Operation

Long Jump

A Jock Miles WW2
Adventure

By

William Peter Grasso

Novels by William Peter
Grasso:

Moon Above, Moon Below

A Moon Brothers WW2 Adventure

Operation Fishwrapper

Book 5 in the Jock Miles WW2 adventure series

Operation Blind Spot

Book 4 in the Jock Miles WW2 adventure series

Operation Easy
Street

Book 3 in the Jock Miles WW2 adventure series

Operation Long
Jump:

Book 2 in the Jock Miles WW2 adventure series

Long Walk To
The Sun:

Book 1 in the Jock Miles WW2 adventure series

Also available as audiobook

Unpunished

East Wind Returns

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2013 William Peter Grasso

All rights reserved

*****

Cover design by Alyson Aversa

Cover photo courtesy of US Army Signal Corps

Map created at planiglobe.com

Kindle Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like
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your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Operation Long Jump is a work of alternative historical
fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales in the
narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current
events or locales or to living persons is purely coincidental. Time lines of
actual events depicted may be modified. Events that are common historical
knowledge may not occur at their actual point in time or may not occur at all.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Novels by William Peter Grasso

Copyright

Author’s Note

Dedication

Map

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

About the Author

More Novels by William Peter Grasso

Author’s Note

Operation Long Jump is a work of alternative historical
fiction. The Japanese never took Port Moresby from the Australians during WW2.
They did come awfully close to doing so, though—within 20 miles. Australian
forces, with some American logistical and air support, managed, just barely, to
hold the town, its airfield, and harbor. Like all historical events, however,
it could have come to something much different: the fall of Port Moresby and an
Allied effort to reclaim it. This work of fiction explores that possibility.

The
designations of military units may be actual or fictitious.

In no
way are the fictional accounts intended to denigrate the hardships, suffering,
and courage of those who served.

Contact the Author Online:

Email: William Peter
Grasso

Connect with the Author on
Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWilliamPeterGrasso

DEDICATION

To the
men of the US 32nd Infantry Division in World
War 2

In the
beginning, they were thrown against the Japanese when far from ready

But at
the end, they were the ones standing tall

Port Moresby and Surrounding Territory

November

1942

Chapter One

Day 1

The PT boat’s deceleration was so violent—and so
unexpected—that Jock Miles found himself no longer kneeling. He was now
sprawled face down across the map he had spread out to study on the cabin
floorboards. The steady roar of the boat’s three engines had mellowed to an
asynchronous rumble, like the murmurings of a disgruntled mob. Jock Miles’s
20-odd soldiers, crammed together in the muggy, foul-smelling cabin, didn’t
look very happy, either.

First Sergeant Melvin Patchett gave voice to the collective
unease as he drawled, “Why in blue blazes are the swabbies slowing down,
Captain? We couldn’t be nowhere near that damn beach yet.”

“Keep your drawers on, Top,” Jock replied as he found his
feet and started up the steps to the cockpit. “I’ll go see what’s happening
topside.”

As Jock climbed through the hatch, his soldiers took solace
in two facts: none of the boat’s machine guns were firing and nothing was
slapping against its plywood hull except the sea. Racer-fast and well-armed
though she might be, this US Navy PT boat was little more than an overgrown and
overpowered cabin cruiser loaded with ammunition and a few thousand gallons of
high-octane gasoline. It wouldn’t take much of a spark to turn their wooden ark
into a blazing inferno.

In the few seconds it took Jock to reach the cockpit, the
boat slowed to a crawl. In a few more, it would be dead in the water. He took
in a quick, panoramic sweep and saw nothing but the crescent moon in a black
dome of sky, casting its pale glow across the deck. It was just enough light
for Jock to see the silhouettes of a dozen men manning heavy machine guns. The
boat’s skipper, a young lieutenant j.g., stood at the helm, straining his eyes
to glimpse something in the dark void before them.

Jock asked, “What’s the holdup, Lieutenant?”

“A couple of blacked-out Jap destroyers, sir, crossing
ahead, heading west toward the Torres Strait,” the lieutenant replied, his gaze
still fixed in the distance. “We’ve got them dead abeam. What I’d give for my
load of fish right now.”

“Fish? What are you talking about, Lieutenant?”

“Torpedoes, sir. We call our torpedoes fish. We don’t have
any onboard right now so we could lighten up and make max speed and range for
this mission. Dammit! I’ve never had a shot like this in my life.”

“I can’t see a blessed thing,” Jock said, his night vision
still impaired by the effects of the cabin lighting. “Where are the boats with
the rest of my guys?”

The lieutenant pointed over the stern. “They’re both a
couple of hundred yards back, idling just like we are. You can’t make them out,
either?”

“Not yet, Lieutenant. But we’re wasting time here. We’ve got
to be at Barakau way before sunrise and it’s already past oh-four-hundred.
Can’t you find a way around those Japs? Or through them?”

“I don’t know, Captain…those destroyers might not be alone.
They could be the escort for a battleship or a carrier. Like we say in Jersey, it
could be a real case of the brown drawers if we tried to pull off something
like that.”

“Look, Lieutenant…I’ve been to New Jersey…and I’ve had brown
drawers before, too. That’s a chance we’ll just have to take. Isn’t that what
these fast little boats are for, anyway?”

“Yeah, sure, Captain…but—”

“No buts, Lieutenant. Your orders are to get us to
Papua before daybreak. Let’s make that max speed you’re talking about.”

Even in the darkness, Jock could see the uneasiness on the
lieutenant’s face. It took a moment, but the skipper’s hand returned to the
throttles and started to slowly push them forward. Calling to his signalman at
the blinker light, the lieutenant said, “Tell the others full speed ahead.”

The lieutenant turned to Jock. “Okay, Captain, we’ll try it
your way. Papua, here we come.”

In seconds, they were ripping across the Coral Sea once again at better than 30 knots. Jock’s night vision
was kicking in, and he could make out the distant shapes of two ships. They
looked sleek and menacing in the moonlight.

“How far off do you make them, Lieutenant?” Jock asked,
pointing in the destroyers’ direction.

“About two thousand yards.”

“How far off Papua are we?”

“About ten miles.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Captain. We get great radio fixes off the Jap
stations.” The lieutenant nudged the ship’s wheel to starboard. “We’re going to
cut behind that second destroyer,” he said. “With any luck, there’s nobody behind
her we ain’t seen yet.”

They passed closer astern to the destroyer than Jock had
imagined. He made the distance as little more than 500 yards off their port
side. One of the PT boats in trail crossed the destroyer’s wake even closer.

“If those Nips are awake,” the lieutenant said, “we’ll
probably get lit up by searchlights any second. And after that, the shooting
gallery opens for business.”

His hand pushed insistently on the throttles, but they were
already at the high-power stops. Within seconds, a searchlight beam began to
sweep the sea’s surface like an accusing finger, well behind the lead PT boat.
But it wasn’t coming from the destroyer they were rapidly leaving behind off
their port quarter. The searchlight came from starboard, from a ship still invisible
in the darkness. “See that, Captain?” the lieutenant said. “There is
somebody behind her.” He was proud to be right.

He was terrified for being right.

“We’re probably looking right down her bow,” the lieutenant
said. “I’m surprised we couldn’t at least see the glow off her bow wave before
that light came on.” He glanced nervously behind; the searchlight’s beam was
scanning dangerously close to the two PT boats racing behind them. “If we were
dead in the water,” he added, “she’d be on us so fast our heads would spin.”

As if changing its mind, the beam suddenly swung toward the
lead boat, following her luminous wake to its source. Sea algae—the simplest of
one-celled organisms—stirred to a bioluminescent frenzy by the boat’s passage,
were foiling their best efforts to escape. For a blindingly bright moment, the
boat and her crew were turned ghostly white, fixed in the beam’s harsh glare.

The lieutenant jerked the ship’s wheel to starboard, and
they slipped from the searchlight’s grasp. The relief of being hidden in
darkness lasted only a second; a dashed arc of bright yellow tracers seemed to
stream from the searchlight and panned across the black sky, making no sound
and hitting nothing but water well beyond the PT boats. Two more strings of
tracers etched their bright path across the sky, to no one’s harm.

Zigzagging his boat to avoid being caught again in the
searchlight’s frantic scan, the lieutenant said, “Looks like they saw enough to
figure out we’re not one of them. I’m guessing that’s twenty-five millimeter
they’re throwing up.” He was growing more confident they were outrunning the
Japs’ blind shooting. “It’s the tracers you can’t see that’ll get you,” he
added.

“Yeah, I know,” Jock replied. “You can’t see much of the
ones coming right at you.”

The boat’s speed carried them from harm’s way very quickly.
The rounds from the ship they had never seen continued splashing in their wake,
becoming little more than a fireworks display, like watching clusters of Roman
candles on the Fourth of July.

First Sergeant Patchett popped his head through the hatch.
“We got our tits in a wringer, sir?” he asked. Taking a look around, Patchett
did a double take as he saw the tracers flying in the distance well behind
them.

“No, Top,” Jock replied, “just a close call. Everyone okay
down there?”

“The boys are getting ants in their pants, Captain. They’ve
been on one damn tub or another for too damn long now.”

“Tell them we’re almost there. Looks to be about another
twenty minutes,” Jock said, looking to the lieutenant at the helm for confirmation.

The skipper nodded in agreement and added, “Twenty
minutes…maybe a little less. Assuming we don’t run into more company.”

Patchett vanished back into the cabin.

Jock asked the lieutenant, “What are the chances of running
into Jap patrol boats along the coast?”

“Not sure, sir. Never been this close to Papua before.” It
seemed to Jock to be more an expression of dread than a statement of fact.

Jock had another question. “Do you think those ships we just
passed will follow us?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Nah, not a chance. They’ll
be hell-bent on getting through the Torres Strait and into the Arafura Sea
before daybreak. The Air Force will beat them up bad otherwise. Those flyboys
are starting to get the hang of this ship-sinking business…in daylight, anyway.
They sunk a Jap cruiser off Bligh Passage last week.”

They raced northward for 15 minutes, until they could see at
least a dozen fires—some near, some far—spread across the darkness that was the
Papuan coast. They were searching for a specific two: two fires that “blinked”
like the beam of a lighthouse, one near the water’s edge, one farther inland.
When those two beacons were aligned, they would indicate the path to their
landing beach near the village named Barakau.

“Every village in Papua must have a fire burning, and I
don’t see a damned one of them blinking,” the lieutenant said. “That Aussie
coast watcher better not have his head up his ass.”

As they slipped closer to shore, throttles at idle, a
crewman on the bow stuck a sounding pole straight down into the water. “Eight
feet, Skipper,” he called out. “Feels like coral below.”

“That’s just swell,” the lieutenant said through clenched
teeth. “Only three feet of water between her keel and razor-sharp rocks…and we
have no idea where the hell we are.”

Jock Miles pulled the binoculars from his eyes. “Wait a
minute…look over there,” he said, extending an arm and holding up two fingers
to form a V, much like the notch of a gun sight. “I’ll bet that’s the far one,
and it’s sort of blinking…but I think we’ve got too much of an angle. We’re too
far east.”

The skipper eased the boat to port. As she crept
westward—two minutes, three minutes—he was growing decidedly uneasy.

“Seven feet, Skipper,” the man on the sounding pole said.

“Shit,” the lieutenant said, taking off his steel helmet to
wipe the sweat from his brow. “Look, Captain, we can’t be screwing around like
this. If we go hard aground, we’re all as good as dead. I can’t be risking the
boat.”

Jock wasn’t paying attention. He was fixated on the shore
fires. Forming another aiming sight with his fingers, he said, “I think I’ve
got it. Look…”

Over her starboard bow were two fires, one higher and
farther than the other—and they both seemed to be blinking on and off every few
seconds.

“I’m going to get my men on deck,” Jock said. “Line those
fires up over the bow and take her straight in, Lieutenant.”

“Down to six feet, Skipper,” came the call from the bow.
“One more foot and we’re sitting on the bottom.”

Chapter Two

Day 1

With a brief but sickening moan of wood against coral, their
slow creep toward shore was abruptly halted. The PT boat had come to rest, her
bow nestled against a shallow coral shelf. No more than 10 yards in front of
them, they could see the outline of a mangrove in the signal fire’s light. It
was obvious now how the fire had been made to blink: a suspended
tarpaulin—perhaps a sail—was swinging on a boom back and forth on the seaward
side of the flames. Whoever pulled the ropes to make it swing was invisible, well
hidden among the trees. Jock was surprised how small the fire actually was
until he remembered even a match’s flame can be seen for over a mile in
total darkness. The other two PT boats appeared out of the darkness and
nestled against shore on either side of their leader. In twos and threes, 60
armed men with heavy packs on their backs leapt from the bows and sloshed
through waist-deep water to shore.

The men fanned out in a line, advanced through the mangrove,
and took up firing positions. From where they stopped, the signal fire was
still 20 yards distant, casting its eerie, dancing shadows against the woodland
like a kaleidoscope lamp. The engines of the three PT boats growled as they
pulled away from shore. They quieted to the mumble of low idle as the boats
glided over the reef on their way back to the sea. Their sound soon gave way to
the fire’s crackle and the rustling of trees in the sea breeze.

A man’s voice—decidedly Australian—called from the shadows:
“This is Oracle. Who goes there?”

Jock Miles, crouched behind a tree trunk, replied, “Oracle,
this is Blind Eye.”

The silhouette of a tall, lean man appeared, backlit by the
fire, his hand raised in greeting. “Welcome, Blind Eye,” the man said. “Welcome
to Papua. Captain Miles, I presume?”

Crouched a few feet from Jock, First Sergeant Patchett
grumbled, “Well, it ain’t Doctor Livingstone, that’s for damn sure.”

Jock approached the man, asking, “Commander Shaw?”

As they shook hands before the fire, Trevor Shaw said, “Yes,
but my days with His Majesty’s Navy are long behind me. Are you all here safe
and sound, Captain?”

“Yes, sir. A little brush with the Jap Navy, but all present
and accounted for. I’ve brought half my rifle company…sixty men.”

“Then we’ll have quite a party, won’t we? Come…let’s get you
lads tucked away before sunrise. You have much to do, I’m quite sure, before
the big show starts.”

Shaw whistled, and half a dozen tribesmen—black men,
shirtless and shoeless; some in shorts, some in loin cloths—materialized from
the shadows. They all carried knives at their waist. A few took their knives in
hand, the steel blades glistening as they caught the fire light. They wasted
little time cutting down the tarpaulin and its swinging boom, dunking the
canvas at the water’s edge and then using it to smother the signal fire.

Jock’s troopers could only tell one thing for certain about
the trek they were on: it was uphill. Sometimes steeply uphill. They were
relieved the native guides had eagerly shouldered the heavy boxes of supplies
and extra ammunition. In single file, the Americans stumbled along through
woods that were a good deal sparser than they had expected. Fewer trees meant
less concealment from the enemy. But it was hard to be sure of the terrain; it
was so dark each man could barely see the soldier a few feet in front of him.
None of their guides—not that old Australian guy or his native porters—seemed
the least bit concerned of running into any Japanese. The Americans found it
hard to share that confidence. They kept scanning the darkness for the
enemy—when they weren’t busy trying not to trip over each other. The urge to
keep fingers on the triggers was very strong, but they kept them outside the
trigger guards, just as First Sergeant Patchett had instructed. A stumble could
lead to an accidental discharge—and the man walking in front of you suddenly
dead.

At the front of the column, Jock walked behind Trevor Shaw.
The Aussie moved with the brisk and steady gait of a much younger man. He
carried no firearm. Jock had yet to see Shaw’s full face, just fleeting, jagged
segments cut from the deep shadows of the signal fire. But from what little he
had seen, Jock figured Trevor Shaw’s age at not a day less than 70.

They’d been walking for better than an hour when the first
gray streaks of pre-dawn began to show the Americans the dense rainforest they
were about to enter. Something else became evident in the still-colorless world
slowly revealing itself: a gigantic wall seemed to loom before them. They were
at the base of one hell of a steep, wide mountain.

Trevor Shaw asked, “Do you know where we are, Captain
Miles?”

“We’re about four miles inland, very close to Imatana
village, right?”

“That’s correct, Captain. Very good,” Shaw replied. He made
a sweeping gesture toward the mountain. “This will be a good jumping off point,
I believe, to stage your conquest of the Astrolabe Range. Fascinating name for
a mountain range, don’t you think? It means that which takes the stars.”

“I haven’t had the time to give it much thought,” Jock
replied, gazing at the ridgeline that formed the mountain’s continuous peak,
faintly etched against the brightening sky. “The Jap observation post…where is
it up there?”

“At the moment, it’s about two miles down the ridge to the
east…and about three thousand feet straight up.”

“So if we’re in the open, any Jap with binoculars can see
us.”

“Yes,” Shaw replied, sweeping his arm once again, this time
in a panoramic presentation of the rainforest now surrounding them. “But as you
can see, Captain, natural concealment here is quite adequate and gets even
better the higher up the mountain we go.” He paused to light his pipe before
adding, “How do you suppose my little coast watching station has survived in
their midst for so long?”

Jock smiled; the old Aussie had a point. “Give us a few
minutes to get a perimeter set up,” he said. “Then we can take a better look
around.”

Jock and his men could see their surroundings more clearly
now. The first rays of sunrise had restored the vibrant colors of the
rainforest. Looking back through the trees for a glimpse of the Coral Sea, they
were surprised to find themselves only a few hundred feet above its level;
after that long walk uphill in the dark, they were sure they had climbed much
higher. Worse, they had hardly made a dent in the ascent of the mountain
towering before them.

Despite the denseness of the forest, they had formed a
fairly wide perimeter some 50 yards across. Those on the perimeter could barely
see their comrades in the adjacent fighting holes only 15 feet away. Within
that perimeter, 60 American soldiers wondered just how close the Japanese were.
They could be just a stone’s throw and you might not see them. The morning
light had brought a new sound to their ears. Mixed with the noises of the
rainforest—wind in the treetops, the cries of birds, and the occasional bellow
of some unseen animal—was the sound of aircraft engines, droning loudly at
first as they clambered for altitude and then fading as they headed over the
sea.

The men on the perimeter’s north side tensed as the crunch
of footsteps sounded on the path from Imatana and then relaxed when they saw it
was Trevor Shaw approaching. A small entourage of native bearers, weighted down
by a large radio set and its cumbersome accessories, followed the old coast
watcher. Jock and First Sergeant Patchett nodded with satisfaction on seeing
the radio; its contribution to their mission had saved the Americans from
having to manhandle a field radio powerful enough to reach an offshore invasion
fleet. That monstrosity would have probably ended up in the water when we
jumped off those damned PT boats, anyway, Jock told himself. And not
having to lug a big radio around gave us more room for ammo.

“Is that the same radio you talk to Australia with,
Commander?” Jock asked.

Shaw chuckled as he replied, “I’m afraid it’s the only
wireless I have, Captain. We must treat it like gold.”

As Shaw reached the center of the perimeter, the Americans
were startled to see who brought up the rear of the Aussie’s parade: a white
woman, tall and sturdy, wearing what looked like a man’s shirt and trousers.
Her hair—dark blond, streaked with middle-age gray—was tied back. She carried a
double-barreled shotgun slung over her shoulder and conversed rapidly in pidgin
with the bearers. Like Shaw, her skin had the tanned, weathered look of someone
who had spent many years—perhaps a lifetime—in the tropics.

Shaw shook hands with Jock and Patchett and then beckoned
the woman to join them. As she came forward, hand extended, Shaw said,
“Gentlemen, this is Virginia Beech, my second in command. Her husband was
foreman on my plantation, before the Japanese drove us to the hills.”

“Husband?” Jock asked, looking around, expecting to see
another white man appear. “Is he with us, too?”

“No, he’s bloody dead,” Virginia said, her Australian accent
sharp as a knife. “Bloody Japs killed him.”

Feeling foolish, Jock said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t—”

She scowled and cut him off. “Don’t be sorry, Yank. It’s not
your bloody fault. Just get rid of the little bastards. Now where do you want
them to set that wireless down?”

“Right over there will be fine,” Jock replied, and then,
fumbling for a proper mode of address, added, “uhh…Missus Beech.”

“Ginny, Yank. Call me Ginny.”

She strode off with an assertive air, calling instructions
in pidgin to the natives. They were followed promptly and without question.

“Virginia’s been like a daughter to me,” Shaw said. “She’s a
remarkable asset…and as subtle as a brick between the eyes, I’m afraid.”

First Sergeant Patchett cast an admiring leer her way that
was none too subtle, either. “Looks like she’d make one hell of a good noncom,
too,” he mumbled, “kinda like that Aussie girlfriend of yours, Captain Miles,
just older.”

Chapter Three

Day 1

Four men huddled around Jock and the map he spread on the
ground. Two lieutenants—each a platoon leader—had joined Trevor Shaw and First
Sergeant Patchett for their captain’s briefing. Jock held a copy of the
operations order in his hand but didn’t need to refer to it. He knew this plan
by heart.

“Before I begin, sir,” Jock said, “I’d like to introduce you
to my two platoon leaders. Commander Shaw, this tall drink of water is
Lieutenant Bob Wharton. He’s in charge of First Platoon, and does a damned fine
job of it.” Jock turned to an almost elfin young officer squatting beside him
and continued, “Now, this man here is Lieutenant Theo Papadakis. He leads
Second Platoon. Don’t let this little guy fool you…the Mad Greek is a
regular tiger, and we’re very glad he’s on our side.”

Jock got down to business. “The day after tomorrow,” he
said, “on or about oh-seven-hundred hours, the US Thirty-Second Infantry
Division…our division…will begin Operation Long Jump, the first
stage of the American and Australian effort to reclaim Papua and New Guinea. It
kicks off with our division making amphibious landings in a zone beginning at
Barakau, where we just came ashore, and extending down the coast three miles to
the east.” He used his bayonet as a pointer to trace the line he had just
described on the map. “The division will secure the foothills between the Coral
Sea and the Astrolabe Range and advance cross-country to attack the Japanese
stronghold at Port Moresby, some twelve miles to the west. The next morning,
the Australian Seventh Division will come ashore on the opposite side of Port
Moresby here”—he traced a new line on the map—“near the village of Boera.
Once all US and Aussie forces have landed, we’ll have the Japs caught in a
classic double envelopment. Plus, we should outnumber them two to one.”

Jock noticed Trevor Shaw chuckling to himself. “Something
funny, sir?” Jock asked.

“Oh, nothing really, Captain,” Shaw replied. “I was merely
amused by General MacArthur’s generosity, assigning the high and dry terrain to
you Yanks, while the Aussies get to trudge through swamps and over jagged scrub
hills.”

“I’m not privy to the general’s thought processes,” Jock
replied, letting his irritation show just a bit, “but it’s obvious the Aussies
will have less distance to travel to the objective. Also, they don’t even come
ashore until we Yanks have fully captured the Japs’ attention. They should
encounter much less resistance than we will. That sounds pretty generous to
me.”

Shaw thought that over for a moment. Finally, he asked, “I
suppose there’s a reason the two forces are not being landed simultaneously?”

“That one’s pretty simple to answer, Commander. There aren’t
enough landing craft to go around. After they drop off the Yanks, they’ll have
to regroup and do the Aussies.”

Trevor Shaw threw up his hands in a gesture of friendly surrender.
“Ahh, I see. I’m not trying to play the curmudgeon, Captain, just trying to
understand the plan. Please continue.”

“No problem,” Jock said. “Now, let’s review our role in all
this. We know from the intel Commander Shaw has provided that there’s a Jap
OP…an observation post…on Astrolabe. They can see everything from up there…the
sea approaches, the landing beaches, and that twelve miles of ground between
the beaches and Port Moresby. They could follow our every move and direct
Japanese ground and air units against us with impunity. You have a question,
Lieutenant?”

Theo Papadakis was so agitated his question practically
burst out of him. “Yeah, but Captain…any friggin’ plane or rowboat could spill
the beans on an invasion fleet, couldn’t they?”

“Of course, Lieutenant…it’s going to be no secret there’s an
invasion fleet offshore once the sun comes up. But whoever holds that high
ground has a big advantage. They can observe opposing ground forces and report
their movements in continuous detail, even adjusting artillery fire without
revealing themselves.”

Papadakis wasn’t convinced yet. “Ain’t the Jap Navy supposed
to be real tough? What if they jump the invasion fleet and sink the whole mess
of them?”

Jock replied, “Then we’d have to figure out a way to get our
sweet asses out of here. But let’s let Commander Shaw fill us in on what to
expect from the Jap Navy.”

“True, the Japanese Navy is quite strong,” Shaw began, “but
not so much in the waters south of Papua. It’s too close to Australia. The
American and Aussie Air Forces based on Cape York have been giving them quite a
beating lately when they show their faces in daylight. I believe the term you
Yanks fancy is air superiority. But like all Japanese outposts in the southwest
Pacific, they can only supply their garrison at Port Moresby by sea…and they’ve
been reduced to doing that mainly at night, when the threat of air attack is
much less.”

Theo Papadakis was still brimming with questions. “You mean
they can’t truck supplies overland from the north coast?”

Shaw shook his head and said, “My good man, you haven’t
gotten much of a glimpse of the Owen Stanley Range yet, have you?”

Papadakis replied only with a look of confusion.

“This mountain ridge you see before you,” Shaw said, “the Astrolabe
Range…it’s a piker compared to the Owen Stanleys that lie beyond. There are no
roads across them, just incredibly difficult foot trails, very steep and
usually muddy from the incessant rain, as the Aussie diggers who fled from the
north coast know all too well. In fact, there are no roads connecting any of
the major settlements on Papua and New Guinea. Each outpost is an island unto
itself. The only practical way to reach them is by air or sea.”

Stubbornly defiant, Papadakis asked, “If that OP up on that
mountain is so friggin’ great, are we so sure they didn’t see us land in those
PT boats? Especially with that signal fire right there, lighting us up. They
could be beating the bushes for us right now.”

“Lieutenant,” Shaw replied with great patience, “a signal
fire at night looks no different to those on the mountain than any number of
fires in the native villages. That, of course, assumes the Japs up there were
even awake. They’ve become quite bored and lackadaisical…there’s been little
for them to do on occupation duty but sit and wait.”

Papadakis shook his head. “It still doesn’t add up,” he
said. “Why the hell doesn’t the Air Force just bomb that OP?”

“Oh, come on, Lieutenant,” Jock said, his patience wearing
thin. “That would be like using a sledgehammer to remove a splinter. A lot of
effort for no result.”

Lieutenant Bob Wharton chimed in, his tone lacking
Papadakis’s emotion but his questioning just as incisive. “Begging your pardon,
Captain…I don’t mean to get ahead of your briefing…but Commander, how do you
come to know all this about the Japs on the mountain? And how many of them are
up there, anyway?”

Jock Miles and Melvin Patchett both raised an eyebrow. The
lieutenant had beaten them to the question each was about to ask. They leaned
in closer to the Aussie; they were dying to hear his answer.

Shaw’s voice dropped as if sharing a great secret. “I have a
spy in their midst, gentlemen. Just as natives will serve as your helpers…willingly,
I might add…they serve as helpers for the Japanese too. Not so willingly, of course,
but they have little choice—”

“We know how that works,” Jock interrupted. “We saw the song
and dance the blacks on Cape York had to do to cooperate with the Japs…and stay
alive.”

With a mix of surprise and respect, Shaw asked, “You fought
the Japanese on Cape York, Captain?”

“Yeah, a bunch of us here did.”

“How many Japanese actually set foot in Australia?”

“It wasn’t much…looked to be a regiment. They were trying to
build airfields to bomb the east coast cities all the way down to Brisbane.
They thought they could bluff Canberra into surrendering.”

“Then my hat is off to you, Captain Miles, for the sound
thrashing you gave them. I heard many tales of those Japanese soldiers
straggling back to Port Moresby. They were a badly beaten lot. But let’s get back
to the lieutenant’s excellent question. As I said, I have a native spy in their
midst. His name is Gabriel Lakai, and he is quite a clever young lad. He speaks
the King’s English fluently and has already learned quite a bit of Japanese.
They use him as a porter, a messenger, an interpreter with the other
natives…whatever is necessary, and as a result, he spends a good deal of time
at the OP and is quite familiar with its operation.  He tells me there are
never more than a dozen men there. A few…the actual observers…are Army and Navy
officers. The rest handle communications and housekeeping.”

“How do they communicate with Port Moresby?” Jock asked.

“Telephone,” Shaw replied. “They ran a landline down the
mountain and into their headquarters in the town.”

“Just one line?” Patchett asked. “No backup?”

“Just one. They have a small wireless set as well, but
rarely use it for communications. Mostly, they listen to music on the
shortwave.”

“Radio Tokyo, I’ll bet,” First Sergeant Patchett said.

“I’m told they listen to anything but,” Shaw replied.

“What about patrols?” Jock asked. “What’re the chances of
running into Japs between here and the OP?”

“Very slim, Captain,” Shaw replied. “Other than when the
watch at the OP is being changed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any Japanese
wandering around outside of Port Moresby. They simply don’t have enough
manpower to do anything but garrison their key bases…and sparsely, at that. As
you noted, only one Japanese division defends the port facilities and airfield
of Port Moresby. We estimate their strength at barely fifteen thousand men.”

At least we hope that’s all they’ve got, Jock thought.

“The watch is relieved once a week,” Shaw continued. “When
that occurs, the new lot walks in from Port Moresby and the old walks back the
next day. They always use the same trail, one that runs along the ridge and
down the slope to Bootless Inlet. It takes most of the daylight hours to make
the trip one way.”

“That’s not the same trail we’ve been using?” Jock asked.

“No, Captain. We’re a few miles to the east.”

“When’s the next watch change?” Jock asked.

“Tomorrow, quite possibly,” Shaw replied.

“Oh, that’s just fucking dandy,” Jock said. The faces of his
lieutenants and first sergeant were none too pleased, either. But he plowed
ahead with the briefing.

“Now let’s review the reason we, the men of Task Force Blind
Eye, are here. Today is D minus two…two days until the invasion. Before D plus
zero…invasion day…we’re going to neutralize the Japs at that OP on Astrolabe
and make it our own.”

Trevor Shaw looked suddenly troubled. “Captain,” he said,
“by neutralize, do you mean kill them all?”

“Yessir, Commander, those are my orders.”

“When do you plan on making this assault?” Shaw asked.

“It has to be tonight,” Jock replied. “We’ll need most of
tomorrow to get that monster of a radio up the mountain and into operation.”

“Well, then, Captain…for your sake and everyone
else’s…there’s a new development you must consider…”

Chapter Four

Day 1

In the blink of an eye, Jock’s expression had grown just as
troubled as Trevor Shaw’s. Jock asked the old coast watcher, “So the Japs on
the OP have to report their status every hour? When did this new
development happen?”

“Two days ago,” Shaw replied. “It’s quite possible the
Japanese are expecting a strike against Port Moresby soon and have tightened
procedures. We advised Brisbane, but I guess the message never got through to
you.”

Jock struggled to keep his frustration from boiling over.
“Commander, me and my men have been stuck on a damned troopship for over a
month. First, we were headed to Guadalcanal. Then Washington redraws the
theater boundaries…and suddenly the eastern Solomons aren’t MacArthur’s
territory anymore…so here I am in Papua with only half my company. It’s amazing
we know anything at all about what’s going on, I guess.”

“Yes,” Shaw replied, “the fog of war can be very thick
sometimes.”

“Tell me about it,” Jock said. “But you think you’ve got a
contingency plan, Commander?”

“Yes,” Shaw began. “As I told you earlier, my man Gabriel
has become a bit nimble with the Japanese language. If you can manage to take
the OP without them sounding the alarm, he can speak the status reports over
the telephone so suspicion is not aroused in Port Moresby. He knows the
procedure…he’s heard them do it a number of times already. They report every
hour on the half-hour.”

It was no secret to anyone Jock liked the idea; his smile
betrayed him. “So we can sit up there all day tomorrow and the Japs will be
none the wiser,” he said. “At least until the relieved watch doesn’t show up
back at Port Moresby like it’s supposed to.”

“Exactly, Captain,” Shaw replied. “And by that time the
invasion forces should already be landing.”

First Sergeant Patchett wasn’t smiling, though. “If that new
watch comes waltzing in sometime tomorrow,” he said, “we get to neutralize the
damn place twice. We just doubled our chances of screwing up.”

Jock looked to Trevor Shaw and asked, “You’re sure the
change of watch will be tomorrow, Commander?”

“That would be in keeping with their schedule.”

Jock paused, weighing his words carefully. “Then we have to
do whatever it takes,” he said.

There wasn’t any time for a proper recon. It would take
nearly four hours just to get up and down the 3,000-foot mountain from their
position, plus however long you wanted to spend snooping around the ridge at
its peak. He had scheduled the attack on the OP for midnight—just eight hours from now. It’s better everybody rests and gets some food in them, Jock
thought as he tore into the crackers from a K ration package, if you can
call this crap “food.” It’s amazing what you’ll eat when you’re starving. He
sat on the ground and tried in vain to relax, settling back against a tree as
the attack plan ran through his head over and over again, like a movie on a
continuous loop.

Melvin Patchett sat down next to Jock and scowled at the K
ration box in his hands. “Makes you pine for those seafood dinners on Cape York,
don’t it, Captain?”

Jock smiled. He’d been thinking the same thing.

Patchett asked, “You think these natives here are gonna be
as helpful as the ones on the Cape?”

“I sure hope so, Top,” Jock replied. “This kid Gabriel…we’d
better take care of him like he’s the second coming…and he’d better be
everything Commander Shaw says he is.”

A woman’s voice spoke from the other side of the tree trunk.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Yank.” Virginia Beech’s unsmiling face poked into
view over Patchett’s shoulder. “Just make sure you buggers don’t muck it up.”

“Now, Ginny…be nice,” Patchett said in a tone Jock had never
heard from his first sergeant before. It left him dumbfounded. Was he
flirting?

“I was being nice, you bloody wanker,” she replied as
she rose, picked up her shotgun, and sauntered away.

The startled look was still on Jock’s face as he said, “You
two sure seem to have hit it off. You’re not sweet on her, are you, Top?”

Relaxing against the tree, Patchett smiled and said, “What’s
not to like, Captain? She’s a good-looking widow woman with a set of brass
balls on her…and like yours truly here, she’s reached a certain maturity.”

Trying not to laugh out loud, Jock replied, “Why, you horny
old son of a bitch...”

“Not old, Captain…mature.”

They only needed to climb another 10 minutes or so and
they’d be at the ridge atop Astrolabe.  Trevor Shaw stopped Jock and his men
there. The column behind them—mostly invisible in the dense forest—would
stretch for 100 yards back down the trail that wound its way steeply to the
top. “This is our rendezvous point,” Shaw said.

“So where’s your boy, Commander?” Jock asked, his voice
uneasy.

“We’re early, Captain,” Shaw replied. “Your men made
excellent time.”

“Yeah. We’re infantry. We’re used to long walks.”

Shaw smiled. “Yes, I can see that. But fear not…Gabriel will
be along very soon.”

First Sergeant Patchett had brought up the rear of the
column; there was no better place to police up stragglers. Now that the column
had stopped, he moved to the front to join Jock and Commander Shaw.

“Everybody make it okay, Top?” Jock asked.

“All present, sir. Only had to kick a couple of ’em in the
ass once or twice.” Patchett looked around and scowled. “We didn’t get stood
up, did we, Captain?”

“Not yet. We’re early,” Jock replied. “Tell you what…get the
men spread out off the trail and—”

“Already done that, sir,” Patchett interrupted. The tight-lipped
look of annoyance that accompanied his words could only mean, How fucking
dumb do you think I am? Jock had been on the receiving end of that look
many times before.

“Very well, Top,” Jock said. “Way ahead of me, as usual. But
while we’re waiting, get Hadley and Boudreau up here. We’ll take them with us
on our little look-see.”

“Good choice, sir,” Patchett said. He headed back down the
trail to fetch the two scouts.

It seemed like an hour had passed, but the hands on Jock’s
wristwatch said it had been only three minutes since he last checked. They
would run out of daylight soon; the sun seemed to be racing to its nightly
refuge behind the towering peaks of the Owen Stanleys. We need a guided tour
of the Jap positions while there’s still some daylight, Jock knew only too
well. Otherwise, an attack in the dark is going to be one gigantic circle
jerk. And if this kid doesn’t show, we’re going to have to come up with a new
plan right quick.

No sooner had that thought darkened Jock’s mind, Trevor Shaw
said, “Ahh, here comes the lad now.”

Lad seemed to sum up Gabriel Lakai completely. He was
short and slender, his dark skin in sharp contrast to his white, short-sleeved
shirt and khaki shorts. He walked beneath a puffy cloud of bushy black hair.
Like Shaw’s Papuan porters, he was barefoot and his only weapon a knife hanging
from a sheath at his waist. He can’t be more than fifteen, Jock thought.

If his appearance was childlike, his voice was anything but.
“Good evening, Commander Shaw,” he said in a deep and cultured adult voice.
“You chaps arrived early, I see.”

They wasted little time with introductions. Within moments
of his arrival, Gabriel Lakai was ready to lead the five-man scouting party to
the Japanese observation post. Trevor Shaw remained behind. “I’d be of no use,”
he said, excusing himself, “but you’re in excellent hands with Gabriel.”

Out of abundant caution, Gabriel had removed his bright
white shirt. Patchett had summed up the Americans’ feelings on the matter when
he said, “You can see that damn shirt from Australia, for cryin’ out loud.”

As they crossed over the thickly treed peak, Sergeant Tom
Hadley was the first of the Americans to notice the telephone cable running
along the ground. “Hey,” he whispered, “is this the Jap landline to Port Moresby?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Gabriel replied.

Hadley lifted the cable off the ground, gauging its heft.
“No big deal,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any problem cutting and splicing it back
together.”

Gabriel seemed alarmed by the idea. “Why would you want to
cut it?” he asked.

“Simple,” the sergeant replied, “It’s insurance…so the Nips
can’t blow the whistle on us if things get a little messed up.”

They continued on toward the objective, sneaking silently
through the trees on the backslope. The setting sun at their backs cast its
oblique rays around the tree trunks, brightening just for a short while the
steeply tilted earth beneath the forest canopy. Instinctively, the men crouched
lower as they advanced; those rays of light could silhouette a man like a
target on a shooting range.

Gabriel raised a hand, bringing the group to a halt. “The
Japanese are just beyond that knob…about fifty yards,” he whispered.

Jock huddled his men. “If anybody needs to take a leak, do
it now,” he said. Corporal “Bogater” Boudreau took him up on the offer.

“That damn Cajun,” First Sergeant Patchett mumbled. “Ain’t a
one of us had enough to eat or drink lately to have more than a drop in him…or
a mouse shit-worth of crap…but Bogater still needs a latrine break.”

“Relax, Top,” Boudreau said as he buttoned his trousers.
“When nature calls, a man’s gotta answer.”

Tom Hadley stifled a laugh as he kept a wary eye for the
enemy. “He just wants to make sure that if we get in Dutch, he can’t piss
himself.”

The top of the knob provided an excellent vantage point.
While Hadley and Boudreau covered the rear, Jock, Patchett, and Gabriel peered
over the edge. The scene that was revealed could only be described as relaxed.
They looked down on an open wooden shelter, its roof and floor made of rough
planks.

The structure was level despite the steep incline on which
it was built. The downslope side of the shelter was suspended in the air some
eight feet, supported by the trunks of two sturdy trees. The upslope side
rested on the slanted ground, leaving an open, triangular space below the floor
where a few sacks of rice and several small barrels—probably full of water—were
stashed.

The shelter had no walls, just a railing that ran along the
three sides not touching the ground. There was enough room for 20 men to sleep
in close quarters on the mats littering the floor and hammocks slung from
support posts. Camouflage netting was carelessly tossed across the roof, but it
was unnecessary; with the canopy of treetops above, the shelter would be
difficult to spot from even low-flying aircraft.

Almost everything inside was visible. Jock counted eight men
seated on the floor, eating bowls of rice with chopsticks. They talked loudly
and were obviously in high spirits. When a man got up to refill his bowl, the
thin floorboards creaked and sagged under his weight. A number of rifles were
haphazardly stacked in a corner against the railing. A radio set, complete with
hand-cranked generator, sat unmanned in another corner. Outside the structure,
a few large cook pots simmered over an open fire.

“Okay,” Jock whispered, “this is where they live, but you
can’t see shit from here. Where’s the OP?”

Gabriel pointed up the slope to the peak. “There,” he said.

Through the trees, Jock could barely make out the shape of a
man silhouetted against the fading sky. He appeared to be seated on a box or
stool beneath a canvas canopy that was mottled in a camouflage pattern. The
shape of another man would appear and disappear among the shadows as if pacing
back and forth.

Two more Japanese men stomped down from the peak, arguing
loudly. Both had swords on their belts. Jock and Patchett identified one as an
Army captain but didn’t recognize the uniform of the other.

“That’s Lieutenant Oshida,” Gabriel whispered. “He’s one of
the Navy officers assigned to the observation post. He dislikes the job very
much.”

“Is this the whole setup?” Jock asked Gabriel. “Just this
hut and some bleacher seats up on the ridge?”

“Yes, Captain, this is all of it.”

“I count twelve men,” Patchett said. “That sound right to
you, son?”

“Yes, sir. Those are the same twelve as when I left
earlier.”

Patchett scowled at being called “sir” but thought, This
ain’t the time for no etiquette lesson.

Jock eyed the field telephone in a corner of the shelter. “I
suppose there’s another phone at the OP?” he asked.

“That’s correct,” Gabriel replied.

They took one long, last look before sliding down behind the
knob. Jock whispered to his first sergeant, “What do you think, Top?”

“Unless we’re the biggest fuck-ups on God’s green Earth,”
Patchett replied, “it shouldn’t be no big thing to take out that bunch of
route-step Nips.”

Jock smiled. “You can say that again, Top. Now…Sergeant
Hadley, Corporal Boudreau…crawl up there and take a good look. Learn it like
the back of your hand.”

Chapter Five

Day 1

His men were chomping at the bit to go early—as soon as
night had completely fallen—but Jock made them wait: the attack would commence
at midnight and not before. First Sergeant Patchett found himself defending the
captain’s decision to group after group of anxious, disgruntled GIs. His words
were always the same: “Listen up, knuckleheads…the captain wants them Japs to
be snoring when we hit ’em…not playing cards or playing with their peckers. And
I’m here to tell you he’s got the right idea. Now quit your griping and relax.
It’ll be here and gone before y’all know it.”

The plan was simple—but there was one catch: the Japs
actually on lookout duty on the peak would have to be taken out first—and
silently—right before the attack on the shelter. That meant sneaking up on the
enemy and slitting his throat with a bayonet.  Theo Papadakis was the only man
to volunteer. “I’ll do it, sir,” he told his captain without batting an eye. “I
ain’t no stranger to a knife fight.”

No one noticed the flash of annoyance Papadakis’s suggestion
brought to the face of Lieutenant Bob Wharton.

“No, Lieutenant,” Jock replied, “this isn’t a knife fight.
It’s an assassination. Besides, I need you where you belong, leading your
platoon.”

The brief, uncomfortable silence that followed was broken
when First Sergeant Patchett asked, “May I say something, Captain?”

“Sure, Top. Go ahead.”

Patchett turned to Papadakis and said, “Like the captain
said, you got better things to do, Lieutenant. Anyway, I’m the only one of us
sorry bastards ever killed a man hand to hand…so I guess it’s my job. Just give
me Mukasic and Simms…they already got blood on their hands from the Cape. That
oughta be enough to handle it.”

Jock and Patchett exchanged a nod that sealed the deal.
Then, every man in the unit waited for the next few hours to pass, checking his
weapon and equipment over and over again, trying to quell the mortal terror
that was growing inside him like a cancer.

First Sergeant Patchett wanted that one last cigarette more
than anything in the world. He was sure he wasn’t alone in that desire. The
captain had already slapped the curfew on smoking for the night, though, and
with good reason: the glow from a cigarette made an otherwise invisible man a
target visible for hundreds of yards in the dark. Striking the match to light
one was as good as turning on a spotlight. A whole company—or at least the half
of a company they were at the moment—would be given away if just a handful
caved in to the craving. He decided to do a sweep of the unit to make sure none
of his men were foolish enough to ignore orders and light up, even if it’s
just some wise-ass hiding under a groundsheet, sweating his balls off just for
a smoke.

Patchett had only taken a few steps when he saw the reddish
glow of burning tobacco and felt his blood start to boil. “Are you begging to
get dead, you numbskull?” he hissed, striding up to the offender. “I said no
smoking and I fucking meant it!” He was startled when the object he jerked
from the man’s lips was not a cigarette, but a pipe.

“I’m so sorry, First Sergeant,” Trevor Shaw said. “I meant
no harm—”

“That’s all fine and dandy, sir, but that’s a good way to
get yourself and the rest of us killed.” Patchett dumped the pipe’s contents
onto the ground, stomped the embers dark, and handed the pipe back to Commander
Shaw. “Sorry, sir…didn’t mean no offense. It’s just the way it’s gotta be.”

“May I ask you something, First Sergeant?”

“You sure can, sir.”

“I heard what you said about hand-to-hand combat. I suppose
you were talking about the Great War?”

“Yessir, I was.”

“Then we share a proud legacy, my good man,” Shaw said. “We
gave the Kaiser a right whipping, we did. You on land, me at sea.”

“Don’t know what it looked like on the sea, sir, but on land
it just looked like a whole lotta dying to me. Nobody whipped nobody.”

Across the perimeter, Lieutenant Bob Wharton sat alone,
consumed by two emotions: the paralyzing fear of first combat and the hate he
felt for Theo Papadakis: That immigrant midget New York City greaseball
needs to stop grandstanding and just do his fucking job. “I’ll do it,
sir,” he said. “I’ll do it!” Yeah…you’ll do it, you little National Guard
jerk-off. You’ll get yourself and your whole damned platoon killed before this
is over…and probably the rest of us, too.  I don’t understand Captain Miles at
all. He’s a West Point man just like me, but yet he keeps handing
me the short stick…like when he made that Jewboy Grossman XO instead of me.
Fuck them…fuck them all.

Chapter Six

Day 1/Day 2

It was just another boring night on the OP. Nothing new to
report to Headquarters at Port Moresby: no flashes on the horizon of big naval
guns locked in battle on the Coral Sea, no sound of enemy airplanes overhead,
just the hourly assurance the men on the OP were still there, watching for
signs of the enemy’s approach. The duty officer, a captain of the Japanese
Imperial Army, was writing a letter to his wife by the light of a dim
flashlight when he heard something on the slope behind him: a faint crunch.

Is that a footstep? Or am I just imagining it?

He thought about shining his light down the slope behind him
but quickly changed his mind. None of my men would bother coming up here in the
middle of the night unless they had to…not even Oshida, that idiot from the
Navy. Slipping from the stool, he crouched, rousing the corporal napping on the
ground beside him with a thump of his fist against the man’s head. “Order the
security detail to the observation post immediately,” the captain said.

The corporal crawled groggily toward the field telephone but
never got to turn its crank.

A hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his startled cry as
the bayonet sliced into his throat.

As he slid from his assailant’s grasp to the ground, the
corporal saw the shadowy outlines of another death dance coming to an end a few
feet away. His captain had met the same fate at the hands of a different
assailant.

Neither of the Japanese soldiers died right away. They would
writhe in the moonlight for minutes, bloody bubbles foaming at their slashed
throats. Those bubbles burst in a sickening gurgle of life slipping away.

PFC Frank Simms took a few wobbly steps back from where the
corporal lay, dropped his bayonet, and slumped to a seat on the ground. His
voice trembled as he mumbled something over and over again:

“Holy fucking crap…holy fucking crap…”

Melvin Patchett wiped the blade of his bayonet clean on the
captain’s trousers before walking over to Simms. His voice as even as if asking
the time, Patchett said, “Easier shooting them with a gun from far away, ain’t it?
If you’re gonna upchuck, son, do it real quiet-like.”

The first sergeant turned away and called into the darkness,
his words spoken softly but their tone unmistakably urgent: “Mukasic, where the
hell are you?”

“Here, Top.” PFC Teddy Mukasic’s silhouette appeared out of
the shadows.

“You didn’t see nobody else getting away, did you?” Patchett
asked.

“No, Top, nobody else,” Mukasic replied. His voice sounded
as shaky as Simms’s.

“Then give ’em the signal, son. This ain’t over yet.”

Teddy Mukasic’s flashlight blinked its message down the
slope—three quick blips and then a short pause, repeated once, twice—and then
the forest below erupted in the strobe-like flashes and drumroll beat of
automatic weapons firing.

The Japs in their bunkhouse weren’t all asleep—but they
might as well have been. Like shooting fish in a barrel, dammit, Jock
thought, grimacing as he watched the slaughter from a short distance up the
slope. Rule Number One: if you’re caught in a well-laid ambush, you’ve got
no chance. You’re dead.

And this ambush was nothing if not well laid.

Of course, it helps a whole lot if the enemy has their heads
up their asses.

Jock’s two platoons encircled the bunkhouse, Wharton’s on
the north and west side, Papadakis’s on the south and east. That perimeter,
though, was only there as a safety valve. The killing blow was struck by only
three men—Sergeant Tom Hadley, Corporal Bogater Boudreau, and a third man
picked from the Mad Greek’s platoon. The three, armed with Thompson submachine
guns, approached the bunkhouse silently from the downslope side, stepped into
the triangular space between the ground and the floor, and, with their weapons
pointed straight up, fired continuously on full auto through the flimsy wood
planking as they walked methodically to the upslope end. Then they turned and
retraced their steps until reaching the downslope side once again. The whole
process took little more than 20 seconds.

They all knew it was overkill: each of the three shooters
had expended eight magazines of .45-caliber ammunition—some 450 rounds
total—before they were done. It made one hell of a racket, but there were no
other Japanese within miles to hear it.

When they finally stepped from below the bunkhouse, each of
the three was stained with the blood dripping through the bullet holes in the
floor.

A squad of Wharton’s men entered the bunkhouse. “We’ve got
eight dead…and one gonna join ’em real soon,” a sergeant called out.

That made nine.

Patchett, Simms, and Mukasic hustled down from the peak and
found Jock at the perimeter. “How many at the OP, Top?” Jock asked.

“Two, sir,” Patchett replied. “Both dead.”

“Shit. That only makes eleven. One’s missing.”

Lieutenant Wharton’s voice rang out in the darkness:
“Negative, sir…we’ve got the twelfth man.”

Two of Wharton’s men approached with a prisoner between
them, his hands bound behind his back. The GIs hurled the prisoner at Jock’s
feet in the glow of a flashlight’s red beam. The man wore only an undergarment
that resembled a diaper.

“The guy must’ve been taking a piss in the woods,” Wharton
said, and then his tone became exasperated. “Looks like he walked right through
the Greek’s position and tried escaping to the west. My guys were right on top
of it, though.”

Patchett asked Lieutenant Wharton, “You wouldn’t be jumping
to no conclusions, would you, sir?”

“Damned straight I’m not, First Sergeant,” Wharton replied,
his tone defensive and belligerent. “I know he didn’t get through my lines.”

Lieutenant Papadakis’s squad leaders weren’t sure where
their platoon leader was. One of them told Jock, “Last I saw of him, Captain,
he went off with Hadley and Boudreau.”

Bob Wharton smirked and said, “I’ll bet I know where he is,
sir.”

Wharton was right. They found the Mad Greek with Hadley and
Boudreau in the woods on the downslope side of the bunkhouse, still cleaning
off the blood that had dripped on their weapons and helmets.

Pulling Papadakis away from his men, Jock said, “I take a
pretty dim view of this, Lieutenant.”

Wharton couldn’t wait to get a word in. “Yeah, while you
were playing Cowboys and Indians—”

“That’s enough, Lieutenant Wharton,” Jock interrupted, none
too pleased. “I believe I can handle this. Go get your platoon squared away.”

As Bob Wharton skulked off, Jock turned his anger back to
Theo Papadakis. “Theo…you fucked up. While you were doing some private’s job
down there, nobody was doing yours. Your platoon left a hole some Jap walked
right through. He could have given us away…if he got that far.”

His voice pleading, Papadakis replied, “I just wanted to make
sure it was done right, sir.”

“Hadley and Boudreau don’t need much supervision, Theo. You
shouldn’t have been with them. You nearly blew the whole mission for us right
there.”

“But sir, I—”

“No buts, Lieutenant. Lead your platoon…or I’ll find
someone who can.”

Jock checked his wristwatch. Shit…it’s damned near
midnight-thirty.

He scrambled through the dark, trying to find the place on
the trail where they had cut the Japanese landline. If it hadn’t been for a
bright white shirt glowing faintly in the darkness, he might have never found
it. But there Gabriel was, shirt on his back once again, standing over two men
busily splicing the lines back together.

“We had a hell of a time finding these wires, sir,” one of
the soldiers said as he put a final twist on the splice. “There…that should do
it.”

Jock and Gabriel hurried to the bunkhouse. As Jock stepped
inside, the young Papuan froze in his tracks when he saw the dead Japanese
sprawled across the floor. He wouldn’t cross the threshold.

“Come on, son,” Jock urged. “It’s time to make that call.”

Gabriel seemed shell-shocked. His feet wouldn’t take another
step. Jock picked up the field telephone and carried it outside the bunkhouse,
away from the horrors it held.

“Do it from out here, Gabriel,” Jock said, pulling the young
man along. “You don’t need to be looking at that.”

Gabriel gave what seemed to Jock a look of relief. He took
the phone and gave the hand crank a few vigorous turns. Then he waited, the
receiver pressed to his ear.

In a few moments, Gabriel spoke some words, unintelligible
to the Americans around him. He listened for a moment and then spoke a few more
words before putting down the receiver.

Gabriel’s mouth twisted into a shy smile. “It is done,” he
said.

“That’s great,” Jock replied. “Now, do you think you can do
that every hour for about the next thirty hours?”

“Yes, sir. I can do it.”

“Outstanding. Just try to get a little sleep tonight in
between calls,” Jock said. “Don’t worry…we won’t let you miss one. But before
you doze off, I need to ask one more favor…”

He brought Gabriel up the slope to where the Japanese
captive was being held. Lieutenant Wharton stood with a few of his men, their
silhouettes barely outlined by the dim glow of red-filtered flashlights.

“We’ve got him tied to a tree over there, sir,” Wharton
said, pointing into the darkness. “We found some clothes to put on him that
weren’t all shot to hell.”

Jock asked, “Is he blindfolded?”

“No, sir.”

“Go do that right now,” Jock said.

As one of Wharton’s men set off on the task, Jock said to
Gabriel, “I need you to identify our captive, if you can. I don’t want him
seeing your face, though.”

Gabriel looked confused, even alarmed. “Why, sir?” he asked.
“Why can’t he see me?”

Judging by Bob Wharton’s facial expression, he was just as confused.

“Because if this guy falls back into Japanese hands
somehow,” Jock said, “I don’t want them knowing which locals helped us. They’d
make an example of you, for sure.”

Wharton seemed to take offense. “He’s not getting away from
me and my men, Captain.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Lieutenant…but it may not come down
to a question of him getting away. I’m more worried about him being taken
away. This little operation of ours can’t be chalked up as a victory yet.
Not by a long shot…”

And then it began to rain as if someone had turned on a fire
hose.

Nobody even had the time to get his cheap and little-used GI
raincoat from his pack. Within seconds, every man was drenched. Surprisingly,
none took shelter inside the bunkhouse. “The men are already calling it The
Morgue, sir,” Patchett explained to Jock.

But Jock was glad to see his men knew how to cut their
losses. They had pulled their steel helmets—the steel pots—from their
wooden liners and were catching all the rainwater they could. “Purest way to
get those canteens topped off out here,” Patchett said. “I trained these boys
real good, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that you did,” Jock replied, “but we’ve got a bigger
problem. We’ve got to get rid of these bodies, real quick.”

They heard Trevor Shaw’s voice before they saw him coming.
“That’s being taken care of, Captain Miles,” Shaw said. “My natives have
already dug a trench big enough to bury all of them. It’s just a short way down
the backslope. They’ll happily perform the burial duties.”

As Jock and Patchett exchanged looks of surprise and relief,
Shaw added, “And I deeply appreciate your wisdom in keeping the prisoner
blindfolded.”

Chapter Seven

Day 2

The drenching rain shower of last night had been mercifully
brief. At dawn, First Sergeant Patchett took his first good look at the
defensive perimeter they had set up around the OP in darkness. What he saw
pleased him.

“Didn’t find one position where we’d be shooting at each
other, sir,” he told Jock. “Not too bad, considering the Chinese fire drill it
could’ve been. I told the lieutenants they oughta get their men dug in deeper,
though. I’ve got the two mortars laid in uphill from The Morgue. They can stash
their ammo under the roof and out of the rain.”

“Okay, good,” Jock replied. “Do we have an ambush site picked
out yet?”

“As a matter of fact, we do, sir. Found a nice, flat place
about two hundred yards down the trail that’s a natural kill zone for the
machine guns. I’d put both thirty cal on it, set up for interlocking fire, if
that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, Top. We can use the BARs for automatic
fire on the OP perimeter.”

Travis Shaw added, “Let’s make sure we don’t accidentally
ambush Virginia and her men when they arrive with the radio.”

“Commander Shaw,” Patchett said with a surprisingly polite tone,
“our men ain’t no geniuses, but they can sure tell the difference between a
split-tail, a native, and a Nip in broad daylight. Besides, you said they’re
gonna be on the south trail.”

“Point taken, First Sergeant,” Shaw replied.

Gabriel Lakai sat a few feet away beneath a ground sheet
rigged between trees as a pup tent. The field telephone was in his hand. His
face wore a decidedly distressed look, like he was going to be sick any moment.

“Something wrong, Gabriel?” Jock asked.

“I’m…I’m not sure, Captain. Headquarters said something…I
think it was a question…I didn’t understand.”

Jock crouched next to the young man and asked, “So what did
you tell them?”

“I didn’t know how to answer…I simply told them hai. That
means yes.”

Patchett shook his head and blew out a whistle like the
sound of a bomb falling. Casting a frigid glance Gabriel’s way, he said, “Like
this little shindig ain’t asshole-puckering enough, eh, Captain?”

It didn’t look like any Japanese bomber they had seen
before. They couldn’t see guns protruding from the mottled green fuselage or
wings. Every one of Jock’s men on the south slope of the perimeter—those facing
the Coral Sea—had his eyes glued to the plane as it lumbered by from west to
east, level with their altitude on the mountain. That big red disk painted on
its side made such an inviting target.

Then it started a slow turn back toward them.

“Oh, shit. What the fuck is he doing?” Patchett mumbled.

Jock turned to Trevor Shaw. “What kind of plane is that,
Commander?”

“It’s a Ki-48, I believe. We call it a Lily.”

“A Lily…So it’s a bomber?” Jock asked.

“Bomber, scout, transport…it’s fairly versatile, Captain.
But a bit vulnerable. We see them quite often over Papua.”

Jock hoisted a bulky walkie-talkie from the ground and spoke
into its mouthpiece: “This is Blind Eye Six. Remember the SOP. Stay down
and do not, repeat, do not engage the approaching aircraft. Acknowledge, over.”

The responses from Lieutenants Papadakis and Wharton
crackled in the radio’s earpiece.

This plane was no speed merchant. It took well over a minute
to complete the turn reversing its direction. Now it was heading straight
toward them, skimming the trees along the mountaintop ridge. It passed over the
OP, its broad shadow sliding over them like a momentary eclipse. No one fired a
shot.

Jock wiped his brow. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Don’t know, sir,” Patchett replied, “but the sound of those
engines alone, right there on top of you, is enough to make you crap your
britches, ain’t it?”

Gabriel Lakai huddled against a tree, convinced he was
responsible for bringing this calamity down on their heads. I’ve given us
away. I know so little Japanese. How could I answer those questions
correctly?

The plane pulled up slightly, beginning a turn back to its
original course. But it didn’t stay on that course for long. It began another
slow semi-circle back toward the mountaintop. This time, as it began its run
down the ridgeline, the wings began to rock violently. It seemed it would crash
into the trees for sure, but the engines throttled up and it struggled to climb
away from the mountain. Again, no one fired a shot.

“Looks like he got caught in some turbulence,” Jock said.
“I’ve heard the air can get pretty rough flying around mountains. Maybe now
he’ll knock off whatever the hell he’s up to.”

But the plane came around again.

“Gabriel,” Jock said, “have you ever seen them do anything
like this before?”

“No, Captain Jock.”

So what is this clown trying to do?

This time, it stayed higher as it flew down the ridge, maybe
100 feet above the treetops. There was a third collective sigh of relief from
Jock and his men as the plane passed over the OP one more time. They heard
nothing for a few seconds but the diminishing roar of engines…until a rapid
series of sharp cracks and dull thuds drove every man face down
into the dirt.

When they had the courage to lift their heads again, they
found themselves and the ground around them littered with rice. A number of
heavy sacks had been dropped from the plane. It was impossible to tell how
many, since only a few were still intact. The rest had tangled with tree limbs
and split open, causing the rice shower.

Patchett scooped up a handful of the kernels and said, “Did
some touch-hole get hitched or something?”

Its mission apparently over, the plane was heading east once
again, toward Milne Bay at Papua’s tip or, perhaps, the Solomons beyond.

The walkie-talkie crackled again as both platoons reported
in. The news was good: no man had fallen victim to a sack of plummeting rice.

The look of doom had vanished from Gabriel’s face, replaced
by a smile. Thanks to the rice bomber, that question from Japanese Headquarters
he hadn’t understood was finally starting to make sense:

Kome...one of the words was kome. Japanese for rice. I’m
sure of it now.

When Gabriel told Jock and Patchett what he thought had
happened, they both smiled, too. The first sergeant patted him on the back and
said, “You see, son? You did real good after all. Now, if only we were
rice-eatin’ Nip bastards.”

Jock turned to Trevor Shaw and asked, “Maybe the natives
could use the rice?”

“Oh, no, Captain,” Shaw replied, “They wouldn’t touch it.
Anyone caught with Japanese supplies would be executed immediately.”

Chapter Eight

Day 2

PFC Bucky Reynolds was so anxious he thought he’d vomit
right there in the fighting hole he shared with Frank Simms. He knew he wasn’t
supposed to make a sound; any noise at all could tip off the Japanese before
they were inescapably in the ambush’s trap. His stomach was trying to push its
meager contents up his throat. He felt sure its rumblings could be heard a mile
away.

Just lying in dirt among the underbrush was making Reynolds
nervous. There seemed to be no end to the bizarre and terrifying insects
joining them in the hole. There were those stories, too, about that guy from
the unit who got bit by a poisonous snake and died back on Cape York. He’d been
lying on the ground waiting for the Japanese to come, too. Funny how nobody
who was there ever wants to talk about that. It must have been awful. I wish to
hell I was back in Los Angeles, walking on the beach with my best
girl.

“Hey, Frank,” he whispered to Simms, “do you really think
the Japs are going to come?”

“That’s what Lieutenant Pop says. Any minute now. What do
you think the whole fucking platoon’s hiding out here for, you nitwit?”

“Frank…I don’t know if I can shoot anyone. What we did last
night at The Morgue…that was terrible. It was just slaughter.”

“Yeah, and with any luck, this will be a slaughter, too.
Just so I don’t have to do it with no knife again. Now be quiet, for cryin’ out
loud.”

Bucky Reynolds’s eyes grew even wider with terror. “A knife?
You’ve killed guys hand to hand?”

“For the last time, shut the fuck up, Bucky.”

Frank Simms’s body tensed when he saw the first Japanese
soldier, still far down the trail. He cradled his M1 rifle into firing
position. “Here they come,” he whispered to Reynolds. “Remember your field of
fire…you get from twelve o’clock to two o’clock. I’ll take from ten o’clock to twelve o’clock.”

Bucky Reynolds wasn’t paying a bit of attention. He saw that
first Japanese soldier, too, and when he did, his eyes promptly slammed shut.
Maybe he’d fire when he heard the others open up. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either
way, he didn’t want to see what was about to happen.

Simms watched with cold detachment as the Japanese neared
the kill zone. Hot damn! These Nips got their heads up their asses just like
that bunch at The Morgue. Looks to be about twelve, just like Lieutenant Pop
said, all close together like they’re in some fucking parade, rifles slung on
shoulders. Look at these assholes! They’re even in step! Come on, come on…just
a little farther...

And then someone in Papadakis’s platoon made a noise from
across the trail, a clink of metal against metal that definitely wasn’t
a natural sound of the forest.

The Japs took off on the dead run for cover in all
directions. Rifles that had been shoulder-slung a split second ago were ready
to shoot from the hip, the long, gleaming bayonets at their muzzles leading the
charge.

It seemed like an eternity before the Americans began to
fire. The two .30-caliber machine guns, whose interlocking fire was supposed to
have formed an inescapable death trap, chattered pointlessly away, plowing up
nothing but the deserted trail.

American M1s and Thompson submachine guns added their
racket, but the wily Japanese riflemen were no longer where they were supposed
to be. This ambush had devolved in an instant from a guaranteed killing field
to a shooting gallery with pop-up targets that shot back.

Frank Simms had no idea if the shots he fired had hit
anything—and he was pretty sure his partner, Reynolds, hadn’t fired at all.

Not 10 yards in front, three Japanese popped up and started
running toward Simms. He squeezed the trigger once—twice—three times. Only the
Jap in the middle went down.

“BUCKY, THE ONE ON THE RIGHT! TAKE HIM!”

Simms fired again—and the Jap on the left went down.

