Shit, if I do that, I’m liable to doze off and get my fucking 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 shiny brass 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 fuck is that? It can’t be a Jap. If it was a Jap, Reeves and the others would have been shooting by now.
But, curious, he slowly pulled himself to his feet.
It was a Jap. 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 fucking woods.
Shit!
The one thing he had learned at Parris Island was that you couldn’t hit a fucking 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 fucking safety!
He snapped it off, pulled on the trigger, and the Thompson jumped in his hands.
The Jap 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 Japs’ 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 fuck they were, or Japs.
Jesus Christ!
There’s a Jap!
The Thompson burped again and suddenly stopped.
Oh, shit! Twenty rounds already?
He slammed another magazine in and saw another Jap and fired again, and seemed to be missing.
Another figure appeared.
One of the fucking 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 Jap’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
I already shit 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 boobs hanging out, like Cecilia. They were wearing dirty cotton skirts and loose blouses, some of which opened in the front to expose breasts that were anything but lust 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 grass-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 shirt 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.
The result of this is that MacA. fired off a cable demanding that Willoughby be added to the Albatross list. Then he made a point of mentioning to me that he understands how critical it is that Magic not be compromised, and the necessity for keeping the Albatross list as short as possible. The implication I took was that he really would be happier if Willoughby were kept off the list and rather hoped that I would pass this on to you.
I’m not sure what his motive is (motives are), but I don’t think they have anything to do with making sure Magic isn’t compromised. Quite possibly, MacA. regards the Albatross list as a prerogative of the emperor, not to be shared with the lesser nobility. He may also be hoping that if you ( "Those bastards in Washington" ) refuse to add Willoughby to the Albatross list, it will ensure that Willoughby hates you as much as the emperor himself does.