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“It will work, all right,” Honcho said confidently. He added more quietly, “Because it has to.”

Any plan was bound to fall apart, but if and when it did, you had to improvise. Lieutenant Steele wasn’t entirely sure what their plan B would end up being if it came to that, so he hoped to hell that the diversion involving Yoshio and the Filipino guerrillas, and Deke and Philly, was going to work.

When he heard the shooting begin on the slope below, he felt an enormous sense of relief. It also meant that it was time for him and his team to hold up their end of the bargain.

“All right, boys,” he said. “It’s showtime. Bat, Ball, you two get that satchel charge into the bunker.”

“I dunno, Honcho. It’s maybe gonna take more than that to knock out those guns.”

“Then get in there and figure it out,” he said impatiently. “You two are the demolition experts. The rest of us will cover you.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

Ball was carrying the satchel charge, but Bat held up several grenades that he had strung together. They dangled from his big hands like bunches of steel fruit.

“What’s that?”

“That’s me figuring it out.”

Lieutenant Steele waved a hand, and the patrol moved forward. The bunker entrance loomed ahead. Closer, closer. He could see Japanese troops scurrying around inside. What they were up to was anybody’s guess.

Approaching one of the Nambu nests, he leveled his twelve gauge. Incredibly, they were only a few yards away. The Japs were so focused on the sounds of combat from down the slope that none of them paid any attention to the crouching forms running at them from the rear.

Honcho pulled the trigger of the shotgun. Boom!

Quickly, Rodeo, Alphabet, and the handful of Filipinos spread out and opened fire. There were not enough of them to overwhelm the bunker defenses, but all they needed was a little time.

“Go! Go!” Honcho shouted at Bat and Ball.

The two marines went running straight up the middle, headed for the bunker entrance. It was like they were running a football play, heading for the end zone. The image was helped by the sight of Ball running with the satchel charge tucked under one arm like a football.

Yesterday, the sniper had winged Bat just as he’d been about to throw the satchel, messing up his toss. The charge had bounced off the mouth of the cave. They didn’t plan on making the same mistake today.

Somehow, the men had managed to dodge the mines. Bat held back and crouched to one side of the cave entrance while Ball dashed inside, surprising the hell out of the Japanese troops within. He hurled the satchel deep into the bunker, then turned on a dime and raced back out, throwing himself to one side of the bunker entrance as he did so.

Steele could see the shock wave like a clear bubble pushing out of the bunker’s mouth. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for the deafening blast. Dirt and grit scoured his face. As if through a dusty curtain, he could hear muffled screaming from the poor Jap bastards who had been caught inside the bunker when the satchel charge went off.

The marines had done good, he thought. But apparently, they were not finished. Bat and Ball went running back into the swirling dirt and dust inside the bunker, rather than away from it.

What the hell? Then Steele thought about those bunches of grenades that Bat had carried, and he had an inkling of what the two planned to do. They were going to spike the guns, just in case the satchel charge hadn’t been enough.

It was likely that neither man had planned on making it back out, but Steele would be damned if he was going to leave them behind. He pumped the shotgun and fired at the nearest Jap who dared to stick his head up after the blast.

Boom!

Around him, the others kept up a withering fire when they should have been beating it out of there toward the rendezvous point. He glanced at the cave entrance but didn’t see anything but more smoke. What the hell was taking Bat and Ball so long?

He fired again and again. Boom! Boom!

Then the shotgun shucked out the last empty shell.

Before Steele had a chance to reload, Bat and Ball came barreling out of the bunker. The sounds of the explosions that chased them out were anticlimactic, sounding more like a firecracker going off inside a pipe compared to the massive blast earlier. But judging by the grins on the marines’ faces, it had been enough.

“Go!” Steele shouted. “Everybody go!”

They beat a hasty retreat back around the bunker to the supply trail. A couple of the Filipino guerrillas had been killed, but otherwise everyone was none the worse for wear. It was time to head for the rendezvous and maybe, just maybe, there would be a boat waiting for them back down at the beach.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Deke lowered his rifle when he saw that it was Lieutenant Steele who had burst out of the forest and into the clearing. Upon spotting friendly faces, Steele lowered his shotgun.

“I never thought I’d say it, but you guys are a sight for sore eyes. Or sore eye, in my case.”

“We were afraid you might be Japs,” Philly said.

“I have a feeling they aren’t far behind.”

More men entered the clearing. First came Rodeo and Alphabet, followed by a handful of Filipinos, and finally Father Francisco.

The priest’s gaze swept over the American soldiers, then around the clearing, searching for the men who weren’t there. “What happened to the local men?” he asked.

The lieutenant’s questioning gaze fell upon Deke, Philly, and Yoshio, who shook their heads in the negative.

“I’m sorry, Padre. It looks like your men didn’t make it.”

“None of them?”

Deke felt for the priest, who suddenly looked forlorn, standing there in his tattered cassock, in the middle of a jungle clearing, in the shadow of the dying rosewood tree. In places they could still see charred patches where those dead men had built their cooking fires that morning, some of them with wives or children they would never be returning to.

He spoke up. “They didn’t die for nothing, though. They bought us the time we needed to take out those guns. They were the real heroes today.”

He wasn’t going to add that some of them had died from having their heads cut off by the Japanese. The priest didn’t necessarily need to know that part — not at the moment, anyhow.

The priest nodded, then made the sign of the cross.

They had no time to mourn the dead, however. Not if the living hoped to stay that way.

“All right, let’s get the hell out of here,” Honcho said. “We gave the Japs a real gut punch this morning, but they aren’t going to stay down for long. You know the Japs. They keep coming no matter what.”

There were a few items in the clearing that the priest wanted to retrieve, considering that he likely wouldn’t be able to return once the Japanese started beating the bushes for the raiders. While he did that, Philly turned to Bat and Ball. “Did you really blow up those guns? I was starting to wonder if it was even possible.”

“We sure as hell did,” Bat said, looking pleased with himself. “Ball here shoved that satchel charge right down the Japs’ throat.”

“It went boom, all right,” Ball added. “I think we ended up exploding some of their munitions. But we were worried that the guns would come through all that, you know?”

“So we climbed up there and shoved a handful of grenades down the barrels for good measure. I’ve always wanted to try that to see what happened. Anyhow, it worked. It was like a firecracker going down your gullet.”

“It seemed to do the trick,” Ball agreed. “It was like a Boy Scout tied a knot inside those barrels.”