Go Down Fighting

by Len Levinson

  Bannon heard something burst through the vegetation . . .

  A second later a hand clamped over his mouth. He raised his hands to defend himself and saw the blade of a knife gleam in the filtered moonlight.

  Bannon reached upwards frantically for the wrist that held the knife. His fingers closed around the wrist, as the Japanese soldier behind him tried to drive the point of the knife into Bannon's throat. Bannon lurched to the side, spinning around and pulling the Japanese soldier's arm downwards, throwing him over his shoulder.

  The Japanese soldier flew through the air and landed on his back, but he bounded around and jumped to his feet quickly, the knife still in his right hand, blade up and pointed at Bannon . . .

  Also by Len Levinson

  The Rat Bastards:

  Hit the Beach

  Death Squad

  River of Blood

  Meat Grinder Hill

  Down and Dirty

  Green Hell

  Too Mean to Die

  Hot Lead and Cold Steel

  Do or Die

  Kill Crazy

  Nightmare Alley

  Go For Broke

  Tough Guys Die Hard

  Suicide River

  Satan’s Cage

  The Pecos Kid:

  Beginner’s Luck

  The Reckoning

  Apache Moon

  Outlaw Hell

  Devil’s Creek Massacre

  Bad to the Bone

  The Apache Wars Saga:

  Desert Hawks

  War Eagles

  Savage Frontier

  White Apache

  Devil Dance

  Night of the Cougar

  * * *

  Go Down Fighting

  * * *

  Book 16 of the Rat Bastards

  by

  Len Levinson

  Excepting basic historical events, places, and personages, this series of books is fictional, and anything that appears otherwise is coincidental and unintentional. The principal characters are imaginary, although they might remind veterans of specific men whom they knew. The Twentythird Infantry Regiment, in which the characters serve, is used fictitiously—it doesn't represent the real historical Twentythird Infantry, which has distinguished itself in so many battles from the Civil War to Vietnam—but it could have been any American line regiment that fought and bled during World War II.

  These novels are dedicated to the men who were there. May their deeds and gallantry never be forgotten.

  GO DOWN FIGHTING

  Copyright © 1986 by Len Levinson. All Rights Reserved.

  EBook © 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN 978-1-62064-857-5

  Library ISBN 978-1-62460-198-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover photo © TK/iStock.com.

  Go Down Fighting

  ONE . . .

  It was two hours before dawn on July 19, 1944. A three-quarter moon floated in the sky, but its light didn't penetrate the thick vegetation of the New Guinea jungle. Beneath the vines, flowers, and jagged leaves, crouching in holes hacked into the ground, was the Twenty-third Regiment's reconnaissance platoon, waiting for the attack to begin.

  Buck Sergeant Charlie Bannon from Pecos, Texas was in charge, and he looked at his watch. The luminous hands glowed at 0345 hours, and the attack would commence at 0500 hours. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked around.

  The jungle was silent except for the calls of night birds and the howling of wild dogs. Bannon's men were lined up on both sides of him, their M 1 rifles locked and loaded and their bayonets fixed. It'd be a sneak attack with no artillery preparation to tip off the Japs that it was coming. The GIs would come out of their holes and rush the Japanese soldiers opposite them, hurling them back from the positions the Japanese had captured during the previous night.

  The night had been a disaster. Bannon had been trapped behind enemy lines for eight hours and fought his way back alone, hiding like an animal, stabbing Japs whenever they got in his way. Lieutenant Breckenridge had been wounded seriously and was in the division medical headquarters. Casualties had been heavy, and now Bannon commanded the recon platoon because he was the ranking man.

  He never commanded the entire platoon before. His greatest responsibility thus far in the war had been command of the first squad, but the roulette wheel of fate had spun around and his number fell into the slot. He had to give the orders instead of take them. He was twenty-four years old and responsible for the lives of twenty-six men.

