Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5)

by William Peter Grasso

  “Who the hell is that, sir?”

  “You’ve never seen Gone With The Wind? Clark Gable played him.”

  “Well that’s just fucking wonderful.”

  Baum blinked the answer with his flashlight. But the sub had another question.

  “My aching ass!” Baum said. “Don’t these fucking squids like baseball? Now they want to know the name of the president’s dog! What the hell is their problem, anyway?”

  “Actually, that’s pretty simple, too, Sid. The dog’s name is Fala.”

  “Better spell that for me, sir.”

  Within minutes of the reply from Baum’s flashlight, a rubber boat was in the water, making its way to the beach.

  Jock told Baum, “Let’s you and me get Mister Richards. Once he’s in the boat, I’ll pull in Morales.”

  The rubber boat scraped to a stop on the beach. An oarsman drawled, “One of y’all a Major Miles?”

  “I’m Miles. Glad to see you guys.”

  “Still a party of four souls, sir?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “No problem…we got us plenty of room.”

  As Jock and Baum struggled to get Steve Richards on board, the nerve-wracking jackhammer of Morales’ machine gun shattered the stillness of the night.

  “Dammit, he’s holding the trigger down,” Jock said. “I’ve got to get to him.”

  First, they had to pass Richards to the two sailors in the boat, who now seemed far more interested in rowing back out to sea.

  “Gimme a goddamn minute,” Jock told them as Richards was finally nestled in the boat. “Hold the fort here, Sid.”

  Baum knew why Jock told him to stay: I’m supposed to keep these squids from taking off without us.

  Jock wasn’t even halfway to Morales’ position when those last seven rounds in the .30-caliber’s belt—the seven tracers—lit up the rainforest like wayward fireworks, bouncing crazily into the air as they careened off trees, the ground, or whatever else was lurking out there. All too soon, the machine gun went silent.

  Suddenly there were more tracers flying low over Jock’s head, slicing through the trees like brilliant arrows, shearing them like a woodsman’s saw run amok. A new sound from offshore now poisoned the night: the deep-throated poom poom poom of the sub’s 20-millimeter deck gun.

  Is this their idea of fire support? Or are they just trying to kill us? And where the fuck is Morales?

  There was movement on the ground to his right. He brought his Thompson to bear, tripped over some unseen obstacle…

  And went sprawling to the ground.

  He landed right next to Hector Morales, who was struggling with something, pulling with all his might.

  “Whoa! Hector…what the hell are you doing?”

  “The thirty cal, sir…it’s stuck. A fucking tree just fell on it.”

  “FORGET IT. IT’S OUT OF AMMO ANYWAY. C’MON, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE.”

  He pulled Morales away by his collar and they began the low-crawl back to the beach. The sub’s tracers were beacons pointing the way.

  Morales said, “Boy, somebody ain’t afraid of using tracers, that’s for sure.”

  “What the hell did you see, Hector?”

  “I never saw them, sir…but I could feel the Japs out there, all around.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “You don’t believe me, sir?”

  “I don’t know what to believe, Hector. All I know is the only fire I saw was all going one way.”

  Scurrying along the coral on knees and elbows, Morales was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You think I fucked up, don’t you, sir?”

  “Not if we get out of here alive in the next couple of seconds.”

  The 20-millimeter deck gun kept firing at the shore until the submarine was under way. “What are you shooting at?” Jock asked the sub’s captain.

  “Same thing you were, I suppose,” the captain replied.

  “Yeah…whatever the hell that was. What took you so long to show up, anyway?”

  “Those coordinates we had for you…they weren’t worth a shit.” He pointed to a spot on the nautical chart about two miles south of the actual pickup location, separated from it by a spit of land. “Your map and my chart certainly don’t agree with each other. One of them—maybe both—is way off. We might’ve never found you if you didn’t fire up that radio beacon.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jock said, “what radio beacon?”

