by Onbekend
‘Leave it to me,’ said Varma.
The challenge from the lambo was repeated, more tersely this time, some kind of threat tacked onto the end by the sound of it. As if in a cheery response, Varma shouted something in another language.
‘What language is that?’ hissed Torrance.
‘Hindi,’ Varma hissed back. ‘But I’m guessing they don’t know the difference between Hindi and Malay.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Suffice to say, it wasn’t the sort of language a gentleman uses!’
More figures emerged onto the lambo’s deck, hunkering down behind the gunwale. Bloody hell, thought Torrance, there are a lot of them. He turned to where Shapiro crouched with the Bren. ‘When you open up, Solly, concentrate your fire on the deckhouse. If there’s anyone in command on that boat, that’s where he’ll be.’
‘Okay, Slugger!’
Torrance took a Mills bomb from his pocket. ‘The rest of you, grenades first. Then let them have it with your tommy guns.’
‘Do you speak English?’ someone on the afterdeck called back in a Japanese accent.
Varma gave them another burst of Hindi and put the helm over to port, turning the sampan’s prow a little to starboard, but that was only to give him more room to make a broad, sweeping turn to port as he came in towards the motorboat.
Torrance inserted a fingertip through the ring of the Mills bomb in his fist. ‘On three,’ he murmured to the others. ‘One… two… three!’
He yanked the pin from his grenade and lobbed it over the jetty and onto the deck of the lambo. Rossi and Quinn did likewise. Someone on the lambo shouted a warning in Japanese and a rifle cracked, but the men on board the sampan had already ducked behind their gunwale. There were three flashes of light in rapid succession, three overlapping crashes, and then Shapiro opened up with the Bren. Torrance looked up again to see the lambo’s deck wreathed in smoke, and then a smouldering object slammed down on the jetty: probably a dead or dying Japanese.
There were still figures moving on deck. Torrance levelled his Thompson and squeezed the trigger. The butt pushed back against his shoulder as the muzzle flamed and spent cartridges rattled down into the sampan’s bilges. Bullet holes stitched lines across the planks of the lambo’s deckhouse. Someone shrieked in agony.
Varma threw a line around a cleat on the motorboat and drew it tight, mooring the sampan to the boat. ‘Give us covering fire, Solly!’ shouted Torrance. ‘Lefty, Bluey, with me!’ He slung his Thompson from his shoulder and scrambled over the gunwale onto the motorboat’s deck, and from there scrambled up the ladder to the jetty. More figures appeared around the corner of the lambo’s deckhouse. Shapiro was still firing the Bren from the sampan, cutting the newcomers down to give Torrance, Rossi and Quinn time to unsling their Thompsons.
Another light machine gun sounded, a Nambu, firing from the darkness of the island. As the bullets tore through the atap thatching of the sampan’s awning, Torrance spotted the flickering white star of a muzzle flash near the temple. Shapiro, Hamilton and Varma hurriedly vacated the sampan to join Torrance, Rossi and Quinn in the lambo’s stern, where the deckhouse gave them some cover from the incoming fire.
As Varma crossed the jetty, a couple more Japanese appeared around the side of the deckhouse, firing their rifles from the hip. Varma had a Webley in his fist. Without breaking his stride, he squeezed off four shots at the two newcomers. At that range, Torrance thought he was wasting his time with a handgun, but was forced to reconsider when both Japanese fell and lay unmoving: Gary Cooper could not have done it any more neatly. Varma joined the others in the lambo’s stern, coolly ejecting the spent rounds from his revolver and replacing them with fresh ones.
Charging Shapiro, a Japanese sailor launched himself into the air, aiming a flying kick at the brawny Australian’s muscular chest. Shapiro took the full impact of the attack without even reeling. As the Japanese dropped to the deck, Shapiro threw a punch at his jaw. The Japanese tried to brush the blow aside with a lightning-fast Asian boxing move. He might just as well have tried to brush aside a speeding locomotive. Shapiro’s fist smashed into his jaw. The Japanese spun around and slammed into the side of the deckhouse. Shapiro caught him by the scruff of the neck with one hand, the waistband of his trousers with the other, and effortlessly lifted him above his head.
