“I don’t know,” the Doctor said staring at the bottle with glazed eyes. The scotch was spilling onto the bamboo floor, emptying out. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said fervently.
“If Ringa had to murder one American to save the lives of five hundred Americans would he be right or wrong,” Con cried half-hysterically, standing up now. “Answer me.”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor screamed glaring up at him.
There was a silence. Con began to pace, then stopped and lit a cigarette.
“I don’t know either,” he said emptily. “But I know we’re here to save as many lives as possible. To furnish information that will save lives. When you deal in life, Grey, and you should know this being a Doctor,” he spoke softly, “you come to a point where no man has the right to judge. You know Jesus was right when he said ‘Judge ye not.’ You know it when you deal in life. I think it is the only way a man will ever truly know it. You know you can’t judge Ringa. Life is a figure here. If you get two or three for one you’re ahead of the game. Christ, who can say who should or shouldn’t die?”
The Doctor was still staring at the now empty bottle on the floor, thoughtfully.
Niven and Lau’rel came in rainsoaked and began to warm themselves by the fire.
“You’re going on leave,” Con said, as once more the prisoner began to scream agonizingly out by the village circle.
Niven and Lau’rel began to dance around the floor joyously. The Doctor struggled for a clear thought but heard only the tortured wails of the prisoner and the joyous shouts of Niven and Lau’rel all intermingled in an utterly ugly human symphony. He shifted his eyes belligerently towards Con and walked across the room and opened another bottle of Dewar’s. Con spit disgustedly and walked over to his map table.
Ringa came in clean-shaven, wet, and grinning.
“How did you make out?” Lau’rel asked.
“He was one tough son-of-a-bitch,” Ringa said. “He busted wide open. Christ,” he added, “but I’ve had a hard day.”
“At the office,” Niven laughed. “See, Lau’rel, just like I said; Ringa had a hard day at the office.”
“Can it,” Doctor Travis said meanly.
“Down, boy,” Niven said.
“The Subadar Major’s taking it all down. It’s good information,” Ringa said.
“How did you get it this time? Set his rectum on fire,” Doc Travis said menacingly.
Ringa laughed. “I feel guilty. Like you doctors feel guilty when one of your patients dies while you’re out laying your best friend’s wife at the country club. Come off it, college man. You wouldn’t talk like that if you were sober, now would you?”
“I see where you had a good house today?” Niven said gleefully.
“A fine audience, those Kachins,” Ringa said. “I’ve been studying this thing. I think it’s the crowd that makes them talk more than anything.”
“That must be a hell of a disappointment to you personally,” Doc Travis said.
Ringa shifted his eyes over to Con at the map-table and winked.
“It is, Doc. It really is an awful blow to my dignity. Or vanity. Or whatever the goddamn word is. I forgot my dictionary. I ought to have a dictionary when I speak to you. Really, I ought to,” Ringa’s eyes shifted to the jungle-rot around the Doctor’s armpits. “You’ll begin to stink soon.”
“You’ll try to get away with this sort of thing when the war’s over. You’ll spend your life in a jail.”
“You’re wrong, Doc,” Ringa grinned gleefully. “You’re the kind that would rot in a jail. I’d die first.”
“Come off it. All of you,” Con said finally.
Ringa went over to the map-table. He told Con the info referring to the map.
“Get a company ready, Niven,” Con said. “Make it a company and a half. There’s about five hundred Jap stragglers that took to the hills in the Myitkyina retreat. They haven’t got any ammo and they’re starving. We’re going after them.”
“When do we leave?”
“In the morning.”
“Mortars?” Niven asked.
“About six. And lots of ammo,” Con said.
“I’ll get Billingsly to get the ammo together,” Niven said.
“He’s leaving on a money spending expedition tonight,” Lau’rel said. “I say, I’ll get it together for you.”
“I wonder how much of that dough Billingsly is trading for silver and pocketing,” Ringa said.
