Jock asked, “If I may, General, where will this meeting take place?”
The general’s finger tapped the map at a point on the Cape York Peninsula. “Right there, Captain, at Weipa.”
Jock never heard another word said in that tent. The sound of the name Weipa had slipped him into a dream world: a safe and contented place, the complete opposite of the hell that was Papua. The reason for this euphoria was simple: in that place lived the woman he loved, Jillian Forbes.
He never dreamed he’d have a chance to see her again so soon. It didn’t matter to him if it was for a minute, an hour, or a day: Plane or no plane, I’ll swim there if I have to, he told himself.
He felt himself shaking: it was not from the joy sweeping over his body but the firm hand of Colonel Murdock on his shoulder, snapping him from his reverie. “Relax, Jock…relax,” Murdock said. “Don’t get all googly eyed on me just because you’re going to meet MacArthur.”
“Yes, sir…I mean no, sir…oh, I’m sorry, sir. Just got a little caught up in the moment.”
“Well, snap the fuck out of it…and do me a favor…” Murdock reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of gold oak leaves: a major’s insignia of rank. “Get rid of those railroad tracks on your collar and put these on instead. You’re a major now, dammit.”
General Hartman had one more thing to tell his regimental commanders: “I’ll expect glowing reports about your breakthroughs of the Japanese line tomorrow. Nothing I’d like better than to shove that in MacArthur’s face…in person.”
Lieutenant Joe Garcia’s heart sank when the field telephone’s ringer began its muted but insistent clatter in the dead of night. It was his platoon’s turn in The Notch, and it wasn’t time for the listening post down in the valley—some 2,000 feet below him—to do its regular communications check. That could mean only one thing: there was bad news to report. It couldn’t be anything else. Three of his best men manned the LP; they’d be the last ones to get jumpy over phantoms.
Garcia fumbled with the phone’s handset like it was a hot potato. “Three-Six, go ahead,” he said, finally getting it right-side up against his head.
In a tense whisper, the sergeant at the other end of the line said, “Sounds like they’re coming, Lieutenant. Lots of them. Permission to start pulling back.”
“Permission granted,” Garcia replied.
“Please, sir,” the sergeant said, “make sure our guys on the line don’t shoot us.” There was a pause—a few brief snaps of static on the line—before the sergeant added, “I’m begging you, Lieutenant. Those guys are greener than grass. Please…make sure.”
“I’ve got you covered. Come straight up the landline. I’ll meet you there myself.”
The Japs were coming. For a moment, that thought overwhelmed Joe Garcia’s mind; he completely forgot what he was supposed to do. Then he remembered: Oh shit! I’ve got to tell the CP, so they can spring the artillery trap. Just as he grabbed the phone to Grossman’s command post, the LP line rang again.
The sergeant on the line sounded breathless; he was moving quickly and talking at the same time. “Here’s an update, Lieutenant…we hear light vehicles, too. Sounds like they’re all across the valley floor. There’s at least a battalion coming, I’ll bet.”
“Roger,” Garcia replied. “Now get your asses back up here on the double.”
“Okay, but we’ve gotta cut the phone line right here, sir. We’re trying to reel it in as we go but it keeps snagging and slowing us down.”
“That’s okay…cut it and follow what’s left home. Get yourselves out of there.”
Joe Garcia strained to listen in the still night air. There it was; he could hear the vehicles, too—the distant but unmistakable noise of engines revving as they struggled to pull their loads across difficult terrain. Their presence could only mean one thing: they were headed for Astrolabe’s more-gentle backslope. No vehicle could climb her steep, seaward face. To get to the backslope, they’d have to roll right through the pre-planned targets in The Notch, finally in range of American artillery. Despite the stalled advance, two batteries—with six 105-mm howitzers each—had struggled through the trackless foothills and were now close enough to throw high-angle fire over the mountain.
Garcia turned to his platoon sergeant and said, “Tell the CP we’ve got Nips in The Notch. Call a fire mission…targets are Roger Peter One, Two, Three, and Four. Shell HE with illum. Do it now!” Reaching to the ground, he curled his hand around the landline to the listening post, and using the wire as a guide, headed off for the perimeter.