  “The one that steered us right to you.” He showed Jock the vectors his crew had plotted from the shore transmitter’s signal. “We were expecting that signal a whole lot sooner, but hey…better late than never, right? And the later it got, the higher the tide, so we could risk getting real close to shore.”

  Jock stared at the chart in stunned silence for a few moments, until a smile began to spread across his face. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said, “the old Dutchman came through after all. Go figure…”

  The captain didn’t get it. “What do you mean, Jock?”

  “Long story. Let’s just say it had a happy ending.”

  “If you say so. But is your leg okay? You had some trouble getting down the ladder before. You need the doc to look at it?”

  “No, I’m okay. It’s just my souvenir of Manus Island. The doc’s got his hands full with Mister Richards, anyway.”

  By the time the sun came up, Biak was nothing but a few distant, hazy mountains off the submarine’s stern. Jock and the three Navy airmen learned they wouldn’t be on board much longer.

  “We’ll rendezvous with the flying boat here,” the sub’s captain said as he pointed to a spot on the chart. “You’ll be back in Hollandia for lunch.”

  Chapter Twenty

  At the Aitape resettlement camp, the sordid empire of Sergeant Knox and Fritz Van Flyss was still being unraveled. Jillian’s first order of business today would be an in-depth interview with Greta Christiansen over breakfast at the camp’s mess tent.

  “The doctor told me I’ll be fine,” Greta began. “Quite a bit undernourished at the moment—and malarial, like everyone else—but nothing that can’t be dealt with.” She took a bite of her scrambled eggs and then, with what seemed to be great reluctance, pushed the rest away. “He did caution me not to eat too much too soon. Our digestive tracts need to get used to—” She stopped herself, as if she suddenly remembered she was talking to another ex-POW, one well familiar with the privations of captivity.

  Jillian switched the topic to the question of Japanese sympathizers.

  “That Van Flyss,” Greta said, “he was the real sympathizer. He’d go whichever way the wind blew. When the Japanese were here, he never spent a night within their barbed wire. He was in business with them instead, coming and going as he pleased, housing their comfort women, supplying the officers with Australian liquor he’d stolen…practically providing a resort for their high command. If anyone stood in his way, he’d single them out for special treatment, and the Japanese were more than glad to oblige.”

  “Yes, I remember the special treatments all too well,” Jillian said. She looked at the bruises on Greta’s wrists—permanent disfigurements they both shared—and knew this Dutch woman had endured her share of special treatments, too.

  “As soon as the Yanks came,” Greta continued, “he switched sides in an instant.”

  “You mean he became an American sympathizer?”

  “More than that. The trouble is, the Yanks always seem to have lots of money. Nobody else around here does. And money is the root of all evil. They had it, he wanted it. All he had to do was find something very profitable to sell to them.”

  Jillian asked, “And that something was the Red Cross food and supplies meant for you survivors of the Japanese occupation?”

  “Yes, and when we found Van Flyss and his natives taking the relief packages away on Yank army trucks, we suspected he was up to no good again, creating a black market out of thin air in partnership with the Americans. Before we could eve
n file a complaint with the Red Cross, we were dragged from our quarters like criminals and told we’d been uncovered as Japanese sympathizers. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? We knew it was Van Flyss who identified us.”

  “To who did he identify you?”

  “That beastly Yank sergeant…the one who prowls about like a feral animal.”

  “Sergeant Knox.”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Just him? No officers?”

  “Yes, just the sergeant, as far as I know. In fact, I’d never seen an American officer until yesterday. Nothing but sergeants and common soldiers.”

  “Interesting,” Jillian said. “So what happened next?”

  “We were herded onto trucks by American soldiers and driven to that prison camp. We were quite sure we’d been brought there to die, whether by starvation, disease, or God knows what. I even heard Sergeant Knox telling some of his men we were as good as dead, and we deserved it.” She took a sip of coffee. “So what will happen to Knox, that hoerenjung?”

  Jillian smiled. She’d been around enough Dutch seamen to know hoerenjung meant son of a bitch. “Considering that at the top of his rather lengthy charge sheet is Van Flyss’ murder, he could get the firing squad.”