“I think I’ll go,” Con said. “I haven’t been out on anything in over a week.”
“Glad to have you, boss,” Niven said. “I wouldn’t want to have to extend myself on the last patrol before my leave. By the way, Doc, get out the vitamins. I’d better build myself up.”
“You got to have something to start with,” Ringa said.
“I weigh a good hundred-five,” Niven said.
“I’m sorry, man,” Ringa apologized.
“I should like to make this effort,” Lau’rel said. “I haven’t been on an expedition since before Myitkyina.”
“He wants something to brag to the ladies about when he’s on leave,” Niven said. “Let him come, Con.”
“You’re all nuts,” the Doctor said taking another drink.
“You can come if you want, José,” Con said. “And you’re going whether you want to or not, Doc. Maybe a few bullets and no scotch will bring you down to earth.”
“I’ve studied psychiatry. There’s not a one of you that’s not Section Eight material,” Doc glared. “Not one of you.”
“You’re the only one that’s excited,” Ringa said calmly.
Lau’rel, staring at the glassy-eyed Doc, had a sudden queasy feeling far down in his belly. He could feel the thump-thump-thumping of his heart. Suddenly, hugely magnified, all he could see were Nickie’s long, cool, sensuous hands as he always remembered having seen them for the first time; but above the wrists they had been amputated and blood flowed streaming down them. He felt a horrible knot in the pit of his stomach and the cold sweat flowing free and white. He felt like screaming, or running, anything to get out of the room. He hated himself for asking to go on the patrol. He didn’t want to go on any patrol. I only want you Nickie, he thought hysterically. I don’t want to go on any patrol. I want to be with you.
“Goddamn it, Lau’rel can’t you hear,” Con yelled.
“I say, quite,” Lau’rel said focusing in again.
“Are you ill?”
Lau’rel wiped his sweating forehead: “The bug, y’know. The bug,” he said not looking at Con and speaking as if to no one in particular.
Con studied him for a second, suddenly remembering how depressed Lau’rel had been that time before Myitkyina after he had come back from taking a patrol to Merrill’s camp; vividly remembering the Filipino’s description of the way the Americans had treated their prisoners. Lau’rel had the same distant look in his eyes now, Con recalled, the same half-hysterical tremor in his voice. Maybe it’s that goddamn malaria, Con thought. The march will do him good. At least suppress the fever. He’ll get over it. He got over it before. A few days leave, that’s all any of them needed.
“Tell Billingsly I want to see him before he leaves,” Con said to the Filipino.
“Righto, right away,” Lau’rel said and fled.
From the beginning the patrol had a bad odor. They missed the Japs by four hours where they had planned to intercept them, and a Russell’s viper had bitten two of the Kachins. They both died in minutes.
Then the Japs made an odd move. Instead of heading toward the road and their own lines they cut toward the hills. At sunset they were still chasing them, and Con halted to rest the men until the new September moon got high enough to furnish light. The moon came up all right but was hidden beyond the heavy rain clouds and Con decided to press on anyhow.
They had marched for four hours in dark night, with the scouts a mile out in front, and now the force of three hundred men were taking their first break in a sma
ll depression that was the base of a hill saddle. Con was chewing tobacco.
“Do you think it’s safe to march at night?” the Doc asked.
“It’s suicide,” Lau’rel said.
“Lower your voices,” Con said. “Nothing’s ever safe.”
“Where’s Niven?” the Doctor asked. It was dark and they could see but the bare outline of each other. They were sitting in the wet mud of the middle of the trail.
“Where is he?” Lau’rel asked, teeth chattering.
“Up front where he belongs.”
Then it happened. Firing broke out all around them. Con lay flat. He felt three bullets tear through his battle pack. There were Kachins scrambling all over and one of the frightened mules stepped on his thigh as it bolted heels flaying through the area.
He heard a voice: “Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with, Hallowed be Thy name …”
It was Lau’rel.