“BUCKY! SHOOT, DAMMIT!”

From the corner of his eye, Simms watched Reynolds wrap his
arms over his helmet as he tried to flatten himself farther into the hole.

The last Jap was only feet away. Simms let loose a
half-aimed shot that did nothing to slow his progress.

There was no ignoring that ping—the sound of an M1’s
empty clip being ejected. Frank Simms was out of bullets.

He grabbed for Reynolds’s M1—he ain’t using it—but
there was no time. The last Jap streaked over the hole, jabbing down at Simms
with his bayonet as he ran.

A knife…a fucking knife, right in my fucking thigh…

Never breaking stride, the last Jap pulled the trigger as
the bayonet unstuck. And then he vanished into the trees down the slope.

The platoon’s firing petered out, ending with one short,
final burst of a Thompson. There was no one else to shoot at. All the Japs were
dead but the one that got away. Blown ambush or not, the Americans had still
outgunned them by more than two to one.

Sounding frantic, Lieutenant Papadakis shouted, “ANYONE HIT?”

Frank Simms was the only man who replied. “Yeah, me,” he
said, sounding more annoyed than in pain. “But one got away, Lieutenant. He
went down the hill.”

Bucky Reynolds had finally opened his eyes. The first thing
he saw was the warm, wet stain of urine in the crotch of his pants. The next
was Frank Simms’s smoldering trouser leg. Reynolds did the only thing he could
think of: he poured water on it from his canteen.

“I don’t see any blood, Frank,” Reynolds said.

“I don’t see any blood, either,” the medic added as he
nudged Reynolds out of the way. “Let’s take a look here...”

The medic cut the trouser leg open with scissors and took a
good, hard look. “Aside from a little powder burn, there isn’t anything wrong
with you. The skin isn’t even broken. Whatever hit you went through a loose
flap of your pants leg and into the ground.” He moved Simms’s leg, revealing
the deep, smooth slit the bayonet made in the dirt.

Frank Simms flexed his leg. It seemed to work just fine.

Lieutenant Papadakis had already ordered their squad to
pursue the last Jap. Frank Simms jumped up and pulled Bucky Reynolds to his
feet. “Come on, Pisser,” Simms said, “we’ve gotta catch up with the
squad. We ain’t done yet.”

At the OP, the sound of the firing from the ambush site
erupted as a thunderous roar, as if entire battalions were locked in combat
rather than just a few squads. Every man in the OP’s perimeter was very glad to
be where he was at the moment and not in the middle of all that flying lead.
Each knew that but for the luck of the draw, it would have been his platoon—Lieutenant
Wharton’s—on that ambush instead of Papadakis’s men.

A BAR gunner on the perimeter turned to his ammo man and
said, “That asshole platoon leader of ours must have been born with a four-leaf
clover up his ass. I’ll let The Wart flip a coin for me any day.” The
gunner laughed as he said it. He imagined Lieutenant Wharton would be mightily
pissed if he knew his men called him The Wart.

Masked at first in the racket of gunfire was a strange,
high-pitched screaming. But as the firing died out, the screaming was painfully
obvious. It was coming from the middle of the perimeter. The
prisoner—Lieutenant Oshida—was its source.

Bound to a tree and blindfolded, Oshida still knew what all
the shooting meant: the relief watch, inbound to the OP, was in a fight with
the Americans. But maybe if I can alert my comrades that I’m here…

Corporal Bogater Boudreau stuck the muzzle of his Thompson
against Oshida’s cheek. “I’m thinking you best shut the fuck up, Tojo,”
Boudreau said, “before I blow your fucking brains out.”

Melvin Patchett strode over and said, “A little late to be
killing him now, don’t you think, Bogater?”

“We should’ve killed him right off, Top,” Boudreau replied.

Patchett shook his head. “Nah…there’s no point. But give him
a good butt-stroke to the head and shut his damn fool mouth.”

Boudreau grabbed his Thompson by the barrel and swung it
like Babe Ruth. As Oshida collapsed against the tree holding him captive, only
his faint moans made it clear the mighty blow hadn’t killed him.

The torrent of gunfire from up the mountain had terrified
Virginia Beech and the native porters she led as they made their way to the OP.
The silence that followed was just as unnerving: who had won the fight? Walking
more cautiously now, they continued their trek, praying the Yanks had succeeded
in what they set out to do.

It was hard to tell who was more startled: Virginia or the
Japanese soldier who popped suddenly onto the trail before her. The porters
following her froze in panic. They knew if they were caught by the Japanese,
carrying that radio set and the boxes of supplies with the letters “US”
stenciled all over them, they were as good as dead.

The Japanese soldier gave a quick, panicked glance up the
mountain over his shoulder. The motion swung the rifle in his hands toward
Virginia and her men.

It was just a simple reflex: she pulled the trigger of her
shotgun.

Virginia was too close to miss, too close not to do some
serious damage. The shotgun’s blast separated the Japanese soldier from his
rifle and flung him to the ground like a discarded rag doll.

There, Ginny…you’ve killed a bloody Jap. Are you happy now?

Virginia Beech struggled to answer the voice in her head but
no words would form. She didn’t need any words to know she was decidedly not
happy.

The shotgun sounded like a cannon’s blast to the American
squad racing down the mountain, alternately running, stumbling, and falling as
they tried to keep their footing on the steep, rough slope. In a few moments,
Virginia and her party came into view below—and so did their quarry, the last
Jap, sprawled in a heap on the trail.

Still some distance up the slope, an American called out,
“Miss Beech, are you okay?”

In a voice that sounded a thousand miles away, she replied,
“Sure, Yank. I’m bloody brilliant.” She never turned to look at the Americans.
Her gaze was fixed on the Jap lying bloody and motionless before her.

At last, the Americans could stop trying to run down this
steep mountainside. The men of the squad weren’t sure which had been the more
feared part of the pursuit: being shot at by their quarry or falling and
becoming a rolling projectile that wouldn’t stop plummeting downhill until
crashing into a tree.

Sergeant Brody, the squad leader, unwittingly chose the
latter option. He might have tripped or simply lost his footing. Either way, he
had turned into that rolling projectile, separated from his weapon and helmet,
and, propelled by the steady and unforgiving hand of gravity, tumbled through
the stunned and speechless line of porters. Brody’s plunge didn’t end until he
bounced off one tree trunk—like hitting a bumper in a pinball machine—and finally
came to rest wrapped around the trunk of another.

His thin plea drifted back up the slope: “Medic.”

Beginning their journey up the trail to the OP again, Virginia’s
entourage had doubled. Besides herself and her 10 porters, there was now the
10-man squad from Lieutenant Papadakis’s platoon, 9 of them on their feet. Two
carried a loudly groaning Sergeant Brody, sitting up on a makeshift stretcher
made of rifles and GI shirts, clutching an arm to his chest. Two more carried
the barely conscious last Jap stretched between them, his limp body
swinging like a hammock.

They were still a five-minute walk from the OP when
Papadakis and the medic caught up.

After quick examinations, the medic told the lieutenant,
“Brody will live, but he’ll need to be evacuated once we can. He’s got a busted
collar bone, probably a concussion, too. I’m betting the rest of him is
sprained pretty bad all over.” The medic turned to Virginia Beech: “But this
Jap…what the hell are you carrying there, ma’am? An elephant gun?”

“Something like that,” she replied.

“Well, he’s leaking like a fountain all over. I don’t think
I can save him…not without blood to give him.”

“You’d bother trying to save him, Doc?” Papadakis asked.

“It’s not that I want to, Lieutenant. But I’m supposed to.”

Chapter Nine

Day 2

The last Jap died at the OP as the sun began to set.
Travis Shaw directed two natives to carry his body to the common grave. Shaw told
Jock, “Once we add this one, we’ll have buried them all.”

The natives had only taken a few steps with their somber
cargo when Virginia Beech asked them to stop. They set the corpse down on the
ground and took a few steps back, leaving her room to stand over the man whose
death she had caused. To those watching, she seemed to be offering a silent
prayer.

In a moment, she was done, and with a wave of her hand
signaled the natives to continue their pallbearing duties. She didn’t watch
them carry the body off; still cradling the shotgun, she turned and walked
toward the spot she had placed her bedroll. Halfway there, she noticed Melvin
Patchett watching her.

“What are you bloody looking at?” she asked. Patchett
wondered whether she’d turn that shotgun on him next.

“Don’t mean no offense, Ginny,” Patchett replied. “I just
thought you might need some talking.”

“Talking about what?”

“Like what you were thinking over that Jap’s body.”

“What do you care, Yank?”

“Because I know a little something about killing. It ain’t
all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

“You’ve got that right, Yank.”

Patchett laid his hand softly on her shoulder. She didn’t
pull away from his touch.

“You’ll feel real bad for a while…but it’ll pass, Ginny.”

Her laugh startled him. “Oh, no, Yank,” she said. “I don’t
feel bad at all about killing the little bugger.”

“So what were you saying all quiet like to his corpse?”

“I was telling him he let me down. I finally get my chance
at revenge on one of those murdering little bastards, but it wasn’t the big
whoop-de-do I was hoping for. It just feels like another chore got done.”

She took pleasure in his open-mouthed surprise. “Does that
make me evil?” she added.

“No, I reckon not,” Patchett replied. “But revenge? For them
killing your husband?”

She nodded.

Now it was her turn to lay a comforting hand on his
shoulder. “But we can’t have everything we bloody well want, can we, Yank?”

Patchett smiled as he said once again, “No, I reckon not.”

Virginia smiled back. “Maybe there’s something I can have,
though,” she said. “I’d like to call you something other than Yank all
the time…and first sergeant is a little too bloody formal for my taste.
What’s your real name?”

“My friends call me Patch, Ginny.”

She extended her hand. As they shook on it, she said, “Nice
to finally meet you all proper, Patch.”

Theo Papadakis needed a moment alone with his thoughts.
Everything he attempted this day had ultimately been a success—but crushing
failure always seemed to be hovering an inch away:

Every screw-up that happened…the Jap who almost escaped at
the bunkhouse, the one who almost escaped the ambush, Brody getting hurt…they
were all my fault. I’m better than this. I know I am…

There’s one thing about the Army, though—you’re never alone.
There’s no such thing as privacy when you wear the green. Bob Wharton was
proving that right now; Papadakis could feel him hovering a few steps behind.
He could sense the smirk on Wharton’s face before he turned to meet it.

“Great fucking ambush, Greek,” Wharton said. “One gets away
and you get a squad leader hurt to boot. How very competent of you.”

“Nobody got away, Bob.”

“Still sounds like a pretty fucked-up deal to me. Oh, and by
the way, Greek, don’t come looking for any of my NCOs to fill Brody’s slot.”

“I don’t need any of your NCOs,” Papadakis replied. “I’m
moving a corporal up to squad leader. The captain’s already okayed it.” The
Greek turned and began to walk away. “But there is a big favor you can do me,
Bob.”

“Yeah? What’s that, Greek?”

“You can go fuck yourself.”

As darkness descended, the radio waves came alive. Trevor
Shaw’s wireless was functioning as advertised. Task Force Blind Eye had made
contact with Operation Long Jump’s command element, still over the horizon on
the Coral Sea.

Shaw demonstrated his blindingly fast telegraphy skills.
“I’ve had a great deal of practice,” he said as he effortlessly decoded message
after message, jotting them onto a pad. Handing one of the messages to Jock, he
added, “This one will amuse you, Captain.”

The message was a directive to provide regular reports on
the disposition of Japanese ships in Fairfax Harbor, the port in Port
Moresby.

In the fading light of day, Jock swung his binoculars toward
the harbor. “I make it as two destroyers and half a dozen freighters at anchor.
Do you agree, Commander? You’re the coast watcher.”

Not bothering to look up from the radio console, Shaw replied,
“That was my count as well, Captain.” As he began to send the report, he added,
“I trust they don’t expect us to see what’s going on fifteen miles away during
the hours of darkness.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Jock said. “MacArthur believes in
magic, you know.”

Chapter Ten

Day 2/Day 3

The GIs manning the night watch on the OP thought they were
watching a thunderstorm far out in the Coral Sea. Bright domes of white light
would flare on the horizon for a moment, illuminating the sky and clouds within
their arc.

Trevor Shaw set them straight. “It’s not a storm, lads,” he
said. “That’s what a sea battle looks like at night. Those flashes are the big
guns firing.”

There was a flash that was different from those before it.
This one was duller, orange in color, and lasted for several heartbeats before
settling into a constant, reddish glow on the dark line of the horizon.

“And that’s what a ship blowing up looks like,” Shaw said.
“Let’s pray the Japanese Navy hasn’t found our invasion fleet.”

The old coast watcher walked back to the radio and pressed
the headphones to his ears. It wasn’t long before he said to Bob Wharton,
“You’d better wake Captain Miles, Lieutenant.”

Bad news travels fast, even among men dispersed in the
darkness. Sergeant Tom Hadley found nothing but jumpy GIs as he moved from
position to position along the OP’s perimeter, checking no one was asleep. He
needn’t have worried.

“I hear we’re getting marooned here, Sarge,” a rifleman
whispered. “That gun battle out there…they’re sinking our fleet, ain’t they?
We’re fucked…the only Operation Long Jump that’s gonna be going on is
when we try to long jump our asses all the way back to Australia.”

His buddy was just as pessimistic and even more jumpy. “I
hear Japs everywhere, Sarge. I’m betting there’s hundreds of ’em climbing this
damn mountain.”

“I don’t hear a fucking thing, you douche bags,” Sergeant
Hadley said, “and if they’re stupid enough to try and climb Astrolabe in the
dark, they’re gonna die just like the ones we already buried. Now hear me
good…the first idiot who fires at ghosts is gonna wish the hell he hadn’t. I’ll
personally see to that. And like the captain says, let the Navy worry about
what goes on in the water. Just stay alert and do your damned job.”

Throughout that long, anxious night, Tom Hadley found
himself repeating that same speech to the men of his platoon over and over. He
wondered how many times he’d have to say it before he believed it himself.

They were hoping the sunrise would reveal a very different
seascape. Instead of an American invasion fleet nestling up to shore, only two
warships could be seen making their way east across the Coral Sea. “They’re
both Japanese,” Trevor Shaw said, “the same two we reported in Fairfax Harbor
last night, I believe.” The brass telescope he used, sitting atop its battered,
wooden tripod, looked like a seafaring relic from the 18th Century.

Jock turned his binoculars to the harbor. Despite the early
morning mist, he could tell one thing right away: there were several more
transport ships at anchor now than last night. “Looks like the Port Moresby
garrison got some overnight reinforcements,” he said. There was something else,
too—something it didn’t take binoculars to notice. Japanese warplanes were
rising from the airfield outside Port Moresby in droves and heading out to sea.
As they passed closer to Astrolabe, the bombs and torpedoes hanging from wings
and fuselages were clearly visible.

As he gazed down on the empty beaches, Melvin Patchett
clenched his teeth and mumbled, “And we got nothing. Not a damn thing.”

Jock called his two platoon leaders together. As the first
sergeant and Trevor Shaw listened in, he said, “Obviously, things got a little
screwed up last night and the landings for Operation Long Jump have been
delayed. We know from the radio traffic that our fleet lost some ships…we don’t
know how many or what kind. But we believe they’re planning to regroup and try
again.”

“Any idea when, sir?” Bob Wharton asked.

“I won’t bullshit you, Lieutenant…I have no idea. We’ve been
instructed to stand by.”

“Stand by?” Theo Papadakis said. “For how long, sir? The
Japs are gonna know something’s fishy any minute now…like when those guys we
buried don’t show up.”

His tone icy, Jock replied, “Tell me something I don’t
already know, Lieutenant. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Softening his words, Jock continued, “Look, our mission
hasn’t changed…it’s just going to take a little longer. We’ve still got a
couple of days’ worth of rations and enough ammo for another scrape or two with
the Japs. And I know we’re all worried about the other half of our company
that’s still with those ships, but we can’t do anything about that right now. I
need the both of you”—he made solid eye contact with both Wharton and
Papadakis—“to keep your men informed. As soon as I know something more, I’ll
pass it along to you. We’ve got enough real problems to deal with. We don’t
need the rumor mill cranking out imaginary ones.”

“Amen to that, sir,” Patchett said.

“Now,” Jock continued, “since it seems we’re going to be
making this our home for a while, we’re going to need to make it more secure.”
He turned to Patchett. “Top, what do you think are the quickest ways to do
that?”

“Well, sir, there are a few easy avenues of approach to this
place that could use their fields of fire cleared…a little less vegetation and
we could see them coming a whole lot better. It won’t take long to do. Also, we
need to string up some noise makers outside the perimeter for the nighttime…any
old ration cans, expended cartridges…anything metal hanging from a tripwire
will do the trick. If the Japs do try to come in the dark, somebody’s bound to
trip over one of them.”

“You think we can scrounge up that much metal, Top?” Jock
asked.

“Are you kidding, sir? After all that shooting, them
touch-holes got pockets full of expended brass. Everybody loves souvenirs.”

“Okay, then,” Jock said. “Let’s get the men working on it
right away.”

Bob Wharton lingered behind. When the others were out of
earshot, he asked, “Captain, what do we do if they forget about us?”

Jock patted his lieutenant on the shoulder and replied,
“Bob, how well do you swim?”

Chapter Eleven

Day 3

The sun was beginning to set on what should have been
D+0—Invasion Day—but as First Sergeant Patchett put it, “History was not made
today. At least not here.” The American invasion fleet never came into view
across the wide expanse of the Coral Sea. Japanese planes that had flown away
to seek battle that morning had returned by midday. Refueled and rearmed, they
set out once again, only to return before darkness fell. No one had kept count
how many departed each time, so it was nothing but wishful thinking that a far
fewer number of aircraft were now resting for the night at their Papuan
airfield.

Under the watchful eye of the first sergeant, the men had
spent the daylight hours clearing fields of fire and setting out noise makers.
No one complained about the downpours that soaked them twice; at least the rain
gave the men a brief respite from the ever-present mosquitoes. Corporal Bogater
Boudreau, stripped to the waist and dripping wet as he rigged tripwires, made a
pronouncement: “At least up here on this mountain, you ain’t never gonna see no
crocs. Come to think of it, I ain’t seen a lot of snakes, neither. So what’s a
few damn mosquitoes?”

“Those damn mosquitoes gonna give you malaria, you dumb
Cajun,” Teddy Mukasic said.

“That’s ‘Corporal dumb Cajun’ to you, Private,”
Bogater replied. “Now get your Yankee ass back to work, mon frere.”

Gabriel Lakai had that worried look on his face again. He
had just finished another of the hourly telephone reports he had been
faithfully performing for nearly two days. This call hadn’t gone well, he was
sure. In fact, it might have been the harbinger of catastrophe. They seemed to
be asking questions again, questions he didn’t understand and had no idea how
to answer. A simple hai—yes—had saved him the last time. This time,
though, hai seemed to be exactly the wrong thing to say. Gabriel could
sense the outrage in the voice at the other end of the line the instant he
blindly offered that word in reply.

One look at Gabriel’s face and Jock smelled trouble. Setting
his K ration supper aside, he asked, “What’s wrong, son?”

“I think they ask questions again, Captain Jock, but I don’t
know what they’re saying.”

“Don’t worry about it, Gabriel. This little ruse of ours
couldn’t last forever, anyway.”

“But should I keep calling every hour, Captain?”

“Is it getting too hard on you? You haven’t had solid sleep
in two nights now.” He broke off a chunk of chocolate from his D bar and
offered it to the boy.

“No, Captain Jock…I’m fine,” Gabriel replied, flexing his
arm muscles to prove his fitness. “Sleep is the last thing on my mind.”

“Okay, then…keep making those calls. We’ve got nothing to
lose now.”

If it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Oshida’s excited cries,
Theo Papadakis might have been as good as dead. He would have never known
someone was sneaking up on him as he crouched next to Sergeant Brody, his
injured squad leader.

“Lovely, lovely,” Papadakis said, the challenge word
tumbling in a panic from his mouth far too late. Even in the darkness of night,
he could tell it was First Sergeant Patchett looming over him.

“Lurlene, Lieutenant,” Patchett said. “I authenticate
Lurlene…but I coulda cut your throat about ten different ways by now,
sir.” The tone of sir managed to perform the ceremony of conveying
respect without implying a shred of it. “Besides, all the L-words in the
world wouldn’t make no nevermind to a Jap standing this close, even if he could
pronounce them. And how come the prisoner ain’t blindfolded, like the captain
wants?”

“But it’s dark, Top. He can’t see shit. Nobody can.”

“Don’t matter, Lieutenant. If the captain wants it, we do
it. No questions. Next thing I know, you’ll be untying him, too.”

“What can I say, Top? You got me.”

“That’s damn white of you, Lieutenant.” Pointing to Oshida,
Patchett continued, “All the noise he was making, he must’ve thought I was one
of his buddies coming to gut you. What worries me, though, sir”—again, sir implied
no respect at all—“is if you’re not alert, how do you expect your men to be?”

“All right, Top. I get the message. I’ll fix it.”

Through with the scolding, Patchett turned to Steve Brody.
“How’re you doing, son?” the first sergeant asked.

“It hurts like a bastard, Top,” Brody replied, “but I can
handle it.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get you and Mister Moto out of here,
Steve,” Patchett said, motioning toward Oshida. “You should’ve been on some
fancy hospital ship by now, with nurses fussing all over you.”

Grimacing with pain as he sat up, Brody said, “It ain’t so
bad with this sling Doc rigged up…and it ain’t even my shooting hand. You know,
as long as I’m stuck here, I could make myself useful”—he motioned toward
Lieutenant Oshida—“like guard that prisoner or something. I can still handle a
pistol with my good arm. Probably hurt like crazy if I have to shoot it, but
that’s just my tough luck.”

Patchett nodded and said, “How about we give him one of
those Nambu pistols we took off the Japs, Lieutenant?”

“Sure,” Papadakis replied. “No problem.”

Patchett motioned in the direction of Oshida again. “And if
that gentleman over there makes any more noise, stick a damn sock in his
mouth.”

The quiet of night was making Jock uneasy. He tried to shake
the feeling, telling himself, Quiet’s supposed to be a good thing, isn’t it?

But something inside him wasn’t buying it: Is there such
a thing as too quiet?

His nervous hovering around the radio set was driving Ginny
Beech to distraction. She pulled the headphones from her ears and said, “You
look positively stonkered, Captain. Why don’t you try to get some rest? We’ll
fetch you if there’s any news.”

Jock shrugged. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “Whoever said no
news is good news didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, that’s
for sure.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Captain,” she replied. “Even if the rest
of you Yanks never show up, Papua is a big place to get lost in. Look at
Commander Shaw and his merry band…we’ve been hidden away for months. That bloke
I put down yesterday was the closest scrape we’ve had.”

“Yeah,” Jock said, “but when that bunch of Japs we just
buried doesn’t show up like they’re supposed to—”

“Like I said, Captain…this is a big place.”

PFC Bucky Reynolds thought it was anything but quiet. Prone
in his fighting hole on the perimeter, he jerked his M1 to firing position at
every gentle tinkle of a noise maker in the breeze. It was driving Frank
Simms out of his mind.

“Knock that shit off, for cryin’ out loud,” Simms said.
“It’s just the wind. There ain’t nothing out there.”

His voice anything but calm, Reynolds replied, “How the hell
are we supposed to tell the difference between the wind and a Jap, Frank? Top
doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. We made those noise maker things all
wrong.”

That earned Bucky a sharp rap on the helmet. “Listen, Pisser,”
Simms said, “you’re the one who don’t know what he’s doing. You weren’t on the Cape…and
Top was already fighting in a war while you were still sucking your mama’s
tit.”

Nothing Frank Simms said made any difference to Bucky
Reynolds. The Japs are everywhere, he told himself. One of them is going to
sneak up and drive his bayonet right through—

Noise makers started clanging like church bells on a Sunday
morning. “OH MY GOD,” Bucky yelled, but his words were drowned out by the POWW
POWW POWW of his M1 as he rapidly squeezed off round after round.

By his third round, every swinging dick on the
perimeter—even Frank Simms—was firing and reloading as fast as he could.

Lieutenant Papadakis screamed into his walkie-talkie, “FIRE
MISSION FIRE MISSION, SHELL ILLUM, TARGET NUMBER TWO.”

The mortar section responded promptly. With a dull PLUMFF,
their weapon launched an illumination round—containing a parachute flare—high
into the air. The round soared over Astrolabe’s front face toward the
preplanned target point, ejecting the flare a few seconds later as it passed
through the top of its arc. The flare floated downward on its parachute,
swinging from side to side, its brilliant white light casting bizarre, jittery
shadows on the landscape below.

As the eyes of the soldiers on the perimeter adjusted to the
unnatural, white-washed images before them, one thing became apparent: there
was indeed something out there among the noise makers. Their firing stopped abruptly.
The only sound they could hear now was a faint, pathetic bleating, slowly dying
out.

They had just riddled several goats.

The parachute flare extinguished, blacking out the magnitude
of their mistake—until a second illumination round popped overhead and
highlighted their error in the brilliant light once more. In the new quiet, one
more plumff sounded from the direction of the mortar section.

“TURN OFF THAT FUCKING MORTAR.” The speaker was unmistakably
First Sergeant Patchett.

Theo Papadakis, the walkie-talkie still in his hand, looked
up to see Jock Miles standing over him. In the flare’s ghastly glow, the
captain looked like a ghost. A very unhappy ghost.

His words slow and measured, Jock said, “In the future,
Lieutenant, let’s not be so eager to light up our secret location like Times
Fucking Square, okay? If the Japs all the way in Port Moresby didn’t hear our
little firepower displays, they sure as hell could see those illum rounds.”

As the last flare flickered and died, Trevor Shaw walked up
to have a look. “Rather raucous way to bag dinner,” the old coast watcher said.
“Unless you have some use for those slaughtered animals, Captain, my men will
be glad to claim them at first light.”

With their night vision ruined by the flares, Jock,
Patchett, and Shaw found making their way back up the slope in the dark to the
OP no easy proposition. Cursing their temporary blindness, each tripped and
fell at least once.

“I should’ve never brought those illum rounds,” Jock said.

Shaking his head, Patchett replied, “Nah…it was a good call,
sir. We just got screwed by Mother Nature again. We may need them flares yet,
but we’ve only got three left now…and I’m thinking we just cut our ammo
reserves about in half.”

“We should move at first light, Top,” Jock said.

Patchett pondered for a moment before replying, “Why bother,
sir? We’re gonna have to stay somewhere on this mountaintop if we’re gonna keep
to our mission. What’s the difference between here or a couple of miles down
the ridge? Even if they saw those damn flares in Port Moresby, they were too
far away to pinpoint exactly where we are.”

“You’ve got a point, Top,” Jock replied. “I’m pretty sure
they’ve got a hunch we’re up here, anyway.”

Shaw added, “For whatever it’s still worth…if we moved, we
wouldn’t have the Japanese landline anymore.”

Ginny Beech’s voice, disembodied by the darkness, rang out
some bad news: “The landline won’t be much of a bloody problem anymore, gents.
Go ahead, Gabriel. Tell them.”

They couldn’t see the boy’s face, either, but his voice
conveyed all the necessary dread by itself: “It’s dead, Captain Jock. The
line’s dead. I ring and ring, but there’s no one at the other end.”

Chapter Twelve

Day 4

It might just as easily have been Japanese soldiers climbing
the mountain instead of goats, and they all knew it. As the watch changed at
0300—with Wharton’s platoon replacing Papadakis’s on the perimeter—those coming
on duty had at least slept a bit, until the thunderous intrusion of the goat
slaughter put an end to it. Those coming off duty would catch no sleep at all,
with one exception: Ginny Beech, having turned over the radio monitoring to
Trevor Shaw, crawled into her bedroll and was snoring in a matter of minutes.

“I’m glad at least someone’s getting a little sleep around
here,” Jock said, the dim light of the radio’s dials making his face seem all
the more drawn and tired. “How are you holding up, Commander?”

Shaw was certain Jock’s question could easily be rephrased
to something like this: How long before you collapse from exhaustion, old
man? He found that amusing; he felt far better than this Yank some 30 years
his junior looked at the moment.

“I’m doing quite well, Captain,” Shaw replied. “No need to
worry about me.”

“That’s pretty amazing, Commander…I mean for—”

Shaw’s burst of laughter cut him short. “You mean for one so
ancient, Captain?”

“Oh, no, sir…I didn’t want to…”

Shaw gave Jock a friendly pat on the back. “It’s all right,
Captain. I guess to someone of your age…How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m twenty-eight, Commander.”

“Hmm…I would have thought you a bit younger. But still, at
the ripe old age of sixty-three, I must seem like some relic of a bygone era to
you.”

It was Jock’s turn to laugh, but in his state of exhaustion,
it came out as more of a groan. “Oh, no, Commander,” he replied, “not anymore.
That’s for sure….but can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“Why don’t you carry a firearm?”

“I’ve never been fond of the bloody things,” Shaw replied,
“and I’ve never been much of a shot. Virginia has provided all the firepower
I’ve needed. Quite competently, I might add.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed her abilities. But still, sir, in a
place as wild as this—”

“Captain, the natives have survived here for thousands of
years without guns. I suppose I can manage the few years I have left without
them, too.”

Dawn broke once again, marking Task Force Blind Eye’s fourth
day on Papua. No Japanese soldiers had come in the night—and no American
invasion fleet had come with the morning. Trevor Shaw had spent the pre-dawn
hours combing the frequencies for any hint of radio traffic that might suggest
the invasion was still on, but the airwaves were just as empty as the sea that
stretched before them.

“That could be good news,” Jock said, struggling to sound
optimistic. “Radio silence could mean they’re getting ready to invade again.”

Melvin Patchett seemed to be speaking to the vacant sea as
he replied, “Or it could mean those bastards have given up on the whole damn
idea.” His words were anything but disheartened, though. Quite the contrary,
they sounded full of renewed purpose.

“Let’s not write them off just yet, Top,” Jock said as he
headed off to tour the perimeter.

“As you wish, sir.”

Not far from the radio set, Ginny Beech was sitting up in
her bedroll, her arms stretched skyward to greet the new day. She heard every
word Jock and Patchett said.

“Tell me, Patch,” she said, “is your captain always so
bloody optimistic when there’s no reason to be?”

“A fine good morning to you, too, Miss Ginny,” Patchett
replied as he squatted next to her. “Let’s just say our captain can be a very
determined man when—”

His words were cut short by the snarl of aircraft steadily
growing louder. As all eyes tried to catch a glimpse of the planes through the
trees, a GI standing near the radio’s tent-like shelter laughed and said, “Anyone
order some more rice?”

The joke sagged like a wet balloon. They could make out the
planes now: there were two of them—single-engined fighters in echelon
formation—flying across the face of the mountain.

“THEY’RE ZEROES,” Jock called as he sprinted back to the OP,
“EVERYONE STAY DOWN!”

Patchett nudged Ginny Beech into a fighting hole. “Stay put
and keep your head covered,” he said. “If they drop anything, it ain’t gonna be
no rice, that’s for damn sure.” He tapped the muzzle of the shotgun still
cradled in her arms. “And don’t be shooting that blunderbuss at them, neither.”

Hurrying to Jock’s side at Shaw’s radio set, Patchett asked
his captain, “Same rules of engagement, sir?”

“Yeah, Top. Absolutely.”

“Better remind them, then,” Patchett replied. He grabbed the
walkie-talkie and spoke into it, his words flowing slowly and calmly: “All Blind
Eye units, this is Six. Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage.
Acknowledge, over.”

The voices of Wharton and Papadakis spilled from the
walkie-talkie in turn, each offering a terse roger.

Staying in echelon, the Zeroes banked sharply, turning 180
degrees to line up for a pass down the ridge. They stayed high, a few hundred
feet above the peak, and whizzed overhead without firing a shot. They passed
close enough, though, to give those on the ground a good look at their
undersides.

“At least they ain’t carrying no bombs,” Patchett said. “All
we gotta do now is maybe dodge some bullets.”

The Zeroes flew a racetrack pattern over the mountain ridge,
lining up for another run. This time, they flew lower, zooming down and pulling
up sharply once they had passed the OP. They didn’t fire their guns this pass,
either.

Patchett mumbled, “Ain’t we seen this act before?”

They flew the racetrack pattern once again and began their
third pass. The lead plane dipped even lower this time, looking as if it would
brush the treetops. As it bore down on the OP, Theo Papadakis, without his
helmet and holding what looked like a rolled bundle of white cloth, jumped out
on the trail that ran along the peak. Standing like a human flagpole, he let
the bundle of cloth—a Japanese flag of the Rising Sun—unfurl and flutter in the
gusty wind above his head.

The flag wasn’t the only thing fluttering in the wind. The
Zeroes, like the rice bomber two days ago, had flown into the turbulent air
swirling around the mountain top. But the lead plane was much too low. Thrown
around like a child’s toy, it dropped suddenly, catching a treetop with a
wingtip, and cartwheeled quickly to the ground, slicing through trees like a
sawmill’s blade run amok. The trailing Zero pulled up sharply, its engine straining
to pull itself from a similar fate. Theo Papadakis turned and stood motionless
on the trail—the flag flapping around him like Superman’s cape—and watched the
last Zero break free of the wind’s grasp and flee toward Port Moresby.

Papadakis was still standing there—stunned, mouth open—when
Jock and Patchett approached. His voice more incredulous than angry, Jock
asked, “Just what the hell did you think you were doing, Lieutenant?”

Hesitantly, The Mad Greek began his explanation: “I
figured I was the smallest, darkest guy here. From the air, I’d look more like
a Jap than anyone. Maybe I could fool them.”

Patchett asked, “Where the hell did you get that flag,
Lieutenant?”

“One of my men found it in The Morgue. Thought he’d
keep it for a souvenir.”

Jock put his arm around Papadakis and ushered him back under
the cover of trees. He couldn’t help but smile as he said, “Theo, you’ve got to
be the only guy who ever shot down a plane with a flag.” Then the smile
vanished from Jock’s face and his voice turned military. “Now get a patrol
together on the double and go see about that pilot, Lieutenant.”

As Papadakis scurried off, Patchett said to Jock, “How long
you figure before them Japs send a search party up here, sir?”

“Not long, Top. Not long.”

Chapter Thirteen

Day 4

The patrol was back from the crash site in less than an
hour. “The pilot’s dead, sir,” Lieutenant Papadakis said to Jock. “That plane’s
twisted up like a ball of tin foil…it didn’t even burn. We cut him out of the
cockpit…but he didn’t make it. Pretty sure his neck’s broken.”

Jock turned to Trevor Shaw and said, “I suppose your men can
bury one more?”

“That won’t be until tomorrow, Captain,” Shaw replied.
“It’ll take that long to deliver the goat carcasses to their village and
return.”

“No problem,” Jock said, “the body isn’t going anywhere. How
far is the crash site from the perimeter, Lieutenant?”

“I make it at two hundred yards, sir,” Papadakis replied.
“Maybe a little less.”

“Good,” Jock said. “At least it’s far enough away we won’t
smell it. Give the coordinates to the mortar section, so they can mark it as a
target.”

Corporal Bogater Boudreau broke open his K ration lunch
packet, scowling as its contents spilled into his lap. “Damn,” he said, “we
fucked up, we did. Shoulda kept some of that goat meat and cooked it up.”

Sergeant Tom Hadley almost spit out his mouthful of canned
pork. “Are you kidding, Cajun?” he said. “Those goats were so shot up we’d be
picking lead from our teeth for days. No, thanks.”

Bogater frowned and shook his head. Tearing into the package
of crackers, he said, “With all due respect, Sarge, you Yankees just don’t know
what good is.” After a long, savoring chew on a cracker, he added, “But
y’all realize if we’re stuck here much longer all by our lonesome, these K
rations will get ate up…and them goats will look pretty damn good to y’all.”

The lunch conversation was doing nothing to soothe Bucky
Reynolds’s frayed nerves. He doubted he could eat a thing; he hadn’t even
bothered to open his K ration packet yet. It didn’t help that at mid-morning
they had watched three Japanese warships sail majestically from the east into Fairfax
Harbor. Bucky swore the huge vessels were battleships, but the others had
laughed at him and said they were only destroyers. That old Australian
gentleman, peering at the ships through his ancient telescope, had added the
destroyers were pretty old ones, definitely not first line. In fact, two
of them appeared to be quite damaged, but those words had done little to
comfort Bucky Reynolds. Then there were the airplanes—constant streams of them
flying around Port Moresby. And every last one of those airplanes was Japanese.

At least they stopped flying close to this mountain, Bucky
thought. But that one did crash. They’re going to be looking for it…and we’re
just sitting here, just half a company of us, waiting for them. When they come,
it’ll probably be a battalion at least, with heavy mortars and artillery and
maybe tanks and…

He didn’t realize he was shaking. Sergeant Hadley grabbed
him by the shoulder and said, “Hey, Reynolds…you okay? I can’t have anyone in
my platoon getting sick out here.”

Bucky tried to control the shaking, but it wouldn’t stop. “I
don’t know, Sarge,” he said, “I’m just soooo nervous. I can’t help it.”

“Join the club, kid,” Hadley replied. “We’re all nervous.
Scared, too. You wouldn’t be in your right mind if you weren’t.”

“There’s all different kinds of scared, though,” Boudreau
said, as he eyed the unopened ration packet in Reynolds’s lap. “If you ain’t
gonna touch that chow, Private,” he said, “maybe you wouldn’t mind sharing it
with your buddies here.”

Gabriel Lakai had gone to his village along with the natives
hauling the goat carcasses. It had been days since he was home, but with the
Japanese landline no longer working, he wasn’t needed around the clock at the
OP anymore. He hated to leave, though. When he was there with Commander Shaw,
Miss Virginia, and the Americans, he had a sense of being in the middle of
something very important. They were making history, and his eagerness to be a
part of it showed.

That’s why Trevor Shaw and Jock Miles knew the boy would be
back—but they hadn’t expected him today, a mere eight hours after he left. But
here he was, in late afternoon, panting for breath and looking very distressed.

“They’re coming, Captain Jock,” Gabriel said, struggling to
get the words out between breaths. “The Japanese…many of them.”

“No kidding,” Jock said, putting his binoculars down. “We
noticed some artillery setting up near the base of the mountain. Looks like
there’s infantry with them, too, but we can’t see them for the trees anymore.
Are they coming up the mountain now, Gabriel?”

“Yes, Captain Jock.”

“And you ran all the way back up here?” Jock asked.

Still struggling to catch his breath and talk at the same
time, Gabriel exhaled his answer: “Yes.”

Jock and Patchett shared the same thought: This kid just ran
up a whole mountain. Sure, he’s out of breath, but he still doesn’t look half
as exhausted as the rest of us.

Jock asked, “You said there were many. Do you have
any idea how many?”

“I’m not sure, Captain Jock…but I saw the leader. He was
riding a horse. I think he was a captain…like you.”

“Sounds like a company, sir,” the first sergeant said. “Some
fucking OP this is. We can see stuff a hundred miles away, but we can’t see
some Nips right under our damn noses.”

Trevor Shaw took another look through his telescope and
asked, “Can that artillery reach us from down there?”

“Yep,” Jock replied. “Not much of a shot for them at all.”

“No shit, sir,” Patchett said, checking his wristwatch, “and
that infantry can climb up here in about an hour or so, if somebody’s kicking
them in the ass real good. They’ll bring their mortars with them, too.”

Trevor Shaw asked, “Can we hit those guns down there with
our mortars?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Jock said, “but with this enormous
vertical interval, God only knows where the first rounds will land. By the time
we adjust them on target, they’ll move, if they’ve got half a brain. We can’t
afford to waste ammo like that.”

Shaw wasn’t happy with that answer. “But we can afford to
let them shell us at will, Captain?”

His voice cold and unwavering, Jock replied, “Listen,
Commander, you’re free to leave whenever you like.”

“No, Captain Miles, that’s not what I meant at all—”

Jock cut Shaw off: “We don’t have time for this.” Turning to
Patchett, he said, “Top, let’s sweep the perimeter one more time. Make sure
every swinging dick is under the best cover he can get.”

Before Patchett moved off to the perimeter, he took Gabriel
by the arm and said, “Son, get yourself into that nice, deep hole over there
with Miss Ginny…and stay put until I tell you different.”

Just like Melvin Patchett surmised, it was one hour on the
dot when the first Japanese probe approached the perimeter’s southern sector.
Lieutenant Bob Wharton’s hushed voice hissed from the walkie-talkie: “We see
them…about fifty yards down the slope. They haven’t seen us yet.”

The impulse struck Jock and Patchett simultaneously: that
blindfolded prisoner of ours…he may not be able to see shit, but maybe with all
this debating going on, he can sense something’s about to happen. We’d better
gag him before that big mouth of his warns his buddies we’re here.

Patchett ordered the GI serving as the OP’s runner to take
care of that simple task, but the soldier replied, “With what, First Sergeant?
I ain’t got nothing to—”

Patchett cut him off with a withering glance. “You got some
spare socks in your pack, numbnuts?”

Before the runner could sputter an answer, Ginny Beech was
moving toward the bound and blindfolded prisoner. “Never mind, you wankers,”
she said. “I’ll bloody do it.”

In a matter of moments, she dazed Lieutenant Oshida with a
butt-stroke from her shotgun across his face, stuffed a bandana from her pocket
into his slack mouth, and then tied it all in place with the bandana from
around her neck.

Stunned by her handiwork, Patchett said, “Geez, Ginny…we
didn’t plan on suffocating the man.”

She just shrugged and replied, “Wouldn’t that be a bloody
shame?”

On the southern perimeter, Lieutenant Bob Wharton’s hands
were shaking as he peered over the edge of his fighting hole. He counted eight
men—a squad of Japanese, more or less—advancing with slow, careful steps up the
mountainside in a ragged V.

Wharton tried to calm himself: They’re just scouts…this
can’t be an all-out attack. It’d be great if they walked right in without
seeing us. Then we could jump up and take them out from behind with bayonets.
No noise. Their buddies down the hill would never know what happened to them.

But the lieutenant knew that was just a pipe dream: One of
my jackasses will get all panicky and start shooting. Come on, guys…I’m begging
you, please: Just let ’em get as close as you can.

The jackass who fired first turned out to be Bob
Wharton. What came next was a ragged fusillade of shots—all from the GIs. It
was over very quickly. Every one of the eight Japanese was down.

Every Japanese soldier waiting farther down the hill heard it—all
120 of them.

He was close! He saw me…I know he did! Kill or be killed,
right? Wharton was so busy trying to rationalize his panic he forgot he was
in charge of a platoon.

Sergeant Mike McMillen jumped into the leadership void left
by his lieutenant. He called out, “Anybody hit?”

After all squads reported no casualties, McMillen called out
once again, “How about you, Lieutenant? You okay?”

“Keep it down, dammit,” Wharton replied, his voice
apprehensive and whiny. “They could still be real close.”

“Nah,” McMillen said. “If they were, we would have been hit
with knee mortars already. The rest of them are still way down the mountain.”

His men would have felt much better if their lieutenant had
something to say right now—in something resembling a command voice—but there
was nothing except silence from Bob Wharton.

McMillen’s voice rang out once more: “So what do we do now,
Lieutenant, now that they know we’re not Japs up here?”

Wharton wished he had an answer, but his mind was still
occupied, churning out reasons why he hadn’t screwed up. He didn’t even notice
Captain Miles looming above him, kneeling on the timbers giving overhead cover
to his fighting hole.

“Something wrong with your radio?” Jock asked, pointing to
the walkie-talkie lying in the mud at the bottom of the hole. “We’ve been
calling you.”

“It was real dicey down here, sir…real bad. Looked like a
whole platoon coming at us. But we beat them off.”

“Really? It didn’t sound like that much of a fight from
where I stood, Lieutenant. Any casualties?”

“Just Japs, sir. I had my men dug in real good.”

“Well, keep them that way, Lieutenant. In fact, be ready to
crawl inside your helmets, too. We’re going to get hit with artillery and
mortars real soon.”

“Yes, sir,” Wharton replied, making a comical attempt to
stiffen his body to attention even though flat on his back.

As he began his running crouch back to the OP, Jock spit out
one more instruction: “Stay on that fucking radio, Wharton.”

The Japanese artillery crews positioned near the base of
Astrolabe heard the shooting, too, so they weren’t surprised when the fire
mission came, targeting a spot on the mountain’s peak a mere 1500 yards away as
the shell flies. It would be a textbook-simple exercise but for one thing: they
weren’t ready to shoot. Too close to the mountain, they couldn’t crank their
tubes quite high enough to engage the lofty peak. Ever since moving into this
position—the only one in the area flat enough and sparsely treed enough to give
them a clear shot at the mountain—their lieutenant had them constructing firing
pedestals for their 75-millimeter guns to gain more elevation for direct fire.
Logs were felled to go under the wheels and deep pits were dug for the trails.
The work was exhausting for the cannoneers. They’d been at it for over two
hours and only one of the four pieces was finally ready to fire.

That one piece would have to do; their infantrymen up the
mountain had been screaming for fire for far too long. A shell was rammed into
its breech. But the gunner was confused. “What exactly is the target,
Lieutenant?” he asked.

“The highest point of the peak, you idiot,” the lieutenant
replied, pointing impatiently up the slope before them. “Stop wasting time and
shoot.”

That instruction didn’t help the gunner at all: the highest
point…it looks like one continuous ridge to me, one point no higher than any
other.

The lieutenant slapped the gunner’s face and, spraying
spittle on his victim’s stinging cheek, said, “FIRE, YOU IMBECILE!”

The firing lanyard was given a quick jerk. The round was on
its way.

Chapter Fourteen

Day 4

At the OP, they never heard the Japanese gun fire; the
projectile outraced the sound of its launch to Astrolabe’s peak. The first
thing the people of Task Force Blind Eye heard was the shattering THOOMP
of the round’s arrival, its echoes wrapped in a chorus of cracks and thuds
as a few shattered trees tumbled to the ground. When those sounds died away,
the brief, anxious silence was filled with the BOOM of another
explosion. Tongues of flame and thick black smoke began to rise above the trees
well outside the perimeter.

It was Theo Papadakis, with his platoon on the mountain’s
backslope, who provided the eyewitness account. “It hit wide of the perimeter,”
he reported from his walkie-talkie. “It was low-angle...had to be artillery.
But some fragments must’ve set off that downed Zero’s gas tank because it’s
burning like a son of a bitch. My men are okay, but we’re probably gonna be
sitting in a forest fire real soon. A bunch of trees are burning already. I’m
gonna pull my men back just a little.”

Melvin Patchett peeked over the edge of the hole where he
sought cover and watched as flames spread through the treetops. The blaze was
still a few hundreds yards away—but he’d watched wildfires spread before.
Recently, at that. “Don’t tell me we’re gonna get burned to a crisp here, too,”
he mumbled to himself, “just like fucking Cape York.”

At the Japanese artillery battery, they didn’t need the dust
to settle to know the gun wouldn’t be firing again anytime soon. They had dug
in its trails deep but not well. When it fired, the entire weapon reared up and
slipped backwards, the wheels rising off their log platform and then slamming
back down. The left wheel shattered the logs beneath it, and the gun was now
dangling to one side from what was left of the pedestal. Its trail spades were
mangled and useless, rammed deep into the ground and then violently twisted by
the gun’s chaotic, asymmetric recoil.

Worse, the gunner and one of his cannoneers were pinned
beneath the piece, badly injured.

The artillery lieutenant informed the infantry captain his
guns must relocate. They could not accomplish the mission from this location.
He’d have to find a better one, and that would take some time—not before
daylight tomorrow, at the very least. The infantry would have to rely solely on
the fire support of their mortars for the time being.

Trevor Shaw ducked instinctively—as did all the others
around him—as shell fragments thumped for the second time into
the log revetment shielding his radio set. He offered a silent wish: Drop
them around me all you like, lads…just no direct hits, please. The
bombardment had been going on for almost an hour at the leisurely pace of one
or two rounds a minute. It covered a wide sheaf; most impacts were well outside
the perimeter. A few, though, like this last one, were painfully close.

“These ain’t no li’l ol’ knee mortars,” Melvin Patchett said
to Jock, examining a shell fragment that was finally cool enough to pick up.
“Looks to be eighty-one millimeter, I reckon. Standard Jap infantry mortar.”

“What on earth is a knee mortar?” Shaw asked.

“It’s a small-caliber mortar, Commander…about fifty
millimeter…more like a grenade launcher,” Patchett replied. “Jap infantry
companies are lousy with them. Don’t know why we call it a knee mortar,
though…you’d bust a leg if you tried to fire it that way.”

Eyeing the wildfire the downed Zero’s fuel had set off,
Patchett looked at Jock and added, “We gonna risk a move while we’re getting
shot at, sir…or wait until those flames start cooking us?”

Jock had been asking himself that same question ever since
the crashed plane started to burn. He had come to a decision, though. “Let’s
get our lieutenants up here for a little chat,” he said. “We need to make sure
everyone’s on the same track.”

Papadakis, whose men were closest to the blaze, appeared
unfazed by his current predicament. Wharton, on the other hand, seemed to have
dancing feet: “We’ve gotta move right away, Captain. Maybe we’d better get off
this mountain altogether.”

“Whoa…go easy, Lieutenant,” Jock replied, surprised by
Wharton’s barely subdued panic. “This ain’t exactly the Siege of Vicksburg
we’ve got going on here. Our mission is to be on this mountain. We can take a
little mortar fire if we have to. We’re dug in about as good as we can be.”

Protesting, Wharton said, “But they’ve got us zeroed in,
sir. They can drop this shit on us all night.”

“Bullshit,” Jock replied. “Judging by how these rounds are
falling all over the place, they don’t have anything zeroed in. They’re
just fishing…and I’m betting they’re as short on mortar rounds as we are.
Besides, as long as these rounds are piddling in, they won’t be attacking us on
the ground.”

“But what if they do come, sir…in force, this time?”

“Then more of them are going to die, Lieutenant. We’re well
dug in on a mountaintop. Can you think of a harder position to attack, even
with superior numbers?”

“We’re not on a peak, sir. We’re on top of a ridge. They can
flank us, and if they do, we’re finished.”

Theo Papadakis burst out laughing. “The only way to flank us
is to come down that narrow little trail along the peak. We’ve got that route
covered pretty good…just ask that bunch of Japs we ambushed out there. Oh,
wait…you can’t. They’re all dead.”

Patchett found himself chuckling: I’m starting to like this
greaseball looey a whole bunch.

The logic sputtered out of Wharton’s argument like air from
a balloon. “But what about the forest fire, sir?” he asked.

“Have you looked at the sky lately, Lieutenant?” Jock said.
“The wind’s shifted away from us…and I’m betting it’s going to rain pretty darn
soon.”

The rain shower struck at twilight, turning the mountain’s
slopes into a cascade of water and mud. Those who had dug and covered their
fighting holes as First Sergeant Patchett instructed stayed relatively dry.
Those who didn’t were soon up to their waists in mucky water.

The few mortar rounds that fell after the start of the
downpour did little more than heave geysers of soggy soil high into the air.
Soon the only thing falling on the OP was rain. It felt like refreshing rods of
cool water, dispensed from some heavenly showerhead, powerful enough to
extinguish the wildfire.

The men of the second Japanese probing attack made it to the
top of the ridge just as the deluge began. Far down the peak’s trail and well
wide of Task Force Blind Eye’s perimeter, the platoon-sized force found they
had to stay on the trail, in single file, as they advanced to attack the
Americans or risk sliding back down the steep, slippery slope. In the fading light,
Theo Papadakis’s men saw them when they were still 100 yards away, as they
tried to sneak through the charred area that had been ablaze only a few minutes
ago. Each GI shared the same thought: They don’t know we’re here. Let ’em
get closer…

Burrowed under his raincoat, Papadakis whispered into his
walkie-talkie, “Six, this is Two-Six. Permission to use mortars
with H-E, over.”

Jock’s reply hissed from the earpiece: “How many coming?
Over.”

“A shit-load, over”

“Permission granted. Six out.”

The Japanese were still 30 yards from the perimeter—and
still oblivious to it—when the first plumff of American mortars
announced their rounds were on the way. Papadakis’s men heard it, but the
Japanese didn’t—the loud, steady hiss of the rain conspired with their greater
distance from the mortar section to drown it out.

“NOW,” Papadakis commanded, and his men raked the lead
elements of the Japanese column. The American machine guns interlocked their
grazing fire at a point 100 yards down the trail, forming a narrow, deadly V
that trapped half the Japanese platoon within its killing field. A dip in the
trail placed those Japanese farther back in defilade; they dove to the ground,
awaiting commands, frantically trying to make sense of the chaos they heard
before them—until the mortar rounds began to land in their midst, precisely
where Theo Papadakis had targeted. Their choice became very simple: flee or
die.

Thirty seconds later, when Papadakis commanded his men to cease
fire, half the Japanese platoon—nearly 20 men—lay dead or dying on the
trail. Those who managed to escape the shooting gallery ran, stumbled, and fell
headlong down the muddy slope in the gathering darkness.

In a few more minutes, the rain stopped and night fell.

Around midnight, an illumination round fired from a Japanese
mortar popped its flare over the OP, causing the trees to cast their jittery
shadows as it swung from its parachute. It landed atop the ridge while still
alight, in the area already burned out by the wildfire. For a few seconds more,
eerie fingers of brilliant white light blazed through the trees. No one on the
OP moved a muscle. They remembered Top’s words: It’s the movement they see,
not the thing doing the moving.

The flare extinguished—and then there was nothing but a
darkness deeper than before.

“They’re just trying to rattle us,” Patchett said. “They
ain’t coming again. Not before  sunrise, anyway.”

Chapter Fifteen

Day 5

Nobody appreciated the quiet of this night more than Ginny
Beech. There was no Japanese gunfire or mortar rounds: they were safe to come
out of their holes in the ground. She could finally wash her body clean and
change into dry clothes. It was a quick and easy affair; all it took was a
helmet-full of rainwater—the helmet being Melvin Patchett’s, which he insisted
she borrow—and a towel from her kit. The privacy necessary to disrobe was
provided by the darkness. Feeling refreshed, she chomped happily on a D bar and
began her 0400 shift monitoring the radio.

She had only been at the console a few minutes when a burst
of traffic in her headphones startled her so thoroughly she nearly toppled from
the stool. After two days of silence, the command channel was suddenly alive
again. As she copied the Morse Code hammering in her ears, there was no
mistaking its importance: This is it. Operation Long Jump is about to
happen. She prodded the dozing runner awake and told him, “Get your
captain…Now!”

In the glow of his red-lensed flashlight, Jock poured over
the message forms Ginny continued to shovel at him. Everyone was awake now,
even those not on watch. Excited GIs peered into the blackness where the Coral
Sea would reveal herself in a few short hours. “I’m telling you…it’s gonna
look like a fucking armada’s sitting out there once the sun comes up,” Sergeant
Mike McMillen told his squad, his words expressing the excitement and relief
that overrode the exhaustion they all shared. “All those big, gray ships, with
their big, gray guns, giving us all that sweet fire support…” Nobody felt the
need to say, Those bastards didn’t desert us after all. They were too
busy envisioning their fellow GIs sweeping ashore, squeezing the Japanese out
of Port Moresby and all the way back to Tokyo.

Across the perimeter, Bogater Boudreau took a more visceral view:
“Maybe we can finally get some decent chow. But if I hear them mess sections
got sunk coming over, y’all gonna have to restrain me from getting all
violent.”

Theo Papadakis’s thoughts were more logistical: “At least we
can finally resupply…and get Sergeant Brody some real medical help.” Immediately,
he realized one of the men standing nearby must be the company medic; the
silhouette of the bulky medical kit slung from his shoulder was unmistakable,
even in the pre-dawn darkness. The Mad Greek scrambled to qualify his
statement: “Not that you ain’t done a hell of a job for him, Doc.”

“No offense taken, Lieutenant,” the medic replied. “Let’s
just hope there’s not going to be a lot more Sergeant Brodys real soon.”

Once he read each message form, Jock passed it to Melvin
Patchett, who, in turn, passed it to Trevor Shaw. It took almost 15 minutes for
all three of them to get through the reading.

Shaw flung the message stack down on the radio console like
he was throwing them in the trashcan. They could tell he was fuming. When he
finally spoke, it was with an annoyed tone the Americans had never heard from
him before. “It appears your general still thinks we can see in the dark, and
much of this information they’re asking for…the anchorage locations, the shore
battery coordinates…I provided bloody weeks ago, long before you blokes even
got here. Do they think fixed installations move around?”

“Don’t take it personal, sir,” Patchett said, playing the
amused conciliator. “They’re just looking for confirmation. They like to do
that. Makes them feel all up to date.”

Ginny Beech felt the need to play conciliator, too. “Steady
on, Trevor,” she said, “it’s no problem to send the information again. It’s all
in your book.”

Jock couldn’t make out the expression on Shaw’s face, but he
wanted to believe it was one of embarrassment. The Aussie’s tall body seemed to
slump for a moment before it returned to its normal, ramrod-straight posture.

“I suppose you’re right,” Shaw said, as he scooped the
messages up and began sorting them. “I just can’t shake the feeling that
something so simple is turning into a bloody cock-up.”

Jock couldn’t make out the expression on Patchett’s face,
either, but he was pretty sure it was the same as his in the wake of Shaw’s
comment: one of astonishment. With an uneasy laugh, he said, “I’m sure glad you
think this is simple, Commander. I just wish I shared your opinion.”

“Amen to that, sir,” Patchett added. “I’m just praying our
own flyboys don’t bomb our asses like they did on Cape York.”

Shortly before the sun poked its head over the horizon,
those on the OP could see the bright flash of ships’ guns firing somewhere
offshore, followed some seconds later by their boom. The bombardment of Port
Moresby’s defenses had begun.

“Listen to that!” Mike McMillen said. “They’re close…and
there must be a thousand of ’em out there.”

As the grayness of pre-dawn turned to the pale orange of
daylight, something became distressingly clear. “A thousand, my ass,”
Lieutenant Wharton said. Then he mumbled, “We’re screwed.”

There were a dozen warships sitting five miles offshore,
well beyond the coral reefs shielding the beaches. Eight of those warships were
destroyers orbiting the four cruisers whose big guns were pounding Port Moresby.
From the OP, the destroyers looked like wind-up bathtub toys, waiting for some
bather’s hand to point them in the right direction or sink them with
mischievous glee. Even when the destroyers’ circular paths took them closer to
shore and they added their five-inch guns to the bombardment, they looked
comically ineffectual.

A score of transport ships sat just off the reefs,
disgorging the first wave of GIs onto landing craft for the three-mile dash to
the beach. Melvin Patchett put down his binoculars but kept his steely gaze on
the sea. “Correct me if I’m wrong, sir,” he said, “but wasn’t that transport
convoy a whole lot bigger when we got put on them PT boats?”

“Yeah,” Jock replied, “I believe it was.”

“And what happened to the aircraft carrier that was with
us?”

“Wish I knew, Top.”

Trevor Shaw put down his telescope and shook his head. “I
had been told MacArthur’s Seventh Fleet was a modest force, but I was expecting
much more than this.” He paused before adding, “Perhaps that sea battle we
witnessed took a great toll of the Japanese, as well.”

Jock replied, “It better have.”

By 0700, the planes of the Japanese Army and Navy that managed
to escape the bombardment of their airfield had joined the battle. Some
aircraft went for the American warships, the rest for the landing craft. They
had their way for a few minutes, until the sky to the south blackened with
fleets of aircraft from the US Fifth Air Force. P-38 and P-40 fighters dropped
to low altitude and scattered the Japanese planes.

The American heavy bombers—B-17s and B-24s—stayed high and
barely visible, scattering their loads on Fairfax Harbor and the airfield
beyond the town. When they were done, the B-25 medium bombers attacked at low
level what little Japanese shipping they could find. All three of the Japanese
destroyers still in harbor were heavily damaged, one exploding from a direct
hit as it tried to pass through the narrow harbor entrance. The other two
escaped, limping off to the west. They were trailing so much thick, black smoke
it seemed unlikely they’d be fit for combat anytime soon.

Jock said, “Those damned hills ringing the harbor are
blocking our view of the near-side docks. I see a lot of smoke over there, but
I don’t know what it’s coming from.”

“Don’t worry, Captain,” Shaw replied, “If there had been
capital ships at anchor there, we’d still see their masts. Some smaller vessels
have definitely been hit, though. Transports and troop barges, perhaps.”

Radio communication with the OP had switched to a voice
channel, and it was now in direct contact with the invasion’s Fire Support Center.
Jock smiled as he announced, “Men, we can finally do the job we were sent here
to do.”

The first wave of American planes couldn’t stay around very
long, especially the shorter-ranged P-40s. They had flown over 300 miles from
the tip of Australia and needed to keep enough fuel in reserve to fly back.
That gave the fighters 10 minutes or less over the invasion beach, and once
that time was up, they turned south for home. The second wave was nowhere on
the horizon.

While gazing through binoculars, Jock said, “Looks like our
Navy’s knocked out that coastal battery at the harbor entrance. Let’s get their
big guns back on the airfield…nobody’s damaged it much, and it looks like the
Jap planes are trying to land and lick their wounds. Here’s the coordinates…”

Trevor Shaw, now manning the radio, called in the fire
mission. The link from ground observer to guns was surprisingly fast. Within a
minute, a cruiser’s eight-inch guns belched smoke. Fifteen seconds later, the
rounds impacted on the northern edge of the airfield, tearing up nothing but
the ground.

“Okay, let’s adjust fire,” Jock called to Shaw, “left four
hundred, drop two hundred.”

Shaw asked, “We are talking yards, are we not?”

“Yes, Commander. Yards. But you don’t have to say it.
They’ll know. It’s procedure.”

A minute later, six shells tore a parking ramp apart and
several airplanes with it.

“Outstanding,” Jock said, “Now, left one hundred.”

After another 60 seconds, several more parked aircraft were
reduced to rubble.

“All right,” Jock said, inching his binoculars to a new
target. “Let’s move on to the other side of the airfield.”

The GIs on the perimeter passed around their squad leaders’
binoculars to watch the show unfolding before them. They wanted to cheer every
time a round from the ships’ guns blew something apart, but they dared not make
a sound. The Japanese infantry they had skirmished with last evening were
probably still out there, somewhere.

Patchett scanned the terrain below the mountain—the
lowlands—the very ground the invasion troops would occupy once they hit the
beach. The landing craft were still a mile offshore; it would be almost 10
minutes before the first GI boots set foot on Papuan soil.

“Hard to believe,” Patchett said, “but I don’t see any Nips
coming out of Port Moresby to take our guys on. Maybe all that stuff about the
Japs not wanting to fight on the beaches is right, after all.”

Jock laughed and said, “I’m glad the G2 was finally right
about something. Any sign of our friends from last night?”

“Can’t see any infantry. They could still be hiding down
there in the trees…or not. That artillery ain’t there anymore, though.” He
scanned the terrain with binoculars again. “Hey, wait a minute…I see some
cannon on the move…three, maybe four, with horses, down closer to the beach.
They could be the ones from last night.”

“I don’t see them,” Jock said.

Patchett held his hand out before his face, with two fingers
extended straight up: a makeshift distance scale. “See the knob at about one o’clock, sir? Go two fingers to the right…”

Jock did the same with his hand. “Oh, yeah, there they are.
Good eyes, Top.”

Patchett checked his map. “I believe I’ll introduce those
Nip cannon-cockers to some naval gunfire.” He reeled off the fire mission
particulars for Shaw to relay.

Two minutes later, the first round from a destroyer landed
wide of the Japanese battery.

Patchett fumed over the Navy’s slow response. “Gotta be a
little quicker than that, swabbies,” he said. “Fucking target ain’t gonna stand
still for you. I’ll lead ’em a little bit…Left two hundred, add one hundred.”

The second round came faster and hit closer, bringing the
Japanese column to a halt.

“Now that’s more like it,” Patchett said. “Tell ’em to fire
for effect, three salvos, if you please.” Shaw relayed the corrections, and
they all paused to watch the results of their handiwork.

They never got to see the deadly impact of those rounds.
Their heads were down—volleys of rifle and machine gun fire were ripping across
the perimeter from all directions. Those bullets that didn’t splash around the
GIs struck high in the trees, pruning them like some crazed arborist. The
screaming voices from the walkie-talkie confirmed it: a large number of troops
were attacking the perimeter on all sides.

Both platoons were begging for mortar fire around the entire
perimeter, a demand the two-tube mortar section could never fulfill.

With a calmness belying the chaos around them, Jock
commanded, “Put the mortars on Wharton’s sector.”

Patchett wasn’t sure he agreed. “Why’s that, sir?” he asked.

“Wharton needs it more. The Greek’s side of the mountain
isn’t so steep…he’s got better fields of fire for the automatic weapons.”

The noise of a hundred weapons firing at once could scare a
man to death all by itself. Lieutenant Bob Wharton was almost there—with the
first thunderous volley he had pissed himself and crapped his pants. The woods
seemed to be full of Japanese, screaming unintelligible taunts at the GIs as
they ran and fired. As soon as one attacker fell, another seemed to take his
place.

Bob Wharton’s mind snapped to a conclusion: We’re going
to be overrun.

Fight or flight became a very easy choice. Wharton
slithered from his hole and low-crawled up the slope like his life depended on
it, because at that moment he truly believed it did.

He hadn’t crawled far before remembering, just for a second,
he was a platoon leader. Without slowing down, he began to scream, “FIRST
PLATOON, PULL BACK, PULL BACK.”

