Burke replied, “You should be fine there, sir, as long as you land in the dark so they can’t see you from Dremsel.”
“This trail,” Jock said, tracing the dashed red line. “Is it really there? Can’t tell from aerial photos. All I see are treetops.”
“It was there two years ago, sir, just like it’s shown.”
“Can I get to Lorengau inside of a day on it?”
“If you can stay on the trail, yes. But remember, villagers and the Japanese will be using it, too.”
Jock asked, “Will the natives support us?”
“Hard to say for certain, sir, but they’ve put up with Nips for two years now. I’ll bet they’re getting mighty tired of the yellow bastards.”
Colonel Molloy looked up from the aerial photos. He’d heard every word Jock and Burke said—and had a pretty good idea what Jock was thinking.
“You’re going for the OP, then,” the colonel said.
“Yeah,” Jock replied. “It’s the only place we can be relatively sure of. And if the Japs aren’t up there, they won’t see the fleet, anyway. But I’ve still got two questions—first, how long does the boat ride to Manus take?”
A naval liaison officer provided the answer: “Figure two days on the sub. When do you want to depart Milne Bay, Major?”
“Not so fast, Lieutenant. How long will it take this invasion fleet to pass in review off Manus?”
“About twenty-two hours, sir.”
“All right, then,” Jock said. “I figure I’ll need three days on the island to scout and get organized, two more days to hold the OP while the fleet passes, and one day to get the hell out. That gives us a jump-off date of Twenty-Four February. Less than two weeks from now.”
Chapter Five
Once the briefing ended, it was time to get down to the serious planning, working out the details which could spell the difference between the mission’s success or failure—or the difference between life and death. The Navy had been fairly easy to deal with. In the words of the submarine flotilla liaison, “No problem, Major Miles. A ten-man team, with their equipment, will fit on the sub. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll make it work.”
The slow-turning wheels of Army bureaucracy proved more difficult. “Absolutely not, Major Miles,” the Division Communications officer, a lieutenant colonel, said. “You may not take Sergeant Botkin. He’s essential to my operation here at HQ. I doubt he’d want to go on whatever little adventure you’re cooking up, anyway.”
“I’ve already spoken to the man, sir,” Jock replied, “and he’s more than willing to go. He’s done some fine work for me before.”
“I couldn’t give a rat’s ass less, Major. Botkin’s not going anywhere with you…or anyplace else, for that matter.”
Obviously, Jock told himself, this desk jockey hasn’t gotten the word yet.
Like some timely magic, the colonel’s phone rang. The conversation lasted only a few seconds, knocked the wind from his sails, and ended with, “Yes, sir, he’s here now. I’ll see to it right away, sir.” With those words, Jock knew he was getting Stuart Botkin—the young man who had worked electronic miracles back on Cape York—as his commo specialist.
There was one more personnel hurdle to clear: getting two Nisei interpreters. “I know they work in the G2 shop somewhere,” Jock told Colonel Molloy. “I spoke with some of them when I was in the hospital.”
“What makes you think they’d want to go on this mission, Jock? It’s an automatic death sentence for them if they’re captured.”
“I’m pretty sure it’ll be a death sentence for any of us—Caucasian or Japanese-American—if we get captured, sir.”
“I don’t know, Jock. How do you think your other guys will take to having Japs with them?”
“I think they’ll realize we just might need Japanese speakers to pull this off, sir,” Jock replied, “just like we did on the mountain at Port Moresby. We got lucky then, with a native kid knowing a little of the language. This time, I’m not trusting it to luck. I’m taking Japanese linguists with me from the get-go.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Molloy said, as Jock set off to find the interpreters’ section.
The G2—a full bird—shared all of Dick Molloy’s reservations. Unlike the communications officer, though, he was already aware of the Supreme Commander’s wishes: Dick Molloy’s people were to get whatever they wanted for this mission.