  He wished he could puff a cigarette, but he couldn't because the lit end could be seen by the Japs. Pulling his canteen out of its case, he unscrewed the lid and raised the tin container to his lips, drinking down some lukewarm water. The tension was almost unbearable. He had a cramp in his stomach and a headache.

  Bannon was six feet tall and lanky, with sandy hair beneath his steel pot. He had a rawboned face with more lines in it than a man his age should have. He'd enlisted in the Army on the day after Pearl Harbor and hit the Guadalcanal Beach with the first wave of GIs. He'd been fighting for his life and his country ever since. He'd been wounded many times and carried a steel plate in his head.

  He looked at his watch again. Only two minutes had passed since the last time he checked the time. He sucked in air between his clenched teeth.

  “Calm down,” said Pfc. Frankie La Barbara, who was sharing the foxhole with him. “If that bullet comes with your name on it, there's nothing you can do except fall on your fucking face.”

  Bannon looked at Frankie La Barbara, who was from New York City's Little Italy. Frankie also was a six-footer, but huskier and swarthier than Bannon. Frankie had black hair and a broken nose that still was healing. The stitches hadn't been taken out yet and his nose hurt like hell. Frankie chewed gum frantically, switching it from one side of his mouth to the other, making it crack and snap every time his jaws closed. Bannon and Frankie had been together ever since Basic Training at Ford Ord, California. They'd had good times and bad times, but mostly bad times.

  “I just don't give a fuck anymore,” Frankie said, snapping the gum. “I got a feeling my number is coming up in this attack.”

  “Your number isn't coming up in this attack,” Bannon said. “Only the good die young.”

  “Oh yeah?” Frankie asked. “Well I seen a lot of young rotten fucks get killed, so that's bullshit.”

  Bannon shrugged. “I'm gonna go see how the others are doing. You hold down the fort here.”

  Bannon climbed out of the foxhole. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and looked south into the jungle where the Japanese were. That jungle had belonged to the American Army at six o'clock yesterday evening, but then the Japanese attacked suddenly and unexpectedly, pushing the GIs back. Now it would have to be recaptured, and Bannon knew that Frankie was right: In ten years this entire part of the world would be forgotten, and the men who died here would be remembered only by their families and friends, and there'd be another war going on someplace else, probably.

  He turned to his right and headed toward the next foxhole.

  “Halt—who goes there!” shouted a voice inside the foxhole.

  “Bannon!”

  “Oh,” said the voice of Pfc. Billie Jones, known as “the Reverend” because he'd been an itinerant preacher in Georgia before the war.

  Bannon approached the foxhole and looked inside. Beside the Reverend Billie Jones was Private Victor Yabalonka, the former longshoreman from San Francisco.

  “How's everything going in here?�
� Bannon asked.

  “Okay,” said the Reverend Billie Jones.

  “What about you?” Bannon said to Yabalonka.

  “I'm okay too.”

  “We're gonna jump off in a little while,” Bannon told them. “When I say go, move it out, but don't get too far ahead of the rest of us and don't fall back. We'll wanna keep the lines straight, understand?”

  The men grunted.

  “As you were,” Bannon said.

  Bannon walked away, heading toward the next foxhole. The jungle was hot and humid and Bannon's uniform was plastered against his skin. His feet itched inside his boots. He wished he could take a bath and drink a cold glass of beer.

  “Halt!” yelled the voice in the next foxhole. “Who goes there!”

  “Bannon!”

  “Advance to be recognized!”

  Bannon walked closer to the foxhole. “You didn't recognize my voice?”

  The big gnarled face of Private Joshua McGurk looked up at him. McGurk was the giant of the recon platoon, seven feet tall and tipping the scales at three hundred and ten pounds. Before the war he'd been a lumberjack in Maine.

  “Yuh,” McGurk said, “I knew your voice, but I wanted to make sure. Them Japs is sneaky, y'know.”

