“That’s as close as I can get,” said the pilot, who still guided the drifting launch toward the shallows where the waves churned. His hands were poised over the controls, ready to nudge the motor back into life if he needed to.
“All right, boys, this is where we get off,” the lieutenant said. “For God’s sake, try not to drown on the way in.”
As it turned out, the lieutenant had not issued an idle warning. From the launch, the water hadn’t seemed all that deep, and the waves hadn’t looked all that big. However, once they were in the water, it was a different story. They splashed into the sea, their boots on the coral shelf. The tricky part was getting through the surf line where the waves were breaking.
Deke barely heard the pilot’s gruff voice say as if to himself, “Godspeed.” Then the motor kicked into life, the bow turned toward the sea, and the launch glided smoothly away into deeper water, leaving them behind in the churning surf.
It was now up to each man whether he lived or drowned. Sea-foam and salt water filled Deke’s nostrils and throat so that he gasped for air. In the darkness, it was hard to tell where the sky ended and the sea started, adding to his difficulties. He struggled to keep his boots under him as the current surged against his legs and waist. He held his rifle over his head, trying to keep it dry. Before leaving the ship, he had wrapped the entire rifle and scope in plastic, but he still didn’t want to take a chance of getting it wet, considering that they might find themselves in a fight as soon as they set foot on shore.
He stepped in a hole in the coral shelf and felt water surge to his armpits. Despite the tropical climate, the dark water felt cold. It would be a hell of a thing, he thought, to come across the whole damn ocean and drown within sight of shore.
He fought the urge to call out for help — which wouldn’t be coming, anyhow. The men around him were also doing their darnedest not to drown in the surf.
To make matters worse, Deke thought about how their silhouettes must have shown plainly against the backdrop of sky. It wasn’t an ideal situation. The sooner that they got to shore, the better.
He took another step, holding his breath, half expecting to sink in over his head, but, gratefully, he stepped out of the hole.
“Watch your step,” Deke whispered to Rodeo, who was right behind him.
Like Deke with his rifle, Rodeo was struggling to keep the radio out of the water. The precious radio was their only communications link. It, too, had been wrapped tightly in plastic. But the radio was a lot heavier than a rifle, not to mention ungainly, and Rodeo was a couple of inches shorter than Deke. When he stepped into the hole, it reached to his chin. Then a wave came in and Rodeo disappeared underwater. He still held the radio out of the water, but the weight of it was keeping him bogged down in the watery hole.
No one could blame him for what happened next. It was simple human nature. Rodeo’s survival instincts kicked in. He let go of the radio and struggled back up to the surface.
Realizing what he had done, Rodeo dove under and tried to retrieve the radio, which had sunk like a stone. Deke saw that he wasn’t coming back up. He cursed, waded back, and held his rifle out of the surf with his left hand while he groped in the water with his right. He grabbed hold of the back of Rodeo’s collar and dragged him to the surface.
They struggled across what remained of the coral reef and reached the shallow water of the beach, then made it to the sand, where they both collapsed, panting.
Steele came over, limping from where he had banged his knee on the coral. “What the hell happened?”
Rodeo still held on to the radio. He was muttering, “Please, please, please.” He tore off the plastic covering. Water ran out. Though intact, the radio was as dead as a drowned baby.
“I’m sorry, Honcho,” Rodeo sputtered. “I don’t even know what the hell happened.”
“No use crying over spilled milk,” Steele said. “Let’s just get the hell off this beach before somebody spots us and we have even bigger problems than a dead radio.”
If they had been vulnerable in the surf, then it went without saying that their dark silhouettes made even more obvious targets against the sand. If any Jap sentries spotted them, they’d be done for. Considering the intelligence reports that there were thousands of enemy troops stationed within a stone’s throw of the beach, to say that they were vastly outnumbered was an understatement.
Steele ran for the tree line, leading the men off the beach. He kept his shotgun ready — he hadn’t bothered to wrap it up in plastic. A twelve gauge could take a lot of abuse and still fire, even after being dunked in the ocean. Deke didn’t stop to unwrap the plastic from his sniper rifle but held the rifle in one hand and drew a pistol with the other.
Looking down, he could see the tracks that they were all leaving in the sand. It couldn’t be helped. If they were lucky, maybe the tide would come in and wash away the tracks. If not, some Jap patrol would find them in the morning.
Deke also took a quick glance upward, at the hill that rose high above the beach. Not a light showed up there. In the night, the hill was nothing more than a hulking darkness, as sinister as a natural feature of the landscape could be. Deke was reminded of mountains back home that were supposedly haunted — old wives’ tales to laugh about in the daylight and think twice about at night. This was their ultimate destination. Somewhere up there, the Japanese battery was hidden. The hill was located about a mile inland, so they sure as hell had a long way to go to get there.
For the first time, it began to dawn on Deke that maybe — just maybe — they had been given an impossible task.
But there was no time to dwell on that now. Deke put his head down and ran, which wasn’t easy in the deep sand. The lieutenant had managed to outpace them all. You had to hand it to Steele. Once again, he showed that he was in good shape, considering that he was the oldest one here. He was also a natural athlete. He’d gone easy on the cigarettes and scotch so that they didn’t affect his wind. He trotted across the sand on his long legs, forcing the rest of them to keep up.
Deke half expected to see the night light up with tracer fire, but so far all was quiet. Steele dashed into the cover offered by the trees, and the rest of the men followed.
Having reached cover, they fell to their knees, panting from the sheer effort of wading to shore and crossing that beach. In the backs of their minds, they were grateful for the shakedown hike that had been an effort to keep them in shape.
Safely hidden in the trees, they took stock. All of them had made it to shore, although Rodeo was still coughing up salt water after his attempt to rescue the radio. Yoshio had a deep gash on his leg from the coral. The two marines had managed to keep their explosives dry, which was good news.
“You should have let me carry that radio,” Bat said to Rodeo. “I wouldn’t have dropped the damn thing in the water.”
“Go to hell.”
“Yeah? I’ve got news for you. We were supposed to use that radio to call for a ride when we’re done with shoving these explosives up the ass of these Japanese.”
Steele had heard enough. “All right, can it. This isn’t the time for a blame game. Radio or not, there’s going to be a boat waiting for us in a day and a half. We just need to get the job done by then.”
But Bat wasn’t ready to let it go. Like everyone else, he knew that plans change. “Without the radio, what are we gonna do, sir? Shout at them?”
“I said that’s enough. And if you call me sir again, the only place those explosives are going is up your ass. You might as well put a target on my back for every Jap sniper to see when you call me that. Call me Honcho like everybody else.”