He released, and the arrow flashed through the tunnel of greenery.
The fighter that he had been aiming at remained standing. Yamagata grunted in disappointment, thinking at first that he had missed. Then he saw the fighter stare down at the copious amounts of blood now running through a hole in his torso. Yamagata realized that the arrow had struck with such force that it had gone right through the Filipino. He watched as the man coughed up blood and then sank to his knees.
Yamagata had no more clear targets through the undergrowth. He did not want to waste arrows that would be deflected by the twigs, leaves, and branches. He put down his bow and drew his pistol from the holster on his hip.
To his men hiding in the brush nearby, he gave the order to fire.
Their first volley was devastating, cutting down several of the Filipinos, who were taken by total surprise. His men worked their bolt-action rifles and fired again.
The element of surprise did not last long. After all, the guerrillas were experienced jungle fighters. They managed to hold back the Japanese advancing up the path while also dealing with the fact that they had been flanked.
Bullets tore through the greenery where the Japanese hid. Yamagata threw himself flat. Nearby he heard one or two of his men cry out as they were hit.
From the direction of the trail, he heard a shout as several of the guerrillas launched themselves into the forest, their long bolo knives flashing. It was more than evident how they planned to deal with any Japanese they caught.
Yamagata crawled away, figuring that his men would have to fend for themselves. In the thick brush, he didn’t even know where they were — until he heard the scream of a soldier being dealt with by a razor-edged bolo knife.
Out of nowhere, an enemy fighter appeared a few feet away. Yamagata was practically on his belly, so he thought that the man might pass him by. But then the Filipino looked down and caught sight of him. Giving a grunt of surprise, the guerrilla lifted his arm to slash at Yamagata, but the colonel fired his pistol at nearly point-blank range. The bolo knife fell from the enemy fighter’s grasp, and his body slumped into the undergrowth.
Yamagata kept crawling until the sounds of the struggle faded and he was confident that he was alone. Slowly, he got back to his feet. He had dragged his bow along with him. He took a moment to reload his pistol, just in case he still had to deal with any more of the guerrilla fighters.
But Yamagata did not circle back and return to his own troops. Instead, he pressed deeper into the forest, following what he hoped was a parallel course to the jungle trail that the American raiders were using as their line of retreat. He knew that his men were in capable hands with Sergeant Matsueda, and even, he reluctantly had to admit, with Lieutenant Osako. Those two would press the pursuit for now.
What Yamagata planned to do was get close enough to the trail to use his bow and arrow to pick off the raiders. He felt empowered by his success just now with the bow, which had been silent and deadly.
Colonel Yamagata was on the hunt, just as he had once done as a boy. Back then, he had pursued deer and wild boar, but the game he hunted now was far more enticing.
On the trail, Father Francisco was busy directing his fighters with one breath and cursing the enemy with the next. He had long since stopped being conflicted about his ire toward the enemy. Of course he was careful not to use the Lord’s name in vain, but he stuck with some of the American slang he had picked up. “Sons of bitches!” he shouted toward the jungle. The sight of the priest, dressed in his homespun brown robes, shaking his fist at the enemy and cursing, was equal parts comical and terrifying as he poured the wrath of God upon them.
Some of his men raced into the trees to deal with the soldiers that had flanked them, and he turned his attention to the dead and dying men on the trail.
“Madre de Dios!” Father Francisco cried out, taking in the horrifying sight of a man with an arrow jutting from his neck. It was bad enough to see a man die from a bullet, but seeing a man shot with an arrow was a new experience — one that the priest wished that he could have avoided.
The guerrilla had already gasped his last. The priest crossed himself, then knelt to give the man last rites and absolve him of sin.
“Exaudi nos, Domine sancte,” he mumbled in Latin, using his thumb to trace the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead. “Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus.” Hear us, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God. The intonations of the prayer managed to transcend the grisly scenes of combat in the midst of the dark jungle. Caught up in his prayers, the priest took no notice of the bullets cutting the air around him.
The presence of the priest was a comfort to the guerrillas and a motivating factor — the men knew that he would absolve them of sin and ease their way to the afterlife.
No sooner had Father Francisco finished with his duties than an arrow flashed past him, narrowly missing the priest. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the white blur of the arrow’s fletching.
He raised his fist and shouted, “Sons of bitches!”
There were plenty of bullets tearing through the brush, but it seemed to be the arrows that the men feared the most. Such a brutal weapon had worn away some of their resolve. The guerrilla fighters retreated, slowly giving up ground. Step by step, the Japanese were rolling them back, forcing their way closer to the retreating POWs. If they could get past the hard shell of the guerrillas’ rear guard, they could then rip into the soft underbelly of the column.
It was now a running battle along the forest path. For both the pursuers and the pursued, everything was at stake.
Now that he was armed again, Deke moved toward the rear of the column with Philly in tow. They both knew that their best hope lay in delaying the enemy that was closing in on them.
“It’s a long way from here back to our lines,” Philly noted. “We are definitely on our own. Any ideas?”
“Honcho is on the front porch, so we’ll mind the back door,” Deke said.
He felt eager for some measure of revenge against his captors, however short his “stay” with them had been. He ignored the fact that he was still sore and aching from his brief imprisonment. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like to be in their clutches for weeks or even months. Now that he had his rifle back, he figured that it was time for some good ol’ American whomp-ass.
But the situation he found at the rear of the column quickly disabused him of that notion. He passed a badly wounded Filipino, and then another, both men making their way forward to join the main part of the column. There hadn’t been that many guerrilla fighters to begin with — they were outnumbered by the Japanese garrison that was pursuing them, so that each loss of a fighter was felt keenly. The sound of gunfire seemed to be growing louder.
“I don’t like the looks of this — or the sound of it, for that matter,” Deke said.
“Me neither,” Philly agreed.
They soon ran into Father Francisco, who was helping a wounded man up the trail. The priest appeared more unkempt than usual, with bits of leaves and twigs sticking to his cassock, his dark hair mussed. He even looked a bit wild eyed, like a horse that had caught the scent of a mountain lion.
“Padre, what’s happening?” Deke asked.
“There are too many of them,” he explained simply. “They got into the woods and flanked us. They are even shooting arrows.”
“Arrows?” Deke knew all too well who had been firing those arrows.
The warrior-priest waved at the empty trail behind him to indicate that he was the last defender. “I will regroup my men farther up the trail, and we will hold them off as long as we can.”