Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes,” Weston agreed, feeling grossly incompetent.

  “So the question is do we want to take them out, in case they seen the boat, or in case they come back? If they do, they damned sure will see the boat. Or are we going to hope we’re lucky?”

  “I think we had better take them out,” Weston decreed, with what he hoped was far more assurance than he felt.

  “That means you’ll have to take them out, by yourself,” Everly said.

  “Your goddamned ankle!” Weston said.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose, Mr. Weston,” Everly said. “And one of us is going to have to stay here anyway. If those guys in the boat hear shooting, we don’t want them paddling back to the sub.”

  “Shit!”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “You go after the Japs. If you stick close to the jungle and don’t make too much noise, you ought to be able to catch up to them without them suspecting anything. It’s going to take those guys in the boat five minutes to make shore. That’ll give you enough time to catch up with the Japs, unless they decide to turn around. When the boat makes shore, I’ll fire a shot. Then you take out the Japs. They’re all bunched up; you should be able to do it easy. And then we’ll take it from there.”

  “Goddamn it, why did they have to patrol this lousy section of beach right now?”

  “Things happen that way, Mr. Weston,” Everly said.

  “How long ago did the Japs go by?”

  “You really didn’t see them?” Everly asked wonderingly, and then answered the question. “About two minutes ago. They was walking slow. Your ass starts to drag in a hurry, walking through sand.”

  “I’ll take them out when I hear your shot,” Weston said. “You make sure whoever’s in that rubber boat doesn’t leave.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  They rose to their feet and left the protective cover of the jungle. Weston started trotting up the beach, keeping as close to the vegetation as he could.

  Within a minute, he realized that Everly was right again. Walking through sand—not to mention trying to run through it—does in fact cause the ass to start dragging in a hurry.

  In three minutes, the Japanese came into sight. None of them seemed at all attentive to anything. Weston began to close the distance between himself and them, taking as much solace as he could from the knowledge that his was not the only dragging ass.

  When he came out of the jungle, Everly had concealed himself—nat on his stomach—behind a massive outcrop of rock. Suddenly he got to his feet.

  The two men were no longer in the boat. After a moment, Everly spotted their heads in the water, and then they began to rise higher and higher from the water, dragging the boat behind them. Finally, they were on the beach. They were dressed in what looked like utilities dyed black, and they had some kind of black grease rubbed on their faces. Even so, one of them looked familiar.

  Everly stepped from behind the rock.

  “McCoy, is that you?” he called.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Every.”

  “Give us a hand with the boat,” McCoy ordered.

  Everly walked quickly to the edge of the water. Up close, the man with McCoy looked seventeen years old.

  “We got a problem,” Everly announced.

  “What kind of a problem?”

  “Four Japs, about five hundred yards down the beach,” Everly said. Then he raised his Thompson to his shoulder, raised the muzzle into the air and pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out.

  Weston had been waiting for the signal. The four Japanese soldiers were walking slowly in a file, not more than twenty yards in front of him. Weston was really surprised that they didn’t seem to have any idea that they were being shadowed.

  He was carrying the Thompson—with growing difficulty; he was running out of breath—much like a quail hunter carries his shotgun when he expects a covey to flush. He was prepared to fire instantly.

  He was aware of the analogy, and the differences. Quail hunters do not usually run through sand; no shotgun he had ever held was nearly as heavy as the Thompson; and quail flush, they do not turn and shoot back.

  He had the Thompson to his shoulder and had drawn a sight on the lead Japanese before the first Japanese, hearing the shots, turned in the action of unslinging his Arisaka rifle from his shoulder.

  Time seemed to move very slowly.

  The first Jap bent his knees and dropped in his tracks. The second and third Japanese in the file fell over forward. The last Japanese, in the act of shouldering his Arisaka, took a four-round burst in the chest and fell over backward.

