Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

“Holy shit!” Mischkie muttered.

  He took his foot off the gas and braked.

  Racing toward them at high speeds were three vehicles, approximately a quarter of a kilometer away.

  Hanklin grunted a curse. He flung an angry look at Keiko.

  “Reckon you couldn’t wait till we got to that air base, could you, sweetheart?”

  Her denial was buried beneath the heavy yammering of two, then three mounted machine guns from the backs of those approaching vehicles.

  The vehicles separated on the far side of where the villagers worked, where the children played.

  The vehicles stormed on, plumes of dust clouding up behind each one, the machine gunners firing random, choppy bursts. One came in from slightly higher ground. One raced directly at the people dispersing wildly in the field, on the right. The third blazed in directly at the jeep.

  Bullets whistled dangerously close above and around the jeep. A few rounds pinged off the chassis.

  Mischkie strong-armed his steering wheel, almost tipping the jeep onto its side in his haste, but he straightened it out and the jeep sprung from the road, bumping across a gulley and down an incline separating the road from the river several hundred yards away.

  The machine gun fire from the approaching vehicles ceased when the gunners lost sight of the jeep.

  Mischkie braked to a sharp halt and everyone jumped out to crouch behind the vehicle for cover, the men aiming their rifles over the jeep at the road approximately where the attacking vehicles would blaze into sight within seconds. Keiko crouched down with them.

  In the adjacent field, the civilians scattered. Ballard heard women screaming from that direction.

  Keiko tugged his sleeve, pointing.

  “Over there!”

  He had lost sight of the children playing in the sunshine, his attention riveted on the attack, assuming the children had been gathered up in the civilians’ run for cover.

  He was wrong.

  The infants squalled their fright near the fallen body of a teenage girl who had been left to oversee them. The girl lay face down in the dirt, lifeless.

  Frantic shouting came from women running across the field toward the children, obviously the mothers. Villagers seeking cover wailed out their anguish and fear.

  The Japanese military vehicles sailed into view, cresting the slope from three directions. The gunner of the vehicle racing in along the river opened fire.

  One of the young women running across the field toward the children threw up her hands and spilled forward onto her face. The other women scrambled away to escape the path of the oncoming Japanese vehicles.

  A pair of vehicles stormed in from the road but the gunner in the vehicle coming along the river was the only one firing.

  Hanklin invested several extra seconds in sighting along the length of his M-1.

  “The gunner’s mine.”

  “He’s out of range,” said Mischkie.

  “He just came into range.”

  Hanklin squeezed the trigger once. The machine gunner toppled out of the vehicle in a spread-eagled dead fall. Hanklin triggered another round that took out the driver.

  The vehicle yawed this way and that at high speed, then slammed into a tree head-on and exploded into a fiery inferno.

  “Yeah!” Mischkie shouted like someone having a great time. “One down and two to go!”

  Keiko started to rise.

  “I must get those children to safety.”

  The mothers across the field started in the children’s’ direction again. The remaining two vehicles were bearing down on the jeep from opposite directions.

  Mischkie reached out and grabbed Keiko to stop her.

  “Oh no, you don’t, sister. You got us into this. If we go down, you’re taking the fall too.”

  Ballard brushed Mischkie’s arm aside.

  “Let her go, Wil. Keep your mind on those guys.”

  He nodded at where the Jap vehicles had sluiced into sideways skids about twenty yards away.

  “But, Sarge—”

  “Those kids are more important than anything else,” Ballard told him.

  He started to nod to Keiko to go ahead, but she was already dodging toward the children, crouching as she ran in anticipation of more fire. Mischkie watched her herd the children toward the river where the bank angled low enough for them to drop from sight.

  “You’re right, Sarge.” he sighed. “I think that doll is on the side of the angels.”

  “Look out, fellas,” Hanklin drawled. “Hell’s a’poppin’.”

