The Corp - Counterattack Part 58

"I've explained the situation, lad," Reeves said evenly.

"So have I," Steve said. "I'm a f.u.c.king Marine. We just don't take off and leave our people behind."

"That's a very commendable philosophy, I'm sure, but-"

"I don't give a s.h.i.+t what you think of it," Steve interrupted. "That's the way it's going to be."

The discussion proved to be moot.

A brown-skinned, fuzzy-haired man appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing a loincloth, a bone in his nose, and a web cartridge belt around his neck, and he was carrying a British Lee-Enfield MK III .303 rifle. He announced, in understandable English, "We have the other bloke, Mr. Reeves. He was hanging from the trees. He has broken his arm."

At least he's alive, Steve thought. Thank G.o.d! Then he thought, What's he going to think when he finds out I s.h.i.+t my pants? My G.o.d, I can't believe I really did that!

A moment later, there was the sound of something moving through the muck on the forest floor. And then Lieutenant Howard appeared. His left arm was folded and strapped across his chest with his cartridge belt; his right arm was around the shoulder of a short, plump, brown-skinned, fuzzy-headed, bare-breasted woman. She was wearing what looked like a dirty towel, and carrying Howard's Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun.

"Jesus, I was worried about you," he said to Koffler.

"I'm Jacob Reeves," Reeves said.

"Lieutenant Howard, U.S. Marine Corps," Howard said.

"Cecilia," Reeves said to the bare-breasted woman, "I want you to take this gentleman to the village. You think you can do that?"

Cecilia smiled, revealing that her teeth were stained almost black.

"Of course," she said. "I think one or two of the other girls are about to help, if need be."

Christ, she sounds just like Daphne!

"Make him as comfortable as you can. Give him some of the whiskey. When we get there, we'll tend to his arm.

"You better take that tommy gun, Sergeant," Reeves said to Steve Koffler, adding to Howard, "We'll see you a bit later, then."

"Where are you going?" Howard asked.

Reeves didn't answer. He started trotting off into the jungle. Steve Koffler took the Thompson and two extra twenty-round magazines from Howard's pocket, and ran after him.

(Four) Steve became aware as they moved through the forest that others were with them besides Jacob Reeves and the guy with the bone through his nose, although he had trouble getting a clear look at any of them.

They were going downhill. Although it wasn't like the sticky muck where they had landed, the ground was still wet and slippery. He had to watch his footing and to keep his eye on Reeves. His chest hurt from the exertion. There seemed to be a cloud of insects around his face, crawling into his ears and nostrils and mouth.

What seemed like hours later, they stopped. According to his watch, it was only thirty-five minutes. Steve stood there, sweat-soaked, breathing hard, looking with mingled amazement and horror at his hands and arms, which were covered with insect stings.

Reeves came up to him.

"Do you know how to use that tommy gun?"

"I fired it in boot camp," Steve said.

"In other words, you don't."

"I qualified," Steve said sharply.

"The way we're going to do this," Reeves said, "the j.a.ps will be coming down a path this way. What I would like you to do is make sure that none of them gets past you. This will be successful only if we take all of them. If one of them gets away ... You understand?"

Steve nodded.

"We'll have our go at them about fifty yards up the footpath," Reeves said. "It then pa.s.ses just a few yards from here. You go have a look at it, and then find yourself a place. Clear?"

"OK," Steve said.

"It shouldn't take them long to get down here, so be quick," Reeves ordered.

"OK," Steve repeated. He swung the Thompson off his shoulder. When he looked up again, Reeves was nowhere in sight.

Steve made his way through the thick undergrowth until he found the path. He walked ten yards up it, and then ten yards in the other direction, and then backed off into the underbrush again and leaned against a tree.

After a moment, he allowed himself to slip to the ground. This action reminded him that his shorts, and now his trouser legs, were full of s.h.i.+t.

He started to think about his and Daphne's bungalow in postwar Melbourne again.

s.h.i.+t, if I do that, I'm liable to doze off and get my f.u.c.king throat cut!

All he could hear was the buzzing of the insects.

And then there was noise.

He worked the action of the Thompson and then looked down inside at the s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s cartridge. When he pulled the trigger, the cartridge would be stripped from the magazine by the bolt, driven into the chamber, and fired. Then, so long as he held the trigger and the magazine held cartridges, the bolt would be driven backward by recoil, hit a spring, and then fly forward again, stripping another cartridge from the magazine.

He heard something on the trail.

What the f.u.c.k is that? It can't be a j.a.p. If it was a j.a.p, Reeves and the others would have been shooting by now.

But, curious, he slowly pulled himself to his feet.

It was a j.a.p. He was wearing a silly little brimmed cap on his head; and he was carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder that looked much too big for him. He was coming down the trail as if he were taking a walk through the f.u.c.king woods.

s.h.i.+t!