Most of his men couldn’t hear him—they were making much too
much noise firing their weapons and screaming back at the attackers. Or perhaps
they just had the good sense to stay safe in their holes.

A few of his men, wild with fear, did hear their lieutenant.
They left their holes and fled up the hill on the dead run, not even bothering
to crawl. They only made it a few steps before Japanese bullets cut them down.

A private from Sergeant Mike McMillen’s squad tried to run.
He couldn’t get out of his hole, though—McMillen was sitting on the ledge, his
foot on the GI’s helmet, pinning him in place. “Any one of you assholes run,
I’ll kill you myself,” the sergeant said. “Now keep fucking firing. This is a
goddamn turkey shoot.”

Just then, as if to punctuate his comment, two American
mortar rounds landed just down the slope, shredding a cluster of Japanese like
they were paper. Farther down the perimeter, a Japanese soldier tried to hurl a
grenade, only to have it rebound off a tree and erase him and his squad. The
GIs employed their grenades differently. What Patchett had told them that first
day on the mountain suddenly made a world of sense: Don’t throw ’em…let ’em
roll downhill into the Japs.

The Americans’ prisoner, Lieutenant Oshida, finally worked
the gag loose from his mouth. He was still bound to a tree and blindfolded, but
he didn’t need his eyes to know what was going on. He began to scream like a
trumpet in Japanese, and at first the Americans thought the enemy must be
inside the perimeter. But the only enemy they could see were the stacks of
bodies piled in front of them and those beyond still charging up the mountain.

He kept up his tirade for nearly 10 seconds, until there was
a single pistol shot, lost in the mayhem and noise of the attack. His voice
abruptly went silent.

Just as quickly, the attack ended. Those Japanese still
standing turned and fled back down the mountain like they had seen the devil.
Even with naval gunfire still sounding in the distance and aircraft buzzing
overhead, it had never seemed so quiet.

The Japanese mortar fire they expected in the wake of the
attack never came. Cautiously, the GIs crept from their fighting holes to have
a better look at the aftermath.

There were three Americans dead, all from Wharton’s platoon.
Their bodies were sprawled close together well inside the perimeter.

“They was running, sir,” Patchett said to Jock, his words
full of distaste. “I seen it too many times before.”

Jock almost expected his first sergeant to spit on the
bodies.

Lieutenant Wharton was standing close by, looking none the
worse for wear, as the medic wrapped his wounded arm in a bandage. “I tried to
make them stand and fight, sir,” Wharton said to Jock, “but they didn’t
listen.”

Mike McMillen heard every word his lieutenant said, now and
during the fight. He dared not speak what he was thinking: You lying sack of
bullshit.

The prisoner, Lieutenant Oshida, was dead, a bullet wound to
the chest.

“I shot him,” Sergeant Brody said, wincing with pain from
his broken collar bone. “He wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I couldn’t do anything
else laid up like this.” When neither Jock nor Patchett said anything in reply,
Brody suddenly seemed very worried. “Am I in trouble, sir?” he asked, his voice
almost a whisper.

“For what?”

“You know…killing a prisoner.”

“No, Sergeant,” Jock replied. “Take it easy. You’re not in
any trouble.”

Gabriel Lakai squatted next to the dead prisoner. “I think I
know what he was saying, Captain Jock. It was a warning. He kept saying
something about many soldiers…and then he said a number.”

“A number? What was it?” Jock asked.

“Two hundred, I think.”

Patchett laughed out loud, a roar that lasted a few moments.
Catching his breath, he said, “You mean he was warning his buddies that there
was two hundred of us?”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” Gabriel replied.

“Now don’t that beat all? That blindfold had some benefits
we didn’t figure on.”

Theo Papadakis walked in from the perimeter with more
information: “Speaking of counting, we stopped counting the dead Japs at fifty,
sir. There’s a couple wounded pretty bad…Doc’ll take a look at ’em, but it
don’t look like they’ll make it.”

Throughout everything, Trevor Shaw had remained steadfast at
the radio set. Jock walked over and asked, “You think your natives are up for
burying a whole lot more Japs, Commander?”

Without looking up from the message he copied, Shaw replied,
“Nothing would please them more, Captain.”

Chapter Sixteen

Day 5

All through the morning, Jock and his men watched wave after
anemic wave of GIs come ashore near Barakau. The landings were unopposed by
Japanese infantry and, save for the early sorties by Japanese aircraft,
unmolested by enemy action. The few enemy planes still in the area were driven
off when a second wave of American fighters appeared just after 0800. After
that, the only signs of Japanese aircraft they saw from their vantage point at
the OP were the twisted metal skeletons still smoldering on the Port Moresby
airfield.

The only other menace the Japanese tried to employ was a
number of field artillery batteries positioned on the east side of Port Moresby.
They put up a steady curtain of fire that fell well short of the invasion
beaches; they simply didn’t have the 12-mile range necessary. The large-caliber
weapons that could reach that far—the fortress guns defending Fairfax Harbor—had
all been rendered useless by the naval and air bombardment.

“Maybe MacArthur picked a good spot for an invasion after
all,” Patchett said before his voice turned sour, “if you can call that
circle-jerk down there an invasion.”

From the distant OP, the Japanese batteries were invisible,
blending into the landscape until they fired. Once that happened, their location
was no longer a secret. The flash and smoke gave it away, no matter how well it
was camouflaged. Jock’s calls for fire on the batteries were refused by Fire Support
Center: Negative, negative. We’ve got higher priority targets, they
explained.

Patchett found that maddening. “They’re gonna be pretty damn
high priority once them dog-faces get a couple of miles closer,” he said, “if
they ever get their asses off that beach. On the bright side, though, those
batteries can’t reach us right now, neither.”

It was impossible to count accurately from the OP, but Jock
estimated in the two hours since the first landing craft dropped their ramps,
no more than several thousand men were hunkered down on shore. “That’s only a
few battalions,” he said. “If they’re going to drop off a whole division at
this pace, it’s going to take all damned day.”

Patchett added, “Don’t see much artillery getting off them
landing craft. A couple of pack howitzers…that’s about it. I tell you what,
though…they’d better be bringing some ammo for us. One more contact with the
Nips and we’ll be throwing rocks.”

“I sure hope the rest of our company is getting off one of
those boats,” Jock said.

“Amen to that, sir.”

Jock pointed to a trail leading away from Astrolabe. “Look
over there…I’ll bet that’s what’s left of that Jap company who took us on.
Looks like they’re running back to Port Moresby.”

“Wanna lob some mortar rounds at ’em, sir?”

“Nah, let’s save those few rounds we’ve got left, Top. We
still might need them real bad.”

Patchett cast a glance at the three dead Americans wrapped
in ground sheets and laid out in a neat row. He cleared his throat and asked,
“You want to bury them up here, sir?”

“No…let’s get them down to a CCP today. Sergeant Brody,
too.”

“That’s one hellacious walk, sir…and can we afford to lose a
bunch of litter bearers for lord knows how long?”

“Yeah, I know all that, Top. That’s why I’m going to ask the
commander to have his natives do it. Send an NCO with them to supervise…they
can bring back supplies and ammo.”

“How about Lieutenant Wharton, sir?”

“He’s not hurt bad. He’ll be staying.”

Sergeant Mike McMillen had something on his mind. “Can I
talk with you for a minute, Top?” he asked Patchett. “On the q.t.?”

Once they were out of everyone else’s earshot, Patchett asked,
“What’s the problem, Mike?”

“Lieutenant Wharton, Top…he’s so full of shit. He wasn’t
trying to stop them three guys from running away…They were following him! He
was running, too.”

“That’s a pretty serious accusation, Mike.”

“I know what I heard, Top. And I know what I saw.”

“Be careful here, son. Things ain’t always what they seem to
be when you’re taking fire.”

“Maybe so…but that man’s a liar. And a coward. You can smell
it on him.”

They stole a glance at Lieutenant Wharton, who was busy shuffling
personnel around the perimeter. There were gaps to fill now that three of his
men were dead. He wore a white bandage wrapped around his wounded upper arm.
Some blood had seeped through; from a distance, it resembled a Japanese
armband. Or a Japanese flag.

Patchett seemed lost in thought for a few moments. When he
was done, he put his hand on McMillen’s shoulder and said, “You said you wanted
to keep this on the q.t., right?”

“Yeah, Top.”

“Okay then, it’s duly noted.” Patchett cast one more furtive
glance at Wharton before adding, “Now, Lieutenant Hero over there’s got
hisself a red badge of courage…so go slow about who you’re calling a coward,
son.”

“But, Top—”

“Take it easy, son…I already heard what you said. I’ll keep
a good eye out…and if it turns out the man ain’t worth a flip, the captain will
deal with it. I guaran-damn-tee it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Day 5

The battle lines—if they could be called that—changed little
during that first day of Operation Long Jump. By late afternoon, the American
and Japanese ground troops were still more than 12 miles apart. Landing craft
were still shuttling men and supplies to the beach, hindered only occasionally
by the brief appearances of Japanese aircraft flying in from distant bases.

American units had finally begun to move off the beach, but
only laterally, in the direction of Astrolabe. Those on the OP could see no
attempt by those troops to move closer to the Japanese defenses around Port
Moresby. It was as if the Japanese artillery shells landing several miles in
front of them were sufficient to keep the Americans in check.

“Them GIs look like they’re on a goddamn admin bivouac,”
Melvin Patchett said.

The Fire Support Center had finally—and reluctantly—agreed
to a fire mission against one of the batteries, detailing the mission to a
cruiser lurking several miles offshore. The adjustments of fire Jock called
for, though, were so slow in coming the battery picked up stakes and relocated,
vanishing into the rainforest for the time being. Its new position wouldn’t be
revealed until it decided to fire again.

Just before 1700, there was a shout from the perimeter:
“Sergeant Hadley’s coming back…and he brought company.”

To the men on the OP, it was more than just company
coming: it was a welcome parade. “Look who I found,” Hadley called once inside
the perimeter. Emerging from the woods behind him, in twos and threes, was the
rest of Company C—Charlie Company. The column of over 70 men wound its
way up the slope, each man lugging a resupply of rations or ammo. The native
porters Hadley had led to the casualty collection point were loaded with even
more supplies.

Lieutenant Leon Grossman, Jock’s XO, dropped the heavy box
of radio batteries he brought up the mountain, snapped to attention, and
saluted Jock. With a big smile on his face, he said, “Charlie Company Minus
reporting for duty, sir.”

Jock returned the salute and shook Grossman’s hand. “Good to
see you, Lee. Did you lose anyone?”

“No, sir. All present.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Jock said.

“Yeah…Sergeant Hadley filled me in on our casualties. Damn
shame…”

Jock watched in amazement as the pile of supplies the men
carried up the mountain grew. “How’d you lay hands on all this stuff, Lee?”
Jock asked.

“You wouldn’t believe how disorganized it is on the beach,
sir, like no one knows what the hell’s going on. When we ran into Hadley, we
didn’t see any point hanging around, waiting to get handed some shit detail. He
said you guys were low on everything…and all this stuff was just sitting there.
So we grabbed it and started walking. Oh, one other thing, sir…we brought a
visitor. He’s bringing up the rear, if he doesn’t keel over from exhaustion
first. I’m really sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”

It took another 10 minutes before the visitor made it to the
OP. Once there, the man—a corpulent, red-faced major—bent deep from the waist
and struggled to catch his breath after the long climb. The major carried his
.45 pistol in a spit-shined holster, hanging from the too-tight web belt
trying—and failing—to cinch his girth. He had two men with him: an old tech
sergeant who looked almost as exhausted as the major and a young artillery
lieutenant, barely out of his teens, who still looked fit.

Jock stood next to the doubled-over major, listening to him
wheeze, waiting for an opportunity to introduce himself. He decided to take a
step back, in case the fat man had to vomit: I’m filthy enough right now. I
don’t need some desk jockey’s puke on me, too.

With a magisterial flourish, the major finally rose and
stood ramrod straight. His face registered nothing but displeasure as he
surveyed the OP and the grimy, exhausted GIs manning it. “Your men are a
disgraceful looking bunch, Captain…and I’m going to court-martial that Sergeant
Hadley,” the major said.

“What are the charges, sir?” Jock asked.

“Willfully disobeying a superior officer, plain and simple.
I told that man none of his niggers were to touch any of my gear”—he pointed to
a confused native holding a duffel bag—“but what does that look like to you, my
young captain?”

Jock noticed the look of terror on Gabriel Lakai’s face as
he tried to hide behind Ginny Beech. “Very well, Major,” Jock said. “Feel free
to file any charges you like. But allow me to introduce myself, sir. I’m
Captain Jock Miles. This is Charlie Company, First of the Eighty-First, and I’m
its commander. May I ask who you are and what you’re doing in my position?”

“I’d mind my tone, Captain, or I’ll be adding charges
against you, as well. Now, for your information, my name is Major B. Jefferson
Conwell. I’m the S2 for Regiment.”

“What happened to Major Foster, sir? I thought he was the
intelligence officer.”

“He’s missing, presumed dead, my young captain, along with
Colonel Snow, his whole damn regimental staff, and a lot of other fine men,
too. Their ships got blown up.”

“In that sea battle a couple of nights ago, sir?”

“Oh, you’re very well informed, aren’t you, Captain?”

“We watched it, sir,” Jock said, pointing out over the Coral
Sea.

“Well, goody for you. And now for the reason I’m here. I’m
taking over your little observation post, Captain. It’ll make a cozy little eye
in the sky for my little shop, won’t it?” He pointed to Ginny and
Commander Shaw. “These civilians”—he made the word sound dirty—“I want
them out of here before nightfall. And take all these niggers with you, too.”

Trevor Shaw seemed far too polite as he asked, “I beg your
pardon, sir? I believe our presence was requested by your command.”

“Makes no nevermind what you people believe. You’ll be gone
from here or I’ll place you under arrest.”

Ginny Beech didn’t bother acting polite. With fire in her
eyes, she started toward the major. Patchett intercepted her before she had
taken three steps. “Let us handle this, Ginny,” he whispered as she tried to
struggle out of his grasp. “You and the commander ain’t going nowhere. We’ll
take care of this joker. Just hush your mouth, okay?”

Unseen by the major, Patchett winked to Jock, flashed a thumbs
up, and set off toward the north side of the perimeter: Papadakis’s
territory.

A smug smile on his florid face, Major Conwell pulled out a
map and began a tutorial on Operation Long Jump. “This is Douglas’s new plan,
Captain.”

“Douglas, sir?” Jock asked. “You mean General MacArthur?”

“Of course that’s who I mean. Now don’t interrupt me again,
young man.” Conwell began to make sweeping motions across the map with his
hand. “The Thirty-Second Division, minus the several battalions of infantry and
artillery lost at sea, will push into Port Moresby and secure the airfield and
harbor—”

Conwell stopped talking. He could see the look of confusion
on Jock’s face. “You’re just begging to ask me a question, aren’t you, Captain
Miles?”

“What happened to the Australians, Major? Wasn’t this
supposed to be a double envelopment, with us as the eastern pincer and the
Aussies on the west?”

“It’ll be weeks before we have the tonnage to land any
Aussie troops, Captain. We lost too many ships out there in the Coral Sea.”

“So we’re throwing in one weakened division that’s short on
artillery against a well dug-in Japanese division?”

Conwell snickered. “You catch on fast, young captain. But Douglas
believes one American is worth three of them Jap sumbitches. Our boys are going
to drive them out of Port Moresby and pin them against the swamps to the west,
the sea to the south, and the mountains to the north.”

Jock couldn’t believe the nonsense he was hearing. “More
than likely, sir, the Japanese will just pump in reinforcements from over those
mountains and flank—”

Major Conwell interrupted with a roar of laughter. “Nobody’s
coming over those mountains, Captain Miles. Douglas calls the Owen Stanleys an impenetrable
barrier.”

“Sir, that’s going to come as quite a shock to the
Australians who evacuated over those mountains, with the Japs on their heels
every step of the way.”

“Nonsense, young captain. Nonsense. These Aussies still
haven’t learned the difference between fighting and running. They talk about
that Kokoda Track like it’s some major thoroughfare. It’s a dirt trail,
Captain, a li’l ol’ dirt—”

The major’s words were cut off by the frightening chatter of
outgoing machine gun fire from Papadakis’s side of the perimeter. A score of
rifles quickly joined the nerve-shattering racket. There was a shout of Fire
in the hole!—Hadley’s voice—and a few seconds later, several grenades
exploded down the slope beyond the perimeter. Through the orgy of gunfire,
those on the OP—now face down in the dirt—could hear the dull plumff of
mortars firing. They could hear more boisterous shouts, too: GIs yelling things
like Die, Jap! and Take that, you Nip bastard!

It took the mortar rounds about 10 seconds to come back to
earth, the dull crump of their explosions sounding a bit too close for
comfort. The rifle and machine gun fire dwindled and, with the sound of the
last few rounds still echoing, finally died.

When Jock lifted his head, he saw Patchett calmly walking
his way. When he got close, the first sergeant winked again and flashed a quick
smile.

“We gave them yellow bastards a right whipping, sir,”
Patchett said, testifying like a hellfire and brimstone preacher. “But they’ll
be back. Them little sons of bitches always come back.”

Major Conwell struggled to get back to his feet, losing his
helmet in the process. His holster had slid around the major’s ample belly and
now hung over his crotch, like a floppy codpiece, its spit shine ruined. His
sergeant and lieutenant regained their composure and began to help the
flustered, fussing major put himself back together.

If the major’s face was florid before, it was positively
iridescent now. “Sergeant,” he barked to his NCO, “we’re returning to HQ on the
double.” He was already making his way to the path down the mountain as he
spoke.

Still trying to suppress his laughter, Patchett called out,
“Sir…your duffel bag!”

The major’s pace did not slow. He just waved his arm over
his head as if saying goodbye to his gear forever. His confused lieutenant
finally picked up the duffel and hurried to follow his fleeing boss.

Trying not to laugh, too, Jock called out, “Major, can I
offer you an escort squad? The Japs are everywhere, you know.”

Conwell didn’t bother to answer. He just kept walking as
fast as the steep slope permitted. When the major was finally out of earshot,
everyone on the OP collapsed in laughter.

When he was able to speak again, Jock said, “Well done,
Top.”

“Well, sir, since we’re flush with ammo again”—he tipped a
salute to Lieutenant Grossman—“I figured it couldn’t hurt to stage a training
exercise, especially if it’s gonna send some chubby-assed, pencil-pushing
bootlicker running home to his mama…with all due respect, of course, sir.”

Chapter Eighteen

Day 5/Day 6

Night fell, and the 32nd Division still had not
taken a step closer to the Japanese at Port Moresby. The men on the OP heard
nothing to suggest they were in the middle of a war—no gun shots, no artillery
fire, no airplanes. Just the sounds of the forest and the occasional, faint
grinding of gears as American vehicles lurched over difficult terrain in
blackout conditions.

Still, it was restful. Those not on watch found they could
actually get some sleep. They felt more secure; it was good having the whole
company back together again. They were able to expand the perimeter: Charlie
Company now commanded almost half a mile of the ridge along Astrolabe’s peak.

“Too bad this damn ridge is fifteen miles long,” Patchett
said, “but at least now, covering as much ground as we do, it’ll be a lot
harder for the Japs to take us by surprise.”

The enemy wasn’t the only one capable of surprises, though.
The new sunrise brought its own—a most unnerving one: the Coral Sea was empty
of ships. The US 7th Fleet was gone.

“Ain’t this just fucking dandy,” Patchett said. “Any ol’ Jap
warship can sail right up and paste the living daylights out of us.”

“And they probably will,” Jock replied.

Shaken by the specter of an empty sea, Trevor Shaw said,
“There wasn’t a word over the radio last night about any withdrawal, just this
message from Javelin Six for you, Captain.”

“Javelin Six?” Patchett said. “Ain’t that Regiment?”

Jock glanced at the message before stuffing it in his
pocket. “Yep…they want me to report there ASAP.”

Patchett cringed. “You think you’re in for an ass-chewing
over that major we scared off?”

Jock shrugged and replied, “Wouldn’t that be hot shit?”
Pulling on his field gear, he added, “Give me two guys, Top, in case I need
runners.”

The first person Jock met at Regiment—a world-weary master
sergeant—gave him the first piece of bad news: First Battalion—Charlie
Company’s battalion—didn’t exist anymore. Jock’s men, high up on Astrolabe,
were all that was left.

“The rest,” the sergeant said, “are missing…lost at
sea…presumed dead.”

The second piece of bad news: not only had the 7th
Fleet departed, but they took tons of still-unloaded supplies—much-needed
supplies—with them. The 32nd Division was not only short men, it was
now short just about everything.

There was one glimmer of good news, though: the new
regimental commander, Colonel Charles Murdock, was an old friend. Chuck Murdock
had been Jock’s battalion commander in the Louisiana War Games of 1940. Jock
could see a few years and another promotion to full bird had done nothing to
change Murdock—he was still a no-nonsense straight shooter.

“I had to see it was you with my own eyes, Jock,” Colonel
Murdock said, pumping Jock’s hand with great vigor. “I can’t believe a West
Point man like you is still just a company commander. Hell, son, you were a shooting
star! You should be commanding a battalion, at least.” He grimaced before
adding, “I guess technically you are, at the moment, being the highest-ranking
survivor of First Battalion. But what happened to you, boy?”

“Let’s just say there were a few incidents since we
last spoke, sir.”

Chuck Murdock shrugged and said, “Yeah, I heard some
stories. But life goes on, Jock…and so does this damned war. Step into my
office.”

Once inside the command tent, Murdock continued, “Let’s cut
the bullshit…I need an S2, and I need him right now.”

“I thought Major Conwell was S2. He came up—”

“Save it, Jock. I know all about his little mountain
climbing expedition. Damn fool wasn’t fit to walk around the block.”

“Is he relieved, sir?”

“Relieved? Hardly. No, Jock, he’s flat on his back at the
aid station. Coronary thrombosis, the doc tells me.”

Jock bit his lip. Oh shit…we gave that fat fuck a heart
attack.

“But anyway, Captain, I need a new intelligence officer…and
I need a good one. I reckon you know more than anyone about what’s going on in
this godforsaken place…and I don’t give a damn how you got on MacArthur’s shit
list.”

Jock remembered another thing about Chuck Murdock: he didn’t
take no for an answer.

“One request, Colonel?”

“Shoot.”

“Can I have Charlie Company as my intel and recon outfit?”

“Good idea,” Murdock replied. “Done. But I’ve a question for
you, Jock…why didn’t you ask if the job came with a major’s leaf attached?
Isn’t a promotion the first thing all us ring-knockers from the Point expect
when offered some hot-shit job?”

Jock shrugged. “To be honest, sir, that’s not really
important to me.”

“So you won’t really mind if I promote you, then?”

“That’s your prerogative, sir.”

A large-scale map of the Port Moresby area hung from an
easel. The colonel stepped to it and said, “Now show me how to not get
thrown right off this rock.”

Chapter Nineteen

Day 6

PFC Bucky Reynolds was never so relieved to be back on
Astrolabe. At least there, he found some semblance of safety in numbers: I
can hide inside the platoon. Bucky had been horrified when Sergeant Hadley
picked him to be one of Captain Miles’s runners. The fact that the other runner
selected was Corporal Bogater Boudreau hadn’t made it any better: That crazy
Cajun’ll get me killed one way or another. I just know it. The thought of
the three of them plodding down the mountain all alone—with Japs
everywhere!—upset his stomach so badly he couldn’t partake of the hot C rations
offered at Regimental Headquarters Mess.

“No problem,” Boudreau told him, tossing a steaming can of
meat and beans from hand to hand until it cooled enough to hold and open. “I’ll
eat yours, too.”

Even worse, he and Boudreau had to go back up the mountain
alone. Captain Miles had some new job all of a sudden and would be staying at
HQ. And it was getting dark—all Bucky could do was follow Boudreau because he
had no earthly idea where they were.

Boudreau laughed at him: “How the hell could you be lost?
Just keep walking uphill. You’ll get to the top sooner or later. And what the
hell’s so bad about this mountain, anyway? If we wasn’t up here, we’d be down
there wrasslin’ crocs…or maybe we’d be fish food like the rest of the
battalion. Just do us both a favor…try not to piss yourself, okay?”

As they sat, eating a K ration supper, Lieutenant Bob
Wharton had one question of Lee Grossman, his new company commander: “Who’s
going to be the new XO?”

“No one,” Grossman replied. “We’re not going to have an XO
for the time being. There are no replacement officers available. If I move up
one of you platoon leaders, I’m stuck with one platoon led by a sergeant. I
don’t want to do that unless I absolutely have to. It’s not fair to that
platoon’s men.”

“I couldn’t agree more, sir,” Melvin Patchett said, much
relieved.

Wharton replied, “Well, I sure don’t agree with either of
you.” He stood there, arms folded, like some tower of defiance. One thing had
always been true in Bob Wharton’s tall world: elevation equaled superiority.

In Lee Grossman’s world, only brains mattered. He stood,
pulled Wharton aside, and said, “I’m really sorry, Bob, but you can’t be XO
right now.”

Wharton took a step closer, staring down at his new
commander. “That’s just dumb, Grossman. Your first decision as CO and it’s
stupid. About what I’d expect from an OCS man.”

Lee Grossman didn’t yield an inch. He would never have made
first-string fullback at Columbia if he felt intimidated by every man on the
football field bigger than him. “Lieutenant,” he said, “didn’t West Point teach
you that smart isn’t measured in inches? Now get back to your platoon. That’s
an order. And try not to be such a schmuck.”

“Is that an order, too?”

“No, Bob…it’s just good advice.”

Taking charge of an organization never comes easy, even for
an Army colonel. Jock’s first meeting as a member of Chuck Murdock’s brand-new
regimental staff was proving that old piece of wisdom in spades. Just four
short days ago, Murdock and every member of his staff—with the exception of
Jock Miles—had been in Australia, doing other jobs. They’d been jerked away,
flown by flying boat to an invasion fleet still licking its wounds from a
vicious mauling by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and forced to don dead men’s
shoes. One imperative drove it all: MacArthur decreed his reclaiming of Port
Moresby would proceed as planned and on schedule.

A minor setback, MacArthur’s Headquarters at Brisbane
had labeled the debacle in the Coral Sea. The only thing that had prevented a major
disaster, Jock supposed, was the Japanese fleet having to withdraw to
refuel and rearm. I wonder what Brisbane calls the Navy
abandoning us at the mere suggestion of Japanese ships on the horizon?

There didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to organize
from scratch an invasion force that was already in shooting distance of the
enemy. A brief overview of the regiment’s problems looked something like this:

The Adjutant (S1) had no idea of the exact number of troops
ashore. He still did not even have a complete list of what units had made it off
the beach.

The Operations Officer (S3) knew the attack plan—the frontal
assault to which a higher headquarters habitually defaults—was a recipe for
disaster.

The Supply and Logistics Officer (S4) had nothing but a
sketchy idea of the status of ammunition and food supplies across the regiment.

The Air Force Liaison Officer insisted his Air Force needed
24 hours advance warning for any mission. After all, he explained, the
planes did have to come all the way from Australia, the closest
airfield there being over 300 miles away.

The Naval Liaison Officer had the easiest job of all: there
was, at present, no Navy with which to liaise—and there was no estimate of its
time of return.

Yet, MacArthur demanded they attack, immediately if not
sooner.

Jock, the Intelligence Officer (S2), watched as frustrated
officers quibbled over details of which they had no real grasp: I’m lucky, I
guess. At least I’ve had a good view from the mountain of what we’re up
against.

Colonel Murdock commanded his staff to be silent. “I’ve
heard enough, gentlemen,” he said. “Everybody has problems, but the important
question is what are you doing about them? Now, everything we hear from
Division boils down to this…they expect us to frontally assault Port Moresby,
which is defended by a well dug-in force possibly greater in number than us.
What’s more, we’re expected to do it without the Australians…their part in this
operation has been put on hold indefinitely. Needless to say, I’m uneasy about
such an enterprise. Captain Miles, as intel officer, tell us what you know
about the Japanese defenses around Port Moresby.”

Jock didn’t bother stepping to the map as he said, “They
expect a frontal attack from the east. If we do that, we’ll get shellacked.”

The S3 wasn’t impressed. “Really, Captain,”—the
lieutenant colonel spoke Jock’s lesser rank with all the condescension he could
muster—“do you presume to know better than Division…and General MacArthur…how
to take an objective?”

“I don’t presume much of anything, sir, except I’m pretty
sure we’re looking at this all wrong.”

“Please…enlighten us, Captain,” the S3 said.

“Yes, Jock,” Colonel Murdock said in a tone far more
encouraging than his S3’s. “Let’s hear your ideas.”

Jock approached the big map. Pointer in hand, he began his
impromptu briefing: “We’ve been looking at the mountains of Papua, and
Astrolabe in particular, as a barrier and flank protector, but that’s a big
mistake. While Astrolabe has been a unique and valuable observation post, it
could be turned against us in a heartbeat.”

He ran the pointer across the map along the backslope of
Astrolabe. “Notice the widely spaced contour lines…the back side of the
mountain is not very steep…more like a mesa, a gently sloping plateau,
quite unlike the sharp front slope we’re looking at from the seaward side.”

He placed the pointer on the western edge of Astrolabe.
“Now, the mountain is really a long ridge…fifteen miles long…which stops
abruptly about twelve miles north of Port Moresby. Right there is a valley…a
deep notch…where the Laloki River runs through. The Aussie coast watcher I’m
working with knows that terrain like the back of his hand. It’s more than wide
enough for large troop movements, with vehicles, to pass through and gain the
backside of the mountain in force. From there, it would be no problem for a
Japanese battalion to push Charlie Company off the peak and command the high
ground once again. If they move their artillery up there, we’re all finished.
They could hit every square inch of our lines down here on the lowlands.”

The Air Force liaison officer shook his head. “If they tried
that…lining up guns on that ridge…Fifth Air Force would blow them to
smithereens.”

Jock didn’t flinch. “Sir,” he replied, “with all due respect
to the Air Force, we’ve told you exactly where their artillery is lined up now…and
you haven’t touched it. And by the time we wait twenty-four hours for your
planes to bomb them off the mountain, we’ll all be dead.”

Colonel Murdock stepped up to the map looking surprised,
like he was seeing its features for the first time. He sounded surprised, too:
“Are you proposing, Captain Miles, we turn the tables on the Japs with a
flanking movement from behind Astrolabe? Through this notch, as you call
it?” His fingers traced along that spot on the map as he spoke, their touch lingering
as if caressing a lover.

“Ridiculous!” the S3 said. “We’d need to put half the
regiment, with supplies, over that mountain. That’ll take a week or more just
to get into position.”

“The natives will be more than glad to carry the supplies
for us, sir,” Jock replied. “That’ll save days.”

Colonel Murdock took back the floor. “What the S3 is saying,
Captain Miles, is we don’t have the luxury of time. We are to attack tomorrow,
so there’s no time to do anything but stick with the plan Division has given us
and make it work somehow. I do agree with you on one point, though…we’ve got to
make sure no Japs slip around us through that notch. Can your boys from
Charlie Company handle that ’round the clock? We can’t have any of those little
bastards slipping through in the dark.”

“Affirmative, sir, Jock replied. “They can handle it.”

Chapter Twenty

Day 7

The radio message was quite clear: Charlie Company was to
reposition to the western end of Astrolabe and cover The Notch: the
valley through which the Laloki River flowed. It wasn’t much of a walk from
their present position—only seven miles—but that put them seven miles in front
of the American lines. Even though this was the day the attack was to be
launched and the sun had been up for an hour, those lines hadn’t moved an inch
yet.

Lee Grossman rationalized the order this way: If it had been
signed by anyone other than Captain Miles, I would have considered it the words
of a lunatic.

The company—130 men in four platoons, plus two dozen native
porters—walked in single file, with tactical dispersion of five yards between
men, along the narrow trail running down Astrolabe’s peak. From Bogater
Boudreau on point to the last native porter bringing up the rear, they
stretched like a snake for more than half a mile. Trevor Shaw and his radio
stayed with Grossman near the head of the column. Melvin Patchett stayed at the
back of the column, making sure there were no stragglers. Ginny Beech was right
behind him, leading the porters. There was no tactical dispersion between Top
and Ginny; they could almost hold hands.

Those two seem awfully chummy, Grossman thought. They were
even sharing chow before we set out. That was strange: Top usually keeps to
himself. Maybe the loneliness is finally getting to an old dog like him, too.

“May I make a suggestion, Lieutenant?” Trevor Shaw asked.

“Sure,” Grossman replied.

“We should set up two observation points this time, as far
apart as you feel comfortable.”

“Why’s that, Commander?”

“So we can triangulate our target spotting at night. We
won’t see anything but flashes of gunfire and shell impacts. With no visible
landmarks, it will be almost impossible to pinpoint their location.”

Wow…what a great idea, Grossman thought. Wish to hell I had
thought of it. We just need to iron out a few details.

“What’s the closest the two points can be and still be
effective, Commander?”

“To smooth out the probable error…about a mile,” Shaw
replied.

“Good,” Grossman said. “We’ll be able to communicate with
walkie-talkies. A mile is about their max range. I don’t want to use field
telephones. It’ll use up too much commo wire. We’ll probably need all we’ve got
to cover The Notch.”

The artillery forward observer Grossman had been promised
had yet to show up. Not really a problem, Grossman reasoned. Artillerymen can’t
see in the dark, either, and infantrymen can call for fire just as well. I
kinda wish we had the FO, though. Maybe he’d bring another long-range radio
with him. Good thing we’ve got that Aussie radio, because ours seem to be real
scarce…

And it doesn’t take an artilleryman to realize we’re walking
out of the range of our own guns. Sure, the seventy-five millimeter battery
near the base of Astrolabe could shoot this far along the lowlands…even hit
targets on the front slope of the mountain…but it couldn’t fire high-angle over
the peak to the backslope, which is exactly where we’ll need it if the Japs
break through The Notch.

Surely, they know this at HQ, right?

Colonel Murdock was less than pleased. He asked his air
liaison, “Where’s your fucking Air Force, Major?”

The air liaison was practically breathing down the neck of
his radio operator, who ignored him as he clamped the headphones against his
ears, struggling to separate information from static. Suddenly, he sat bolt
upright, nearly socking the major in the jaw with the crown of his head.

“I’ve got it,” the radio operator said. “They’re ten minutes
out.”

“About fucking time,” Murdock said.

In another corner of the command tent, Jock huddled over a
map with the division artillery commander, a bird colonel. “We’ve got to get
some of your bigger guns closer to Astrolabe, sir,” Jock said, sketching a
goose-egg on the map. “We need some one-oh-fives or one-five-fives somewhere in
here so they can shoot high-angle over the mountain if we need it. The
seventy-fives can’t do the job.”

Shaking his head, the divarty commander replied, “I’d love
to, Captain, but I need a road or a trail. There are too few up that way and no
engineers to make more right now. The big trucks pulling those guns will get
stuck in some gully before they go a mile. I can’t risk it…the bigger guns will
have to stay down by the coast, where it’s flatter and there are at least some
trails for the vehicles to drive on.”

Jock knew the colonel was right: You need engineers to build
roads. A division is supposed to have an engineer battalion…but all that’s made
it ashore so far is just an engineer company…and they’re clearing land for an
airfield five miles behind us, with hardly any of their heavy equipment. From
the OP, I think we saw a grand total of two bulldozers come off the landing
craft.

Blowing out a chest-full of exasperation, Jock said, “So
I’ve got an I and R company sitting way out here”—his finger fell on the map at
The Notch—“with no artillery support at all…all by their lonesome.”

“What about mortars?” the divarty commander asked.

“Yeah, they’ve got their sixty-millimeter section…but that’s
not going to be near enough if the Japs try to break out through The Notch,
sir.”

“How about putting a four-deuce mortar platoon from
battalion up there with them?”

“There is no battalion, sir. They got sunk. Besides,
we’d need just about every native porter and every mule in Papua to keep those
big bastards supplied with ammo. We can’t drive any vehicles up there,
remember?”

“Then how about this, Captain? Instead of going over,
how about we drive a battery around the east end of the mountain?”

“No go, sir. The terrain is much too rugged for vehicles
down there. It’s got to be high-angle fire over the mountain…or nothing.”

The divarty commander just shrugged. “Then I guess it’s
going to be nothing, Captain. I’ve got a whole division to support. I can’t
sacrifice them for your one little I and R company.”

Once they reached the western end of Astrolabe, Lee Grossman
set up his company like a giant horseshoe, with the curved toe overlooking The
Notch. The branches of the horseshoe—one facing north, one south—extended back
along the peak for hundreds of yards. The men were just starting to dig into
their new position when they saw the planes approaching from over the Coral Sea.
“Looks like our Air Force has finally decided to help us out,” Lee Grossman
said.

One squadron of heavy bombers droned high over Port Moresby,
followed by another squadron a few miles behind—20 planes in all. The throaty
purr of their engines was little more than a murmur to the GIs on Astrolabe.
They watched as anti-aircraft fire rose to meet the planes, the bursts looking
more like harmless tufts of soiled cotton than deadly threats. Bombs began to
splatter across the eastern outskirts of Port Moresby, the shock waves
radiating from hundreds of blasts mingling like the ripples of pebbles thrown
on a still pond. A few seconds later, the time-delayed rumble of their
explosions sounded like strings of giant firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It
was all over in less than two minutes; the bombers turned back toward Australia.
Other than one plane slowed by a smoking, feathered engine but still winging
its way home, the anti-aircraft gunners had claimed no victims.

“That looked really great,” Sergeant Tom Hadley said,
staring at the targeted ground through binoculars, “but do you think they hit
any Japs?”

“You got a point, Tom,” Melvin Patchett said. “Nothing’s
burning…not a damn thing. Looks like all they did was plow a lot of ground.”

“You remember the Cape, Top?” Hadley asked. “We call in a
squadron of bombers…and only one of them comes anywhere near the target and
another one bombs the shit out of us.”

“Don’t remind me, son.”

“The attack bombers should come next,” Lieutenant Grossman
said, “Our radio’s up on the net...start calling out targets for them.”

A few minutes later, Grossman’s words proved true. Sweeping
in so low over the coastal plain the men of Charlie Company actually looked
down on them, the attack bombers looked and sounded like a swarm of angry
insects. The American A-20s and Australian Hudsons passed over the GIs lined up
to attack and headed straight for the Japanese wall defending Port Moresby.

“Pretty gutsy move by those flyboys,” Hadley said, “flying so
low over those green troops. They’re lucky some of those dumbasses didn’t shoot
them down. How many planes are there, anyway? I can’t count them all.”

“A coupla dozen, at least,” Patchett replied. “Stop your
yammerin’ and watch where they hit.”

The attack planes unleashed their bombs and bullets and,
banking steeply, turned hard left for the safety of the sea.

“Hmm…not too bad,” Grossman said. “A few of them actually
hit where we asked for. Call for a repeat…they need to make another pass if
they can.”

“We’d better have them focus on those hilltops over there,
sir,” Hadley said. “They look like they’re crawling with Japs.”

“Yeah, fine…you guys call it in,” Grossman replied. “I’m
going to check on Lieutenant Wharton’s platoon down at The Notch.”

It wasn’t much of a walk to The Notch, and it gave Lee
Grossman a moment to watch the second strike by the attack bombers. Their
accuracy looked a little better this time: They must’ve hit an ammo dump or
two…there are actually secondary explosions and columns of thick black smoke
curving through the sky. My boys are doing a good job.

From the edge of Astrolabe’s peak, he had a spectacular view
of the valley that formed The Notch and the narrow plain stretching for miles
toward Port Moresby. Wharton and his men were a short way down the slope—on the
military crest—just where they should be: you can still see
everything but you can’t get silhouetted against the skyline.

Bob Wharton was having a meeting of his NCOs, his back to
his approaching company commander. The NCOs saw Grossman coming—even smiled in
recognition—but did nothing to alert Wharton, who roared on, deep in some
diatribe. Grossman got close enough to hear his words.

“I don’t care what that kike wants,” Wharton said, “we
aren’t setting up a listening post down there in the valley. I ain’t getting
any of us killed over his dumb ideas. If they come in force at night, we’ll
hear them up here, anyway.”

The silence that followed quickly grew uncomfortable for Bob
Wharton. He had expected agreement and gratitude from his sergeants. What he
was getting was eye-rolling and looks of expectant glee.

“A word, Lieutenant?” Lee Grossman said.

Now Wharton’s NCOs were elbowing each other with delight.
“AT EASE,” Wharton said to his men as he rose and turned to face the voice
behind him. He couldn’t tell which sergeant said it, but he heard one murmur,
“The Wart really shit in his mess kit this time.”

Slowly, Wharton walked up the slope to face his company
commander. He never got to say a word—Lee Grossman took full advantage of the
added height the slope afforded him and delivered a mighty uppercut to
Wharton’s midsection. As the tall man crumpled, Grossman delivered another to
his chin. When the dust settled, Bob Wharton had tumbled back to where his
delighted NCOs still stood.

Lee Grossman wasn’t just a college football player. He was a
Golden Gloves boxer, too.

“You all saw that,” Wharton said, his voice a frail wheeze.
“I’m pressing charges, Grossman.”

“Press all you like, Bob,” Grossman replied, “but I’ll be
back within the hour…and you’d better have that fucking listening post set up.”
He pointed to spools of telephone wire laying unused in a heap. “And with a
working telephone, too.”

As Lee Grossman walked away, Wharton again beseeched his
sergeants: “You’ll all make statements attesting to that assault on me.”

Mike McMillen shook his head. “We didn’t see nothing,
Lieutenant. We were too busy minding our own business.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Day 7

The Air Force had done its bit to soften the Jap defenses—Flying
Artillery, the Air Force liaison officer at Regimental HQ called it with
great cockiness. Now it was time for the ground attack to start. With a
collective groan, the division overcame its inertia and started creeping
forward.

The attack’s jump-off line spanned four miles from the sea’s
edge to the base of the mountain. Standing at that line, the men of 32nd
Division were 12 miles from the Japanese defensive positions. Those 12 miles
presented a variety of terrain to the three infantry regiments making up the
division: flat coastal plain that snaked around bays and inlets; rolling hills
farther inland; jagged foothills near the base of Astrolabe. The jagged
foothills belonged to the weakened 81st Regiment—Jock’s regiment,
missing its lost-at-sea battalion. Owing to their greatly diminished numbers,
the 81st had been given the narrowest sector of the front—little
more than a mile. They’re still going to have the toughest time, though, Jock
thought. Every one of those hills could be a Japanese bunker…and there are
dozens of them. Even worse, none of the handful of light tanks the division has
are attached to the 81st. Wrong terrain for them…they’d be much too
vulnerable. They’ll probably break down in the first mile, anyway.

Sitting in the Headquarters tent, waiting for news to filter
back, was more than Jock could bear.  He needed to be out among the troops—his
troops, preferably, the men of Charlie Company—but they were on a
mountaintop 10 miles away as the crow flies. As a soldier walks, though, they
were a whole day away. Even the radio-equipped jeep that came with his
regimental staff job wouldn’t get him there any faster: it couldn’t climb the
craggy face of Astrolabe.

Jock’s driver, a young PFC named Homer Flood, turned a
sickly shade of white when Jock announced his intention: they would be at the
front as the regiment went into battle. “Are you sure you want to do that,
sir?” Flood asked, his voice rising an octave.

“No better place to gather intelligence than from the
source,” Jock replied, “except maybe up on that mountain there.”

Homer Flood shuddered at the thought of being up on that
mountain with the I and R company, behind enemy lines. He had been
thrilled when first assigned as a headquarters driver: a nice, safe,
rear-echelon job. He was even more thrilled when he found himself
underemployed as that fat Major Conwell’s driver: that crazyman wanted to be
up on that mountain, too, but he never did figure out how to get the jeep up
there. Oh, well…he didn’t last long, anyway.

Now, Homer Flood had to contend with a new crazyman: this
Captain Miles, who’d rather be risking his ass up on point than sitting in some
nice, cozy HQ tent.

Just my damn luck, Flood thought, slumping down in
his driver’s seat, offering the jeep’s engine block more of his body to
protect.

Jock wondered what this advance might look like from the
mountain: Probably like some kind of turtle race, with bunches of GIs inching
along, sometimes going straight for the finish line, sometimes veering off
course and needing a helping hand to point them in the right direction. Turtles
would probably move faster, though. I doubt we’ll make contact with the Japs
before tomorrow.

The 32nd Division made six miles that first
day—halfway to Port Moresby. The only shots fired were by panicked GIs who
sprayed gunfire at livestock rummaging in the brush, low-flying friendly
aircraft, and an unfortunate native in a tree who was mistaken for a sniper and
killed. Even though the Americans were now in range of the Japanese artillery,
it remained silent. “They’re not sure where we are yet and they’re saving their
ammo,” Colonel Murdock said.

The division dug in as the sun set. Everyone expected there
would be sporadic gunfire in the night by the green, nervous GIs. Whatever phantoms
they’d be shooting at in the dark would not, hopefully, be shooting back.

They thought it was a late-night thunderstorm at first—a
bright flash, like lightning, right in front of them and then that deep rumble
a split-second later which shook the ground so violently it toppled GIs who were
standing. But there was no rain: the only thing falling from the sky was shells
from big guns. Two had landed in quick succession a few hundred yards in front
of the American line. An anxious silence followed for more than a minute—and
then two more landed farther inland but still short of the American line. All
across the 32nd Division, some GIs clutched their weapons tighter
and gazed warily into the darkness; some tried frantically to burrow deeper
into the earth. The rest froze in mortal terror.

PFC Homer Flood was in that last category. He was dozing in
the back seat of the jeep when the first round hit. Now he was wide awake but
curled into a quivering ball on the jeep’s floorboard, blocking Jock’s access
to the radio.

“MOVE, FLOOD,” Jock said, but Private Flood didn’t budge.
Jock grabbed him by the web belt and dragged the terrified young man out of the
way. Finally able to get at the radio’s dials, he tuned it to the fire
direction net, which was surprisingly silent. He keyed the microphone: “Blind
Eye Six, this is Long Jump Six-Two, over.”

Jock instantly recognized the voice that replied: it was
Melvin Patchett. “Got a target, Blind Eye?” Jock asked.

“Affirmative…hostile battery is offshore. Repeat, offshore.”

As Patchett handled the radio, Lee Grossman and Trevor Shaw
were busy calculating the coordinates of the Japanese ships doing the shooting.
From Astrolabe, they had seen the flash of their guns; Shaw had the azimuth to
the flash from the OP at The Notch. Bogater Boudreau reported the azimuth from
the remote OP, a mile east on the peak. Everything else was simple
geometry—your target was located where the two azimuth lines intersected on the
map.

“Give us an illumination round about ten seconds before
impact and continuously after that,” Shaw said as he handed the coordinates of
the target to Patchett.

At first, the gunners in the 155-millimeter artillery
battery thought the fire command they had just been given was somebody’s giant
fuck-up: the target direction was 90 degrees to the left of their field of
fire. At the charge and elevation called out, the target would have to be about
six miles out to sea, making it eight miles from their position.

Then the realization sunk in: they would be firing at ships.
The fear that caused the US Navy to flee had finally materialized: Japanese
warships had arrived, and they were hurling their very big shells at the GIs.
The only American weapon that could try to engage them was the 155 howitzer.
Nothing else had enough range.

The gunners began the laborious process of manhandling their
cumbersome guns through a seaward pivot. It would have been even more laborious
if they had actually fired some rounds since occupying those positions: the
guns’ trail spades would have been driven much deeper into the ground, requiring
much more digging to get them free. Grunting, stumbling, and cursing in the
dark, the gunners managed to reorient the guns, but it took almost 10 minutes
before the first round—the requested illumination round—was on the way,
followed 15 seconds later by a ranging round from a different gun. During that
time, another two dozen Japanese shells shook the earth around the American
positions, getting closer to doing some real damage with each new salvo.

“Sarge, what if they see our flash and zero right in on us?”
a terrified cannoneer asked his section chief.

“Can you see their flash?” the sergeant asked.

“No…we can’t see much of the sea at all from here.”

“That’s because our battery’s down in a depression,
numbnuts. We can’t see their flash, they can’t see ours. Be thankful for that.
Now shut up and keep those powder bags coming.”

The illumination round popped its flare, revealing the tiny,
ghostly shapes of five warships to the observers on Astrolabe, some 12 miles
distant. Peering down his telescope, Shaw gasped. “Oh my goodness,” he said, “I
count four destroyers, but the big one is a battleship…an old girl, too. One of
the Kongo class, unmistakably. She’s the one doing the shooting, for
sure, but I wonder why she’s in so close. She can shoot more than twice as far
as we—”

“Splash, out,” Patchett said into the radio, loud enough for
everyone nearby to hear. That meant the ranging round would impact in five
seconds.

Staring down binoculars, Grossman counted,
“Three…two…one…there it is.”

Well short of the battleship’s hull, a tiny geyser of
seawater shot up and glimmered briefly in the flare’s light. Grossman added,
“Gee…everything is so small. I can barely make it out.”

“But you can see enough,” Shaw said. “At sea, we do this
over greater distances, and we’re observing from only a masthead, not a
mountain.” He did some calculations in his notebook as he continued, “She’s not
making much smoke, so I’m guessing her speed at ten knots, maybe less. And
we’re a bit short, so…” A few more calculations and he reported the correction
to Patchett. The first flare flickered near the water’s surface, about to
extinguish. A second flare popped high above to take its place.

Less than a minute later, the soft poom of the 155
firing from the lowlands echoed up the mountain. They counted to themselves
until Patchett once again acknowledged, “Splash, out.”

They couldn’t see the round impact this time. “Shit,”
Grossman said, “we lost it.”

“No, Lieutenant,” Shaw replied, “that can only mean one
thing…”

“Yeah,” Patchett said, “we’re over…and we’re real close.
Can’t see the splash because the ship’s in the way.”

Shaw’s face beamed in his flashlight’s glow. “Exactly, First
Sergeant,” he said.

“Well, Commander,” Patchett replied, “this ain’t exactly my
first time at the circus. What’d y’all say we give ’em a right two hundred,
drop five-zero and fire for effect?”

The old Aussie nodded. “That sounds like a capital idea.”

Fire for effect: every gun in the battery—all six of
them—let their rounds fly in near-perfect synchronization. As the sound of the
shots echoed, Patchett said, “Not bad…It usually sounds like popcorn in the
cooker when they all try to fire at once.”

Shaw was the first the first to speak after the impacts, his
voice more surprised than jubilant: “Bloody hell…I do believe a couple of
rounds actually hit the bugger.”

“I counted two direct hits,” Grossman said, breathless with
excitement. “You can’t miss that bright flash of round hitting metal.”

“Let’s not get too giddy, lads,” Shaw said. “It’ll take a
lot more than that to sink her. But look at how much smoke she’s making from
her stacks now.” He watched the ship’s progress for a few moments more and then
added, “Ahh, look…she’s leaving. I guess she didn’t think very much of our rude
welcome.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Day 8

By late the next morning, the Americans’ jagged line of
advance was within three miles of the Japanese airfield. A rifle platoon of the
82nd Regiment was the division’s lead element. The men of the
platoon crept forward in column, two abreast.

First Squad was at the column’s head…

And then they were wiped away in one fell swoop.

Those farther back in the column never heard the blast that
erased First Squad. They could feel its deadly punch, though, as the punishing
pressure wave of expanding gases, metal shards, wood splinters, and body
fragments flew invisibly past them at blinding speed.

Every man spared had known the expression blown to bits since
he was a child. It had always been just words—until this moment. Now, they all
knew what blown to bits looked liked: First Squad had actually been
blown to bits. A Japanese artillery round had done it.

Machine gun bullets from unseen bunkers began to crisscross
the American column. Those GIs who could still move retreated on the dead run.
No orders could make them hold their ground. They didn’t stop running until
they found hills to take shelter behind.

They didn’t bother to return fire. Instead, they huddled in
languid, demoralized groups of threes and fours, no longer bound to the
brotherhood of their unit or the armed force to which it belonged. Overcome by
terror, they cowered, incapable of fighting, incapable of saving themselves.

They were waiting to die.

It was the same throughout the 32nd Division.
Jock Miles came across a group of three GIs straggling away from the stalled
battle line, discarding most of their field equipment like they’d no longer be
needing it. They were sullen and unresponsive when Jock asked, “What outfit are
you from?”

They weren’t the first demoralized GIs Jock had seen this
morning. He took a step closer and asked, “Who’s your commanding officer?”

One of the men—a corporal—looked quizzically at Jock at
first. Then he broke eye contact and stared into the distance, mumbling, “I
thought you was.”

“No, Corporal, I’m not your CO,” Jock replied. “All of you
climb in the jeep. I’ll take you back to your unit.”

They ignored him and kept walking.

Jock called out, “Perhaps you didn’t understand me. I just
gave you an order.”

Without breaking his shuffling stride, the corporal replied,
“We heard a lot of officers giving orders today, and every one of them fucking
orders got guys killed for nothing. We ain’t following no more orders.” To make
his point more clear, he flung his rifle into the underbrush.

Jock glanced at his catatonic driver, PFC Homer Flood, still
shaking and hugging his knees to his chest in the back of the jeep: I’m
having a tough enough time finding a CCP to drop off this poor bastard Flood. I
don’t have time to play cop and start arresting people right now. That bunch
will run into the Division MPs soon enough…assuming they’re not running, too.
This attack’s going to shit, real fast.

He loaded the discarded rifle into the jeep and drove off to
Regimental Headquarters.

When Jock entered the Headquarters tent, Colonel Murdock was
berating the naval liaison officer. When the tirade was done, the Navy man
said, “But Colonel, you could lose all the rest of the supplies and
equipment”—he put great emphasis on the word all—“if our fleet gets
caught at anchor by a force like the one last night.”

No one would be surprised if steam began to vent from
Murdock’s ears. His face was beet red—and not from the tropical heat. After a
few agonizing moments of silence, he said, “Ain’t this hot shit, gentlemen? The
best this regiment can do right now…no, make that the best this whole goddamned
division can do…is hold its position. We’ve got company after company that
won’t even fight, with deserters running away all over the place…and the Navy
can’t even find the guts to land our fucking supplies.” He looked to the S4,
hunched over a desk in the corner of the tent, and asked, “What’s the damage,
Herb?”

The S4 wished he had about another hour to prepare that
answer. Hesitantly, he began his report: “Well, sir…at the forecast casualty
rates—”

“Cut the shit, Herb,” Murdock said. “I’ve got half a
regiment that might as well be casualties right now, for all the fighting
they’re doing. Just give me the numbers.”

“It’s like this, Colonel…we have one day’s worth of C
rations left and another two days’ worth of K rations. After that, we’re living
off the land.”

“What about fresh water?” Murdock asked.

“Let’s just hope it rains a lot, sir…and soon.”

“And ammunition?”

“Critically low on all types, especially artillery rounds.”

Murdock refocused his frustration on the Air Force liaison
officer. “When can we expect some fighter support that doesn’t take twenty-four
hours to show up? The Jap air forces won’t stay away forever…especially if they
think they’ve got us on the ropes.”

“The Japanese Army and Navy planes are having the same
problems we are, sir,” the Air Force man replied. “Their bases are just too
darned far away right now—”

Murdock cut him off. “Not for long, I’m afraid. Any minute,
I expect some new squadrons of Japs to reoccupy the Port Moresby airfield.
Nothing’s stopping them at the moment.”

“Not likely, sir,” the liaison officer said. “Their closest
main base is now Lae, up on the north coast. To get here, they’ve got to get
over the Owen Stanleys. That’s an exhausting flight for anyone.”

“But what about our airstrip at Gaile? Are we going to get
some fighters in there anytime soon?”

“The engineers say it’ll be ready in another day or two. The
rains slowed them down a little. But General Kenney won’t base any planes there
unless the airfield is secure…and the way things look at the moment…”

“You and the Navy boy over there are singing from the same
hymnal,” Murdock replied.  Turning to Jock, the colonel’s scowl softened. “But
there is one bright spot. Your boys up on the mountain did a great job last night,
Jock. How are we doing with counter-battery fire this morning?”

“Every Japanese battery that’s shot off a round has been
targeted, sir. We’re keeping on top of them as they try to relocate. We’ve been
able to pinpoint some of the bunkers and taken them out, too. One problem,
though…we’ve got more targets than the artillery has ammunition.”

“Ain’t that fucking great,” Murdock said. Putting the naval
liaison squarely in his sights, he added, “I don’t care if I have to call
MacArthur himself. We need our stuff. We need those ships. We’re all going to
die here without them…and Dugout Doug is going to look like the biggest
asshole in history for throwing away this entire division.”

No one could disagree with Colonel Murdock on that point.

“Still,” the S3 said, “our biggest problem is to get this
attack moving again. We’ve lost the initiative—”

“I’m not sure we ever had it,” Murdock interrupted. “If this
frontal assault bullshit is going to work, we’ve got to find a place we can
break through the Jap line. Then, maybe, we can exploit that breakthrough.” He
pulled Jock to the battle map. “We’ve got to find a place where the Japs are
weakest, Jock. Where would that be?”

“I’m not sure, sir, and I’m not going to find it standing
here.”

“What do you suggest, Jock?”

“I’m going back up the mountain, sir.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Day 8

It was late afternoon by the time Jock Miles reached Charlie
Company’s position at The Notch. Walking alone on the trail, he was confronted
by a soldier he recognized immediately: PFC Travis Spill, a rifleman in
Lieutenant Colletti’s Third Platoon. Spill’s rifle was aimed squarely at his
ex-company commander’s chest.

“Good afternoon, Private Spill,” Jock said. “How about
pointing that weapon someplace else.”

“I challenge Lipstick,” Spill drawled. His rifle’s
aim didn’t budge.

“I don’t think that’s the challenge word for today, Spill. I
believe it’s—”

Travis Spill tightened his grip on the rifle. “Makes no
nevermind what you think, sir. I’m just waiting to hear you say that password.”

Jock offered a nervous smile. “And if I don’t know it?”

“Then I’ll have to shoot you, sir.”

The smile vanished from Jock’s face. This crazy redneck just
might be serious.

“Okay, then,” Jock said, “I’ll give you a password. Licorice.”

“Sorry, sir. That ain’t it. But I’ll be white about it and
give you one more try.”

“Spill, cut the crap. You know who I am.”

Travis Spill sighed deeply and shook his head. The aim of
his rifle never wavered. “I need to tell you a little story, sir,” he began. “I
got took from my sweet home in Jackson, Tennessee, got put on a train to Georgia,
so I could get put on a train to California, so I could get put on a boat to Australia,
so I could get put on another boat to this stinking place…just to keep you out.
Now, sir, if I was to let you pass, all that money Uncle Sugar spent shipping
my rebel ass all over the world would be wasted, wouldn’t it?”

The boy’s got a point, but—

A voice boomed from within the perimeter: “SPILL, JUST WHAT
THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? AT EASE WITH THAT WEAPON BEFORE I SHOVE IT
SO FAR UP YOUR ASS YOU’LL BE ABLE TO WIPE YOURSELF AND BRUSH YOUR TEETH AT THE
SAME TIME.”

Travis Spill did exactly as First Sergeant Patchett
instructed.

“Don’t you know Captain Miles when you see him?” Patchett
said, swatting Spill on the back of the helmet. “It’s only been two damn days
he’s gone, for cryin’ out loud.”

“He didn’t know the password, First Sergeant.”

Eyes bulging, Patchett replied, “DID YOUR MAMA HAVE ANY
CHILDREN THAT LIVED, BOY? YOU JUST BOUGHT YOURSELF EVERY SHIT DETAIL THERE IS
FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE.”

“No hard feelings, Spill,” Jock said, patting the private on
the shoulder as he walked over to Patchett and shook his hand. “Good to see
you, Top.”

“Same here, sir. Can’t bear to stay away, can you?”

“I guess not,” Jock replied, “but I’m hear to tell you we’ve
got big problems down the mountain.”

“Yeah, we’ve been noticing. Looks like everyone down there
dipped their feet in a bucket of glue. But come on over here, sir. There’s
something we’ve got to show you before it gets dark.”

As they walked, Jock said, “By the way, Colonel Murdock
wants you guys to know you’ve been doing a hell of a job up here. Last night,
especially, scaring off those ships.”

“Thank Commander Shaw for that, sir,” Patchett replied.
“Speaking of ships, is our Navy thinking about coming back anytime soon?”

Jock shrugged. “All I know is we’re going to be eating dirt
and throwing rocks if they don’t. How’re you guys doing on ammo?”

“We’re okay for now, sir…but you can never have too much
ammo. If Miss Ginny and her natives ever change their minds about hauling it
for us, we’re in deep shit.”

“And how are you and Miss Ginny getting along, anyway?”

“Fine, sir. Just fine.” He really meant it, too. His big
grin gave him away.

Lee Grossman was delighted to see his old boss. “The men
will be thrilled you’re here, sir,” he said. “You’re going to stay for supper,
right?”

Jock would have liked to say, Sure, I’ll be glad to share
some K rations with you guys, but he never got the chance—he was cut off by
the whine of diving aircraft. These words tumbled from his mouth instead: “Oh,
crap…we were wondering when the Jap Air Force was going to show up again.”

Their scramble for cover lost its urgency as the four
Japanese fighters screamed overhead and flew away down the ridge. Even though
the planes passed from sight quickly—lost beyond the treetops—they still heard
those engines for miles. After about two minutes—the time it would take to fly
the seven miles from The Notch to the old OP—they heard the bombs explode.

“See? They ain’t forgot about us,” Patchett said, “but they
still think we’re way down there. We ain’t gonna change that opinion, neither,
if we can help it…seeing we’re sitting in range of their artillery and all.”

Their bombing mission over as quickly as it began, the
Japanese planes dove down from the mountaintop and swooped low over the GIs on
the lowlands. They fanned out for one quick strafing pass and then climbed,
turning north to fly away over the Owen Stanleys.

“So much for today’s visit by the Imperial Japanese Army Air
Force, I guess,” Jock said. “So, what do you guys have to show me?”

Lee Grossman pointed down the mountain toward the stalled
battle line of the 32nd Division. “The Japs are dug in too well,
sir,” he said. “It’s like that all along the line. We’ve been hitting those
bunkers with artillery all day but don’t have a whole lot to show for it. If
anything, they’re getting stronger.”

Jock asked, “How do you figure that, Lee?”

“I’m going to let you hear it straight from the horse’s
mouth, sir.” He summoned Theo Papadakis to join them. “Lieutenant Pop can fill
you in.”

“Really good to see you, sir,” Papadakis began. “Here’s the
deal…last night, while that artillery duel was going on, I took a squad down
the mountain. We walked right in behind the Jap positions and had ourselves a
little look-see.”

At first, Jock thought The Mad Greek was kidding—but
he realized Papadakis was completely sincere: Theo’s not the kind of guy who
tries to pull your leg.

“We covered a couple of miles,” Papadakis continued, “and
everywhere we looked, there were more and more Japs coming up to join the line.
We thought they might be massing for a counterattack…”

Jock shook his head. “That’s not their style. You remember
the briefings we got…they want to make you come to them and then grind you
down.”

“Yeah, we remembered, sir, and so do the Japs, apparently.
All night, these guys would come and build more fortifications…digging, cutting
timber, you name it. The only way we’re gonna take that wall is to go around
it.”

“Let me get this straight, Theo,” Jock said, still stunned
by what he was hearing. “You just walked around behind the Jap lines?”

“Yes, sir…so close you could hear them talking and playing
grab-ass. One of my guys almost tripped over a couple of Japs catching a nap.
And we picked up this…” He called to Sergeant Hadley, who hoisted a Nambu
machine gun, complete with magazine.

Jock burst out laughing: “Holy shit, Theo…that was just
laying around?”

“Yes, sir…and I’ll bet they’re still looking for it.”

“You guys never cease to amaze me,” Jock said, and then his
expression turned deadly serious. “If you’d wanted to, though, do you think you
could’ve done the Japs any damage?”

Papadakis’s answer came with no hesitation at all: “For a
minute, maybe. But considering we were outnumbered about a thousand to one,
that would be our last minute on this earth.”

Not surprised by the Greek’s answer, Jock asked, “So how the
hell are we going to take these Nips?”

Papadakis yielded the floor to Lee Grossman, who asked,
“What does HQ think about enveloping them through The Notch?”

“I suggested that, Lee…and they shot it down so fast my head
spun. Maybe they’ve got a point, though. Running major units through there
could be real dangerous for us. We’d get channelized…and we’d be looking right
down the throat of their artillery. They could cut us to pieces.”

Grossman picked up his binoculars, gazed across Port Moresby,
and said, “So how about this, sir? We think we know where all the Japs Theo saw
are coming from. It looks like there’s nobody covering their backside on the
far side of the town.”

Jock asked, “You mean where the Aussies were supposed to
land?”

“Exactly, sir,” Grossman replied. “We think they’ve
abandoned that whole area to stop our attack. If that’s true, and we could put
some troops over there…GIs, Aussies, it wouldn’t matter who…this wall we’re
facing would thin out in a hurry.”

Jock asked, “Are you sure that’s where they’re coming from?”

“Pretty sure, sir. There haven’t been any ships or planes
coming in, and we would have spotted any troops coming overland across the
swamps to the west. And we know for sure nobody’s come down The Notch.”

Jock swept the far side of Port Moresby with his binoculars.
“I think I see your point, Lee. Pretty hard to see troops at this distance,
though, but I don’t see any vehicles at all.”

“Maybe we could scare up some boats,” Grossman said, “and
start shuttling guys over there at night?”