  “I know.” Bannon looked down at McGurk, who was very sensitive and not too bright. Everybody tried not to antagonize him because he had a ferocious temper. Bannon had learned that the best way to deal with him was treat him like a child. “You did the right thing,” he said to McGurk. “If you're not sure, make sure.”

  McGurk nodded and blinked his eyes. “Yuh.”

  Bannon looked at Private Randolph Worthington, who'd hunted big game in Africa for sport before the war. “How're you doing?”

  “I'm all right, Sergeant. When things settle down, I'd like to have permission to talk with the C.O.”

  “Ask me when things settle down.”

  “Okay.”

  Bannon dropped down to one knee beside the foxhole. A mosquito landed on his neck and jabbed its prong in, and Bannon raised his hand, smashing the mosquito into goop.

  “We'll move out in a little while,” he said, beginning the same sermon he'd just delivered to the Reverend Billie Jones and Private Yabalonka. He told McGurk and Worthington to stay lined up with everybody else and not to stop for anything.

  “Keep firing your weapons,” Bannon said. “That's the most important part. Even if you can't see anything, fire anyway. Your bullets'll make the Japs keep their heads down. Got it?”

  The men nodded, and the leaves festooned to their helmets trembled in the moonlight.

  “Any questions?” Bannon asked.

  “Nope,” said McGurk.

  Private Worthington shook his head.

  Frankie La Barbara was all alone on his knees in the bottom of his foxhole. Bannon hadn't returned from his inspection yet and Frankie's hands were clasped together in prayer. His eyes squinched shut and his lips moved like two squirming worms as he whispered: “Oh Lord, I don't know if I believe in you or not, but if you're there, please get me through the next attack in one piece, okay? If you do, I promise I'll go to confession right after the attack, and then I'll go to Mass every Sunday for as long as I live. I won't gamble or use bad language anymore, and I won't fuck any more nurses whether they're married or not. Okay?”

  Frankie listened for the voice of God, but heard nothing except the nightbirds and monkeys. He clasped his hands tighter and was about to pray more, when he heard the crack of a twig nearby. He dived onto his M 1 rifle and pointed it in the direction of the sound.

  “Halt—who goes there!” he shouted.

  A rotund figure emerged out of the darkness. “What the hell were you doing in there, praying?”

  The voice was deep and hoarse, and Frankie La Barbara would know it anywhere. It was the voice of Colonel Bob Hutchins, the commanding officer of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment. Frankie looked up at him, amazed to see the colonel so close to him.

  Colonel Hutchins carried a Thompson submachine gun in his right hand, and wore his helmet low over his eyes. His big pot belly hung over his cartridge belt and his eyes gleamed out of the darkness.

  “I just asked you a question, young soldier,” Colonel Hutchins said in his Arkansas drawl. “I asked if you were praying down there.”

  “Yes sir, I was,” Frankie admitted.

  “What the hell were you praying for?”

  Frankie was embarrassed to have been caught in the act of praying. “I dunno,” he said.

  “You don't know what you was praying for?”

  “Well yeah, I mean yes sir, I know what I was praying for.”

  “Well what in the hell was it?”

  Frankie thought for a few moments. “I was praying for good luck, I guess, sir.”

  Colonel Hutchins spat a lunger onto the ground and then dropped down to one knee beside Frankie's foxhole.

  “Waal,” said Colonel Hutchins, “you can pray for good luck if you want to, but I'd say that it's the Japs over there who ought to be praying for good luck, because they're the ones who're gonna need it most. Do you wanna know why?”

  “Why sir?”

  “Because they're gonna have to face murderous sons of bitches like you in only one more hour. I almost feel sorry for the Japs, because you're not gonna be nice to them, are you now?”

  “No sir.”