  Weston ran forward to them, the Thompson still at his shoulder. The first and third Japanese showed signs of life. Without really thinking what he was doing, Weston took his Nambu pistol—already carrying a round in the chamber—and shot both of them in the head.

  A little sanity returned. He felt a twinge of nausea at the sight of the blood and brain matter on the sand.

  And then, in a reflex action, Weston stripped each of the bodies of their ammunition, gathered up the Arisakas, and, staggering under the weight, started back to where he had left Everly.

  “What the hell...” McCoy asked just before they heard the four bursts—three short and one long burst—from Weston’s Thompson.

  “Captain Weston was waiting for my signal before taking them out,” Everly said.

  McCoy turned to the kid.

  “Koffler, go see if you can help down there,” he ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Koffler responded, pulled a Colt .45 pistol from under his dyed-black utilities, and started to run down the beach.

  “He’s a little young, isn’t he, McCoy?” Everly asked as he and McCoy dragged the rubber boat across the narrow beach and into the jungle.

  McCoy didn’t reply.

  “Is it safe enough to bring in a couple more boats?” he asked.

  “Your call, McCoy,” Everly replied. “I think that was all the Japs for right now, but I don’t know that.”

  McCoy took a black bag of some kind from the boat, then took a knife, a daggerlike weapon, from a sheath strapped to his arm and sliced at the bag.

  Jesus Christ, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that isn’t the same knife he used to cut those Italian Marines! Everly thought in wonder.

  Then McCoy had a microphone in his hand and was pulling what looked like an automobile antenna out of a black box.

  “Coffin, Coffin, Columbus, Columbus.”

  “Go ahead, Columbus. Read you five by five.”

  “Coffin, send in two repeat two boats.”

  “Understand two boats. On the way.”

  “Who the hell are you talking to, Killer?” Everly asked.

  McCoy didn’t reply, directly.

  “I guess they didn’t hear that Thompson,” he said. “Otherwise I probably would have been talking to nobody.”

  Then he touched Everly’s arm, and when Everly looked at him, nodded out to sea.

  The conning tower of the Sunfish rose from the sea. Before her deck broke water, there was activity on her bridge.

  Two officers appeared—identifiable by their brimmed caps. And then four or five sailors. A .50 caliber machine gun appeared and was quickly put in its mount. There was the glint of gleaming, belted cartridges as the gun was charged.

  The national colors sprouted on a mast, their red, white, and blue suddenly vivid in the early-morning sun against the wet gray of the Sunfish. The officers and sailors in the conning tower saluted as the wind whipped the flag straight.

  A port in the conning tower burst open and sailors poured out, some to man the four-inch cannon mounted forward, some rushing to open ports in her deck. Two rubber boats suddenly inflated on the Sunfish’s deck, and were quickly put over the side.

  “Shit!” Everly said, his voice breaking. “Look at that fucking flag, will you?”

  Weston and Koffler came running back down the beach while
the two rubber boats making their way to shore were still a hundred yards offshore.

  “Got them all!” Weston reported excitedly, even jubilantly. “We dragged the bodies off the beach.”

  “Mr. Weston, this is Killer McCoy,” Everly said.

  “Fuck you, Everly,” McCoy snapped.

  “McCoy, this is Captain Weston,” Everly said.

  McCoy, smiling, saluted.

  “Lieutenant McCoy, Sir,” he said. “Captain, you need a shave.”

  “I’m Sergeant Koffler, Sir,” Koffler said to Captain Weston. “We didn’t have time for introductions back there.”

  “How do you do, Sergeant?” Weston replied formally.

  “You’re a sergeant?” Everly asked incredulously.

  “He’s a staff sergeant,” McCoy said, chuckling. “Zimmerman—he’s in one of those boats—is a gunny.”

  Weston looked out to sea and saw the rubber boats and then the Sunfish, with her colors streaming proudly from her mast. And then he realized that tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his chest was heaving with sobs he couldn’t control.

  [THREE]

  “Do you have any people with you, Captain?” McCoy asked.