As they waited for Jock to return, the G2 said, “You say you want them to be volunteers, Dick. You are talking Army-style volunteers, aren’t you? I mean, what Nip-American is going to want to lay his neck on that chopping block? And as I recall, one of the terms of their enlistment was they would be kept out of combat with Japanese forces.”
“Unless they volunteer for that combat duty, Fred,” Molloy replied. “Unless they volunteer…and we’re talking real volunteers here, not this you, you, and you bullshit. Let’s just wait and see what Miles can come up with.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Jock strolled into the G2’s office with two Nisei corporals. They certainly didn’t look like they had been forced to accompany the major. In fact, they looked positively eager.
“Every man in the section wanted to come,” Jock said. “We had to draw lots, and Corporals Nishimoto and Hashimoto were the lucky winners.”
The G2 said nothing, but the look on his face seemed to say, I am one surprised son of a bitch.
Dick Molloy was pretty surprised, too. He smiled as he said, “We’d better hurry up and get over to the G1 shop, Jock, and get your new guys’ paperwork in order…or we’ll be spending the night here.”
The slow-as-molasses personnel sergeant was getting on Jock’s nerves. Using only two fingers, one lethargic key stroke at a time, the sergeant was typing the orders that would assign Sergeant Botkin and the two Nisei corporals temporarily to Jock’s battalion. Every few letters, he would stop, mumble something under his breath, and readjust the paper on the carriage.
“Having a problem with that typewriter, Sergeant?” Jock asked.
“No problem with the machine, Major, but I didn’t get my coffee because of this expedite on these here orders of yours.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jock replied, with all the insincerity he could muster. “It must be one hell of a sacrifice having to work in this clean, comfortable office without a fresh cup of coffee. Maybe you ought to come out to the field with us. Coffee will be the least of your little worries.”
“We do things a certain way around here, Major,” the sergeant said, “and—”
Jock cut him off. “Yeah, I can tell, Sergeant. Creature comforts got you all by the ass. I’ll be back in five minutes to pick up my completed paperwork. You’d best get on with it.”
Jock found Colonel Molloy in the G1’s office, riffling through the regimental dispatch pouch. “Having problems?” Molloy asked.
“No, sir…just some poor, deskbound sergeant needed a little guidance.”
“And his ass kicked, too, I suppose,” the colonel said as he handed some documents to Jock. “Here…this’ll be of interest to you.”
It was the paperwork on First Sergeant Tom Hadley’s Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at Buna. It had taken a year to wind its way through the chain of command, but the final determination had been made: Sergeant Hadley’s actions, though valorous, do not meet the established criteria for awarding the CMOH.
The Silver Star was being awarded instead.
“Shit,” Jock said, “they didn’t even consider a DSC…just kicked it down to a Silver Star. If what Hadley did doesn’t qualify, what the hell does a guy have to do?”
“It looks like he only did one thing wrong, Jock,” Molloy replied. “He didn’t die.”
Chapter Six
The sergeant piloting the courier plane—a well-worn, single-engine Stinson L1—turned to his passengers and shouted, “This is gonna be a real close-run thing, gentlemen.”
Jock and Colonel Molloy didn
’t need to be told that. Even though the coastline of Goodenough Island was filling the windshield, the sun was awfully low, casting deepening shadows across the land and sea below them. The lower the plane dropped as she made her approach, the more the darkness would envelop her.
Swell way to end up wrapped around a tree, Jock thought, reflecting on those close calls he’d had in another light aircraft over the Port Moresby battlefields. But he’d walked away from all those without a scratch. It was the crash of a big plane—the C-47 high up in the mountains of Papua, the one that cost the life of everyone on board but him—that he couldn’t remember at all.
When the little plane finally skimmed over those last treetops—nothing but jagged, colorless blurs against the burnt orange sky—and bounced down on the darkened grass airstrip, the sighs of relief that escaped the plane’s occupants in near-perfect unison didn’t seem enough of a celebration. A hearty round of applause seemed more in order.
Sergeant Major Patchett was waiting with the jeep. “I thought for sure y’all weren’t gonna make it. You get Botkin?”
