Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5)

by William Peter Grasso

  He’d been quiet the entire trip, despite Jillian’s and Ketchum’s attempts to engage him in conversation. I reckon he’s in no hurry to get to Hollandia, Jillian figured. He knows he’s getting sent back to a combat unit. But with all the unspeakable things that went on right under his nose, he’s a lucky wanker he’s not in a cell right next to Knox.

  Maybe the brass figure this is a better way to punish him.

  She checked her watch again: 1025. When she’d talked to Jock on the landline two days ago—right before she left Aitape—he told her in a conversation that was all too brief he’d be flying back to Wakde Island. He had to be there by sundown on June 21.

  Today.

  It’s over an hour’s flight. They’ll have to leave by 1600.

  And we’re still thirty miles from Hollandia.

  She returned to the memory of that phone call. They’d only been allowed two minutes on the circuit, but that was all they’d needed to express relief for each other’s escapes from mortal danger and plan for their paths to intersect—even just for an hour or two—at Hollandia.

  Now that plan was crumbling. The column had stopped moving. The dark shape of the truck off their front bumper was barely visible through the cascades flowing down the windshield. Ketchum shut off the jeep’s engine. “Better save the gas, ma’am,” he said. “We’re going to need it.”

  The rain was falling in sheets now, washing away the last traces of Jillian’s hope she’d get there in time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The battalion had been on the road to the Mokmer airfields for almost thirty minutes, its three rifle companies in column, just like Colonel Billingsley ordered. Master Sergeant Patchett folded the map sheet for the landing beaches and stuffed it between his helmet liner and steel “pot.”

  Walking beside him was First Sergeant Tom Hadley of Charlie Company. Hadley asked, “Shouldn’t we take out that old Mokmer map sheet now, Top?”

  “Why bother, Tom? It ain’t worth the damn paper it’s printed on. Look at what’s happening…the terrain to our right is rising faster than bread in the fucking oven. That map sheet don’t show shit about it. We’re gonna be fish in a barrel real soon, son.”

  Hadley laughed. “What the fuck else is new?”

  “What we gotta do,” Patchett continued, “is get us a company up on that high ground. The boundary with 3rd Battalion is way over thataway. We can’t trust those shitheads to cover our flank. I gotta talk to the C.O.”

  “Get him on the radio,” Hadley said.

  “Nah…I don’t want this broadcast to the whole fucking world for a whole lotta reasons. Better I do it face to face.”

  Patchett hurried back through the next unit in the column, Able Company. At its tail end he found its commander, Captain Theo Papadakis, with Colonel Billingsley. The Mad Greek wasn’t happy.

  “We need to get us a company up on the high ground, sir,” Patchett said to Billingsley.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell the colonel, Top,” Papadakis added.

  “Negative, negative,” Billingsley replied. “I’m in contact with 3rd Battalion. They’ll move west to cover our flank.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Patchett said, “but that dog won’t hunt. Our battalion’s gonna be strolling into a shooting gallery in a couple minutes—and we’re the fucking targets down in this valley. We gotta cover our own asses now, not trust them route-step douchebags to do it for us.”

  “Just what I was saying,” Papadakis mumbled.

  Billingsley shook his head. “We can’t. It’ll just slow us down.”

  The Mad Greek had seen that look coming over Patchett’s face before. He knew what it meant: the colonel was about to be hosed down with some righteous wisdom, hard-won in this war as well as the Great War before it.

  “Slow us down, sir?” Patchett began. “Slow us down? We best not get too comfortable over having that li’l Stuart tank out in front, because once we get boxed in here—the sea on one side, this cliff on the other—one pissant anti-tank gun on the road ahead stops him dead in his tracks, and we’re stuck in a classic fucking ambush. That’ll slow us down right quick. If we wanna keep moving, better we control our own fate, sir. And the only way to do that is to get up on that high ground.”

  He watched for a few moments as Billingsley vacillated silently, and then added, “We didn’t come all this way to offer ourselves up like rookies, did we, sir?”

  Under his breath, Papadakis offered, “Amen to that.”