The binoculars still pressed to his eyes, Jock replied,
“Hmm. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Suddenly, the view through Jock’s binoculars went dark:
Sergeant Hadley was walking toward him, blocking his line of sight. Directing
Jock’s attention out to sea, Hadley said, “Take a look over there, sir.”

Flying in over the water were two small spotter planes. Back
in the States, they’d be called Piper Cubs. The big, white American stars on
their olive drab fuselages were unmistakable. “They’re L4s,” Jock said,
“nicknamed Grasshoppers. Where the hell did they come from, I wonder?”

Theo Papadakis offered, “Australia, maybe?”

“They don’t have that kind of range,” Jock replied.

The planes made their way east along the coastline. Once
they reached the village of Gaile—where the airstrip was being cleared—they
circled back, descended, and dropped from sight behind the curtain of the
rainforest as they landed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Day 8/Day 9

Only one event shattered the peace and quiet of night on The
Notch: a flight of Japanese high-level bombers—complete with the intentionally
annoying throb of out-of-sync propellers—dropped their loads behind the
American lines before flying away unmolested. They left nothing burning.

“At least they didn’t hit any fuel or ammo dumps,” Lee
Grossman said.

“Let’s hope they hit nothing at all,” Jock added.

“Amen to that, sir,” Melvin Patchett replied.

“By the way,” Jock said, “I left my jeep down the mountain
and I’m in need of a new driver. Got someone you can farm out to me?”

Patchett rubbed his hands with glee as he replied, “Oh boy,
sir, do I got a guy for you: Private Reynolds from Lieutenant Pop’s platoon. Ol’
Pisser ain’t worth a flip as a rifleman. Nothing but a regular…” He paused,
realizing he was doing a poor job of selling his choice. “But I reckon he’d
make a damn fine driver for you, sir.”

“Come on, Top,” Jock said, “be nice. Give me somebody at
least halfway dependable.”

Patchett looked to Lieutenant Grossman. “Any suggestions,
sir?”

“Well, Lieutenants Colletti and Garcia have the most men in
their platoons. Papadakis is already down one. Wharton’s down three.”

Jock thought it over for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said,
“Colletti’s fat, you say? And isn’t Private Spill one of his?”

Patchett stifled the urge to burst out laughing. “Spill? You
thinking about taking Spill? The numbnuts who almost shot you?”

“Yeah, Top, why not? His particular brand of
single-mindedness just might prove very dependable for my purposes.”

Patchett sighed and said, “As you wish, sir. As you wish.”
He walked off, adding, “I’ll give Lieutenant Colletti the good news while I’m
checking the perimeter.”

With the first sergeant out of earshot, Jock asked, “Lee,
was the Greek’s little recon your idea?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you even know about it?”

“No, sir.”

“So,” Jock said, “are you going to court-martial him…or
decorate him?”

“Well, sir…I’m not going to court-martial him. I told him he
did a real good job…and then I told him to never fucking do it again.”

“A wise move, Lieutenant.”

They sat in silence for a few moments until Grossman asked,
“Sir, what the hell do I do if the Japs decide to run The Notch?”

Jock replied, “Whatever happens, Lee, don’t give up this
high ground. You’re all that’s keeping the whole damned division from getting
flanked.”

The sun rose over the mountain to reveal a wonderful and
unexpected sight: the US Navy had returned to the shores of Papua. Once again,
unloading operations were under way but still at the same slow pace. Nobody on
shore was complaining, though: they needed every man, every pallet of supplies,
and every piece of equipment these ships had to offer. Planes of the Fifth Air
Force seemed to own the sky, protecting the fleet while it bombed and strafed
the well-entrenched Japanese to little apparent effect.

Jock Miles, with PFC Travis Spill in tow, started his trek
down Astrolabe at first light. In the foothills at the mountain’s base, they
came across a somber sight: a busy American cemetery. Looking at row after row
of the simple, tiny crosses that served as grave markers, Spill said, “It just
ain’t right.”

Jock replied, “What’s not right, Spill?”

“That they’re burying these boys here.”

“This is a war, Spill. People die.”

“I know that, sir,” Travis Spill replied, “but I mean it
ain’t right to bury them here…in this ground we ain’t won and maybe
won’t.”

Jock smiled as he told himself, The boy’s deeper than I
thought.

They were at Regiment by late morning. Colonel Murdock was
positively giddy when Jock entered the HQ tent.

“The Navy’s back, Jock my boy,” Murdock said. “They’re
offloading the rest of the division’s heavy artillery. Two more batteries’
worth! Twelve more one-five-five tubes! Not to mention boatloads of supplies,
fuel, vehicles—”

“And some spotter planes showed up, too,” Jock interrupted,
unable to contain his own enthusiasm. “I’m headed over to the airstrip. I’m
going to try to latch on to one.”

Murdock was curious: “I thought you could see everything you
needed from that mountain, Jock.”

“Not quite everything, sir.”

The ground beneath their feet gave a faint shudder, joined
by the thud of heavy naval shells landing in the distance. “The Air
Force must be done for now,” Murdock said. He cast a frigid glance at the naval
liaison officer and added, “It’s time for the Navy to make amends for its
absence.”

“We have new intelligence, sir,” the naval liaison said, as
if that excused everything. “That visit from the Japanese Navy was a fluke…just
a battleship and its escorts on their way to the Solomons. The Japs are
apparently far more interested in hanging on to those islands than this little
outpost. If they can hold on to those islands, they can interdict our sea lanes
from the States to Australia by sea and air.”

Bristling with annoyance, Murdock spit fire at the Navy man:
“This little outpost, as you call it, Lieutenant, just happens to be
where twelve thousand men of this division are fighting and dying right now. In
future, I’d show their sacrifices a little more respect, if I were you.”

“Sorry, sir,” the liaison sputtered, “no offense meant.” He
hurried off to find some urgent business to hide behind.

Preparing to leave, Jock gathered his gear. Murdock had one
final thought for him: “Find me a way out of this damned siege we’re stuck in,
Jock…and find it quick. I saw enough of this trench warfare in The Great War to
last a lifetime.”

The new airstrip at Gaile was little more than a cleared and
smoothed patch of dirt near the water’s edge, almost 12 miles behind the front
lines. Leaving Travis Spill to extricate the jeep from the gulley in which its
new driver had gotten it stuck, Jock walked the last hundred yards to the
airstrip alone. What he saw there was less than inspiring.

The two spotter planes he had watched from the mountain
yesterday were the airfield’s only residents. Only one of them stood proud and
airworthy in the afternoon sun. The other was a crumpled mass of metal tubing
and fabric nestled clear of the landing zone among a stand of trees. Looking
more like a pile of refuse, it no longer bore much resemblance to a flying
machine. The only person visible was a strapping young lieutenant working
diligently on the engine of the airplane that still seemed flyable. His silver
pilot’s wings glistened against the grimy coveralls to which they were pinned.

To get his attention, Jock asked, “What happened to that
other plane, Lieutenant?”

The pilot snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir,” he said, offering
a salute. “Didn’t hear you coming. The other one? Well…Cooper ground looped
it.”

Jock didn’t return the salute: “Don’t bother doing that
around here. Snipers, you know. Is the pilot okay?”

“Broke his leg, sir.”

“That’s too bad. We could have used him…and that plane.” He
offered a handshake. “I’m Jock Miles, S2 for Eighty-First Regiment.”

The pilot looked confused as they shook hands. “I’m John
Worth, sir…No disrespect, but what’s an S2?”

“Intelligence officer…and I could sure use a ride on that
plane of yours to do a little recon.”

Lieutenant Worth brightened up at the word recon. “I’d
love to help you out, sir. I’m a recon pilot myself, actually. Supposed to be
flying an F-4, but our planes are still being put together back in Australia.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, either, Lieutenant, but what’s
an F-4?”

“A P-38 fighter, sir, with cameras instead of guns.”

Jock was impressed. “A P-38, eh? That’s one hell of an
airplane. So what are you doing flying this puddle jumper?”

Worth waited for a particularly strong rumble of distant
artillery to subside before replying, “Me and Cooper were low men on the totem
pole, sir, so it was the Grasshoppers for us. Now, I guess it’s just me down
there at the bottom.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you, anyway, Lieutenant.” Jock
pointed into the distance, toward Astrolabe. “We watched you guys land from up
there last evening. Where’d you come from?”

“They stuck a wooden deck on one of the landing ships…like a
miniature aircraft carrier. We just flew off and found our way here. That was
the best chance of getting these flimsy little crates on shore in one piece.”
He glanced over at Cooper’s wreck, adding, “Well, almost. At least we can
cannibalize that one for some spare parts.”

Jock took a look inside the cabin of Worth’s airplane. It
was nothing fancy: two cramped seats—one behind the other; a radio; and not a
bit of armor plating. Jock asked, “You ready to take me for a little
sight-seeing tour?”

“Sight-seeing? Of what, sir?”

“The other side of Port Moresby.”

“Sure, sir, just as soon as the engineers come back from the
beach with some gasoline. And speaking of fuel, you wouldn’t have anything to
eat, would you?”

“We’ve got some K rations in the jeep that’s stuck way over
there.”

Relief seemed to wash over John Worth’s entire body. “Oh,
yeah…I’m so hungry I’ll eat anything…even that.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Day 9

To their mutual surprise, the gasoline showed up in short
order. It took just a few minutes for John Worth to pump in the fuel, filling
the L4’s 12-gallon tank. “That’ll give us a couple of hours’ flying,” he said
to Jock. “Hell, it’ll be dark by then, anyway.”

Jock clambered into the back seat, fumbling with the control
stick between his knees as he struggled to stow his Thompson submachine gun.
John Worth took the front seat and said, “This is a first for me, riding up
front. I’ve never had a passenger before. When you fly by yourself, you’ve got
to sit in the back to balance her.”

“You’ve never had a passenger? Really? How many hours do you
have in this type?”

“Just a couple, sir. I flew one in flight school a few
times…and now this one.”

This whole damned Army is full of rookies, John
thought. He cinched his seatbelt a little tighter, hoping it would make him
feel safer. It didn’t.

Worth cranked the L4’s little engine. After misfiring a few
times, it settled into a gentle putter at idle. There was no interphone; the
plane’s occupants had to shout at each other to be heard. As the engine warmed
up, Jock handed Worth a piece of paper with the command and fire direction radio
frequencies for the division. He was surprised when Worth took a grease pencil
and wrote the numbers on the clear pane of a side window. “Easier this way,”
the pilot shouted. “Never have to fumble through papers when I’m trying to
fly.”

The little L4 bounced and lurched along the ground as she
taxied to the end of the dirt runway. “First takeoff in history from Twenty
Mile Airfield coming right up,” Worth said.

“That’s the name of this place? Twenty Mile Airfield?”

“Yeah,” Worth replied, “because it’s about twenty miles from
Port Moresby.” Then he laughed and added, “Maybe they’ll change their minds
and rename it Cooper Field, after the first person to become a casualty here.
You all set back there, Captain?”

“Ready.”

John Worth eased her throttle forward. The engine’s putter
transformed to an enthusiastic, if less-than-mighty, roar. As the plane gained
speed, it took more than a few gut-wrenching rudder inputs to keep her tail
from swinging too far and causing the dreaded ground loop which brought Cooper to
grief. Then the rumbling and bumping of wheels over rough ground ceased
abruptly and she was airborne, rising smoothly above the treetops. Looking
around the pilot’s broad shoulders, Jock could see the airspeed indicator. It
read 50 miles per hour.

“Is that gauge right? That’s as fast as this thing goes?”
Jock asked. He had visions of gleeful Japanese gunners zeroing in on this
leisurely moving target.

“We’ll pick up a little more speed when we level off, sir.
Not much, though. Funny, but when I first flew one of these things, I looked
down at a road, and there was a car going faster than me.”

Jock didn’t find that funny at all. His visions of the
Japanese gunners grew darker.

As he turned the L4 toward the sea, John Worth said, “I’m
going to stay out over the water, at least until we’re on the other side of Port
Moresby. I figure the Navy will be less likely to shoot us down than the GIs
on land will.”

“Good plan,” Jock replied.

They cruised slowly up the coast, over the ships still
unloading men and material near Barakau. Looking down at the beach, there
seemed to be a steady stream of wounded—some walking but most carried on
litters—being loaded onto landing craft for evacuation.

“Back on ship,” Worth said, “the scuttlebutt was all about
how bad you guys were getting beat up on Papua.” He took one more sad look: “I
was really hoping they were full of baloney, but…”

In another five minutes, the view toward shore revealed the
no man’s land separating the Japanese and GIs. “Looks like there’s a ton of
artillery in the air in both directions,” Worth said, drawing a red goose egg
on the map board strapped to his thigh. “Good area to stay away from…but what
about the natives? Are there any villages in the middle of all that?”

“There used to be a couple,” Jock replied, “but the natives
picked up stakes and moved.”

“They told us the natives are on our side. Is that true,
sir?”

“Yeah, they are…and believe me, we need their help.”

Their headphones hummed with the voices of Blind Eye Six—Charlie
Company at The Notch—directing fire missions for the artillery. Worth asked,
“Those guys calling the fire missions…they’re the ones you’ve been talking
about? Your old company?”

“Yep, that’s them,” Jock replied, the need to shout doing
nothing to hide the pride in his voice.

Another five minutes of flying brought them to the mouth of Fairfax
Harbor. “Can we get a little lower?” Jock asked.

“You sure, sir? It took us this long just to get to eighteen
hundred feet,” Worth said. “How much lower do you want to be?”

“Close enough to read their laundry tags, okay?” Jock didn’t
sound like he was joking.

After he thought about it for a moment, John Worth’s
reluctance faded. He remembered a lesson from flight school: When you’re very
low, you’re a harder target—even a slowpoke like the Grasshopper will pass
through an anti-aircraft gunner’s field of fire much quicker. He throttled back
and pointed the L4’s nose down. We’ll be able to gain back the altitude if we
need it…maybe.

When Worth leveled her off, they were down to 400 feet,
barely higher than the tops of the bluffs that ringed the harbor. It was high
enough, though, to give Jock his most unobstructed view of the wharves and
anchorages ever. He could see Trevor Shaw was right: the bombardment they
directed had caused far more damage than was evident from Astrolabe. The harbor
was ringed with sunken and damaged barges, freighters, and small patrol boats
too numerous to count. The two coast artillery guns that once defended the
harbor’s entrance were oddly askew amidst the rubble of their shattered
concrete emplacements, knocked from their trunnions by dozens of hits from Navy
shells and Air Force bombs.

“I just realized something,” Jock said. “Those two big guns
guarding the harbor…the Japs didn’t even put them there. The Aussies did. The
Japs just borrowed them.”

Just like Singapore, Jock thought, with all the guns pointed
to the sea. The Brits didn’t think the Japs would come over land there, either.
And yet MacArthur still thinks they can’t do it here…even though they already
have.

“I thought the Japanese Navy would’ve been stronger here,”
Worth said.

“The Jap Navy’s spread pretty thin now,” Jock replied. “Our
Navy liaison says they’re more interested in kicking us out of the Solomons at
the moment. Fairfax Harbor’s too small for a big fleet, anyway…but I’ve seen a
few warships come and go since I’ve been here. Look down…your Air Force buddies
even sank one of them right there in the harbor’s mouth.”

They were past the harbor now, flying northwest along a
rugged coastline with dominant bluffs overlooking narrow beaches. Those bluffs
would be an ideal place for the Japanese to mount a defensive stand against an
amphibious invasion force, but there were no Japanese troops in sight.

Can’t say I blame them, Jock thought. No invader in his right
mind would choose to land there, anyway. They’d be fish in a barrel.

“Keep flying up the coast, Lieutenant.”

“Remember, sir…we’ve only got about two hours’ worth of gas
left…and even less of daylight.”

“Stop worrying. We’re not going that far.”

“You want me to stay at this altitude, sir?”

“Affirmative.”

It only took a few minutes more of flying for the coastal
terrain to change. The beaches were flatter now; high ground still overlooked
them but from several miles away. In a few places, vast mangroves extended
right into the sea—a natural defense against seaborne invaders. But just west
of a coastal village built on stilts over the water—Boera, Jock’s map
called it—the conditions for landing large numbers of troops looked perfect.
Even the coral reefs that usually skirted the coast—barely hidden beneath the
shimmering turquoise of shallow water—faded into the darker blue of water
several fathoms deep. Deep-draft vessels would be able to come close to shore
here.

A few miles farther west—where the Aussies were supposed to have
landed—the terrain turned to swamp. Bringing troops ashore there would be a
disaster: vehicles would bog down immediately; men on foot would have to slog
through fetid water knee deep or worse, totally without cover and concealment.
The only tactical advantage this landing beach offered was the absence of
overlooking high ground. This would be of little comfort when the invading
troops emerged from the swamp with their equipment and stamina less than
intact.

Jock had seen enough. “Turn back toward Boera, John. Let’s
get a look at the terrain behind the beach.”

“You mean those hills?” Worth replied. “The peaks are higher
than we are, sir. You want me to climb?”

“Yeah…but stay just below the peaks. Let’s check out the
seaward face first…especially near that highest point.”

“Do you still want to read laundry tags, sir?”

“That’s affirmative, Lieutenant.”

As they got close to the hills, Worth said, “I’m gonna pour
the coals on, sir, and get as much speed as we can. If there’s anybody up there,
I want to give him as crummy a target as possible.”

The L4 gave a tiny shudder and then a stronger one. Before
Jock could catch his breath, the plane was floundering like a rowboat on a
stormy sea. She seemed totally out of control as she oscillated wildly,
pitching, rolling, and yawing all over the sky. He tried to brace himself, but
there wasn’t much to grab—just the control stick flopping around between his
knees. There was something slamming into the bottom of his seat—he was both
relieved and horrified to find it was his Thompson being thrown back and forth
between the seat and cabin sidewall: That’s all we’d need right now…the Japs
are trying to knock us down, and my weapon helps them by shooting the tail off
this plane. Good thing it’s still on “safe.”

“HOW BAD ARE WE HIT, JOHN? ARE WE GOING DOWN?”

John Worth twisted around in his seat and gave Jock a
quizzical look. “Hit? What are you talking about, sir? That’s just turbulence.
You get that around mountains all the time.” He didn’t seem in the least bit
worried.

Jock felt like the biggest idiot this side of the Equator: Of
course it was mountain turbulence…I knew that, just like I knew that’s what
brought that Zero down on Astrolabe…but it all seems so different when it’s
your ass in the seat. Fucking pilots think they’re all so fucking clever.

The turbulence created another problem, though: you couldn’t
see much when your eyeballs were bouncing around inside your head. Aerial
reconnaissance, for the moment, came to a screeching halt. Then, just as suddenly
as it started, the turbulence ended. The L4 floated along in a tranquil sky
once more. Jock could see the ground clearly again—and there were Japanese
soldiers on that hill.

Trying—but not completely succeeding—to curb the anxiety in
his voice, Jock announced, “There they are, right on the military crest, just
where they should be. Looks like a platoon-sized unit.”

“Are they shooting at us?” Worth asked.

“Not sure, John.”

Worth pushed the plane’s nose down. “Well, if they are…let’s
make it a little harder for them.” Her airspeed indicator quivered up to 90
miles per hour.

Marking his map, Jock said, “We couldn’t see anything on the
seaward side of these hills from Astrolabe. I’m real glad we made this little
trip. Loop around the back side of the hills, John. Let’s see how many other
Japs there are.”

There weren’t any others on those hills or anyplace else
west of Port Moresby. Jock had seen enough; he directed Worth to head for home.
They were so confident no Japanese were beneath them they cut directly across
the harbor, staying low and just out of small arms range from the town on its
shore. Once out over the sea again, they turned east toward Twenty Mile
Airfield.

The L4 touched down as the dark shadows of dusk swept the
airfield. Jock’s jeep was waiting, with Travis Spill proudly in the driver’s
seat. The jeep looked spotless; once Spill got the jeep unstuck from the
gulley, he must have spent the rest of his time wiping off all the caked-on
mud.

Spill walked up to the little plane as her propeller swung
to a stop. Pointing to the aft fuselage, he said, “I don’t believe all them
bullet holes were back there when y’all left, sir. I count me about a dozen.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Day 9

The trail seemed too narrow for the jeep. Jock had just
ducked for what seemed like the hundredth time to avoid being smacked by a
low-hanging branch that loomed suddenly out of the darkness. He asked his
driver, “Are you sure this is the way to Division, Spill? This feels more like
some goat track to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Spill replied, “I’m mighty sure. We’re nearly
there. Them MPs who dropped off that message for y’all showed me how to come. I
already drove it once for practice while I was waiting, so I wouldn’t get us
all lost in the dark.” He passed a piece of paper to Jock; in the flashlight’s
glow, it was a crude, hand-drawn map—one only PFC Travis Spill could
understand. “I saw how slow that li’l ol’ airplane flies, sir,” Spill said.
“Figured I had plenty of time before y’all got back. But seeing how slow it is,
I’m kinda surprised y’all came back at all.”

“So while I was doing a recon, so were you. That’s good
thinking, Spill.”

Spill nodded in proud acknowledgement as Jock hoped his
praise wasn’t premature. They hadn’t found Division HQ yet.

“Are y’all in some kind of trouble with the big brass,
Captain?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, Spill. I wouldn’t be surprised at
all.”

A few minutes later, they rolled up to the Division HQ tent.
As Jock climbed out, Spill said, “Good luck, Captain.”

“Thanks, Spill. I might need it.”

Colonel Murdock looked like a man with a fire lit under him.
He accosted Jock the moment he stepped inside the tent. “Look, Jock,” the
colonel said, “I’ve already talked the G2 out of court-martialing you for
commandeering that plane. The Division staff seems to be of the opinion it’s
their property. But you’d better have some top-shelf information for us, my
boy, or your ass is grass…”

Jock finished the expression for himself: And they’re the
lawnmower. Wait until they hear about the bullet holes. They might not be so
eager to take a joyride then.

It didn’t take long for Jock to complete the briefing. The
Division staff officers listened intently as he described the wide-open back
door to Port Moresby, the token Japanese rear guard on the hill overlooking
Boera, the suitability of the landing zones.

When Jock was done, General Hartman, the division commander,
said, “Very fine, Captain Miles. I’ve decided to take you with me when I report
to General MacArthur tomorrow. A plane will pick us up at oh-seven-hundred. We’ll
join the general for lunch and brief him on the situation afterward.”

Jock did some quick math in his head: If we’re going to be
there for lunch, we can’t be going too far into Australia…

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 Mississippi, 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.”

“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.

The situation reports coming in from the platoons painted a fairly
optimistic picture of the night fight’s aftermath: they were fairly sure they
had beaten off an attack, but it was still too dark to estimate enemy
casualties. As to Charlie Company’s status, Lee Grossman hoped the unanimous no
men killed or wounded reports were accurate. But there was one disturbing
statistic: one man missing. First Platoon could not find its leader,
Lieutenant Bob Wharton.

“Maybe he’ll turn up when the sun rises,” Melvin Patchett
said. “That’s less than an hour away.”

When the sun did rise, Joe Garcia picked up binoculars and
tried to count the dead Japanese in The Notch. After a few moments, though, he
couldn’t go on. There were only a few intact bodies; he didn’t know how to
tally the horrific abundance of severed limbs and dismembered torsos the
artillery left behind. Sagging to his knees, he joined the others who had been
foolish enough to look. Together, they surrendered to the painful dry heaves
wracking their empty stomachs.

Around Charlie Company’s perimeter, the other platoons did
their count of enemy dead. Lieutenant Tony Colletti’s platoon, on the backslope
closest to The Notch, found four dead Japanese, all just a few yards in front
of their positions. Sergeant Mike McMillen, the acting leader of Wharton’s
platoon, found no Japanese bodies at all.

Theo Papadakis’s count held the biggest surprise. Beside the
16 dead Japanese scattered in front of their L-shaped perimeter, there were 3 behind
them—inside their position. Not far from those three dead Japanese lay the body
of Bob Wharton.

With that first glint of dawn, Bucky Reynolds’s
self-satisfaction shattered like glass. He realized the mistake he made in the
dark: he had been facing the wrong way. Maybe it had been a fortuitous error.
Maybe he killed the Japs. Or not.

Maybe I killed Lieutenant Wharton…

First Sergeant Patchett wrote the epitaph for the night’s
battle on the spot: “The lieutenant gave his life protecting the company from
infiltrators. We owe him a great debt.”

Lee Grossman was stunned by Patchett’s words. “You really
think that’s what happened, Top?”

As he examined Wharton’s submachine gun, Mike McMillen
gnashed his teeth and said, “C’mon, Top…this weapon ain’t even been fired.”

Patchett just shook his head. “Don’t matter much now, does
it?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence before Grossman
replied, “Maybe you’re right, Top. But I’ll tell you what does matter…the Japs
know we’re here now. We’re probably going to get pasted by artillery any
minute. We’ll keep an OP at The Notch, but get everyone else to the backslope
and dug in deep on the double. They won’t be able to hit us much back there.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Day 10

The two surviving battalion commanders of the 81st
Regiment felt sure this was about to be the worst morning of their lives—and
maybe the last. Their commander, Colonel Murdock, was here—in the flesh—to lead
an assault against the Japanese dug in along the foothills of Astrolabe. The
colonel made it clear: he was going to kick ass and take names.

“While your battalions have been busy fucking the dog,”
Murdock said, “I’ve got one li’l ol’ company…just one…actually doing its
job: those boys up on the mountain. Last night, they routed a Jap flanking
attack at least a battalion strong. If they hadn’t, you’d have Japs in your
face and up your ass right now. No good deed goes unpunished, however,
gentlemen, because those boys up there started their morning with Jap artillery
pounding the shit out of them. But they’ve never stopped functioning as a forward
observation post. Because of their efforts…and their efforts alone,
gentlemen…counter-battery fire from our own guns has silenced their artillery,
at least for a little while.”

The battalion commanders cringed; they knew what was coming
next.

“And during that little while,” Murdock continued,
“we’re going to execute a flanking attack of our own and break this stalemate
wide open.”

One of the battalion commanders raised his hand. “How can we
do that, Colonel,” he asked. “There’s no room to maneuver…not with that fucking
cliff on our right flank and the Eighty-Second on our left. We can’t do
anything but try another frontal attack, and they haven’t worked out real well
for us so far.”

“That’s because you’re not using your imagination, Major,”
Murdock replied as he pointed to a spot on the map. “We know this is as far as
their bunker complex extends. Beyond there, you’re right…the mountain is too
steep even for goats. This last foothill, though…Hill Seven-Five…it’s only got
two bunkers on it—”

The other battalion commander raised a hand to interrupt.
“How do we know there are just two, sir? I’ve lost half a company already
trying to take that hill.”

“How do we know? Because, gentlemen, our boys on the
mountain can see those bunkers plain as day…and they can count, too.”

Murdock’s icy stare silenced any further comments. Turning
back to the map, he continued, “For once, the wind is perfect, so we’ll lay
down a smoke screen to blind the Japs. Third Battalion will keep them busy with
frontal fire. Second Battalion will come out of the smoke, envelop the hill,
and take it. Once we’ve done that, we’ve made an avenue for the whole fucking
division to surround and finish the Japs.”

There was one more question from a thoroughly horrified
battalion commander: “Can’t we just pound that hill to smithereens with bombs
and artillery, sir?”

Murdock shook his head. “We’ve been doing that for days,
Major, and I don’t have a damned thing to show for it. A cockroach shouldn’t
still be alive up there, but you’re still sitting here with your heads up your
asses.” Murdock checked his watch. “Saddle up, gentlemen. We move out in one
hour.”

Jock could not believe his eyes: Weipa was a very different
place from the tiny seaside village it had been only three months before. It
was now a sprawling military compound—a major Allied base on Cape York in northern
Queensland—with a busy harbor, four airfields buzzing with aircraft large and
small, a forest of tall poles sprouting radio antennas, row upon row of Quonset
huts, and olive drab tents big enough to house circuses. Trucks and jeeps
jammed the newly cut roads; American MPs at every intersection—with shrill
whistles and short tempers—somehow kept the traffic moving.

Electric wires seemed to be strung on poles everywhere. The
steady hum of diesel generators provided the background noise in those brief
moments when louder machines fell silent.

One thing hadn’t seemed to change: the old Mission House was
still the center of it all. A phalanx of parked jeeps and staff cars formed
what looked like a defensive ring around its perimeter. General Hartman’s
jeep—with its two-star flag flying from the front fender—was being shepherded
by MPs through the traffic to a VIP parking spot within that ring. Wedged
sideways into the back seat among the general’s baggage, Jock couldn’t read the
banner stretched across the front of the house. He assumed it bore a welcoming
message for General MacArthur—that would suit the old man’s style. Paying the
banner no attention, Jock eased his body from its cramped perch in the jeep.

The banner said something very different. In bold block
letters, it read: WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN JOCK.

General Hartman wasn’t pleased. “Have that sign taken down
immediately, Major,” he said to Jock, “before MacArthur sees it and shoves it
up both our asses.”

What Jock wanted to reply was, Having MacArthur shove
something up my ass wouldn’t be a first, sir. What he said instead: “Yes,
sir. Right away, sir.” Only then did Jock look up and read the sign. He wanted
to smile. He didn’t dare.

With a startling crash, the Mission House’s screen
door flew open and Jillian Forbes shot out across the veranda, a blur of lean,
strong limbs pumping and curly black hair flying, the skirt of her cotton dress
whipping like a flag. She leapt from the top step and her feet never touched
ground again: she came to rest entwined with Jock, her arms hugging his
shoulders, her legs wrapped around his buttocks, her mouth on his in a
shamelessly deep kiss. A vertical beast with two backs.

When she came up for air, she said, “My God, you’re bloody
filthy. I’ll bet it’s been three months since you’ve had a proper bath, too.”

General Hartman’s disapproving glare was getting harder to
ignore. Jock eased her bare feet gently back to the ground. That done, his arms
resumed their embrace.

“How did you know I was coming, Jill?”

“Manifests, laddie, manifests.” She nodded toward the
Mission House. “This is a pub and guest house now. They booked you a room
here...with the rest of the Yank punters.”

“Let me guess…you run the place.”

“I don’t run it, you silly wanker. I own it.”

“And the fishing business?”

“Making a fortune. You Yanks just love to dole out money,
don’t you?”

A welcome line of smiling Aborigines—male and female staff
of the house—had formed on the veranda. Aside from the three men dispatched
from the line to lug General Hartman’s bags, they paid the man wearing two
stars no attention. Their smiles were for Jock Miles.

He remembered almost everyone’s name—men who carried food
and water to his recon patrol; those who stood guard at the Peppan Creek camp
as together they hid from the Japanese; the women who fed them as they
recovered from the ordeal of combat. To the black people of Weipa, the man who
freed them from the Japanese had returned. Captain Jock was the one to be
revered; the men wearing stars were just more strangers in their midst.

Jillian fingered the oak leaf on Jock’s collar. “Oh…and I
see it’s major now, too. About bloody time, I’d say.” A worried look
crossed her face. “Does this mean you’re not with your lads anymore?”

“They’re still with me…just in a little different capacity.
They send their love.”

She liked the sound of that. “Give them mine, too,” she
said, but her smile faded again as she remembered just how soon he’d be doing
so. This reunion would be very brief. She was his innkeeper now, and he was
only booked for two nights.

But two nights are better than none.

As they walked into the Mission House, she told one of the
black men, “Better take that banner down right away. God forbid we annoy our
old friend MacArthur.”

“Thanks,” Jock said. “I appreciate that.”

Arm in arm, Jillian pulled him down the hallway. “Later,”
she said, “when you’re free, take a walk with me down to the harbor. There’s
something I want to show you. But first, we must get you cleaned up.” For
emphasis, she clamped her nose closed with her free hand.

The artillery’s smoke screen was doing its job. The GIs
sneaking along the fold at the base of Hill 75 hadn’t drawn any fire from the
Japanese dug in on its peak. There was just one problem: smoke doesn’t take
sides. It drifted across the hill, obscuring the Americans’ view of their
objective just as surely as it was blinding the Japanese. Colonel Murdock,
accompanying the assault’s lead platoon, signaled the column to a halt. He
diagrammed in the dirt his estimate of how far they had come.

Stabbing his finger into the diagram, Murdock told the
platoon leader, “We’re here, Lieutenant, directly adjacent to our objective.
Now, climb the hill and take the northern bunker from behind. They’ll never see
you coming. You’ll be making history.”

The young lieutenant shook his head. “With all due respect,
sir, I think we’ve only come to here.” He stuck his finger onto Murdock’s
diagram at a point well short of the colonel’s estimate. “That slope peeking
through the smoke…it’s not the hill with the bunkers on it. It’s just a ledge
that sticks out in front of it like a big claw. We’re not there yet, sir. We
need to go farther.”

The colonel wasn’t interested in the lieutenant’s protests.
The landscape preoccupied him; it looked so much different now, so less
favorable. Seen through binoculars from the comfortable distance of several
miles, these looked like gentle hills, easy to climb, covered with lush trees
providing ample cover and concealment for his attacking troops. But up close,
thinly veiled in the white smoke, the gentle hills seemed more like
near-vertical walls needing to be scaled. The trees jutting from these walls
were actually low, scraggly, and sparse—little more than overgrown
scrub—offering the GIs no protection.

“We don’t have any time to dicker, Lieutenant. We’ve got
only so many smoke rounds. Once they’re gone, you’re shit out of luck. You’ll
have nothing to hide behind.”

“Sir, we’re going to walk right into their mine field—”

“Nonsense, Lieutenant. There’s no evidence the Japs have
laid any mines.”

“We hear them digging in the night, sir.”

“For all we know, they’re just burying their own shit.”
Murdock stood and started toward the hill. “I’ll tell you what…if there’s a
mine field up there, I’ll be the first one to step in it. Follow me,
Lieutenant.”

It all seemed so easy now. The hill wasn’t nearly as hard to
climb as his fear wanted him to believe. Chuck Murdock felt invincible—the king
of the mountain—enveloped in this mysterious cloud that rendered him invisible
to his adversaries; a cloud of his own design. Because of his leadership, the
stalemate at Papua would be broken. The Japanese defensive wall that had
stopped the Americans cold would be breeched. They’d be in Port Moresby by
tomorrow—Hell, maybe even tonight.

He looked back over his shoulder. The platoon following him
was lagging farther and farther behind, their silhouettes growing ghostly. Foolish
young men, Murdock told himself. Don’t they know fortune favors the
bold? He wanted to call out to them, urging them on, letting them stoke
their courage with his, but the sound of a voice would give them away. He
pumped his fist in the air instead: Hurry up!

Nothing and no one hurried up. Time, in fact, did the
opposite. Colonel Murdock watched as the men of the platoon—walking at funereal
pace—lost their ghostly quality and became amazingly distinct in the bright
sunlight. The shroud of smoke in which they hid was gone like a fog blown out
to sea. Needing replenishment but finding none, the cloud floated away toward
Astrolabe, where eddies of wind along its steep slope would swirl it like
cotton candy and disburse it to nothingness.

Shit. The guns are out of smoke rounds, Murdock
thought, as he watched the platoon turn as one and begin their sprint—still in
slow motion—back down the hill. His head swiveled to face front again, taking
in at a snail’s pace the panorama the hilltop provided. It was beautiful, this
island paradise, he thought, this lush garden jutting skyward from the sea. It
was ugly, too, for some men would die to possess it, while others would die for
nothing.

The cold snap of a machine gun’s bolt slamming home
took on its own duality: on one hand, a harbinger of death just yards away; on
the other, a clear and sweet clarion call beckoning you to another dimension.

The afternoon’s torrential rain caught everyone by surprise
except Jillian Forbes. “This is The Wet, gentlemen,” she told the group
of American officers marking time in her pub. “Expect to get very drenched,
very frequently.”

The rain had delayed MacArthur’s arrival at Weipa. His
flight from Brisbane had diverted to Iron Range to refuel and wait out the
storm. He wasn’t expected to land at Weipa for another two hours. When Jock
finally made his appearance at the bar—freshly scrubbed and wearing brand new
khakis supplied by the quartermaster—Jillian jumped from behind the bar to
greet him.

“Well, hello, Major,” she said. “Don’t you look all bright
and shiny.” Then she pulled him outside to the veranda. The rain was letting
up. The dark storm clouds rumbled and flashed their lightning as they moved on
toward Albatross Bay and the Gulf of Carpentaria beyond.

“Let’s take that walk I mentioned before,” she said. “You
won’t need a raincoat.”

“Oh, darn,” Jock said with all the theatrical disappointment
he could summon, “I was kinda hoping—”

She swatted him hard on the shoulder. “No, silly boy…I mean
an actual raincoat, not a rubber, as you bloody Yanks say. We’ve
got all night for that.”

“Whew, what a relief.”

She swatted him again.

Navigating the maze of wooden walkways the Americans built
to keep from sinking into The Wet’s deep and sticky mud, they
were at the water’s edge in a few minutes. “I’m still amazed by all the
activity in this harbor,” Jock said.

“There’s more every week now,” she replied. “This will be a
major depot to supply Papua and the Solomons…”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Jock knew the words:
If you bloody wankers ever get off your arses and get rid of the bloody Japs.

“Look over there,” she said, pointing to a ship at anchor.
“What do you think?”

Jock wasn’t sure what she was getting at. He shrugged: “It’s
a freighter…a little small, maybe.”

“Not an it. She’s a she. And she’s not
small...she’s two hundred twelve feet at the waterline, to be exact. Big for a
coastal trader. Her name’s Esme, by the way.”

Esme…the name of Jillian’s late mother.

“She’s yours, Jill?”

Jillian nodded, her pride unmistakable.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“I’ve got a contract with your government to carry supplies
to Papua and beyond, Major Miles. I’m going to follow you all over the bloody
map. You’ll never get rid of me.”

As wonderful as that sounded, there were still a few hurdles
Jock’s mind needed to clear. “You’re going to sail on her?”

“I’m going to captain her, Jock.”

“You can do that? I mean…the biggest things you’ve ever
captained are your fishing boats, right? And what are they…a quarter her size?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Jock, there’s a war on. They’re
not exactly choosy about who does what right now. I can handle her just fine.
How the bloody hell do you think she got here?”

He was about to say how worried he was she’d get hurt, maybe
killed, but he didn’t bother. She’d just laugh it off. Or maybe kick him.

Hell…she’s braver than I am, anyway.

He kissed her forehead. “Sorry I doubted you, Jill.”

Jillian and Jock were back at the Mission House long before
MacArthur’s entourage arrived. Slipping off her Wellington boots, she told him,
“Better clean the mud off those shoes. They’ll want the whole kit you’re
wearing back when this little get-together is done. All this spit and polish is
just for MacArthur’s benefit.”

“Are you serious, Jill?” He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or
cry. The clean clothes felt wonderful. He wasn’t ready to give them up just
yet.

“Dead serious, laddie. Your Army wouldn’t even bother to
launder your filthy combat clothes before they gave them back, either. But
don’t worry…I’m having that done, just for you.”

The other American officers were busy setting up a meeting
room, its walls steadily being papered with more and more maps. General Hartman
nervously paced the floor. He kept glancing at a telephone, a direct line to
the communications center. It sat on a side table, silent and indifferent to
the general’s pleading looks, like a watched pot refusing to boil.

A sergeant stationed on the veranda with a walkie-talkie
gave the news: MacArthur’s plane had landed. He’d be here within minutes. On
the road from the airfield, MPs brought traffic to a stop, clearing the way for
the supreme commander’s motorcade. The preparations in the meeting room reached
a frantic intensity as the last items were set into place.

“Good heavens, we’ve forgotten the brass band,” Jillian
mumbled as the lead jeep, with its four-star flag flying, rolled up to the
Mission House. Two colonels standing nearby overheard and were not amused. They
turned and gave her withering looks.

She thought about flipping them off, but decided against it:
The old wankers will probably take it out on my Jock.

The lead jeep stopped so close to the veranda’s steps that
MacArthur—unmistakable in aviator sunglasses, corn cob pipe, and gold-braided
crusher cap—could exit without having to dirty his feet on the sodden ground.
The lesser-starred generals in the four jeeps that followed were not so lucky.
They had to dismount and walk along the mucky track to the veranda. Last—and
evidently least—in that underprivileged line was General Blamey, the top
Australian commander. Short and portly, wearing a rumpled, green field uniform
in startling contrast to the gleaming Yanks in crisp khakis, Blamey had the
longest slog to the steps.

Jillian wasn’t surprised as she watched the American
officers bow and scrape before MacArthur. It wouldn’t startle her at all if
they began to genuflect and kiss his ring. She had seen it all before in Brisbane.
That time, she had shocked him—as recorded by the newspapers for the world to
see—by actually demanding restitution for the people of Weipa. This time, she
decided she’d be polite and friendly. After all, he was now her guest.

Maybe he won’t even remember me…

But he did remember. After dispensing with his underlings’
attentions, MacArthur came straight to her. She couldn’t tell if the look on
his face was a smile of greeting or the grimace of some painful memory
resurfacing.

“Miss Forbes…so good to see you again. I look forward to my
stay in your little empire.”

She offered her hand. He took it with a limp grip, in a hand
that felt to her like a cold, dead fish.

“We’re very pleased to have you, General,” she said.

He swept his free hand grandly as he took in the spectacle of
tropical beauty, wartime industry, and mud. “I see you’re as enterprising as
ever, young lady. It looks like you’ve done very well for this community.”

“I’ve had a lot of help, General.”

“I should say you have, Miss Forbes,” MacArthur replied, as
he turned abruptly and entered the Mission House.

The meeting’s first session dragged on. After several
tedious hours of battle statistics and situation reports—reports pretending to
find silver linings in the ongoing disasters—the assembled officers were more
than ready for a break. They just had to endure the summation of General
Hartman’s briefing.

“As I’ve shown, the Japanese are cagey and well dug-in,”
Hartman said, “but we’ve figured out how to break their line. By pushing
here…here…and here”—he thrust the pointer to a different spot on the map with
each here—“we will break the Japanese line. The operation to finally do
just that is being executed as we speak. I expect the Thirty-Second Division
will be in Port Moresby by this time tomorrow. Your questions or comments,
sir?”

“I eagerly await the news of your success,” MacArthur
replied. He rose from his chair. “It’s eighteen-thirty, gentlemen. Let’s break
for supper.”

Jillian’s Aborigine cooks prepared the sumptuous seafood
feast. There had only been one hitch in the dinner’s preparations: she had to
quickly indoctrinate a last-minute detail of clueless GIs to serve as waiters.
MacArthur’s chief of staff had forbidden her from using her usual cadre of
black servers. “The general will not be waited on by niggers,” he said.

No problem, she thought. She’d give the black servers
the night off and pay them triple what they would have received for the night’s
work. The added expense would be easy to cover. She’d simply charge the US
government twice the usual rate for services rendered.

And the stupid wankers will pay it, too.

It was 2000 hours as the last round of coffee was poured. As
the officers, sleepy from the long day and full stomachs, trudged back to the
meeting room, the phone to the communications center rang. The call was for
General Hartman. He broke into an anxious sweat before the receiver was in his
hand.

Blood drained from Hartman’s face as he listened to the message.
It was from his headquarters on Papua. His division’s attack had failed—his
troops had been thrown back, the Japanese defensive line had not been breached.
Casualties were heavy.

One combat statistic struck General Hartman a particularly
heavy blow: Colonel Murdock, the commander of 81st Regiment, was
missing and presumed killed in action.

Hartman sagged into an armchair, staring at a point a
million miles away. He knew his division was finished. After this disaster, its
combat effectiveness was spent. A unit can only take so many failures. Then it
collapses.

And he still had to tell MacArthur.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Day 10

The meeting that commenced after supper was a tense and
awkward affair. MacArthur said little, letting his subordinates argue the matter
for him as he silently weighed his options. When asked what he planned to do
next to break the stalemate on Papua, General Hartman had nothing to offer
except the usual commander’s plea for more troops.

MacArthur rose, walked up to the big map of Port Moresby,
and said, “I had high hopes, Hartman, that you would handle this campaign on
your own. Basically, you’re up against an isolated garrison. Your troops have
not been seriously threatened by sea or air…”

Inwardly, Hartman found that comment ironic: I lost more
than a battalion’s worth of officers and men, the aircraft carrier that was
supposed to provide close air support, and many ships full of supplies before
we ever set foot on Papua. Wouldn’t you consider that being threatened by sea?

MacArthur moved to the bigger map covering all of Papua and New
Guinea. He continued, “When General Kenney informed me his Air Force had
swept the Japanese from the sky over Port Moresby, I felt confident you had
everything you needed to accomplish the task by yourself.” He nodded to the
smiling Kenney.

Here we go again, Hartman thought. The flyboys are getting
accolades for doing next to nothing. Maybe I should tell Kenney how grateful we
are for the two times a day the Fifth Air Force appears over Port Moresby for
five fucking minutes…

The supreme commander rolled on. “With this in mind, I
planned to deploy Blamey’s Australians as part of a much bigger operation
here”—his finger fell on the northern tip of the island of New Britain—“at
Rabaul. By going there, straight to the main Japanese base in the southwest
Pacific, we could cut off all these annoying little enclaves in Papua, New
Guinea, and the Solomons…and isolate them to starvation. We could be in the Philippines
within six months.”

The mention of the Japanese base at Rabaul stunned everyone
in the room. They couldn’t believe MacArthur was contemplating a seaborne
assault against the heart of the Imperial Japanese Navy with the meager naval
assets under his control.

“Of course,” MacArthur continued, “we would need Nimitz’s
ships to take on Rabaul, and Washington has just informed me such a
reallocation of combat resources will not be forthcoming. They’d rather let
Chester Nimitz and his Marine Corps play hopscotch across the Pacific for
years, one measly island at a time, than let MacArthur take a few bold leaps
right into Tokyo Bay.”

He strolled back to the Port Moresby map. “So now, Hartman,
you and the fools in Washington leave me little choice. Something you said
earlier has caught my interest. Tell me more about your suspicions there are no
Japanese on the far side of Port Moresby. I believe you said this information
came from local aerial reconnaissance?”

“Yes, General,” Hartman replied. “In fact, sir, the officer
who did the actual reconnaissance is in this room.”

MacArthur scanned the room. “Is that so? Stand up, whoever
you are.”

Jock Miles rose to his feet.

MacArthur gave him the once-over. “And who might you be,
Major?”

“Miles, sir. Maynard Miles. S2, Eighty-First Regiment.”

MacArthur stared off into space for a moment, as if
searching for something. “Miles, you say…Would you be the same Captain Miles
who led that Cape York task force a few months back?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

The general fixed Jock in a steely gaze. Several
uncomfortable seconds passed before MacArthur said, “Well, well…the prodigal
son returns. Let me congratulate you on your promotion, Miles. Now, tell us
what you know about the Japanese around Port Moresby.” Turning to General
Blamey, he added, “Pay close attention, Blamey. I suspect we’ll be needing your
Aussie tigers on Papua after all.”

She was surprised how keyed up he was as he climbed into her
bed. It wasn’t their first time together—far from it. The lovemaking of their
days in Brisbane—to the tempo of the powerful melodies of Liszt and Wagner—was
still fresh in Jillian’s mind. So was the delicious surprise when Jock showed
up in Weipa unexpectedly before shipping out. It was only three months ago.

But it was different this time. There was ferocity to his
motion that went well beyond ardor. It seemed almost—her mind searched for the
right word—desperate.

She remembered something she read long ago, something that
had made her giggle back in those days of adolescence. The passage told of how
before going into battle, Napoleon’s troops often experienced
persistent—sometimes painful—erections, even though there were no women for
miles and lead was flying everywhere. It was explained like this: the soldiers,
facing imminent death, felt an uncontrollable urge to procreate, to leave something
of themselves behind after they were shattered on the battlefield.

Is that what’s on Jock’s mind? Does he think death is
finally catching up to us? Why now? We’ve always known that every time we’re
together could be our last.

There was another problem, one much more immediate.

“Honey, you’re hurting me,” she said. It wasn’t so much a
complaint as a question, a need to understand. His face was contorted in some
private agony as she held it in her hands. He seemed to be gasping for breath.

“What’s wrong, Jock? Tell me.”

The violent thrusting slowed to a stop. His heart pounding,
he fell against her. She wrapped him tight in her arms. It took a few anxious
minutes, but he calmed down and said, “It’s like I’m chasing time, but I can’t
grab it. It slips away so fast.”

“Your Colonel Murdock…is that what’s got you so upset, Jock?
It sounds like you two were so close.”

He shook his head.

“Then what is it, honey?”

“Being here with you, Jill…In a blink of an eye, it’ll be
over again. So fast…”

“Sure, until the next time…and the time after that…and the
time after that. But there’s just one thing, Jock…”

“What’s that?”

“We’re not finished with this time, yet. Back to work
now, laddie.”

He did as he was told.

They awoke to the racket of trucks outside the Mission House.
It was still dark; Jock tried to rub the sleep from his eyes as he checked his
watch. It read 0500.

“Go back to sleep, Jock,” Jillian said. “Heaven knows you
need it.”

She was right about that. The only good sleep he had gotten
in the last week and a half—since the Papuan adventure began—was the few hours
on the plane flying to Weipa and the blissful hours of this night, nestled next
to Jillian.

The racket didn’t let up. He asked, “What the hell’s going
on out there?”

“That’s breakfast coming, Jock. Your Army mess whips it up
and brings it here. It seems my cooks don’t do American breakfasts to your
liking. Apparently, you Yanks adore this slop you call grits.”

“What do you mean? Grits are dee-licious.”

“And then there’s this stuff so ghastly you can only refer
to it by its initials.”

“Are you talking about S.O.S.?”

“Yes, Jock…shit on a shingle. What a fitting name for
something we wouldn’t feed to dogs.”

He slid closer and spooned against her back. “I’m a little
surprised to hear this, Jill…considering it’s coming from a girl who thinks K
rations taste wonderful.”

There was no point trying to sleep anymore. They weren’t
tired, and every moment of sleep was a moment they couldn’t feel the comfort
and thrill of each other’s arms. There was plenty of time to linger in bed; the
morning session with MacArthur wasn’t scheduled to begin until 0800, and
MacArthur stuck to his schedules like glue.

“You want to hear something funny, Jill?”

“Uh huh.”

“Melvin Patchett’s got a girlfriend, I think.”

Jillian sat bolt upright. Even in the dark, Jock could make
out the incredulous look on her face.

“Who? Where?” she asked.

“In Papua. An Aussie lady. A sheila.”

Her look grew even more incredulous. “What kind of
sheila, Jock?”

“A widow-woman. She works with the old coast watcher who’s
been helping us. Been a pretty big help herself. Terrific with the natives.
Speaks pidgin and everything. She’s got a big bone to pick with the Japs, too.
They killed her husband.”

Jillian was doubled over with laughter. Between gasps for
breath, she managed to say, “Oh, a widow…Thank God…”

“What’s so damned funny about that, Jill?”

“Oh, Jock…I’m sorry, but Papua was bloody overrun with
Catholic missionaries before the Japs came. I had this picture of Patchett
having it off with a nun.”

“Yeah, that would be pretty funny. But I don’t think they’re
having it off…I don’t see where they’d get the opportunity.”

She snuggled back into his arms. “Oh, come now, Jock. Give
the old boy a little more credit than that.”

Chapter Thirty

Day 11

MacArthur made his proclamation at the morning meeting:
Blamey and his Australian Seventh Division would land on Papua, to the north of
Port Moresby, on the beaches Jock had identified. “That, gentlemen,” he said,
“will almost double our manpower, envelop the Japanese, and end this
stalemate.”

Blamey gulped hard at the timetable: his troops would hit
the beach in 96 hours. He asked MacArthur, “Cutting it a bit close, wouldn’t
you say, General?”

“Why, Blamey? Are your men not ready?”

“No, sir. Of course they are. But it takes a day just to
sail there from here.”

“Then that gives you three whole days to get squared away,
doesn’t it?”

Blamey knew there was no point in arguing further. All he
could do now was put his hope in two assumptions. First: the Yanks hadn’t made
an even bigger cock-up on Papua than it seemed. Second: the Japanese were
really as unprepared as the Yanks wanted him to believe.

We’ve already been kicked off Papua once, he told himself. I
don’t bloody fancy it happening again.

Gritting his teeth, Blamey accepted his fate: Shit runs
downhill…and me and my men are all alone at the bottom of that hill. He
settled in to spend the rest of the day bashing out the details of the Aussie
landing.

MacArthur was feeling optimistic, even triumphant.
“Gentlemen, the Japanese have played right into MacArthur’s hands.”

No one in the room had any idea what their supreme commander
was talking about.

The Japanese artillery barrages had been brutal, but
Astrolabe’s front face had proven an effective shield for the men of Charlie
Company. Along with Ginny Beech and her contingent of native porters, they were
out of harm’s way on the backslope. The four men manning the OP at The Notch—in
the line of fire but deeply dug in—had a field day directing the American
artillery in counter-battery fire. The Japanese guns were silenced by
mid-morning—some destroyed, some fleeing to new positions—but silenced for now
nonetheless.

There was only one casualty. “Damn shame,” Melvin Patchett
said as he helped carry the wounded corporal back from the OP. “Y’all picked
yourself a hell of a time to stand up and take a piss, son. But don’t
worry…you’re getting a ticket back to Australia. Good thing you had your hands
wrapped around that pecker, though, ’cause y’all mighta lost that, too.”

Lee Grossman took a long look at the bright, sunny sky.
“Dammit,” he said, “we need some rain. How much water you figure we’ve got
left, Top?”

“Less than a day’s worth, sir.”

Gabriel Lakai had returned with Ginny’s last supply run. He
offered an idea: “I know where there is water very close by, Lieutenant Lee.”

Grossman shook his head. “You’re not talking about the
river, are you, Gabriel? I told you, I don’t want to send a detail all the way
down the mountain unless I absolutely have to.”

It was Gabriel’s turn to shake his head. “No, no, Lieutenant
Lee… I mean the stream at Uptanoon.”

Ginny Beech asked, “Are you sure, Gabriel? I thought that
stream was almost dry.”

“No, Miss Ginny. I know a place. We can fill many canteens.”

Grossman checked his map. “That looks to be about three
miles…and not too far down the backslope, right?”

“Spot on,” Ginny replied.

Patchett asked, “And it ain’t downstream from where it gets
used for a latrine?”

Gabriel seemed horrified by the suggestion. “No, of course
not, First Sergeant,” he replied.

Patchett shrugged and said, “I’ll get a detail put together,
sir. Maybe you can take them there, Gabriel?”

“Yes, First Sergeant.”

The medic was repacking his kit after treating the wounded
corporal. Patchett pulled him aside and said, “I need me a tube of Tetracaine,
Doc.”

“Why, Top? Something in your eye?” He started to examine the
first sergeant’s eyes, but Patchett swatted his hands away.

“Just mind your business and hand over the damn tube, son.”

The five-man water detail was on its third trip back from
the stream at Uptanoon. Each time they’d taken a slightly different route,
seeking one with the easiest uphill climb. One more run and they’d have every
canteen in the company replenished. The afternoon had grown beastly hot, and
the men needed a break.

“Take five, ladies,” Sergeant Hadley said, his voice just
above a whisper. The detail flopped to the ground, vanishing among the scrub.
“But if anybody falls asleep, I’ll have their ass,” Hadley added. “This is
still Indian country. Stay alert.”

One of the privates asked, “How come you let that kid go
back to his village, Sarge? He could’ve been humping some of these frigging
canteens.”

“Gabriel did his job,” Hadley replied. “Now shut the hell
up, Wozniak, and worry about doing yours.”

PFC Wozniak kept up his whining. “But what about the
darkies, Sarge? Ain’t they supposed to be doing the toting around here?”

“Better they tote our food and ammo ten miles up this damned
mountain. Would you rather do that instead, Wozniak?”

They heard footsteps approaching…and softly laughing voices
talking in English. One of those voices was a woman’s, decidedly Australian.

“Holy shit,” Hadley said as Melvin Patchett and Ginny Beech
popped into view among the trees. “I figured something was going on with those
two.”

His eyes wide with lascivious delight, Wozniak whispered,
“Look at them touching each other like that…He’s gonna screw her, ain’t he,
Sarge?”

“How the hell should I know? Everybody be quiet and give
them some privacy. Don’t move or those canteens will rattle and give us away.”

Wozniak scoffed at Hadley’s words. “Why, Sarge? He’s always
fucking with us. Let’s fuck with him a little. Why should he be getting any? We
ain’t.”

Hadley shot the private a look that would cut steel. “If
Top’s lucky enough to be getting some, then good for him. And we’ve got no call
to be embarrassing Missus Beech, either, all she’s done for us. You’ll be
mighty sorry if you do, I guarantee it.”

“Why? What’s Top gonna do? Kill me?”

“No, you idiot…but he’ll make you wish he had.”

Top and Ginny found a place to lie down not far from Hadley
and his men. Propping their weapons against a tree, the couple vanished in the
undergrowth.

“Shit! I can’t see nothing,” Wozniak mumbled. “Oh,
wait…look! What the hell’s going on?”

Ginny sat up and Patchett rose to his knees before her. He
pulled a small tube—something medicinal, it seemed—from his pocket. She took it
and began to minister to his invisible lower region.

Wozniak was getting swept up in the moment. “She’s rubbing
something on his pecker!” he said, his voice full of uncertain wonder, like a
boy seeing pornography for the first time.

Ginny lay back down, pulling Patchett with her. All but her
hands—wrapped tightly around Patchett’s neck—vanished from the detail’s sight.
They could see clearly in profile the plane of their first sergeant’s back,
from his naked buttocks to the top of his head.

“Oh my God,” Wozniak said, “he’s giving it to her like a
jackhammer! He’s driving her to fucking China!”

The other three soldiers watched in stunned silence, until
the bookish PFC McCleary chimed in: “That idiom only works if you’re in the
States, Woz. In this part of the world, he’d be—”

“Okay, okay,” Wozniak replied, “he’s driving her to China-town,
then.”

Even Tom Hadley was becoming impressed. “Geez…I’ve never
heard a woman make sounds like that before. She’s humming like a Packard V-12
after it’s all tuned up.”

The humming didn’t last long. It became a rhythmic,
high-pitched shriek—a bleat like a claxon horn. Her hands—the only parts of her
they could see—were fiercely busy stroking Patchett’s head, pulling his ears,
clawing his back.

Hadley and his men watched and listened in mutual amazement
as the lovers’ reverie went on and on. Wozniak checked his watch. With a mix of
disbelief and reverence, he said, “I can’t fucking believe this. He’s been
doing her for almost fifteen minutes now. He’s Superman, I tell you.”

Superman or not, Melvin Patchett showed no signs of
stopping. Five more minutes went by before his steady, machine-like rhythm
accelerated to a frantic gallop…and Melvin Patchett groaned like the sound of
an old door slowly creaking open.

Their motion stopped. The forest was still and quiet once
more.

Hardly a minute passed before Patchett and Ginny popped up,
buttoned up, grabbed their weapons, and headed off for the 10-minute walk back
to the camp.

“We’re taking a detour,” Hadley announced, leading his men
down the slope. “I don’t want to give them a reason to think we were anywhere
near them. And none of you assholes better go blabbing about what you saw,
either.”

Every few minutes, Wozniak would repeat a little chant to a
marching beat: “Superman, Superman, Top, Top is Superman.”

Private McCleary had heard enough. “Shut up, Woz,” he said.
“I think it was kind of disturbing, actually…like watching your parents doing
it. Some things are better left unseen. What do you think, Sergeant Hadley?”

“Actually, Mac, I’m with Wozniak on this one. Top must
be…Oh, shit!” Hadley froze in his tracks. “Hold up and cover the compass,
guys.”

His four men dropped to the ground, forming a miniature
perimeter with each man facing a different quadrant. Hadley walked over to a
strange object lying on the ground. It looked like a short, thick pipe with a
T-shaped handle sticking from one end. He poked carefully around it with his
bayonet.

Wozniak asked, “What the hell are you doing, Sarge?”

“Checking that it’s not booby-trapped.”

That got Wozniak’s full attention. “Booby-trapped? What the
hell is that thing?”

“That, men, is a Japanese knee mortar. And it’s only a few
hundred yards from our company’s position.” Hadley picked up the mortar and
examined it.

“How do you know that’s what it is?” McCleary asked.

“I’ve seen pictures.”

McCleary seemed doubtful. “Why would they leave it there?”
he asked.

Peering into the barrel, Hadley said, “Look’s like the
firing pin’s broken off.”

“That could have been there a long time, Sarge,” Wozniak
said.

“I don’t think so. It’s awful clean…it hasn’t been on the
ground very long.”

Lee Grossman and Melvin Patchett were unsure what to make of
the knee mortar. “It could’ve been there from last night’s fight at The Notch,”
Grossman said.

“It couldn’t have reached us at The Notch from where Hadley
found it, sir,” Patchett said. “And any Japs running from that fight would’ve
never gone that far east…not in the dark, anyway. They’d be high-tailing it
straight down the slope, back toward The Notch.”

Patchett gave the mortar a long, hard look. “They were damn
close, real recent-like. We were just lucky,” he said. “But we’d better put out
some listening posts, sir. I suppose we can’t see down this backslope as good
as we thought.”

“We’d better hurry, then,” Grossman said. “It’ll be dark
before you know it.”

As Patchett left the command post, Tom Hadley saw him hand
the small tube to the medic. Waiting until the first sergeant was well out of
earshot, Hadley approached the medic and asked, “Hey, Doc, what’s the stuff Top
just gave you?”

“This?” Doc held the tube out for Hadley to read the label.
“It’s Tetracaine.”

“What does it do, Doc?”

“It’s brand new…a mild anesthetic, mostly for treating eye
injuries.”

Hadley gave him a suspicious look. “Mostly? Does it do
anything else?”

Doc looked around to make sure no one could hear. “You
promise not to tell? If this gets out, Tom, guys will be stealing this stuff
and selling it.”

“I promise, Doc. I can keep a secret.”

A look came over Doc’s face like he’d just seen heaven.
“Tetracaine,” he said, “is the greatest sexual enhancement known to man. Rub a
little on your pecker after you get hard and you can go all night. It’ll make a
Hong Kong whore call you mister.”  He pulled Hadley close and
whispered, “I suspect that’s what Top wanted it for…you know, him and Miss
Ginny…”

Hadley forced a stern look onto his face. “I wouldn’t go
spreading rumors if I were you, Doc.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, Sergeant.”

After supper, Jock and Jillian sipped cognac on the Mission
House’s veranda. Jock held up his glass, swirled the rich amber liquid, and
said, “Where the hell did you get this stuff, Jill?”

“From your Army, silly boy. Your brass hats don’t travel
without their spirits.”

They were startled when MacArthur emerged and sat with them.

“Cognac, General?” Jillian asked, already pouring.

“No, Miss Forbes, none for me. The wine at dinner was my
limit.”

After some small talk, Jillian asked, “Why don’t you move
your headquarters here, General, to Weipa. Brisbane is so far away from
everything now.”

“As lovely as that sounds, my dear, I’ll be moving my
headquarters to Port Moresby very soon.” MacArthur tapped his West Point class
ring against the chair and said, “I see you wear the ring, too, Miles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, son, your tenacity has done the Academy proud. Will
you be flying back in the morning?”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

The supreme commander rose from his seat. Jock began to do
the same but MacArthur stopped him. “No, no, Major. At ease. I’ll leave you two
to enjoy this beautiful night.”

As MacArthur vanished back into the Mission House, Jock
leaned close to Jillian and said, “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

She kissed him on the mouth and said, “You’d better, you
bloody wanker. I’ll be expecting a demonstration of your tenacity very
shortly.”

When the lovemaking was finished, Jock looked deep into
Jillian’s eyes and said, “I haven’t said anything about this, Jill, but I’m
scared shitless about your plans to be sailing a ship into a combat zone.”

“Why? It’s a lot safer than what you’ll be doing.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

She climbed on top and pinned him to the bed. “Did the
cognac affect your memory, laddie?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it make you forget everything we’ve been through? I
seem to remember killing a Jap to save you. Have you forgotten that?”

“No, of course not. How could I?”

“Then what on earth makes you think I’m not capable of
captaining my ship?”

“But you’ll be in hostile territory, Jill.”

“Jock…sweetheart…I’m from Weipa. I’ve lived in hostile
territory my whole life. You, of all people, should know I’m not afraid.”

“Jill, only crazy people aren’t afraid of combat.”

“Then call me crazy, Major Miles.” She rolled off and pulled
him to her. “Now, will you bloody shut up and fuck me, please?”

Chapter Thirty-One

Day 12

Colonel Murdock’s absence—and presumed death—necessitated an
immediate command shuffle at 81st Regiment. Lieutenant Colonel Glen
Hailey stepped up from the executive officer’s position to take over as
commander. The S3 would step into Hailey’s old shoes as XO. Jock Miles, just
back from Weipa, barely had time to lay his baggage down before he was summoned
by Colonel Hailey.

“Major Miles,” Hailey began, “as you can see, there’s been
some shuffling of jobs around here. I have a new one for you, too. You are now
regimental S3 as well as S2, at least until a replacement lieutenant colonel
can be found. Think you can handle all that?”

Jock knew full well there would be no replacement
lieutenant colonel for the foreseeable future. He hoped Hailey realized
that, too.

“It would be an honor, sir,” Jock replied.

“Good,” Hailey replied. “I take it General Hartman has
filled you in on the division’s revised mission?”

“I was in the meetings with General MacArthur, sir. I got it
all first hand.”

“Well, good for you,” Hailey replied. His tone conveyed the
implied sarcasm: Ain’t you the hot little shit. “Have an ops order on my
desk by eighteen hundred hours, Miles.”

