W E B Griffin - Corp 07 - Behind the Lines

by Behind The Lines(Lit)

  "I'll go," Weston said immediately.

  "Can you ride a motorcycle, Mr. Weston?" Lieutenant Everly asked.

  "It can't be that hard," Weston said. "It's only a bicycle with a motor, right? I can ride a bike."

  "I'll go," Everly said. "I can ride a motorcycle."

  "You'll both go," General Fertig said. "You will both attempt to make your presence known to the submarine, if there is a submarine. If there is a submarine, Captain Weston will remain on the beach to do whatever has to be done, and Lieutenant Everly will get back on the motorcycle to establish con-tact with the patrol which Captain Hedges will be leading from here, and lead it to the rendezvous point. If there is no submarine, Lieutenant Everly will meet Captain Hedges, who will then return the patrol here. In that circumstance, you will have to get back here by yourself, Weston."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "We will have to establish, right now, the path of the patrol, and Everly will have to memorize it. It would be best, Weston, if you were unaware of the patrol's route."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  The thinking behind that isn't hard to figure out, Weston thought. There is a very good chance that I'll be captured. If I don't know the patrol's route, then I can't tell the Japanese, no matter what they do to me.

  "When the patrol leaves, we will relocate Headquarters, USFIP," Fertig said. "If this maneuver proves successful, I will get word of the new location to you. If it doesn't, it won't matter whether you know where we are or not."

  "Yeah," Lieutenant Everly said thoughtfully, and quickly corrected him-self: "Yes, Sir."

  "Captain Weston, would you please give my compliments to Captain Hedges and ask him to join me?"

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Sergeant LaMadrid, would you please instruct Lieutenant Everly in the operation of your motorcycle, and then, using the new Marine Hymn substitu-tion code, transmit the following message to both Australia and Pearl Harbor: 'We'll bring the hot dogs. Fertig.' "

  "Sir," Weston said.

  "What is it?"

  "May I suggest the message be 'We'll try to bring the hot dogs'?"

  "Oh, ye of little faith," Fertig said. "Send 'We'll bring the hot dogs,' Sergeant LaMadrid."

  "Yes, Sir," Sergeant LaMadrid said.

  [TWO]

  Approximately 30 miles south of Boston

  Davao Oriental Province

  Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines

  0501 Hours 24 December 1942

  It was raining. It had alternated between raining and drizzling all night. The road was slippery and they spilled five times, but suffered nothing more than damaged egos and Christ only knew how much mud and slime forced into the actions of their weapons.

  United States Forces in the Philippines, having decreed a state of martial law, had issued an order that all road signs that might be useful to the Japanese be destroyed, removed, moved, obliterated, or otherwise rendered unusable. The Filipinos had carried out the order with an efficiency that disheartened and frustrated Captain Weston. Since they couldn't go into Boston and start count-ing from there, he needed road markers to tell them how far they were south of Boston.

  The next-to-last spill occurred when Weston spotted a nearly concealed concrete mile marker the Filipinos had missed. He applied the brakes too sud-denly when he wanted a closer look.

  Using Mile Marker 19 as a reference point, they continued 10.0 miles far-ther down what had been Highway 1. And then, hiding the motorcycle a hun-dred yards off the road-in a spot where Weston was convinced it would next be seen by archaeologists in the year 1999-they proceeded on foot through the rain-soaked jungle until they heard, but did not see, the surf crashing on the beach.

  They then proceeded at approximately a hundred yards' distance from the beach-and the Japanese patrols that might be on the beach-until they reached the tip of what Weston would never forget was called a promontory.

  Not without effort, they climbed the tallest trees they could find that might offer a view of the shoreline and ocean, then climbed down again when they could see nothing but other trees. Everly fell the last twenty feet and sprained his ankle. This would pose problems when the time came for him to return to the motorcycle, presuming he could find the motorcycle.

  Then, with one hundred yards separating them-if there was a patrol, one of them might stand a chance of escaping-they crawled through the steaming slime to the end of the vegetation, and there took up their vigil.

  To protect them both against an inadvertent discharge in case the trigger snagged in the vegetation, Captain Weston had carried his weapon without a round ready to be chambered and fired when he pulled the trigger. Now, his heart leaping, he pulled back the bolt on the Thompson, rolled over on his back, and prepared to fire at whatever was coming through the jungle at him.

  "Easy, Mr. Weston," Everly hissed. "Easy does it."

  "You scared the shit out of me."

  "Did you see the Japs?"

  Weston's heart jumped. He shook his head, no.

  "Four of them, headed north," Everly said. "A corporal and three pri-vates."

  "They've gone?"

  Everly nodded.

  "Then what's the problem?"

  "There's two people out there in a black rubber boat," Everly said.

