by Ian Blake
He ran his hand carefully and lightly round the bamboo frame of the door. At the top right-hand corner his fingers came in contact with a thin, taut wire.
‘There’s one here all right,’ he called down to Taffy, who was watching him intently. ‘It’s probably a pull switch which operates when the door is opened.’
He cut the wire with a small pair of pliers, one of the implements on a versatile knife he always carried, and then began feeling round the door again.
‘If the Japs are like everyone else, there will be a second one,’ he said.
‘They’re not,’ said Taffy with feeling. ‘They’re not like anyone else, Tiger, I can tell you that. But you’re right. They always use two triggering devices.’
As Taffy was speaking, Tiller’s probing fingers found a second wire. Once he had severed this he pulled on the bamboo door, which squeaked on its leather hinges as it swung open. He found both pull switches, which had been jammed into either side of the door, then traced the severed wires from them up to a book-sized package lashed to the bamboo wall above the door. Tiller ran his fingertips around it to make sure that the device was not attached to another booby-trap. Satisfied, he carefully untied it and carried it into the daylight.
‘That would blow a man’s head off very neatly,’ he said, laying it on the ground. ‘What explosives do the Japs use?’
‘Shimose, mostly,’ Taffy replied, squatting on his heels to look at the device more closely. ‘A form of lyddite.’
‘Christ, don’t they have anything more modern than that?’ Tiller said, surprised. ‘These pull switches are as good as any I’ve seen.’
He threw the two small metal objects on the ground next to the packet of explosive.
‘OSS stores, I expect,’ Taffy said. ‘The Japs have captured a lot of stuff from the Chinese, apparently.’
He picked up one of the switches and turned it over. ‘Yes, here you are.’ He showed Tiller a tiny hallmark on the metal. ‘That’s an OSS device, all right.’
‘OSS?’ Tiller queried. He had never heard of any outfit with these initials.
‘Office of Strategic Services,’ Taffy replied. ‘A Yank organization. They’re everywhere in South-East Asia now, trying to raise guerrilla bands and so on. They’re meant to be hush-hush but everyone knows about them.’
Sandy and Dopey broke through the undergrowth and came towards them.
‘No other bashas,’ said Sandy, ‘and no sign of any other caches. But we’ve found a couple of good spots to site the Bren if we’re going to set up an ambush here.’
Taffy entered the basha cautiously and shone his torch into every corner, but was soon back with the others.
‘There’s only the rice in there,’ he said. ‘I reckon they’ll come for it as quickly as possible. It already smells a bit.’
‘What will they do?’ Tiller asked.
‘Hijack some local labour and bring them in a couple of lorries to the nearest road after dark,’ Taffy said promptly. ‘The locals will load the rice and the Japs will then drive off. The labourers will have to walk home. It’s unlikely there will be more than half a dozen Japs. They can’t spare the men.’
‘If you’re right, Taffy, we can’t set up an orthodox ambush,’ said Tiller. ‘We won’t know who we’re shooting at – Japs or Burmese.’
‘Well, the Burmese are collaborating, aren’t they?’ said Dopey harshly. ‘They’ll only be getting what they deserve.’
Taffy gave him a long, hard look and Dopey shrugged and turned away.
‘What we must do,’ said Tiller as he carefully replaced the booby-trap and rewired it, ‘is ambush the lorries once they’re loaded with the rice. We won’t set it up here at all.’
‘Makes sense,’ Taffy said, ‘provided we can find the road.’
They found it eventually, though it took them most of the afternoon. It proved to be no more than a track for bullock carts that threaded its way down through the Arakan plain from the Yomas. It looked infrequently used and was much overgrown, but faint tyre marks among the wheel ruts of the local carts showed that the Japanese had recently been there.
The track was, Taffy said, too close to Japanese positions to start a fire-fight. They would just have to find a way of mounting a silent ambush and destroying the rice. Nevertheless, they sited the Bren gun so that the lorries would have no chance of escaping from its field of fire if the silent ambush went wrong. They made their plans and then sat and waited.
