Pacific Sniper

Chapter Eighteen

The shrill sounds of birds and wildlife, along with the buzzing of the insects, seemed to grow louder. They looked around uneasily at the vegetation pressing in on them from all sides.

“What the hell?” Philly muttered. “Never mind the Japs. It’s like this jungle is out to get us.”

Deke thought about that necklace that Tony Cruz wore to ward off evil spirits. Maybe he was on to something. Deke had spent enough time in the woods and mountains back home to know that the old stories of ghosts and what the old people called h’aints were not to be taken lightly.

However, their guide did not seem perturbed. Once again, he reached for the machete hanging from his belt and began to carve a path through the vegetation, chopping through vines and saplings. It was slow going, so the GIs mostly had to stand around and wait.

No stranger to hard work, Deke decided to join him. He turned to Philly. “Give me that sword a minute.”

“See, aren’t you glad that I kept it?”

Long and light, the Japanese sword wasn’t intended for chopping brush, but Deke made do. With Tony Cruz using the heavy machete blade to hack through the thickest jungle growth, Deke worked behind him to widen the path. They gave each other plenty of room for their swinging blades. Within minutes, he was sweating mightily, and the band of his broad-brimmed hat was soaked through. To his surprise, they hadn’t managed to go more than a few dozen feet into the jungle.

“The war might be over by the time we get out of here,” Philly grumped. He had begun pulling brush and vines taut to make them easier for Deke to hack with the officer’s sword.

“Fine by me,” Deke said.

But as it turned out, Tony Cruz once again demonstrated his uncanny sense of direction. After another few minutes of hacking, he led them into a small clearing in the jungle. The ground here was rockier and strewn with moss-covered boulders. In the center of the clearing loomed the black mouth of a cave. Deke was reminded of a giant bullfrog with its mouth open. He wasn’t all that eager to step inside.

Tony Cruz had no such qualms but was smiling with satisfaction at having reached the cave.

“Camp for night,” he said.

“We’ve got to stop somewhere,” Lieutenant Steele said to his men. “At least we found a clearing and some shelter.”

Lucky for them, the clearing also proved to have a pool of water fed by a spring. It wasn’t exactly free-flowing, but there was enough motion for the water not to be completely stagnant. At this point, with their empty canteens, they couldn’t be too picky. Lieutenant Steele ordered them to refill their canteens and use a double dose of halazone tablets. They all agreed that the resultant drinking water tasted like chlorinated cat piss, but it was more or less safe to drink.

The lieutenant radioed to HQ but didn’t have anything useful to report other than that Patrol Easy was still alive. However, he received some disturbing information in return.

“One of the other patrols got wiped out,” he told them. “Apparently, they walked right into a Jap unit. We’ll post two guards during each watch tonight. For all we know, this jungle is crawling with Japs.”

Tony Cruz walked into the dark cave. A couple of bats flew out, their wings more than a foot wide.

“Oh boy,” Philly said. “I think I’ll take my chances out here.”

“You sure about that?” Deke asked. Already, it was getting dark under the jungle canopy. They were completely exposed in the clearing. Under the cover of night, it would be all too easy for any two-legged interlopers to walk right up on them — or four-legged interlopers, for that matter. “You saw those claws around Tony’s neck, right? He didn’t order that necklace out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog. No sir, he got those claws off a big-ass cat in this here jungle. I reckon the Japs ain’t the only thing we’ve got to worry about.”

Reluctantly, Philly followed Deke toward the cave mouth.

The interior wasn’t all that bad. A previous traveler, or perhaps Tony himself, had left a pile of firewood within the cave. The Chamorro guide already had a fire going. The flames lit up the relatively dry walls of the cave. A few pairs of eyes glittered down at them — more bats. Deke reckoned they were harmless enough. He noticed that Philly stuck the Jap sword into the ground nearby so that it was within reach.

After a few minutes, Whoa Nelly started barking at something in the cave. Deke looked in that direction and spotted a dark shape scuttling across the bare stone cave floor, and he used the Jap sword to spear a spider nearly the size of a dinner plate.

“Holy crap! Look at that thing!” Philly said, sounding near panic.

Nearby, the Chamorro guide just laughed. He babbled something at them in the local dialect, but Deke caught only every third or fourth word. The giveaway was Tony Cruz holding his hands apart as if demonstrating the size of something.

