the living and the dead in her head.

  “So, sixty-three souls in all were brought here?”

  “That sounds correct,” the red-haired woman replied as she brushed away some windblown hair in her face. As she did, her tattered sleeve slid down, exposing her wrist. Both women had matching scars there, harsh ligature marks imprinted for life by methodical acts of torture.

  Mine come only from the Japanese, Jillian told herself. I hope this woman can say the same.

  Composed enough now to make notes, she asked, “Do you know all their names?”

  “Yes. You can begin with mine…I’m Greta Christiansen, nee Dyckman, from the island of Biak.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jock, Baum, and Morales took turns carrying Steve Richards down to the beach. The man not holding up one end of the stretcher carried the .30-caliber machine gun. Once they found a seaside patch of trees where they could hide the wounded pilot, Jock said, “Okay, Steve…we’re going to leave you here while we go back and get the rest of the stuff. You got everything you need?”

  Everything didn’t boil down to very much: two canteens of water, a little pouch of food—fresh crab meat and berries, courtesy of Dyckman’s people, for which he had no appetite—and his .45 pistol with one bullet in the chamber and nothing left in the magazine. Richards sounded less than convinced when he replied, “Yeah, I’ll be fine. You’ll be back before sundown, right?”

  “It’s only about a mile round trip, Steve”—Jock checked his watch—“and it’s only 1600 right now. We’ve still got a couple of hours until sundown.”

  “But you’ll be lugging that transmitter…and that generator, too.”

  “We’ll manage. You just relax. Before you know it, we’ll be on that sub.”

  Jock and the two Navy men made good time on the walk back to the camp. It was deserted, just as they’d suspected it would be. Dyckman and his people had been ready to depart on their trek north the same time they’d set out to bring Richards to the beach. Finding them gone was no surprise.

  What was a surprise was finding the transmitter and generator gone, too.

  They dropped to the ground as one, sure a million Japanese eyes were close by, watching their every movement. Quickly, though, it dawned on all three of them:

  The Japs didn’t do this. They’re not interested in stealing our transmitter.

  They’re interested in killing us.

  So there’s only one explanation where it went.

  Hector Morales stood up, scanning the trees for the wire antenna he’d strung there. But it was gone, too. He looked bewildered, like a man who couldn’t come to grips with the fact he’d just lost everything he held dear to people he’d come to trust. He just kept shaking his head, unable to say a word.

  Sid Baum didn’t have any problem finding his words. “Those lousy lying sons of bitches. When it came down to us or them, I always figured they’d fuck us up the ass.” He shot Jock an accusing look; its meaning seemed quite clear: This is all your fault. You trusted that miserable Dutch son of a bitch.

  Then Baum said, “We gotta go after them and take that shit back.”

  “No,” Jock replied. “I’m not getting any of us lost on some wild goose chase.”

  “But they couldn’t have gotten far, dammit…and we know they’re going north.”

  “Am I not speaking fucking English? I said no, Baum. Now calm down and forget about it.”

  “But why, sir?” His tone was less aggressive, as if he suddenly remembered he was talking to a superior.

  “Why? Because north covers a lot of territory—which we don’t know from Adam—and with this useless map we’ve got, we might as well be on the moon. Plus, it’s going to get dark on us real quick.”

  His defiance had collapsed, but Baum’s pride was still calling the shots. “We can’t let them get away with this shit, sir!”

  Sounding more like a priest than a superior officer, Jock replied, “Sid, I know you’re a stand-up guy, but this isn’t some brawl between street gangs. We’re in the jungle. Different rules apply out here, like don’t go looking for trouble when you don’t know where the hell you are in the first place.”

  Baum pleaded, “But what are we going to do, sir?”

  “Simple. We’re going to stick to the plan and be waiting for that sub.”

  “And if that doesn’t pan out?”

  “Then we’ll have to think of something else, Sid. But at the moment, it’s all we’ve got. So let’s get moving. Let’s not leave Mister Richards alone any longer than we have to.”

  Jock and Baum started walking. Morales didn’t—he was just standing there, looking toward the bluffs surrounding them.

  Baum asked, “You coming, Hec, or what?”

  “I hear something,” Morales replied. “Listen…”

  “I don’t hear a fucking thing,” Baum said.

  “No,” Morales replied. “I’m not kidding. Listen.”

  Then they heard it: the sound of engines…

  “Tanks,” Jock said.