“Yep,” Jock replied, “I sure did. He’ll fly over tomorrow. You got my other six guys lined up, Top?”
“Yessir, all ready and willing….the damn fools.”
“Look who’s talking,” Jock said. “You’re one of those damn fools, aren’t you?”
Patchett replied, “Affirmative, sir. Who else is gonna keep you straight?”
“I’ve got some news about Hadley’s CMOH, Top.”
“Yeah, word beat you back here, sir. He already knows he’s getting a Silver Star instead.”
“How’d he take it?”
“Like a man. Said right out he doesn’t give a damn about medals. Just wants to get him and his boys home alive. Made me damn proud to hear it.”
They dropped off Colonel Molloy at the regimental CP and then began the short but slow drive to their battalion bivouac, inching along the few feet of road barely lit by the jeep’s blackout headlight. Patchett asked, “How long you figure we gotta keep driving with these Mickey Mouse lights?”
Jock replied, “Until the Jap airbase at Rabaul runs out of fuel.”
“Maybe that happened already. We ain’t had a night visitor overhead here in weeks.”
“Let’s hope, Top.”
“This mission we’re going on, sir…it got a name?”
“Yeah. They’re calling it Operation Blind Spot.”
“That ain’t real inspiring, sir,” Patchett said.
“It’s just a name, Top.”
“And you’re gonna do this with eight men, counting yourself?”
“Make that ten, Top.”
“Ten? Who’s the other two, all of a sudden?”
As Jock spoke the names of the two Nisei, Patchett slammed on the brakes, nearly throwing his commander onto the hood in the process. In the darkness, Jock couldn’t make out the expression on his sergeant major’s face. But he didn’t need to see it to know the man wasn’t happy.
“Them names,” Patchett said. “They sound awful Japanese to me, sir.”
“They’re Nisei, Top. Japanese-American troopers. Volunteered for this man’s army just like you and me. Now it’s been a real long day, so let’s get this jeep moving. We can talk about this back at the CP, if you like.”
“Don’t see much to talk about, sir,” Patchett said, sounding as if he was slamming a door on an unwelcome visitor.
As the jeep began its slow rumble again, Jock could sense a wall between the two of them, men who—until a moment ago—had trusted each other with their lives for three combat campaigns in this war. Suddenly, that trust seemed to have vanished—and Jock blamed himself.
He looked over at Melvin Patchett in the driver’s seat, now just a faint outline in the night.
How the hell could I have been so wrong about Top’s reaction to the Nisei? Have I just ruined one of the finest working relationships I’ve ever had in this Army?
Or can it still be saved?
They pulled up to the CP tent and went inside without saying a word to each other.
“Clear this tent, on the double,” Jock said. The battalion staff members working there weren’t surprised by that order in the least. The tension between the commander and the sergeant major was sucking the dank jungle air from the CP. They all felt it.
Once they were alone, Patchett asked, “Permission to speak freely, sir?” He sounded like he was addressing a stranger.
“Absolutely, Top. There’s no other way we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
“It’s real simple, sir,” Patchett began. “The only thing I ever agreed with that sumbitch Roosevelt on was when he locked up every last one of them yellow bastards in prison camps.”
“Internment camps, Top, They’re internment camps.”
“Same fucking thing, sir. Now, as far as them Nisei go”—he made Nisei sound like a cuss word—“I don’t care if they swear allegiance to Uncle Sugar on a stack of bibles a hundred feet high—they’re still fucking Japs. And I don’t—no, I can’t—trust ’em. What I don’t understand is how the hell can you, a guy who’s been through hell and back because of them lowlife, cannibal bastards—you do remember ’em eating our dead at Buna, right? And you was there at Pearl Harbor, too. How the hell can you want to play ball with ’em now?”
“Because we need them, Top, just like we need our German-American and Italian-American troopers. You don’t suppose those GIs who fought in North Africa—or the ones fighting in Italy right now—give a rat’s ass where the parents of the guy fighting next to them came from? In fact, we don’t seem to care much, either—”
“Until now, sir. This is a whole different ball of wax.”