As the day progressed, the towering masses of monsoon clouds built over them. At one time thunder rolled around the peaks of the Yomas in the distance, and a torrent of rain swept over them which then cleared. The sun, hanging low in the sky now, looked bleary at the edges, and the air was steamy and dank.
Tiller took a swig from his water bottle and wondered how long the Japs would be in coming. He didn’t fancy sitting in this sauna-like atmosphere for any longer than he needed to, for soon, as night fell, the mosquitoes would find them.
But just as the sun dipped below the horizon they heard the sound of engines. They were a long way off but quite distinct. By the time the lorries arrived it was quite dark. There were two of them, with their lights off, and open at the back. Just as Taffy had said, they were crowded with chattering Burmese – at least twenty of them, of all sizes and ages, all men or boys.
The SBS patrol watched them clamber down and crowd together while the Japanese shouted at them and at each other. No one seemed in much of a hurry. A Japanese officer wearing a cloth peaked cap and a long, curved sword at his side paced up and down while his subordinates organized the Burmese. Tiller drew a bead on him with his M2 and felt the restraining hand of Taffy on his arm.
Tiller turned his head and grinned reassuringly at his fellow sergeant, then lowered the carbine. Taffy must think him a fucking beginner if he thought he was going to ruin the whole operation by killing the officer.
Still, on reflection, Tiller understood Taffy being cautious. Better safe than sorry. It took time to get to know a new man in such a tight-knit team. Even a highly trained, elite outfit like the SBS was not exempt from finding itself harbouring a man who, for whatever reason, panicked or made an elementary mistake, or failed to pull his weight at a critical moment during an action. In an ordinary unit these men were tolerated, even protected from authority, but no one trusted them under fire, and they knew they were not trusted.
In the SBS, where everyone was a volunteer, such men were given a second chance, but never a third. After a second error they were returned to their units, discreetly, without comment. The work was too dangerous to carry passengers.
At long last the Burmese were marshalled into some sort of order and, led by one of the Japanese, set off down the path towards the basha. The officer went last, after ordering the two drivers to remain in their vehicles.
Somehow – and Tiller realized how fucking stupid they’d been – he and Taffy had thought the drivers would go with the rest, assuming that the Japanese would want as many hands as possible to shift the rice quickly.
Tiller could begin to see what Taffy meant when he said the Japanese always did the unexpected. They had different thought processes, was how Taffy put it. But there was probably some standing order in the Japanese army that drivers had to remain with their vehicles at all times. Whatever the reason, it meant the SBS patrol couldn’t remove the distributor heads from the lorries’ engines as they had planned to do. Which in turn meant that it was going to be difficult in the dark, and with the Burmese still milling about, to stop them from being driven off without opening fire on them.
Tiller felt Taffy tap him on the leg and he began to wriggle back slowly from his ambush position. Taffy put his mouth to Tiller’s ear and whispered: ‘What shall we do? Hope for the best?’
Tiller shook his head. He never hoped for the best. A man had to create his own luck.
‘We’ll take out the drivers now. Remove the distributor heads, and then wait for the remaining Japs to come back.
There will be four of us and four of them. Much better that way.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Again Tiller shook his head. ‘One of us has to tell the others.’
Tiller, feeling Taffy hesitate in the dark, gripped his shoulder. ‘I’ve done quite a bit of silent killing, Taffy. Better let me do it.’
Taffy grunted his reluctant agreement. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered and moved off into the dark to where the Bren gun had been set up.
Tiller propped his carbine against a tree, loosened his commando knife in its sheath, and took from his pocket the length of cheesewire with its wooden handles at either end. He didn’t want to use his knife if he could help it. Using the garrotte was just as quick and efficient – a man was unconscious in seven seconds, dead in fifteen – and a lot less messy than using his knife, expertly though he had been taught to handle it.