  Greta relaxed into her chair. “That would be too good for him. Too good for any Yank, as far as I’m concerned. They’re all a bunch of ratbags.”

  “They’re not all like that, Greta. Really. Most of them are good blokes.”

  But the Dutchwoman’s skepticism would not be shaken. “I’m not surprised you say that, considering you work for them.”

  “It’s more than that. I’m married to one.”

  Their conversation ended like a door being slammed, replaced by an awkward silence. Jillian finally broke it by asking, “Can I ask you about your family, Greta?”

  “I don’t know if I have one anymore.”

  “Maybe I can help find them,” Jillian replied. “Tell me all you can.”

  Hesitant and guarded at first, Greta settled into the telling of her tale: her life as a wealthy planter’s daughter; her and her husband’s work mapping the wilderness that was Biak; the last she saw of him as they were separated at a Japanese prison camp; her father, left behind on the island at the mercy of the Japanese.

  “You’re a mapmaker,” Jillian said. “That’s very interesting. My husband is an intelligence liaison between the American Army and Air Force, and I believe they’ve set their sights on Biak…”

  Greta sensed Jillian’s question before it was asked. Her face screwed up as if she’d just smelled something rotten.

  “If you’re going to ask me if I’ll work for the Americans like you’re doing, my answer is this: absolutely not. I won’t help those barbarians any more than I’d help the Japanese.”

  Jillian managed only to say “But Greta, listen to—” before she saw the company clerk barging into the mess tent, making a bee-line for her.

  “Missus Miles,” he said, “there’s an urgent call from HQ on the landline for you.”

  Jillian cringed at the word urgent—there was a good chance it was news of Jock, and it was even odds whether that news was good or bad. Watching the tense uncertainty seize her, the clerk wished he’d phrased his sentence differently. He tried again: “Oh, no, ma’am…they wanted you to know right up front it’s urgent in a real good way.”

  She was breathless from running when she reached the phone. Colonel Molloy’s cheerful voice was on the other end, asking her, “How soon can you get yourself to Hollandia, young lady?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Master Sergeant Melvin Patchett scowled as he watched his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Kit Billingsley, strut like a conquering Caesar on the beach at Biak. With smug satisfaction, the colonel surveyed the mass and might of American men and machines coming ashore to claim the island. We ain’t even set up our damn CP yet, Patchett told himself, and already that sorry excuse for a C.O. is playing grand marshal of the victory parade.

  “Sergeant,” Billingsley thundered, “this is just another example of the brilliance of Douglas MacArthur.”

  Patchett replied, “How do you figure that, sir?”

  “Just look around you, Sergeant. Do you see any Japanese? Once again, our landing was virtually unopposed.”

  “Our battalion took three dead and ten wounded, sir. Looks like the other battalions got hit a little worse. Wouldn’t exactly call that unopposed.”

  “Small potatoes, Sergeant,” Billingsley replied. “Now, as I was saying, MacArthur has the knack for knowing where the Japanese will be weakest. But I think he’s outdone himself this time…this island was a positively inspired next move for us. We’ll be through this place like shit through a goose, and then it’s on to Manila…and Tokyo.”

  “Remains to be seen, don’t it, sir? We ain’t been here an hour yet, and the Japs never try to fight on the damn beach, anyhow. They let you land…suck you in…and then—”

  “That’ll be quite enough, Sergeant Patchett. I don’t need a lecture on Japanese tactics right now.”

  Colonel Billingsley’s confident façade faded as he spread his map on the hood of the jeep. He stared at it for a moment and then took in a quick panoramic view of the island beyond the beach, trying desperately to reconcile the cartographer’s graphics with what the land revealed of itself. Then he returned to the map and the process began all over again. His eyes made that circuit three times before he said, “Our CP…I think it should be right over there.” He pointed to a spot on the open beach a few yards away.