  “SHIT,” Baum wailed. “We’re boxed in here. What the hell are we going to do against tanks?”

 
“Don’t worry about the damn tanks,” Jock replied. “They’re pretty far away and they can’t come down here. The trail’s way too steep and narrow for them. If they try, they’ll just slide off and tumble down the cliff. Worry more about any infantry that may be with them.”

  That came as no comfort to the two Navy men, who seemed frozen in place.

  “C’mon, dammit,” Jock said, “we need to get the hell away from here…and right fucking now.”

  They hadn’t gotten far when a tank—perched at the edge of the ridge—fired its main gun, targeting the area where the transmitter had been. Baum and Morales flinched, but Jock said, “Hey, that’s a good sign. As long as they’re shooting this way, there probably isn’t any Jap infantry poking around down here. Too much chance of hitting your own guys. The sons of bitches sure got the transmitter’s old location dialed in, though, don’t they?”

  Jock found a spot where he had a good view of the bluff. “Look…there’s two tanks sitting up on the ridge,” he said. He watched the puffs of smoke from their barrels as the guns fired. A moment later, he heard the reports.

  Two more rounds splashed into the ground hundreds of yards away from them.

  “Pretty low-caliber stuff,” Jock said, “and they’re just lobbing it down here blind, like artillery shooting at a spot on the map. Don’t worry about them…just keep your eyes peeled for foot patrols. But let’s get real wide of where the camp was, just to be safe.”

  Baum said, “Then it’s going to take a lot longer to get back to the beach, sir.”

  “No shit, Sid.”

  It was darker than they’d hoped when they got near the beach. The late afternoon sun, which had silhouetted the tanks perched on the ridge so well, had now dropped behind it, shrouding the coastal lowlands in dusky shadow. The spot where they’d left Richards wasn’t so easy to find anymore.

  We’ve got to be close, Jock thought. But if we stumble onto him, he might get panicky and…

  He stopped Baum and Morales, telling them, “Mister Richards is probably going to be really jumpy, lying there listening to those tanks firing. Let’s not startle him, okay? Keep calling his name real softly.”

  They both nodded in agreement. Then Morales said, “Speaking of the tanks, they haven’t fired in at least ten minutes.”

  “Yeah,” Baum added, “and if they’re not shooting anymore, maybe Jap infantry’s on the way?”

  “Could be,” Jock replied.

  “That’s just fucking great,” Baum said. “Now we’ve got two different ways to get shot.”

  Jock smiled and said, “Only two? That’s pretty good odds in this game, Sid.”

  After walking north for ten minutes—and still not coming across Steve Richards—Jock said, “We fucked up. Let’s backtrack. We must’ve been too far north to begin with.”

  He was right. They backtracked for ten minutes and walked a few minutes more before Richards’ frail voice floated out of the darkness: “I’m over here, for cryin’ out loud. Geez, you guys are making a hell of a lot of noise. Where the hell’ve you been? And what’s all that shooting back there? Artillery?”

  Jock told him about the tanks.

  Richards sat up on his stretcher as the three friendly shadows drew closer. But something didn’t look right: “Hey…you guys aren’t carrying enough stuff. Where’s the transmitter?”

  The answer stunned Richards into silence for a few moments, until he finally whispered his reply: “Shit. Those bastards…”

  “Damn good thing we got to recon this place in the daylight,” Jock said. “Otherwise, we’d be just guessing how to defend it.” He placed Morales’ machine gun so its fire crossed a broad, flat field inland of their position, with few trees to provide cover for attackers. “We’ll get the best field of fire for the thirty cal here,” he explained. “It should cut down anyone trying to come from the south or west. Sid, you and I will move over a few yards and cover the north.”

  Their backs were to the east, where there was nothing but the no-name bay and the sea.

  “Ain’t we all kinda close together, sir?” Baum asked. “You know…like one hand grenade gets you all?”

  “In the daylight, you’d be right, Sid. But in the dark…we’ve got to stay close to keep in touch. Otherwise—”

  “We could end up shooting at each other, sir?”

  “You got it.”

  Jock checked what was left of the machine gun’s only remaining ammo belt. “Should be enough for four or five decent bursts,” he told Morales, “but let’s do something. I count seven tracers still mixed in…swap them out with ball ammo from the end of the belt. If we get all the way down to those last rounds, we’re screwed anyway…it won’t matter a damn bit those last shots are tracers.”