He slid silently down the bank towards the two lorries. They were parked about twenty feet apart, pointing back the way they had come. The driver of the rear one was leaning against its tailgate, smoking. Tiller could see the glow of his cigarette. He should be no problem, Tiller decided. But where was the other driver?
Tiller moved cautiously towards the first lorry. When he came level with its cab he could see that the driver was asleep, his head leaning on the driving wheel. Momentarily, Tiller considered dealing with him first, because it seemed the easier of the two options. But his training had been thorough and he remembered the advice of his instructor in such a situation. Always take the one who is awake first. If anything goes wrong it will take the sleeping one longer to react. Any noise created by dispatching the first might rouse the sleeper but he wouldn’t know what was happening. He might even come and investigate, presenting an easy target.
Tiller moved back to a position where he was opposite the second Japanese. He could see that the man was getting impatient, for he kept looking at his watch. Tiller knew that the SBS patrol, by circling in search of the road, had taken very much longer to find it. It now occurred to him that the distance between the lorries and the basha was probably not all that far. He would have to hurry.
He moved from the undergrowth and crouched by the side of the lorry’s cab, took a deep breath, and then eased himself gradually towards the end of the vehicle. He could now see that the driver was still leaning against the open tailgate. If he remained in that position it would be impossible for Tiller to use the garrotte. He wished now he had someone working with him who could distract the driver so that he could approach him from behind. Perhaps he was going to have to use his knife, after all.
He bent down and found a small stone, and as he reached the rear of the lorry he flicked it over the driver’s head. He didn’t hear it drop but the driver must have, for he stood upright and turned towards the sound. That was all Tiller needed. In one quick movement he threw the wire over the man’s head and drew it tight around his neck while at the same time pushing his knee hard into his lower back.
The driver scrabbled desperately, Tiller overbalanced and the man landed on top of him, gurgling and wriggling. Desperation lent Tiller a strength he didn’t know he had and he exerted every ounce of his muscle power on the handles of the cheesewire.
For a second or so it was touch and go whether the Japanese would be able to lessen the pressure of the wire on his windpipe by squirming around. But Tiller hung on and the man’s strength quickly waned. The heels of his boots drummed on the ground and then quite suddenly, like a balloon with the air released from it, he went limp.
Tiller held tight as he counted, then rolled the Japanese off him and stood up. He bent down and felt the man’s carotid artery on the right side of his neck. He was dead.
Tiller grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into the ditch. He had always thought the Japanese were a small people, but this fellow was large and powerfully built. He had, he realized, a lot to learn about his new enemy.
As he stood and listened he could feel the sweat trickling down his sides and legs, and could still smell the dead driver in his nostrils. He could not hear anything, but he knew he had to act quickly, for the rice-bearers would be back at any moment.
Throwing caution aside, he moved up to the cab of the first lorry and tapped on the window. The driver’s head jerked up and he tumbled out of the cab, stuttering something in Japanese. Tiller chopped him under his ear with the side of his open hand, turned the stunned man round, and broke his neck.
As Tiller dragged the body into the ditch the others scrambled down from their positions.
‘Good work, Tiger,’ Taffy said softly.
‘What now?’ Sandy asked.
‘We’ll take the others as quietly as we can without alarming the Burmese too much,’ said Tiller. ‘Use your pistols if you want to. If you press the muzzle right into the Japs’ uniforms it’s as good as using a silencer. I’m going to position myself over there and will take out the Japanese bringing up the rear. It’ll be the officer probably. Once I’ve done that I’ll signal you and you can finish off the other three.’
‘How will you signal us?’ Taffy asked. Tiller produced a curved silver whistle-like object that the SBS teams were issued with in the Mediterranean theatre to signal to each other during an operation.
‘Ever used one of these?’ he asked Taffy.