‘Kicking, is it?’ said the Australian. ‘Kicking’s for girls!’ He hurled the Japanese over the gunwale and into the sea.
A Japanese came at Torrance with a bayonet in an upraised arm. Torrance turned his Thompson on him, but the magazine was empty. As the Japanese tried to stab him with the bayonet, the crook of Hamilton’s malacca cane caught him by the wrist, staying the blow until Quinn could slam the butt of his Thompson into the Japanese’s jaw.
The machine-gunner ashore had been happy enough to open up on the sampan, but he seemed reluctant to turn his fire on the lambo: Torrance guessed that at that range, in darkness, the machine-gunner could not be sure if he was firing on friend or foe. Peering around the corner of the deckhouse, however, Torrance was in no hurry to put his theory to the test by showing himself.
Rossi emerged from the deckhouse with a protective arm about the sultan’s shoulders. The sultan still had his arm in a sling, but no fresh injuries. ‘Where’s Kitty?’ asked Torrance, replacing his drum magazine with a box magazine from one of his utility pouches.
‘I think they took her up there.’ The sultan nodded in the direction of the temple.
‘I was afraid you were gonna say that. Okay, Lefty and me will get Kitty, the rest of you clear out any Japs left on this tub.’
‘Slugger, the moment that machine-gunner sees us running up the jetty—’ protested Rossi.
‘The machine-gunner isn’t gonna see us running up the jetty because we’re not going over it, we’re going under it.’ Torrance slung his Thompson across his back, clambered over the transom and plunged into the warm tropical water below. From there it was a two-foot drop and he made quite a splash. He could only hope the sound would not carry as far as wherever the machine-gunner was hidden ashore, or if it did, he would not understand its significance. Using a breast stroke, he swam under the pilings of the jetty. There was a good three feet between the surface of the water and the underside of the boards overhead. Rossi followed him. The two of them swam between the barnacle-encrusted pilings until the water became shallow enough for them to walk on the sand, then when there was insufficient headroom to walk they crawled, first on their hands and knees in the surf, and then, when they were out of the water entirely, on their bellies, until there was no more room to do even that. The occasional shot still sounded from the direction of the lambo, but the machine gun somewhere on the hill above was silent.
‘Now what?’ asked Rossi.
‘I reckon this close to the foot of the hill, we’ll be out of the machine-gunner’s line of sight.’
‘How d’ye work that out?’
‘Blind optimism.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then. For a moment there, I was worried you were gaunae tell me it was one o’ your gut feelings.’ Rossi thrust his head out from under the boards to take a look around, then withdrew it. ‘Ye go first.’
Torrance rolled out from under the boards on the other side, coming up like a sprinter from the starting blocks, keeping his head down and unslinging his Thompson as he dashed across the sand to where the first palms grew at the foot of the hill. He could see the steps leading up to the temple off to his left, and ignored them: whatever path he was taking up the hill, it was not that one.
When he reached the nearest palm, he took up position behind it, then turned and gestured for Rossi to follow. The Glaswegian squirmed out from under the boards and began to sprint across to where Torrance waited. He was halfway before the Nambu somewhere above them chattered, kicking up spurts of sand all around him.
Rossi was sobbing for breath by the time he joined Torrance at the treeline. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, I thoug
ht I’d had it there! How come he shot at me and no’ at ye?’
‘I dunno. Maybe he supports Rangers? Keep me covered.’
‘Haud on a mo’! There’s only a few rounds left in my tommy gun.’ Rossi discarded his drum magazine and replaced it with a box magazine from one of his utility pouches, gave Torrance the nod, and fired a burst in the general direction of where he had last seen the muzzle flashes from the Nambu. Torrance dashed a few yards up the hill, took up position behind the trunk of another palm, and fired a burst of his own as Rossi leapfrogged him to take up position behind another tree further up. The Nambu sent a hail of bullets tearing down through the foliage, forcing Rossi to throw himself flat a few feet shy of the tree he had been heading for. He crawled for the cover of a closer tree, crouching with his back to it.
‘Go wide!’ hissed Torrance. If the machine-gunner was going to be firing bursts at both of them, the more time he spent traversing the Nambu’s barrel left and right, the less time he would be spending actually shooting.
