Deke was a little awed despite the peril that he was in. He had stumbled across a tropical paradise. He was so captivated by the scene that it took a shout from below to get his attention.
“Deke, quit pussyfooting around and get down here!” He looked down to see the familiar figures of the guys from Patrol Easy emerge on a ledge at the edge of the pool. Philly was waving at him.
He raised a hand in acknowledgment, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t seen them sooner, then picked his way down the slope to join them.
“What happened to you? You’re the last person I figured to get lost,” Philly said.
“He didn’t get lost,” Steele said. The lieutenant looked as haggard as ever. He was swaying on his feet, like a tree in the wind, but not so much as a breeze stirred the air in the waterfall valley. “He hung back to deal with the Jap squad traveling with that tank.”
Yoshio was staring at Deke in awe. “What did you do, shoot them all?”
“No, but I reckon I picked off a couple, then sent them hunting for us in the wrong direction.”
“Nice work, Deke. That was stupid to do on your own — but you saved our bacon.”
Deke was still thinking about the disastrous ambush. He wasn’t sure that he could ever make up for that.
“Listen up,” Lieutenant Steele began. “Keep your voices down and no shooting — no sense making it any easier for the Japs to find us.”
“Let’s get into that cave and out of sight. We can rest there until we get our bearings.”
Nobody argued with that plan, except for Philly.
“Just great. Another cave.”
“You want to stay out here and take your chances with that Jap patrol that’s looking for us?”
“All right, all right. At least there won’t be any Japs inside. What the hell, I’ll even go first.”
Outside the mouth of the cave, Whoa Nelly had begun barking furiously. Egan was working to hold her back. “Easy, girl.”
“What’s she going on about?”
“She smells something in that cave.”
“Hell, I smell something out here. Philly ain’t had a bath in at least a week.”
“Very funny.”
“Toss in a grenade.”
“And let every Jap around know where we are? Besides, Nelly’s probably barking at some critter in there.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They headed inside the cave, with Philly leading the way. To show his bravado, he had simply walked right through the cave entrance. The others followed.
“Anybody got a light?”
Lieutenant Steele obliged by clicking on a flashlight.
Instantly, two Japanese soldiers appeared in the glare of the flashlight. They all froze.
The two groups stared at each other, not sure what to do.
Then with something like a snarl, one of the Japanese started to raise his rifle. The last thing they needed was a gunshot to attract the other Japs in the area — not to mention getting shot.
But they needn’t have worried. Their Chamorro guide stepped forward and grabbed the muzzle of the rifle, wrenching it from the grasp of the weakened and wounded Japanese. An instant later, his machete slashed down into the soldier’s neck, and the Jap slumped to the floor of the cave.
The second Japanese soldier, wide-eyed, had not moved. He did not appear to be armed. Tony Cruz raised his machete.
The Japanese soldier closed his eyes and lowered his head, ready to accept the killing blow.
But Lieutenant Steele put out a hand to stop the guide. “Wait,” he said. “We’re supposed to capture some Japanese, but so far we haven’t had much luck. Yoshio, why don’t you see if you can figure out what this man knows.”
When the machete didn’t slice down at him, the Japanese soldier looked up at them, clearly puzzled. He did not relax but eyed them fearfully.
“What should I ask him?”
“For starters, see if he can tell us where the rest of his buddies are hidden.”
Yoshio stepped forward but didn’t start his line of questioning right away. Instead, he pointed to the enemy soldier’s bandages and asked him something in Japanese.
The soldier responded, and Yoshio nodded.
“He says he was up on the hill during the ambush.” Yoshio jerked his chin at Deke. “He says that you shot him.”
Deke realized that this must have been the soldier who popped up out of the grass like a decoy. The real sniper had gotten away.
“I reckon I didn’t do such a good job shooting him.”
“Now’s your chance to shoot him again,” Philly said. “It’s gonna be hard to miss this time.”
“Egan, take a look at him,” the lieutenant ordered.
“He’s a Jap!” Philly said. “What are we going to do, fix him up so he can shoot at us again?”
“Shut up, Philly,” Steele said, glaring. “He’s out of the fight for good.”
Philly seemed to realize that he was pushing his luck. “Whatever you say, sir,” he grumbled.
Egan handed Nelly’s leash to the lieutenant and inspected the wound. To do so, he had to take off the soldier’s shirt, revealing how emaciated the Japanese looked. His rib cage and shoulder blades were prominent.
Deke had not felt bad about shooting the Jap, who had been shooting at him, after all. But seeing how thin the soldier was, he experienced a twinge of sympathy. Deke knew a thing or two about going hungry.
“Looks to me like he’s missed a few meals.”
“All that these Japs eat is rice and fish. How fat do you think he could get?”
Also, with his shirt off, the soldier looked not only thin, but quite young, given his small stature and youthful face, which didn’t seem to feature so much as a whisker.
The Japanese soldier winced as Egan sprinkled on sulfa powder, added a fresh bandage, and then wrapped up the wound. “The bullet went all the way through,” he said. “He’ll live if we get him some help and there’s no infection — though I wouldn’t say that a cave in the jungle is the best place to avoid that.”
Once the Japanese soldier had been patched up, Yoshio began his interrogation, such as it was. He spoke gently, and although they couldn’t decipher the words, the tone was easy enough to understand. From time to time, Yoshio paused to give the Japanese soldier a drink of water from his canteen or a little food.
“Remind me not to drink out of Yoshio’s canteen,” Philly muttered. “Now it’s got filthy Jap germs on it. Not that Yoshio would care, considering that he’s one of them.”
“Philly, go keep an eye out,” the lieutenant said. “Take Tony here with you.”
With Philly gone and the Chamorro no longer glaring at him with machete in hand, the prisoner seemed to relax a little. He had been stingy with his answers at first, but now a flood of words poured out as Yoshio asked his questions. The prisoner had seemed to accept that, for him, the war was over.
Yoshio relayed to the lieutenant what he had found out. It seemed that the bulk of the remaining Japanese defenders were dug in not far from here, at a place called Mount Santa Rosa.
“All right,” Steele said. “I want to get eyes on these Japs. Once we have an exact location and an estimate of their numbers, we can report back. That’s why we’re out here.”
The others in the cave exchanged nervous looks. After the fight today, and having captured a prisoner, it seemed as if they had found out all that they needed to. “Whatever you say, Honcho.”
“What about the prisoner, Honcho?”
“We either have to shoot him or bring him with us,” the lieutenant said. “Considering that he’s going to show us where to find the rest of these Japs, it’s his lucky day.”