But Weston, his eyes following his nose, saw fish drying.
There are boats around here somewhere.
There was a cantina.
In the cantina were four tables, perhaps a dozen rickety chairs, and a bar onto which a metal Lucky Strike cigarette advertisement had been nailed. A shelf behind the bar held a dozen glasses and half a dozen empty Coca-Cola bottles. It was tended by a very fat Filipino woman with graying hair and bad teeth.
She eyed them suspiciously.
Weston looked at Everly, waiting for him to speak to the woman. After a moment, it became apparent that Everly was waiting for him to say something to her.
Not because I’m the officer in charge, but because he doesn’t want her to know he speaks Spanish. Christ, why didn’t I think of that?
Weston gestured that he wanted something to drink.
“No cerveza,” the woman said.
Weston knew enough Spanish to understand there was no beer.
He shrugged, hoping she would interpret this to mean he would be satisfied with whatever she had.
“Dinero?” the old woman asked.
He reached in his pocket and laid an American five-dollar bill on the bar. She picked it up, examined it carefully, laid it back down, and walked out of the cantina through a door in the rear. In two minutes she was back with one bottle of Coca-Cola. She opened it and handed it to him. Then she picked up the five-dollar bill and stuffed it in the opening of her dress.
“It’s a good thing we’re not really thirsty,” Everly said, and then indicated with a barely perceptible move of his head that Weston should look behind him.
A small, dark-skinned man had come into the cantina. He was barefoot, and he was wearing a loose-fitting cotton pull-over shirt and baggy, ragged cuffed trousers.
“Hello, American buddies,” he called from behind the bar. “I speak English. How are you?”
“Hello,” Weston said.
“Very bad,” the Filipino said. “Goddamn very bad.”
“What’s very bad?”
“Fucking war,” the Filipino said, walking to Weston, putting out his hand, and when Weston took it, shaking it enthusiastically. “Fucking Japons. Bullshit.”
“Very bad,” Weston agreed.
“Hello, buddy,” the Filipino said to Everly.
Everly nodded his head.
“No fucking beer,” the Filipino said. “Damn near no Coca-Cola. Fucking Japons.”
“Yes,” Weston agreed.
“What can I do for you?” the Filipino asked.
“Actually, we’re looking for a boat.”
“Ha! No fucking boats anymore. You got any money?”
“We’re trying to rent a boat to take us off Bataan,” Weston said.
“No fucking boats. Japons maybe twenty-five miles away. Next week they be here.”
“What happened to the boats that were here?” Weston asked.
“Everybody gone. Except maybe one or two boats hidden.”
“We would like to rent one of the boats that are hidden,” Weston said.
“Very expensive. Very illegal. Very dangerous. Be very expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“Very expensive. Thousand dollars.”
“How about five hundred?” Everly said.
“Thousand dollars. No boats left. Fucking war. Fucking Japons.”
“All we have is one thousand dollars,” Weston said. “And we’ll need money when we get to Mindanao.”
The slight Filipino looked thoughtful.
“Why you want to go to Mindanao?”
“To fight the Japanese,” Weston said.
“Fucking Japons no fucking good. Goddamn. I will ask. But I think man with boat will want thousand dollars.”
“If you take us to Mindanao,” Weston said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars. Five hundred dollars now, five hundred when we get there.”
“I will ask,” the Filipino said. “You stay here. Drink Coca-Cola. I will come back.”
“When I see the boat, I will give you five hundred dollars,” Weston said.
“You stay here. Drink Coca-Cola,” the Filipino said. “I come quick.”
He left the cantina the way he had come in.
“That was too easy,” Everly said softly.
Weston’s temper flared.
“You have any better ideas, Sergeant?”
“Your show, Mr. Weston, but if I was you, I’d put all but the one thousand someplace he can’t see it.”
Weston glowered at him, which didn’t seem to faze Everly at all.
“If he does come back, I wouldn’t give him the five hundred until we’re on the boat,” Everly said.
The Filipino came back after fifteen minutes, but he didn’t enter the cantina. He stood in the door and motioned for them to follow him.
Everly gestured for Weston to go first.
The Filipino led them down a trail through the thick vegetation for a quarter mile, and then stopped. He pointed toward the water. After a moment, Weston saw faint marks on the muddy, rocky beach which suggested that a boat had been dragged from the water. A moment later, he saw the stem of a boat peeking through the thick vegetation.
“Good fucking boat,” the Filipino said. “Carry you to Mindanao. Shit, carry you to fucking Australia.”
He left the trail and pushed his way through the vegetation toward the beach.
When they reached the boat, two other Filipinos were there. An older man was dressed like the first, and a stocky, flat-faced young woman wore a thin cotton dress and apparently nothing else.
“They no speak English like me,” the Filipino said. “I translate for you.”
There was an exchange between the Filipino men.
“He say he want to see money.”
“I’ll give him the money when that boat is in the water and we’re under way,” Weston said.
“You no trust me?” the Filipino asked, in a hurt tone.
“When the boat is in the water and we’ve pushed off,” Weston said.
“No go now,” the Filipino said, as if explaining something to a backward child. “Must go in dark. Fucking Japons see us if we go now, and maybe fucking U.S. Navy.”