Rossi nodded, and fired another burst in the direction of the machine gun. Torrance dashed off to his left, angling up the slope. Reaching the steps slanting across the face of the hill in the other direction, he scrambled across them and plunged into the foliage on the other side. Crouching behind a crag of rock, he fired a burst in the general direction of the machine-gunner. The Nambu replied at once, but then Rossi was firing a burst from the other side of the hill, and the machine-gunner left off shooting at Torrance to swing the Nambu’s barrel towards the Glaswegian. Dashing around the far side of the crag, Torrance took the opportunity to sprint for a thicket further up to his right. He was near the top of the hill now, close enough to the machine-gunner to have lobbed a grenade at him, if only he had had one left.
Another burst of machine-gun fire sent bullets whip-cracking around his head. He threw himself down in the undergrowth. The machine-gun fire was cut short as someone screamed in agony. Then he could hear a rustling in the undergrowth, grunts and groans coming from nearby.
‘Lefty?’ he hissed.
‘I got one o’ them!’ gasped Rossi. ‘I widnae mind a hand wi’ the other!’
Torrance was moving towards the sounds of the struggle when another burst of machine-gun fire came from above, another Thompson this time. He glanced up the hill to see a man wearing a Japanese helmet leaning over a balustrade, silhouetted by the glow of a light within the temple.
‘Hold on, Lefty! I’d better get that bastard up there!’
‘Don’t take too long, will ye?’
‘Menoarai akuma ni kisushite kudasai!’ gasped the man Rossi was wrestling with.
‘Oh, ye think so, do ye? Stitch this!’
‘Aieee!’
Grinning – Torrance’s money was on his friend – he fired a burst at the Japanese above, then made a final sprint through the trees, approaching the temple at an angle. When he reached the balustrade – about fifteen yards or so to the left of where he had seen the Japanese armed with a Thompson – the Japanese had fallen back. He was crouched behind a statue of a Chinese lion, waiting for someone to charge up the steps, and had his back to Torrance. A burst from Torrance’s own tommy gun sent him sprawling across the flagstones in a pool of his own blood, but then a pistol cracked from behind one of the stout scarlet pillars supporting the temple roof. Torrance dropped to fire his Thompson through the gap between two balusters. Almost immediately, his magazine was spent. He swapped it for a full one.
Yashiro appeared between two pillars, apparently unarmed. Behind him, a burly Japanese sergeant held a Taisho magazine pistol to Kitty’s head. She had lost her hat, her hair was dishevelled, she had a bruise on one temple and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth as if someone had slapped her.
‘You okay, Admiral?’ called Torrance.
‘Don’t take any chances, Corporal!’ she called back. ‘One bullet. Make it quick!’
‘Throw down your gun, or I’ll order Sergeant Shimura to kill her!’ said Yashiro.
‘Seems like we’re back where we started, doesn’t it?’ shouted Torrance. ‘Tell your sergeant to go ahead. My job is to make sure she doesn’t give you any useful intelligence. No one said anything to me about keeping her alive. Do yourself a favour and surrender, chum. We’ve got your boat.’ Torrance had heard no shooting from the direction of the jetty for a while now; he hoped that meant Hamilton, Varma and the two Australians had overpowered any remaining Japanese rather than vice versa. ‘You ain’t going anywhere.’
‘To the contrary, it is you who is going nowhere. Your General Percival has surrendered to us.’
‘Cobblers!’
‘It is the truth, Englishman. We heard it on the radio: Singapore has fallen. Your empire is crumbling. The ceasefire begins at half past eight.’
Twenty
Sunday 2010 – 2030
Torrance knew in his heart that what Yashiro had told him about the fall of Singapore was probably no more than the truth. Until that moment, he had held out some hope that somehow Percival would find a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; that British pluck would win the day like it always did in the movies. But this was not the movies. Only now did he see just how vain that hope was.
‘Surrender, and we may yet be magnanimous in our hour of victory and spare you,’ said Yashiro.