  “Negative, sir,” Patchett replied. “The only ones gonna find us there are the Jap planes come to strafe the beach.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “We’re supposed to be a couple hundred yards over yonder, just inside the treeline.”

  Billingsley regained his bluster. “Well then, Sergeant, you’d best get over there and set that CP up on the double.”

  As Patchett rounded up the battalion headquarters staff, he thought, And that’s the good map, the brand spanking new one! Shit, it’s like looking at an aerial photograph that got took five minutes ago…and the damn fool still can’t figure out where the fuck he’s at. Ink ain’t hardly dry on that map it’s so new…just like them orders jacking MacArthur’s golden boy there up to light colonel.

  I reckon we never knew how good we had it when ol’ Jock Miles was running the show here.

  “You serious, Top?” Sergeant Bogater Boudreau asked Patchett. “He couldn’t even figure where he was on that li’l ol’ beach?”

  “As I live and breathe, Bogater, that man is a walkin’, talkin’ fubar.”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know, Top.” Boudreau leaned over the maps he’d spread on the ground. “But now he doesn’t even want me and my boys to recon this road to the airfields in person first? Just a fucking map recon?”

  “That’s what the man said. He’s in a big rush to get to Tokyo, you see.”

  “Fuck Tokyo, mon frère. Y’all might never even reach Mokmer alive if we don’t have ourselves a little look-see first. We only got one good map of this whole fucking island and it stops about a mile north of here. Once we’re off it…shit, the fucking road even disappears off the next map sheet…and I ain’t believing the terrain’s as flat as this antique piece of junk says it is.”

  “What’d you expect? Damn thing was drawn around the turn of the century. Fucking road probably wasn’t even hacked out of this here jungle then.”

  Bogater fumed for a moment. “Son of a bitch. This is Hollandia all over again, ain’t it?”

  “You still going on about that, Cajun?”

  “Hell yeah I am. We were supposed to be capturing some nice, firm ground for more of MacArthur’s precious airfields…looked fucking great on that map from last century, didn’t it?...but instead, we’re up to our titties in a swamp. A little too soggy for flight operations, the brass say, so let’s move ourselves onto this little rock of an island called Wakde instead. Don�
�t even give us no dry set of clothes or nothing. Fuck me...just once, I’d like to be sure what exactly the damn terrain’s gonna be before I set foot on one of these shitholes.”

  “Hey, you knew this landing was gonna be on a dry coral beach, didn’t you?”

  “I surely did, Top…and I’m beaucoup grateful for small favors. But I’m betting them favors just about run out.”

  The downpour had slowed the long column of military traffic to a crawl once again. Jillian fumed, checked her wristwatch, and slid inboard on the jeep’s passenger seat as far as she could, trying to keep dry from the rain slashing into the open-sided jeep.

  “At least we’ve got good canvas on top, ma’am,” Lieutenant Jimmy Ketchum said as he rode the clutch for traction on the dirt road’s slick surface. A little more rain and it would become a quagmire, ending their progress toward Hollandia until the deluge stopped and the ground dried out. It would be the third time their trek from Aitape had been forced to a halt by storms in the past two days.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” Ketchum said, “I’ll get you there before your husband ships out.”

  She smiled and patted him gamely on the shoulder. But deep down inside she didn’t believe him. It had been five days since Jock had arrived in Hollandia, his odyssey on Biak finally over. It had taken her three days to wrap up her business at the resettlement camp. She’d managed to account for every last refugee of the sixty-three missing from the camp’s official roster: fifty-two living, eleven dead. Those still alive, like Greta Christiansen, had been placed in the care of the Red Cross, with the camp now under the direct supervision of 6th Army HQ. The unit originally responsible for the camp—the 106th Military Police Company—was disbanded. Its members were promptly dispersed to other units with two exceptions: the top sergeant, Franklin “Hard” Knox, was in prison at Port Moresby, awaiting court martial for murder and a variety of other serious charges. The company commander, Captain Hutchins, was in the back seat of the jeep.