“Let them burn!” a soldier shouted. “Don’t waste a bullet on the ones that are on fire. We’re only putting them out of their misery.”
“To hell with that,” Philly said, and kept on shooting.
Deke lined up his sights on an enemy soldier whose shirt was on fire. The soldier was running away, and Deke shot him between the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling into the dirt. The dead enemy soldier continued to burn, looking like a pile of smoldering rags.
“What did you go and do that for?” demanded the soldier, who didn’t want to waste bullets.
“Go to hell,” Deke said.
The soldier looked as if he might say something in response, but then thought better of it when Deke turned his full attention on him. The look in Deke’s eyes signaled that he wouldn’t mind wasting another bullet right then and there.
Deke worked the bolt and searched for another target. But by the time another enemy soldier appeared, two or three other bullets found him instantly.
This was like the barge all over again, just shooting fish in a barrel. It was clear that the Japanese who still could were pulling out of Ipil.
Deke lowered his rifle, his head swimming from the noise and heat. Damn this fever. Just when he thought that he was feeling better, another dizzy spell washed over him all over again.
Just as quickly as it had started, the skirmish in the village of Ipil had come to an end in the Americans’ favor. Not all the Japanese had made a run for it, and what followed was a mopping-up operation in which the soldiers moved from hut to hut, searching for Japanese.
Nobody bothered to ask if they wanted to surrender. Yoshio could have translated, but his services were not requested. Instead, the soldiers went from hut to hut, tossing grenades into cellars. Sometimes a soldier bent down and sprayed a burst from a submachine gun into the space below the floor. Simply put, this was eradication of the enemy.
If the little village had seemed peaceful when they first approached, it was now being left a smoking ruin as the flames kept spreading from one burning hut to another. Thick, dark smoke roiled into the sky, the clouds of smoke bejeweled with flecks of red sparks and orange embers. The hamlet was now a scene of perfect destruction. Even some of the crops in the vegetable patches had caught fire, flames crackling through the dry vines and leaves. There were a few racks of fish drying in the sun, and these too caught fire. The whole damn place was going up in smoke.
Deke watched it all, wondering how the Filipinos were going to feel when they returned home. It was evident that the people who lived here must be subsistence farmers, scratching a living out of their fields, the nearby jungle, and even the sea. Like poor people everywhere, he reckoned that they would pick up the pieces and go on. At least they would finally be free of the Japanese.
The resistance in Ipil seemed to be at an end. Or most of it, anyway. It appeared that most of the Japanese had been killed or had slipped away into the surrounding forest.
So far he had managed to avoid the mopping-up action.
But he felt like he ought to be doing something rather than standing around gawking. He went to take a step and staggered, catching the attention of Lieutenant Steele.
“Are you all right?” the lieutenant asked. “Are you hit?”
“No, I’m just fine,” Deke replied.
He paused to gather his strength before taking another step. The smoke, the flames, the heat — and through it all the nauseating pork-like smell of roasting flesh — it was all too much, and he felt his senses being overwhelmed. Another wave of dizziness left him swaying on his feet.
He had been doing his best to hide just how weak he was from the lieutenant. He had no desire to be sent back to the hospital area on the beach, perhaps to be deemed unfit for duty and sent to one of the hospital ships offshore. The last thing that he wanted to do was let down the lieutenant and the rest of the patrol.
“Goddammit, you’re still sick, aren’t you? I should have made sure those doctors kept you back on the beach.” The lieutenant shook his head. “Make sure you drink plenty of water and eat something. You’re getting so damn skinny that somebody is going to mistake you for a stick before too long.”
Deke nodded in acknowledgment, the effort of speaking suddenly too much. He knew that the lieutenant was right about eating. The last real food that he’d eaten was the meal that Danilo had cooked on the trail. Fresh chicken and rice — couldn’t ask for better. He doubted there would be more of that anytime soon.
The trouble was, the thought of a cold tin of stew made his stomach knot up. The only food items that sounded good were the hot buttered biscuits that his ma used to make. That and some hot coffee would have gone down good right about now. However, he had about as much chance of getting a buttered biscuit as he did of being promoted to general.
Deke’s thoughts of food evaporated when he heard the crack of a rifle from the scrubby trees nearby. Deke and the lieutenant ducked just as someone yelled, “Sniper!”
Ducking was a reflex that wouldn’t have done them any good if they’d been in the sniper’s sights. A soldier about fifty feet away crumpled and fell.
Apparently not all the Japanese had retreated. There was at least one sniper lurking out there. A trio of soldiers ran toward the trees, intending to take care of the problem. They soon returned, the sniper evidently having slipped away.
“All right, everybody keep your eyes open. We know the Japanese aren’t done with us yet,” Steele said to the men within earshot.
Captain Merrick was at the other end of the village, shouting orders that they couldn’t quite hear above the pop and crackle of the flames from the burning huts.
The lieutenant moved off in Captain Merrick’s direction, but not before giving Deke a long, doubtful look. Steele had a lot more men to worry about now than his handful of snipers, Deke included. Ostensibly, he had been put in charge of a platoon, but he had quickly become Captain Merrick’s de facto second-in-command. He was now doing his best to get the men organized and moving, especially those who wanted to search the bodies of the dead Japanese for souvenirs.
It seemed as if even these combat veterans couldn’t get enough Japanese gear and remained hopeful that they would pick up a coveted pistol or sword.
“Knock it off,” Steele ordered the souvenir hunters. “For all you know, those bodies might be booby-trapped.”
A kind of greed made one of the soldiers overly bold. He was not a big man, but he had a cockiness about him, like a bantam rooster. Wearing an insolent grin, he said, “You think they booby-trapped themselves in between running from those huts and us shooting them, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t be a smart aleck,” Steele said. “And if you call me by my rank again when there might be Jap snipers around, you won’t have to worry about the Japanese, because I’ll shoot you myself. Now get your asses ready to move out.”
There was some grumbling about officers spoiling their fun. It was likely that some of them saw Steele as the new guy and he hadn’t yet earned their respect. He might be a combat veteran, but he hadn’t been in combat with them. Or not much combat, anyway. Also, some of the soldiers had reached that point where they were tired of being told by an officer what to do, or didn’t much care about the consequences if they didn’t.
But Lieutenant Steele could be an intimidating presence with his eye patch and shotgun. He was no butter bar fresh from Officer Training School. The soldiers did as they were told, even if they took their time about it.
Maybe this was why Steele had dodged any kind of promotion or command — Deke could see that being in charge was all one big headache.