  “You're gonna really fuck ‘em up, ain'tcha?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You're gonna stab ‘em with your bayonet and kick ‘em in the balls, ain'tcha?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Colonel Hutchins shook his head sadly. “Boy, I'd hate to be one of them poor hungry skinny Japs over there, because they ain't gonna have a chance against a big mean feller like you. If I was a praying man, which I ain't, but if I was I'd pray for the souls of them poor Japs that're gonna run into you this morning, because they're gonna die, ain't they, young soldier?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Colonel Hutchins leaned closer to Frankie and winked. “Wanna drink?” he asked, licking the left side of his upper lip.

  “Yes sir,” replied Frankie.

  Colonel Hutchins reached behind him and pulled his canteen out of its case. He handed the canteen to Frankie and Frankie unscrewed the top eagerly, because he knew what was inside. Frankie raised the canteen to his lips and threw his head back.

  “Take it easy, now,” Colonel Hutchins said gently. “Save some for me.”

  The fiery sweet liquid burned its way down Frankie La Barbara's throat. It was the famous white lightning brewed in the Headquarters Company mess hall by one of Colonel Hutch-ins's cooks, based on a recipe belonging to the legendary Sergeant Snider, a former moonshiner from Kentucky who recently had been shipped back to the States with his million-dollar wound.

  “Thanks sir,” said Frankie La Barbara, handing the canteen back.

  Colonel Hutchins took a swig for himself and dropped the canteen back into its canvas case. He looked at the watch on his wrist.

  “The attack'll begin pretty soon,” Colonel Hutchins said. “I expect you to give it your best, young soldier.”

  “Yes sir,” Frankie replied.

  “Don't let me down.”

  “No sir.”

  Colonel Hutchins stood up, turned around, and walked away. In seconds he merged with the blackness of the night and was gone. Frankie La Barbara dropped back into the foxhole, sweating profusely from the sudden influx of alcohol.

  He's just a loudmouth and a drunk, Frankie La Barbara thought. Why do I love that old son of a bitch so much?

  In the next trench, by the light of the moon, the Reverend Billie Jones read his handy pocket Bible. His eyes squinted because the light was piss poor, and he ran his fingers across the sentences so he could keep track of where he was.

  Opposite him sat Private Victor Yabalonka, the former longshoreman from San Francisco, and he had mixed feelings about Bibles. He'd been an atheist and a member of the Communist Party befo
re the war, but two strange events had happened to him during the past week and he still wasn't sure of how to handle them.

  It began when Billie forced him to take one of the handy pocket Bibles that he carried around in his knapsack. Yabalonka had buttoned the Bible into his shirt pocket and forgot all about it, but later that day he'd been shot, and the Bible stopped the bullet.

  At first Yabalonka had been astounded by the strange event, but then realized it was no more than a coincidence. He'd heard tales of bullet-stopping Bibles ever since Basic Training, and now realized that the tales probably were all true. Tons of lead in the form of bullets or shrapnel flew around battlefields when things got hot and heavy, and it was inevitable that some of it would hit Bibles, because there were many Bibles on battlefields too. Lots of men carried them in their shirt pockets. Religious organizations back in the States shipped Bibles to the front by the carload.

  Just when Yabalonka had rationalized the incident, he'd been shot again the next day, and his handy pocket Bible had stopped the second bullet too! That one really scrambled his brains, but now he'd rationalized it away just like the first one. It was just another coincidence, not the intervention of any supernatural being. Strange things happened in the world. Anybody who ever read Ripley's Believe It or Not would know that. If people could be born with two heads and four arms, why couldn't a Bible stop two bullets?

  The Reverend Billie Jones looked at his watch. “Well, it won't be long now.”

  “Sure won't,” Yabalonka replied.

  “Don't you think you'd better talk with God before we charge on out of here?”

  “I don't believe in God, Billie. I don't wanna hurt your feelings or anything like that, but I just don't.”

  “Even after he saved your life!”

  Yabalonka regretted telling Billie about the first incident, but he had the sense not to tell him about the second. “It was just a coincidence,” Yabalonka said. “I was lucky.”