  His gallows humor was infectious. Morales replied, “At least we’ll go out in a bright blaze of glory, sir.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Jock said. “We’ve just got to hold on a couple more hours…”

  “Yeah, that’s all,” Baum added, “and pray that fucking sub finds us.”

  The hours dragged on, marked only by the rhythmic lapping of low waves along the beach, like the languid swish of a clock’s pendulum running much too slowly. The moon cast the faintest of glows, yielding a vague, monochrome sketch of shore and water. It wasn’t enough light to see the silhouette of a dark vessel, especially a submarine’s, with her decks nearly awash and stubby conning tower barely protruding above the sea.

  The night brought an end to the sea breeze, and with it, the hope of that breeze helping to carry the faint sound of diesel engines toward shore. “It might not matter,” Hector Morales said. “I’ll bet when the sub gets close, she’ll probably be running on electric, anyway. Much quieter.”

  Jock shook his head and asked, “You ever been on a sub?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I was, for a couple of days. Believe me, if they’re on the surface, they use diesel, period. They can move faster and keep their batteries charged…not to mention the fresh air those engines suck into the sub.”

  “The fresh air, sir?”

  “Yeah. Subs stink to high heaven. You cram about seventy guys who never shower into a stifling little tin can and it gets ripe really fast. Airing the damn boat out whenever you can is a real good thing.”

  Morales replied, “Right now, I don’t care what it smells like, sir, just so it shows up.”

  Jock looked seaward, cupping his hands against the sides of his head like crude ear trumpets. There was nothing to be heard but the sounds of nature.

  “I can feel it in my bones,” Baum said. “This ain’t gonna work. We’re never gonna get picked up.” These weren’t the words of a frightened man, just one who seemed totally convinced of his fate.

  It was the last thing Jock needed to hear: This is all we fucking need right now…a collapse of morale.

  “Take it easy, Sid,” Jock replied. “The night makes everyone a little pessimistic.”

  “You mean that old shit it’s always darkest before the dawn, sir? Sorry, but I’m more than pessimistic. I’m fucking certain. It’s not gonna happen. Too many ways for it to go sour. Shitty map coordinates, no radio to home on…We’re fucked.”

  Morales threw up his hands. “Ahh, shut up, Sid,” he said. “This ain’t like you.”

  “He’s right,” Jock said. “It’s not like you at all, Sid. And it sounds like I’ve got more faith in your Navy than you do. A hell of a lot more.”

  Morales mumbled, “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  Even though Baum’s face was invisible in the darkness, Jock could sense him withdrawing into himself, a man suddenly without hope. Bad choice of words on my part, he told himself. I must’ve hit a nerve, and Morales piling on was maybe the last straw.

  “I’m not questioning your loyalty to the Navy, Sid, just trying to lighten things up a little.”

  “I know, sir, and I appreciate that. But it’s fate I’m pissed at right now, not the Navy.”
/>   Pissed at fate, are you? Well, join the fucking club.

  They settled back into their waiting game. Jock turned to listen for the sound of engines on the sea once again, but all he heard was the sloshing of surf.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Three hours until dawn. There was still no sign of the submarine.

  Morales asked Jock, “If it doesn’t come, sir, are we going to try and hook up with the Dutchman again?”

  “You’ve been reading my mind, Hector.”

  “Hey, sir,” Baum said, “can I get first punch when we find him again?”

  “Negative. I’ll be doing the honors personally.”

  Another hushed voice joined in, a voice they hadn’t heard for quite a while. It was Steve Richards saying, “All due respect, sir, but you guys need to shut up for a minute, so you can hear something really interesting—maybe even wonderful—out there.”

  They all turned to face the sea, listening, hoping…

  And there it was: the faint rumble of diesel engines.

  “Damn right it’s wonderful,” Jock said. “That’s what our subs sound like.”

  He picked up the binoculars but found he didn’t need them. The sub was coming much closer to shore than he’d imagined, so close he could make out the shadowy outlines of her periscopes and deck guns. She seemed only about half a mile from the beach when she coasted to a stop. A blinker light on the conning tower began flashing its message.

  “Sid, you be our signalman,” Jock said. “Leave Hector on the machine gun.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Baum replied.

  It took a little over a minute before the sub’s message ended. Baum shook his head and said. “You ain’t gonna believe this. They want to know who said, Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  “That’s an easy one,” Jock replied.

  “That’s swell, but I don’t know it.”

  “Tell them Rhett Butler.”