That should be pretty easy to whip up in five hours, Jock
thought. All I’ve got to do is tell the regiment to stay put and keep the Japs
fixed in place for three more nights, until the Aussies land. Shouldn’t be a
problem for them…they’ve been real good at “staying put” so far. It’s
“advancing” that’s not working out too well.

“One more thing, Major,” Hailey said, “those boys of yours
up on Astrolabe…we’re the only regiment I know that’s got a whole company for
an I and R unit. Authorized strength calls for just a platoon. Short as this
regiment is on manpower, I need most of those men off that mountain and
fighting down here with the rest of us.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir,” Jock replied.
“They’ve been doing plenty of fighting right where they are. They’re all that’s
keeping this division from getting flanked. It was only three nights ago they
held off that night attack by at least a battalion—”

Hailey cut him off. “Bullshit, Major. The artillery stopped
that attack. All I need on that mountain is an FO team, not a whole damned
company playing grab-ass. Get them down here and put them to work.”

“Very well, sir. I suggest, though, we bring the company off
the mountain intact once we can get a fresh FO team up there and briefed by my
people. After the company is off the mountain, then we can reorganize it. It’ll
be much less confusing for everyone that way.”

Colonel Hailey wasn’t interested in the details. “Just make
it happen, Major,” he replied.

Good. Put it in my hands. That’ll let me stall off his
stupid idea for a little while.

Jock took a moment to consider Charlie Company’s situation.
Half the men had been in action for 12 straight days, the other half for 7.
They’d been sleeping outdoors in muddy holes in the ground all that time, each
man with only a ground sheet for shelter, eating nothing but K rations,
suffering torrential rains, broiling sun, and Japanese attacks. Four of them
were already dead. The rest were filthy, exhausted, and miserable. Half of them
would probably have malaria or bush typhus before year’s end. Or maybe both.

But we still need them there, at least until the Aussies are
safely on shore. Can’t be changing horses now.

As soon as Hailey left the tent, Jock told the radio
operator, “Get Blind Eye Six up on the command net.” He wrote a simple
message for the operator to code and send: Can you continue your mission
another seven days?

It only took a few minutes for the answer to come back. It
flustered the HQ radio operator, because Blind Eye Six hadn’t bothered
to code the reply. Jock smiled as he heard Patchett’s voice spill from the
speaker: “If it’s you doing the asking, sir, that’s a big affirmative,
over.”

“They shouldn’t be transmitting in the clear, sir,” the
operator said. “That’s a serious breach of commo security.”

“Don’t worry, Corporal,” Jock replied. “They didn’t give
anything away to the Japs.”

Jock wrote the operations order in less than 30 minutes.
Turning it over to the operations sergeant for distribution, he headed outside
to his jeep. “Spill,” he told his driver, “let’s take a ride to Twenty Mile
Airfield.”

Travis Spill asked, “Y’all going for another sight-seeing
tour, sir?”

“I plan to.”

The L4 had just touched down when Jock arrived at the
airfield. Before the little plane’s propeller had even stopped spinning, a
lieutenant colonel Jock recognized from Division staff tumbled out of her,
landed on all fours, and promptly surrendered to airsickness. The pilot, John
Worth, climbed out and gave his plane a quick walk-around inspection.

The inspection done, Worth helped the ailing colonel to his
feet and said, “Thanks so much for not puking on board, sir. It’s really hard
to get rid of that smell.”

Despite the flecks of vomit splattered across his fatigues,
the colonel tried to summon his dignity. In his best command voice, he asked,
“Is your ship okay, Lieutenant?”

“Yes sir,” Worth replied, “Not a mark on her. She’s been
through much worse, believe me.”

The colonel bent over and puked some more.

“You take care now, Colonel,” Worth called as the airsick officer
wobbled to his jeep.

As the jeep roared to life, Jock asked, “What happened to
him?”

“These officers from Division think it’s better to fly a
mile high. We got bounced around in all kinds of turbulence…caught a stiff
headwind and damn near came to a stop in mid-air. Then, some flak opened up on
us. I had to dive like a brick to get the hell out of there.”

“All that a little too much for the colonel’s delicate
stomach, I guess?”

“I suppose so. I just thank heavens he didn’t get sick all
over the cabin. You need to go someplace, sir?”

“Yeah,” Jock said, “I need to see the other side of town
again. And I’d like to take a peek behind Astrolabe if we still have enough
light.”

“No sweat, sir,” Worth replied as he headed for the latrine.
“Just let me fill up her tank and empty mine. Be right back.”

They were airborne in less than 20 minutes, retracing the
route of their last flight together. “I’m going to stay low, sir,” Worth
shouted to Jock in the back seat. “We’ll save gas not climbing so much.”

Jock looked to the water below. There were far fewer
American transport ships offloading their supplies to the beach. He’d noticed
that earlier today, too, as the plane bringing them back from Weipa descended
for landing at Twenty Mile. He knew why: They’ve been pulled back to pick up
General Blamey’s Aussies.

Nothing seemed new on the far side of Port Moresby. There
was still a small Japanese outpost on the hills inland from the beach at Boera.
John Worth gave those hills a wide berth now; maybe this time the gunners
sitting up there would be luckier and do more than just punch holes in her
fabric skin if they got too close. Jock could see all he needed through
binoculars: We’re not going to read their laundry tags this time.

After the pass around the hills was done, Worth asked, “How
do you want to get behind Astrolabe, sir? Going around the west end is
quickest…it’s a straight line, but it’s a little dicey. We’d pass over where I
started catching flak before. Or course, if I hadn’t been screwing around at
five thousand feet…”

“Go down to the eastern end,” Jock replied. “We’ll start our
look-see there.”

They backtracked over the water, nearly all the way back to
Twenty Mile. Once safely behind the American lines, Worth turned the L4 inland
toward the mountain.

Worth asked, “Are we looking for anything special, sir?”

“I need to get a good lay of the land back there, John. I’ve
looked down at it from the peak, but you can only see so far.”

“How come, sir? We expecting Japs from that direction?”

“Lately, that’s become my biggest fear, John.”

The L4 reached Astrolabe’s eastern tip. “How close to the
peak you want to go, sir?” Worth asked. “It would be better if we stayed away a
bit, out of the mountain wave.”

“I know,” Jock replied. “Let’s stay a mile or so north of
the peak. Use those rising smoke columns as a guide.”

“Is that smoke from native villages, sir?”

“Should be. There’s a bunch of them on the backslope. They
haven’t been touched by the fighting…at least not yet.”

The smoke…wispy, grayish. Typical of a village’s
cook-fire. But something didn’t look right. Jock rechecked his map. He counted
five smoke columns rising into the sky. Four of the columns—separated by no
more than a mile—were in places he’d expect: Trevor Shaw and Ginny Beech had
confirmed the presence of those villages when Jock’s men first took the OP on
Astrolabe from the Japanese. The fifth smoke column, a bit farther north—the
map was blank there, showing nothing but open space.

“That far smoke column, John…about ten degrees off the right
nose. Let’s take a closer look. Get down in the treetops if you can.”

Flying down the backslope, the L4 was in a moderate descent
and able to make decent speed—almost 80 miles per hour. They were nearly there.

“You want to pass it to the right or left?” Worth called
from the front seat.

“Make it to the left, John.”

Worth nudged the L4 that way. As the last few seconds to
flyover ticked off, he said, “Okay, banking right.”

The right bank gave Jock Miles a view of nothing but the
ground below, unobstructed by the lower fuselage. In the instant the L4 flashed
over the smoke’s source, Jock didn’t know who was more startled: him, or the
faces of a few Japanese soldiers looking up at him with open mouths as they
tended the cook-fire.

“Shit,” Jock said. “We’ve got Japs.”

“You need another pass, sir?”

“Yeah…Gotta get an idea how many.”

“Okay, but we’d better come in from a different direction,”
Worth said, pulling into a turn so tight, Jock swore the low wingtip was
skimming through the trees.

The L4’s second pass was slower: she wasn’t flying downhill
coming out of the north. Still, at just a few feet above the trees, she whizzed
over the objective in the blink of an eye. Jock saw many more men this time.
There were too many to count—and they were scurrying about like their lives
depended on it.

“Turn northeast, John, NOW!”

Worth did as he was told, only asking why as he rolled out
on the requested heading. “What’s the deal, sir?”

“I’ve got a hunch…follow this creek a little bit…” Jock
paused, straining to see through the canopy of trees.

“YEAH…THERE THEY ARE,” Jock said, pounding his fist against
his knee for emphasis. “There’s a whole damned column of them walking up the
slope. That cook-fire…that’s their supper stop. Fish heads and rice all around,
I guess.”

“So how many you figure, sir?”

“I really can’t tell, John. It could be a division for all I
know.”

“You know, sir…if there’s that many guns pointing at us,
maybe we—”

“You’re right, John. Let’s get out of—”

They both pretended not to hear that first thump or
feel her shudder…but denial of the painfully obvious can last only a moment.
The purr of her engine had turned to a coarse rumble mixed with a hair-raising
howl, like the sound of a grinder against metal. There were a few more thumps,
more felt than heard; someone had her well in his sights and was hitting her
again and again.

Her engine cowling began to flap like a street sign in a
howling gale. What had been the smooth arc of her propeller tips was now a
jagged, oscillating blur. She seemed determined to shake herself apart at any
moment. Her remaining life as a flying machine seemed to be measured in
seconds.

“JOHN! TURN WEST…MY GUYS ARE ONLY A FEW MILES AWAY. WE’LL BE
SAFE THERE…”

He didn’t add: If we survive the crash.

Worth was paying Jock no attention. His mind was already
made up. He turned east, retracing the route they had taken to get behind the
mountain.

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING, JOHN? TURN AROUND!”

“No dice, sir. If we go west, our only choice is which tree
we end up in. If I go east, I’ve got a chance of getting us back to Twenty
Mile. It’s not that far.”

Jock checked his map. “BUT IT’S MORE THAN TWELVE MILES BACK
TO THE AIRFIELD, JOHN.” And Astrolabe was in the way.

“Once I get out from behind this damned mountain, I can
maybe glide the rest of the way. Now let me fly, will you? And start figuring
out what you can jettison…because we’ll need to lighten up here real quick.
Every pound’s gonna matter.”

The engine sputtered, surged, and sputtered again as John
Worth struggled with the throttle and mixture to keep it running. “I think
she’ll keep going,” he said. “Won’t make much power…and we sure as hell can’t
climb…but I think I can nurse her back home.”

She hardly seemed to be moving. Jock snuck a peek at the
airspeed indicator; its needle hovered just above 50 miles per hour.

“HOW SLOW CAN THIS THING FLY, JOHN?”

“With a good headwind, she can fly backward. Just relax,
sir…Why don’t you call in what we just saw on the radio…before we have to chuck
it overboard.”

The radio! Use the damned radio, Jock thought as he fumbled
with its knobs. I’ve really got my head up my ass. I’m screaming my head off
like a scared little girl, and this green kid in the pilot’s seat is cool as a
cucumber. And we’re still flying, somehow…

Her engine began to backfire. The propeller seemed to be
barely spinning, each blade plainly visible as it spun past the windshield.

“Oops, too lean,” Worth said as he fiddled with the
controls. A few more backfires, and the engine resumed its sickly grumble.

Jock took another look at the airspeed indicator; it seemed
stuck at 50 miles per hour. They were still behind Astrolabe; the mountain’s
peak towering above them had never looked so tall.

Jock couldn’t raise Division or Regiment on the radio. He
tried Blind Eye Six. The unmistakable Aussie accent of Trevor Shaw
replied. Jock’s signal was very weak, Shaw reported, but readable.

John Worth offered a reason for the radio problems: “Our
antenna’s probably shot to hell.”

There was no time to code the message. What Jock told Blind
Eye—in the clear—was concise: “Move immediately to block Japs in unknown
strength seven miles east-northeast your position, advancing from north.”

There was no reply. The L4’s radio had gone dead. There was
nothing but static from the headphones.

“Get rid of it,” Worth said.

Jock disconnected the heavy radio from its mount and
wrestled it out the open cabin window. The plane shot up in altitude the moment
it left his hands. The sudden climb made his gut feel like it had bounced off
the cabin floor.

“Hang on,” Worth said, “I’m gonna cut around the end of the
mountain real close. We’ll probably get our brains beat in from turbulence.”

Astrolabe’s peak still loomed high above the little L4 as
she skirted the mountain. Worth had been right: they did get their brains beat
in, but it didn’t last very long. They were soon clear of Astrolabe’s high
ground, no longer skimming its trees. The ground was now 2,000 feet below them
as they flew across the lowlands. Twenty Mile Airfield was visible some six
miles in the distance. They were headed straight for it.

“I think we’ve got it made, sir,” Worth said.

The engine wasn’t convinced, though. It began the cycle of
surging and sputtering again. This time, John Worth couldn’t find the sweet
spot in the controls that kept it turning. Two miles from the airfield, the
engine quit.

At least we’ll crash in GI-held territory, Jock told
himself, looking for the silver lining as the now-silent L4—this wounded
glider—seemed to be sinking lower more quickly than it was moving forward.

There was at least half a mile to go, and Jock was already
able to count leaves in the treetops. John Worth didn’t say a word. Jock
watched the back-seat control stick moving gently between his knees, responding
to Worth’s gentle ministrations to keep her in the air just a few more seconds.

She seemed to stop in mid-air, and Worth pushed her nose
down ever so gently. She began to creep forward again—they were close, but not
close enough.

But she kept flying. Jock wasn’t sure how that was possible:
the airspeed indicator showed 40 miles per hour—but we’re hardly moving…

The top of a tree dead ahead loomed higher than the L4’s
wing. A gentle nudge of the controls and she was around it. A few more seconds
and she seemed to be floating on a sea of treetops. There was a sound like paper
ripping that went on for what seemed an eternity—and then it stopped. There
were no trees beneath them now, only the flat, dirt runway of Twenty Mile.
First, a bump—then a steady rumble as her wheels grasped the earth and
didn’t let go.

They were home.

Jock climbed from her cabin first and surveyed the L4. Her
engine was a mess: most of the lower cowling was gone, leaving only some jagged
aluminum behind. A slick coating of blackened oil started at the engine’s
firewall and extended down the belly as if smeared by a giant paintbrush. A
cylinder head was completely gone, giving a clear view of the piston inside.
One propeller blade was shorter than the other, its tip jagged and splintered
like a shattered baseball bat.

The source of that ripping noise just before landing became
apparent, too: leafy branches were entangled in the landing gear. She had been
trimming the treetops during her last few seconds of flight.

Worth still hadn’t left the aircraft. Sticking his head in
the cabin door, Jock asked, “Are you okay?” Then he saw why the pilot was in no
hurry to get out. The telltale stain in his crotch gave him away. He had pissed
himself.

John Worth was ready to die of embarrassment right then and
there. “You won’t tell anyone, will you, sir?” he asked. “They might not want
to fly with me.”

“Are you kidding me, John? The only story I’m going to tell
is what a fantastic job you did to get us back alive.”

Travis Spill pulled up in the jeep. “They’ve been screaming
for you, sir,” Spill said. “Don’t that plane have a radio?”

“Not anymore,” Jock replied.

At least the jeep still had its radio, and it worked fine.
The first message brought Jock some small measure of relief: Blind Eye Six had
relayed his information about the Japs on Astrolabe’s backslope to HQ, and they
were moving into a blocking position, as ordered. They had even called in
artillery on the location Jock identified. He could hear the rumble of
batteries firing in the distance.

But there was still a world of things to do.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Day 12

They had to hurry if they were going to be in position
before dark. Charlie Company would need to walk some six miles along
Astrolabe’s peak, back to the vicinity of the old OP they left five days ago.
As they broke camp at The Notch, two questions still swirled in Lee Grossman’s
head: Are we supposed to leave an OP at The Notch? Are we even supposed to
be moving at all?

Repeated radio calls to Long Jump Six-Two Eagle—Jock
Miles’s airborne call sign—received no reply. Lee Grossman tried calling Regimental
Headquarters. He got a response but no answer to his question. The voice on the
radio merely recited the operations order Jock had written earlier that
afternoon, the one that instructed all units to hold present positions and
maintain contact with opposing Japanese forces.

Grossman shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he told
Melvin Patchett. “We just told them there are Japs coming up the mountain.
Don’t they think the regiment…shit, the whole division…ought to react?”

What Grossman didn’t know was the only staff officer in HQ
at the moment was the adjutant, who was busy preparing the regiment’s casualty
report for the day. Operations orders were not his concern.

“But that damned radio call,” Grossman said, “it was in
the clear, Top. How do we really know it was Major Miles and not some Jap?”

Melvin Patchett gave his company commander the look every
man in the unit had come to know well. It meant, quite simply: you dumb son
of a bitch. With all due respect, of course.

“Lieutenant,” Patchett said, his voice weary, like that of a
schoolteacher repeating the same lesson over and over again, “that was Major
Miles on the radio. I guaran-damn-tee it.” He paused, and then added, “You
know, sir, me and the major been to a couple of rodeos together.”

“Okay, fine. We move. But what about the OP right here at
The Notch, Top? Isn’t that important anymore?”

“I reckon it is, sir…but even if we did leave an OP here,
how in blue blazes are they gonna communicate with the rest of the world?
Commander Shaw’s radio gotta come with us.”

The first sergeant had a point. Shaw’s radio needed to stay
with the company. An OP at The Notch would have no more than a walkie-talkie
for a radio, and it would only be able to transmit about a mile. They would
need Shaw’s radio as a relay, but it would be six miles away, well out of
walkie-talkie range. In fact, every American radio on the ground in Papua would
be well out of range.

Even telephones wouldn’t work: the reels they had left held
less than two miles of wire.

“I know how we can do it, sir,” a voice called out. Grossman
and Patchett turned to see Sergeant Tom Hadley standing by the trail. He lifted
a cable from the ground and held it in his hand.

“We can use the old Jap wire,” Hadley said. “It runs from
the old OP, down through The Notch, all the way to Port Moresby. We cut it here
and splice into it…then we do the same when we get to where we’re going. An
instant landline from The Notch to Commander Shaw’s radio.”

Patchett nodded his endorsement. “Just might work, sir, but
to avoid confusion, let’s call the OP at The Notch OP Charlie Baker. The
old OP, we’ll call it OP Charlie Able.”

There were personnel problems, too. Ginny Beech said, “The
porters will carry your kit back to OP Charlie Able, but then they want to go
home. If there’s a fight brewing on the backslope, their villages will be in
the crossfire. They need to help move their families to safety.”

Lee Grossman had no choice but to reply, “Of course. No
problem.”

Actually, Grossman thought, it’s a really big problem. A handful
of porters double the company’s capacity to carry ammunition and supplies. They
eat next to nothing…hell, they consider K rations a feast…and they never seem
to get tired. But we can’t hold them against their will.

Patchett pulled Ginny aside. “When your porters go,” he
whispered, “I want you to go, too. Safer that way.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet, Patch,” she said, touching his cheek.
Then she turned hard as nails: “But forget it. I’m bloody staying.”

There hadn’t been much for Jock to update on the big
situation map at Regimental HQ. The only American unit that had moved was
Charlie Company, from its perch at The Notch to its blocking position six miles
east, now named OP Charlie Able. Right where the Jap OP used to be, he
thought, before we took it from them. The only other change on the map
was the red rectangle on the backslope of Astrolabe that designated—pending
further information—a Japanese infantry unit of unknown size.

The latest radio communication with Charlie Company had
brought a piece of good news: they had left behind an OP at The Notch—named OP
Charlie Baker—with which they had wire communication. Jock had been thrilled
and proud to redraw that triangle—symbolizing an observation post—on the map. My
boys are on the ball, he told himself as the grease pencil squeaked against
the map’s acetate overlay. They’re way ahead of me. I’m not sure how they
pulled that off, but I’m grateful they did.

Colonel Hailey entered the tent and sauntered up to the map.
He still had crumbs from supper on his shirtfront and web gear.

At least he got to eat, Jock thought. I hope the rest of the
regiment is so lucky tonight.

Hailey ran his finger along the map, right down Astrolabe’s
spine. A look of smug satisfaction came over his face as his fingertip tapped
on the rectangle marking Charlie Company’s new position at OP Charlie Able.

“You see, Miles,” the colonel said, “if I hadn’t told you to
move that company, the Japs would be swarming down on us from Astrolabe right
now. Of course, if they’d been doing their job up here”—his finger tapped on
the map at The Notch—“those Japs would have never gotten this far in the first
place.”

The suicidal urge to punch Colonel Hailey right in the mouth
rose up within Jock Miles. He had to jam his hands into his pockets for a moment
until the urge passed: There’s no point explaining to this pompous imbecile
now how Charlie Company came to be where they are. And I don’t plan to spend
the rest of my life in Leavenworth.

“Those Japs didn’t come through The Notch, Colonel,” Jock said,
struggling to keep a civil tone.

“Nonsense, Major. Where else could they have come from? We
know there are no other Japs within a hundred miles of Port Moresby.”

“They came over the Owen Stanleys, sir. I could see their
column coming from the east when I was airborne.”

Rolling his eyes, Hailey said, “I’m beginning to question
your sanity, Major Miles. MacArthur says the Owen Stanleys are the best flank
defense we could ask for. It would have taken them a month, maybe more, to walk
over those mountains.”

“They’ve got plenty of time, sir,” Jock replied. “And
they’ve done it before. So have the Aussies. And with our Navy and Air Force
finally showing some muscle against Jap shipping, it would be the safest way
for them to move more troops to Port Moresby.”

Colonel Hailey threw up his hands. He was finished with this
discussion. Pointing to the big red rectangle marking the Japanese position on
Astrolabe, he said, “Just keep the artillery blowing the shit out of them and
we’ll be fine. The Aussies will be here before you know it, Major.”

“Sir,” Jock said, “we need to reinforce Charlie Company. I
know that part of the mountain well. The backslope is more of a plateau. It
doesn’t favor the defender on the peak all that much. We need at least two more
companies—”

“ENOUGH, MAJOR,” Hailey said, his volume ruffling the tent’s
canvas. “You are forbidden from moving any more of my soldiers up that damned
mountain. That’s all I need…pull troops from the line down here and watch the
Japs flow through like it’s an open spigot. Artillery, man! Trust your
artillery! And get that fucking Air Force of ours over the target at first
light tomorrow.”

Colonel Hailey stormed from the tent. With the old
operations sergeant by his side, Jock went back to studying the situation map.

“The man don’t tolerate much back-talk, sir,” the sergeant
said to Jock. “He ain’t near as open to suggestion as Colonel Murdock was.” His
voice took on a tone of reverence when he spoke the name of their
missing—probably KIA—ex-commander.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Jock replied, “but tell me, Sarge…are the
locations of our artillery batteries up to date?”

“Yessir.”

The old sergeant watched as Jock measured the range arcs of
each battery. “You got a better place for some of them guns, sir?”

“I’m just making sure we can pour fire on both the backslope
of Astrolabe and The Notch at the same time, if necessary. If we can’t support
Charlie Company, they’re in big trouble. And if they get pushed off Astrolabe,
so are we.”

The sergeant did a little measuring of his own. “If that’s
what you’re wanting, sir…how about we move this one-oh-five battery inland
about three miles…to here?” His fingertip landed at a spot on the map; he drew
a goose egg around it. “They can’t hit either place you want from where they’re
at right now.”

“I was thinking the same thing, Sarge. Cut the order, quick.
Let’s get them moving before it gets dark and they get themselves lost.”

It was strangely quiet when Charlie Company got to OP
Charlie Able. The artillery barrage they called in was long over. In the
twilight, they could see no Japanese coming up the backslope. Only smoke and
dust were visible, drifting slowly away.

The Morgue still stood, like a monument to the Japs
who died there 10 days ago. The GIs avoided it now as they had then. Even though
it had a roof to provide shelter from sun and rain, it was a place of certain
death: a slaughterhouse.

“I guess that artillery kicked them in the ass pretty good,”
Melvin Patchett said. “I was figuring we’d have to fight them for this
ground…again.”

Lee Grossman’s wariness showed: “Top, you don’t suppose
they’ve already crossed over the peak farther south?”

Patchett shook his head. “Nah, they know as well as we do
that the only trail down the front face starts right here. They may well be
farther south on the peak, but to get down to the lowlands, they’re gonna have
to walk right into us…and we’d better be ready for them.”

Patchett’s words worked their magic; Grossman felt his
confidence growing. “You’re right, Top,” he said. “I think we’re going to need
to set out listening posts…a couple down on the backslope, for sure.”

“You bet your sweet ass we need them LPs, sir, and we’d
better be damn quick about it, too. We got about fifteen minutes before
dark…and I smell rain coming.”

Grossman asked, “You think they’ll come at us in the rain,
Top? At night?”

“They done it before, Lieutenant. Just depends what kind of
Bushido bastard with a sword is prodding them in the ass.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Day 12/Day 13

The night rain fell on Astrolabe in invisible sheets,
soaking Charlie Company to the bone. Fighting holes filled with water so fast
that constant helmet-bailing was necessary. It was only for the sake of keeping
the ammunition dry, though; the men were already wet beyond remedy.

Trevor Shaw sought refuge with his radio inside The
Morgue. He had no choice: there had been no time to set up the usual canvas
shelter before the deluge began. Good as his radio had proven to be, its case
wasn’t hardened and sealed like the GI field units. A soaking wet radio was
useless as a communications tool and dangerous to its operators. The ghosts of
all those Japanese killed under The Morgue’s roof would have to make
temporary accommodations for Shaw and his equipment.

It was raining buckets across the lowlands, too, all the way
from Astrolabe’s base down to the sea. Rivers of mud flowed through Regimental
Headquarters. To Colonel Hailey, the bad weather was good news. “Gentlemen,” he
announced, “Mother Nature has blessed us with a quiet night. The rain will keep
the Japs in line for us, mark my words.”

The Japanese, however, seemed intent on proving Hailey
wrong. When the first radio reports began to come in—reports by screeching,
panicky men—of Japanese attacks all along the division’s line, Hailey was the
first to doubt their accuracy. “Can’t be,” the colonel said. “No Jap in his
right mind would attack now. It’s not like them to do that…they’ve got no
advantage.”

The reports kept coming. In the 81st
Regiment—Hailey’s regiment—Second Battalion was reporting an attack in force
against its line. The battalion commander himself was on the radio. He seemed
calm—his voice hadn’t climbed as high in pitch as some other frightened men on
the net—but he was insistent: his unit needed supporting artillery fire and
illumination rounds immediately, if not sooner.

“I don’t give a shit how hard it’s raining,” the battalion
commander told the fire direction center. “Keep the fucking powder dry and
shoot, dammit. I need that artillery and I need it now.”

Grabbing his gear, Jock said, “I’d better get over there and
see what’s going on.”

He was surprised when Colonel Hailey remained glued to his
camp chair. Jock had assumed the colonel, too, would wish to be at the most
critical point of contact, maybe even influencing the situation with sheer
command presence. It seemed obvious, though, Colonel Hailey had no intention of
going anywhere.

“You’ll never make it, Major,” Hailey said. “Your jeep will
get stuck in all that mud.”

“Then I’ll walk, sir. This is still the infantry, right?”

Hailey just shrugged. “Suit yourself, young man…but you’re
playing a fool’s game. This regiment has already lost one commander who decided
to go on a glory hunt.”

Jock could feel his face flush with anger. In his mind,
Hailey’s words amounted to blasphemy. “I’m sure Colonel Murdock wasn’t looking
for glory, sir,” Jock said, perhaps too aggressively. “He was leading by
example and—”

“AT EASE, MAJOR,” Hailey interrupted. “I’ll decide how I
lead this regiment…and right now, it’s best led from right here in this command
post. But if you’re so intent on getting out there, just make damned sure
Second Battalion doesn’t budge an inch from its position.”

“Very well, sir,” Jock replied. He had barely stepped from
the tent when the first call for fire from Astrolabe came in.

Corporal Bogater Boudreau had waited as long as he could. It
was time to pull himself and his two men back from The Notch. The Japanese were
coming: even in the darkness and pouring rain, Boudreau could hear trucks down
in the valley and the shouting of enemy soldiers struggling up the mountain.

He jerked the field telephone from its wires and slung it
over his shoulder. “Artillery’s on the way, mes freres,” the Cajun
corporal said. “Let’s haul ass.”

Slipping and sliding as they ran down the muddy trail along
Astrolabe’s peak, they had made 50 yards when the first artillery rounds
crashed into the spot they had been just a minute before. They weren’t sure
whether it was the concussion from the rounds’ impact or just their own terror
that sent them sprawling face-down in the mud.

“Let’s get beaucoup farther than this,” Boudreau
said, and the three were off and running again.

Lee Grossman couldn’t hear the artillery rounds impact at
The Notch. The roaring hiss of rain on the forest canopy made it hard to
hear the voice of a man standing a few feet away; hearing artillery rounds
impacting six miles distant was out of the question. He just hoped Bogater
Boudreau and his men had gotten out from under those rounds in time.

“Don’t be none too worried about that crazy Cajun, sir,”
Melvin Patchett said. “He’s a tough son of a bitch. Clever as a fox, too. And
don’t be surprised if he splices into that Jap phone line a ways down the trail
and calls us up again asking for more fire.”

A field telephone rang at the CP, but it wasn’t Bogater
Boudreau’s line—it was from one of the listening posts on the backslope.
Patchett picked it up.

“We can hear ’em even in the rain, Top,” the voice from the
LP said. “They’re talking real loud…but the voices stay in the same place. They’re
close, but they’re not getting closer. At least not yet.”

“All right, son,” Patchett said, “Good job. Now y’all pull
back…I’m gonna call in some hellfire on those bastards.” He turned to Lee
Grossman: “We got company out there, sir. Time for every swinging dick to get
his head out of his ass.”

Then he called to Trevor Shaw at the radio in The Morgue,
“Got another fire mission for y’all, Commander…”

The jeep slipped sideways and came to a stop as its wheels
spun in the slick mud. Travis Spill tried the lowest gear, and then reverse,
but it didn’t help. It was stuck. Time to break out the shovel and start
digging again.

“Looks like this is as far as we go, sir,” Spill said, quite
disappointed with himself. He wanted to show off his foul-weather driving
skills and deliver Major Miles right to Second Battalion’s command post, but it
wouldn’t happen tonight. It was too dark and the rain falling too hard to see
where he was going. Even though he had followed the little signs with arrows
pointing the way, he wasn’t sure he was on the trail to Second Battalion
anymore.

“Don’t sweat it, Spill,” Jock said. “This is close enough.
Stay with the jeep.” He hopped out and slogged into the darkness, toward the
intermittent chatter of gunfire.

It only took a few minutes to find a tent befitting a
battalion CP. Dumb luck, maybe, Jock told himself, not entirely sure in
the darkness it was an American and not a Japanese tent. He knew he could have
just as easily blundered across enemy lines. He heard voices from inside, and
to his great relief they were speaking English, even if they were doing so with
the high-pitched, breathless voices of men in terror.

Jock walked into the tent, surprised the dirt that served as
its floor was just as soggy as the ground outside. Garbage was scattered
everywhere. Affairs in this battalion were obviously a mess; basic items like
hygiene, housekeeping, and drainage of the encampment were being ignored. This
CP tent had the look and smell of weak command.

Lieutenant Colonel Blevins—the battalion commander—was
huddled over a map with a captain and a sergeant. “We’ve got to pull back,
sir,” the captain said to Colonel Blevins, his voice pleading. Stabbing the map
repeatedly with his finger, he continued, “They’ve broken through here…and
here…and here.”

“Nobody’s pulling back, I’m afraid,” Jock said, announcing
his presence.

The three turned and looked at the intruder from higher
headquarters, their expressions a mixture of fear and loathing. “Major Miles,”
Blevins said, “it’s pretty easy for someone to come down from Regiment and run
his mouth without the faintest damned idea what’s going on here.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Jock replied, “I’ve got a
pretty good idea what’s going on. In all likelihood, you’re being probed by no
more than a company. It’s happening all across the division’s line. Nothing you
shouldn’t be able to handle.”

“You can’t know that, Miles,” Colonel Blevins said. “It
looks to us like a major Japanese unit has joined the fight…and they’re pushing
right through us.”

“Not likely, sir,” Jock replied. “We can see their every
move from Astrolabe. Unless this major Jap unit dropped from the sky after
sunset, you’re facing the same guys since first contact.”

“That sounds real fine, Major, but I’m still being overrun.
I need to pull my men back.”

“You can’t do that, sir. Colonel Hailey orders this position
be held.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, Major Miles…the Japs are already in
this position.”

“Then we need to call in your final protective fires, sir.
We can’t allow a Jap breakthrough.”

The battalion commander look shocked. “You’re asking me to
call artillery on my own position? On my own men?”

“Affirmative, sir. We’ve got no choice. If they breach our
line here, the whole division can be enveloped. We’ll all be up shit’s creek.”

Colonel Blevins looked as if the battle being waged outside
this tent paled in comparison to the one raging in his soul. For a few moments,
he stood frozen, looking physically ill, paralyzed by indecision.

The sound of automatic weapons grew louder—and closer.

“Sir,” his captain pleaded, “we need to get our asses out of
here…now!”

Blevins snapped out of his trance and looked at Jock. “Is
that what Regiment wants, Major? That I kill my own men?”

“I’ve already told you what Regiment wants, sir. I didn’t
hear all of your conversation when I came in, but I think I got the gist.
You’re not really sure where your men are right now, are you?”

Reluctantly, Colonel Blevins agreed.

“So,” Jock continued, “whether or not your own men are
endangered by an FPF is something of a crap shoot.”

Again, Blevins agreed. Reluctantly.

Jock swept his hand across the situation map. “And if
they’re still in the positions on this map, where they’re supposed to be…and
they’re dug in properly…they at least have a chance of surviving the FPF. Any
Japs running around get decimated, though.”

Jock’s words had turned Blevins pensive. The colonel turned
to the map, studied it for a minute, and then asked, “Major, I suspect you’ll
be hauling ass back to Regiment before I call this FPF, am I right?”

“Negative, sir. I’m here to help. Just point me to the
nearest hole. I’ll take my chances with you and your men.”

Blevins thought that over for a moment. “Fuck it,” he said,
his deliberation done. “Major Miles, you’re sure there’s not some Jap
division knocking at my door?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure.”

“Okay, then,” Colonel Blevins said, seeming very much like a
confident commander again. “Let’s stay put and fight the bastards nose to nose.
Forget about the FPF.” He picked up his rifle. “I’m going to Dog Company,” he
told his sergeant. “They seem to be taking the worst of it. You coming, Major
Miles?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

Travis Spill drove up in the jeep just as Jock and Colonel
Blevins stepped outside. Jock was surprised—and pleased—to see his driver again
so soon. “Nice job getting unstuck, Spill,” Jock said. “Report to the sergeant
inside. Give him the use of our radio. I’m going forward on foot with the
colonel.”

“Will do, sir,” Spill replied. “Y’all be careful out there.”

D Company—Dog Company—was conspicuous only in its
absence. Jock and Colonel Blevins found what they supposed was the company
command post—a makeshift bunker of earth and timber, complete with a bank of
field telephones—but nobody was there. Jock grabbed the phone marked 1st
Platoon and spun the crank a few vigorous turns. No one answered. He
cranked the phone marked 2nd Platoon. This time, someone
answered. The man’s voice was intense but direct, with the inflection of
someone attending to some minor duty—like answering this telephone—that distracted
him from truly important tasks. He identified himself as the platoon sergeant.

The sergeant was a wealth of information. Yes, he said, his
platoon had tangled with the Japs—they weren’t sure how many—and taken no
casualties. The contact was over now and they were holding their position just
fine. No, he had no contact with 1st Platoon, on their left flank.
No, he had no contact with 3rd Platoon on their right flank, either.
Yes, he had seen the company commander. The XO and first sergeant, too. They
were out trying to find 1st and 3rd Platoon, and were supposed to be
on the company radio net if you needed to talk to them. Yes, he could try to
relay a message to the company commander.

Blevins looked at the walkie-talkie he carried. “Ain’t that
dandy,” he said. “This radio is on battalion frequency, and they’re on their
company frequency. We’re stumbling around out here blind and deaf.”

While they waited for the reply from the platoon sergeant,
Jock picked up the phone marked 3rd Platoon. Nobody answered.
He wasn’t surprised.

The sergeant from 2nd Platoon was back on the
line, saying he hadn’t been able to raise the company commander.

Soaking wet, with rain dripping from the rim of his helmet,
Blevins cut a pathetic figure as he looked one way and then the other, trying
to figure out in which direction he might best influence this mysterious
battle. “What do you think, Major?” he asked. “Where do we start?”

“I think we should go to our strength first, sir, and hook
up with Second Platoon.” Jock began to justify his advice, but a persistent
exchange of gunfire erupted—to their rear.

“Oh, shit,” Blevins said. “They’re behind us. That’s not
good at all.”

“Yeah, that changes things,” Jock said as he climbed from
the bunker. “We’d better get a handle on what’s going on in our own backyard.”

Blevins seemed just as terrified by that suggestion as he
was when final protective fires were first mentioned. He asked, “How do you
propose we do that, Major?”

“Carefully, sir. Very carefully.”

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Visibility improved
slightly: Jock could make out shapes all around him now in the flickering light
of muzzle flashes. Among the silhouettes of trees, he caught brief glimpses of
running men, little more than black pop-up targets on a dark gray background,
there one second, gone the next. Whether they were GIs or Japanese, he couldn’t
tell. He wouldn’t be surprised if he collided with one of them.

Hunched low to the ground, Jock moved as quickly as the
soggy ground allowed but came to an abrupt and painful stop when he stumbled
headlong into a gully. Catching his wind, he looked around and realized he was
alone. Colonel Blevins was nowhere in sight. The barrel of Jock’s Thompson was
impaled inches deep in the gully’s mud:

Shit…If I try to fire this thing now, it’ll probably blow up
on me. Shit.

The gully turned out to be a good vantage point. He could
hear men all around him yelling as they fired, things like Eat shit, Jap!
and Fuck you, Tojo! It provided good cover, too: bullets seemed to be
coming from all directions, pinging off the trees above his head and pelting
him with wooden splinters.

Idiot! I walked right into the middle of this damned fight.
This hole saved my life.

There was a sound of sloshing, like an approaching man’s
footsteps in the slippery mud. On instinct, Jock swung his Thompson in their
direction before remembering it was plugged and useless. Holding his breath, he
pulled out his bayonet, straining to see in the darkness—waiting, waiting…

The silhouette of a man loomed for an instant just feet away
and then quickly disappeared as Colonel Blevins fell face-first into the gulley
beside Jock.

“Thought I lost you, sir,” Jock said. “Are you okay?”

Blevins said nothing as he wiped mud from his eyes and
mouth. When he was done with that task, he began to frantically feel around in
the mud.

“Lose your rifle, sir?” Jock asked.

“Yeah…and the fucking walkie-talkie, too.”

The gunfire all around them slowed and then stopped. The
shouting didn’t. One voice from the left stood out: it had the distinctive
accent of some New York City borough. The Bronx, I think,
Jock surmised.

“Funny thing, sir,” Jock said to the colonel, “but in all
that shooting, I only heard GI weapons firing—”

“You can tell that, Major?”

Even in the darkness, Jock could read the surprise in
Blevins’s face.

“Sure, Colonel. A Garand sounds a lot different than an
Arisaka…and a Browning a hell of a lot different than a Nambu. And another
thing…I only hear GIs yelling. Japs usually make plenty of their own noise when
they’re in a fight.”

“What are you saying, Major?”

“Let’s find out, sir.” He cupped his hands and yelled toward
the GI voices to his left: “HEY, BRONX MOUTH…IF I GIVE YOU THE PASSWORD, YOU
PROMISE NOT TO SHOOT US?”

“TAKE THE GAS PIPE, HIROHITO,” the New Yorker replied. “WE DON’T
KNOW NO FUCKING PASSWORD…AND A SHITLOAD OF YOU NIPS SPEAK BETTER ENGLISH THAN
ME.”

Jock tried a different tack. “TELL YOU WHAT…ASK ME A
QUESTION ABOUT THE NEW YORK YANKEES INSTEAD. GO AHEAD, ASK ME ANYTHING.”

There was a moment of silence—a palpable hesitation—before
the New Yorker said, “OKAY, WISE GUY…WHO’D THE BAMBINO PLAY FOR BEFORE THE
YANKS?”

“IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO, NUMBNUTS? EVERYBODY KNOWS BABE
RUTH WAS WITH THE RED SOX FIRST.”

“OH YEAH? SO ANSWER THIS, SMART GUY…WHAT CITY DOES JOLTIN’ JOE
COME FROM?”

“DIMAGGIO COMES FROM SAN FRANCISCO. NOW, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD…”

Another voice piped up in the darkness. This one came from
Jock’s right—the opposite side from the New Yorker. It was decidedly GI,
gruffer, and bathed in the deep drawl of the American South: “HOW ABOUT YOU
YANKEE ASS-WIPES SHUT THE FUCK UP…THE JAPS ARE EVERYWHERE.”

“HEY, JOHNNY REB,” Jock said, “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? FROM
WHERE I’M SITTING, THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE WE’VE GOT NOTHING BUT AMERICANS
SHOOTING AT EACH OTHER HERE.”

Another palpable silence—and then the New Yorker said, “HOW
ABOUT THIS ONE, SLANT EYE? WHERE’D THE IRON HORSE GROW UP?

“THE LATE, GREAT LOU GEHRIG WAS FROM NEW YORK CITY,” Jock
replied.

The southern voice rang out again: “YOU GOT A NAME, MISTER
BASEBALL EXPERT?”

“MY NAME’S JOCK MILES.”

“AND WHAT RANK WOULD YOU BE, JOCK MILES?”

“I’D BE A MAJOR. NOW LISTEN UP…ME AND YOUR COLONEL ARE RIGHT
BETWEEN BOTH OF YOU, AND WE DON’T SEE OR HEAR ANY JAPS.”

The voices from both the northern and southern camps were
softer now, just murmurs. But their combined message was unmistakable: Oh,
shit…

“WE’RE COMING OVER TO THE NEW YORK SIDE,” Jock said. “PAY
ATTENTION, ALL OF YOU…CEASE FUCKING FIRE UNLESS YOU CAN REACH OUT AND TOUCH A
JAP. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

The answer came from both sides simultaneously: “YES, SIR.”

Jock asked the colonel, “You find your weapon, sir?”

“Yeah, and the walkie-talkie, too.”

“Well, then,” Jock said, taking a deep breath, “let’s go.”

It was all sorted out very quickly: the New York voice
belonged to a sergeant—a squad leader—in Third Platoon. The rest of the platoon
was scattered nearby around its leader, a terrified lieutenant who seemed
little more than a confused and frightened child at the moment.

Colonel Blevins asked the lieutenant, “Why did you pull
back, son?”

“I was told to, sir.”

“By who, Lieutenant?”

“I think it was Captain Foley, sir.”

Captain Foley: the company commander they had yet to find.

“You think, Lieutenant? You’re not sure?”

“No, sir…It was all so confusing…the Japs were everywhere.”

“Yeah, we’ve heard that one already,” Jock said, his
skepticism hard to miss. “Do you have any casualties, Lieutenant?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

The southern voice belonged to the platoon sergeant of First
Platoon. That unit, too, claimed they had been told to pull back, though they
hadn’t come under any pressure from the Japanese. The first fire they
encountered this night probably came from Third Platoon. Mercifully, they
suffered no casualties, either—and no, they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of their
company commander lately.

Colonel Blevins wasted no time appointing the First Platoon
leader as acting company commander, pending the reappearance of the absent
Captain Foley or his XO. This lieutenant, at least, seemed far more
composed—and far less terrified—than Third Platoon’s leader. Blevins’s first
order to the new company commander was simple: Get your asses back on the
line with Second Platoon and stay there.

As Jock cleaned the mud from his Thompson, Blevins, shaken
and weary, sat down on the ground with his back against a tree. Looking to
Jock, he said, “We’ll never know what really happened here, will we?”

“It’s confusing enough in daylight, sir,” Jock agreed.

“Amen, Major. Amen. I think I’d better get back to my CP,
but…” Blevins looked around, clearly confused in which direction he’d find the
command post.

“It’s this way, sir,” Jock said, pointing into the darkness.

They hadn’t walked far. Three quick shots rang out some
distance ahead—an M1 firing as fast as a GI could pull the trigger.

Then a muffled explosion—a grenade.

“Not again,” Colonel Blevins said, the words a moan of
frustration laced with fear.

They crept forward until they could see the outline of the
CP tent. Jock’s jeep was still parked in front; Private Spill leaned
nonchalantly against its hood, his M1 trained right at them.

“Spill, it’s Major Miles and the colonel,” Jock called out.
“Don’t shoot us.”

“Well, come on if you’re coming, sir,” Spill replied. “I
recognized y’all way off, anyway.”

“How’d you do that?” Jock asked.

“Ain’t no Jap as tall as you gentlemen, sir. And even in the
dark, the shape of the helmet is all sorts of different.”

Jock and Blevins took a few steps closer. Twenty yards in
front of Travis Spill, three Japanese soldiers lay on the ground. Two were
lifeless, their bodies mangled by some explosive force; the third, barely alive
but no less mangled, gurgled softly as the life flowed from his body.

Jock asked, “Did you take these guys down, Spill?”

“It was them or me, sir. Kill or be killed, right?”

“Did you see any more than these three?” Jock asked.

“No, sir, I surely didn’t.” Spill walked over to one of the
bodies, pulled a rucksack from beneath it and carefully peeked inside. “Looks
like they had a whole bunch more of them grenades, too, but only got to pull out
that one. Didn’t even get to throw it…just kinda dropped it when I shot him.
Son of a bitch must’ve gone ten feet in the air when she blew.”

Colonel Blevins shook his head in disbelief. “Are you
telling me that three little sappers caused all this mayhem…nearly turned my
whole battalion inside out?”

“Maybe, sir,” Jock replied, “but like you said before, we’ll
never know.”

Two officers stepped from the CP tent, the silver bars on
their collars catching a glint of moonlight through the clearing skies. A third
man, older, without silver bars but with sleeves heavy from the weight of many
stripes, followed close behind. Blevins put his hands on his hips, as if about
to reproach delinquent children.

“Well, well, Captain Foley,” Blevins said, “I see you, your XO,
and your first sergeant are still with us, after all.”

“We couldn’t raise you on the radio or the landline, sir,”
Foley replied, his voice shaky, “so we came to the CP for your instructions.”

Blevins grew testy. “You found it necessary for all three
of you to come?” he asked. “Who did you leave in charge of your company?”

“I didn’t…didn’t think to delegate command, sir,” Foley
said, staring at his feet as he spoke. “Didn’t think it would be necessary.”

Blevins was finding it difficult to control his rage.
“Apparently, you were wrong, Foley. Dead wrong. At least two of your platoon
leaders are of the opinion you gave them permission to pull back. Is that true?
Did you do that?”

“Well…no, sir…not exactly…”

“Well, exactly what, then, Captain?”

“I believe I said if it was necessary—”

The colonel’s rage boiled over. “YOU LEFT IT UP TO THEM,
CAPTAIN?”

Blevins whirled in a little dance of frustration, its final
step a sound kick of a tire on Jock’s jeep. “Get out of my sight, Foley,” the
colonel said. “Go back to your company and reclaim command. I made your First
Platoon leader…whatever the hell his name is…acting commander in your absence.
We’ll discuss this matter in greater detail later.”

Foley tried to offer a word of explanation, but Blevins
would have none of it. “Dismissed, Captain,” the colonel said and
stormed into the CP tent.

Captain Foley approached Jock, desperate for a sympathetic
ear. They met before at regimental staff meetings but weren’t close by any
means. Jock had had no occasion to form an opinion of the man before this
night. Everyone knew Jock, though—the Cape York campaign had seen to that.
Surely, Foley thought, here was a man who hadn’t yet forgotten the difficulties
of company command while under fire. A man who wouldn’t think his judgment poor
or question his courage under fire.

“You really fucked up, Mike,” Jock said, playing the Dutch
uncle and shattering Foley’s vain hope. “A lot of people…me included…almost got
killed because of you. Don’t ever run out on your men like that again. You’d
better pray the colonel doesn’t decide to court-martial you for dereliction.
Now get your head out of your ass and start showing those men some leadership.
They deserve it.”

Spill was behind the wheel of the jeep, grinning from ear to
ear as Captain Foley and his entourage slogged off.

Jock asked, “What are you so fucking happy about, Spill?”

“It’s not every day a l’il ol’ mutt like me gets to see an
officer chewed out, sir…and I got to see it twice.”

“I see your point,” Jock said as he checked to see if the
jeep’s silent radio was still working. “Any radio traffic for me while I was
gone, Spill?”

“Just Colonel Hailey wanting to know where you were at,
sir.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him you were busy saving his ass and you’d get back
to him as soon as you could…not my exact words, of course.”

When he stopped laughing, Jock said, “Well done, Spill. But
seriously, I’ve got to ask you…are you okay after what you did…what you had to
do?”

“You mean killing them Japs, sir?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“I reckon I’m just fine, sir. I mean, ain’t that what I’m
supposed to be doing? It don’t seem much different than shooting game, except
game don’t shoot back.” Spill cranked the jeep’s engine. “Where to, sir?” he
asked, still smiling.

Before Jock could answer, the jeep’s radio came to life:
Charlie Company—high on Astrolabe—was calling for more artillery fire.

“Those coordinates they just gave,” Jock said, pulling out
his map. “They’re calling for fire near The Notch…and on the backslope, too.”

“Sounds pretty hot up there, sir.”

“Yeah, it does,” Jock said as he checked his watch. The sun
would be up in less than two hours. “Take us back to Regiment, Spill. This is
going to be an interesting day.”

Bogater Boudreau couldn’t have agreed more with Major Miles:
this day had already proved interesting. A little too damn interesting,
maybe, the Cajun told himself. The artillery fire he had called down on The
Notch had slowed the Japanese down but didn’t stop them. They were still coming
and they were very close; it was too dark to count how many, but there seemed
to be plenty of them. Far too many for three men to handle, Bogater was sure,
so the three were on the run again, racing to get out from under the fire
mission they had just called. At least that’s what he hoped they were doing:

If I ain’t right about where we’re at…maybe I guessed a
little too far down the ridge…we ain’t gonna be leaving them rounds behind us.
We’re gonna run right into them.

As they sprinted for their lives, one of his breathless men
managed to ask, “Hey, Corporal…how far we gonna go this time?”

“Until I say stop, numbnuts.”

The pursuing Japanese were yelling louder now.

Are they closing on us? Or just making more noise?

Boudreau felt the rapid whoosh whoosh whoosh of
objects cutting through the dark sky above.

Moment of fucking truth…

He didn’t hear the explosions. Something had lifted him off
his feet and propelled him through the air.

He didn’t remember crashing into the ground. Must have
been knocked out, I reckon. His weapon, his helmet, the field telephone he
was carrying—they were all gone.

Bogater sat up and looked around. He could see nothing in
the darkness and heard nothing but a fierce ringing in his ears. His body felt
numb, like he was swaddled in cotton. Only his sense of smell provided any
information. It registered the acrid odor of spent explosives. The scent of
death.

He called the names of his two men—Fanning! Lyle!—but
his voice sounded distorted and unintelligible through the bizarre filter of
his ringing ears. On his hands and knees, he collected his gear and bumped into
Fanning and Lyle doing the same thing.

Fanning was trying to say something. It sounded like, “What
do we do now, Corporal?”

Lyle was trying to say something, too. It sounded like, “I
think I’m hit.”

Bogater replied, “Think about it a little longer while we
find that fucking Jap wire again and get this phone spliced in.”

Ringing ears or not, they must have understood him,
because—wounded or not—that’s exactly what they started to do.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Day 13

The sun rose, and the bombers of the Fifth Air Force
returned to the clear skies over Port Moresby, quickly dumping their ordnance
on—or at least near—the designated targets before hurrying back to their
Australian bases. On Astrolabe, both The Notch and the backslope received a
healthy share of the flyers’ brief attention.

Among the flurry of radio traffic at Regimental HQ was yet
another request from Charlie Company for a second long-range radio. “How many
times do I have to tell these people?” the regimental communications officer—an
efficient and resourceful captain—said as he pigeon-holed the message. “They’re
lucky they’ve got the radio they have. They aren’t getting another one.”

“But they’re spread across that peak for six miles,” Jock
said, “and they’ve got to stay mobile. They need another long-range set.”

“Look, Major,” the commo officer said, “a big chunk of the
regiment’s Two-Eight-Fours are on the bottom of the Coral Sea. We’ve got half
of Third Battalion with no radios at all. The radios that made it ashore are
crapping out faster than my guys can fix them. I’ve got two days to get stuff
reallocated before the Aussies come ashore and we start moving again…or we’ll
be using smoke signals.”

“How about this, then?” Jock said, pulling the captain over
to the map. “Run a landline up this trail on the front face of Astrolabe, right
to here.” He pointed to OP Charlie Able’s location. “If their radio craps out,
at least they’ll have some kind of backup system…and we’ll still know what’s
happening on our flank.”

“My wire teams are exhausted, sir, and you’re asking them to
lay wire up a steep mountain. On foot, yet.”

Jock was fast losing his patience. “Every swinging dick in
this division is exhausted, Captain. I want wire up that fucking mountain.
Today.”

“My men will need a guide, Major. They don’t know the
mountain trails.”

“No problem. I’ve got just the man.”

Jock went back to studying the map. Despite last night’s
probes by the Japanese, the regiment’s—and the division’s—lines were still
intact. When the sun came up, the American units had expected to see the ground
around them littered with Japanese corpses. Including the three sappers Spill
killed near Second Battalion’s CP, though, the Japanese dead could be counted
on two hands. Thankfully, the American casualty reports had been even lighter.
Jock was relieved to read Charlie Company’s morning report—radioed to Regiment—listed
only one man wounded in action but returned to duty.

Astrolabe still troubled him more than any of the other
ground 81st Regiment defended. If Charlie Company got pushed off the
mountain, the advantage would shift to the Japanese again. Jock’s fingers
traced the gentle contour lines of Astrolabe’s backslope all the way to the
Kokoda Track over the Owen Stanleys. I’ve got to see what’s going on back
there, he told himself. I need Lieutenant Worth and his little airplane.

But the status report from Twenty Mile Airfield wasn’t
encouraging. Worth’s L4 was still undergoing repairs from the battering it took
on its last flight. It wasn’t expected to be back in service before tomorrow.

Okay…if I can’t get my bird’s eye view from an airplane,
I’ll do the next best thing…

He would rejoin the men of Charlie Company on Astrolabe.

PFC Travis Spill was proud to be the man Major Miles
designated to guide the commo team up the mountain, but he didn’t understand
why they needed him. Any damn fool can walk up a mountain, he thought.
No matter, though—the major had entrusted him with the job, and he would see
that it was done, and done right. Even though he’d only been up and down this
particular mountain once himself.

He waited all morning—and was still waiting—for the three
wiremen to get their gear together and barter with the natives to carry the
extra reels of wire. Funny, Spill thought, how up on the mountain,
the natives would go out of their way to help you for free. But down here at
HQ, they were learning how to be all commercial real fast. If you want
something done, you gotta pay for it someways.

He had nothing better to do than daydream. He thought about
what he’d done—what he had to do—back at that battalion CP. And it
hadn’t been a lie when he told Major Miles that killing those Japs wasn’t
eating on him. It truly hadn’t—not then, anyway. But now, every time he thought
of that dead Japanese sapper and his rucksack full of grenades, it was his face—the
face of Travis Spill of Smokey Junction, Tennessee—gracing that corpse. It got
even stranger: standing in a circle around the dead body with his face were all
his friends from Pastor White’s Sunday School at their little mountain
church—barefoot, in tattered clothes—looking just like they did at the age of
nine or ten. They were chanting a song. He couldn’t remember if they actually
knew that song as children, but they certainly seemed to know it now:

The worms crawl in

The worms crawl out

In your stomach

And out your mouth

They eat your eyes

They eat your nose

They eat the jelly

Between your toes

“Shut up,” Spill said, barking at no one in particular, but
startling some troopers goofing off nearby. “I ain’t dead yet, you little
redneck fuckers.”

“No, you ain’t,” a trooper replied, “but you sound like
you’re ready for a Section Eight, pal.”

Jock made it to Astrolabe’s peak well before midday. The men of Charlie Company would have been happy enough just to see their old
commander, but Jock came bearing gifts: loaves of fresh-baked bread from the
regimental mess he carried in a sack strapped to his back. To a soldier who’s
been living on subsistence rations, a slice of fresh bread on which to smear
his K ration jam was nothing short of a feast.

“That’s damn white of you, sir,” Melvin Patchett said,
gratefully accepting the sack. “There’s more than enough here for everyone.
I’ll get this divvied up right away.”

Jock sat down with Lee Grossman, who was trying to draft the
requisite commander’s letter of condolence to Lieutenant Wharton’s wife. “This
is harder than I thought, sir,” Grossman said. “How do you say nice things
about a nasty son of a bitch you couldn’t stand?”

“I’ve done six of them already, Lee, and it’s never easy.
Just say how he fought and died bravely, doing his duty.”

“But that’s just it, sir,” Grossman replied. “He sure as
hell wasn’t brave…and I’m not really sure he was doing his duty.”

Jock knew exactly what Lee Grossman meant. He remembered
Patchett’s suspicions about Bob Wharton’s attention to duty after those
first Japanese attacks. But that was all water under the bridge. “It doesn’t
matter now, Lee,” Jock said. “His family deserves to be told he’s a hero.”

When Patchett returned, he brought the four platoon leaders
and Commander Shaw with him, each still licking the remnants of the bread and
jam treat from his fingers. The first sergeant asked, “Ready to give us that
briefing you promised, sir?”

“I’m ready, Top,” Jock replied. “But first, let me ask
this…from what you can see, has the Jap disposition down on the lowlands
changed at all?”

“Not a damn bit,” Patchett replied.

“That’s good, I suppose,” Jock said. Then he launched into
the plan for the Aussie landing, still two mornings away. Warily, the cadre of
Charlie Company took in the information.

“You know what’s gonna happen, sir,” Patchett said. “The
Aussies will push on the Japs’ back door, our division will push on their
front, and them yellow bastards will vamoose right through The Notch…and
there won’t be much we can do about it.”

“Yeah, Top’s right,” Theo Papadakis said. “If there ain’t a
big force to block them in The Notch, they’ll get away…”

“And we’ll have to fight them all over again someplace
else,” Lee Grossman added.

“I hear what you’re saying, guys” Jock replied, “but Regiment
won’t risk pulling men from the line to form a blocking force at The Notch. Neither
will Division. Believe me, I tried to sell that plan from the moment I became
S2, but it isn’t going to happen.”

“Figures,” Patchett said, spitting on the ground in disgust.
“The brass are still fighting the last war. Forget about out-maneuvering your
enemy. All they know is trenches, artillery barrages, frontal assaults…”

Grossman finished his sentence: “With a bunch of airplanes
thrown in every now and then for show.”

“The brass are right about one thing, though,” Jock said.
“Any blocking force we could muster would be weak and vulnerable. We couldn’t
get any artillery over or around Astrolabe in time. It’d take months. We just
don’t have the engineer support to cut roads.”

Patchett wasn’t convinced. “Division shoulda started
plugging The Notch the minute they landed, sir,” he said. “This thing would’ve
been over in a week.” The first sergeant pointed toward the backslope, swept
his arm across its broad expanse, and added, “And it’s gonna be up to our l’il
ol’ company to cover Division’s ass and hold out against whatever Tojo throws
at us on this mountain, I suppose?”

“You’ve been doing a great job of it so far,” Jock replied.
With a nod toward Commander Shaw, he added, “Of course, when the Aussies land,
maybe you can do some spotting for the Navy’s guns again. Granted, you can’t
see the landing beaches from here.”

“True, Major,” Trevor Shaw replied, “but if any Japanese ships
try to approach from the east, we’ll certainly be the first to see them.”

Something Jock said was still eating at Theo Papadakis:
“Does Colonel Hailey really believe we’re just goldbricking up here, sir?”

“He did, but he’s changed his tune,” Jock said, “and he’s
now taking full credit for you guys being in this excellent position.”

Patchett let out a laugh. He couldn’t let the ridiculousness
of Hailey’s claim pass without comment. “Wasn’t that your idea, sir?
When you were flying around in that little spotter plane, right?”

“That’s how I remember it, too,” Jock replied, “but no
matter. Tell me about The Notch. How are we covering it?”

“Boudreau’s got an OP team out there,” Lee Grossman replied.
“They got pushed back a couple of miles during the night…sounds like they cut
it so close they almost bought it from our own artillery…but they’re working
their way back toward The Notch now. Hadley took a squad out there with a BAR
to help them out.”

“And they’ve got to bring back Private Lyle so Doc can patch
him up good,” Papadakis added. “He caught a little shell fragment in his ass.”

“He was your one WIA on today’s morning report?” Jock asked.

“Yeah, but he’s okay, sir. Walking wounded.”

“That’s a relief,” Jock said, “but maybe I’m missing something
here. How is Boudreau’s team communicating with you? They’re out of
walkie-talkie range, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yeah,” Grossman said, “we forgot to mention that. We’re
using the old Japanese landline. It was Sergeant Hadley’s idea.”

“Outstanding,” Jock said, truly impressed.

“And speaking of wire, sir,” Grossman added, “thanks for
getting that new landline run up here from Regiment.”

Jock shrugged. “It’s the least I can do since I couldn’t get
you another radio.”

“And you got that foul-up Spill guiding the wire team?”
Patchett asked, his tone and expression quite skeptical. “He’ll get ’em lost
for sure. They’ll never get here.”

“Spill’s doing just fine,” Jock said. “In fact, he saved
Second Battalion’s CP from a sapper attack early this morning.” Seeing the
disbelieving faces around him, he added, “Single-handedly.”

“No shit?” Patchett said.

“No shit, Top.”

Patchett asked, “So, you gonna decorate him?”

“Damned right I am.”

Melvin Patchett grinned broadly. That was exactly what he
wanted to hear.

“So what’re your plans, sir?” Grossman asked. “I know you
didn’t come up here just to say hello.”

“I need to have a look farther down this backslope than you
guys can see from here,” Jock said. “I’ve got to get an idea how many Japs are
down there. I’d rather do it from the airplane, but it’s still being patched
up. How far down the slope are your LPs?”

“A couple of hundred yards.”

“That’s not far enough, either.”

Half the soldiers in Charlie Company wanted to go on the
recon patrol with Major Miles. It would be a small team, just the major and
three men. Melvin Patchett made a most impassioned case to be included.

“I could never go with you on those Cape York patrols,” the
first sergeant said to Jock, trying to cloak his plea in logic. “I always had
to stay back and mind the base camp. Now it’s my turn, sir. Lieutenant Grossman
can manage without me for a little while.”

Lee Grossman nodded his agreement. Patchett was in. With
great purpose, the first sergeant strode off to gather his field gear.

“I need proven scouts to round out the team,” Jock told
Grossman. “Men who were with me on Cape York.”

He really wanted Sergeant Hadley and Corporal Boudreau,
who’d proved themselves beyond any doubt long before they set foot on Papua.
But they were busy and several miles away, trying to reclaim The Notch. The
patrol’s last two slots would go to Sergeant Mike McMillen and PFC Frank Simms.

As the team members got themselves ready, Jock and Grossman
snuck to an LP for a closer look at the terrain the patrol would be crossing.
Jock didn’t like what he saw.

The rainforest that looked so dense from the air was, when
viewed at ground level, little more than a collection of scrawny tree trunks,
which despite their vast number provided little cover or concealment to troops
on foot.

“We figure that’s why the Japs are only coming at night,
sir,” Grossman said. “We can see them a mile off when the sun’s up.”

“I’ve still got to find a way to get down there,” Jock
replied. “And back.”

“But what about commo, sir?” Grossman asked. “You’ll get out
of walkie-talkie range real fast.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jock replied. “I’m going to take the Very
pistol with us. If we fire a red flare, put artillery, mortars…whatever you
can…right under it.”

“But isn’t that where you’ll be, sir?”

“Maybe, Lee. But with any luck at all, we’ll be running away
like hell.”

They returned to the company’s perimeter at the peak. Jock
noticed Melvin Patchett and Ginny Beech standing by The Morgue, locked
in verbal confrontation. Even at a distance, he could sense the emotion of words
he couldn’t hear, words that seemed to evoke not anger but great concern. It
looked like the way things of great importance were hashed out by close
friends. Or lovers.

They saw him watching. It was Ginny who broke away and
headed straight for Jock. She began to make her case while still several paces
away.

“You’ll need me to go with you, Major,” she said. “I can
talk with the natives for you. You’ll get more information that way.”

“Come on, Ginny,” Patchett said, hurrying to catch up with
her. “You said yourself all the villagers down there up and moved out when the
Japs started showing up. Don’t listen to her, sir. She don’t know what she’s
getting herself into.”

“Apparently, neither do I, Top,” Jock said. “It’s so wide
open down there, I still haven’t figured out how to pull this off in daylight
without getting spotted.”

“I know a way,” Ginny said.

Jock clearly wanted to hear what she had to say. Patchett
clearly didn’t.

“There’s a series of narrow gullies running down the
backslope,” she said. “Stick to them, and we’ll have all the cover and
concealment we need.”

Patchett didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “Gullies!”
he said. “They can be deathtraps… machine gun alleys.”

