He could see the breakers foaming on the coral shelf beyond the beach. However, there was no hope of hearing the soft sound of waves crashing on the shore or the distant squawking of seabirds. This was not a restful beach.
Instead, the breeze off the sea carried the sound of roaring engines from landing craft, Jeeps, a bulldozer or two, and even a few planes overhead. All that engine noise was punctuated by irate shouts. It was easy to pick out the source, because the beach masters were notoriously short tempered and foulmouthed.
Transports ran right up on the beach, and soldiers had stripped to their waists, laboring under the tropical sun to unload the vessels. The toiling troops glistened with sweat, their arms and shoulders and torsos long since tanned nut brown by the tropical sun. You could always tell the replacement troops, because they were either fish-belly white or sunburned as red as a boiled lobster.
They didn’t have an easy task, because the soft sand at the tidal line sucked at their feet with every step. Some men had to work in the actual surf, getting soaked in addition to sunburned.
Watching them work, Deke was reminded of growing up on the farm and all the endless chores, from taking to the fields to hoe weeds to putting up hay. Like these men, he had often stripped off his shirt in the heat, exposing his scars from the bear attack he had survived as a boy. The skin across the scars sometimes felt tight as a drum in the morning. The sun always felt good on them, like it was somehow healing them, but maybe that had been only his imagination.
His sister, Sadie, had worked right alongside him. Even now, Deke rarely took his shirt off, because he was self-conscious about the angry red scars that raked down his side. People asked too many questions. Sadie never commented — she knew well enough how he’d gotten them. She’d been there that awful night.
Watching the laboring soldiers, some of whom bitched and complained the whole time, Deke was sure that Sadie could have worked most of them right into the sand. He grinned at the thought. He and Sadie had come through a lot together. Life on a hardscrabble mountain farm had been hard, but it had gotten a lot worse when the farm had been lost to a greedy banker when the Coles could no longer pay the mortgage.
He missed her and hoped that she was doing all right as a police officer in Washington, DC. It had been a while since he had received a letter from her.
“I could get used to this,” Philly murmured. “Doing nothing and answering to nobody.”
Deke looked over. He had thought that Philly was asleep. Like most soldiers, he could drop off in seconds. Deke always seemed to have a hard time, his thoughts rambling, his senses uneasy about what was out there.
“No, you couldn’t,” Deke said. “After a day of this, you’d be volunteering to head back out on patrol. Worse yet, nobody would let you lay around. You’d find yourself unloading crates.”
“There you go, busting my bubble again. A guy can dream, can’t he?”
“Sure, why not. Dream all you want, Philly. But it just makes it worse when you wake up.”
“Aw, stuff a sock in it, Corn Pone.”
Even after just a few hours on the beach, Deke felt a restlessness settle over him. He cleaned his rifle and sharpened his knife. From time to time, he heard the dull thud of artillery in the distance. It was the sound of unfinished business.
Deke finally allowed himself to doze, but his prediction that they would not be left alone for long was soon proved true. Nobody was going to let them sleep the day away, blissfully forgotten. A shadow soon fell across the lounging men. Deke raised one eyelid to see a young, sweaty private standing over them. He had the nervous look about him that staff clerks tended to get when coming face-to-face with grizzled combat veterans.
“You lost?” Deke drawled.
The private turned out to be a runner from division HQ. He managed to stammer out a message that they were being summoned there.
“Right away,” the runner emphasized, when he saw that the soldiers were making no effort to raise themselves off the sand.
“Yeah, yeah,” Philly said, finally stirring to the point where he managed to lift himself up on one elbow. “Run along now. We’re coming.”
Message delivered, the private appeared glad to retreat. He lost no time trotting away.
“Now what?” Rodeo wondered.
“I’ll bet we’ve done such a crackerjack job that we’re being sent back to Honolulu for some R & R and then on to the States for a Liberty Bond tour. Nothing but steak, booze, and broads.”
“Like hell we are,” Deke said. “It’s never a good thing when somebody comes looking for us. It means there’s a job to do that they can’t find anybody else to do.”
“Or dumb enough to take it,” Philly added.
“Well, there is that,” Deke agreed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Having been summoned to HQ, Deke and the others quickly dismantled their makeshift sun shelter, knowing it was unlikely they’d return. Then the six of them — plus Thor — made their way to the command tent.
They took their time crossing the beach, similar to men on the way to the executioner. Nonetheless, Deke felt a stubborn pride in the fact that when there was a hard job to do, it was usually Patrol Easy that was called to do it.
At this point it was still anybody’s guess why they had been called to HQ, but recent experience indicated that it wouldn’t be to take part in a division cookout and baseball game.
Headquarters was a hubbub of activity, with a steady stream of men and messengers going in all directions. Weary officers and sergeants trudged in and out of the tent that had been set up on the beach. The tent’s canvas flanks were buffeted by the tropical sea breeze. The constant flapping made a sound like a tethered sail. Two guards were posted outside the tent, just in case some diehard Japanese suddenly appeared. Their uniforms had the ragged and filthy appearance that could only be the result of several days spent fighting across the interior following the landing that had taken place on the beach.
“Maybe we’ll get guard duty,” Rodeo said.
“Fat chance of that,” Philly muttered. “Look around. Almost every poor bastard on guard duty is walking wounded. No, they’ve got something else in mind for us.”
One of the guards, a soldier with a thick bandage on his shoulder, reached out to scratch Thor’s ears, but the war dog was having none of that. His warning growl was a low rumble.
“I wouldn’t do that unless you want to lose a hand,” Egan advised.
The soldier quickly withdrew his hand, as if he had just touched a hot stove.
“We’re supposed to meet our lieutenant here,” Deke told him.
“Go on in,” the soldier said, keeping a wary eye on Thor. “But if I were you, I’d leave that dog out here. The Filipino too.”
Egan obliged by taking a cigarette break, Thor sitting beside him. “Fill me in later, fellas.”
But Deke wasn’t going to leave Danilo behind. He turned to the guard. “He’s one of us. He goes where we go.”
The guard squared his shoulders as if he might make an issue of it, but looked away from Deke’s hard glare. “Suit yourself,” the guard replied. He stepped to one side so that they could pass.