“Get off the trail,” Con yelled. “And don’t move.”
Con got up and ran forward. “Nautaung, Nautaung,” he hollered.
There were grenades going off and wounded screaming now.
Somehow he found Nautaung. He sent the old man rear to settle them down. “I’m going forward. They’ll expect us to back out. We’ll have to go forward.”
He heard Niven screaming at the Kachins to slow down their rate of fire.
“Shit, they’re shooting each other,” Niven said.
“They got us wrapped up nice,” Con said. “It’s good we’ve got this little part of the knoll.”
“We’ve got to get a little more of it,” Niven said.
“Get it then,” Con said.
“A squad of my first platoon is inching up there now,” Niven said. “They’ve let the scouts go through.”
“They couldn’t stay stupid forever,” Con said.
“Dig in?”
“Looks like we’ll have to. We’ll make an effort but they got a hell of a lot of firepower on us.”
Con started to vomit. He had swallowed the plug of tobacco with the first shots and now it came up practically intact. He felt better.
They finally got organized. Con got the scouts on the walkie-talkie and told them to go to Danny’s for aid. They had a hell of a time keeping the soldiers from burning up all their ammunition. The mules were all scattered and it was impossible to set up mortars.
The Japs kept pouring it on all night. It began to rain and they infiltrated the lines. Everyone was shooting at anything that moved after the first infiltration. The night was an eternity. Finally the dawn came. With the first light Con and Nautaung and Niven met and reorganized the position. The jungle was verdant, lush, almost impenetrable where they were. They counted nine dead. Two of the dead had only been wounded slightly but drowned in rain puddles when they fell asleep after taking their morphine. There were over twenty wounded. But the count was not complete. There were two dead Japs inside the perimeter.
Con found a small depression and put four Kachins to work hollowing it out for an aid station, but he couldn’t find the Doc or Lau’rel. Nautaung located them, finally.
Con got them over to the aid station. Lau’rel was a grey white, mumbling a prayer incoherently. Con couldn’t tell whether the malaria had gone to his head or whether he had chickened out or cracked completely. He only realized that for the present the Filipino was useless; that none of the now precious time could be spared trying to straighten him out. Con turned to the Doc.
“It’s your fault. It’s all your fault,” Doc Travis said wildly. “You’ll get everyone killed before this is over.”
Con busted him with a hard right cross the cheek. The Doc went down bleeding. Con lowered his carbine, pointing it to the Doc’s chest. “I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up and go to work.”
The Doctor nodded his head slowly brushing the blood from his cheek and beard with the back of his hand.
“Lau’rel, you stay with the Doc,” Con said.
Lau’rel didn’t say anything. His wild, glazed eyes were distantly empty.
“Do something for him if you can,” Con said to the Doc.
The Doc still holding his hand to his cheek shook his head slowly, despairingly.
Quickly Con took a final glimpse of Lau’rel then crawled from the depression. He walked about four steps. There was a lone sniper shot. Con went down, white hot pain searing his left side. He lay still for a moment. He could move. He crawled back into the aid station. There was blood on the side of his green-jungle blouse. The Doctor was staring. It had never occurred to him that Con, too, was vulnerable. He helped Con undo the blouse. The bullet had glazed the ribs and gone in and out of the loose flesh of his side. Con spit into his hand. No blood. The shot had gone outside the lung. His face was yellow-white with the shock.
“Broken ribs,” he said. “Bandage and tape me.”
“You’re shocked. I’ll give you some morphine,” the Doc said.
“Like hell you will. Tape me.”
The Doc went for the tape. They were bringing the wounded in now and already the word was spreading that the Dua was hit. By the time it got to Niven, Con was supposed to have been killed. The Doctor taped him. He felt better in an hour but nauseous. There was only periodic firing. The Japs were readying an attack.
Niven came into the aid station: “I didn’t think you were dead.”
“Help me up,” Con said.
“You shouldn’t,” the Doc said to Niven.