  The villagers across the field saw their children being led to safety by Keiko and hesitated, skittishly eyeing the Japanese soldiers pouring to the ground behind their vehicles.

  The machine guns opened fire with pounding bursts that kicked up soil not far short of the jeep. The Americans returned fire, toppling one of the machine gunners, causing the surviving one to pause in firing for a moment’s reflection on whether he might not be safer behind cover.

  The other Japanese soldiers fired from behind the cover of their vehicles—hurried, frightened rifle fire that went high and wide. A sergeant could be seen wildly exhorting his men to charge the Americans trapped with their backs to the river.

  Hanklin said, “Won’t be long before that NCO has those boys riled up enough to come after us.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” said Mischkie.

  He sighted across the hood of the jeep.

  “Wait a minute,” said Ballard. “What’s this?”

  The civilians who had sought cover were emerging. There was no sign of Keiko or the children.

  Some of the civilians were lifting up the bodies of the fallen and carrying them away, but most of the villagers, walking in a line three or four abreast came, not hurrying but purposefully walking, directly into the field of fire between the opposing forces.

  “What the hell?” Mischkie grunted.

  The small band of villagers, men and women of every age, many of them carrying farming implements, the knees of their clothes damp from working the land, filed across the field, following an elderly man carrying a hoe as if it were a walking staff. The people, like their leader, looked neither to the left nor right as they moved to form a human wall between the two sides.

  Rifle fire from behind the Japanese vehicles tapered off despite the rantings of the sergeant who stood in the rear of his vehicle haranguing his men, pointing at the Americans. He reminded Ballard of a mad dog foaming at the mouth.

  The Japanese soldiers did not resume firing, did not attack, but stared at the villagers from behind their vehicles and listened when the village leader faced them and spoke in a plaintive, pleading voice. Some of the soldiers rose from behind their cover, their rifles lowered, aimed at the ground.

  “Now what the hell?” said Mischkie.

  “They’ve had enough,” Hanklin said without much conviction.

  The elder next turned and called over to the Americans in barely intelligible, broken phrases.

  “G . I … no killing … enough!”

  “Looks like we’re not the only ones who feel that way,” Ballard said under his breath.

  He stood up from behind the jeep, as the Japanese soldiers had stood behind their vehicles. He braced the M-1 to his hip, canting the barrel high. Mischkie and Hanklin did the same.

  Hanklin said quietly, “Looks like a Mexican stand-off.”

  “Your geography’s off base, cowboy,” said Mischkie, “but you got the idea.”

  “Those men are demobilized soldiers,” said Ballard. “They’ve got nothing to gain by risking their lives fighting us. The war’s over.” He raised his rifle, not in a threatening gesture but to motion. “Drop your rifles,” he shouted, knowing that they did not speak his language but that they would understand.

  They dropped their rifles. Their sergeant, remaining standing in the back of one of the vehicles, was not pleased. His men looked weary. There was some dispirited exchange among them, then they boarded the
vehicles. The sergeant barked something at his driver, a corporal who sat with his hands on the steering wheel.

  The other vehicle chugged to life. The driver circled around, those aboard avoided looking at the villagers. Ballard stepped from behind the jeep.

  “Where are you going, Sarge?” Mischkie asked with a note of rising concern.

  “I’m going to try to make these people know we’re not here to fight them.”

  Hanklin’s attention stayed on the Jap sergeant across the way. The demobbed soldier had given up exhorting his men, apparently yielding to the dissension, but his glare glowed like burning coals.

  “That jasper don’t appear any too sociable.”

  “So cover me.”

  “You can bet your ass on that.”

  “I am,” said Ballard.

  He strode toward the village elder, never taking his eyes off the sergeant glowering down from the rear of the vehicle parked just beyond where the villagers stood.

  The Japanese sergeant erupted with a shriek at the top of his lungs, full of naked madness, and threw himself behind the .50 caliber mounted at the rear of his vehicle and kept right on screaming as he tracked the muzzle in a lightning arc around on the Americans and the villagers.