Weston wondered if that meant the Navy was patrolling these waters to prevent Americans from leaving the peninsula. From deserting in the face of the enemy. He looked at his watch. It was 1735. Darkness should fall soon.
“OK,” Weston said. “We’ll wait.”
“OK,” the Filipino said. “Get off beach where nobody can see you.”
As darkness fell, there was a heavy rain shower, and Weston and Everly found what shelter they could under the hull of the boat. It didn’t offer much shelter, though, and they could not help but notice the battered condition of the hull.
It was quite dark when other men appeared. “Their” Filipino motioned them out from under the hull, and when they moved onto the beach, they almost immediately stepped into water. The beach had narrowed; the tide had risen.
The men, using ropes woven from vines, dragged the boat across the beach and got it into the water.
“You give me money now,” “their” Filipino said when the boat was bobbing, barely visible, several yards offshore.
When Weston produced the money, the Filipino counted it in the light of a Zippo lighter. The lighter had a USMC insignia. For a moment Weston thought, lightly, that might be a good omen. Then he wondered where the Filipino found the lighter. Lighters were in short supply. There were no more Ship’s Stores or Army Post Exchanges, nor stores outside military bases. Good cigarette lighters were in demand; people took care of them.
Where did this guy get the lighter? Steal it from somebody? Offer some other Marine a way off Bataan, then rob him, knowing he couldn’t go to the Military Police? Or throw him over the side?
That’s paranoid, he told himself. There’s no reason to be suspicious of the Filipino.
If he’d wanted to rob us, he could have done it in the cant
ina, or while we were here in the bush, waiting for it to get dark. And we couldn’t have done a thing about it. There is a boat, and absolutely no indication that the Filipino is going to do anything but what he agreed to do, get us off Bataan. What’s wrong with you, Jim Weston, is that you’re afraid. You’re afraid of what you’re doing, deserting in the face of the enemy; and you’re afraid of getting killed. For Christ’s sake, you’re supposed to be an officer. Act like one!
They waded out to the boat, finding themselves in water almost to their armpits, holding their weapons over their heads. When they reached the side of the boat, one of the Filipinos leaned over and took Weston’s Springfield from him. Then he reached down for the web belt, with its holstered pistol.
If I hand over the pistol, I’ll be disarmed. Maybe they’ve been waiting for this—to separate us from our weapons.
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Stop it! If they wanted to slit our throats, they would have done that on the beach.
He let the Filipino on the boat take the web belt. And then a hand found his in the darkness, and he felt himself being hauled out of the water.
The first thing that happened was his pistol belt and the Springfield were returned to him, which made him feel like a fool.
Everly came aboard a moment later. One of the Filipino seamen took Weston’s arm, led them to a small hatch in the deck, and motioned them through it. A match flared, and in its light Weston saw the Filipino lighting a primitive oil lamp, nothing more than what looked like a six-inch piece of clothesline stuck into a bottle of oil. But the flame caught, and the small compartment was dully illuminated. The Filipino handed him the lamp and then left the compartment, closing the hatch after him.
Weston looked at Everly.
“Well, we seem to be on our way,” Weston said. Everly did not reply.
Weston saw Everly make sort of a pillow out of his rucksack and then lie down on the deck. Weston had no rucksack, and tried to make himself comfortable without one. But the confinement of the compartment and the curve of the hull made this impossible; his head hung down painfully. Finally, he took off his shirt and rolled it up. This seemed to work.
He heard creaking sounds from outside; and then he had a sense of motion, as if the boat were getting under way.
“Have you got a match, or a lighter?” Everly asked. It was the first time he had spoken.
“Both,” Weston replied.
“Why don’t you put that lamp out?” Everly said, his suggestion again sounding more like an order. “If we need it, we can relight it. If that lamp spills, lit, there’s likely to be a fire.”
“Right,” Weston said, and blew the flame out. There was an unpleasant-smelling smoke, and the coal on the wick took a long time to die out.
Then the darkness was complete. There was no question now that they were moving. The hull was canted—which forced Weston to readjust his position on the deck—and he could hear the splash and gurgle of water on the hull.
He started to think. The idea that they were going to be robbed and killed no longer seemed credible. He was almost embarrassed that he had had it. But what was real was that he had now deserted. That was a fact. He had deserted in the face of the enemy, in the foul-smelling bilge of a crude Philippine fishing boat. It was not what he had had in mind when he joined The Corps and went through flight school.
He fell asleep trying to put things in order, telling himself he was going to have to stop dwelling on the desertion business. It wasn’t as if he was running away to avoid his military duty; what he really was doing was evading capture, so that he could make his way to Australia and get back in the cockpit of a fighter to wage war against the enemy as he had been trained to fight.
Weston woke in shock and confusion. That immediately turned into terror.
He tried to sit up—a reflex action—and became instantly aware that something—someone—was lying on him. And then whoever was lying on him was thrashing about and making horrible guttural sounds. And then—again without conscious effort—when he tried to push whoever was on top of him off, or to slip out from under him, he realized his hands were slippery.