  “Very well,” the colonel said. “Papadakis, take your company up on the high ground. Link up with 3rd Battalion and make damn sure you keep them out of your way. We can’t slow down, not for a minute.”

  “Roger, sir,” Papadakis replied. He gave Patchett a victorious wink.

  “One more thing, sir,” Patchett said. “He should take Sergeant Boudreau’s recon platoon with him. They can do a hell of a lot more good up there than down here.”

  Papadakis liked the sound of that so much he had trouble containing his enthusiasm.

  Colonel Billingsley hesitated. Patchett and Papadakis knew why: he’s trying to figure out if it’s really a good idea…or are we just steamrolling his ass?

  “Time’s a-wastin’, sir,” Patchett reminded the colonel.

  “All right, fine. Take Recon with you.”

  “Roger, sir. I could sure use them.”

  Patchett said, “Captain Pop, keep your bazooka guys up front. We got that intel about Jap tanks running around, remember?”

  “Got it, Top.”

  As Theo Papadakis hustled off, Billingsley told Patchett, “Let me make it clear, Sergeant—we will take those airfields before nightfall.”

  Patchett smiled and said, “I do admire your confidence, sir.”

  Kit Billingsley knew that was just another of his sergeant’s many cryptic ways of saying, You’re one dumb son of a bitch, ain’t you?

  Crouched at the brink, Bogater Boudreau looked down on the road that lay before his battalion’s column. Coming into view was the lead Stuart tank, with its small main gun—only 37 millimeter—and several mounted machine guns. It plodded along slowly so the platoon of men on foot behind her could keep up. Farther ahead on the road, he could see something else: two Japanese anti-tank gun emplacements, small caliber also, but with enough punch to knock out the American Stuart.

  “I gotta put mortars on those guns,” Boudreau told Murphy, his radio operator. “Tell Captain Pop we need a fire mission, shell HE, at these coordinates…”

  Then he hesitated, as he tried to reconcile the gun positions with the coordinates on his map. “Dammit…this is gonna be a crap shoot. Don’t know where exactly the hell anything is.” A few more seconds and he said, “Ah fuck, tell ’em this…”

  He read off a set of target coordinates. They were nothing more than his best guess.

  Then he said, “Please, dear Lord…don’t let me drop them rounds on our own guys down there.”

  “Or us guys up here, either, Sarge.”

  The call for fire was made. Twenty seconds later, Murphy reported, “Shot, out…and they say we’re coming in weak and barely readable, Sarge.”

  “Oh, that’s fucking great. How’s your battery?”

  “Brand fucking new, Sarge.”

  His binoculars trained on the terrain below, Bogater mumbled, “I pray to God them bastards hit close enough so I can see ’em.”

  One one thousand, two one thousand, three—

  Four mortar rounds splashed into the ground, silently at first, a second or two passing until the muffled report of their impact reached the GIs on the high ground.

  They landed nowhere near the Japanese guns.

  “Son of a fuckin’ bitch,” Bogater said. “Left four-zero, drop two hundred. Fucking map…”

  Murphy relayed the correction. Fifteen seconds later, he said, “Shot, out.”

  Well, they know we’re shooting at them now, sure as shit, Boudreau thought. At least anti-tank gunners
can’t up and run near as quick as infantry. But that li’l ol’ Stuart keeps on coming right at ’em.

  Four more rounds landed, no more accurate than the first. Different points of impact but still way off.

  “KISS MY CAJUN ASS,” Bogater said. “Ain’t no way that correction got plotted right. Them gunners gotta have our azimuth to target all fucked up. Tell them again, Murph—Direction TWO NINER ZERO, drop five-zero, goddammit.”

  The RTO crawled to the edge of the precipice with the walkie-talkie still pressed against his ear, waiting for the reply, hoping to see with his own eyes just why on God’s green earth this simple exercise in fire direction was so screwed up:

  It can’t be Sergeant Boudreau’s fault….we don’t call him “Bullseye Bogater” for nothing.

  Twenty seconds passed before he nudged Boudreau and said, “Shot, out.”