“Where’re you going, sir?” the platoon sergeant called after him.
“To make sure our guys don’t shoot McCarthy and his team.”
“Yeah…real good idea, sir.”
At the company CP, First Sergeant Patchett took the call from Lieutenant Garcia’s platoon. He signed off with a business-like, “Roger. Stand by.” Lee Grossman felt his adrenaline begin to spike as he waited for Patchett to fill him in.
“The Japs are making their move, sir,” Patchett said as casually as if discussing a train schedule. Trevor Shaw’s adrenaline was pumping, too. He already had his native assistant cranking the transmitter’s generator; the fire mission request was broadcast in less than 30 seconds. They waited for the fire direction center to report, Shot, over, meaning rounds were on the way.
With a wary eye, Patchett looked straight up into the night sky and said, “It’s a damn shame we couldn’t have fired in those registration points in daylight. I hope them cannon-cockers ain’t got their heads up their asses, because them rounds are gonna go right over us, and it don’t take much of a mistake for a high-angle shot to fall short.”
Lee Grossman grimaced and added Patchett’s misgiving to a long list of his own worries. He had personally alerted each of the other three platoon leaders by telephone. It should only take a minute for the word to get down to every man on the perimeter. Grossman reviewed his company’s horseshoe-shaped disposition one more time: Garcia’s at The Notch. Wharton’s got the front face…that’s the least likely place any Japs should pop up. It’s so steep the goats don’t even go there. Papadakis and Colletti have the backslope, with two of the mortars and three of the heavy machine guns dedicated to them...that’s the biggest danger zone. But if Garcia called it right, the artillery should take care of the Japs without us having to lift a finger, and that’ll be a real good thing, because they still won’t know we’re here.
Trevor Shaw clamped a headphone tight against his ear and then spoke the words, “Shot, out,” into the microphone. Artillery rounds were on the way. The men on the mountain hadn’t needed the radio to tell them that: they could hear the guns firing quite clearly in the distance to their rear.
“Remember,” Patchett said, “at this range, it’ll take over a minute for those high-angle babies to come back down.”
They waited—and for that minute, the night became deathly still.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Day 9/Day 10
Lieutenant Joe Garcia had heard the guns fire, too. He was still stumbling through the darkness, following the telephone wire—but it seemed he had been doing it for much too long. He was growing frantic he had somehow walked right past his own perimeter and was headed steadily into The Notch: Ain’t this just swell? Now I’m the one who’s going to get shot by his own men.
Then he fell into a hole—and landed right on top of one of his soldiers.
“Geez, Lieutenant…you ever heard of knocking, sir?” the private he landed on said, his tone a strange blend of annoyance and respect.
“Sorry, Harper,” Garcia replied, “but you’re just the man I’m looking for. Sergeant McCarthy and—HOLY SHIT!”
The illumination rounds had popped their flares high in the sky over The Notch, bathing the several hundred Japanese troops walking through it in surreal and brilliant light. The flares began their slow descent on parachutes as the Japanese froze in their tracks—one Mississippi, two Mississi
ppi, Garcia counted—and then the high-explosive rounds impacted in their midst, brief red flashes on a floodlit stage. A second later, the dull crump of their explosions rumbled up the mountain like the thunder of an approaching storm.
Joe Garcia’s eyes had adjusted to the harsh light of the flares just in time: he could absorb the full horror of what was unfolding in the valley below. The artillery rounds had been perfectly on target. The units caught in their impact were decimated…blown to bits. A second ago, they were there. Now, they weren’t.
He heard the guns fire again. Japanese who survived the first salvo were scurrying in all directions. Vehicles towing small field guns—guns, no doubt, destined to be set up on Astrolabe and rain fire on the GIs below—drove in crazed circles, seeking escape from the kill zone. They had less than one minute to succeed or die.
Three dark silhouettes—men backlit by the flares’ light—were running up the slope toward the perimeter. Joe Garcia’s first instinct was to shoot them; he knew it would be the same for the rest of his men. But before he could scream the words, HOLD YOUR FIRE, the first shot rang out from the perimeter. Like a cancer, that shot grew in an instant to a deafening frenzy of gunfire.