Torrance’s despair quickly gave way to anger. He glanced at his watch. ‘Half-eight, did you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That gives me twenty minutes. More than enough time to finish you off.’ Switching the Thompson to single-shot, he drew a bead on Shimura’s head and squeezed off a single round. The sergeant reeled, and Torrance saw blood. As he scrambled over the balustrade, to his horror he saw Shimura’s arm rise, the Taisho still gripped in his fist. Kitty saw it too, lashed out with one foot and sent the pistol flying across the temple. It clanged loudly against a gong and bounced into the sand of an incense burner. Torrance switched the Thompson to automatic fire and was about to cut down both Yashiro and Shimura when another Japanese soldier leaped at him from the balustrade with a cry of ‘Tenno heika banzai!’ Torrance swung the Thompson around to fire a burst at him, but the man’s lifeless corpse still slammed into him and both of them fell to the ground, the Thompson flying from Torrance’s grip to skitter across the flagstones.
Dazed, Torrance pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and shook his head muzzily. Shimura tried to grapple Kitty: she still had her arms bound behind her back, so she kicked him in the crotch. Yashiro was crossing to the incense burner. Torrance remembered that was where the Taisho had fallen. He looked around for his Thompson, but could not see it. Pushing himself up, he hobbled across to intercept Yashiro.
The Japanese reached the incense burner first. Grabbing the pistol, he whirled, turning the muzzle towards Torrance. The cockney was still a few feet away, but he had built up enough steam to launch himself forward in a rugby tackle, catching Yashiro around the waist and slamming him back against the burner. The two of them rolled over and over on the flagstones. Torrance rolled on top, but Yashiro still had the pistol in his fist and tried to press the muzzle to the underside of Torrance’s jaw. The cockney caught him by the wrist with both hands, pushing the gun away, but that left Yashiro’s other hand free to grope across Torrance’s face, first getting the heel of his palm under the cockney’s jaw to force his head back, then his fingers clawing for Torrance’s eyes. Torrance sank his teeth into Yashiro’s thumb, tasted blood in his mouth and bit down harder regardless, trying to gnaw through the bone. Yashiro screamed and tried to jerk his right hand out of Torrance’s grip, but Torrance clung on relentlessly, knowing the moment the Japanese got his hand free, he was as good as dead. He drove his knee into Yashiro’s crotch with all his might. Yashiro headbutted him, making stars explode behind Torrance’s eyes. The next thing he knew, Yashiro was on top, trying to aim the pistol at his head again. Again Torrance caught him by the wrist, but the Japanese had freed his left hand fr
om Torrance’s teeth and now caught hold of his throat, squeezing. Torrance felt himself choking. A red mist invaded the periphery of his vision and he felt himself weakening.
Yashiro squeezed off a shot. The blast was explosive so close to Torrance’s ear – he felt the heat of the muzzle flash sear his cheek – and he instinctively turned his head away from it. That was when he noticed the stock of the Thompson sticking out from under the incense burner. He tried to grab for it with an outstretched left arm, but it was an inch out of reach. Seeing what he was trying to do, Yashiro redoubled his efforts to bring the muzzle of his Taisho to bear on Torrance’s head. His heels scrabbling against the flagstones, Torrance tried to thrust himself closer to the Thompson, carrying Yashiro’s weight as well as his own. He reached for it again. His fingers brushed the Thompson’s stock, but only succeeded in pushing it further under the incense burner. Yashiro grinned wolfishly. Channelling the rage of his frustration into his left fist, Torrance slammed it into Yashiro’s ribs. Yashiro’s left hand was still squeezing his throat and Torrance could feel himself blacking out. Through his fading vision, he saw Kitty still struggling with Shimura. The sergeant was behind her now to avoid any more kicks, one arm crooked over her throat, choking her.
Torrance smashed Yashiro’s right hand repeatedly against the edge of the incense burner until at last he let go of the Taisho, sending it skittering across the flagstones. Scowling, Yashiro smashed a fist into Torrance’s jaw and broke free, hurling himself across the temple to where the Taisho had come to rest.
Torrance grabbed the Thompson from under the incense burner.
Yashiro’s fingers closed over the grip of the pistol. He finished his dive with a beautifully executed forward roll, twisting and rising on one knee, the Taisho’s barrel swinging back to where Torrance crouched by the incense burner. Then the Japanese froze as he saw Torrance already had the Thompson aimed at him.