  Maybe the Japanese gunners figured the range was finally right. Or maybe they were afraid they were running out of time, even though the mortar rounds hadn’t done so much as flick dirt on them. They fired at the American tank in perfect unison—two barrels bouncing in recoil, spewing smoke as their breeches snapped open—the whoomp of their shots finally heard by the distant GIs a second later.

  It was the last time the Japanese gunners would fire. A moment later, the next volley of mortar rounds hit, close enough this time to send hot metal fragments slashing through their position like invisible razor blades.

  “That’s more fucking like it,” Bogater said. “Looks like we got about half them yellow fuckers. Tell ’em Repeat, Murph. Just level the bubbles and don’t move a damn knob.”

  Murphy did what he was told, and then said, “The bastards hit the Stuart, Sarge. It’s stopped dead. Didn’t you hear it?”

  Hatches sprung open on the American tank. An arm flailed from the turret and then fell back inside. Nothing but flames escaped the hull. The squad of GIs walking behind the tank fled to safety. There was nothing they could do to save the tank’s crew.

  “She’s gonna blow sky high,” Boudreau said. “Thank God I ain’t no tanker. Them contraptions ain’t nothing but a pot to get your ass roasted in.”

  The final four mortar rounds landed. If there were any Japanese gunners still alive, they had already fled.

  “We took too fucking long,” Boudreau said.

  “Maybe the mortar section screwed up,” Murphy offered.

  “Nah. Our coordinates were for shit. The radios ain’t so fucking great, either.”

  Bogater Boudreau watched as the men of Charlie Company reached the silenced Japanese guns. There were a few, time-delayed pops from M1s and Thompsons as the GIs made sure the gunners were really dead. Then they continued the advance at a much slower pace now, waiting for another Stuart from farther back in the column to come forward, push its dead brother off the road, and take its place in the lead.

  “Tell Captain Pop we’re moving out,” Bogater told Murphy. “We gotta stay ahead of the boys down there and be their eyes in the sky.”

  They hadn’t advanced very far when the point man—suddenly agitated—signaled the platoon to halt and hit the deck. Boudreau crawled forward to join him.

  When he got there, the PFC sputtered, “Tanks, Sarge…four of them! And they ain’t ours, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Well I’ll be a dumb sumbitch,” Bogater said. “Two fucking years in this theater and I ain’t never seen me one Jap tank…”

  And now there were four, spread wide in a line, not moving but with engines running. They hadn’t bothered with camouflage. They stood like steel fortresses among the sparse trees.

  “If they got any brains at all,” he added, “there’s infantry with ’em, too. We just ain’t seeing ’em yet. Good thing they ain’t seen us, neither. Get Captain Pop up here, on the fucking double.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The downpour stopped. Gears grinding and engines revving, the convoy was moving again. They’d been handed a bonus, too: there was little traffic heading in the opposite direction on the Hollandia-Aitape road. Lieutenant Ketchum was able to race the jeep down the nearly deserted oncoming lane, leapfrogging large portions of the seemingly endless line of vehicles in which they’d been stuck. It was saving time, but the extra speed amplified the bumpiness of the dirt road, often to violent, gut-wrenching levels. Jillian was sure the wheels had left the ground a few times already:

  Bloody axles are going to snap right off.

  When an oncoming vehicle would appear, Ketchum had to rapidly squeeze the jeep back into the convoy’s slower flow, sliding the little vehicle between much larger trucks traveling almost bumper-to-bumper. The hair-raising process was forcing Jillian and Hutchins—who was being thrown around the back seat like a rag doll—to the brink of nausea.

  But they were making up time, Jillian was sure. They still had a chance to reach Hollandia before Jock stepped on that plane.

  And then all this reckless driving will be worth it, she thought…

  Until they came to the curve. The thick growth of trees lining the road made the curve blind—you’d never be able to see what might be coming the other way…

  Until it was too late.

  He downshifted to lose speed and tried to ease right, nestling between a deuce-and-a-half and the three-quarter-ton in front of it…

  But there wasn’t enough room. The deuce’s driver tried to brake hard but his truck began sliding on locked wheels along the slick, muddy surface, barely decelerating as the front bumper hooked the right rear quarter of the jeep. The groan of crunched metal sounded like the devil’s hammer pounding the world to shreds.