  By this time Ballard had unsheathed the knife worn across his chest. He pulled back his arm and let fly even before Hanklin or Mischkie could trigger their weapons. The blade buried itself in the center of the Jap’s chest and his scream gurgled into an inhaled gasp of surprise and finality. His body thudded from the vehicle to the ground.

  The corporal behind the wheel started up the engine, steered around, and followed the first vehicle onto the road, out of sight in the direction from which they had come. They did not look back. Left in their wake was a grim quiet broken only by the weeping and sobbing of the families of the dead beneath the burning late afternoon sun.

  Mischkie could not take his eyes from the line of villagers which was slowly breaking up.

  “Never saw anything like it,” he said. “This war must really be over.”

  “Let’s find Keiko,” said Ballard, looking around.

  A few of the older children from the group of kids appeared above the drop-off of the river bank, considerably further downriver from where Keiko had disappeared with them.

  “She did a good job getting them out of the line of fire,” Hanklin said.

  Some of the villagers broke from the group in the field to hurry toward the children. Ballard nodded his thanks to the village leader, then he and his men moved along toward those scooping up children in their arms amid much frightened jabbering of the kids.

  A rise in the terrain formed hillocks which placed a shelf of land here, well out of sight from where the main drama had occurred moments ago.

  It was to this spot Keiko had brought her charges to safety. From here the river continued a distance beyond the shelf of land before disappearing around a bend.

  There was no trace of Keiko.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Baron Tamura and Colonel Hayashi watched with the Baron’s chief security officer, Kozono, as an armored vehicle drove in through the stone archway and came to a stop before them. Three men of the security force leaped from the vehicle, two of them holding Keiko by her wrists. They led her forward. She allowed them to lead her with her chin held high. A thin cut, a bruise on one cheekbone, and scuff marks on her clothing testified to the struggle required to subdue her.

  Kozono’s men bowed deeply to the Baron. She did not bow to her uncle or the men with him.

  “There was fighting,” one of the soldiers reported.

  “Who was it?” Kozono demanded.

  “We could not see. We only saw her, hiding with children.”

  “I was not hiding,” Keiko snapped. “I was saving lives.”

  Baron Tamura told the men, “You have done well.”

  They bowed again, radiating gratitude at the compliment.

  “What will you do with your niece?” Kozono inquired.

  “Shackle her.” The Baron’s words rang colder than a blade piercing flesh. “I warned you, Keiko, the day we witnessed the first landing of the barbarians. I advised you then not to leave the castle, that to do otherwise would result in dire consequences for you.”

  One of Kozono’s men held her hands together, while the second clamped heavy metal cuffs over her wrists, snapping them shut.

  “What will you do with me now, Uncle? Torture me?”

  “Do not make light of such things.”

  “You would do that. Or you would have it done.”

  “Such extremes will not be called for. We know where you have been. You can have no comprehension of my dismay, nor my anger.”

  “Nor you of mine.”

  “Somehow you found out about the ninja. I am told there was a woman who went to the hotel to warn the Americans. It was you.”

  “Will you kill me?”

  He snapped his eyes at the men who flanked her.

  “Take her to the dungeon.”

  “Dungeon? You live in the Dark Ages, Uncle. It will be your undoing.”

  “I live by the tradition of my sacred ancestors,” he said sternly. “I live by the code of Bushido. It will not be my undoing, child, but my destiny and the destiny of Japan.”

  “Tradition does not make wrong right,” she retorted. “It is your tradition, Uncle, and yours, Colonel Hayashi, which brought this national tragedy upon us. The folly begun in Manchuria, compounded at Pearl Harbor, has come to its inevitable end. You militarists,” she spat, “you say you love Japan. How could you let such a fate befall her? You will forever be a black stain on the pages of our history. Your ways, your beloved tradition, led our country to the brink of annihilation and now you would seize from us even the most fragile of hopes for peace.”