  Weston looked. Visibility was very poor, and the sea very wide, but eventually he saw two men, dressed in black, in a small, black rubber boat, their backs bent to lower their silhouette, paddling slowly through the black water toward the shore.

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "The Japs may come back, or they may not," Everly said. "Your call, Mr. Weston."

  "What do you mean, 'my call'?"

  "Do you want to take the chance that they won't come back? If they do come back, they're going to see the boat for sure. If they haven't already seen it, and already started somewhere where they can report it. They didn't have a radio that I could see."

  Weston thought the situation over.

  "I don't think they're just marching down the beach," Everly went on. "A truck must have put them off down that way." He pointed south. "They'll have a walk on the beach, and the truck will pick them up somewhere down that way." He pointed north. "Unless they climb a telephone pole and tap into the line, which I don't think is likely, they're going to have to go someplace, in the truck, to get on a telephone. Even if they seen the boat, four of them aren't going to do anything; they'd want more people, and they sure as hell are under orders to report something like this."

  "Yes," Weston agreed, feeling grossly incompetent.

  "So the question is do we want to take them out, in case they seen the boat, or in case they come back? If they do, they damned sure will see the boat. Or are we going to hope we're lucky?"

  "I think we had better take them out," Weston decreed, with what he hoped was far more assurance than he felt.

  "That means you'll have to take them out, by yourself," Everly said.

  "Your goddamned ankle!" Weston said.

  "I didn't do it on purpose, Mr. Weston," Everly said. "And one of us is going to have to stay here anyway. If those guys in the boat hear shooting, we don't want them paddling back to the sub."

  "Shit!"

  "Can I make a suggestion?"

  "Of course."

  "You go after the Japs. If you stick close to the jungle and don't make too much noise, you ought to be able to catch up to them without them suspecting anything. It's going to take those guys in the boat five minutes to make shore. That'll give you enough time to catch up with the Japs, unless they decide to turn around. When the boat makes shore, I'll fire a shot. Then you take out the Japs. They're all bunched up; you should be able to do it easy. And then we'll take it from there."

  "Goddamn it, why did they have to patrol this lousy section of beach right now?"

  "Things happen that way, Mr. Weston," Everly said.

  "How long ago did the Japs go by?"

  "You really didn't see them?" Everly asked wonderingly, and then a
n-swered the question. "About two minutes ago. They was walking slow. Your ass starts to drag in a hurry, walking through sand."

  "I'll take them out when I hear your shot," Weston said. "You make sure whoever's in that rubber boat doesn't leave."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  They rose to their feet and left the protective cover of the jungle. Weston started trotting up the beach, keeping as close to the vegetation as he could.

  Within a minute, he realized that Everly was right again. Walking through sand-not to mention trying to run through it-does in fact cause the ass to start dragging in a hurry.

  In three minutes, the Japanese came into sight. None of them seemed at all attentive to anything. Weston began to close the distance between himself and them, taking as much solace as he could from the knowledge that his was not the only dragging ass.

  When he came out of the jungle, Everly had concealed himself-flat on his stomach-behind a massive outcrop of rock. Suddenly he got to his feet.

  The two men were no longer in the boat. After a moment, Everly spotted their heads in the water, and then they began to rise higher and higher from the water, dragging the boat behind them. Finally, they were on the beach. They were dressed in what looked like utilities dyed black, and they had some kind of black grease rubbed on their faces. Even so, one of them looked familiar.

  Everly stepped from behind the rock.

  "McCoy, is that you?" he called.

  "Who's that?"

  "Everly."

  "Give us a hand with the boat," McCoy ordered.

  Everly walked quickly to the edge of the water. Up close, the man with McCoy looked seventeen years old.

  "We got a problem," Everly announced.

  "What kind of a problem?"

  "Four Japs, about five hundred yards down the beach," Everly said. Then he raised his Thompson to his shoulder, raised the muzzle into the air and pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out.

  Weston had been waiting for the signal. The four Japanese soldiers were walk-ing slowly in a file, not more than twenty yards in front of him. Weston was really surprised that they didn't seem to have any idea that they were being shadowed.

  He was carrying the Thompson-with growing difficulty; he was running out of breath-much like a quail hunter carries his shotgun when he expects a covey to flush. He was prepared to fire instantly.

  He was aware of the analogy, and the differences. Quail hunters do not usually run through sand; no shotgun he had ever held was nearly as heavy as the Thompson; and quail flush, they do not turn and shoot back.

  He had the Thompson to his shoulder and had drawn a sight on the lead Japanese before the first Japanese, hearing the shots, turned in the action of unslinging his Arisaka rifle from his shoulder.

  Time seemed to move very slowly.

  The first Jap bent his knees and dropped in his tracks. The second and third Japanese in the file fell over forward. The last Japanese, in the act of shoulder-ing his Arisaka, took a four-round burst in the chest and fell over backward.