The one thing he had learned at Parris Island was that you couldn't hit a f.u.c.king thing with a Thompson the way Alan Ladd shot one in the movies, from the hip. You had to put it to your shoulder like a rifle, get a sight picture, and just caress the trigger.

He did so.

Nothing happened. He really pulled hard on the trigger. Nothing happened.

The safety! The f.u.c.king safety!

He snapped it off, pulled on the trigger, and the Thompson jumped in his hands.

The j.a.p dropped right there.

There was no other sound for a moment, and that too was scary.

And then there was fire. Different weapons. A burp-burp noise, probably from that funny-looking little submachine gun Reeves had; and booming cracks like from a Springfield, and sharper cracks. Probably from the j.a.ps' rifles.

Now he could see figures moving through the trees. Not well. Not enough to tell if they were Reeves's Fuzzy-Wuzzies, or whatever the f.u.c.k they were, or j.a.ps.

Jesus Christ!

There's a j.a.p!

The Thompson burped again and suddenly stopped.

Oh, s.h.i.+t! Twenty rounds already?

He slammed another magazine in and saw another j.a.p and fired again, and seemed to be missing.

Another figure appeared.

One of the f.u.c.king Fuzzy-Wuzzies.

And then Jacob Reeves.

"I think that's all of them," Reeves said. "We counted. There were eight. They usually run eight-man patrols."

Steve came out of the underbrush onto the trail.

"You all right, son?" Reeves asked.

"I'm all right," Steve said.

There was a body on the trail. Steve walked up to look at it. It was the first one he'd shot.

He looked at the face of the first man he had killed.

The first man he had killed looked back at him with terror in his eyes.

"This one's still alive!" Steve said.

"We can't have that, I'm afraid," Reeves said, walking up.

Steve pointed the Thompson muzzle at the j.a.p's forehead and pulled the trigger.

I already s.h.i.+t my pants and now I think I'm going to throw up.

The village looked like something out of National Geographic magazine. It was much larger, too, than Steve had expected, although when he thought about that, he couldn't understand why he thought it would be any particular size at all.

Brown-skinned, flat-nosed people watched as he marched after Reeves into the village. Some of them had teeth that looked like they had been dyed blue and then filed to a point. Most of the women weren't going around in nothing but dirty towels with their b.o.o.bs hanging out, like Cecilia. They were wearing dirty cotton skirts and loose blouses, some of which opened in the front to expose b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were anything but l.u.s.t inciting.

There were chickens running loose, and pigs with one leg tied to a stake. There were fires burning. And he saw women beating something with a rock against another rock.

A clear stream, about five feet wide and two feet deep, meandered through the center of the collection of gra.s.s-walled huts.

"I'll go see about your lieutenant's arm," Reeves said.

"What can you do about it?" Steve asked.

"Set it, of course," Reeves said.

"Can you do that? I mean, really do it right?"

"I'm not a sodding doctor, if that's what you mean," Reeves snapped.

"No offense," Steve said lamely.

"I'll have them put up a hut for you, while you're having your bath," Jacob Reeves said after a moment. "Just leave your clothing there. The girls will take care of it for you. And I'll send you down a s.h.i.+rt and some shorts to wear."

He pointed to a muddy area by the stream, at the end of the village. It was apparently the community bath and wash house.

I think he actually expects me to just take off my clothes in front of everybody and sit in that stream and take a bath.

"That water's safe for bathing," Reeves said, as if reading Steve's mind. "But don't drink it. I've been here since Christ was a babe, and I still haven't built up an immunity to the sodding water. There's boiled water and beer."

Steve looked at him in surprise.

"Well, it's not really beer," Reeves admitted. "We make it out of rice and coconuts. But it's not all that bad."

Reeves walked off. And after a moment, Steve Koffler walked to the edge of the stream and started to take his clothing off.

(Five)

TOP SECRET.

Eyes Only-The Secretary of the Navy DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN.

ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAVY.

Melbourne, Australia Monday, 8 June 1942 Dear Frank: This will deal with the Battle of Midway, from MacArthur's perception of it here, and the implications of it for the conduct of the war, short- and long-term, as he sees them.

But before I get into that: Willoughby somehow found out, I have no idea how, that I am on the Albatross list; and he promptly ran to tell MacA. MacA., of course, knew; like everyone else on it, he had been furnished with the list itself. I am quite sure that MacA. brings Willoughby in on anything that would remotely interest him whenever he (MacA.) receives Magic intelligence. But Willoughby is not on the Albatross list himself, and as a matter of personal prestige (he is, after all, a major general and MacA.'s G-2), he found this grossly humiliating even before he learned that lowly Captain Pickering was on it.