More than once, Tony Cruz had given Yoshio the Chamorro version of the stink eye, clearly not ready to trust anyone who looked Japanese — even if Yoshio wore an American uniform.
Nobody spoke much during their break, except to bitch about the clouds of insects.
Curious, Deke pointed at the necklace the Chamorro guide wore. It appeared to be made from the claws of a large animal, strung on a leather thong and interspersed with polished shells. In fact, Deke reckoned it wasn’t all that different from an old Cherokee necklace that he had seen back home.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“Espíritus malignos. Evil spirits.”
Deke touched one of the claws.
“What kind of critter is that?” He wasn’t sure about the limits of the guide’s English, so Deke raised his fingers to resemble claws.
“Jaguar.”
“Gonna have to get me one of those necklaces.”
To his surprise, the Chamorro reached out and touched one of the deep scars running down Deke’s face. The guide’s rough finger traced the path of the furrow. Then he flexed his fingers like Deke had and said, “Claws.”
Deke nodded. To his relief, that was all the explanation that the Chamorro seemed to need. Tony Cruz turned his attention back to the jungle.
Nearby, Lieutenant Steele put the cap on his canteen and shook it with a woeful look. “We’ll have to find some water soon.” It was ironic that while the air was fairly dripping with humidity and they were all soaked through with sweat, they had yet to pass any creeks or streams to refill their canteens. Steele was right — if they didn’t find water soon, it was going to be a problem. “Let’s get a move on.”
Normally, the GIs were glad of any break, but they seemed to welcome the chance to get moving again. The path climbed and their progress was more strenuous, but somehow they managed to move faster.
Nobody was eager to linger in the jungle. Night would arrive before long, and nobody liked the idea of trying to make camp for the night on the path. They wouldn’t have much choice — movement at night through the jungle would be impossible. It would be too easy to take one wrong step off the path, never to be seen again.
Once more, the path faded and disappeared. They found themselves facing a green wall of impenetrable vegetation, wondering what to do next and feeling utterly lost.
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.