The silhouettes vanished.
“CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE,” Garcia said, his words more a plea than an order. “THOSE ARE OUR GUYS, DAMMIT.”
They had to be, Garcia told himself. No Jap could be this far up the mountain yet. Then he told himself something else: You promised McCarthy one simple thing, and you fucked it up already.
The firing from the perimeter withered as the Cease Fire order passed down the line. With one last crack of an M1, it stopped.
Another sickening thought swirled in Joe Garcia’s mind: Even if we didn’t just kill three of our own guys, the Japs know we’re here now. Even half a platoon firing all at once sounds like the world’s coming to an end. What a fucking disaster.
The second artillery salvo impacted on the valley floor. Some of the Japanese still standing escaped its wrath. Some did not.
Joe Garcia stood and said, “I’M GOING OUT TO GET THOSE GUYS. HARPER, SULLIVAN, YOU COME WITH ME. THE REST OF YOU…DO NOT FUCKING SHOOT US, OKAY? I REPEAT: DO NOT FUCKING SHOOT US.” He started to run down the slope. Whether Harper and Sullivan were following him, he had no idea.
Garcia had only taken a few steps when one of the silhouettes reappeared. “McCARTHY…IS THAT YOU?”
“Yeah, Lieutenant…yeah,” Sergeant McCarthy replied. “Geez, but I told you that would happen, sir.”
“I know, I know. Anybody hit?”
“It’s a fucking miracle, but no…we’re not hit.”
Great, Garcia thought. Not only are my men jumpy, they can’t shoot worth a shit, either.
“I gotta clean my drawers out, though,” McCarthy added.
Joe Garcia escorted the three men back to the perimeter. Harper and Sullivan were still there. They had never moved a muscle. Their excuse: “We didn’t hear you, sir. Honest! Our ears must be ringing too bad from all that shooting.”
Two more salvos landed in the valley before the fire mission came to an end. The last of the illumination rounds were still floating down, giving Joe Garcia and his men one last, sobering look at the devastation below. But as much as they wanted to believe it, they knew the artillery hadn’t killed every last Jap who marched into The Notch. Not even close.
The flares finally burned out, turning false day back into impenetrable night. Several vehicles still burned on the valley floor like flickering candles floating on a black sea. There was a brief chatter of a machine gun far in the distance—a Japanese Nambu by the sound of it—and then the night fell silent as a tomb once again.
“SHIT! DAMMIT!” Lee Grossman said as he collided painfully with a tree. He was still night-blind from the illum rounds and had no idea he was just a few steps from Joe Garcia’s platoon.
Garcia took his commander’s outburst to have a completely different meaning. “I’m really sorry about all the shooting, sir. I pulled in the LP…my guys got jumpy…we fucked up—”
“Forget it,” Grossman said, feeling around for the walkie-talkie he dropped in the collision. “That’s water under the bridge now, Joe. Did we scare the Japs off…or just redirect them?”
“The vehicles that didn’t get blown up high-tailed it back toward Port Moresby…but their infantry was running all over the—”
The muted squawk of walkie-talkies cut him short. It was Bob Wharton’s voice on the air—and it sounded deranged with panic: “They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere.”
There were a few gunshots from the direction of Wharton’s platoon—maybe from several M1s or just one emptying its clip—and then the brief bup bup bup of an automatic weapon. Their echoes quickly faded, leaving only eerie silence.
Bullshit! I can’t believe they’re coming up the front slope, Grossman told himself as he stumbled toward Wharton’s position. Before he could get there, an explosion of gunfire erupted from the opposite side of the company’s position—on the backslope—and didn’t stop. Flat on his face in the dirt, he could hear bullets hitting the trees around him—he could feel them. One of his machine guns was firing a belt of ammo that must have been a mile long: That barrel’s gonna melt any second if they aren’t dumping their canteens on it.
The dull thuds of mortar rounds exploding sounded like bass drum accents to a chorus of gunfire. Grossman couldn’t tell whose mortars they were—but they were landing somewhere on the backslope. Those mortars better be mine…I shouldn’t be running around out here like a chicken with his head cut off. I need to be at my CP. I think it’s that way.