“Mr. Weston, you all right?” Everly hissed. Before Weston could form a reply, he sensed movement; and then the weight on him lifted.
“What the hell?”
“You all right?” Everly asked again. “Did he cut you?”
“Oh, Christ!” Weston said. “What the hell happened?”
“I cut his throat,” Everly said almost matter-of-factly. “Are you all right?”
The sonofabitch is annoyed that I didn’t answer him quickly enough.
“I’m wet, my hands are wet,” Weston said.
And then he realized what made his hands wet and sticky, and was quickly nauseous. Not much came out, but his chest hurt from the effort, and there was a foul taste of bile in his mouth.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, now indignant himself.
“Here it is,” Everly said. “I found it.”
“Found what?”
“The knife, a filet knife, it looks like,” Everly said. Weston felt something pushing at him. “You take it.”
“I don’t want it!”
“There’s three more of them outside,” Weston said. “In thirty seconds, they’re going to suspect this guy fucked up.”
“He tried to kill me?” Weston asked, his brain not quite willing to accept that fact.
“Just be glad he went after you first,” Everly said. “If I’d have had to fight the sonofabitch, no telling what would have happened.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Load your pistol,” Everly ordered.
“There’s shit—there’s blood—all over my hands.”
“Wipe them, for Christ’s sake, on your pants. Get your pistol loaded. Quietly!”
Weston slapped his hands against his trousers to wipe off the blood, then somehow managed to get the .45 pistol from its holster. The first time he tried to pull the slide back to chamber a cartridge, his fingers slipped when it was halfway back, and the spring forced the slide forward again without chambering a cartridge.
“Quietly, for Christ’s sake!” Everly said. And then, as a flashlight played in the compartment, blinding Weston with its sudden light, he added, “Shit!” A moment later there were half a dozen deafening explosions, each accompanied by an orange flash.
Now everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Weston frantically wiped his fingers on his trousers and felt for the serrations on the rear of the pistol slide. He jerked it back violently. His fingers slipped off, but when the slide moved forward again, he heard—and felt—a cartridge being chambered.
He now recognized the noise. It was the Thompson firing, and it was incredibly loud, painfully deafening. His ears rang, and he felt dizzy. Though he was nearly blinded by the light from the flashlight, he vaguely saw Everly diving for it. Then he covered it with his body, and the light went out.
An orange ball in Weston’s eyes faded slowly. After what seemed like a full minute but was probably far less time, he could make out a slightly lighter area in the blackness. This was the hatch to the compartment, he realized—now open. A moment later, he saw the reason the hatch was open: There was a body in it.
He could now make out Everly, not clearly, but clearly enough to see that he was grasping the hair on the head of the body in the hatch. He pulled the head back and cut the man’s throat.
“They don’t have any weapons,” Everly said. “Guns. If they did, they would have used them by now. But how the fuck do we get out of here?”
“They’ll be waiting for us,” Weston said, and immediately felt like a fool.
Everly moved close to the hatch, then rolled onto his back.
“As soon as I’m through the hatch, you follow,” Everly ordered. “Come up here!”
Weston moved toward the hatch. When he put his hand to the deck, it slid in what had to be blood. The bile returned to his mouth, but he was able to restr
ain the impulse to vomit.
He had just reached Everly when Everly fired the Thompson at the side and overhead bulkheads, ten or twelve rounds in two- and three-round bursts. The noise and muzzle flashes were again blinding, deafening, and painful.
When partial sight returned, Weston could see Everly shoving himself through the hatch, still on his back. Additional flashes came from the Thompson. But, with the muzzle outside the compartment, no more painful explosions assaulted his ear.
Weston dove through the hatch the moment Everly had cleared it, then rolled onto his back.
“Shoot the sonofabitch!” Everly ordered.
Weston looked frantically from side to side, and finally saw one of the Filipinos, scurrying aft on all fours.
“Shoot the sonofabitch!” Everly screamed.
Weston held the Colt in both hands, lined up the sights as best he could, and fired. The Filipino seemed to hesitate. Weston shot him again. And again.
“Make sure he’s dead,” Everly called, somewhat more calmly.
Weston rose to his feet and walked unsteadily aft. The Filipino—he was “their Filipino,” the one who’d arranged for the boat, taken the money—was on his stomach, his legs pushing as if trying to get away. Weston did not want to shoot him again. But then, as if with a mind of its own, the hand holding the .45 raised the pistol until it was pointing at the base of the man’s skull, and his finger pulled the trigger.
The man’s head seemed to explode.
He looked back at Everly in time to see him—far more clearly this time—repeat what he’d done in the compartment. Pulling the man’s head backward by his hair to expose his throat, he used a thin-bladed knife to cut deeply into it. Blood gushed out.
Everly dropped the man’s head onto the deck. As Weston watched, horrified, Everly ran his hands over the man’s body, searching it. He put his hands in the man’s pockets and came out with a pocket watch, a key, and some money, all of which he jammed into his own pocket. Finally, he stood up.
“You want to give me a hand here, Mr. Weston?”
“What?”
“Get this sonofabitch over the side. Him and the others.”
“You’re going to throw him overboard?”
Behind the Lines Page 5