  Trying to get away from the jagged, intruding steel, Hutchins flung himself to the left side of the jeep, hanging over the edge like a sailboat crewman struggling to keep his boat from heeling over.

  Ketchum stomped on the brake. The wheels locked, without a hint of deceleration.

  He jerked the steering wheel hard left. The jeep’s course didn’t change a bit.

  “I AIN’T GOT HER,” he said.

  The big truck’s momentum was doing the driving now…

  Ahead, the nose of another speeding truck popped into view as it rounded the curve, less than a hundred yards away, no more capable of stopping than anyone else…and coming straight at the jeep, now nothing more than the deuce-and-a-half’s sidecar.

  They’d collide in less time than it would take to draw their final, terrified breaths.

  Bogater Boudreau was more worried about Japanese infantry he couldn’t see than the tanks he could. Captain Papadakis had a plan to deal with both. “For openers, we’ll call artillery in on them,” he told Boudreau and his other platoon leaders. “It probably won’t do shit to the tanks, but it should shred any infantry with them. Then, we get our tanks up here. No better weapon against a tank than another tank.”

  Bogater wanted to believe, but he had a long memory. “You don’t think their infantry will be dug in those fucking bunkers like they were at Buna, do you, Captain Pop?”

  “I doubt it. The ground’s just fucking rock. And this looks like a mobile defense. Those bastards at Buna weren’t going anywhere. It was stay put and die.”

  “Sure hope you’re right, sir.”

  “Anyway,” Papadakis continued, “I’m gonna call the colonel and get some tanks up this way. Meanwhile, you get us that artillery.”

  “They’re gonna get plenty of warning we’re coming, though, sir,” Bogater said. “Our adjustment rounds will probably be way off for openers. I had one hell of a time a while back getting the mortars on targets. Fucking maps…”

  “I know, I know…but the guns are only about two miles behind us. Won’t be much time of flight. Do all your adjustments with air bursts. Start waaay high and walk them down. The artillery’s got the same shit map we do—their vertical integral info is gonna be just as fucked up as ours. Ain’t no bigger waste than burying a shell in the ground that’s supposed to be an air burst.”

  “Amen to that, sir.”
>
  “Just make it happen, Bogater.”

  The base piece of a 105-millimeter howitzer battery still on the landing beach let the first adjustment round fly. It burst well beyond the Japanese tanks, but the height above ground was much too low—just barely above the treetops. “Drop two hundred, up thirty,” he told his radio operator. “Dammit! If that sumbitch was any lower, I woulda lost it in the fucking trees. This turf’s a lot higher than this map says it is, that’s for damn sure.”

  Someone crawled up beside him and said, “You wasting rounds again, Bogater?”

  He turned angrily toward the voice, and then realized it belonged to Master Sergeant Patchett, who’d come to join him.

  Bogater asked, “You been here long, Top?”

  “Long enough to watch you fucking up. Where do you reckon that next round’s gonna land, son?”

  “It’ll be a little short, but the burst height oughta be a perfect forty. I’ll bracket them in.”

  “A pack of smokes says you’re wrong. You’re gonna be long again. Them bastards are closer than you think.”

  “Buulllllshit, Top.”

  “Just you watch, young man.”

  Patchett was right. The burst height was good—the perfect forty yards above the ground—but still well beyond the target.

  “Ahh, fuck,” Bogater said. “Can I owe you them smokes?”

  “Sure can. Now make your last correction, son, and call in holy hell.”

  Boudreau told his radio man, “Drop five-zero, fire for effect.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Patchett said. “Where’s Captain Pop?”

  “Over yonder,” Boudreau replied, pointing to where Papadakis was briefing his platoon leaders. “He’s calling for our tank support.”

  “I’m gonna go listen in,” Patchett said, tapping the Cajun on the helmet. “Good luck, son.”

  Bogater had the howitzer battery deliver the fire for effect volley six times—six guns, six shots each: thirty-six high-explosive shells in total. Half were air bursts showering deadly fragments meant for the still-unseen Japanese infantry. The rest rained down to point-detonate on the ground—or with a little luck, hit a tank directly.