  Weston ran forward to them, the Thompson still at his shoulder. The first and third Japanese showed signs of life. Without really thinking what he was doing, Weston took his Nambu pistol-already carrying a round in the cham-ber-and shot both of them in the head.

  A little sanity returned. He felt a twinge of nausea at the sight of the blood and brain matter on the sand.

  And then, in a reflex action, Weston stripped each of the bodies of their ammunition, gathered up the Arisakas, and, staggering under the weight, started back to where he had left Everly.

  "What the hell..." McCoy asked just before they heard the four bursts- three short and one long burst-from Weston's Thompson.

  "Captain Weston was waiting for my signal before taking them out," Ev-erly said.

  McCoy turned to the kid.

  "Koffler, go see if you can help down there," he ordered.

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Koffler responded, pulled a Colt.45 pistol from under his dyed-black utilities, and started to run down the beach.

  "He's a little young, isn't he, McCoy?" Everly asked as he and McCoy dragged the rubber boat across the narrow beach and into the jungle.

  McCoy didn't reply.

  "Is it safe enough to bring in a couple more boats?" he asked.

  "Your call, McCoy," Everly replied. "I think that was all the Japs for right now, but I don't know that."

  McCoy took a black bag of some kind from the boat, then took a knife, a daggerlike weapon, from a sheath strapped to his arm and sliced at the bag.

  Jesus Christ, I'll be a monkey's uncle if that isn't the same knife he used to cut those Italian Marines! Everly thought in wonder.

  Then McCoy had a microphone in his hand and was pulling what looked like an automobile antenna out of a black box.

  "Coffin, Coffin, Columbus, Columbus."

  "Go ahead, Columbus. Read you five by five."

  "Coffin, send in two repeat two boats."

  "Understand two boats. On the way."

  "Who the hell are you talking to, Killer?" Everly asked.

  McCoy didn't reply, directly.

  "I guess they didn't hear that Thompson," he said. "Otherwise I probably would have been talking to nobody."

  Then he touched Everly's arm, and when Everly looked at him, nodded out to sea.

  The conning tower of the Sunfish rose from the sea. Before her deck broke water, there was activity on her bridge.

  Two officers appeared-identifiable by their brimmed caps. And then four or five sailors. A.50 caliber machine gun appeared and was quickly put in its mount. There was the glint of gleaming, belted cartridges as the gun was charged.

  The national colors sprouted on a mast, their red, white, and blue suddenly vivid in the early-morning sun against the wet gray of the Sunfish. The officers and sailors in the conning tower saluted as the wind whipped the flag straight.

  A port in the conning tower burst open and sailors poured out, some to man the four-inch cannon mounted forward, some rushing to open ports in her deck. Two rubber boats suddenly inflated on the Sunfish's deck, and were quickly put over the side.

  "Shit!" Everly said, his voice breaking. "Look at that fucking flag, will you?"

  Weston and Koffler came running back down the beach while the two rubber boats making their way to shore were still a hundred yards offshore.

  "Got them all!" Weston reported excitedly, even jubilantly. "We dragged the bodies off the beach."

  "Mr. Weston, th1s is Killer McCoy," Everly said.

  "Fuck you, Everly," McCoy snapped.

  "McCoy, this is Captain Weston," Everly said.

  McCoy, smiling, saluted.

  "Lieutenant McCoy, Sir," he said. "Captain, you need a shave."

  "I'm Sergeant Koffler, Sir," Koffler said to Captain Weston. "We didn't have time for introductions back there."

  "How do you do, Sergeant?" Weston replied formally.

  "You're a sergeant?" Everly asked incredulously.

  "He's a staff sergeant," McCoy said, chuckling. "Zimmerman-he's in one of those boats-is a gunny."

  Weston looked out to sea and saw the rubber boats and then the Sunfish, with her colors streaming proudly from her mast. And then he realized that tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his chest was heaving with sobs he couldn't control.

  [THREE]

  "Do you have any people with you, Captain?" McCoy asked.

  "No. It's just Lieutenant Everly and myself," Weston said.

  " 'Lieutenant' Everly?" McCoy asked.

  "The General commissioned me, McCoy," Everly said.

  "What were you before the war, Captain?" McCoy asked.

  "I was a lieutenant. I'm an aviator," Weston said.

  Hearing what he said, he realized that he no longer felt like an aviator. It seemed impossible that he had ever done anything like that.

  "You're a Marine officer? A regular?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "Are there other officers around?" McCoy asked. "Somebod
y with more rank?"

  "Captain Hedges," Everly said. "He's leading a patrol here."

  "When will he get here?"

  "Two, three days. He has to come sixty miles. Maybe four," Everly said.

  "Nobody higher than a captain?"