  Hayashi’s pudgy features were nonplussed at this effrontery. He was speechless.

  “Take her away,” the Baron ordered.

  Kozono nodded to his men, who escorted her off.

  She called over her shoulder to the Baron and Hayashi, “Your day is past. It is normal for people to want peace. It is not normal to want war. The people will make the difference. You will see.”

  When they were alone again, Hayashi asked, “How much do you think she knows, Baron-san?”

  “About tomorrow? She knows nothing about that, rest assured.”

  The air force colonel appeared unconvinced.

  “She preached a stirring ode to collective strength. What will we do with her?”

  “She is my responsibility, Colonel Hayashi. Do not concern yourself further about it. My niece will be dealt with.”

  Shortly after dusk, Ballard steered the jeep off the main road onto a narrow, dusty trail at a point just before where the main road crested a rise. The trail climbed a short distance into a cluster of pines.

  He parked the jeep among the trees. They left the jeep to move cautiously through the trees to a craggy outlook exactly where the village elder had told them they would find it: a beautiful vantage point that offered them an unobstructed view of the road as it went directly past the high, foreboding stone walls of a castle perched on a sheer cliff above the sea, about a quarter mile away from their position.

  A breeze nipped in off the ocean, cool and refreshing in the gathering gloom after the heat of the day.

  The leader of the village where Keiko disappeared managed to convey to Ballard that he had picked up a smattering of English, to put it mildly, from the days when he worked at a restaurant in Tokyo before the war. He was profuse in his bowing.

  “You not want war, we not want war,” he kept saying over and over between bows and smiles.

  The language barrier and the general confusion cost them another thirty minutes in getting a few simple answers from the old-timer, but the time and effort proved well invested.

  The village leader recognized the young woman as Keiko Tamura. She was in some way related to someone named Baron Tamura who, if Ballard
interpreted the man’s directions correctly, resided in the medieval castle on the cliff below them.

  One of the residents of the village had witnessed Keiko being spirited away by soldiers of the Baron’s personal army. Again, if Ballard’s understanding of the village leader’s translation was accurate.

  They heard chugging engine noises. Moments later, in the final, uncertain light of day, an armored vehicle lacking any military markings topped the rise of the road and approached the main gate of the castle set squarely in the high wall facing the road. A sentry emerged from a station and waved the vehicle on through without stopping it.

  Hanklin worked a chaw of tobacco. “So now what do we do?”

  “That’s a dumb question, hillbilly,” Mischkie ribbed. “Yeah,” Hanklin admitted sheepishly, “I guess it is. We’re going in, right, Sarge?”

  “Right,” said Ballard. “I don’t see any other way. This is where Keiko was taking us.”

  “Something’s in the wind down there.”

  A lighted area around one wing of the castle appeared from here to be a command post for a paramilitary setup. Ballard made out a motor pool and numerous men bearing rifles, walking about.

  “Whoever this Baron’s working with and whatever it is they’re planning,” said Ballard, “we’ve got between now and dawn tomorrow to put it out of commission before the surrender signing. This has to be about that. That doesn’t leave us time to go back to Yokohama for reinforcements, and I’m not about to trust the telephones even if we could find an operator who spoke English or a phone that worked.”

  “So who said anything about reinforcements?” Hanklin wanted to know.

  “What size force you think they’ve got down there?” Mischkie wondered.

  “My guess would be company strength. Our only chance is to get in and out without them realizing it until it’s too late, and for that we’re going to need a real light touch and a whole lot of luck. Mission objective is to stop the Baron and to do that we need to know just what we’re up against. Keiko can tell us that. If she’s in there, we’ll find her. That’s priority one. From there, we take it as it comes.”

  Another armored vehicle without markings approached the castle’s main gate from the other direction. As before, the sentry waved the vehicle through without stopping it.