“Not these gullies, Patch,” she replied. “They’re very
winding. There’s not a straight bit in the lot.”

Jock asked, “Can’t you just show us where these gullies are
on the map?”

“It’ll be much easier to show you in person.”

Jock was warming to the idea. Despite Patchett’s obvious
disapproval.

Ginny watched Jock’s face closely. She knew the major was
going to say yes. He wanted—no, needed—this patrol to succeed.
She plunged ahead to her next, sugar-coated demand: “Can I carry one of those
Thompsons, too? I quite fancy them.”

Melvin Patchett threw up his hands in despair. “No, Ginny, no,”
he said, “they’ll kill you if you got caught with one of them things.”

“They’d kill me, anyway, Patch. You, too…if they catch you.”
Her eyes caught Jock in their fiery gaze. “So, it’s settled, Major?” she asked.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Day 13

Ginny’s plan to use the gullies was working like a charm. It
had only been an hour since leaving camp at the old OP, but they were already
over two miles down Astrolabe’s backslope. The gullies were narrow and often no
more than a few feet deep, but they were winding, just as she promised.
Patchett’s fear of them being long, straight machine gun alleys was
slowly but steadily being put to rest. Walking low, concealed within the
gullies’ banks, the patrol would be difficult to detect.

Patchett felt obligated to remind Ginny of one point: “Don’t
forget, this is a recon patrol. No shooting unless we have absolutely no other
choice.”

His comment obviously annoyed her. She replied, “Patch…dear
boy…you don’t think I’m bloody stupid, do you?”

The first bit of information the patrol discovered was not
good news: the morning’s bombing raid on the backslope had come nowhere near
the Japanese assembly area. Several rows of bomb craters and shattered trees
etched straight lines through empty rainforest, wounding nothing but the earth.

“Didn’t think them flyboys would hit shit,” Patchett
muttered. “It was kinda misty down here when they made their run.”

They crept forward through the mud of the gullies for nearly
another hour, Jock at the column’s point, with Ginny close behind. He could
hear the Japanese long before seeing them, their voices loud, unconcerned with
being overheard. Some sounded like they were giving orders; others like
boisterous, idle talk. Soldiers bustled about an assembly area which sprawled
across gently sloping terrain and straddled a network of creeks. The thatched
huts of what was once a native village towered over ranks of small Japanese
tents.

“That’s the village of Birribi,” Ginny whispered to Jock as
she circled its location on his map.

Staring through binoculars at the Japanese camp, Jock said,
“Looks like the natives have cleared out.”

“Good on them,” Ginny replied. “They’re probably safer
wherever they are…at least with you Yanks dropping bombs willy-nilly.”

Melvin Patchett asked, “How many Japs you figure, sir?”

“I make it as a battalion, Top. You agree?”

“Yep. And this camp’s a hell of a lot farther down the
backslope than we reckoned. The dumb bastards feel safe here. They ain’t even
got pickets out.”

Jock ducked behind the gully’s bank. “Let’s try to get a
little closer,” he said. Patchett nodded his agreement.

They didn’t get far. Peering around a bend in the gully,
Jock suddenly found himself less than 30 yards from some approaching mules, a
dozen or so by his quick count. Three bored Japanese soldiers were herding the
animals, whips in hand and rifles slung over shoulders.

Jock made two quick but urgent hand signals to his patrol: Be
quiet! Get down!

The patrol flattened itself in the slurry coating the bottom
of the gully. The Japanese soldiers hadn’t noticed them, and wouldn’t unless
standing directly overhead. If the mules knew of the patrol’s presence—and they
probably did by smell alone—they didn’t seem to care.

Patchett found the tense scene instructive: Son of a bitch!
Maybe they got pickets after all, but they got four legs instead of two. Them
muleskinners ain’t figured out whipping them animals never gets ’em to do what
you want, though. Wonder what kind of munitions those mules been carrying? It
ain’t artillery, that’s for damn sure. I don’t see none in that camp…not even
small bore stuff. The heaviest weapons they’ll have are mortars and machine
guns…and they’ll have to get a whole lot closer to use them.

Jock was doing his own mental calculations: These Japs are
clever little bastards. This camp is just out of range for our artillery. Even
our closest 155 battery is a little too far away to lob one this far over the
mountain…and those big guns won’t be getting closer anytime soon. Not without
engineers to build roads. I’ve got to get another air raid on this place…today.
Now that we know exactly where the Japs are, maybe the Air Force will have
better luck hitting them.

Frank Simms found a reason far more immediate than the
Japanese to be terrified: in the mud inches from his face, a snake was coiling
its body in what seemed slow motion. Mottled geometric patterns adorned its
dark skin, looking just like the ones that Aussie doctor had advised them to
steer clear of back on Cape York.

It wasn’t a very big snake—maybe three feet long, its body lean.
Nothing like the other slithering killers they had seen in this part of the
world. But Simms’s mind burned with one question, proposed and answered in a
millisecond:

How fucking big does a snake have to be to kill you?

With the speed that is adrenaline’s gift, Frank Simms
snatched the helmet from his head and plunked it over the coiled body. His arms
pressed down on the steel dome with all his might, trapping most of the
snake—and the needle-like fangs Simms swore he saw—inside.

But that didn’t fix everything.

About a foot of the snake’s tail managed to avoid
imprisonment beneath the helmet. It began to wrap itself around Frank Simms’s
wrist. Powerfully.

Despite the mud caked on his hand, Simms could see it
quickly turning blue.

He wanted—no, needed—to cry out in pain and horror.

He didn’t dare. First Sergeant Patchett was giving him that
look. Every man in Charlie Company knew what those narrowed eyes and firmly
set mouth meant: Make a fucking peep and I’ll kill you myself, sissy-boy.

Patchett cast another look, this one a silent command
punctuated by an impatient jerk of the head. It was aimed at Mike McMillen, who
caught its meaning immediately: Get over there and help that man.

Both sergeants knew they shared the same thought: Not
again…Didn’t we have enough trouble with fucking snakes on Cape York?

McMillen crawled closer to Simms, until they were
face-to-face across the helmet entrapping the creature.

“What if it digs out from underneath?” Simms asked in a
near-hysterical whisper.

“Snakes can’t dig, Frank,” McMillen said. “They’ve got
nothing to dig with.”

“But what if he just squeezes out through the mud?”

“Then I cut his fucking head off,” McMillen replied, his
bayonet at the ready.

“My hand’s gonna fall off any second, Sarge,” Simms
whimpered.

That hand wasn’t blue anymore. Now it was a ghastly white.

“Just relax, Frank,” McMillen said. “We’re gonna have to
move out of here one way or the other real soon. When we do, I’ll cut off the
son of a bitch’s tail and you grab your helmet and back away, real quick-like.
Your hand’ll be okay.”

“Fuck that, Sarge. I’m leaving the helmet.”

“The hell you are, Private. You know what Top said: ‘No
trooper of mine runs around under fire without his steel pot.’ He even makes
Miss Ginny wear one, for cryin’ out loud.”

“But…but this is different! That snake is—”

“Shut the hell up, Frank, and do as I say. That’s a fucking
order.”

The mules got closer, a few stopping to graze. The
muleskinners cracked their whips; the animals seemed more determined than ever
to continue munching the grass.

One beast, no more than 10 feet from where Jock lay, seemed
to be performing a high-wire act, tottering along the edge of gully’s bank as
it foraged.

That’s all I need, having a fucking mule fall on me. These
sons of bitches better be as sure-footed as they say. Damn! It’s right on the
edge…

Liberated by the mule’s hooves, clods of earth rained down
closer and closer to Jock with each step the animal took.

There was a sudden torrent of yelling in Japanese.

Shit. They saw us. Shit.

Jock tightened his grip on the trigger. The rest of the
patrol did the same

But the muleskinners couldn’t see anything but their
disobedient animals. They weren’t sounding an alarm; their words were more the
annoyed utterances of young men going through the motions of a detested job,
and a poorly performed one at that.

They hadn’t even unslung their rifles.

The mules stopped eating and stood their ground, refusing to
move, filling the air with strange, foghorn-like honks. They didn’t seem upset,
merely offended.

The noisy standoff between man and beast gave Jock his
chance. He gave the signal to pull back.

“Now!” Mike McMillen whispered.

The bayonet sliced through the snake’s tail like a flash of
lightning, passing so close to Simms’s wrist he felt sure McMillen had skinned
him.

Without realizing it, Frank Simms, helmet in hand—and with a
most unwelcome bracelet still clamped to his wrist—had scooted backwards some
10 feet from the writhing, mortally wounded snake.

His Thompson stayed behind, just inches from the snake.

With one more quick slash, McMillen severed the snake’s head
for good measure. After all, he told himself, Miss Ginny, the major, and me
have to climb over this fucker to get out of here. Even a dying snake can still
kill you.

Mike McMillen joined Patchett and Simms in slow retreat,
scooping up Simms’s forgotten weapon along the way. Ginny Beech and Jock crept
close behind.

Hearts pumping, eyes scanning for danger new and old in
every direction, the patrol inched slowly back in the direction they had come.
The mud beneath their feet made sucking noises that seemed so loud they swore
each step could be heard in Tokyo.

But neither the mules nor the muleskinners, still locked in
their noisy standoff, seemed to notice.

It seemed a safe distance now; Jock signaled Halt.

He peered over the gully’s bank.

Shit.

They were still much closer to the herd and its handlers
than he wanted to be.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Jock said.

“Hang on,” Frank Simms hissed, trying—and failing—to pull
the severed tail from around his arm. “This fucking thing’s like a vise! I
can’t feel my hand!”

Ginny Beech got to Simms first. With one snap of her wrist,
she jerked the snake’s tail free and flung it to the ground, where it squirmed
in postmortem agony.

“It’s easier if you stay calm,” Ginny said. “You aren’t bit,
are you, laddie?”

“Nah,” Simms muttered, trying to shake some life back into
his cadaverous hand.

“You’re lucky that snake wasn’t bigger,” Ginny said. “It
might’ve snapped your arm like a bloody twig.”

McMillen added, “It’s like fucking Cape York all over
again.”

Patchett was tired of this melodrama. “All right, all
right…that’s enough about the damn snake,” he said. Looking to Jock, he asked,
“What do we do now, sir? Give the Air Force another try?”

“You read my mind, Top,” Jock replied.

Even though the Japanese were still close, the patrol was
beginning to taste success. As they quickly put more distance between
themselves and the enemy camp, that taste became sweeter—until the sound of
artillery impacting in the distance far to the west turned it sour.

Patchett cocked an ear to the explosions. “Sounds like our
guns are shooting at The Notch,” he said, his tone anxious. “That’s either real
good news…or real bad news.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Day 13

Jock’s recon patrol made it back to OP Charlie Able in
record time. “Not surprising,” Ginny Beech said. “We ran the whole bloody way.”

Lee Grossman filled them in about the artillery fire on The
Notch: “The Japs still hold it. Boudreau’s got an LP about a mile west now
keeping tabs on them. Hadley and his men will be back soon. No casualties.”

Jock blew out a sigh of relief and said, “Could be worse.”

“A hell of a lot worse,” Patchett added.

“By the way,” Grossman said, “the landline to Regiment is
laid in. Spill’s waiting for you.”

Jock called in the air raid request on the Japanese camp
personally. There were still several hours of daylight left. The Air Force
liaison at Regiment agreed to divert one of the day’s last raids to Jock’s
target. A feeling of quiet elation settled on the members of the patrol: they
had set powerful wheels in motion. Now it was time to rest and wait for the
results.

Once the recon patrol’s debrief was done, Jock didn’t think
it odd Melvin Patchett vanished for about 15 minutes. He wasn’t surprised,
either, that Ginny Beech dropped from sight for that same period of time: Nothing
like a brush with danger to make a man—even a graying fossil like Melvin
Patchett—want to sow some seed.

As he expected, they reappeared separately but almost
simultaneously. They were cleaned up, refreshed, and relaxed. Very relaxed.
Patchett took a circuitous path to the CP that went right past the medic’s aid
station. Jock couldn’t help but notice the first sergeant slipping what
appeared to be a small medicinal tube to the doc. That done, he walked straight
to Jock.

Making sure no one else could hear, Jock asked Patchett,
“Let me guess…Tetracaine?”

“Can’t fool you, can I, sir?”

“Good for you, Top.”

Patchett replied with just a sly smile.

Then the first sergeant got very serious, showing a
vulnerability Jock had only seen hints of in their many months together. “I had
my heart in my mouth that whole damn patrol, sir,” Melvin Patchett said. “I’d
never forgive myself if something happened to her.” Then he added, “Don’t she
remind you of somebody, though?”

“Yep,” Jock replied, “Ginny’s definitely an older version of
Jillian. They’re like two peas in a pod, aren’t they?”

Patchett nodded. “Can you imagine if all the women in Australia
were as tough as them two, sir? There wouldn’t be a man left standing in that
country.”

“I’d love to stay and watch the air show with you,” Jock
said, “but duty calls. I’ve got to get back to Regiment, and I’d better hurry
if I’m going to make it off this damned mountain before dark.”

“Get some rest once you get back, sir,” Patchett replied.
“You look like shit.”

Like buoyant fans at a football game, Charlie Company and
their two Australian guests looked down the backslope from their grandstand
seats at OP Charlie Able, waiting for their team to score that winning
touchdown.

“Them flyboys shouldn’t have a damn bit of trouble finding
those Japs this time, boys,” Patchett said. “The sky’s clear as a bell…the
target coordinates are dead on. This oughta be one hell of a ball game.”

Despite his public bravado, one sobering thought had begun
to darken Melvin Patchett’s private optimism: But this is the Air Force we’re
talking here…and they can still find the damnedest ways to fuck up. Shit…them
prima donnas bombed our asses on Cape York and got medals for it. One of us
shoulda stayed down by the Jap camp with that Very pistol. He could’ve marked
the spot with a flare so them pilots couldn’t miss it. They’d pin a medal on
that guy, that’s for damn sure...if we could ever find his cold, dead body.

Charlie Company waited. And waited.

When the sun finally dropped behind the Owen Stanleys,
casting the shadows of dusk across their world, they knew that touchdown would
never come.

Somewhere, somehow, someone had dropped the ball.

They were on their own again. Fifth Air Force wouldn’t be
helping them beat the Japanese tonight.

Lee Grossman asked, “What if those Japs come, Top? We’ll be
outnumbered at least three to one.”

Patchett replied, “We’ve got artillery…and we’ve got the
high ground, Lieutenant. They don’t.”

The hike down Astrolabe’s steep front slope had been an
exhausting ordeal for men running on no sleep. To Jock and his driver, Travis
Spill, reclaiming the jeep at the base of the mountain had seemed a gift from
heaven. Their legs, which now felt like rubber bands ready to snap at any
moment, savored the relief the little vehicle offered. Its hard canvas seats
felt as good as any plush armchair.

Night was falling across Regimental HQ as Jock and Spill
drove up. Killing the jeep’s engine, Spill asked, “Can I get you some chow,
sir?”

“No, thanks,” Jock replied, “but you go ahead. Catch a
little shut-eye while you have the chance, too. I know where to find you.”

Food and sleep: Travis Spill liked the sound of that. He did
an about face and shuffled off to the mess tent.

Jock dragged his exhausted body into the HQ tent. He
couldn’t remember the last time he had slept for more than a few minutes. The
lack of sleep had taken its toll, mentally as well as physically.

It would have been difficult for a man at the top of his game
to absorb what Colonel Hailey had to say. For a man fatigued beyond human
limits, those words could incite violent rage. Or a nervous breakdown.

“Excuse me, sir?” Jock asked, not believing what had just
spilled from the colonel’s mouth.

“You heard me, Major,” Hailey said. “I put the screws to
that bombing raid you called. Division concurs with my action.”

“But sir,” Jock said, his voice hoarse and pleading,
“there’s a battalion sitting on our flank—”

“And there’s a division to our front, Major. That’s what
I’ve directed our air assets to concentrate on…not some ghost battalion”—Hailey
sneered as he said those words—“miles on the other side of some mountain only
goats can cross.”

Jock could barely stand and think, let alone debate. For
him, the discussion quickly devolved to an out-of-body experience. He stood
beside himself, observing and listening as his own, shrieked arguments—life
and death arguments—bounced off a man who rejected every word out of hand.

“It’s not a ghost battalion, Colonel,” Jock watched
himself say. “It’s very real. I saw it, with my—”

“I know, Major,” Hailey interrupted. “With your own eyes.
That’s another problem I’m having with you. You’re running around playing scout
corporal while what I really need is an operations and intelligence officer.”

Words began to tumble from Jock’s mouth as if prerecorded,
uncensored for propriety. “This regiment…this whole division…is in
static defensive positions right now,” he said. “You don’t need an operations
officer for the time being. There won’t be any operations until the
Aussie landings influence this fucking stalemate—”

“At ease, Major,” Colonel Hailey interrupted again. “I’d
mind your tone if I were you.”

Jock plowed on, his words coming like a runaway train. “But
what you do need…and what I’ve been trying to give you…is sound intelligence on
the enemy around us.”

“This is your last warning, Major Miles,” Hailey said. “Are
you quite finished?”

Jock had no idea if he was finished or not. He hadn’t
planned to say any of those things; they came out all by themselves. His
psyche—rubbed raw by exhaustion and this incredibly obtuse lieutenant
colonel—was refusing to bump its head against stone walls any longer. Unwisely,
perhaps, it had decided to unburden itself.

Is this the Army or some nuthouse? he asked himself. If this
is the loony bin, which one of us is the loony?

Jock was exhausted, but he wasn’t insane. Any further tirade
would help no one.

His psyche wasn’t quite finished speaking, though. “Sir,” he
said, “I have no choice…I request to be relieved.”

He wanted to take those words back the moment they escaped.
He hated the sound of them. From some still-lucid corner of his weary mind, a
voice explained why:

I’ve heard so many officers say that, and it always comes
out the same—like an ultimatum. One they don’t have the right to offer…like
they’re putting their pride above the mission and the men they lead.

And now I’m talking like one of those assholes.

It’s still about “Duty, Honor, Country,” isn’t it? Just like
they taught us at the Point?

This is still the Army. You don’t get to pick and choose
which “duty” you perform. You just do what’s handed to you.

The man is still my boss…even if he is an incompetent ass.

I just need some sleep. Maybe this will all seem much
different then.

Hailey’s reply provided Jock the easy way out. “Denied,” the
colonel said.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Day 13

If this was a dream, Jock never wanted to wake up. It
featured Jillian—slightly older, just as beautiful—presiding over some outdoor
social gala at a scenic, seaside venue. He wasn’t sure of the setting. It could
have been Brisbane or perhaps Hawaii. Maybe even southern California. She was
dressed, for once, in a lovely frock, hat, and gloves, like the women of
wealthy families always wore in public. As usual, her air of total command
seemed effortless.

A commentary of questions by an unseen narrator began. Jock
recognized the speaker’s voice. It was his own:

Where the hell is the marching band? I can hear drums…bass
drums, lots of them. How many bass drums does a marching band need, for cryin’
out loud? Jillian’s going about her business like nothing’s wrong, paying them
no attention at all. Can’t she even hear them?

He awoke with a start, still immersed in the sound of drums;
their continuous rumble was shaking his cot. The sweet dream dissolved into the
murky turmoil of his conscious mind, and he descended back to war’s reality: Those
aren’t drums. It’s drumfire—the artillery battery down the road firing like
crazy. In fact, it sounds like every battery on Papua is firing like crazy.

Duty was calling once again. The hour of sleep it had
allowed him would have to suffice.

As he stepped from his tent, an eerie white glow in the sky
to the west greeted him. Damn, he thought, not only are we shelling the shit
out of somebody, but we must be firing every damned illumination round we’ve
got. It looks like the Fourth of July out there.

The scene greeting Jock at Regimental HQ looked like a
carbon copy of the night before; only the downpour was missing. All along the
division’s line, the Japanese were probing again. The only unit that wasn’t
reporting contact at the moment was Charlie Company, high on Astrolabe.

But once again, the line units facing the Japanese believed
they were being subjected to a major offensive. Surprisingly—and unlike last
night—Colonel Hailey actually seemed interested in exercising some command
authority, though still from a safe distance. He was on the phone, dressing
down the commander of 3rd Battalion:

“Do not, Major…I repeat, do not allow your units to
pull back. The Japs are only probing, looking for an opening. Don’t fall for
their tricks and give them one.”

Hailey listened to the reply for a moment before cutting off
the battalion commander: “Do I have to come down there and run your battalion myself,
Major?”

The old operations sergeant snickered. He mumbled to Jock,
“That would sure be a first, sir.”

Jock was intrigued by the sergeant’s candor. It wasn’t like
old school master sergeants to make disparaging comments about officers to
other officers. Not when they were sober, anyway.

“What do you mean, Sarge?”

He wouldn’t have been surprised if the sergeant clammed up,
pretending those words had never passed his lips. But the old master sergeant
was in a talkative mood. And like Jock, apparently, he was fed up with their
regimental commander.

“Until the other day, sir, the only thing our Colonel Hailey
ever commanded was a warehouse in the peacetime army.”

“What about The Great War, Sarge? He’s old enough…he must
have served.”

“But he never set foot in France, sir. I don’t believe he
ever got closer than New Jersey.”

Jock smiled; that explained a great deal.

“Funny thing, sir,” the old sergeant continued, “Colonel
Murdock had no choice but to take him on as XO. There wasn’t anybody else. He
didn’t know Hailey from Adam…and when he asked a buddy what sort of officer
Hailey was, I’m told his buddy replied, ‘He’s a good golfer.’”

The thunder of artillery hadn’t slackened at all. It seemed
to be doing its job, too, even if providing nothing more than moral support for
the GIs. No American unit seemed to be unraveling like 2nd Battalion
had last night. Maybe even Colonel Hailey had shown some command presence at
last, dissuading 3rd Battalion from retreating. The regiment’s—and
the division’s—line was holding fast.

But the requests for artillery fire kept pouring in from all
across the division’s front. Busily updating the situation map, the operations
sergeant muttered, “Hell of an expensive way to kill a couple of Japs running
around in the open. We ain’t doing shit to the ones holed up in those bunkers.”

“Keep giving them all the fire they ask for,” Colonel Hailey
said. “Better safe than sorry.”

They did just that for the better part of an hour. Then, the
first call for fire from OP Charlie Able came in. Jock could tell it was Lee
Grossman’s voice, but he had never heard the man sound so unsteady. The first
words of the fire mission request were Danger Close.

Danger Close: standard terminology for friendly forces in
close proximity to the target.

Grossman was still talking, giving the target description as
Jap infantry in open, as Jock plotted the coordinates on the map:

Shit…the Japs must be right on top of them. Those
coordinates are just short of the peak.

No sooner had Grossman’s fire request ended, 3rd
Battalion was on the air again, screaming the coordinates for a new target. The
target description: mass of infantry with vehicles and heavy weapons.

“Mother of God,” Colonel Hailey said, his face plainly ashen
even in the tent’s dim electric light. “Probe, my ass! They’re getting hit with
a mechanized attack.”

Jock tried to protest: “Sir, we haven’t seen a Jap armored
vehicle since we got here. They can’t be under a mechanized attack.”

Second Battalion added their shrieking voices to the radio
traffic. They, too, were suddenly being hit hard: “They’re all over the place,”
the voice on the radio shrieked, rising in pitch with each hysterical word.
“Thousands of them…they’re coming out of nowhere!”

From the other side of the tent, the flustered fire direction
officer yelled, “I’ve got more shit to shoot at than I’ve got guns. Give me a
target priority.”

Jock was already doing just that. Still hunched over the
map, he called out, “Shift Baker Battery to OP Charlie Able direct
support…High-angle, over the mountain. Do that first and do it fast!”

“NEGATIVE, MAJOR, NEGATIVE,” Hailey said, exerting his
command presence once again. “The priority of fires goes to the regiment’s
front, not that fucking outpost on the mountain.”

Jock’s reply was anything but courteous: “That fucking
outpost as you call it is all that’s preventing this regiment…this division...from
being enveloped. If they fall, we all fall.”

Hailey wasn’t buying it. “My immediate concern is preventing
a breakthrough of our front line, Major. If that happens, we’ll fall a hell of
a lot faster.”

“For God sakes, Colonel, there’s enough artillery raining
down to kill every Jap in Port Moresby twice. Those battalions on the line are
panicking again, just like last night.”

“How the hell would you know that, Major?”

“Because I was there, sir. Those troops are green and
leaderless from the top down, and they’re proving it again.”

Hailey glowered, trying to figure out if from the top
down was meant as an evaluation of his abilities, too.

Jock added, “The only troops you’ve got who are worth a shit
are on that mountain right now, Colonel…and they need our help.”

The argument might have continued, but the next call over the
radio stifled it: OP Charlie Able was calling for final protective fires.

Jock fully expected Hailey to continue his intransigence,
but the colonel surprised him by saying: “Fuck it. Do what you think is best,
Major.”

PFC Bucky Reynolds was alone in the fighting hole. Until a
few minutes ago, Frank Simms had been there with him. Lieutenant Papadakis had
come out of the darkness like a man possessed and snatched Simms away, telling
Reynolds, “Cover this sector by yourself until I can get someone else. Stay
alert…shoot anything that moves. The Nips are real close.”

What does it matter how close they are? Bucky asked himself
as that all-too-familiar panic took control again. I can’t see shit, anyway. A
Jap could be in the hole with me and I wouldn’t know it. This is crazy…fighting
is crazy. It’s like that night…that night Lieutenant Wharton died. Did I kill
him? I don’t know…It’s not my fault…How could I know?

For once, the dreams of home were not clouding his mind,
whisking him away from the fear and paralyzing confusion of combat. He was
still terrified, but he hadn’t pissed himself. Not yet, anyway:

Maybe I’m learning how to do this shit, like those guys in
the outfit who think killing’s such a natural thing. They don’t fool me,
though…I know they’re scared out of their fucking minds, too. I don’t want to
die—that’s never going to change. But maybe now, if it’s going to happen, I
want to see it coming. I’m not going to close my eyes anymore.

It still doesn’t seem fair, though. One second a guy has the
world on a string, people who love him, a whole life ahead of him…and he’s
suddenly erased, like he was never there. Like he never mattered. You get a
couple of notes from a bugle and a hole in the ground.

A hole in the ground…just like this one.

There was so much screaming: some in Japanese, some in
English by GIs, and some in crude English by Japanese soldiers, offering
promises of death to the GIs. Whatever language they were speaking, the
Japanese sounded right in their midst. Bucky Reynolds could hear it all so
clearly, when it wasn’t being drowned out by volley after volley of gunfire.

But Bucky Reynolds hadn’t fired a round in this clash yet.

Shoot anything that moves, Lieutenant Pop told me. Easier
said than done—anything I do get to see is just a quick shape, here and gone
before I can get a bead on it.

He could hear the first sergeant’s voice screaming its
warning: “Y’ALL CRAWL INSIDE YOUR FUCKING HELMETS! FPF ON THE WAY! FPF ON THE
WAY!”

The sound of running footsteps, coming from behind Bucky…

It’s got to be Lieutenant Pop, right? It’s got to be! He’s
bringing me help…or looking for cover from the FPF…

Reynolds rolled to his back and caught the thrust of a fixed
bayonet squarely in his gut. He stared—surprised and unbelieving—at the
faceless silhouette looming in the darkness above the hole, pushing the blade
deep into him.

In an instant, that faceless silhouette vanished, he and his
rifle erased by the artillery round landing just feet away, leaving behind
nothing but the Japanese bayonet run through Bucky Reynolds’s body.

Everything changed in the instant the final protective fires
hit their mark. What had been a confusing, chaotic struggle in the dark, with
the lives of hundreds of men offered up to the turmoil, was suddenly swept away
by some giant steel broom. A great and deathly stillness settled across OP
Charlie Able. The stench of high explosives hung heavily in the light mountain
breeze.

At the company CP, Lee Grossman regained a groggy
consciousness in the bottom of his fighting hole. He ached from head to toe, as
if his entire body had been run over by a steamroller. His ears rang with
a disorienting whine, like machinery running at high speed.

Nothing’s moving out there. The Japs…where’d they go? Where
the hell are my guys?

He tried to pull himself to his knees but a bolt of blinding
pain stopped him cold. A small, jagged piece of metal—still hot to the
touch—protruded from his forearm. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out the shell
fragment.

If Lee Grossman screamed, he didn’t hear it. The ringing in
his ears saw to that. At least the arm and hand were useable, even if they did
hurt like crazy.

He felt around the hole for his walkie-talkie. All his hand
found were some twisted shards of metal.

I’ve got to get to Commander Shaw’s radio…

Favoring his wounded arm, he clambered from the hole and
promptly tumbled over something on the ground. His fingers explored what his
eyes couldn’t make out:

It’s rough cloth…it’s laced up, like a legging...not a GI’s,
though…AHH, SHIT!

Grossman recoiled from the object. Even in the dark, he knew
what it was:

Fuck me! A Jap soldier’s leg, or what’s left of it, from the
knee down…Now where the hell is that radio bunker?

A voice boomed from the darkness, loud enough for even Lee
Grossman’s ears to hear it. “WHO GOES THERE?” the voice asked, in an
unmistakable Aussie accent.

“It’s Grossman, Commander. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”

Finding his feet, Grossman scrambled toward the sound of
Trevor Shaw’s voice. After just a few steps, he fell into the Aussie’s bunker.

“At least there are four of us still alive,” Shaw said in
greeting, his voice much too loud. Like Lee Grossman, he, too, was half-deaf at
the moment.

“We’ve got to call a new fire mission…get it shifted
downslope,” Grossman said. “Catch any Japs still alive while they retreat.”

“The first sergeant has the same idea,” Shaw replied, “but
my radio’s finished. Blasted to smithereens.”

“What about the landline?”

“It’s dead,” Shaw said. “Probably cut in the bombardment.
Patchett and Virginia are trying to trace the wire now.”

Lee Grossman decided not to join them in the search: two
people were more than enough to chase one broken wire. He told himself, Patchett
can handle calling the fire mission on his own. I’ve got to find my men.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Day 14

It was nearly two in the morning before the American
artillery fell silent across Papua. The last fire missions were called by
Melvin Patchett as he walked artillery rounds down Astrolabe’s backslope. At
Regimental HQ, Jock jumped on the landline to talk with his old first sergeant.

“How bad are you beat up, Top?” Jock asked.

“Pretty bad, sir,” Patchett replied, his voice sounding as
if it was at the end of a long tunnel. “I’m guessing about twenty dead and a
shitload wounded. Won’t know for sure until daylight.”

“How about the Japs, Top?”

“Don’t know that for sure neither, sir…but you can’t take a
step around here without tripping over a dead Nip.” There was a solemn pause
before Patchett added, “Bad enough the Air Force fucked us, but we’re real
pissed with them cannon-cockers, too, sir. If they’d shot the danger close
mission like we asked, it would’ve never come down to an FPF.”

“Don’t blame the flyboys or the artillerymen, Top.” He
wanted to come right out and say it: it was the colonel who fucked you on
both counts. But Hailey was only a few steps away and could hear Jock’s
every word. The night had been contentious enough and the danger the GIs faced
was far from over; antagonizing this incompetent commander further wouldn’t
help anyone.

Additional explanation was unnecessary, anyway: an old
soldier like Top would need no help getting Jock’s drift.

“You can’t talk, can you, sir?” Patchett said.

“Affirmative.”

“So it was Regiment that put the screws to us?”

“Affirmative.”

“By Regiment, I don’t mean you, of course, sir.”

“Roger, Top.”

Patchett’s words of reassurance weren’t necessary. It had
never crossed Jock’s mind the first sergeant might hold him responsible for the
lack of timely fire support.

Patchett asked, “I suppose that son of a bitch expects us to
thank him for the FPF?”

Jock took a look at Hailey. The colonel seemed quite pleased
with himself, standing triumphantly, arms folded across his chest, as if
presiding proudly over a great victory.

“I’m sure you’re right about that, Top,” Jock replied.

On the lowlands, the sunrise brought few surprises along the
division’s front line. A handful of Japanese bodies were found, just like the
night before. Casualties for the GIs were light once again.

In 81st Regiment’s sector, there was one bizarre
find: just in front of their forward positions was an American ¾-ton truck,
scorched and still smoldering. The unit markings on the bumper were still
barely legible: the truck belonged to a wire team of 82nd Regiment,
the unit on the left flank of the 81st. The team had apparently
gotten lost as they went about their wire repair duties, ending up in front of
3rd Battalion of the 81st. Unfortunately, their errant
journey occurred during the night’s Japanese probes. The riddled and charred
bodies of the team’s four men were found in and around their devastated
vehicle.

At Regimental HQ, Jock let out an exasperated sigh when he
heard of the wire team’s demise. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I believe we’ve found
the remains of our Japanese mechanized attack.”

Colonel Hailey bristled at the inference. “Are you saying,
Major, these brave men were killed by friendly fire and not the Japanese?”

“I’m saying it’s very likely, sir,” Jock replied. “We
certainly called enough artillery on them.”

“Oh, come now, Major. A light truck doesn’t sound like an
armored vehicle.”

Hoping his ironic smile wasn’t lost on this clueless
colonel, Jock replied, “To a green GI scared out of his mind in the dark, it
could sound like a whole squadron of tanks, sir.”

Sunrise revealed a far more sobering picture on Astrolabe.
Melvin Patchett’s supposition that a man couldn’t walk around OP Charlie Able without
tripping over a dead Japanese soldier was proving prophetic. Japanese bodies—or
at least parts of bodies—littered the ground. The wind had carried away the
stench of high explosives. Now, the air the GIs breathed reeked of death.

The wholesale slaughter extended as far down the backslope
as Charlie Company’s scouts dared to venture. Patchett’s shifting of fire had
done exactly what the American survivors of the FPF hoped: decimate the
retreating Japanese survivors. The GIs had given up on an exact count of the
enemy dead. There was no formula to tally whole bodies from random pieces.

Melvin Patchett had looked upon scenes like this before: This
ain’t looking no different than France in ’18. The first
sergeant then offered his experienced opinion: “If we got hit with a battalion
of Japs, half of them are lying here dead.”

That would fix the Japanese death toll at about 200.

Fittingly, the backslope had taken on the look and stillness
of a graveyard. Trees sheared off near the ground by artillery shells looked
like rows of tombstones. Impact craters—ringed by piles of churned-up
earth—looked like fresh graves awaiting their occupants. Within the Charlie
Company perimeter, there were 18 such craters, representing three volleys of
deadly accurate final protective fire from a six-gun battery. No one above
ground when the rounds hit survived. Some burrowed into the ground didn’t,
either.

“We’re gonna need some of these shell holes to bury our own
dead,” Patchett said. His voice—flat, dispassionate, yet unquestionably
authoritative—was the only thing pulling the dazed and aching survivors of
Charlie Company back to purposeful action. Eighteen of their comrades were
dead. Some, like Bucky Reynolds, had apparently been killed in hand-to-hand
fighting. It looked like Lieutenant Joe Garcia died that way, too. His body was
still in his fighting hole among half a dozen Japanese dead.

Three men were unaccounted for: Boudreau, Fanning, and
Mukasic. They had been manning OP Charlie Bravo, keeping tabs on the Japs at The
Notch. Their landline had gone dead—probably severed—when the final protective
fires fell.

Standing beside Lieutenant Grossman, Patchett said, “We’ve
got to get rid of all these Jap bodies, too, before disease sets in and
finishes the rest of us off.”

They hadn’t heard Ginny Beech walk up behind them. “I think
I can get the natives to help with that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I know
where they went.”

Patchett gave her a worried look. “I’ll give you two men to
take with you,” he said.

“No, you can’t bloody spare them,” Ginny replied. “I’ll be
quicker on my own, anyway.” Wanting no further discussion of the matter, she
walked off.

Scores of the company’s men were wounded, their bodies torn
by bullets or shell fragments. A dozen were wounded badly enough to be
evacuated to CCP at Regiment. As soon as the sun had risen, those evacuees were
taken down the mountain, the slightly wounded carrying the badly wounded
wherever possible. That left Charlie Company at half-strength. Every man left
alive was still suffering from the unspeakable pummeling of the artillery
rounds, like they had been hammered again and again by the fists of a thousand
supermen.

“We just gotta hold out one more day, until the Aussies
come,” Patchett said. “After that, everything’ll be different.”

Lee Grossman’s mind was still trying to fathom how it had
come to this. He asked Patchett, “How’d they get so damned close, Top? What
happened to our listening posts?”

“They probably got fooled, Lieutenant. All that noise them
Japs were making way down the hill…it masked the quiet ones who snuck up on our
guys. Took ’em out before they even knew what hit ’em.”

Grossman was fighting to hold back his tears. He was losing
the battle.

“Top, do we know how many of our guys died from the Japs…and
how many from the FPF?”

“No telling, sir. But you did the right thing calling that
FPF, no two ways about it. We’d all be dead if you hadn’t.”

Bittersweet as Patchett’s verdict was, Lee Grossman needed
to hear it. He wished with all his might he could say the decision had been a
result of careful calculation. But he knew better: it had been sheer,
adrenaline-fueled terror calling the shots. Try as he may, though, he couldn’t
bring himself to his first sergeant’s level of stoic acceptance.

“We’re in Hell, Top,” Grossman said.

“No, sir, this is just Purgatory. Hell’s a final
destination…and we got a long road ahead of us yet.”

A slight but bitter laugh rose from Lee Grossman. “So I
guess we won this fight, Top?”

“I reckon we did, sir…but it don’t feel like that, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Get used to it, Lieutenant. Even when you win, it ain’t
gonna seem that way. It just feels like you lost a little less than the other
bastard.” Fumbling to light a cigarette with trembling hands, Melvin Patchett
added, “Victory is for the generals. All us dogfaces get is a little relief.”

Sergeant Hadley called to Grossman and Patchett from the CP.
A field telephone was in his hand. “Lieutenant, Top…I’ve finally got Bogater
Boudreau on the line. He and his guys are okay…and he says the Japs are gone
from The Notch.”

One more day, Jock thought as he studied the
situation map at Regimental HQ. By this time tomorrow morning, the Aussies
would be coming ashore. If that didn’t break the stalemate on Papua, he had no
idea what would.

The division’s line on the lowlands was holding solid. The
operations order for the next phase of Long Jump had been cut: the plan
was to try and fix the Japanese forces facing the Americans in place. If they
succeeded, Blamey and his Australian division would land virtually unopposed on
the west side of Port Moresby. The Aussies could then storm the Japanese from
the rear, enveloping them completely. Unable to escape the jaws of the Allied
vise, the Japanese forces would be crushed bunker by bunker.

If the Americans didn’t succeed and some of the Japanese
forces abandoned their current positions to turn and meet the Aussies, the GIs
would then press forward, rolling up the divided and weakened Japanese from the
rear.

Nobody in the US 32nd Division expected the Japanese
to do that, though. It wouldn’t be like them to abandon fortified positions.
When on the defensive, they preferred you bring the fight to them.

And if the Aussies prove as punchless as we are, Jock
thought, the Japs could hold both Allied divisions off in a bloodbath that
could last weeks, even months.

Jock rubbed his tired eyes, hoping that would bring the
map’s details into better focus. It didn’t. The half-hour nap he’d managed to
steal right before sunrise hadn’t helped at all.

Turning his attention to the flank on Astrolabe, he began to
feel even worse. The Japanese battalion threatening that flank had been mauled,
but so had Charlie Company. The thought of all those dead and wounded
GIs—soldiers he had led until just a few days ago—was making him physically
ill. A bitter voice spoke from deep within him:

Use your artillery, the colonel said…that’s all you need to
defend that flank. So when my guys called for that artillery, the son of a
bitch doesn’t give it to them…until it’s too late. Half a company
sacrificed—just thrown away—so this fucking idiot of a regimental commander can
chase phantoms.

Yet, a feeling of pride welled up inside of him: But even
beat up, filthy, hungry, and exhausted, my boys are still doing their job,
still ready to fight. If they aren’t the best soldiers in this man’s army, I
don’t know who is.

There were still some questions about Astrolabe begging for
answers, though, questions the beleaguered men of Charlie Company hadn’t been
able to address. Jock drew question marks on the map as he mulled them over:

The Jap battalion that had been beaten off—where were its
survivors? Were they still an effective fighting force?

The Japs that had held The Notch and now were gone…where’d
they go? And how big a force were they? Grossman said his scouts couldn’t tell.
The Japs must have slipped away during the night.

No matter how willing they were, was a weakened Charlie
Company strong enough to hold the flank? We’d better pray they are…Colonel
Hailey made it clear once again he has no intention of sending any more troops
up that mountain.

Jock needed the answers to those questions quickly, and he’d
never get them staring at a map. He needed John Worth’s airplane:

But I’ll never get it, not with the Aussies coming tomorrow.
Division will have Worth and his L4 commandeered for the duration, I’ll bet.

Jock looked up from the map to see Colonel Hailey and a
major he didn’t know standing before him. The major was clean right down to his
boots. Sharp creases were pressed into his fatigues, too. He looked like he
hadn’t been deprived of a moment’s sleep. Clearly, he hadn’t spent last night
on Papua.

“Major Miles,” Hailey said, “this is Major Pryor. He’s just
flown in from Australia. He’ll be relieving you of your duties here at
Regiment.”

That was the last thing Jock had expected to hear. He asked,
“Effective when, sir?”

“Effective immediately, Major Miles.”

Jock began to feel the full weight of those words tumbling
down on him. “You mean I’m fired, Colonel?”

Hailey laughed. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Major. You’re
getting kicked upstairs, that’s all. General Hartman has ordered you to
Division staff.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Day 14

Jock wasted no time packing his gear. When he stepped
outside the Regimental HQ tent, two men were waiting for him. The first was his
new driver from Division, who jumped from behind the wheel of the idling jeep
to grab Jock’s kit. The second was Travis Spill, in full field gear.

Jock asked, “Going somewhere, Spill?”

“Well, sir, with you leaving and all, I figured I’d go back
to the old outfit. From what I hear, they could use some extra hands.”

“Do you have orders to go back, Spill? You don’t have to,
you know.”

“I know, sir…but I reckon you could cut me them orders.”

Jock couldn’t help but smile. Even in parting, Travis Spill
had managed to make him proud.

“Sure,” Jock said. “I can do that for you.” He extended his
hand. “You’re a good man, Travis, and a damned fine soldier.”

Spill did a brief aww, shucks dance in place as they
shook hands. He had one last question: “Think you could mention that to First
Sergeant Patchett, sir? He thinks I’m a real screw-up.”

“Not any more, he doesn’t.”

Travis Spill, a one-man parade, started marching toward
Astrolabe.

“Hey, Private,” Jock called after him, “keep your head down
up there.”

Spill began to salute, but the gesture quickly transformed
to a wave of goodbye. “If I did that,” he replied, “I couldn’t see who I was
shooting at, sir.”

Thirty minutes later, Jock was at Division HQ. General
Hartman, the division commander, wasted no time putting him to work.

“I’m making you my Assistant G2, Jock,” General Hartman
said. “The Aussies are on the way. Their invasion fleet set sail this morning
from Queensland. Now that they’re coming for sure, I need you back in the air.
It seems almost everything we know about the Japanese dispositions—or lack of
them—in the Aussie sector comes from your aerial exploits. If those
dispositions change, I need your experienced eyes watching.”

“I understand, sir,” Jock said, barely managing to keep in
check the heady thrill of his new assignment. “Just one question, sir…do we
have a recon plane available again?”

“As a matter of fact, we do, Jock. It’s waiting for you at
Twenty Mile right now. But let’s chat for a moment before you go.”

General Hartman led Jock to the situation map. It was four
times the size of the one at Regiment. The general laid his finger on
Astrolabe’s peak and said, “Those boys up there…they used to be yours, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are they holding up, Jock?”

“They’ve taken the worst beating of any unit in this
division, sir, and never given up an inch of ground. By rights, they should be
relieved. They’ve more than earned it.”

“I agree, Jock,” the general replied. “But answer me one
question…with the entire division committed, just who do I relieve them with?”

That bit of information surprised Jock. “The entire
division’s committed, sir? There’s no division reserve?”

“On paper, we have a reserve…but it’s less than two
companies now. Everybody is plugging holes in the line somewhere.”

Jock’s eyes swept over the situation map once again. Every
little rectangle signifying a combat unit was on or very near the division’s
line. “I see your point, sir,” he said. “May I ask one favor, though?”

“Shoot.”

“If those men on the mountain call for fire support, they
get it, immediately…no questions asked.”

Hartman’s smile seemed warm and full of sympathy. It was as
if he was saying, I know full well what happened last night…and it’s a
crying shame.

“You have my word, Jock,” the general replied.

It was difficult to tell who was happier to be in the air
again: Jock Miles or John Worth. The L4 in which they were once again flying
had taken to the air effortlessly, her damage repaired and forgotten. The
jettisoned radio had been replaced, borrowed from the wrecked L4. In clear
skies, beneath the blazing sun of midday, her pilot’s capable hands were
guiding her to Astrolabe’s backslope, where she had nearly come to grief just
two days ago.

As they skirted the mountain’s eastern edge, Worth asked,
“How high do you want to be for the first pass, sir?”

“Let’s try five hundred feet,” Jock replied. “That sound all
right with you?”

“No problem,” Worth said, pointing the nose down a few
degrees to comply.

In a few minutes, they passed just north of last night’s killing
field on the backslope. It was unmistakable from the air: the broad, barren
swath of exposed earth and shattered trees looked as if those acres had been
selectively leveled by a storm of biblical proportions. There was another dead
giveaway, too: human remains too numerous to count were scattered across the
wasteland. Dark-skinned humans—Papuan natives, bare to the waist—were dragging
the dead to mass graves.

Looks like Miss Ginny’s still working her magic with the
locals, Jock thought.

They flew along the backslope for some six miles, to where
the Laloki River met the swamps of Eworogo Creek. In all that distance, Jock
could find no trace of living Japanese soldiers. He radioed that information to
Division HQ.

Worth asked, “Aren’t you going to tune in your boys on the
mountain and tell them, too? I’ll bet they can’t wait to hear good news like
that.”

“I’d love to, John, but their radio got knocked out last
night. Don’t know when they’re going to get another one. In the meantime,
they’re down to landline.”

“That’s a tough break,” Worth said. “Where to now, sir?”

“Follow the river through The Notch, John. Then we’ll take
another look at the other side of Port Moresby.”

Worth asked, “Are the Aussies really coming tomorrow, sir?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“It’s about time.”

OP Charlie Baker’s intel proved accurate: the Japanese were
gone from The Notch. The steep, treed slopes of Astrolabe’s western edge had
been beaten up by artillery, but it was nothing like the earth-clearing
devastation the backslope had experienced. And there were no dead bodies to be
seen.

Thinking out loud, Jock said, “The question is, where’d they
go?”

Flying south across the lowlands, they skirted Port Moresby’s
airfield and Fairfax Harbor. The Aussie landing beaches lay about 10 miles
ahead. Between the L4 and those beaches were the coastal hills, where Jock had
noted that lone, small contingent of Japanese on their last flight over that
ground. As those hills grew closer, Jock could tell right away the situation
had changed.

“This place looks lousy with Japs,” he said, the tension in
his voice obvious. “Maybe I just answered my own question.”

As if to emphasize his words, the L4 gave a barely
detectable shudder—and then several more. Before Jock’s racing heart had time
to take another beat, something invisible whizzed straight up through
the cabin right in front of him.

That something left a bullet-sized puncture in the floor
between his feet and a spider-webbed hole in the plexiglass window above his
head.

Worth slammed the throttle forward, rolled the little plane
hard right, and pointed her nose almost straight down. Cold as ice, he said,
“Gotta get low.”

Good idea, Jock thought. He couldn’t see much during
their treetop dash, but he could see enough: the Japanese were in position on
the inland side of the hills, in some semblance of force, to defend against an
invasion from the Aussie landing beaches. It wasn’t a huge force—he noted two
batteries of light artillery at the most—and it didn’t seem enough to throw a
division-sized landing back into the sea. But it was enough to impede that
landing and make life miserable for the troops who made it to shore.

“I’m surprised your guys didn’t see this buildup from
Astrolabe,” John Worth said.

“Give them a break, John. They’ve been pretty busy. Plus,
it’s over twenty miles away. Even with a great pair of binoculars, that’s a
little far to see much of anything.”

“I didn’t mean to”—Worth stopped speaking for a moment to
concentrate on clearing a tree—“didn’t mean to say they weren’t doing their
job, sir.” He paused again to make another quick, dodging maneuver and then
asked, “Have you seen enough around here yet?”

“Yeah, let’s get out over the water.”

“Roger, sir.”

Worth banked the L4 tight between two hills, tucked her low
into a treeless corridor—a crudely cut road, perhaps—and aimed straight for the
beach. The ground, only a foot or two below, whizzed by in a blur of green and
brown. Jock felt sure the plane’s tires had actually brushed terra firma once
or twice as she raced out of danger.

“WHOA!” Worth yelled as he jerked back hard on the stick.
The L4 shot up and then settled back toward the ground as he eased the stick
forward.

“Holy shit,” Worth said, like he had just seen a ghost.
“Ho-lee shit!”

“What the hell, John? What happened?”

“There was a vehicle…like a jeep…or whatever Japs call it.
Two guys in it, I think. Flew right over them. Would’ve hit them, for sure.”

Visions of decapitated Japanese soldiers, shattered wooden
propellers, and an airplane splattered on the ground flashed through Jock’s
mind.

“Ho-lee shit,” he said, in total agreement.

They held their collective breath as Worth kept up the
low-level dash to the water’s edge and safety. In a few uneventful minutes,
they were over the sea. Worth eased the little plane higher as Jock coded their
findings for radio transmission. As he grabbed the microphone from its hanger,
Jock noticed several small, neat holes in the lower skin of the L4’s olive drab
wing. He hoped there were matching holes in the wing’s unseen upper surface, made
as the bullets passed cleanly through the fabric. That would leave the wing’s
structural integrity intact. Otherwise, if the bullets damaged some ribs or the
spar, the wing might buckle—and they’d plummet to their deaths.

John Worth had noticed the bullet holes, too, but they
didn’t worry him. He was pretty sure they’d gone right through an open bay and
hadn’t done any serious damage.

He was far more concerned about holes he couldn’t see.

Once Jock’s transmission was done, Worth asked, “Is this
going to change the invasion plans any, sir?”

“Nope. It just gives the Air Force and Navy more stuff to
hit.”

Jock knew that was far from a done deal, though. “I’ve just
got to figure out a way to make sure they actually get hit,” he added.

Thirty minutes later, the L4 touched down gently at Twenty
Mile Airfield. “See?” John Worth said as he switched off her engine, “I told
you we’d make it.”

He didn’t waste any time jumping out to check for additional
damage, though.

Jock extricated himself from the back seat and asked, “How
bad is she?”

“I think she’s okay, sir,” Worth replied as he gave the tail
surfaces a thorough examination.

Jock asked, “So, she can fly tomorrow?”

“She could fly right now, if you wanted to.”

“No, at first light tomorrow will be soon enough,” Jock
said. “I’ve got a question, though…how much more weight can she carry?”

Worth gave him a quizzical look. “Besides you, me, and all
our stuff…not a lot. How much extra weight did you have in mind, sir?”

“Maybe a hundred pounds?”

Worth shook his head: “No way, sir.”

“How about fifty?”

The pilot thought that one over a moment before answering,
“Maybe.”

“Good enough.”

Back at Division HQ, Jock had time for a quick supper before
the briefing started. As the sun began its nightly descent behind the far peaks
of the Owen Stanleys, every high-ranking officer in 32nd Division
had assembled in the HQ tent.

This would be a hell of a time for the Japanese bombers
to make a reappearance, Jock thought, remembering what happened on Cape
York when an errant but lucky American bombing raid managed to wipe out the
officers of a Japanese regiment in one stroke. Their leaderless troops
degenerated into an aimless rabble almost immediately. He had no reason to
doubt American troops would react in the same manner if their officers were
suddenly obliterated en masse.

Another thought crossed his mind, too: We still have no idea
where the Japanese HQ at Port Moresby is located. It’s got to be hidden in the
town somewhere…that’s where their radio transmissions are coming from. The Air
Force is dying to bomb the shit out of it.

The division G3—a bird colonel Jock had served with years
before in the States—began the briefing. He rehashed the division’s plans and
contingencies in conjunction with the Australian landings, illustrating the
proposed maneuvers on the giant situation map. This was all old news; eyes
began to close and heads started to bob. Many of the officers present were as
sleep-deprived as Jock; staying awake through the colonel’s droning
presentation was proving a challenge.

Jock would have loved to doze off, too, but he was the
briefing’s next speaker. The G3’s final point, however, made sure Jock wouldn’t
be sleeping now, or perhaps anytime soon.

“As Major Miles will elaborate in a few moments,” the G3
said, “the Japanese seem to be moving troops into position to counter the
Australian landings. That brings up some burning questions: how do the Japanese
know the Aussies are coming now? And how do they know where they plan to land?”

He let those questions sink in for a moment.

“This is what we think has happened,” the G3 continued. “The
convoy carrying the Aussies from Queensland was spotted the minute it set sail.
There has been Japanese submarine activity in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In fact,
two Aussie coastal freighters were torpedoed and sunk yesterday…”

Jock didn’t hear another word. A terrified voice bleated in
his head, drowning out everything else: Freighters…torpedoed…the Gulf
of Carpentaria…Oh, no. Not Jillian’s ship. Please.

Lost in his fears, he didn’t hear the G3 summon him to the
briefing platform. He didn’t know how many times the colonel called his name
but everyone in the HQ tent was staring at him like he was some kind of
shell-shocked idiot. But duty was calling and, as usual, wouldn’t be denied.

It can’t be her, he rationalized, chasing the dark thoughts
from his mind. I was just with her a few days ago…and that bucket of a
freighter was nowhere near ready to go anywhere.

Speculation was the only defense mechanism he could muster
against those fears. It would have to do for now.

Jock climbed the platform and gave his detailed overview of
Japanese dispositions. He noticed no one was napping anymore. In fact, they
were giving him their undivided attention. There seemed a communal sense of
relief when he said there was no evidence of living Japanese troops on
Astrolabe’s backslope. That relief evaporated when he discussed the Japanese
troops now positioned near the Aussie landing beaches. He took the opportunity
to propose an answer to one of the G3’s questions:

“If the Australians are going to influence the situation at Port
Moresby, there are only two likely places for them to come ashore. They
either land at Barakau, like we did, and join the slogging match in which we’re
currently engaged, or they land here, at Boera, and envelop the Japanese. Come
ashore any farther west and they’re stuck in the swamps. You don’t have to be a
brilliant strategist to figure that one out. The Japanese have always had a
small force in the hills behind Boera, on the lookout for a landing. It’s been
reinforced in the last day or two.”

The commander of 83rd Regiment stood to ask a
question. “Major Miles, do you see any possibility the Japanese near Boera have
been pulled from the troops facing us on the lowlands?”

“No, Colonel,” Jock replied, “there’s no evidence of—”

General Hartman mounted the platform as Jock was still
speaking. Thinking this was his cue to exit, Jock started to climb down.

“No, Major,” the general said. “Stay. I’m going to need to
pick your brain a little, too. Finish what you were telling the colonel.”

“All right, sir,” Jock continued. “As I was saying, there’s
no evidence the Japanese near the Aussie beaches came from the lowlands front.
The most likely place they came from is The Notch. I wouldn’t expect the forces
facing you on the line are any weaker today than they were yesterday.”

Jock immediately wished he had phrased that differently. He
hadn’t meant to imply the division’s units on the lowlands were facing a weak
opponent. But the comment slipped by without any offense taken. He breathed a
sigh of relief.

The tent fell silent as an aide slipped a piece of paper to
General Hartman. He took his time reading it and then took a long look at the
situation map. He seemed newly worried when he said, “We’re going to do our bit
to squash whatever opposition the Aussies might face, of course. But their
landing area…the whole area west of Port Moresby…is out of range of our
artillery. And I’ve just been handed another piece of bad news…the warship
escort for the Aussies will be extremely light, a few destroyers at most. The
big capital ships have been ordered east, toward the Solomons. That means the
bulk of the fire support available to the Aussie landing will have to come from
the Air Force…and we know how spotty and inaccurate that support can be,
especially against targets not clearly visible from high-flying, fast-moving
aircraft.”

The general turned to Jock and said, “Major Miles, I’m
designating you air support coordinator. You’ve seen the terrain the Aussies
must cross and the Japanese defenses in their way. Do you think we can keep the
Air Force on target and get those Aussies ashore intact?”

“Yes, sir,” Jock replied. “I believe I know a way.”

Chapter Forty

Day 14/Day 15

In the dimly lit wardroom of a transport ship, General
Thomas Blamey was bracing himself for another disaster. It wasn’t bad enough
the Japanese had kicked him and his forces off Papua earlier this year. Now, on
this night before his Australian Seventh Division would land on Papua, it looked
more and more likely their attempt to retake it would be hurled back into the
sea.

“We’re not ready, General,” his troop commanders told him to
a man. They were convinced: MacArthur’s rush to throw them into Port Moresby
had resulted in hurried and haphazard loading of men and supplies. The
commanders were still not completely sure where all their vital equipment was
located. As a result, the schedule of when it would be unloaded and available
to troops on shore was merely conjecture. Assuming, of course, the equipment
had actually made it onboard some ship of the invasion fleet and wasn’t still
sitting in Queensland. Blamey envisioned his troops floundering on the beach
without Bren guns, artillery, and ammunition.

Worse, the big-gunned cruisers of the US Navy would not be
supporting his troops as they landed. The Imperial Japanese Navy was presenting
a heightened threat farther east in the Coral Sea. If they prevailed, Allied
operations in both the Solomons and Papua would be as good as finished. The entire
southwest Pacific would be dominated by the Japanese indefinitely. To stave off
that possibility, any Allied warship that could be spared was being committed
to those waters. Such a move might not result in a decisive victory for the
Allies, but anything less than a draw would be a disaster.

That left Blamey’s invasion force with only two destroyers
of WWI vintage—one American, one Australian, with a paltry handful of five-inch
guns between them—for naval fire support.

In other words, Blamey told himself, I have no naval fire
support. Those bloody destroyers are only here for submarine defense…and they
seem barely fit for that job, as well.

It would be up to the planes of the US Fifth Air Force to
provide fire support. Blamey found that small comfort:

We have, at best, a small handful of radios which can even
communicate directly with the Yank planes…assuming, of course, those radios are
even on these bloody ships. And those planes use up most of their fuel just
flying from Queensland and back. They won’t be loitering over the battle area
very long.

And when we land, our fire support coordination rests in the
hands of the Yank Thirty-Second Division.

God help us all.

John Worth was too nervous to sleep. He wondered if Major
Miles was having the same problem. It was only a short walk to the major’s
tent. He decided to find out.

When Worth got there, he was startled to see Jock sitting by
a small but raging campfire. He seemed to be throwing small, rectangular pieces
of Swiss cheese into the blaze one at a time. The fire roared more fiercely as
each new piece joined the flames.

Worth asked, “What’re you doing, sir?”

“Oh, hello, Lieutenant. Got anything you need heated up?”

Only then did Worth notice the coffee pot hanging above the
fire. “No, sir, I ate already. But what is that stuff? It burns like a son of a
bitch.”

“It’s the propellant from these mortar rounds,” Jock
replied. He pointed to four projectiles lined up on the ground a safe distance
from the fire, each missing the propellant charges usually stuck to the fins at
its base. “I don’t want it on the airplane with us. Much too flammable. This is
the approved way to dispose of it.”

John Worth stepped over to the projectiles. In the
firelight, he could read the markings stenciled on each of their casings:

WP SMOKE

81M

SHELL M57

It only took a moment for him to realize what Jock was
planning. Worth smiled and said, “WP…white phosphorous incendiaries. You
infantry types call them Willie Petes, right? We’re going to use these
as smoke rounds to mark targets, aren’t we? Drop them like bombs…”

“You catch on quick, John.”

“Why can’t we just use smoke grenades? They’re light…we can
carry a lot of them.”

“Because any idiot can pick up a smoke grenade and throw it
someplace else. These things will start a fire no one can get near.”

“I see your point, sir,” Worth said. “You know, they’ve been
talking about arming spotter planes with rockets. They could mark targets, take
out enemy installations…”

“Have we got any of those rockets, John?”

“No, sir. They never showed up.”

“Then I guess we’re back to mortar bombs.”

Worth hefted one of the rounds. “About ten pounds, right?
Maybe a little more?”

“Yep. A little less than twelve pounds each. Four of them
will just make your fifty-pound limit.”

“But how’s that going to work, sir? I thought they had to be
fired from a mortar tube before they’d arm.”

“That’s exactly right,” Jock replied. He lifted a steel
baking tray from the ground by his feet. “That’s why I borrowed this from the
mess hall.”

“I’m not following, sir.”

“You will, John. You will.”

Mercifully, the night before the Aussies were to land was
calm and quiet. It was a few minutes past 2300, and Jock had yet to hear even
one distant burst of gunfire as nervous GIs on the line shot at phantoms in the
dark. It should have been the perfect time for an exhausted soldier to get some
sleep. But he was still wide awake. Thoughts of Jillian kept flooding his mind.

She’s got to be okay, he told himself again and again. That
tub of hers couldn’t possibly have been at sea to get itself torpedoed. Just
two days ago, it was still sitting at Weipa, empty. Hell, she hadn’t even
finished putting a crew together yet.

But no amount of logic could turn off the wild speculation
in his head. Maybe this is the worst time to be alone, he thought. If
I could only talk to someone.

And then it hit him. There was someone to talk to, someone
who would surely understand.

He got up from his cot and walked to Division HQ. The
switchboard operator patched him through to OP Charlie Able. On Astrolabe,
Sergeant Mike McMillen picked up the phone.

“This is Miles,” Jock said into his phone. “Is that you,
Sergeant McMillen.”

“Yeah, it’s me, sir.”

“Good to hear your voice, Mike. Everything quiet up there?’

“Quiet as a tomb, sir. Hope it lasts.”

“Yeah, I hope so, too. Can you put me on with Top?”

“Hang on a minute…I’ll get him.”

It took a few minutes, but Melvin Patchett was finally on
the line. “You’d better not have some all-fired circle-jerk of a mission for
us,” he said, sounding more crotchety than he had in a long time. Then Jock
could almost feel the smile coming through the phone line as Patchett added,
“Just fooling, sir. How you been?”

“My ass is dragging, to be honest,” Jock replied. “I’m so
tired my brain’s turning to mush.”

“Well, join the fucking club, sir. This ain’t exactly been a
vacation for any of us.”

“I know, Top, I know… Look, I didn’t mean to—”

“No offense taken, sir. But something’s on your mind, ain’t
it?”

Jock laid out his fears for Jillian. When he was finished
speaking, all he could hear was Patchett chuckling softly at the other end of
the wire.

“Jock Miles, I’m surprised at you,” Patchett said, sounding
like a coach launching into a pep talk. “You and me both know that woman don’t
need nobody looking after her, least of all some damn soldier boy who’s too far
away to do her a bit of good. Now, I’m gonna tell you the same thing she’d be
saying: you’d best get your head out of your ass, laddie, and get on with doing
your bloody job. A lot of swinging dicks are depending on you. Mine included.
And one more thing—”

“Let me guess,” Jock said. “If the Army wanted you to have a
woman”—they finished the sentence together—“it would have issued you one.”

“Thanks, Top. I think that was the sleeping pill I needed.”

“You’re welcome, sir…oh, and before you ring off, I gotta
tell you one thing. We are talking private, right?”

Jock glanced at the switchboard to make sure the operator
wasn’t listening to their conversation.

“Yeah, Top. Just you and me.”

“That idiot who replaced you at Regiment…what’s his name?”

“Pryor,” Jock replied. “Major Pryor.”

“Yeah, him. When we told him Bogater and them had an OP back
at The Notch again, he says, ‘No…pull them back.’ He wants us to consolidate
our company’s manpower.”

“You’re kidding, right? He wants you to give up one of the
biggest advantages we’ve got? What did Lieutenant Grossman say about that,
Top?”

“He thanked him for the advice.”

That brought a grin to Jock’s face. “So, you didn’t do it?”

“Hell, no, sir. You know me better than that. Me and the
lieutenant are still shaking our heads over that one. Where does Uncle Sam get
these morons? He ain’t one of you West Point ring knockers, is he?”

Jock hated to admit it: Pryor did wear the ring.

Three hours of sleep felt like a gift from heaven, but all
good things come to an end. An hour before dawn, Jock Miles and John Worth were
wide awake at Twenty Mile Airfield, readying the L4—still the field’s only
airworthy machine—for the day’s mission.

“Here are the radio frequencies and call signs,” Jock said,
handing a sheet of paper to Worth. He read it in his flashlight’s glow and then
began to write the data on his plane’s side windows in grease pencil.

“So, we’re Slowbird Three-Two,” Worth said, not
sounding very amused. “How appropriate. I see they gave the flashier call signs
to the planes with the guns and bombs.”

“Yeah,” Jock agreed, “Whiplash and Spitball do
have a certain charm, don’t they?”

“It would be charming as all hell, sir, if they actually
drop the stuff where we tell them to.”

Worth watched as Jock placed the steel baking tray on the
cabin floor between his feet and said, “Hand me one of those mortar rounds,
John.”

The round in hand, Jock explained, “This is how it’s going
to work. When I’m ready to drop, I’ll pull this safety pin from the fuze”—he mimed
doing so—“and then slam the base straight down on the tray.” He thrust the
round down but stopped short of contact. “We needed something solid to strike
it against. Otherwise, I’d probably drive it right through this flimsy
floorboard.”