“You better hope he does get up,” Niven said to the Doc. “The way the Kachins will feel from just seeing him may make the difference of whether we all live or not.”
“Not that way,” Con said. “That’s where the sniper is.”
Once Con got on his feet he moved fairly well. He puked several times but an hour later he had circumscribed the whole perimeter. Finally, around nine, they were attacked.
They repulsed the attack and another attack later in the morning. Before noon the sun came out and the jungle began to steam. There hadn’t been a shot fired in over fifteen minutes.
“We’re in,” Con said to Niven. “Danny will be here soon.”
They were lying on their bellies just off the trail at the foremost frontal position of the perimeter.
“I’d like to know how they doped this,” Niven said.
“So would I.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say they knew exactly what we had in mind.”
“I think they’ll wait until the sun goes down a little before they try again,” Con said.
“Or the sun goes in,” Niven said.
“It’s not going in,” Con said.
“You talk like Nautaung now,” Niven said.
Then they both heard a scream from behind. Up the open, exposed trail came Lau’rel. He was completely naked and brandishing a Kachin dah: “Japanese you die,” he was hollering. “Japanese you die,” he was running hard, straight-up headed for the Jap lines.
In an instant Niven was out of his position. He tackled the Filipino low and hard from the side. Lau’rel had a wild frenzied strength and was swinging wildly with the dah. Con managed to make it across the trail and fell over Lau’rel’s face but the dah cut him across the back of the leg. Niven got several Kachins in to help and they finally dragged the now maniacal Lau’rel back to the aid station. They managed to get him wrapped in a blanket, then roped the blanket. The Doctor gave him a morphine.
“If they get through,” Con said to the Doc, “shoot him.”
The Doctor eyed Con for a moment: “I understand,” he said.
Con grinned a white, gluttonous grin. The Doctor grinned back.
Danny came up from behind and surprised the Japs. He hit them in four different places at once with a maximum of fire power. The surprised Jap forces withdrew almost at once.
The next morning they were back in camp.
The weather was bad and they couldn’t get planes into evacuate the twenty-three wounded. The Doc put seventeen stitches into the
back of Con’s leg where Lau’rel’s dah had sliced him. He put sulpha powder on the wounds of his side, and taped his ribs. Now Con was lying on the floor of the basha headquarters, his head propped against the center pillar. Above his head hung a plasma bottle that was draining into his arm. The bottle emptied out and Nautaung helped him remove the needle. Subadar Major Winston Smythe-Churchill was there, too, waiting to speak to the Dua.
The Subadar Major was tall for a Kachin. Five foot-ten. He was lean, pure white headed, neat in person, with soft dreamy, dark eyes. His face, like Nautaung’s, was lined with deep fine wrinkles.
“The men demand retribution,” he said.
“It is no disgrace for a Kachin to be defeated,” Nautaung said as a way of explanation. “But to be ambushed. That is something else again.”
“The most severe retribution,” the Subadar Major said in his fine English.
“Punjis,” Ringa said coming across from the far side of the room where the fire was.
“Punjis for one thing,” the Subadar Major said.
“Will you handle it, Bill,” Con said.
“I’ll handle it,” Ringa said.
“Get ready today. Make up your own plan,” Con said. “Start tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Dukaba,” the Subadar Major said respectfully.
“You may leave if you wish,” Con said. The Subadar Major would never leave unless the Dua gave him permission first. The Subadar Major would not ask for permission ever.
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth: and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified, died.…” Lau’rel was mumbling. He was tied up in blankets near the fire, stretched out flat on his back with a field pack under his head.
“How is the wound, Dua?” Nuataung asked.
“It’s a good wound,” Con said. He was a little drunk. He had not eaten and would not take the morphine and had been drinking all morning. “A perfect wound. It will get me out of sight of your ugly old face. It will not make me spend much time in the hospital. It will not maim me. It will get me a sick leave. No one ever had a better wound,” he grinned.
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