Father crawled on his belly from the sorghum field back to the dike, anxious to talk to Granddad, who was urgently reloading his pistol. The lead Jap truck revved its engine to get across the bridge, but the front wheels ran over the rake barrier; loud hissing sighs escaped from the punctured tyres. The truck rumbled grotesquely as it dragged the linked rakes along, and to Father it looked like an enormous twisting snake that had swallowed a hedgehog it was trying to dislodge. The Japs on the lead truck jumped to the ground. ‘Old Liu,’ Granddad shouted, ‘sound the bugle!’ The sound of Bugler Liu’s horn chilled the air. ‘Charge!’ Granddad commanded, leading the charge and firing without aiming, cutting down one Japanese soldier after another.
The troops on the west side of the road joined the attack, engaging the Japs in hand-to-hand combat. Granddad watched as Mute leaped up onto the bed of the lead truck. The two remaining Japs on the truck lunged with their bayonets. He warded off one with his knife, then neatly separated the soldier from his helmeted head, which sailed through the air, trailing a long howl before landing heavily on the ground, the thud driving the remnants of the scream out of its mouth. Father, amazed by the sharpness of the knife, stared at the stunned expression on the Jap’s face. The cheeks were still quivering, the nostrils still twitching, as though it were about to sneeze.
Mute dispatched the other Jap, and when the man’s headless torso fell against the truck’s railing, the skin on his neck shrank inward around pulsating gushes of blood. The Japs in the rear truck lowered the barrel of their machine gun and fired a hail of bullets, mowing down Granddad’s soldiers like so many saplings, which toppled onto the Jap corpses. Mute sat down hard on the cab, blood seeping from a cluster of chest holes.
Father and Granddad threw themselves to the ground and crawled back to the sorghum field. When they cautiously peeked over the top of the dike, they saw the rear truck chugging in reverse. ‘Fang Six,’ Granddad shouted, ‘the cannon! Nail that son of a bitch!’ The Fang brothers turned their loaded cannon in the direction of the dike, but as Fang Six bent over to light the fuse he was hit in the belly. Green intestines slithered out of the hole. ‘Shit!’ he blurted as he grabbed his belly with both hands and rolled into the sorghum field. The trucks would soon be off the bridge. ‘Fire that cannon!’ Granddad screamed. Fang Seven picked up the smouldering tinder and touched it to the fuse with a shaky hand. It wouldn’t light, it simply wouldn’t light! Granddad rushed up, grabbed the tinder out of his hand, and blew on it. It flared up. He touched it to the fuse. It sizzled, smoked momentarily, then went out with a puff of white smoke. The cannon sat silently, as though dozing. Father just knew it wouldn’t fire.
The Jap truck had already reached the bridgehead, and the second and third trucks had started moving backward to join it. In the river below, several Jap corpses floated eastward, seeping blood that attracted frenzied schools of white eels. After a moment of silence, the cannon belched thunderously, and its iron body leaped high above the dike as a wide swath of fire immolated one of the rice trucks.
The Japs aboard the first truck jumped down onto the dike and set up their machine gun. They opened fire. A bullet slammed into Fang Seven’s face, shattering his nose and splattering Father with blood.
Two Japs in the cab of the blazing truck opened their doors and jumped out, straight into the river. The middle truck, unable to move either way, growled strangely, its wheels spinning. The rice rain continued to fall.
The Jap machine gun abruptly stopped firing, leaving only carbines to pop off an occasional shot. A dozen or so Japs ran at a crouch past the burning truck, heading north with their weapons. Granddad ordered his men to fire, but few responded. The dike was dotted top and bottom with the bodies of soldiers; wounded men were moaning and wailing in the sorghum field. Granddad fired, sending Japs flying off the bridge. Rifle fire from the western side of the road cut down more of them. Their comrades turned tail and ran. A bullet whizzing over from the southern bank of the river struck Granddad below the right shoulder; as his arm jerked, the pistol fell from his hand to hang by its strap from his neck. He backed into the sorghum field. ‘Douguan,’ he cried out, ‘help me.’ Ripping the sleeve of his shirt, he told Father to take a strip of white cloth from his waistband to bind the wound. That was when Father said, ‘Dad, Mom’s asking for you.’
‘Good boy!’ Granddad said. ‘Come help Dad kill every last one of those sons of bitches!’ He reached into his belt, removed the abandoned Browning pistol, and handed it to Father, just as Bugler Liu came crawling up the dike dragging a wounded leg. ‘Shall I blow the bugle, Commander?’
‘Blow it!’ Granddad said.
Kneeling on his good leg, Bugler Liu raised the horn to his lips and sounded it to the heavens; scarlet notes emerged.
‘Charge!’
Granddad’s command was met by shouts from the west side of the road. Holding his pistol in his left hand, he jumped to his feet; bullets whizzed past his cheeks. He hit the ground and rolled back into the sorghum field. A scream of agony rose from the west side of the road, and Father knew that another comrade had been hit.
Bugler Liu sounded his horn once more; the scarlet blast struck the sorghum tips and set them shaking.
Granddad grabbed Father’s hand. ‘Follow me, son.’
Smoke billowed from the trucks on the bridge. Gripping Father’s hand tightly, Granddad darted across the road to the west side; their progress was followed by a hail of bullets. Two soldiers with soot-streaked faces witnessed their approach. ‘Commander,’ they cried through cracked lips, ‘we’re done for!’
Granddad sat down dejectedly in the sorghum field, and a long time passed before he raised his head again. The Japs held their fire. The crackling of burning trucks was answered by periodic blasts from Bugler Liu’s horn.
His fear now gone, Father slipped off and moved west, carefully raising his head to peep through some dead weeds. He watched a Japanese soldier emerge from under the still-unburned canopy of the second truck, open the door, and drag out a skinny old Jap in white gloves and black leather riding boots, a sword on his hip. Hugging the side of the truck, they slipped off the bridge by shinnying down a stanchion. Father raised his Browning, but his hand shook like a leaf, and the old Jap’s ass kept hopping up and down in his sights. He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and fired. The Browning roared: the bullet went straight into the water, turning a white eel belly up. The Jap officer dived into the water. ‘Dad,’ Father yelled, ‘an officer!’
Another explosion went off behind his head, and the old Jap’s skull splintered, releasing a pool of blood on the surface of the water. The second soldier scrambled frantically to the far side of the stanchion.
Granddad pushed Father to the ground as another hail of Jap bullets swept over them and thudded crazily into the field. ‘Good boy,’ Granddad said. ‘You’re my son, all right!’
What Father and Granddad didn’t know was that the old Jap they’d just killed was none other than the famous general Nakaoka Jiko.