He started to run in the darkness—and crashed headlong into another running man, sending helmets, weapons, and walkie-talkies flying. When they both found their feet again, Lee Grossman recognized who it was. The pale moonlight was the only illumination necessary, for nobody else in his company was as tall and blond as Bob Wharton. Grossman had to grab him with both hands to keep him still.
“What the fuck is happening in your sector, Bob?”
“We’ve gotta pull back,” Wharton replied, his words a jumble as he tried desperately to pull from his commander’s grasp. “There’s a million of ’em…all around us.”
“Negative, Bob, negative. That’s my call, not yours. Hold your ground. That’s an order.”
It was like talking to a fence post. He shook Wharton hard and said, “Don’t make me smack you again, Bob. Do you understand what I just told you?”
Those words seemed to get through. Wharton stopped trying to break free.
“Do you understand your orders, Bob?”
“Yeah…I understand.”
“Good. Do it.”
Bob Wharton turned and walked away, vanishing into the darkness.
The firing had died out again by the time Lee Grossman found his CP. “Thought we lost you there, sir,” Melvin Patchett said. “Where you been? Can’t even raise you on the radio.”
Grossman had no time for lengthy explanations: “I got lost somewhere between Garcia’s and Wharton’s platoons, Top. I guess this walkie-talkie quit on me, too. What’s our situation?”
“I wish the fuck I knew for sure, Lieutenant, but it sounds like we got Japs wandering all over this damn mountain. Begging your pardon, sir, but I told…ah, suggested to Lieutenant Pop that he swing around a little and cover our backside better.”
“Good idea, Top. Whose mortars were those?”
“Ours and theirs.”
“Shit,” Grossman replied. “How many mortar rounds do we have left?”
“Six HE and three illum, by my count.”
“Shit.”
Patchett’s calm was unnerving as he asked, “What’s going on over at Wharton’s platoon, sir? After he started screaming like a little girl, McMillen came on the radio and said everything was under control.”
“Let’s just say that I think your suspicions of Lieutenant Wharton’s abilities may be correct, Top.”
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“Then you’re gonna relieve him, sir?”
“Not right now, Top. Things are confusing enough.”
“Amen to that, sir. Amen to—”
Another round of gunfire cut him off, lighting the woods behind them with muzzle flashes. The firing was intense but very brief, stopping as if a plug had been pulled.
“There you go,” Patchett said, pointing into the darkness. “Contact right on the backside. Let’s hope Lieutenant Pop’s boys got there none too soon.”
Lieutenant Theo Papadakis was thinking the same thing. He had taken the first sergeant’s suggestion and moved two of his four squads, turning them 90 degrees to face back down the trail along Astrolabe’s peak. They hadn’t been there two minutes—not even time to dig in—when they saw what looked like the silhouettes of several men creeping slowly toward them. They didn’t even think to challenge for the password. They let their weapons do the talking.
Repositioning in the dark is never easy. You think you’re in the right place, but there’s a good chance you’re not. Bucky Reynolds wasn’t sure what to think. He’d lost his partner, Frank Simms, the minute they climbed out of their hole: one second Simms was there, the next he was gone. He could hear his squad-mates moving, though: GI gear can make an awful lot of noise, especially when the person bearing it is in a hurry. They were close by—somewhere—and he followed their sound. When their noise stopped, Bucky stopped, too, and took up a prone firing position. He couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Then, one of his squad-mates blurted, Company’s coming, and the deafening roar of gunfire began. Bucky Reynolds jammed his eyes closed, afraid to look—but after a moment he opened them again—he wasn’t sure why, what made this time different—and saw the shape of a man coming toward him. Company’s coming, he told himself, and started squeezing the trigger of his M1 over and over. He didn’t stop until the ping of the empty clip told him he was finished. The man wasn’t there anymore. It had turned quiet all around; his squad-mates were finished firing, too. Bucky felt a calmness come over him, a sense of quiet satisfaction: I did good. I did my job…and I didn’t even piss myself this time.
Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2) Page 15