Worth nodded; it probably would go right through the
floorboard—and into the control cables below.

“By doing that,” Jock continued, “and doing it hard, we
trip the setback safety in the fuze, just like if it got fired out of a mortar
tube. Now, the round is armed. As soon as the fuze hits something”—he tapped
the point at the top of the round—“it goes off.”

Worth was still worried about something, though. “I know you
got rid of the propellant charge in that little bonfire last night, sir, but
what about the primer? Isn’t that still in the base of the round?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Any chance of that going off when you smack the round
down…and shooting sparks all around the cabin?”

“If I don’t hit it squarely on the tray—like catch a corner
or something—there’s a small chance I might set the primer off. But have you
ever used a spark lighter for a welding torch?”

“Sure,” Worth replied. “We welded stuff back on the farm all
the time.”

“Well, the sparks will look just like that. They don’t go
far and they burn out real quick. So don’t worry, John…we won’t blow up your
airplane.”

John Worth smiled; the possibilities of this scheme had
begun to outweigh his doubts. “Sounds like a plan, sir. Let’s do it.”

Chapter Forty-One

Day 15

They took off as soon as there was enough light to see the
dirt runway’s far end. Even from the air, they couldn’t see the ships bringing
the Aussies yet; it would take a few more minutes for dawn’s light to creep far
enough west and illuminate them. Until then, the gray ships were camouflaged by
the equally gray sea and sky. The radio traffic left no doubt, though: the
ships were there, a few miles offshore, getting ready to launch their landing
craft.

Their flight path would take the L4 across Astrolabe’s
backslope. “That’s the safest way, I think,” Jock said. “We’d be an easy target
flying in off the water. As long as we stay low, the Japs won’t get much of a
look at us until we’re right on top of them.”

John Worth couldn’t agree more.

It took 35 minutes of flying to get around Astrolabe,
through The Notch, and enter the airspace behind the Japanese lines. “That’s
about a quarter of our fuel load gone already,” Worth said. He had meant it
merely as an observation, but the words came out like a dire warning. Jock
checked his watch and dismissed any concern, telling himself, We’ve still
got plenty of time…and gas. The flight leg from The Notch to the target
area—the hills overlooking the Aussie landing beaches at Boera—would take
another 15 minutes. Now clear of Astrolabe, Worth brought the L4 down to 200
feet, tucking the little plane into the long shadow the mountain cast in the
low sunlight of early morning.

They couldn’t see them yet, but the fighters and bombers of
the Fifth Air Force were all over the radio. Jock made contact with Whiplash
Zero Six, the leader of the bomber force, while the L4 was still five
minutes from its objective. Whiplash Zero Six reported the bombers were
still 10 minutes out from the box: the designated target area.

“That’s perfect,” Jock called to Worth in the front seat.
“Everybody’s right on schedule,” he added as he picked up the first of the four
white phosphorous rounds. He started to pull the safety pin from its fuze but
stopped himself: Calm down, Miles…Plenty of time yet. Don’t get ahead of
yourself.

The morning sun had risen higher; the ground below was no
longer wrapped in shadow. Neither were the startled faces of Japanese soldiers,
looking up through the trees as the L4 appeared and then quickly disappeared
right above their heads, the sound of its engine just a dull murmur, lost in
the noise of scurrying vehicles.

They were close to the box now, no more than half a
mile away. “Turn right and fly parallel to their gun line,” Jock said. “Let’s
make sure the batteries are still in the same places.”

Worth asked, “Two passes, then? One to take a look, the
other to mark with smoke?”

“Affirmative.”

That’s just swell, John Worth thought. Give them two chances
to knock us down.

The first pass revealed no surprises: the Japanese batteries
were still in place, set back behind the cover of the hills. They’d be safe
there from everything but heavy naval gunfire and airplanes. And we know the
Aussies didn’t bring any heavy naval gunfire, Jock reminded himself.

The radio came alive with the voice of Spitball One Two, the
leader of the fighter squadron escorting the bombers: “Whiplash, Whiplash,
be advised. Bogies in the box. Repeat, bogies in the box.”

“Oh, shit,” John Worth yelled over his shoulder to Jock.
“The Jap fighters are coming out to play, too.”

Jock looked up through the plexiglass glazing of the cabin
ceiling. He saw single-engined planes—in several groups of three and four—high
above them. He knew from their silhouettes they weren’t Allied aircraft. The
planes began to roll on their backs and dive straight down. They looked like
they were coming straight for the L4.

“They’re not after us,” Worth said, casting a quick, wary
glance upward. “They can’t even see us…not an olive drab plane like this,
flying right over green trees. Not from that distance.”

Jock wished Worth had said that with a little more
confidence. But the pilot was right: the Japanese planes flashed overhead and
out to sea, straight for the invasion fleet.

The voice of the bomber leader sounded surprisingly
unconcerned. “Spitball, this is Whiplash Zero Six. Roger. Keep
them off our ass. We’re busy.” Then he turned his attention to the
spotter plane. “Slowbird Three-Two, this is Whiplash Zero Six. You
got targets for me? I’m four minutes out.”

“Affirmative, Whiplash,” Jock replied, “Use Box
Able. Target line in box identified by white smoke.”

Worth banked sharply, reversing direction and setting up the
L4 for her second pass—and dropping the smoke rounds. “Showtime, sir,” he
called over his shoulder.

Jock pulled the pin on the first round, took a deep breath,
and slammed its base against the metal tray. It made a loud CLANK—and
nothing else.

Over the noise of the engine, he couldn’t hear John Worth’s
great sigh of relief but he was sure he felt it.

“You never did that before, did you, sir?” Worth asked.

“Nope. First time.” Then Jock fibbed a little: “But I knew
we wouldn’t blow up.”

It seemed almost anticlimactic when Jock dropped the round
onto the first battery. He kept his head out the window to look behind and see
what happened.

He wasn’t disappointed. The mortar round exploded and spewed
a dense plume of white smoke skyward. Transfixed, he almost forgot to get his
head back inside and prep the second round. He rushed through the process and
dropped it on Worth’s command.

It, too, exploded in a white plume halfway down the target
line.

“Last battery coming up,” Worth called and began the
countdown to drop: “On my mark…three, two, one, DROP.”

Worth banked the L4 sharply away from the hills, giving them
the first look at their handiwork: a mile-long straight line defined by three
towering smoke columns marked the target line for the fast-approaching bombers.
The L4 had cleared the target area just in time: within seconds, a flight of
six B-25s streaked in at low level, dispensing their load of high-explosive
bombs along the target line.

“YEAH,” Worth yelled, exuberantly pounding a fist against
his thigh. “DEAD ON THE MONEY!”

The only emotion Jock felt was gratitude: his plan had
worked. It was as simple as that. He found nothing to celebrate in this
business of war. Kill or be killed, the slogan beaten into every recruit
from the first day he was handed a rifle, echoed once more in his head without
a hint of emotion.

His voice dry and businesslike, Jock said, “Don’t get
carried away, John. Keep your eye on the ball.”

Then he keyed the mic and said, with an equal lack of
passion, “Bingo, Whiplash. Right on target. Good job.”

“Roger, Slowbird,” the bomber leader replied, as he
took his planes out over the sea, back to Australia. “Second flight is five
minutes behind us. We’re done here.”

Five minutes. That didn’t give them much time to mark the
Japanese bunkers on the seaward side of the hills…and they had only one smoke
round left to do it.

“You want to stick to the plan, sir?” Worth asked.

“Affirmative.”

On paper, the plan was simple. Flying across the front of
the hills would be suicidal; they’d done it on their first flight together and
came away lucky: the Japanese had been caught by surprise. But that was six
days ago. There would be no surprise this time. Not with all those Aussies
headed toward the beach.

Jock and his pilot had devised in advance another way to get
a smoke round on the target, one that would hopefully give them the least
exposure to enemy fire.

Worth guided the L4 farther inland, her throttle wide open and
gulping fuel while climbing to 500 feet. Reaching that altitude, he banked her
hard, reversing direction. Now flying straight at the backslope of the most
prominent hill—the one centered on the Aussie landing beaches—she dove back to
the treetops, gathering all the speed she could.

“Ready for a roller coaster ride, sir?” Worth asked.

“Let’s do it,” Jock said, checking his watch. They had less
than three minutes before the second flight of bombers were in their box.

Whiplash Two-Six—the second flight’s leader—came up
on the frequency.

Whiplash, this is Slowbird,” Jock replied. “Box
Able destroyed. Confirming your target is Box Baker.”

“Affirmative, Slowbird. You got a good marker for us?
Looks like a whole lotta smoke up your way. Positive target acquisition might
be tough.”

He called to Worth, “How long to drop, John?”

“About six-zero seconds.”

“Whiplash,” Jock said, “new white smoke at Box
Baker in six-zero seconds. Repeat, new white smoke at Box Baker in
six-zero seconds.”

The new smoke shouldn’t be too hard to pick out, Jock
thought. With so much burning from the first bomber strike, all the smoke from Box
Able was a broad palette of gray and black. The new smoke would be bright
white—and on the opposite face of a thousand-foot-tall hill.

But just like any other warrior, a pilot could make mistakes
under pressure. If the leader struck the wrong target, his whole flight would,
too.

The roller coaster ride began. At the base of the hill,
amidst that gray and black smoke of the first strike, John Worth pulled the
stick back into his lap. The L4 began a steep climb, hugging the hill’s
backslope as she reached for the peak. She’d be trading airspeed for altitude—rapidly.
If she ran out of flying speed before cresting the hill, it would all be for
nothing.

Jock’s gut, already wrenched out of place by the vertical
acceleration, was telling him they’d never make it. She seemed to have lost too
much speed already—and they were only halfway up the hill.

“One little change of plans, sir,” Worth called out, his
voice surprisingly calm despite having to shout over the roar of her straining
engine.

“What do you mean?”

“At the top…I’m going to have to turn left instead of
right.”

Surprised, Jock replied, “You really think we’re going to
make it to the top?”

“Yeah…but a chandelle to the right ain’t gonna work. I’ll
need to use the prop torque and snap left. Sorry…”

Snapping around to the left would make it much harder for
Jock to get the smoke round out of the airplane and on target. The open cabin
door—really just a hatch that folded down—was on the right side, forward of
Jock’s back seat. He’d planned to drop the smoke round as the plane reversed
direction in the graceful chandelle and started down. Turning right, it would
be easy: the door opening would be pointed toward the ground. It was just a
matter of letting the round fall from the plane during the turn. But you needed
some airspeed to pull off a chandelle, and the pilot sensed there wouldn’t be enough.

Turning left at top of climb made the drop much more
difficult. The door opening would be facing the sky. Jock would have to wait
until the exact moment the turn was finished and the plane went into a dive.
Only then would he have his chance to wrestle the gravitational and centrifugal
forces, shove the round out, and actually have a chance to hit the target. If
he waited a second too long, the round would impact on the backslope. The
target—the Japanese dug in on the front slope’s military crest, just below the
peak—would escape unmarked and unscathed.

With only one smoke round left—and no time for another
pass—this drop had to be perfect.

“Slowbird, this is Whiplash. We’re getting
pretty close. I don’t see the white smoke.”

Jock replied, “Standby, Whiplash…smoke on the way.”

Or at least he hoped it would be.

The L4 was almost to the peak. She seemed to be hardly
moving. Jock snuck a peek around Worth’s shoulder at the airspeed indicator. It
read 45 miles per hour. He didn’t believe it. They couldn’t be going even that
fast.

Suddenly, they were above the peak, watching it drop away
through their side windows. Out the windshield was nothing but sky.

Jock could swear the plane had stopped in midair. Worth’s
hands seemed steady on the controls, though, gently nudging her over the hill’s
front face.

“Prep the round, sir,” Worth said, his voice like an alarm
clock jarring Jock into action.

There was a final CLANK of a round’s base striking
the metal tray and then Worth’s voice: “Okay…gonna turn…left…NOW!”

The control stick and rudder pedals jammed violently
left—and the uphill run of the roller coaster was over. The L4 swapped ends as
if on a turntable, banging Jock’s head against the side window. At the same
time, his gut felt like it shot up to his neck as she began to plummet like a
rock. The downhill roller coaster run had begun.

“DROP IT, SIR. DROP IT NOW!”

At first, the round didn’t want to move. Then, as Jock managed
to get it to the door, it didn’t want to leave his hands.

There was no time to ponder the physics at work. All he knew
was he had to get that round out the door.

Somehow, he did.

They couldn’t see the round impact. The L4 plunged behind
the peak and was hugging the backslope once again, but this time she was going
downhill and gaining speed. A lot of speed.

Whiplash Two-Six radioed some potentially good news:
“Roger, roger,” the bomber leader said. “We’ve got the white smoke. We’re going
in.”

Great, Jock thought. Let’s hope I put it in the right place.

The L4 was down to the base of the hill, pulling out of the
dive, when Whiplash  reported, “Bombs away.”

Worth banked sharply left, giving them a view of the hill’s
backslope. The bombs of Whiplash Two-Six and company hadn’t landed
there.

“They must’ve hit the front face,” Worth said.

“Let’s hope so,” Jock replied.

Still skimming the treetops, Worth turned the plane inland
in a wide circle.

“You think anybody’s been shooting at us, sir?” Worth asked.
“I haven’t felt a damned thing hit us.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

Worth took a look through the windshield at the fuel tank’s
float gauge. “Holy shit,” he said, “we’ve been burning gas like crazy. All that
full throttle stuff’s killing us. You have anything else you need to see real
quick?”

“We need to loiter, John. Maybe pick out targets of
opportunity.”

“For who, sir? The Air Force is high-tailing it back to Australia.
Lord knows when they’ll be back. And the Navy doesn’t have any big guns out
there.”

“We need to hang around, John. We’re the only eyes the
Aussies have.”

“I wish we had the gas to do that, sir.”

Jock knew there was no point arguing. If they were forced
down by an empty fuel tank, they were no use to anyone—and they were out of
smoke rounds, anyway. Calling in targets for the Air Force without smoke
markers—if they were even around to respond—would be a chancy proposition.
Pilots of high-performance tactical aircraft weren’t terribly good at hitting
pinpoint targets identified only by map coordinates.

The Aussies hadn’t even started hitting the beach yet; the
first boots on shore weren’t scheduled for another 30 minutes, and schedules
were notoriously flexible. Jock knew he wouldn’t miss much if they returned to
Twenty Mile. Refueled and rearmed, they could be back over the invasion beaches
in a little over an hour.

And they’d already done the Aussies a huge favor: the
Japanese batteries were crippled. Hopefully, the positions overlooking their
landing beaches were, too.

“All right,” Jock said, “let’s go back.”

Worth offered, “We could save some time if we went straight
over the harbor. We could get away with it, I think, if we keep real low.”

“Fine. Do it.”

In just a few minutes, they were skimming the surface of Fairfax
Harbor. The radio was alive with the frantic chatter of Spitball One-Two—the
lead American fighter—and other planes in his squadron.

“Okay, boys, looks like the Jap fighters are running,” Spitball
One-Two said, sounding triumphant. “Great job, all of you.”

Spitball Three-Four had a different perspective: “Are
you sure we drove them off, boss? Or are they running out of gas, just like us.
It’s a long way over those mountains back to Lae.”

“Who gives a shit?” Spitball One-Two replied. “Now
let’s get the hell out of here, before we all start swimming home.”

“Well, that sounds like partial good news, anyway,” Worth
said to Jock. “The Jap planes are clearing out.”

Those words had hardly left his lips when the water
stretching before them erupted in two straight lines of closely spaced geysers.
Worth looked up through the clear glazing of the cabin roof just as a Japanese
fighter streaked right over them, buffeting the L4 fiercely in its wake
turbulence.

From the back seat, Jock asked, “What the hell was that?”

“A Jap fighter…looks like a Zero. You didn’t see his rounds
splash in front of us?”

“No, I didn’t. I thought they were leaving.”

“Maybe this guy didn’t get the word, sir.”

They watched as the Zero turned left and gained some
altitude. The pilot was either heading for home—or circling back for another
shot.

Suddenly, being over water didn’t seem like such a great
idea. Viewed from above, an olive drab plane against a background of bright
blue water made a tempting target—but not an easy one.

“He’ll have to slow down way too much to get a good bead on
us,” Worth said, his eyes following the Zero. “That first shot missed us by a
mile. Keep an eye on him, sir, and tell me if he comes around again.”

John Worth was confident he could stay out of the
much-faster plane’s gun sight, but it would come at a price: sudden maneuvers
would demand all the power the engine could muster. That would eat up fuel.
They barely had enough to get back to Twenty Mile now.

A few more blasts of full throttle and they wouldn’t make it
at all.

“He’s turning back towards us,” Jock said. He couldn’t
remember a time he felt more vulnerable than being in this flying machine made
of sticks and fabric.

He wished there was some way to shoot at the Zero with his
Thompson. But even if the L4 had an aft gun port to shoot from, the submachine
gun’s accuracy would render it useless: It’s tough enough to hit something
twenty yards away when you’re standing still. Hard-won experience had
taught Jock that lesson.

“Tell me when he’s done turning and coming straight at us,
sir,” Worth said.

The Zero’s turn was wide and graceful. It took almost a full
minute before the pilot leveled his wings and began to draw down on the L4 from
her aft starboard quarter. The field of vision offered by the L4 was excellent
in almost every direction, except directly below and behind. As long as the
Japanese pilot wasn’t dead on their tail, Jock would be able to see him
clearly.

“Okay,” Jock called out, “he’s coming. Four o’clock.”

The L4 jerked into a tight right turn. The Zero flashed
harmlessly by, never getting off a shot.

That couldn’t have burned up more than a few ounces of extra
fuel, Worth thought, as he eased the wide-open throttle back. But how long is
this guy going to keep it up? A couple more passes like this and we’ll be lucky
to make it back to the American lines, let alone Twenty Mile.

“He’s coming again,” Jock said. “Looks like it’ll still be
from four o’clock.”

It took the Zero longer to get in position for this next
pass. “Looks like he’s slowing down,” Jock said, “like he’s trying to match our
speed.”

“Nah, he can’t,” Worth replied. “He’d have to throw out
flaps, landing gear…”

“Uhh, he just did. I see the wheels coming down.”

“Shit,” Worth said. “If there were any of our fighters still
around, this guy would be dead meat. But I can still go slower than him…and
still maneuver, too. They don’t call us Slowbird for nothing.”

They were almost to the mouth of Fairfax Harbor now. The two
planes flew in tandem—a slow-speed aerial ballet—with the Zero trying to match
the L4’s skittish slips and skids. The Japanese pilot was getting closer—almost
to kill range—but he couldn’t keep the nimble little plane centered in his
sights. She was made to fly slow. His Zero wasn’t.

Squeezing off a few bursts that went wide of the mark, he
tried once more to lock onto the L4’s tail.

But Worth flicked his plane into a sharp, 90-degree turn.

The Japanese pilot banked hard, trying to follow, but his
plane would have none of it. On the edge of a stall and much too low, she
buffeted, dropped a wing—and for a terrifying instant refused to respond to her
pilot’s desperate inputs.

But the Zero’s powerful engine kept dragging her forward,
fighting off a full stall. Her pilot regained control of his ship before she
dove straight into the water.

He’d had enough of this game. Retracting his landing gear
and then his flaps, he turned the Zero toward the Owen Stanleys and flew away.
He had decided there was nothing honorable in being downed by an unarmed,
slow-flying spotter plane.

“Our biggest worry now is fuel,” Worth said, as the float
gauge flirted with the empty mark. “We need to fly straight for home.
It’s our only chance.”

Flying straight home would involve passing directly
over the town of Port Moresby—still full of Japanese gunners.

But John Worth was right: it was their only chance. He
turned the plane straight for the harbor’s closest shore—and Port Moresby.

They expected ground fire from the town, and they weren’t disappointed.
Most of it came at them horizontally, from the hills on the town’s landward
side. The crests of those hills were higher in the air than the L4. They
couldn’t tell if they had been hit or not. The L4 just kept flying.

Their low altitude gave Jock an almost horizontal view of Port
Moresby, a perspective he’d never had before. If he had a street map, he
could’ve followed their progress across the town alley by alley.

He would have never seen it if they’d been higher: the long,
wire antennas, high above the ground, stretched horizontally from tall poles;
the vans parked between the antennas, beneath a canopy of trees.

All this was invisible if viewed from above or far away. But
plainly obvious when viewed obliquely and up close.

Jock knew what it was; he’d seen the equipment before on Cape
York. It was a mobile, high-powered radio transmitter installation.

He knew what it meant: they’d found the Japanese
headquarters at Port Moresby.

Chapter Forty-Two

Day 15

The L4’s engine quit when they were still half a mile from
Twenty Mile Airfield. “No problem,” John Worth called to Jock, sounding like he
truly meant it. “They use these things to train glider pilots, you know. Just
shut the engine off and let them glide in…kinda like what we’re doing right now.”

I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better, Jock told
himself. If only it did…

But they made it to the runway no problem. One of the
tech sergeants helping push the L4 off the runway had two pieces of news:
first, a squadron of P-39s was due in from Australia this afternoon, to be
based at Twenty Mile. Second, there was a big storm expected to arrive about
the same time.

“We could sure use the fighter support,” Worth said, “but
they’d better hurry up. After the rain turns this runway to muddy slop, those
nose gears on the P-39s will dig right in. They’ll either snap off or the
damned things will flip right over on their backs.”

The tech sergeant added, “When the clouds roll in and the
visibility gets bad, sir, they won’t find this damned place, anyway.” He gave
the L4 a once-over and said, “I’m surprised she ain’t all shot to hell again,
considering where she’s been. I don’t see a hole in her.”

Jock and Worth exchanged a surprised look. Neither man could
believe their plane hadn’t suffered even one hit.

Jock’s relief didn’t last long. A telephone call to Division
HQ pushed him quickly to the point of rage. Taking out the Japanese
headquarters—now that he had actually found it—didn’t seem to be much of a
priority at Division.

“Look, Major,” the Division G3 said, “the Air Force can only
give us an approximate time they’ll be able to mount a sortie against what you
think is the Japanese headquarters.”

Jock struggled to keep a civil tone. “Colonel, I don’t think
it’s their headquarters. I know it is. I’ve seen a radio setup like that
before. It’s used for long-range communications with Rabaul, even Tokyo. Only
major headquarters have it.”

“Well, we gave them your target box,” the colonel replied,
sounding very dismissive. “Now it’s the Air Force’s problem. Are you sure we
can’t hit it with artillery, Major?”

Jock really wanted to say You fucking idiot. Didn’t you
even look at your own map? Instead, he said, “Quite sure, sir. It’s twelve
miles from our nearest one-five-five battery. And the last time I checked,
those guns still have a range of only nine miles. Besides, there are civilians
in Port Moresby. Lots of them. If that target isn’t marked—and marked
accurately—all those planes will do is kill them instead of the Japs.”

Jock imagined the colonel’s scowl as he countered, “So what,
Major? This is war. If some of those local porch monkeys get in the way, that’s
just the way it goes.” He paused before adding, “What about the Aussie
artillery? They’ll be much closer, won’t they?”

Jock looked at his watch and asked, “Colonel, you do realize
the first Aussie troops are not scheduled to even hit the beach for another
three minutes? That is, of course, if the landings are actually on schedule.
Lord knows how long it’ll take to get their artillery up and running.”

“Look, Major, I can’t help you any more than that.”

Like you helped at all…

“I’ll give you their approximate time window over the
target,” the colonel said. “Take it from there.” He passed on the time
information and rang off the line.

Unable to control his frustration for another second, Jock
kicked over a table in the operations tent.

“Whoa! Easy, sir,” John Worth said, rushing over to Jock.
“What’s wrong?”

“Sometimes,” Jock replied, “it’s harder to fight our own
damned command than the Japanese. How long until she’s ready to fly again?”

“About another ten minutes. They’re gassing her up now. And
there are four more Willie Pete rounds ready to go on board.”

“Good,” Jock replied. “You up for flying over Port Moresby
again, John?”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes, sir, I am.”

The first wave of the Australian Seventh Division came
ashore at Boera against scant opposition. Several battalions—over a thousand
men—were already off the beach and working their way to the hills a few miles
beyond. The boats of the second wave were approaching the shore.

There was one big snag: two passes through those hills
formed the exit corridors from the beach, and Japanese heavy machine guns
blocked them. The machine guns’ interlocking fires formed an invisible but
deadly fence that had already killed or wounded over 100 men. Now pinned
down—and with a tenth of the first wave already out of action—the Aussie troops
stopped cold at the passes were coming under fire from heavy mortars. They had
two choices: attempt to scale the steep hills, which would take hours before
any sizeable force could get behind the Japanese machine gun nests, or dig in.

They chose to dig in.

“WHERE’S MY BLOODY ARTILLERY?” General Blamey bellowed. He
had decided to come ashore with the second wave—a surprising but courageous
choice, considering the uncertainty of the situation. But not one field gun was
among the thousands of diggers now crowding the beach. Hunkered down
with his stalled troops, Blamey desperately needed some firepower of his own.
Without it, many more would be dead within an hour, and his landing would be
hurled back into the sea.

“We’re calling in fire from the destroyers now, General,” a
fire support officer said.

“NO!” Blamey replied. “My men are too close. Those Navy guns
are just as likely to hit us as the Japs. We need close support. Where
is that bloody Yank Air Force?”

“They’re up on frequency now, General…and about five minutes
out.”

“Cancel the naval gunfire,” Blamey replied, “and pray we’re
not all killed in the next five minutes.”

The general glanced at the panting, sweating private
furiously spinning the cranks of the radio’s hand-crank generator. “Take it
easy, lad,” Blamey said, “Don’t kill yourself. There are enough wankers trying
to do that already.”

John Worth eased the throttle back as the L4 leveled off at
800 feet. They were retracing their steps back up the coastline, heading
straight for the center of Port Moresby—and the Japanese HQ. The clouds just
above them were thickening. Already, the peak of Astrolabe—sitting 3,000 feet
above sea level—was hidden among them.

“That’s not good,” Jock said from the L4’s back seat. “My
boys on Astrolabe won’t be able to see much of anything.”

Worth had more immediate concerns. “It isn’t very good for
us, either, sir,” he replied. “Flying around all this high ground in bad
visibility is a great way to get ourselves killed. And if it starts raining
really hard, we’ll be lucky to see half a mile.”

Jock tried to think of something reassuring to say to the
young lieutenant, but nothing was coming to mind. Worth was right: the weather
could give them and their little plane far more trouble than the Japanese.

“Even if we mark the Jap HQ,” Worth said, “the Fifth Air
Force guys might not be able to find it in this soup…or even want to try.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, John.”

They were beginning to see the hazy outline of Port Moresby
dead ahead, jutting into the mouth of Fairfax Harbor. Worth gently nosed the L4
toward the water’s surface; they’d have to get low again to see the Japanese
radio station.

“Come right about two degrees,” Jock said. “That should put
us right over it.”

“What are you using for a landmark, sir?”

“That pair of long, two-story buildings…aim right between
them.”

Barely a minute passed before they were skimming over the
rooftops. “That street just off our right nose,” Jock said, “…those radio
trucks should be…right…” His voice trailed off. His next words came quickly, a
disappointed “Oh, shit.”

There was nothing there. The spot the vans had occupied less
than two hours ago was now vacant.

Worth asked, “You sure that’s the right place, sir?”

“Yeah, I’m damned sure.”

“They couldn’t have gotten far,” Worth said. “Want me to get
a little higher, so we can get a better look around? If they’re moving, we
should be able to spot them pretty easily.”

“No, let’s go up to Boera first. See if the Aussies can use
our help.”

The fighters of the American Fifth Air Force were over the
beaches at Boera in less than the promised five minutes. Despite the steadily
dropping ceiling, they had little trouble picking out the passes in which the
Australians were pinned down. Once the Aussies marked their lines with smoke
grenades, the Yank pilots strafed the Japanese machine gun nests just beyond to
devastating effect. Despite their close proximity to the strafing runs, no
Australian diggers fell victim to friendly fire.

The beaches of Boera cleared as the Aussies flooded inland
through the now-open passes, allowing their subsequent waves to land. Most
importantly, their artillery and Bren gun carriers began to stream ashore,
finally unloaded from the bowels of haphazardly loaded transport ships. Only an
hour and a half had passed since the first wave set foot on dry land, but the
Aussies had advanced beyond the coastal hills and were moving east,
encountering only token opposition. Ahead lay Port Moresby and the rear of the
Japanese forces facing the American 32nd Division.

As General Blamey surveyed the bombed-out Japanese artillery
batteries—batteries that, as far as he could tell, had never fired a shot
against his troops—a single American spotter plane droned past overhead,
teasing the lowering cloud deck. Working the radio set in the general’s ute—an
American jeep in Aussie paint—his aide said, “Those Yanks overhead are asking
if they can be of any help, sir.”

Blamey seemed amazed by the question. “Of course they bloody
can,” he replied. “Ask them where the bloody Japanese are, for God’s sake.”

Looking at the wrecked Japanese guns all around them, Blamey
knew the Yanks had already provided a great deal of help: only a deadly
accurate bombing raid could have done this sort of devastation.

The aide had the answer in short order. “They say it’s wide
open all the way to Port Moresby, but the town is only lightly defended and
perhaps being evacuated. The bulk of the Japanese are still farther east,
beyond the town.”

Bloody wonderful, Blamey thought. Five miles of unopposed
ground in front of us. Plenty of time and space to get ourselves properly
organized.

Chapter Forty-Three

Day 15

By late morning, a deluge of rain turned the lowlands to
quagmire within moments of its arrival. General Blamey’s advance slowed to a
crawl; if the rain kept up at this pace, he had doubts the lead elements of his
force would reach the outskirts of Port Moresby—still several miles away—by
nightfall. And even if they did, he knew they wouldn’t be in any shape to do
battle. Next to withering enemy fire, nothing disorganized a military unit like
foul weather.

On Astrolabe, the pouring rain only added to their problems:
all morning, a thick and constant mist had shrouded the long ridge of the
mountain’s peak. At OP Charlie Able, Melvin Patchett tried to scan the lowlands
with binoculars from beneath the shelter of a lean-to. “I believe we’re on the
top side of a cloud,” he said. “Still can’t see much of anything down there.”

The walkie-talkie sputtered to life with the faint sound of
Sergeant Hadley’s voice, awash in static. “I’m almost halfway down the slope,”
he reported. “and the fog isn’t so thick. But I can’t make out much of anything
on the lowlands through all this rain.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be like this for the better part
of the day,” Trevor Shaw replied.

“That ain’t good,” Patchett said. “We ain’t much of an OP if
we can’t see shit.”

Lee Grossman had an idea. “You know, Top…The Notch isn’t as
high as we are. Maybe they’ve got a better view down there.” He picked up the
field telephone and gave it a few cranks. “Let’s get Corporal Boudreau on the
line.”

It was PFC Teddy Mukasic who answered the call at OP Charlie
Baker, his words barely audible through torrents of static. “Yes, sir, we’re up
in the fog here, too,” he said, “but it ain’t raining yet. Bogater’s gone down
the slope to see how far you gotta go for a clear view. Maybe it won’t be too
far and we can run a phone down there. We ain’t got a lot of wire left,
though.”

“Neither do we,” Grossman said. “Let us know what you find
ASAP.”

Mukasic responded, “Will do, sir,” but Lee Grossman never
heard it. Neither realized the line had gone dead.

No sooner had Mukasic rung off than Bogater Boudreau came
scrambling back up the slope. Breathless, he said, “We got Japs on the move all
over the damn place.”

Mukasic asked, “Are they in artillery range?”

“They won’t be if we don’t get some rounds on them right
quick,” Boudreau replied. “We’re moving our OP. Grab that last reel of commo
wire and follow me…on the fucking double.”

Zigzagging across the sky as they reconned behind enemy
lines, Jock Miles and John Worth had an even better view of the Japanese troop
movements than Bogater Boudreau. Several large units—each at least battalion
size, Jock estimated—were disengaging along the battle line with the Americans.
They were hurrying down the roads toward Port Moresby—and Blamey’s Australians.

And we figured the Japs wouldn’t do that, Jock told himself.

“Hurry up and get us a couple miles west of here,” Jock said
to Worth. “The artillery I just called for…we’re right in its flight path. It’d
be hell to get knocked down by our own guns.”

Worth stared glumly at the L4’s fuel gauge. It had been
almost 90 minutes since they left Twenty Mile Airfield; it was time to go home
again and refuel. What gas was left would barely get them there.

“Okay, but we can only stay around here another minute or
two, sir,” Worth said. “Unless you want to walk back.”

“Crap…fucking gas,” Jock mumbled, switching frequencies like
a madman as he alternately gave fire mission coordinates to both the American
and Australian artillery. “Unable to adjust fire,” he told the gunners.
“Leaving the area to refuel.” He made a special plea to the American fire
support center: “Use Blind Eye Six for further adjustments. They should
have eyes on target.”

Jock could barely see Astrolabe, nearly 10 miles to the
north, mysterious behind a curtain of low clouds and driving rain. Yet, he
hoped the men of Charlie Company—Blind Eye Six—could somehow track the
Japanese from their mountain perch.

As Bogater Boudreau led his two men down the slope at The
Notch, the humidity of the rainforest felt so thick he swore it parted like an
invisible curtain as he moved through it. They hadn’t gotten below the fog
still clinging to the mountain top, but they could hear the first volleys of
artillery rounds impacting on the Japanese pulling back across the lowlands.

“Hot damn!” Boudreau said. “Somebody’s already giving them
Japs hell.”

PFC Fanning was playing out the communications wire from
their only reel. “We ain’t got much left,” he called to Boudreau, scrambling
downhill far ahead. “Maybe another hundred yards.”

“Just keep moving, numbnuts,” Corporal Boudreau replied.

They heard the rain coming seconds before it engulfed them,
shimmering like the hiss of surf rolling in their direction. The first drops
stained their fatigues and web gear like giant polka dots for just an instant.
Then their clothing turned dark and sodden from head to toe as if they were
standing beneath a giant faucet. Water streamed off the lip of their helmets
and down their shirt collars, soaking the three GIs to the bone.

The spinning of the wire reel snapped to a halt as the last
turn on the spool played out. “That’s it,” Fanning said. “This is as far as it
goes.”

Bogater Boudreau wiped the dripping water from his face and
scanned the murky vista below, stopping every few seconds to wipe the rain from
his binocular lenses. He couldn’t see much of the Japanese, but he could see
enough.

“Well, they ain’t walking anymore, that’s for damn sure,”
Boudreau said, “and they ain’t stupid, neither. They’re running like sons of
bitches to get out from under that artillery.” He turned his impatient glare on
Mukasic and Fanning and asked, “You got that fucking phone hooked up yet?”

“It ain’t working, Corporal,” Teddy Mukasic replied, holding
out the handset like an offering of proof. “It’s fucking dead.”

Boudreau snatched the handset away from Mukasic. But
Bogater’s turns of the crank brought no more response than Mukasic’s.

“I told you, Corporal…it’s dead,” Mukasic said, sounding
oddly satisfied with the sad state of affairs.

“It’s the fucking rain,” Boudreau said, sending mud flying
in all directions as he stamped his feet in fury. “All them splices we had to
make in the Jap wire…the rain’s shorting them out. They’re probably all sitting
in puddles now. We shoulda hung them up in the trees from the git-go.”

Mukasic and Fanning gave a collective shrug, which
infuriated Boudreau all the more.

“We can’t do nothing about that,” Fanning said.

“The hell we can’t,” Boudreau replied. “For starters, you
two take the spare phone and start policing that commo line…on the damn double…and
get every damn splice high and dry.” Seeing the reluctant expressions on the
privates’ faces, he added, “I don’t give a crap if you gotta trace it all the
way back to OP Charlie Able. Get moving…NOW!”

Mukasic and Fanning hovered for another few moments—straining
their exhausted minds to discover some drier option requiring less effort—and
then gave in to the order. They turned and started following the wire back up
the mountain, just like they had been told.

“Don’t get no bright ideas about hiding out under a ground
sheet until the rain stops, neither,” Boudreau called after them. “If I don’t
have communications with OP Charlie Able in about one-zero minutes or less,
it’ll be your asses.”

With each passing minute, John Worth grew more certain the
L4 would run out of gas before reaching Twenty Mile Airfield. Even if they did
make the field, they might never know it: the rain was cutting the visibility
down to almost nothing. The view through the windshield was a watery blur. The
side windows were somewhat clear, but even from their low altitude, wide swaths
of the ground were still indistinct in the mist.

Worth said, “If I don’t hit the field dead on…” He didn’t
bother finishing the sentence. There was no need; he and Jock were both well
aware what would happen if they couldn’t find it.

“That would be a real raw deal, too,” Worth added, “seeing
as how we’ve been flying over enemy territory all morning and nobody even shot
at us, near as I can tell.”

“Oh, I’m sure somebody tried, John. He just didn’t aim good
enough.”

Jock was trying to navigate from the map, but there were no
usable landmarks. Every feature of the terrain below seemed dissolved in the
storm’s gray mist. Suddenly—out the left window—there was a landmark he wasn’t
expecting at all. There was the unmistakable shape of aircraft—American P-39
fighters, from what he could tell—scattered on a patch of open ground below. “I
think I found it, John,” he said. “Check left.”

“Holy shit,” Worth said, truly surprised. “Those fighter
jocks really did show up. Let’s go join the party…before we make another silent
entrance.”

He banked the L4 into a tight, descending half-circle. No
sooner had Worth leveled her out, her tires began to slosh along the sodden
runway. As she rolled to a quick, mud-assisted stop, Jock counted the parked
P-39s: there were seven parked against the trees at the field’s periphery. They
taxied past an eighth fighter mired at the end of the runway, its nose and one
wingtip rumpled and plowed deep into the soft, wet earth.

“Gear collapse,” Worth explained. “Like I said, that type
doesn’t do soggy fields real well. How many did you say you counted, sir?”

“Eight, counting the wreck over there.”

“That’s only two flights’ worth. There was supposed to be
three. Wonder what happened to them?”

She rolled to her parking spot and Worth shut the engine
down. Once outside the airplane and sheltered beneath the high wing from the
rain, he looked up at the low, opaque sky and said “I think we’re done for a
while, sir.”

A resigned smile on his face, Jock replied, “You wouldn’t
kid me, would you, Lieutenant?”

After what he had been through this morning, the studied
inactivity that greeted Jock at Division HQ was too much to take. Senior
officers—in dry uniforms untouched by the morning rain—huddled over maps and
spoke in sweeping generalities of troop maneuvers more imagined than real.

To someone who had been looking down on the battlefield
little more than an hour ago, the HQ’s big situation map was hopelessly
inaccurate. “The Aussies are a good two miles closer to Port Moresby,” Jock
said, sketching a more accurate line on the map with his finger, “and I
estimate several battalions—perhaps as much as a regiment—of Japanese have
pulled back from contact with us”—his hand made a big sweep across the map—“to
about here. I called for fire on them from the plane. The artillery—ours and
the Aussies—ought to be shelling the shit out of them right now.”

But the sound of big guns firing—a low rumble even heavy
rainfall couldn’t mask—was completely absent.

The G3 began his reply with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Once you had to fly away, we had no observers tracking the target. We ceased
fire so as not to waste rounds.”

“What about Astrolabe? There are two OPs up there.”

“They can’t see a damned thing, Major.” the G3 replied.
“Weather, you know.”

Yeah…tell me about the weather.

The situation map told another surprising story: it showed
no American unit had moved forward to exploit the weakening Japanese line they
now faced.

“We tried,” the G3 said, annoyed at having to explain, “but
we ran into very stiff resistance once again…and even if we could advance, we
couldn’t go very far until this rain stops. The artillery vehicles will bog
down if they try to move…and then nobody will have fire support.”

Jock leveled his glare at the Air Force liaison officer.
“When can we expect some support from those P-39s that finally showed up?”

“Can’t fly,” the Air Force officer snapped. “The weather’s
below minimums. And the squadron isn’t ready to go fully operational, anyway.”

Jock asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means, Major, that none of their ground support
personnel have arrived yet. Those planes require a lot of maintenance. It’s not
safe for them to fly without it.”

“Really?” Jock replied, feigning shock. “What about the crew
of mechanics who are doing a hell of a job keeping our L4 in the air?”

“They’re not trained on the P-39.”

“Maybe it’s time they learned,” Jock said. “And by the way,
I only counted eight planes…and one of them is already badly damaged. Where’s the
other four?”

“They didn’t make it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. We know that flight left Australia…but they
never got here. We don’t know where they are.”

“In other words, one third of our Air Force direct support
is missing before it even gets here,” Jock said, and then poured on the sarcasm
as he added, “Ain’t that great?”

The G3 had had enough of Jock’s pointed questions. Adding
his own dose of sarcasm, he said, “Speaking of missing, Major Miles, I
see your Japanese Headquarters at Port Moresby seems to have vanished
into thin air.” The colonel was taking great pleasure in erasing the red flag
that symbolized that headquarters from the situation map. “Perhaps it was just
your imagination, Major,” he added.

“Negative, sir,” Jock replied. “I know what I saw. The
Japanese aren’t fools. They know they were spotted, so they moved. We just
don’t know where yet.”

The G3 went back to shuffling the papers on his desk; Jock
had no doubt he was being dismissed in every sense of the word. Without looking
up, the colonel said, “Very well, Major. Just be sure to let us know if that
phantom headquarters of yours pops up again.”

Jock stepped outside the HQ tent and let the rain cleanse
his spirit. He needed to be back in the air again, where he could at least do
some good. The weather forecast wasn’t optimistic, though: there would be no
flying for the rest of this day.

It was nearly an hour before Bogater Boudreau’s field
telephone rang. It was Teddy Mukasic on the line.

“Honest, Corporal,” Mukasic pleaded, “we ain’t been
goldbricking. This line is really fucked up. We’re about a mile down the trail,
and we’ve been hanging the splices up in the trees to keep them dry. There’s
still more trouble farther down the line, though…I can’t raise OP Charlie Able at
all.”

Boudreau kicked the ground and sent a plume of mud high in
the air. “Shit,” he said, “ain’t no big rush now. I can’t see any fucking Japs
no more anyway.” He sighed and then told Mukasic, “Keep at it, even if you
gotta fix that line all the way back to Charlie Able. One more thing…if
you do get all the way there, make fucking sure you bring me back a couple of
ration boxes. I’m starving out here.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Day 15

By suppertime, the rain had stopped. There were a few hours
of daylight left; every officer in 32nd Division knew their excuses
for not advancing were drying up as fast as the Papuan mud. Visibility was no
longer an issue, either. Even the sun descending in the evening sky cast plenty
of light for military operations—but not enough for another recon flight. His
pilot was game, but by the time Jock got to Twenty Mile Airfield and they got
airborne, the long shadows of day’s end would already be casting much of the
ground in the cover of darkness.

Still, Jock told himself, I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit
around this HQ tent with my thumb up my ass like the rest of this staff,
pretending to be doing work of monumental importance.

The G3’s order came like a gift from heaven: “Major Miles,
we think tomorrow’s big push will be spearheaded by Eighty-Second
Regiment. I want you to go down there and liaise with them…Make sure
they’re getting all the support they need from Division.”

Jock was packed up and in his jeep in less than two minutes.
He didn’t even bother waiting for his driver. Funny thing is, Jock thought, the
colonel thinks he’s screwing me over with this little liaison assignment, like
it’s some shit detail. Fat lot he knows.

Astrolabe no longer had its head in the clouds. Bogater
Boudreau reeled his phone line back up to the peak at The Notch. Despite the
clear view he once again had of the terrain below, he couldn’t see anything
other than the occasional vehicle. All the troops—American, Japanese, and
Australian—seemed to be lying low.

He wasn’t at the peak five minutes when his field telephone
sounded its muted ring; it was Teddy Mukasic, calling from OP Charlie Able. It
had taken all afternoon—and over six miles of walking and working in the
rain—but he and Fanning had finally gotten the phone line to the Notch operational
again.

“Ain’t that hot shit,” Boudreau said with a laugh. “Good
job…Now you two better hurry up and get your asses back here before dark. I’m
getting lonely out here. And don’t y’all dare forget my food, y’hear?”

Lieutenant Grossman came on the line, asking if he could see
any troop dispositions from his location.

“No, sir,” Boudreau replied, “it looks about as quiet as
church down there.”

All in all, It hadn’t been a bad first day for Blamey’s
Australians. The general stood on high ground overlooking the town of Port
Moresby, little more than a mile to the east. In the fading light of dusk, it
looked like a ghost town to him. His troops had gone far enough for one day.
Tomorrow, they’d begin taking back the town.

One question still bothered him, though: Just where the
hell are all the Japanese? After the near disaster at the passes exiting
the beach, the Aussie advance had been uncontested. They had only encountered a
handful of Japanese—scouts, probably—and those had been easily
dispatched. But he knew the night could bring a whole different equation:

I can’t just sit back and wait for the little bastards to
sneak up on us in the dark. All those troops that Yank spotter plane said were
coming our way…they’ve got to be out there somewhere. The only way to be
prepared is to patrol aggressively tonight.

Nobody’s bloody taking me by surprise.

It wasn’t the nightfall that bothered the Japanese
lieutenant. He had learned long ago darkness could be a good friend if a
soldier learned to ignore his fears and use it to exploit the fears of his
enemy—like they had been doing to the Americans ever since they landed on
Papua. Nothing seemed to panic the Americans and make them give their positions
away like a handful of scouts running around in the darkness, screaming their
silly heads off.

The fact that they were running out of everything—food,
ammunition, medical supplies, even soap—wasn’t bothering him, either. He had
heard the reports on Tokyo Radio of stunning Japanese victories at sea. Any day
now, he was quite sure, the Imperial Japanese Navy would send the rest of the
enfeebled American fleet to the ocean floor. Then, the supplies would flow into
Port Moresby once more, and they would crush this pathetic Allied attempt to
dislodge them once and for all.

What did bother the lieutenant: the battalion in
which he served had been ordered from their bunkers facing the American lines,
the relatively safe and impregnable havens they had occupied for the last 10
days. Why had the colonel picked his battalion? Had they not stood up to the
enemy well enough?

He ignored the fact he had not really fought at all. His
Nambu pistol had yet to be fired at an enemy—or even removed from its
holster—since the occupation of Port Moresby began. Whatever the colonel’s
reason, the lieutenant and his men were in the open now, maneuvering to destroy
the Australian nuisance, and vulnerable to any sort of enemy fire.

He took the picture of his wife from the liner of his cap
and held it tenderly in his hands. It was too dark to make out the features of
her pretty face, but it mattered little: even in broad daylight, the ravages of
the tropical climate had taken their toll, washing away the contrast of dark
and bright. The photo was now little more than a dingy rendering of a ghost.
But it was all he had. His memory sketched in the details nature had erased as
he spoke to her fading image:

Do not worry for me, my darling. We have the darkness to
shield us…

And I’m quite sure the Australians fear the dark just as
much as the Americans.

The skeptical men of the US 82nd Regiment’s recon
platoon had never before had a guest accompany them on a patrol—and he was a staff
officer, a breed who usually preferred hiding out behind the front lines at
HQ. This Major Miles from Division certainly seemed like an old hand who knew
the drill, though, and he had a hell of a lot more knowledge of the Japanese
dispositions than their own regimental S2. He’d seen them from the air,
this major said. As they probed forward in the night from their own lines, trying
to gauge the strength of the enemy still facing them, everything he had told
them had been right so far.

“They’re going to be very weak in this sector,” Jock Miles
told the recon platoon. “We’re going to find gaps in their defenses that
weren’t there before today.”

He was dead right about the gaps: they had just walked right
through one, without a single Japanese shot to protest their presence. Now,
they were operating behind enemy lines.

The platoon leader seemed a bit stunned by their success.
Unsure how to proceed, he asked Jock, “How far do you think we should go, sir?”

“Until we make contact,” Jock said.

“With the Japs, sir…or the Aussies?”

“Either one,” Jock replied.

The Aussie patrol was anything if not quiet. They wore no
helmets, only soft slouch hats that didn’t go clank if they bumped into
something. The sling of each man’s weapon had been secured to the stock with
tape so its metal hardware wouldn’t rattle. Everything carried on their person
was firmly secured and padded if necessary to remain silent. Their feet seemed
to glide on velvet as they crept without a sound toward the suspected Japanese columns.

Their silence paid off handsomely: they heard the Japanese
approaching while they were still a long way off: clumsy footsteps; spoken words—obviously
Japanese—meant to be hushed but carrying great distances in the night; the
constant clatter of personal gear.

The ambush would be almost too easy, the Aussies thought.

When the Japanese grew close, the sparse tree growth in this
area allowed the moon to backlight their silhouettes. As each of the nearest
Japanese soldiers was shot, the muzzle flash froze his dark outline like a
photograph for just an instant. In each successive flash, the soldier’s shape
crumpled to the ground in split-second increments as if the pages of a flip
book were being riffled to the industrial beat of automatic weapons.

It was all over in seconds. There was nothing else to shoot
at except the screams of fleeing Japanese.

“Cease fire, mates,” the patrol’s sergeant told his men.
“Bloody well done.”

Other voices rang out of the new silence, speaking English.
They were Yanks.

Challenges and passwords were exchanged in hushed tones; a
joint perimeter was quickly established. As they shook hands, the Aussie
sergeant asked Jock Miles, “Were you blokes stalking them, too, Major?”

“Yeah, we were,” Jock replied, “but we weren’t planning on
engaging, just reconning. Pretty ballsy of you to take them on like that,
Sergeant, considering you can’t really tell their strength in the dark. Good
ambush, though.”

The Aussie didn’t bother to mention the warning he had
received before going out on patrol: Avoid the American lines. They’re green
troops just as likely to fire at you as the Japanese. At least that advice
hadn’t turned out to be true, so far.

Jock and the sergeant watched as two diggers checked
to make sure the clustered, lifeless bodies of at least a dozen Japanese were
actually dead and not just staging some suicidal trap. Carefully rolling over
one of the bodies, a digger said, “Look at this, Sergeant…this one’s a bloody
lieutenant.” He pried open the dead man’s clenched fist. It held a faded
photograph of what appeared to be a young woman. “Should’ve been worrying a
little less about his sheila and more about us wankers,” the digger said. “Poor
bugger didn’t even have a chance to pull his bloody Nambu. Well, he won’t be
needing it anymore.” He relieved the corpse of the pistol and stuck it into his
web belt.

Once the bodies were confirmed dead, the sergeant asked
Jock, “Where do you suppose the rest of them went, sir?”

“Toward the airfield, probably,” Jock replied. “They’ve
still got a lot of heavy weapons up there. I don’t imagine they’ll be running
to Port Moresby anymore. There’s no way out of that place now…if any of them are
even still there.”

They compared maps in the glow of red-filtered flashlights.
“Watch your asses backing out of here,” Jock said. “I’m pretty sure we’re in
the middle of a bunch of Japanese units that pulled back to meet you Aussies.
They should have been on us like stink on shit once the shooting started, but
we didn’t even get mortared, and that’s pretty standard procedure in their
book. I know there are plenty of them around here—I saw them from the air
earlier today—but they must be disorganized and not supporting each other.”

The Aussie sergeant agreed, but with a decided lack of
expectation added, “I just hope to bloody hell we can take advantage of the
Nips while they’re cocked up like this. We could cut them up piecemeal if we
moved our arses quick enough.”

Jock couldn’t have better expressed his hopes and fears for
what might happen next.

Chapter Forty-Five

Day 15

In Tokyo, bitter disagreement hung over the Imperial War
Council like a storm about to unleash its fury. The day had brought bad news of
the Australian landings near Port Moresby; as usual, the Army and the Navy held
diametrically opposed opinions on the proper response. As the debate raged far
into the night, General Sugiyama, Chief of the Army General Staff, sat
red-faced as Admiral Yamamoto, naval Commander-in-Chief, patiently stated his
position:

“Gentlemen, since we decided many months ago we have neither
the interest nor the resources to occupy Australia, Port Moresby is, therefore,
of little strategic value to our forces. The harbor is far too small to support
serious fleet operations. The New Guinea land mass simply is too vast and
inhospitable to occupy anything other than the vital garrisons along the Bismarck
and Solomon Seas, strongholds which protect our sea routes to the Solomon
Islands.”

General Sugiyama spewed his rebuttal: “The Army would have
no problem holding every harbor in the southwest Pacific if the Navy would stop
making excuses and deliver the necessary material.”

The other Army men in the chamber muttered their agreement.
The Navy men shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Ultimately, the men of both
branches believed it was Tojo who determined the war effort’s direction—and
Tojo was an Army man.

Yamamoto refused to be ruffled. He replied, “Making
excuses, you say? What excuse did you make when your army’s aircraft fled Port
Moresby the moment it faced its first formidable challenge in this war?”

Sugiyama waved away the all-too-accurate barb, replying,
“Your naval aircraft fled just as quickly.”

“The duties of our naval aircraft lie elsewhere,” Yamamoto
said, “unlike your Army planes, whose primary duty was to defend Port Moresby.
As to the Navy providing material support, let me say this: our fleet is strong
but it is not invincible. Despite the happy talk being broadcast over
Tokyo Radio, our Navy has not vanquished the Allied fleet, and it will never do
so if we continue to allow reinforcements from America to arrive unchecked. It
is essential we marshal our forces where they will do the most good, and right
now, that is not at Port Moresby. Let me repeat: It is on the wrong side
of that vast island to suit our purposes. Our highest naval priority is to
drive off the Allied challenge to our dominance in the Solomon Sea and maintain
our grip on the Solomon Islands. Once we can maintain permanent air and sea
bases on those islands, we can prevent the flow of American resources to Australia
and New Zealand. And if we can do that, we will be in unchallenged control of
the southwest Pacific. Indefinitely.”

“You give up on Port Moresby too easily,” Sugiyama said.

“I’m not giving up, General,” Yamamoto replied, “I am merely
allocating my resources where they will do us the most good and not be
needlessly sacrificed. I suggest you do the same. There is no reason to
wantonly discard the nearly twenty thousand troops you have in Port Moresby.
The Americans and Australians, despite their lackluster performance so far,
will inevitably starve your men to death. We should not let that happen. After
all, they are not suicide troops, and we need them desperately in other, far
more valuable places—”

“Perhaps to reinforce your pointless feint in the Aleutians,
Admiral?”

“Please try to stay on topic, General,” Yamamoto replied.

Sugiyama fumed for a moment before asking, “Are you suggesting,
Admiral, that you will not supply naval vessels to evacuate my troops from Port
Moresby?”

“I’m not suggesting—I’m stating it plainly, General. I will no
longer allow my surface fleet to transit the waters south of New Guinea—not
while the American Air Force in Australia is allowed to become stronger every
day. As the absence of your Air Force over Port Moresby attests, the American
flyers are not the ill-equipped pushovers the British, Australians, and Dutch
proved to be.”

“Then how do you propose they evacuate?”

“The same way many of them got there, General…over the Owen
Stanleys. Just like they did when they chased the Australians out of Papua.”

As General Sugiyama chewed over this distasteful suggestion,
Yamamoto added the clincher: “Perhaps you are not aware this has already been
discussed and agreed upon at the very highest levels of the Council.”

The very highest levels: that meant The Emperor.

“You’re bluffing, Admiral.”

“I can assure you, General, I am not.”

Sugiyama threw up his hands, rose from his chair, and began
to storm from the chamber. On the way, he told the colonel chasing close
behind, “Have the evacuation order transmitted to Rabaul at once.”

“But, General,” the colonel said, “a plan must be drawn up
first and—”

Sugiyama cut him off. “Here is the plan, Colonel. They walk
back to Buna over the Kokoda Track immediately. General Adachi can work out the
details on his own.”

Nestled in a grove a few miles north of Port Moresby, two
Japanese radio vans hummed with activity late into the night. The radio
operators had just completed their first contact with Rabaul since
repositioning from the town, where their old hiding place had been compromised.
They were still amazed they had not been bombed or shelled after that American
spotter plane flew so low overhead he seemed to be landing on a rooftop. The
aviators could not have helped but see them.

The officer-in-charge fell silent as he decoded the message.
He stared intently at the message form for a few seconds before telling a
runner, “Get this message to General Adachi immediately.” Then he changed his
mind and snatched back the message form. “No…I’ll deliver it personally,” he
said, climbing from the van.

One of the radio operators called after him: “May I ask
what’s so important, Captain?”

“You may not, Corporal,” the OIC replied, but then relented,
adding, “but I will tell you this: prepare yourself for a few weeks of mountain
climbing.”

On the bridge of the small coastal freighter docked at a Queensland
harbor, the ship’s captain was reading a different radio message. It directed
the Australian merchant vessel Esme—now being loaded with ammunition—to
take its place in a convoy forming in the Gulf of Carpentaria, which, in two
days’ time, would sail northward through the Torres Strait to the vicinity of
Port Moresby.

Jillian Forbes smiled as she told herself, Port Moresby—couldn’t
have picked a better port of call if I tried.

Chapter Forty-Six

Day 16

The sun hadn’t risen on the new day yet, but Jock Miles was
already studying maps in the operations tent at Twenty Mile Airfield. John
Worth walked in, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. He was startled to find
Jock hard at work.

“Get any sleep, Major?” Worth asked.

“A little. Got back to HQ around oh-four-thirty.”

“Got back? Where were you?”

“Did a little patrolling with the recon platoon of
Eighty-Second Regiment. We made contact with the Aussies. Found out that Jap
pullback is all sorts of disorganized, too.”

“Gee, that’s great news, sir. So you maybe got an hour of
shut-eye?” Worth asked, suddenly feeling guilty about the five hours he had
just bagged.

“Sounds about right,” Jock replied. “Hey, I was just looking
at the weather. A little low cloud cover and haze this morning…but I think
we’re going to have great pickings the rest of the day.”

A roar of engine noise shattered the pre-dawn silence. A few
of the P-39s were being fired up.

“What’s going on with the fighters?” Jock asked. “I thought
they weren’t ready to fly yet.”

“Who said that, sir?”

“The air liaison at Division. He said they were waiting for
their ground crews. The guys already here aren’t trained on the P-39.”

Worth laughed and said, “That doesn’t mean they can’t learn.
By the way, I was talking with the fighter jocks last night. They’re here to
fly top cover.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’re supposed to keep the Jap fighters and
bombers off us.”

Now it was Jock’s turn to laugh. “Swell. Where were they
when we needed them?” He turned serious: “I was kind of hoping they’d do some
ground attack, though.”

The first Aussie patrol to creep down the narrow streets and
alleys of Port Moresby didn’t believe their luck: the Japanese were nowhere to
be found. Some vehicles were still lying around—they were broken down, foiling
the Aussies’ attempts to commandeer them—but those items were the only calling
cards the Japanese left behind. Wary Papuan townspeople, expecting a battle but
hearing no shots, filtered slowly onto the streets for a better look at what
was happening. At first, they didn’t believe their luck, either. Gradually,
though, reports came in from all across the town: the Japanese occupiers had
packed it in and marched inland during the night.

The good fortune stalled the Aussie advance just as surely
as stubborn Japanese resistance. They hadn’t expected this: by mid-morning they
had secured the entire town, an enterprise that was expected to take up to a
week. Another bonus: Fairfax Harbor was suddenly open to Allied shipping once
again. Unloading of men and material no longer required amphibious landings.

“What do we do now, sir?” a regimental commander asked
General Blamey.

Blamey replied, “We wait right here until we know what the
Yanks are up to.”

The picture from the American side was a bit more complex.
The 82nd Regiment, capitalizing on the information gained in last
night’s patrolling, quickly enveloped and finished off the weakened enemy still
facing them across the long-stalled battle line. The Japanese bunker system,
impregnable as it had been to the frontal assaults of the past week, became little
more than ready-made tombs for the defenders now being overwhelmed from behind.

“Something’s very interesting,” the commander of the 82nd
reported to Division. “There were only a handful of Japs left on the line. It’s
like they were just a rear guard covering a retreat.”

General Hartman put a damper on his regimental commander’s
optimism. “Let’s be careful about assuming they’re in retreat, Colonel,” the
division commander said. “They just may have fallen back to secondary
positions…and they’re trying to draw us into a trap.”

At the advance’s current pace, the commander of the 82nd
wanted to believe his men could race all the way to the airfield—some seven
miles distant—and capture it by midday. American planes of any size and type
would have a prepared runway to land on before sunset far more suitable than
the rough, postage stamp-sized facility that was Twenty Mile Airfield. The
general, however, was telling him to rein his wild horses in. The colonel did
what he was told. His regiment’s brief, lightning-fast advance slowed to a
crawl.

The 83rd Regiment—between the 82nd and
the sea—wasn’t finding the going quite so easy. They thought they had
identified a corridor along the shore where the Japanese offered no resistance,
but this was, in fact, a trap. One of the regiment’s three battalions was
stalled there, pinned down by murderous heavy machine gun fire. Worse, they
weren’t sure exactly where the machine gun nests cutting them to ribbons were
located. An artillery observer on the ground was blindly adjusting the cannon
fire by sound. The impacts of his adjustment rounds weren’t even showering dirt
on the Japanese gunners, let alone steel.

On board the L4, Jock broke into the radio traffic, telling
the artillery observer, “This is Slowbird Three-Two. I have your target
and your battery in sight. Switch to gun-target line adjust…Left four-zero, add
two hundred.”

The next adjustment round got the Japanese more than dirty.
“That’s better,” Jock reported. “Drop five-zero, fire for effect.”

The volley was on target in less than 30 seconds. It
silenced the machine guns.

The 83rd Regiment streamed through the now-open
corridor and enveloped the Japanese positions along their segment of the line
in short order. Within two hours, they, too, had vanquished the Japanese left
behind to halt their advance. The regiment’s commander marveled at how few of
the enemy there had been to kill while agonizing over the staggering toll this
small number had taken of his own men. Heeding the division commander’s
directive to be cautious, the 83rd licked its wounds, took its place
on the left flank of the 82nd, and joined the snail-paced advance
toward the airfield.

On the right flank of the 82nd, a far more
pessimistic picture had emerged. There, the 81st Regiment—smaller
than the other two regiments by the loss of nearly a battalion at sea—sat
wedged between its sister regiment and Astrolabe. Sat was a very
descriptive word, as the regiment had not moved an inch since daybreak. In his
communications with Division HQ, Lieutenant Colonel Hailey, the commander of
the 81st, had offered nothing but a litany of excuses for his unit’s
lack of forward progress.

“To hear Hailey talk,” Jock said as the L4 turned toward the
stalled regiment, “he’s up against the bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Again.”

Jock looked to the ground below; all along the lowlands,
streams of Japanese soldiers—looking so much like lines of ants—were heading
west, away from the Americans. If anything, Hailey and his regiment—the one in
which Jock had served until two days ago—was facing greatly diminished
opposition.

Worth asked, “That used to be your regiment, right, sir?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s wrong with it?”

Jock knew exactly how he wanted to answer that question: What’s
wrong with it? Simple—a poor commander.

Instead, he replied, “That isn’t my call to make, John.”

As they got closer to the battle line of the 81st,
Jock said, “Let’s get low, John…real low. Come up on the Japs from behind, and
let’s get a good look at them.”

“You going to get our artillery to stop shooting first,
sir?”

Jock laughed. “What artillery? It’s dead quiet down there,
like everyone’s got his head in the ground…or up his ass.”

Jock could tell he had not calmed his pilot. “You’re right,
John…I should make it formal.” He was sure he could see the tension flow from
Worth’s shoulders as he broadcast the cease-fire order.

As the L4 descended in a tight turn, Jock could see more of
the ant-like columns of Japanese troops, heading away from the 81st
Regiment. A few hurriedly raised rifles toward the plane; neither Jock nor
Worth felt anything hit their ship.

“Dammit!” Jock said. “Looks like there’s no more than a
company of Japs facing the whole regiment. Head toward the coast again,
John…I’m betting there’s a gap a mile wide on their left flank, where the 82nd
used to be.”

For over a minute, they flew low along the battle line, the
Americans to their left, the Japanese to their right.

“You’d think the Japs down there would be shooting at us,”
Worth said, sounding surprisingly unconcerned.

“You’d think.”

In the blink of an eye, there was a single, metallic THUNK—like
a manhole cover being dropped into place—as the left side window shattered.
Simultaneously, the guts of the radio hanging from the cabin ceiling exploded
from its case in a shower of sparks, metal fragments, and glass.

“SON OF A BITCH,” John Worth said as he banked her hard
right to escape. “THAT HAD TO COME FROM OUR SIDE OF THE FUCKING LINE!”

Jock knew his pilot was right; a shot with that trajectory
could have only come from the American lines. He found it ironic—and smart—that
his pilot had sought safety by steering their plane over enemy territory. He
did a quick check of his body and found he wasn’t wounded. But what about his
pilot?

“YOU OKAY, JOHN?”

“Yeah…got something sticking out of my arm, though…a piece
of metal or something. Take the controls a minute, will you? I’ve gotta pull it
out…it’s hot....and it stings like a bastard. Wait…let me get her straight and
level for you.”

Worth leveled the L4’s wings and set up a gentle climb.
“Okay, sir…your airplane.”

Jock wrapped his hand around the stick as if expecting an
electric shock. He slapped his feet clumsily onto the rudder pedals; Worth
could feel the pressure of Jock’s feet in his own pedals.

“Don’t worry about the rudder, sir,” Worth said as he tore
open his sleeve for better access to the wound. “Just keep the wings level and
the nose a little bit up.”