“Because they don’t look like us, Top?”
“I don’t care what they look like, sir. I care what they done. Let me ask you something…you planning on giving them weapons?”
Jock found that funny. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m going to give them weapons.”
“Then that’s another mistake you just made.”
There was a silence—brief as the blink of an eye, but thunderous as any explosion— before Jock said, “That’s just about enough out of you, Sergeant Major. I’m going to assume from our conversation you’re un-volunteering for this mission.”
“Whoa! Hang on a minute, sir. I didn’t say nothing about that.”
“Well, I just did. Return to your regular battalion duties, effective immediately.”
Chapter Seven
This long day that had begun with the flight to Milne Bay was refusing to end. It was just past midnight when Jock, sprawled on his cot at long last, saw the outline of a short, muscular man hovering outside the tent’s mosquito netting. He told himself, With a fireplug shape like that, it can only be one man—Captain Theo Papadakis.
“Come on in, Theo,” Jock said. “Something on your mind?”
“Didn’t mean to disturb you, sir, but the rumor’s all over camp. They’re saying the sergeant major’s not going. Is it true?”
Jock sat up and rubbed his tired eyes. “The rumor mill’s quicker than usual,” he said, “but yeah, it’s true—Patchett’s not going.”
Jock figured the next thing out of Pop’s mouth would be Why? He wasn’t expecting him to say, “Then I volunteer to go in his place, sir.”
“Theo,” Jock replied, “I’ve already told you no once. I’m not taking any company commanders. You guys are critical. I need you getting your troops ready for the follow-up landings at Hollandia.”
“But you’re taking Tom Hadley, sir. Aren’t first sergeants just as critical?”
Jock shook his head. “As long as Lee Grossman’s in command of Charlie Company, we can cover Hadley for a couple of weeks.”
Papadakis said, “Speaking of Grossman, I think he’s coming to see you, too.”
“If it’s about volunteering to take Patchett’s place, tell him to save his breath.”
In the shadows, Jock couldn’t ma
ke out Pop’s expression, but his body language was unmistakable: Captain Theo Papadakis was desperate to go on this mission.
Theo’s a natural fighter, Jock told himself. Guys like him always want to be picked for the special missions.
Papadakis’ desperation then took a surprising turn: he began to unfasten the captain’s insignia on his collar. “I tell you what, sir,” he said, “I’ll take off these railroad tracks right now if it’ll get me in on this fight.”
“Knock it off, Theo,” Jock replied. “Privates are a dime a dozen but company commanders as good as you don’t grow on trees. Do me a big favor—stay a captain, please.”
Papadakis knew when he was licked. His head hung low; his shoulders slumped. “One question, sir,” he said. “Who is gonna replace Patchett?”
“Nobody, Theo. Nobody can replace him.”
Chapter Eight
Their official name on the operations order was Scout Team Blind Spot, but every one of the nine men on that team—Jock Miles included—hated it. Blind Spot had the stench of delusional blundering by the high command about it, something they knew from hard experience got soldiers killed in vast numbers very quickly. They took to calling themselves The Squad instead. It fit: numerically, they were too small to be an infantry platoon and too big to be considered a section. Squad said it best.
The men of The Squad were becoming a close fit, too. They’d been training together for three days now and Jock could sense the camaraderie growing. Integrating Sergeant Stuart Botkin, the commo specialist, back into the unit had been no problem at all. It was like he’d never left, even though it had been two years since he fought as one of Jock’s men at Cape York.
Integrating the Nisei had been rockier. Corporals Roy Nishimoto and Bruce Hashimoto barely had time to drop their duffle bags before Bogater Boudreau was in their faces. “You better be worth it, mes frères,” the Cajun sergeant said. “A man I’d really like covering my backside ain’t coming on this little trip because of you two.”
Operation Blind Spot (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 4) Page 3