“Huh.”

“What did he say?” Philly was scanning the cave floor anxiously for more of the large, eight-legged critters.

“I ain’t exactly sure, but I think it’s that he’s seen spiders a whole lot bigger.”

“Just great.”

Deke walked to the cave mouth and flung the spider’s carcass away. He couldn’t even see where it landed, because the darkness swallowed it up. Already, it was so dark that he could barely see the trees at the edge of the clearing twenty feet away. The jungle was coming alive with a whole different set of sounds, noisier than ever with the buzz of insects and night birds.

Gladly, he returned to the firelight and handed Philly back his sword. “Better hang on to that,” he said. He followed the Chamorro guide’s example and spread his blanket on the cave floor, suddenly exhausted.

Lieutenant Steele and Yoshio had taken the first watch. They sat with their backs to the cave, and the lieutenant kept his shotgun across his knees. He had borrowed Whoa Nelly and had her on a leash beside him. Yoshio didn’t inspire much confidence, but between the dog and Steele’s twelve-gauge, Deke reckoned that they were well guarded. He couldn’t help but be reminded of how secure he had felt as a boy, when he had lain in the loft upstairs in the early-morning darkness, hearing his father getting the coffee ready downstairs. With the reassuring sound of his father up and about, he had drifted back to sleep, knowing that all was right with the world.

This cave in the jungle was a far cry from the cabin where Deke had grown up. But as far as Deke was concerned, the cave was a whole lot better than trying to sleep in a foxhole filled with water, worried about Jap infiltrators — which was where they had been the night before. He rolled himself in his blanket and muttered to Philly, “Sweet dreams.”

“Yeah,” Philly said, then gulped and clutched the sword tight.

They were up and moving at first light. If night came quickly to the jungle, then morning liked to sleep in. Mists hung about among the trees. Reluctantly, the sun made its way through the canopy, turning the clouds of mist into bursts of rainbow colors that mixed among the brilliant green foliage.

Deke, who had an eye for the natural world, found the morning jungle stunning. But he knew all too well that they weren’t here to sightsee.

“It would almost be pretty if the jungle and everything in it wasn’t out to kill us,” said Yoshio, who also seemed in wonder of the scenery.

“Amen to that,” Deke said. “Now keep your eyes open.”

“I think I had my eyes open most of the night,” Philly grumbled. “I wasn’t sure which one I should worry more about — bats, snakes, Japs, or spiders as big as my mess kit.”

“You survived,” Deke pointed out. “I have a feelin’ that nighttime was the easy part.”

Not everyone had seen the spider that Deke had speared in the cave, so Philly was searching the clearing for the carcass. “Where did that thing go?”

“I reckon that it wasn’t dead yet and scurried off, or somethin’ ate it.”

“What the hell eats a giant spider?”

“A bigger spider.”

Philly quickly abandoned his search. “Never mind, then. I’m done with spiders. I’ll be happy if I never see so much as a daddy longlegs ever again.”

It was true that the night in the cave hadn’t exactly been restful. If the squad hadn’t been so tired, it was doubtful that anyone would have slept at all. Even Lieutenant Steele looked weary, although he didn’t complain.

After a so-called breakfast that consisted of a few bites of rations washed down with a swig or two of the halazone-flavored canteen water, they set out. Once again, Tony Cruz and Deke took point. They made a good team, both men moving silently down the trail that led away from the cave. From time to time, the Chamorro guide looked back at Deke and nodded approvingly. For that matter, Deke was impressed by the guide, who seemed unperturbed by whatever the jungle threw at them.

The trail climbed and the jungle seemed to grow darker. Heavy clouds showed through the canopy, and rain began to fall. The leaves broke up the downpour, but everything dripped. The path became a muddy stream that further soaked their feet, but they didn’t have any choice but to follow it because the jungle on either side was impenetrable.

They passed a few rocky outcroppings, but there was still no sign of any Japanese soldiers. The enemy must have retreated even farther into the jungle reaches.

“There are supposed to be thousands of Japs still on this island,” Philly said, when the squad halted for a short break. “What I’d like to know is: Where the hell are they?”

Nobody had a good answer for that. “Don’t worry, the Japs won’t show themselves until they start shooting,” the lieutenant said. “Just be ready.”

“I was born ready,” Philly said, but the words rang hollow in the jungle vastness.