  “No. It’s just Lieutenant Everly and myself,” Weston said.

  “ ‘Lieutenant’ Everly?” McCoy asked.

  “The General commissioned me, McCoy,” Everly said.

  “What were you before the war, Captain?” McCoy asked.

  “I was a lieutenant. I’m an aviator,” Weston said.

  Hearing what he said, he realized that he no longer felt like an aviator. It seemed impossible that he had ever done anything like that.

  “You’re a Marine officer? A regular?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are there other officers around?” McCoy asked. “Somebody with more rank?”

  “Captain Hedges,” Everly said. “He’s leading a patrol here.”

  “When will he get here?”

  “Two, three days. He has to come sixty miles. Maybe four,” Everly said.

  “Nobody higher than a captain?”

  “That’s it, McCoy,” Everly said.

  “Can you paddle a rubber boat, Captain?” McCoy asked. “I mean, if we can get you into a rubber boat, could you paddle it out to the submarine?”

  “I think so.”

  “How much do you know about Fertig’s operation?”

  “Here you go, Mr. McCoy,” Koffler said, handing him a carbine. “Careful, it’s loaded and not locked.”

  “What the hell is that thing?” Everly asked derisively. And then, “He called you ‘Mister McCoy’?”

  “You can call me ‘Sir,’ Percy,” McCoy said. “It’s a carbine. Fires a real-hot .30 caliber pistol cartridge from a fifteen-round magazine. Good little weapon. We’re going to try to bring one hundred of them ashore.”

  “You know I don’t like being called ‘Percy,’ ” Everly said.

  “Then don’t call me ‘Killer,’ or I will make you call me ‘Sir,’ Percy.”

  “Mr. McCoy is a lieutenant,” Koffler furnished helpfully.

  “You’re in charge, here, Mr. McCoy?” Weston asked.

  “I am,” McCoy said simply. “I asked you how much do you know about Fertig’s operation?”

  “I’m the G-2,” Weston said.

  “That OSS guy is in the first boat, Mr. McCoy,” Koffler said. “Him and Mr. Lewis.”

  McCoy turned to look at him. He was peering out to sea through binoculars.

  “Give me those,” he ordered.

  Koffler somewhat reluctantly handed them over.

  “Police up that plastic,” McCoy ordered. “Jesus Christ, Steve! You know better than to leave stuff like that for the Japs to find!”

  “Sorry,” Koffler said contritely, and immediately dropped to his knees to pick up the shredded plastic in which the radio, the binoculars, and the carbines had been wrapped.

  “What I want you do to, Captain,” McCoy said, “is go out in the surf until you’re up to your waist. Koffler will go with you. Leave the Thompson. When that first boat gets here, help unload it. The stuff will float, and Koffler will see it doesn’t get away. Then get in, and go out to the submarine.”

  “What for?” Weston asked.

  “My orders are to send the highest-ranking officer I can find out with the Sunfish. You’re it.”

  “Why? I’m not sure—”

  “Don’t argue with me,” McCoy said coldly. “Just do it!”

  “You better do it, Mr. Weston,” Everly said.

  Weston looked at McCoy, confusion in his eyes. McCoy felt sorry for him.

  “I think you’re going to brief General MacArthur on what’s going on around here,” he said with a smile. “I know you’re going to brief General Pickering.”

  “MacArthur?” Everly said. “No shit?”

  “No shit, Everly,” McCoy said. “And, Captain, don’t shave off that beard until General Pickering sees it.”

  Weston still looked confused and hesitant.

  “Go, goddamn it!” McCoy said. “By the time you wade through the surf, the boat’ll be there.”

  Weston looked at Everly, who nodded.

  “Have a cold one for me, Mr. Weston,” he said, and put out his hand.

  “Take care of yourself, Everly,” Weston said, aware and surprised that he wanted to cry again.