That’s easy for you to say, Jock thought. Bouncing on
the air currents flowing around Astrolabe, she seemed to have a mind of her
own. Suddenly, her left wing dropped and her nose dipped—or at least that’s
what the seat of his pants was telling him. No sooner did he ease the stick
right, leveling the wings, her right wing suddenly dropped and the descent
steepened.

“Better pull back a little, sir,” Worth said, preoccupied
with getting the packet of sulfa powder into his wound. “We’re a little low to
be trying aerobatics.”

Jock pulled back on the stick and the L4 shot upward, as if
wanting to stand on her tail. He glanced through the shattered left window and
cringed: the horizon was at a crazy tilt, and the plane didn’t seem to be
moving at all.

“Better goose up the power, sir,” Worth said, “and be a
little gentler with the stick. This girl doesn’t like the rough stuff. Gotta coax
her.”

As far as Jock was concerned, the sooner this flying lesson
ended, the better. “You going to be much longer, John?” he asked, wishing he
didn’t sound as flustered as he felt.

“Almost there, sir. Tying this bandage on with only one hand
is really tough. I’m going to have to use my teeth to hold the other end. Don’t
worry…you’re doing okay.”

Doing okay was a lot different than doing great,
though, and the inflection of Worth’s comment confirmed it. Sure, Jock was
doing okay in the sense he hadn’t crashed the airplane yet, but he
definitely didn’t have the feel of her controls. If you got points for
simulating a gut-wrenching thrill ride, he’d have a very high score.

He didn’t dare think about turning her in a different
direction; flying straight and level was proving enough of a challenge. Worse,
every minute of flight brought them a mile deeper into Japanese territory, just
hanging in the sky, a slow-moving target well in range of anything bigger than
a pistol. They were a gunner’s dream: even a green GI could—and had—hit them.

Finally satisfied with the bandage, Worth said, “There…all
done. I’ll take her back now, sir.” He gripped the control stick and felt the
pressure of Jock’s hands on it disappear. “We aren’t much good to anyone
without the radio. Should we head for home? See if we can get her fixed up?”

“Might as well.”

Worth began a broad turn toward the sea. Halfway around,
Jock saw them: “Hey, look, John! Those trucks…two of them. I think they’re
radio vans.”

“The same ones from inside the town?”

“Who knows? But I’ve got an idea. Swing around and get low.
Come up right behind them.”

John Worth heard the unmistakable sound of a mortar round
being armed as it slammed against the baking tray between Jock’s feet. And then
he heard it again. More than a little surprised, he asked, “We’re going to try
and bomb them, sir?”

“Yep. Ever see what white phosphorous does to a vehicle,
John?”

Worth hadn’t. Maybe he was about to find out.

“Just go right over the top of them from back to front,”
Jock said. “I’ll try to drop these babies so they’ll drive right into them.”

“They’re kicking up a load of dust, sir. I’m going to have
to stay off to the side until the very last second. Don’t like being blind so
near the ground.”

“No problem. Just get me close.”

The truck drivers never saw them coming. Worth did just as
Jock asked, slipping the L4 sideways at the last moment while she pulled ahead
of the trailing truck. Jock dropped the round onto the road only feet in front
of the vehicle, engulfing it in the burst of white smoke and orange flame.

With another deft side slip, the pilot put the lead truck
into Jock’s imaginary bombsight. It, too, erupted in another burst of smoke and
flame.

Worth circled the L4 to assess the damage. Their makeshift
bomb run appeared to be an unqualified success. The two radio vans had
shuddered to abrupt stops. They were nothing now but flaming hulks blocking the
narrow dirt road.

Watching the blaze, John Worth began to feel terribly
mortal. He asked, “You think the drivers got out, sir?”

“No idea,” Jock replied, “but I think it’s time we get the
hell out of here.”

“Couldn’t agree more, sir.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Day 16

The repair of her shattered side window would have to wait,
but John Worth’s L4 had a new radio installed by mid-afternoon. Returning from
the operations tent, Jock was surprised to find her ready to go. He asked
Worth, “Where the hell did they get the radio from this time?”

“Took it out of one of the P-39s, sir. We figure there’s
only enough gas to keep four of them in the air…so that gives us a few supply
rooms with wings attached.”

“How about fuel for us? Do we have a full tank?”

“Topped off to the brim, sir. How’d the chat with Division
go?”

“They’re real worried about the 81st, John. Just
like we saw from the bird, they can’t seem to get started. So, you and me are
going to give them all the help we can, while still being a set of eyes for
everyone else, too.”

Worth shrugged as he said, “Sounds like we’re blessed with
work, sir.”

“That’s a good way to put it,” Jock replied, hoisting a
mortar round into the L4’s cabin. “Let’s get going while we’ve still got
daylight.”

Through a series of coded radio messages between General
Blamey’s headquarters, the American headquarters, and MacArthur’s staff in Queensland,
a consensus had finally been reached: the Japanese were trying to pull back and
consolidate at their dormant airfield, some seven miles inland from Port
Moresby town. The airfield sat in the middle of a broad, dry plain quite
unlike the typical Papuan topography of steep mountains, rainforests, and
malarial swamps. Command wisdom dictated the enemy would be most likely to make
a stand there. If the Allies could interdict the numerically inferior Japanese
while still en route, in the open, and with units unable to effectively support
each other, the enemy could be destroyed without much trouble.

“Such an obvious conclusion,” General Blamey said to his
staff, “yet it took almost the whole bloody day for MacArthur’s lackeys to
reach it.”

At least Blamey finally knew where to lead his Australians
next: they were assigned to form the western arc of the pincers enveloping the
Japanese. The Americans would comprise the eastern arc. Two of Blamey’s
regiments were already closing in on the road between Port Moresby and the
airfield; the third would race from Port Moresby and close the back door on the
retreating Japanese.

This should be a piece of cake, Blamey told himself, provided
the Yanks don’t get it all cocked up again.

The US 83rd Regiment—moving up the coast—met
little resistance, and despite the cautious pace Division HQ had mandated,
linked with the Aussies coming out of Port Moresby by 1700 hours. Together,
they pushed slowly toward the airfield.

A nervous GI of the regiment asked his lieutenant, “Are we
gonna stop for the night soon or just keep walking in the dark and let the Japs
jump our asses?”

The lieutenant had been thinking the same thing, but the
orders he had received were as follows: push forward until you meet serious
enemy resistance. He had started to ask his captain for a clarification of
the term serious but changed his mind. As far as the lieutenant was
concerned, the order was ridiculous. In his mind, any resistance was serious
resistance.

The US 82nd Regiment—farther inland on the right
flank of the 83rd—encountered scattered enemy resistance as they
pushed west. The Japanese, though, seemed more interested in breaking contact
and slipping away than engaging in any drawn-out battle. Something didn’t feel
right to the Americans: there should be the bulk of a Japanese division—perhaps
10,000 men or more—caught between them and the Australians. Yet, the men of the
82nd found themselves skirmishing with forces which seemed no bigger
than squads and platoons. But every exchange of gunfire, however brief ,
brought the GIs to a screeching halt. Once the enemy disappeared, it took
sequential ass-kicking down the chain of command—colonels kicking captains,
captains kicking lieutenants, lieutenants kicking sergeants, sergeants kicking
privates—before the American units would start moving again. The process
resulted in an advance which could best be described as sluggish.

Another problem loomed large for the 82nd, and
its commander summed it up this way: “Goddamn Hailey and his Eighty-First can’t
get off their asses. I’ll bet they haven’t moved a fucking inch. They’re so far
behind us now, our right flank is wide open.”

On Division’s tactical map, the 81st remained an
isolated goose egg nestled against the base of Astrolabe, no longer part of any
concerted American effort forward.

“What the hell’s wrong with them, sir?” John Worth asked
Jock as he orbited the L4 over the supposed battle line of the 81st.
“I can’t even see any Japs in front of them. Can you?”

Jock had been straining his eyes trying to answer that
question, too. His conclusion: “Nothing that should be holding up a whole
regiment, John. That’s for damned sure.”

He was beginning to believe the 81st was beyond
help. A handful of Japanese seemed to be stalling over a thousand GIs in their
tracks. In broad daylight, yet.

It’s not the GIs’ fault, Jock told himself. There aren’t any
bad troops…just bad leaders.

“Head toward the old Jap airfield,” he called to Worth.
“Maybe somebody up that way actually wants our help. We sure as hell aren’t
doing much good here…and pretty soon, it’ll be dark.”

“You don’t want to fly right over that airfield at this
altitude, do you, sir? We’re way too high. Last time I did that, the ack-ack
opened up on me. You know what that stuff will do to a bag of sticks like
this?”

“Good point, John. Give the airfield a wide berth.”

From a thousand feet in the air, they had a great vantage
point to view the action below. It looked like a game of toy soldiers played in
a sand box. Large numbers of Japanese troops—some in vehicles, most on
foot—were moving swiftly along the road linking the town of Port Moresby and
the airfield. The clouds of dust they kicked up glowed golden in the light of
the setting sun.

The Australians, easily identified by the Bren Gun carriers
in their lead elements, were racing from the south and west to cut off the
Japanese before they reached the airfield.  The US 82nd and 83rd
Regiments, still several miles from the enemy columns, were closing in from the
east to do the same.

From high above, the error in the Allied plan struck Jock
like a slap in the face:

The Japs aren’t going to their damned airfield. Their lead
elements are already past it. They’re going to the mountains…straight through
The Notch.

The blunder unfolding below was so obvious even John Worth,
though busy flying the airplane, couldn’t help but see it, too. “There’s nobody
blocking them from the north,” he said. “We’re going to squirt those Japs right
through the Notch, just like squeezing a ripe pimple.”

The north side of the trap was where the 81st  Regiment
should be, but wasn’t. With nightfall approaching—and the failure to execute
the regiment had shown so far—Jock knew one thing for sure: There’s no
chance that gap’s going to get plugged anytime soon.

Worth said, “I think our guys are a day late and a dollar
short again, sir.”

Jock said nothing in reply. He was too busy trying to code
the message to the commanders on the ground. Consumed by urgency, he gave up.
There was simply no time to bother with coding and decoding. It might already
be too late: unless the Allied commanders acted immediately, the bulk of the
Japanese forces would escape to fight another day. He sent the message in the
clear.

“You think we’re going to catch hell for not coding that,
sir?” Worth asked.

“Maybe…but if that message makes any difference—if one of
the other units can swing around and cut off that escape path—it’ll be worth
it. Better fly west, John…I’m calling in artillery. We’ll be right in the way.”

As he turned the L4, John Worth found himself staring into
the last rays of the setting sun. “Too bad it’s so late,” he said. “Otherwise,
some of the Fifth Air Force boys might’ve been hanging around. They could’ve
had themselves a field day…all those Japs in the open.”

“Yeah,” Jock replied, “but they all went home a long time
ago. We’re the only idiots going to be stuck up here in the dark.”

“Speaking of the dark, sir,” Worth said, “better call Twenty
Mile and tell them to get some lights ready for us. By the time we get back
there, we won’t be able to see a damned thing.”

The night’s meeting was long over. General Sugiyama was the
only member of the Imperial War Council still in the chamber, pouring over
reports from the field. He pulled a page from the stack on the table before
him, one he had already read several times. Desperately, he read it one more
time, hoping it might say something different.

But its meaning was still the same: Rabaul was reporting a
complete loss of communications with the Port Moresby headquarters. An Army
reconnaissance aircraft had been dispatched from Buna on a night flight over
the Owen Stanleys. Hopefully, it could act as a radio relay for the short-range
tactical radios of the retreating division.

Deep in thought, Sugiyama didn’t realize Admiral Yamamoto
had entered the chamber and was reading the message over his shoulder. “Perhaps
it is nothing more than a radio failure,” Yamamoto said, startling the volatile
Sugiyama. Trying to calm the agitated Army man, the admiral continued, “It is
much too early to assume the worst. I am sure the aircraft will provide the
communications link and ease your fears.”

Too furious to look Yamamoto in the eye, Sugiyama scooped up
the papers from the table. Storming to the door, he blurted, “This disaster,
Admiral, just like every other one that has befallen the Army, is totally the
fault of your Navy.”

“Your disasters have been very few, General,” Yamamoto
replied, “and your victories very great. Tell me…are those victories the fault
of my Navy, as well?”

The only reply was the sound of Sugiyama’s boots storming
down the hallway.

Nighttime had beaten the L4 to Twenty Mile Airfield. They
could see nothing but the vaguest hint of the horizon—an indistinct line
separating two broad fields of very dark gray. Even that might be an illusion.
John Worth checked the clock on her instrument panel and said, “We should be
about there. Have them pop a red star cluster, sir.”

Fifteen seconds after Jock broadcast the request, the
flare—the red star cluster—blossomed in the darkness off her left wingtip.

“The field reports winds calm,” Jock said.

“Okay,” Worth said, “have them give us some runway lights.
Tell them we’ll come in from the east…less trees that way.”

That request was a little slower in coming. As Worth circled
the L4 to the east of the fading flare, carefully holding a safe altitude, he
and Jock waited anxiously for the runway lights: the headlights of six
vehicles lined up along the runway. Once they illuminated, Worth would have to
get the L4 on the ground quickly. An enemy aircraft in the vicinity would be
able to see the lights—and the location of the airfield—just as clearly. A
bombardier couldn’t ask for a better gift.

The first set of headlights popped on, shining across the
runway’s width. The other five followed in rapid succession. From the L4, the
six points of light outlined the narrow runway—one on each side of the near
end, the middle, and the far end. His voice tense, Worth said, “If we lose
sight of any of those lights during the approach, we’re too damned low.”

“How do we know if we’re too high?”

“That’s kind of hard to tell, sir. I’ve just got to try to
set her down somewhere between the first and second set of lights.”

“Have you ever done a landing like this before, John?”

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before Worth
answered, “Not exactly, sir.”

“Well, then…best of luck to you, Lieutenant.”

“Same to you, sir.”

Only once during the approach did the nearest set of lights
suddenly disappear. Worth gunned the engine, tugged back on the stick, and in a
matter of seconds, the lights reappeared.

“Shit,” Worth said through gritted teeth.

A few seconds more and the closest pair of headlights passed
beneath them. There was a rough bump—and then another—before her tires were
rolling steadily toward the last pair of headlights at the runway’s far end. She
came to a stop well short of them. As soon as she did, the vehicles’ headlights
snapped off. A mechanic armed with two flashlights appeared out of the darkness
and guided her taxi to the parking ramp.

As they climbed from the L4, Jock realized his pilot was
drenched with sweat. He patted him on the back and said, “Great job, John.”

Worth returned a feeble smile and dropped to his knees by
the landing gear. In the glow of his flashlight, he looked like he was praying.

“What are you doing?” Jock asked.

“That time the lights vanished…I swear to God we brushed a
treetop. I bet there’s a branch or two jammed in the gear.”

But he found nothing; not even a leaf.

John Worth rose to his feet. He wiped his brow on his sleeve
and said, “Tonight, I am the luckiest son of a bitch in the United States Army
Air Force.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Day 16

When he returned to Division HQ, Jock was surprised to find
General Hartman and his staff in high spirits. If the positions drawn on the
tactical map were the reason, their elation was based on false hope:

This map looks nothing like what I told them from the air.
It’s someone’s pipe dream…or maybe their wet dream.

“Neither we nor the Aussies are in the positions you’ve got
marked here,” Jock said, staring at the map in disbelief. “They’re not even
close. They couldn’t possibly have swung around to block the Japanese escape.
Not that fast. Not in the dark.”

General Hartman shook his head in disagreement. “Don’t you
think the darkness is going to slow down the Japanese, too, Major? We’ve still
got plenty of time to trap them.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” Jock replied. On the map, his
fingers traced the actual Australian and American positions as he’d seen them
from the air at dusk. “While our forces are sitting way back here, waiting for
the sun to come up again, I’m betting the bulk of the Japanese are within a
mile or two of The Notch.” He moved his fingers to bridge the nearly eight
miles between the Allied positions and The Notch. “Question is, what are they
going to do when they get there?”

“If they get there, Major,” the general said, “which
isn’t very likely. We’ve got every artillery piece we own pouring fire into
this area.” He pointed to the target zone, a spot on the map well short of The
Notch. “The Navy will have a cruiser offshore later tonight, dropping its
eight-inch shells on them, too.”

“That’s all well and good, sir…assuming the Japs are just
going to stand still while we shell them. We need to consider what will happen
if they move into the mountains in force and dig in. We’ve only got about half
a company holding Astrolabe—fifty men hanging on to a fifteen-mile ridge that
commands this whole area. They won’t last long if a Jap regiment, or a Jap
division, decides it wants that high ground.”

General Hartman still wasn’t buying Jock’s argument.
Supremely confident, he said, “We won’t need to worry about Japs in the
mountains, Major. Not tonight. Not tomorrow, either. Our plan is working like a
charm. We’ve got them on the run and we’re decimating them with artillery fire.
Tomorrow, our infantry will begin mopping up what’s left. Then, we can scratch
a whole Japanese division from the order of battle in Papua.”

While the general basked in his certain victory, an
operations sergeant handed a message to the G3. He read it, walked to the map,
and sketched a new red goose egg, signifying a Japanese position. It was
centered squarely on The Notch.

“General,” the G3 said, “OP Charlie Baker reports the sound
of many vehicles in The Notch right now. It’s a Japanese movement in force,
sir.”

“It can’t be,” Hartman said. “They must be confused. The
night can do funny things with sound. They’re letting their imaginations run
wild…”

“It’s certainly not our vehicles they’re hearing, General,”
the G3 replied. “I’m afraid Major Miles’s estimate of the situation is turning
out to be pretty accurate.”

Jock Miles appreciated the vindication, but he would have
preferred to be dead wrong.

General Hartman stepped to the map. His mind launched into a
thousand different calculations, each prejudiced toward his original belief the
Japanese were caught in his trap. But no amount of prejudice could erase that
new red goose egg. It began to look like a big, fat zero to Hartman: a failing
grade on the report card MacArthur would give him.

“Shift the artillery,” Hartman said, still staring at the
map. “All of it. Put it on The Notch.”

“That’s out of range of some of the seventy-five and
one-oh-five batteries, General,” Jock said. “And even if that naval cruiser
drove right up on the beach, it’s out of her reach, too.”

“Fine,” Hartman replied, with obvious impatience. “Just
shift the batteries that have the range. And do it quickly, dammit.”

Jock started to update the situation map but the G3 stopped
him. Sounding surprisingly fatherly, the colonel said, “We can handle this,
Major. Why don’t you get some chow and some rack time? We’re going to need you
in the air again tomorrow, well rested and looking sharp.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. As Jock made his way out of
the HQ tent, the G3 added, “You’ve been doing a hell of a job, Jock.”

Man! Two notes of praise in as many minutes, both from a guy
who’s done nothing but break my balls up until now.

He tried once more to make his exit, but this time he was
stopped by the naval liaison officer. He ushered Jock aside and spoke quietly:
“Hey, Jock…didn’t you say your girlfriend captains an Aussie ship called Esme?”

“Yeah, I did. What about it?”

“Did you know her ship is part of the first merchant convoy
coming here? It’s supposed to get here tomorrow.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jock said, his spirits soaring even higher.
“That’s great!”

The Navy man didn’t return Jock’s smile. Instead, he gave a
look that said you poor bastard. He handed over the clipboard from under
his arm. The top sheet was a radio message from AX-17, the convoy due to arrive
tomorrow. It said the convoy, en route from Queensland, was under night attack
by Japanese submarines. Three merchant vessels were reported sunk. So far.

Jock’s happiness collapsed like a punctured balloon. He
stared at the clipboard for a second which seemed like an eternity before
saying, “They don’t say who…”

“They’re probably not sure yet,” the liaison officer said.
“Sounds like the attack is still going on. Sometimes these cat and mouse games
with subs go on for quite a while. I’ll let you know if I find out anything
else.” The Navy man gave Jock a consoling pat on the arm and went back to his
desk.

Dazed and feeling terribly alone, Jock told himself, You
might as well go back to work, too. You’ll never sleep now.

On OP Charlie Bravo, Corporal Bogater Boudreau listened as
the first artillery rounds began to crash down into The Notch. All he could see
from the overlooking mountaintop, though, was the instantaneous flash of rounds
exploding on impact. Whether those rounds had hit anything or not, he had no
idea.

PFC Fanning was working the field telephone back to OP
Charlie Able. “Tell them to repeat,” Boudreau told him, “and call for
illum rounds, too. I gotta see if we’re on target or not.”

Fanning nearly dropped the phone in horror. “Illum rounds?
You can’t be serious, Corporal! The Japs’ll know we’re up here, watching them!”

Boudreau just shrugged and replied, “So?”

When Fanning still didn’t relay his request, Boudreau added,
“Just do it. That’s an order.”

Within a minute, the first illumination round popped and
bathed the valley floor below in its stark, white light. “It looks like a
million of ’em down there,” Teddy Mukasic said, his voice shaky, his body
coiled low, ready to run. Fanning looked like a sprinter in the starting blocks,
too, just waiting for the signal to start running.

A few seconds later, the second volley of high-explosive
shells crashed down, far wide of the Japanese column.

“It ain’t no million, numbnuts, but we ain’t hit a damn one
of them yet,” Bogater said. “Fanning, give ’em a left one hundred, drop four
hundred.”

Fanning did as he was told. Bogater Boudreau then grabbed
his two privates by their web gear straps and pulled them close. He wanted to
look them right in the eyes. “Y’all calm the fuck down,” Bogater said. “We’re a
thousand feet up a steep fucking slope…and I don’t see none of them Nips
climbing nothing anyway. You’re gonna be just as fine as red pussy hair. Now
get your heads out of your asses and stop acting like something that squats to
pee. Y’all know what a turkey shoot is?”

Even in the dark of night, Bogater could see enough of their
faces to know they didn’t have a clue. He explained, “You’re enjoying one right
now, dickheads. They’re the fucking turkeys and we’re doing the shooting.”

Cannoneer Number Four was certain he had never felt as
drained as he did at this moment. He’d lost track of how many rounds his
howitzer had fired today. As the low man on the totem pole in this
105-millimeter howitzer crew of seven men, he’d spent most of his waking
hours—and what hours in combat weren’t waking?—in this tropical hellhole
uncrating and assembling 40-pound artillery shells. By the truckload.

And when I haven’t been humping ammo, I’ve been digging
holes.

He never even knew he made the mistake. The high-angle fire
mission called for Charge Six; that meant he was supposed to remove and
discard one powder bag from the canister—the number seven bag, the
largest of the seven bags strung together by a thin cord—before mating the
canister and projectile. Fumbling in the dark, his arms and legs wobbling like
elastic stretched to its breaking point, his eyes strained and weary, he didn’t
realize he’d pulled numbers seven and six from this canister and flung
them mindlessly into the pile of surplus powder bags.

That’s when the section chief—a staff sergeant—starting
yelling at him.

“Don’t throw that bag away yet, you moron,” the sergeant
yelled. “Hold it up, dammit, so I can see it.”

In the darkness, the sergeant couldn’t tell how many bags
had just been tossed into the pile; he just assumed it was only the number
seven bag. There was no time to walk over and check. In a well-trained battery,
all six guns fired simultaneously when the command was given. If his piece
fired even a split-second late, the other gun sections would mock them with the
taunt Popcorn! His crew would become the screw-up section.

Cannoneer Number Four had been on the sergeant’s shit list
before; he wasn’t eager to find himself there again. His tired, fearful brain
made him do the only thing that made sense at the moment: he reached into the
pile of discarded powder bags, grabbed a number seven bag at random, and held
it up for the section chief to see.

The errant round he had just assembled—a Charge Five,
not the required Charge Six—was rammed into the breech.

“That’s better, dumbass,” the section chief said. “Now, hold
that son of a bitch there until—”

The firing of the howitzer finished the sergeant’s sentence.

No one in the battery realized they had just fired a short
round.

As that short round crashed down on Bogater Boudreau and his
men, they never knew what hit them.

First Sergeant Patchett cranked the field telephone for the
third time. He waited in vain for someone to answer. After a few moments, he
flung the phone down in disgust. “We’ve lost contact with Bogater and them,
sir,” he told Lieutenant Grossman. “We’ve got nothing. The line’s dead.”

“What do you think we should do, Top?”

“We need to stay dug in right here, sir,” Patchett replied.
“We’re still the only swinging dicks watching Division’s back. If those Japs
swing around and try to come up the backslope…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Everyone
knew there was a large Japanese force on the move. If they came up the
mountain, the men of Charlie Company would be overrun.

Patchett reached for another phone, the one connected to
Division HQ, and said, “We’d better tell them OP Charlie Baker is knocked out.
Any eyes we had on the Japs down that way, well…we ain’t got them no more.”

Lee Grossman felt the need to do something—anything—to
fight the feeling of helplessness swelling inside him. Once again, they were
just sitting there, waiting for the Japanese to attack.

“We should send a patrol to look for Boudreau and his
people, Top,” Grossman said.

“Not now, sir. That’s a good way to lose another bunch of
GIs. When the sun comes up, maybe.”

The Allied artillery kept firing—blindly—for another hour.
No staff officer took the initiative to stop it. It was General Hartman who
finally made the call: “Turn the guns off. We don’t know what the hell we’re
shooting at anymore. Let’s not waste rounds.”

There was no dissenting voice among his staff. It didn’t
take a tactical genius to know that any Japanese still alive were long gone.
The problem was, nobody in this tent knew where they went. There was no point
in shooting where they used to be.

Just a few hours ago, this headquarters was smelling
victory. Now, it was wallowing in the stench of defeat. “It’s all the fault of
the damned Eighty-First Regiment,” General Hartman pronounced.

Jock slumped on his camp stool, burying his face in his
hands. The general’s words had stung. He felt guilty by association; only a few
days ago, he had been a member of the 81st, and his heart was still
with the men of Charlie Company.

The general’s right, Jock told himself. If the Eighty-First
had advanced like they were supposed to, we could have trapped every last Jap
on open ground and finished them. But they didn’t…and just like John Worth
said, we squirted the Japs through The Notch just like squeezing a pimple. Will
they vanish into the Owen Stanleys? Or will they turn and take Astrolabe again
from the back side?

If they come up Astrolabe, only my boys in Charlie Company
stand in their way.

He looked across the HQ tent; the naval liaison officer
shook his head: no news from the convoy.

Jock stepped outside the tent for a breath of fresh air. His
soul felt as dark as the night sky greeting him. The lives of everyone he held
close—Jillian, the men of Charlie Company—all seemed to be dangling from the
thinnest of threads. One quick slash by the Japanese and they’d all be gone.

He stepped back into the HQ tent. The G3 was at the
situation map planning the next phase of the operation. It would commence at
dawn, still three hours away.

The G3 turned to address the assembled staff. Speaking with
an optimism which seemed oddly out of place in this assortment of lost
opportunities, he said, “Gentlemen, the Japanese can’t have gotten far in the
night. At first light, we’re going to find them, pursue them, and kill them.”
Pointer in hand, he turned back to the map. “This is how we’re going to do it…”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Day 17

General Hartman’s orders to Lieutenant Colonel Hailey made
the telephone wires sizzle: “Despite your regiment’s total and inexcusable lack
of forward progress, Colonel, you are still closest to the valley known as The
Notch. You will secure that valley not later than oh-nine-hundred hours this
morning. You’ve got a couple of hours to get your asses in gear. If you start moving
by oh-six-hundred, you should have no trouble keeping that schedule. Do I make
myself perfectly clear?”

Flustered by the general’s harsh words, Hailey replied,
“Yes, sir…but—”

“Don’t bother with the fucking buts, Colonel,”
Hartman interrupted. “The book on yesterday has already been written, and your
chapter is not a pretty story.”

Indignation crept over Hailey as he hung up the phone. Just
my luck, he thought. The general has it in for me. He refuses to
acknowledge just how tough we’ve had it in this sector. He thumbed the
silver oak leaf on his collar—the rank insignia of a lieutenant colonel—as a
confident smirk crossed his face. But just let him try to stop my promotion
to full bird. We’ll see what MacArthur has to say about that.

Hailey’s regiment pushed off a few minutes before sunrise.
They moved slowly at first, expecting Japanese snipers in every tree and
machine gun nests atop every hill. But there were none—not even dead enemy
bodies from the artillery duels of the days before. Gradually, their confidence
and pace improved. They might actually make it to The Notch—almost six miles
away—by the ordained time of 0900.

Colonel Hailey put his own deluded interpretation on their
easy passage: My regiment gave no quarter. It struck the fear of God into those
Japanese. They ran away like scared little girls.

A mile from the mouth of The Notch, the chatter of gunfire
brought Hailey’s regiment to a screeching halt. The gunfire died out quickly,
and shortly thereafter, the commander of the lead company was on the radio to
Colonel Hailey.

“Ahh…I think you’d better come up here, Colonel,” the
captain said.

“What’s the problem, Captain?” Hailey replied, quite content
to stay well back in the column.

“Really, sir…you need to be here. In person.”

It took Hailey a good 15 minutes to present himself at the
head of his regiment’s column. When he arrived, he was startled to find the
lead company’s captain being berated by an aged Australian officer. American
and Aussie soldiers milled about in angry groups, ready to come to blows. They
would have, too, if it wasn’t for their junior officers keeping them apart. As
he climbed from his jeep and walked closer, Hailey realized it was not just any
Australian officer: the short, fat old man doing the berating was a general.

“My name is Blamey,” the Aussie bellowed at Hailey. “And who
in this cocked-up Yank circus might you be?”

Hailey introduced himself, trying to be respectful while not
showing how intimidated this blustery little general made him feel. He extended
his hand; Blamey refused to shake it.

“Your jumpy wankers just shot two of my best scouts,
Colonel,” Blamey said, spraying Hailey with spittle as he spoke. “Do we look
like bloody Japanese to you? And speaking of Japanese, you haven’t seen any,
have you? We certainly haven’t. I’m betting they’re halfway to Buna by now.”

Halfway to Buna was a bit of an exaggeration. The
leading elements of the Japanese division were approaching the village of Sogeri,
some 12 miles past The Notch. Once beyond Sogeri, they would soon be on the
Kokoda Track, the footpath through the passes of the towering Owen Stanleys. It
was a difficult slog, often more vertical than horizontal as the trail rose to
over 7,000 feet at its highest. The journey could take a week or more; it could
take much longer if you had to fight your way across, as the Japanese had done
once before on their way to Port Moresby, pushing back the Australians before
them. Once over the peaks, though, it was downhill all the way to the town of Buna,
on the coast of the Solomon Sea.

On Astrolabe, the men of Charlie Company were breathing a
collective sigh of relief. The Japanese hadn’t come in the night. In fact, the
Japanese didn’t seem to be anywhere.

“They’ve got to be down there somewhere,” Lieutenant Theo
Papadakis said, pointing down the backslope. “I’d be glad to lead a recon
patrol and smoke them out.”

“Not a good idea, lads,” Trevor Shaw replied. Turning to Lee
Grossman, he asked, “May I explain why, Lieutenant?”

“Be my guest, Commander.”

“The Japanese are trying to escape to the north coast,” Shaw
said. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense. They haven’t been resupplied
since you Yanks arrived, so they must be low on everything—food, ammunition,
petrol, medical supplies...”

Ginny Beech added, “If they stay on this side of the Owen
Stanleys, they’ll wither and die. They must be headed for the Kokoda Track.
Considering when they passed through The Notch…and if they marched all
night…they’d be about here.” She pointed to a spot on the map some 12 miles
from their location on Astrolabe. “Once they get past Sogeri, they’re going to
have to abandon their vehicles. The track is a footpath only, and a devil of
one at that. The diggers that fought the Japanese there said the climbing was
worse than the combat.”

Lee Grossman took a long, hard look at the map. “Twelve
miles, huh?” he said. “Theo, that’s way too far out to patrol. All you’ve got
for commo is walkie-talkies. You’ll be way out of range.”

Melvin Patchett added the words that slammed the door on
Lieutenant Pop’s idea for good: “We’ve had enough good men not come back, sir.
Let’s not add to it.”

The buzz of a light airplane began to softly float on the
breeze. As the sound grew louder, the olive drab profile of an L4 came into
view, cruising as if in no great hurry down the backslope toward Sogeri.

“Maybe that’s Major Miles up there,” Patchett said. With a
nod to Ginny and Commander Shaw, he added, “And it looks like he’s got the same
idea about where the Japs are as y’all.”

John Worth was beginning to worry they were flying too high
to see anything on the ground. He reckoned they were five miles beyond
Astrolabe’s peak and they had yet to see a trace of the Japanese exodus. As
they flew farther north, the towering Owen Stanleys were looming larger before
his airplane with each passing minute.

“Do you think we’re too high, sir?” he called to Jock in the
back seat.

“I don’t think so, John. You remember what they looked like
yesterday? Like some parade of ants that wound its way for miles. If they keep
to the road that runs through The Notch, they’ll parallel the Laloki River.
That’s still about five miles ahead. And if they’re on that road, they’ve got
to be headed to the Kokoda Track.”

“But don’t you think they might split up and try to hole up
in the forest, sir? We’d never see them, then.”

“Let’s assume they stayed together for now. If we’re right,
we’ll stumble into them in a few more minutes.”

“Yeah,” Worth said, “but what if we find them, sir? There
are no GIs or Aussies within miles of here. The Japs’ll even be out of
artillery range, won’t they?”

“Yep.”

“So if there’s no one from the Fifth Air Force hanging
around, waiting for targets of opportunity…”

Jock filled in the rest of the sentence: “We just wave at
them and mark the map.”

“I was thinking, sir,” Worth said. “If we keep a little
reserve fuel, we can make a pass of the harbor on the way back. Maybe see if
your girl’s ship is there?”

There was nothing Jock would rather do at the moment than
search for Jillian. But as much as I want to, that’s not what we’re up here
for, he told himself.

“Great idea, John,” Jock replied, “but the mission comes
first. We’ve got to find the Japs. Once we’ve done that, we’ll see if we can go
ship-hunting.”

“Okay,” Worth said, “but I’ve got to hand it to you, sir. If
I had a girl out in the middle of this war, I think I’d be going out of my
fucking mind with worry.”

He wished he hadn’t said those words the moment they spilled
from his lips. “I didn’t mean any disrespect, sir…I mean—”

“It’s okay, John. I know what you meant. And I’m here to
tell you…you’re absolutely right. You do go out of your fucking mind.”

“Holy shit,” Worth called out. “Dead ahead…let me give you a
better look, sir.”

He banked the L4 sharply, turning to give Jock a broad view
of the ground below. They had made it to the Laloki River. The road which
paralleled it was crowded with Japanese troops.

“Ahh, there they are,” Jock said, checking their quarry
through binoculars. “They still look like a trail of ants, don’t they?”

“Yeah, they sure do. Is this close enough, sir? I don’t want
to get us right over the road. They’ve probably got some anti-aircraft guns
with them.”

“Yeah, this’ll do. Keep paralleling the road, though. Let’s
see if their vehicles are up ahead.”

In the forest beyond the village of Sogeri, just before the
trail began a steep mountain ascent, were the Japanese vehicles. A few hundred
of them.

“It looks like a giant motor park with trees,” Worth said.
“Are they just going to leave them there?”

“They’ve got no choice, John. The Kokoda Track is for men
and goats only.” Jock took a good look through his binoculars. “Hey,
look…they’re spiking their guns and wrecking the trucks.”

“Wrecking? What do you mean, sir?”

“Rendering them useless. Shooting out the tires, taking axes
to the engine compartments…”

“Why don’t they just burn them, sir? Oh wait…I just answered
my own question.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you did. That would leave quite a smoke
marker for Fifth Air Force, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, better they shoot at their trucks than at us,” Worth
said. “So I guess they’re definitely going over the Kokoda Track, then?”

“Without a doubt, John.”

“Are our guys going to chase them?”

“That’s not up to me,” Jock replied, as he plotted the
locations of the Japanese on his map. “Let’s call this in and see if we can get
the Air Force to do their stuff. If they’re available, we can hang around and
spot for them.”

“And if they’re not, sir?”

“Well…then I guess we’d be free to do whatever we want,
John.”

Jock radioed the information on the Japanese. The reply
wasn’t encouraging: there would be no planes of the Fifth Air Force over the
target locations for at least an hour; too much time and not enough fuel for
them to loiter in the L4.

Venting his frustration, Worth asked, “And who the hell
knows where the Japs will be then? Do you think our pilots will be able to
figure out where an hour down the trail is? If they can even find the
damned trail?”

The radio squawked to life again. It was Division HQ calling
with new orders.

“Oh, you’re going to love this, John,” Jock said when he was
done copying. “We’ve been given a top-priority mission. Headquarters has just
renamed the old Jap airfield. It’s now Seven Mile Airfield.”

“That figures,” Worth said. “It’s about seven miles from Port
Moresby town.”

Jock continued, “We’re ordered to fly over to Seven Mile
Airfield and be an airborne scout for the GIs securing it. We’ve got important
company going to be landing there this afternoon.”

“Who’d that be, sir?”

“MacArthur himself.”

Chapter Fifty

Day 17

The L4 was on its fifth, uneventful orbit over Seven Mile
Airfield. There was nothing to see on the ground but GIs, Aussie diggers, and
the burned-out hulks of Japanese airplanes. Jock hadn’t seen an enemy trooper
since they flew away from Sogeri.

John Worth was fixated on the fuel gauge. “If we’re going
back to Twenty Mile,” he said, “we’ve got to go NOW, sir.”

Jock radioed the request to leave the area. The reply was
rapid and blunt: Negative. Stay on station as long as possible. If fuel
exhaustion imminent, land at Seven Mile.

“If?” Worth said, trying not to laugh. “It’s not a question
of if. This engine’s going to quit in about twenty minutes.”

Fifteen minutes and a few more orbits later, Worth
announced, “Okay, that’s it. I’m declaring a fuel emergency. Tell them we’re
coming down at Seven Mile.”

Three minutes later, they were on the ground. As they
climbed from the airplane, a jeep from 83rd Regiment pulled
alongside. The sergeant behind the wheel said to Jock, “I’m supposed to take
you to the division commander, sir.”

“Where is he?”

The sergeant pointed south. “About half a mile yonder, sir.”

“Okay, fine,” Jock replied, “but we need some fuel for the
plane.”

“Yeah,” Worth said. “Can you fix me up with some eighty
octane?”

The sergeant replied, “I can run you over to the motor
section, Lieutenant. Maybe they can help you out.”

As they piled into the jeep, Worth said to Jock, “Sorry we
never got over the harbor, sir.”

Jock replied, “Yeah…me, too.”

At Division Headquarters, all thoughts of pursuing the
Japanese were on the back burner. There was a new boogeyman driving the place
to a frenzy. Jock could see it in every man’s face: MacArthur is coming!
MacArthur is coming!

That the headquarters had been on the move only added to the
disorder. No circus tent had been set up to bring the command and staff
elements together under one roof. They would wait to see if they’d actually be
staying at this location before dragging out all that canvas. The separate
staff sections were operating out of vans and utility trucks scattered in a
circle at proper tactical distance throughout a thickly wooded area. In the
middle of the circle sat General Hartman’s jeep. There, he held court with his
staff officers as a constant stream of runners carried information to and from
the outlying vehicles.

Jock found the chaos amusing: Maybe it’s easier for me.
I’ve been around the Great Man before. There was only one person Jock
was interested in seeing at Division, however. He asked the operations
sergeant, “Where the hell is the naval liaison?”

Pointing to a truck some distance away, the sergeant
replied, “I think he’s over that way, sir.”

Jock was running in that direction before the sergeant
stopped talking.

“Here’s the deal, Jock,” the naval liaison said. “The lead
ships are coming into harbor now.” His voice dropped: “We don’t know by name
which ships they lost…but there were five of them, all freighters.”

“Out of how many?”

“Twenty-two, they said.”

Jock did the math: Hmm…better than a three-to-one chance
she’s okay.

At five minutes before its appointed arrival time,
MacArthur’s personal B-17, with a flight of P-38 escorts, droned into view
above Seven Mile Airfield. Jock was pleased to find out he, as a mere assistant
G2, was not required to stand in the supreme commander’s receiving line with
Generals Hartman, Blamey, and their staff. He sought out John Worth instead,
who was busy pouring gasoline into the L4’s tank from five-gallon cans.

“I see you found some gas,” Jock said.

“Turns out there’s plenty of gas here, with His Majesty coming
and all,” Worth replied. “The whole shebang at Twenty Mile is getting moved up
here on the double, too. I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t go back there,
eh?”

“It was a pretty crummy airfield, anyway,” Jock said. “Hell,
MacArthur’s plane is too big to land there.”

“Oh, she could probably land there,” Worth said, and then,
with a devilish grin, added, “but she might never take off again. You need a
lot more runway for that.”

He set the last of the gas cans down. As he screwed on the
plane’s filler cap, he asked, “Any news, sir? You know…about your girl?”

“Nothing concrete, John.”

The B-17—with the name Bataan painted in big letters
on her nose—rumbled onto the ramp. She pivoted majestically about so MacArthur
would exit facing his welcoming party and, more importantly, the combat photographers
poised to record the event for posterity. The door in the aft fuselage opened
and out stepped the man himself.

On the opposite side of the plane, the two engines were kept
running. Only then did Jock realize the escort fighters hadn’t bothered to
land. Instead, they circled high overhead. MacArthur had no intention of
staying.

The supreme commander gathered the men on the ramp around
him. “You have done a great thing here,” he began. “Soon, we will do more great
things to drive back the Japanese menace, and we will do it together.”

Jock noticed the skeptical expression on General Blamey’s
face brightened at the word together.

“This is how we will proceed,” MacArthur continued. “The US
Thirty-Second Division will be responsible for securing the Port Moresby area.
All airfields and harbor facilities will fall under its control.”

Blamey’s face soured as quickly as it had brightened. He
braced for the blow.

MacArthur shifted his gaze to the Owen Stanleys in the
distance. “Blamey’s Australians,” he said, “due to their great familiarity and
experience in Papua, will pursue and destroy the Japanese as they attempt to
withdraw along the Kokoda Track.”

Blamey’s ruddy face reddened a few shades deeper, but he
offered no response in word or gesture. Hartman appeared visibly relieved.

From Jock’s vantage point at the rear of the crowd, he
watched as scores of Australian soldiers began to flick the “V” sign: two
fingers extended, knuckles down; the equivalent of the American raised middle
finger. They kept the gestures low—below waist level—so neither MacArthur nor
members of his staff could see them. But they were obviously not making
gestures of thanks to the supreme commander.

One Australian officer near Jock was far more demonstrative:
he flung his slouch hat to the ground and began to stomp on it. “The bloody son
of a bitch just fucked us diggers right up the arse,” the officer said.

The snarl of MacArthur’s aerial entourage faded and died as
it winged its way back to Australia. Along Astrolabe’s peak, Sergeant Tom
Hadley could hear something else now: slow, shuffling footsteps of approaching
men. With a brisk hand signal, Hadley halted his patrol. Silently, they dropped
to prone firing positions.

A few seconds later, those men making the footsteps came into
view. They weren’t enemy at all. Struggling down the trail was a battered and
limping Bogater Boudreau, who, despite his wounds, still managed to act as a
crutch for Teddy Mukasic, who looked in even worse shape.

“Thought you guys were never coming,” Bogater mumbled as his
legs suddenly buckled. Two of Hadley’s men raced in to catch his fall. They
eased both wounded GIs to the ground.

Hadley asked, “What the hell happened to you guys? And
where’s Fanning?”

“Dead and buried,” Bogater replied, his voice a parched
croak. “We got hit by artillery, I’m pretty sure. Might have been ours.”

“All right, take it easy,” Hadley said. “Here, drink this.”
He offered his canteen to Bogater. One of his men did the same for Mukasic.

As his men rigged two stretchers from M1s and GI shirts,
Hadley said, “It’d be a shame to leave you guys behind. We’re finally getting
off this damned mountain.”

A weak smile came over Boudreau’s face. “You mean we’re
finally gonna get us some real chow again, Sarge?”

Within minutes of MacArthur’s departure, Seven Mile Airfield
turned into a beehive of activity. The P-39s arrived from Twenty Mile thirsty
for fuel. A flight of A-20 attack bombers arrived from Queensland and joined
the line for the gas truck.

John Worth huddled with the A-20 pilots. Their flight leader
was an apprehensive captain. “Our guys who went in this morning,” the captain
said, “they couldn’t even tell where the damned Kokoda Track was. They have no
idea what they bombed.”

“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll steer you right to the Japs,” Worth
replied. “Even mark them with white smoke for you.”

Jock was waiting at the L4, ready to fly, when his pilot
returned. “It’ll be a while before the A-20s all get fueled up,” Worth said.
“How about we get airborne and take us a little sightseeing trip first?”

“You mean around the harbor, John?”

“That’s exactly what I mean, sir.”

In the air again, they couldn’t help but reminisce about
what happened the last time they flew over Fairfax Harbor. The brush with the
stubborn Zero had been nerve wracking but ultimately not much of a contest:
“Fighters just can’t fly slow real good,” Worth said as they skimmed around
docked and anchored ships, low enough to read the names on their bows and
sterns.

They counted eight freighters in the harbor. Esme was
not among them.

Worth pulled the L4 into a gentle climb. Once they were
higher than the hills surrounding the harbor, they could see several freighters
at anchor, dotting the water out to the barrier reef, awaiting their turn to
unload. A few miles down the coast, several more had dropped anchor in the
shelter of Bootless Bay.

“Let’s check the offshore ones first,” Worth said.

“Sure,” Jock replied as the knot in his stomach tightened.

Half down…half to go, and still no sight of her. I wish to
hell I could remember what that damned ship looked like. They all seem the same
to me.

Esme wasn’t among the ships anchored off the reef.
There were no words to say as John Worth turned the L4 toward Bootless Bay. No
matter how hard a man tried, there was no way to make this is our last
chance sound optimistic.

The radio squawked to life: the A-20s were taking off. The
L4 was needed elsewhere. She was already late for that appointment.

They were down to one ship left to check. Jock found himself
repeating a silly cliché his mother used to say: Something lost is always in
the last place you look.

The A-20 flight leader’s voice boomed from the radio: “Slowbird
Three-two, are you on station? Time to target is zero-six minutes.”

“Shit,” Jock mumbled, “it’s going to take us twenty minutes
to get there, at least. We’re fucking up here.”

“Tell them to keep their drawers on, sir,” Worth said as he
swung the L4 around toward the last ship. “We’re kind of busy right now.”

Jock’s hands suddenly weren’t working right. They shook so
badly he banged his binoculars against the bridge of his nose. He was seeing
stars when he should be reading the ship’s name.

“HEY,” Worth said as the distance to the ship closed. “WE
MIGHT HAVE OURSELVES A JACKPOT HERE.”

Jock tried again with the binoculars. This time he managed
to get them over his eyes…

What he saw truly was a jackpot. It was Esme.

Even better, on the ship’s bridge, looking back at him
through her own binoculars, was Jillian.

“That’s the one, isn’t it?” Worth asked.

Jock tried to answer but the words caught in his throat.

“Sir? You okay?” Worth spun around for a glimpse of Jock
slumped over, head in hands, wiping at eyes blinded by tears of joy. The best
his back-seater could muster was a nod of his head: Yes.

“Tell you what, sir,” he said. “I’ll circle, you just stick
your hand out and wave.”

As they orbited Esme, Worth added, “Look, sir, she’s
waving back. You can see that, can’t you?”

Chapter Fifty-One

Day 18

There was a new face in Division HQ that morning, a full
colonel who had arrived with MacArthur yesterday but stayed behind. General
Hartman greeted him warmly. “It’s good to see you again, Dick,” the general
said. “Hailey made quite a mess at Eighty-First Regiment. You’ll have a mighty
job on your hands cleaning it up.”

“I won’t let you down, sir,” Dick Molloy replied.

“Of course,” Hartman continued, “one of the biggest problems
you’ll face is rebuilding the shattered First Battalion. There’s only one
company left…Charlie Company, or what’s left of it. They took a mighty beating
up on Astrolabe.”

While the general spoke, Colonel Molloy studied the
division’s roster of officers. His steel-gray eyes brightened as they fell on
one name.

“I need a favor right off the bat, General,” Molloy said.
“Jock Miles…I see he’s on your staff. I’d like to make him First Battalion
commander.”

“You know Major Miles?”

“He’s been under my command several times, sir. If anyone
can whip a raw unit into shape, it’s Jock Miles.”

“If that’s what you need, Dick…he’s yours.”

They had been airborne at first light, guiding the day’s
first sortie of attack bombers against the Kokoda Track. By 0830, Jock and
Worth were back on the ground at Seven Mile.

As he taxied the L4 to the ramp, Worth said, “I’m guessing
the Aussies will catch up with the Japs by tomorrow. What do you think, sir?”

“Yeah, I think you’re right, John. Then they can spot their
own air strikes.”

A runner greeted them as they climbed from the plane.
“You’ve got orders, Lieutenant,” the runner said, handing a piece of paper to
John Worth. “That C-47 over there leaves in a half hour. You’re supposed to be
on it.”

Worth unfolded the message with a mix of dread and
excitement. When he read it, neither emotion took control. Instead, they
blended into quiet satisfaction.

“I’m going back to Australia to pick up my brand new F-4,”
he said.

“F-4…that’s your photo-recon ship? Like a P-38?”

“Yessir...a P-38 without guns.”

“But who’s going to fly Slowbird if you’re gone?”

“I heard a rumor they trained a bunch of sergeants to fly,
and they’re supposed to arrive any day now.” Jock seemed hesitant to accept
that new state of affairs, so Worth added, “Hey, you don’t have to be an
officer to fly a plane, sir. Anyone can do it. The trick is to do it without
making a mess.”

Jock smiled at the wisdom in that statement. As they shook
hands, Worth said, “Don’t worry, sir…I’ll still be doing the same thing I did
for you here. Just higher and faster.”

Stuck on the ground, Jock decided to avoid Division HQ,
telling himself, They’re spending more time setting up that villa for
MacArthur to live in than fight the damned war. Instead, he hopped in his
jeep and drove to Fairfax Harbor.

When he got there, Esme was at quayside, being
unloaded. From the ship’s bridge, Jillian saw him right away. She raced down
the gangplank and leapt into his arms.

Between kisses, she asked, “Was that you in that flimsy
little airplane yesterday, you bloody wanker?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

Pointing to her ship, she let out a roaring laugh. “And you
worry about what I do?”

“Yes, I do.” He motioned toward the jeep. “Do you have some
time to take a little ride?”

“Where to?”

“There’s a bunch of guys just dying to see you again.”

They held hands atop the jeep’s gearshift lever sprouting
from the floorboard between them. As they bounced down the road out of Port
Moresby, Jillian said, “I worked it so we’re the last ship to be unloaded.
Takes the pressure off.”

“What pressure, Jill?”

“To clear the wharf,” she replied. “Otherwise, I’d never
have time to get away for a bit, like we’re doing right now. These convoys run
on a tight schedule, you know.”

“And submarines don’t knock you off schedule?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “You heard about that?”

“Yeah. I sure did,” he replied, his words clipped and laced
with pain.

She had hoped this wouldn’t come up. Now that the cat was
out of the bag—sailing in these convoys was as dangerous as he feared—she tried
to lighten those fears.

“You only have problems with them at night, Jock. The
airplanes cut them to shreds during the day.”

“Great. So it’s only twelve hours a day you’re in trouble.”

They drove past an American anti-aircraft battery that had
just gotten into position. Gazing at the guns pointed skyward, she said,
“Better than the round-the-clock kind of trouble you’re in, silly boy.”

She decided to change the subject. “Where the bloody hell
are we going, anyway?”

Turning off the road on a well-worn trail, he said, “Funny
you should ask. We’re going right here…”

A large house—you could call it a villa—popped into view. In
the woods nearby, there was a small city of GI tents of all sizes. Army
vehicles were in abundance, as were more anti-aircraft guns.

They pulled up to the big house. On the veranda, Trevor Shaw
was waiting to greet them. “That’s Commander Shaw,” Jock told Jillian. “He’s
the coast watcher we worked with. Without him, we’d probably all be dead now.”

Virginia Beech darted from the house, waving happily.

“Don’t tell me,” Jillian said. “That’s Missus Shaw?”

“Nope. That’s Ginny Beech. Patchett’s girlfriend.”

Eyes wide with surprise, Jillian said, “Bloody hell! She’s a
right looker, too. Good on him, the old bugger!”

Introductions done, a native woman brought a pitcher of cold
Japanese beer to the veranda. They drained it quickly.

“As you can see,” Shaw began, “my plantation has become a
most convenient site to bivouac some of you Yanks. Just as well…the Japs did so
much damage when they were here. It’ll be a year, at least, before we’ll have a
decent coffee crop. At least they left this bloody beer behind.”

“Tell them about our special guest, Commander,” Ginny
said.

“Ahh, yes…our guest. Your General MacArthur has
appropriated my home to use as his residence in Port Moresby—”

With fire in her eyes, Jillian interrupted, “The wanker’s
going to bloody pay you for it, right?”

Shaw chuckled softly. “Of course, my dear. Of course.”

“Bloody right,” Jillian said. “Don’t let those star-spangled
punters walk all over you.”

“Hey!” Jock said, pretending he was offended.

“Not you, Yank,” she replied. “Not you.” She made those
words sound sweet as honey.

“Okay,” Jock said. “So where’s Charlie Company’s bivouac?”

Ginny pointed to the closest tents. “Right over there. Got
to keep my eye on Patch, now, don’t I?”

As they drove into the bivouac, there was a joyous uproar.
Jillian was quickly mobbed by the men who had been on Cape York. When Melvin
Patchett strolled over to say hello, he stopped first to inspect the jeep.

“Looking for something, First Sergeant?” Jock asked.

“Well, sir…it’s just that every time Miss Forbes came to
visit on the Cape, she always came with a cart full of chow. I guess she don’t
love us no more.”

“Come here, you bloody old wanker,” she said, giving
Patchett a fierce hug. “We’re not on the Cape now. It’s your turn to feed me.
Where are those bloody K rations? I’ve missed those things terribly!”

In short order, the men began to fill the jeep with boxes
full of K rations.

As Bogater Boudreau went back to fetch another box, a GI—one
who hadn’t been on Cape York with the others—asked him, “Who’s the skirt,
Corporal?”

“Watch your tone, soldier,” Boudreau replied. “That’s
Jillian Forbes.”

“Hmm…I’d fuck her,” the GI said.

Bogater Boudreau decked him with one quick jab to the jaw.

It was late afternoon before they began the drive back to
the harbor and Esme. Over the sea, ominous clouds were darkening the sky.

“There’s a storm brewing,” Jillian said, inching across her
seat to get as far under the canvas roof of the open-sided jeep as she could.

“Yeah, maybe,” Jock replied. “So tell me…where are you
sailing next?”

“It looks like we’ll be going back and forth to Papua for
the foreseeable future. Where do you think you’ll be going next?”

“Who knows? Actually, I think we’re going to be stuck here
for quite a while. Months…maybe longer. The division has to refit and get
replacements…and they’ll all have to be trained. It’ll take time. A lot of
time.”

“Are you going to keep being target practice for the
Japanese in that little toy airplane?”

“Hey…I’m division staff. I do whatever the job calls for.”

“Any chance you’ll be changing jobs, Jock? Perhaps to one
that entails being a less tempting target?”

“I doubt it.”

She wasn’t thrilled with that answer. She changed the topic:
“What about the diggers MacArthur sent over the Track? A right fucking that is.
How’s that going to work?”

“I know what you mean, Jill. It’s suicide. I hear climbing
the Track is enough to kill you all by itself…and the closer the Aussies get to
Buna, the stronger the Japs will be. Crossing Kokoda’s only going to pay off if
we invade Buna from the sea at the same time. I think that might be what MacArthur
has in mind for us…but we’re not ready yet. Not by a long shot.”

“It’s not you chaps…it’s your bloody Navy that’s not ready.
If they try to sail into the Solomon or Bismarck Seas, they’ll be on the bottom
in the blink of an eye. Your Air Force is doing a great job on this side of
Papua, but your flyboys can’t do the same for the other coast. It’s too far,
even flying out of Port Moresby. Those bloody mountains…”

The conversation lulled for a moment as they watched the
skies thicken.

“So we agree?” Jock asked. “Things are at a stalemate right
now?”

“Until something changes so you can beat the Japanese Navy,
they are.”

“In other words,” he said, “I’m going to be here in Port
Moresby for a while…”

“Until something changes, Jock. And until it does, I’ll be
here every chance I get.” Content in that thought, she asked, “Are you going to
spend the night on my boat?”

“Why not? I’ve been AWOL this long…what’s a few more hours?”

Jillian eyed the storm clouds, now ominously close. “The
only thing changing around here, Jock, is the weather. We’re going to get
bloody soaked.”

Three hundred miles away, on the other side of Papua, a
different kind of storm was brewing. Patrolling alone and vulnerable over the
Solomon Sea near the island of New Britain, the crew of a Royal Australian Air
Force Catalina flying boat were the first to feel it. They saw from a great
distance what looked like smoke from ships’ stacks. As they ventured closer,
they could see many warships, their wakes glistening in the afternoon sun as they
made their way east.

They might be headed to the Solomon Islands. Or perhaps the Coral
Sea—and Australia beyond.

They were a force so strong—the Aussie aviators counted four
aircraft carriers and many capital ships among their number—they could decimate
the American and Australian ships scattered piecemeal around the Solomon
Islands…

Unless they could be warned. If the Allies could consolidate
their forces, they stood a chance.

They might even win the battle…

And that could change the course of the war. Overnight.

For MacArthur’s forces on Papua, it could change everything.
Quickly.

There was still time. The radio operator tapped out the
message on his telegraph key, gripped by an urgency he had never known.

The message sent, he clamped the headphones tight against
his ears, waiting—praying—for acknowledgement…

And then the first shattering burst of flak ripped through
the aircraft.

***

About The Author

History is a parade of chance outcomes,
influenced by any number of natural forces and human whims. As a lifelong
student of history and lover of alternative historical fiction, William Peter
Grasso’s novels explore the concept change one thing…and watch what happens.
The results are works of fiction in which the actual people and historical
events are weaved into a seamless and entertaining narrative with the imagined.

Focusing on the WW2 era, Grasso’s novels have
spent several years in the Amazon Top 100 for Alternative History and War.

Retired from the aircraft maintenance
industry, Grasso is a veteran of the US Army and served in Operation Desert
Storm as a flight crew member with the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF). These
days, he confines his aviation activities to building and flying
radio-controlled model aircraft.

Contact the Author Online:

Email: William Peter Grasso

Connect with the Author on
Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWilliamPeterGrasso

More Novels by
William Peter Grasso

Moon
Above, Moon Below

A Moon Brothers WW2
Adventure

France, August 1944. In this alternate history WW2
adventure, American and British forces struggle to trap and destroy the
still-potent German armies defending Normandy. But the Allies face another
formidable obstacle of their own making: a seething rivalry between generals
leads to a high-level disregard for orders that puts the entire campaign in the
Falaise Pocket at risk of devastating failure—or spectacular success. That
campaign unfolds through the eyes of two American brothers—one an idealistic
pilot, the other a fatalistic tanker—as they plunge headlong into the confusion
and indiscriminant slaughter of war.

Operation
Fishwrapper

Book 5

Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series

June 1944: A recon flight is shot down over the
Japanese-held island of Biak, soon to be the next jump in MacArthur’s
leapfrogging across New Guinea. Major Jock Miles, US Army—the crashed plane’s
intelligence officer—must lead the handful of survivors to safety. It’s a tall
order for a man barely recovered from a near-crippling leg wound. Gaining the
grudging help of a Dutch planter who has evaded the Japanese since the war
began, Jock discovers just how little MacArthur’s staff knows about the terrain
and defenses of the island they’re about to invade.

The American invasion of Biak promptly bogs down, and the
GIs rename the debacle Operation Fishwrapper, a joking reference to
their worthless maps. The infantry battalion Jock once led quickly suffers the
back-to-back deaths of two commanders, so he steps into the job once again,
ignoring the growing difficulties with his leg. When his Aussie wife Jillian
tracks down the refugee mapmaker who can refine those fishwrappers into
something of military value, the tide of battle finally turns in favor of the
Americans. But for Jock, the victory imparts a life-changing blow.

Operation Blind Spot

Book 4

Jock Miles WW2
Adventure Series

After surviving a deadly plane crash, Jock Miles is handed a
new mission: neutralize a mountaintop observation post on Japanese-held Manus Island
so MacArthur’s invasion fleet en route to Hollandia, New Guinea, can arrive
undetected. Jock’s team seizes and holds the observation post with the help of
a clever deception. But when they learn of a POW camp deep in the island’s
treacherous jungle, it opens old wounds for Jock and his men: the
disappearance—and presumed death—of Jillian Forbes at Buna a year before.
There’s only one risky way to find out if she’s a prisoner there…and doing so
puts their entire mission in serious jeopardy.

Operation Easy Street

Book 3

Jock Miles WW2
Adventure Series

Port Moresby was bad. Buna was worse.

The WW2 alternative history adventure of Jock Miles
continues as MacArthur orders American and Australian forces to seize Buna in Papua
New Guinea. Once again, the Allied high command underestimates the Japanese
defenders, plunging Jock and his men into a battle they’re not equipped to win.
Worse, jungle diseases, treacherous terrain, and the tactical fantasies of
deluded generals become adversaries every bit as deadly as the Japanese. Sick,
exhausted, and outgunned, Jock’s battalion is ordered to spearhead an
amphibious assault against the well-entrenched enemy. It’s a suicide
mission—but with ingenious help from an unexpected source, there might be a way
to avoid the certain slaughter and take Buna. For Jock, though, victory comes
at a dreadful price.

Operation Long Jump

Book 2

Jock Miles WW2
Adventure Series

Alternative history takes center stage as Operation Long
Jump, the second book in the Jock Miles World War 2 adventure series, plunges
us into the horrors of combat in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. As a
prelude to the Allied invasion, Jock Miles and his men seize the Japanese
observation post on the mountain overlooking Port Moresby. The main invasion
that follows quickly degenerates to a bloody stalemate, as the inexperienced,
demoralized, and poorly led GIs struggle against the stubborn enemy.

Seeking a way to crack the impenetrable Japanese defenses,
infantry officer Jock finds himself in a new role—aerial observer. He’s teamed
with rookie pilot John Worth, in a prequel to his role as hero of Grasso’s East
Wind Returns. Together, they struggle to expose the Japanese defenses—while
highly exposed themselves—in their slow and vulnerable spotter plane. The enemy
is not the only thing troubling Jock: his Australian lover, Jillian Forbes, has
found a new and dangerous way to contribute to the war effort.

Long Walk to the Sun

Book 1

Jock Miles WW2
Adventure Series

In this alternate history adventure set in WW2’s early days,
a crippled US military struggles to defend vulnerable Australia against the
unstoppable Japanese forces. When a Japanese regiment lands on Australia’s
desolate and undefended Cape York Peninsula, Jock Miles, a US Army captain
disgraced despite heroic actions at Pearl Harbor, is ordered to locate the
enemy’s elusive command post.

Conceived in politics rather than sound tactics, the futile
mission is a “show of faith” by the American war leaders meant to do little
more than bolster their flagging Australian ally. For Jock Miles and the men of
his patrol, it’s a death sentence: their enemy is superior in men, material,
firepower, and combat experience. Even if the Japanese don’t kill them, the
vast distances they must cover on foot in the treacherous natural realm of Cape
York just might. When Jock joins forces with Jillian Forbes, an indomitable
woman with her own checkered past who refused to evacuate in the face of the
Japanese threat, the dim prospects of the Allied war effort begin to brighten
in surprising ways.

Unpunished

Congressman. Presidential candidate. Murderer. Leonard
Pilcher is all of these things.

As an American pilot interned in Sweden during WWII, he
kills one of his own crewmen and gets away with it. Two people have witnessed
the murder—American airman Joe Gelardi and his secret Swedish lover, Pola
Nilsson-MacLeish—but they cannot speak out without paying a devastating price.
Tormented by their guilt and separated by a vast ocean after the war, Joe and
Pola maintain the silence that haunts them both...until 1960, when Congressman
Pilcher’s campaign for his party’s nomination for president gains momentum. As
he dons the guise of war hero, one female reporter, anxious to break into the
“boy’s club” of TV news, fights to uncover the truth against the far-reaching
power of the Pilcher family’s wealth, power that can do any wrong it
chooses—even kill—and remain unpunished. Just as the nomination seems within
Pilcher’s grasp, Pola reappears to enlist Joe’s help in finally exposing
Pilcher for the criminal he really is. As the passion of their wartime romance
rekindles, they must struggle to bring Pilcher down before becoming his next
victims.

East
Wind Returns

A young but veteran photo recon pilot in WWII finds the fate
of the greatest invasion in history--and the life of the nurse he
loves--resting perilously on his shoulders.

“East Wind Returns” is a story of World War II set in
July-November 1945 which explores a very different road to that conflict's
historic conclusion. The American war leaders grapple with a crippling setback:
Their secret atomic bomb does not work. The invasion of Japan seems the only
option to bring the war to a close. When those leaders suppress intelligence of
a Japanese atomic weapon poised against the invasion forces, it falls to photo
reconnaissance pilot John Worth to find the Japanese device. Political intrigue
is mixed with passionate romance and exciting aerial action--the terror of
enemy fighters, anti-aircraft fire, mechanical malfunctions, deadly weather,
and the Kamikaze. When shot down by friendly fire over southern Japan during
the American invasion, Worth leads the desperate mission that seeks to
deactivate the device.