They followed the path to the top of a peak and started down the other side. The slick mud made for treacherous footing, and once or twice someone in the squad fell and crashed into the underbrush. To Deke’s ears, it sounded loud as an elephant and surely would have alerted any Japanese in the area, but the rain managed to muffle their passage.

They were all glad, though, when the rain stopped and the water running down the path was reduced to a trickle. Once the rain ended, the sun came back out, and the steamy heat in the stillness among the trees intensified. Fresh clouds of insects seemed to have hatched after the rain. They buzzed relentlessly around their ears. Deke knotted a rag at his throat to keep the bugs off the back of his neck. He noticed that the insects didn’t seem to bother Tony Cruz at all.

Deke had half expected the path they were following to peter out like the others, but to his surprise, the path became wider and more worn. The jungle itself also began to thin out. To Deke’s mind, these were signs that they might be approaching areas where there was a greater chance of encountering Japanese activity. Although the trail was now easier to follow, their Chamorro guide began to move more slowly and cautiously, rather than faster, along the trail.

His instincts proved correct. Up ahead, they heard voices. The path disappeared around a bend so that he couldn’t see who was up there. Deke raised a hand and gave the warning sign.

“What is it?” Steele demanded.

“Japs!” Deke hissed.

The squad spread out as best it could, weapons at the ready, waiting for whoever was on the path to come around the bend and into view. Deke raised his rifle.

Tony Cruz had done the same but then quickly lowered his weapon.

“No Japs,” he said. “Chamorro.”

Deke passed the word. “Don’t shoot!”

“What?”

“Tony here says it ain’t Japs.”

An instant later, a trio of men appeared around the bend in the jungle path. They had been talking jovially among themselves but froze when they saw the GIs arrayed on the trail, weapons pointed at them. The trio carried what looked like Japanese rifles. They wore ragged civilian clothes, but definitely not enemy uniforms.

Tony Cruz called out to them, and the men replied with joyous shouts, running toward the Americans.

“What the hell?” Steele said. “Yoshio, get up here and see if you can figure out what they’re saying.”

“I do not speak the Chamorro language.”

“You’re supposed to be an interpreter. I’m sure that you’ll figure it out.”

It didn’t take an expert to determine that the Chamorros were overjoyed to see American GIs. Up close, it was evident that the three men were underfed, too skinny, their clothes barely more than rags. They looked like gaunt old men from a distance, but it was evident that they were hardly more than teenagers. All three babbled at once, waving their rifles like trophies and pointing them in all directions.

“Yoshio, tell them to put those rifles down before they shoot somebody by accident,” Steele ordered. It was clear that the young men were not trained soldiers, but their account soon revealed that they were warriors at heart.

“We are the first Americans that they have seen,” Yoshio said, beginning to piece together the epiglottic babble of Chamorro, English, and a few stray words of Spanish into a woeful tale. “They have been held in a labor camp for two years, forced to work building fortifications for the Japanese. The Japanese were very cruel. Once all the shelling began on the island, the Japanese began to abandon the camp. Two days ago, they overpowered the few remaining guards, took these rifles, and went in search of help. There are many others in the camp, sick and starving.”

Once the three young men had shared their story, they eagerly accepted food and water from the GIs.

“Easy now,” Deke said, gently prying his canteen away from one of the Chamorros who had been gulping down water. “You’ll make yourself sick, especially with all that halazone in there.” He couldn’t imagine trying to survive in the jungle without any food or water. These Chamorros must have been desperate to find help for the others back at the camp.

“How many others are in that camp?” Steele wanted to know. “I mean, are we talking about twenty or thirty people? I suppose that we could share some of our rations with them.”

Yoshio shook his head. “There are thousands.”

“What?”

It sounded like an impossible number, but the young refugees didn’t seem to have any good reason to lie. Dealing with a labor camp left behind by the Japanese had not been part of the squad’s mission, but it seemed as if they had little choice but to accompany the Chamorros back to the camp.

“Another question,” Steele said. “Where did the Japanese go?”

All three of the Chamorros pointed toward the north, where jungle-covered mountains rose. In other words, the enemy must be firmly dug in and waiting to make their final stand.

“What should I tell them?” Yoshio asked the lieutenant.

“Let them get something to eat and drink, and then tell them to lead us back to this camp.”