  “Yeah,” Everly said. He held out his hand for Weston’s Thompson submachine gun. Weston gave it to him, then walked to the edge of the water and waded in.

  “Where can we stash the stuff we’re bringing ashore?” McCoy asked, turning to Everly.

  “How much stuff?”

  “What’s in those two boats for now,” McCoy said. “More stuff tomorrow, if we get away with this.”

  “I think you can forget tomorrow,” Everly said. “There’s going to be Japs over here sooner or later, and I think sooner.”

  “Tell me about the Japs,” McCoy said.

  “Four-man patrol,” Everly responded. “I think they got off a truck down there a ways, and were supposed to be picked up by another a couple of miles down that. When they don’t show up, I think somebody will come looking for them.”

  “How much time?”

  Everly threw up his hands helplessly.

  “If we’re lucky, nobody heard the Thompson. That may give us a little more time. If they did, we could have Japs anytime.”

  “What about stashing this stuff?”

  “There’s jungle for maybe half a mile from here to the road, in a straight line. Any place between here and the road would be as good as any.”

  “How far away is Fertig?”

  “Sixty miles. But he’s moving.”

  “What do you mean he’s moving?”

  “He figured maybe one of us would be captured. He didn’t want us to tell the Japs if we got captured. If we don’t know where he went, we can’t tell the Japs.”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  “But no sweat. McCoy. He’ll find us, if the Japs don’t find us first.”

  “What do you think of Fertig?”

  “He’s a little weird,” Everly said. “He’s got a little red goatee, and I guess you know he’s not a real general. He was a light colonel, I think. But he’s smart, and he’s got balls.”

  That’s about as close to high praise as Everly is likely to give, McCoy decided.

  “OK. Here’s the drill. The first thing we do is get Koffler and one of the radios to Fertig. How do we do that?”

  “I know where to meet Captain Hedges and the patrol....”

  “How many men on the patrol? Enough to carry this stuff?”

  “Enough to carry a lot of it. You won’t believe how much crap these Flips cam carry. But I don’t know how many men. Probably fifteen, twenty, anyhow.”

  “Can a couple of them take Koffler to Fertig? I guess he’s got about a hundred pounds of gear.”

  “I got a motorcycle stashed a ways back,” Everly said. “If I can find the s
onofabitch. Can we strap what he has to take on the motorcycle?”

  “What about Japs on the road?”

  “I don’t know,” Everly said. “And the General didn’t say anything, but like I said, he’s smart. He’ll probably do something the other side of Boston to have all the Japs running around up there.”

  “Fertig, you mean?”

  Everly nodded.

  “Or I could carry—what did you say his name is?”

  “Koffler.”

  “—Kofner and his stuff to the motorcycle and wait until tonight to move down the road.”

  “Your call,” McCoy said. “Just keep in mind, getting Koffler and that radio to Fertig is the most important thing right now.”

  “Just one radio?”

  “I got another one here. And there’s two more on the sub, if we can get more stuff off.”

  He looked out to sea. The first boat had reached Koffler and Weston, and Lewis was shoving black plastic-wrapped parcels over the side. Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC, was kneeling in the center of the boat doing, as far as McCoy could see, absolutely nothing.

  The second boat, carrying Zimmerman and two sailors from the Sunfish, was approaching them.

  The sun was fully up now. If a Japanese patrol boat appeared, or worse, an airplane, the Sunfish would be in trouble.

  McCoy scanned the horizon, and then the skies, with the binoculars. There was nothing.

  Zimmerman’s boat passed Lewis’s and kept coming.

  “If they don’t go over the side now, it’ll turn over in the surf,” McCoy mused aloud.

  A minute later, his prediction came true. The boat flipped over on its side, dumping the three men and the stack of plastic-wrapped parcels into the sea.

  “Come on, we better get those people some weapons,” McCoy said, and led Everly to the boat they had dragged off the beach into the jungle. He reached into the boat, pulled a plastic-wrapped parcel of carbines from it, and slit the plastic.