The sergeant nodded. ‘But they don’t have that species of waterfowl over here,’ he objected.
‘Who’s to know?’ Tiller retorted. ‘The Japs aren’t going to have time to ask the Burmese about it, are they?’
He left the others to sort out where they wanted to position themselves and walked off down the trail. He calculated roughly the distance the returning party would be strung out along the path and added fifty yards, then found a place to hide and settled down to wait. He did not have to wait long, for within five minutes he heard the chatter of the Burmese as they approached. They appeared out of the night in single file, all of them carrying two sacks, the younger ones three stacked on top of their heads.
One of the Japanese – he seemed to be some sort of junior NCO – was leading the party and he kept turning round and urging the Burmese on. Tiller counted them as they passed, and for a nasty moment thought the other Japanese must all be bringing up the rear together. But then, about two-thirds of the way along the column, there was a short gap before two more Japanese appeared.
As they passed, Tiller noted with satisfaction that neither was the officer. The officer had looked an arrogant bastard strutting around.
The party straggling along the path seemed endless. There must have been more Burmese than they thought. But then there was another gap and the officer came along. He was smoking a cigarette and seemed in no hurry at all. Tiller waited until he had exhaled the smoke – he didn’t want him spluttering and coughing – and then clamped his hand over his mouth and drove his knife deeply into his right kidney.
The Japanese sagged and expired without any protest or struggle, and the Burmese porter ahead of him never faltered in his stride. Tiller waited until the porter had disappeared into the night before moving the body to the side of the trail. He wiped his knife on the dead man’s tunic, returned it to its sheath, and produced the duck call. It certainly made a curious sound.
Tiller searched the officer, tucked his papers into his pocket, then hurried back along the trail. He was confident he wouldn’t be needed, but he wanted to be there all the same. He rounded a corner and saw the white lungi of the last Burmese in the party well ahead of him. Then he heard three shots – two stifled, one louder – and as if by magic the Burmese were gone. They had simply evaporated into the night without a word.
Tiller broke into a run and arrived at the lorries as the other three SBS men were searching the bodies of the three dead Japanese. Two bags of rice lay in the back of the second lorry and others were scattered around the opening. Of the Burmese there was no sign.
‘How many bags do you reckon they were carrying?’ Taffy asked Tiller.
&n
bsp; ‘Less than half of the total, no more.’
Taffy grunted. ‘Yeah, I reckon that’s right. I suppose we should destroy what’s here.’
‘Take too much time,’ said Tiller. ‘Anyway, the locals will take it before the Japs do. They could do with it. But we’ll have to destroy what’s still in the basha.’
They siphoned the petrol out of the lorries’ tanks into cans they found in the back of one of them. They scattered the contents of one can over both vehicles while Taffy took two incendiary devices out of his knapsack.
‘More OSS stores,’ he said to Tiller, showing him the small, flat, black celluloid cases, no larger than a small pocket notebook. Tiller took one and weighed it in his hand. It weighed, he guessed, not much more than half a pound and was less than six inches long and half that in width. He noticed the time pencils positioned on either side of the device.
‘What delay are these?’ he asked.
Taffy peered at them in the dark. ‘One’s red. That’s only twenty minutes. The other’s yellow. That’s roughly six and a half hours, so I’ll use that one. If the Burmese return for the rice they will have come and gone by then.’
‘Very neat,’ said Tiller admiringly. ‘What are they called?’
Taffy shrugged. ‘Just pocket incendiaries, I think. They’ve got what the Yanks call napalm in them.’
‘Napalm?’ Tiller had never heard of the word.
‘Naphthalic and palmitic,’ Taffy explained. ‘They’re acids which turn petrol into a kind of jelly.’
He removed the yellow-tagged time pencil, squeezed the tube to break the glass ampoule inside it, and carefully replaced it in its groove alongside the incendiary device’s black case. He primed the second device in the same way and then placed one under the driver’s seat in each lorry.