Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

After a moment, the general said, “Despite it all, ill-advised as it is, you do form bonds in a war.” He nodded across the ward. “ My next stop’s my driver.”

“Marco? He’s checked into this hotel, too?”

“Yes. And no, we didn’t crash or wind up in a ditch — simple dysentery.” Wainwright reached out and patted the patient’s arm. “Tell you what, Captain — I’ll take Corporal Satariano on as my driver for the next few days. My current replacement’s a Nervous Nellie whose goal seems to be driving slow enough to make a good target.”

Wermuth chuckled, but his face was quite serious as he said, “I appreciate this, Skinny. Owe you one.”

Arching an eyebrow, the general said, “Who’s counting?”

With some effort, Wermuth rolled to his side. His voice soft, to keep the conversation private, he asked, “What do you hear?”

All of the implications of those four simple words were immensely clear to Wainwright. A few weeks before, he’d been confident of victory; but now his command was running out of food, medicine, and even bullets — so hope was in short supply, as well.

The general said, sotto voce, “There’s a strong sentiment stateside that MacArthur should not be permitted to remain on the Rock.”

Wermuth’s face retained its bland expression, but his eyes died a little.

Wainwright chose his words carefully. “If America’s greatest hero were to be captured or killed, the home front would take a terrible hit.”

The propaganda value of a defeated MacArthur would be enormous — another indication, post-Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese were indeed invincible.

“But if he withdraws...” Wermuth began.

The captain did not complete the thought; he didn’t have to — both men knew that MacArthur leaving would be a clear signal to the Philippines garrison... and to the entire world... that the USA’s commitment to the islands was over.

“We’ll know more soon,” Wainwright said, rising. “The Old Man wants to see me tomorrow.”

“Tell him we can still win this.”

“You know I will... Now, where can I find this corporal of yours?”

The following morning — clear and hot, typical March Bataan weather — General Wainwright broke in his new driver, who’d been summoned to him from the bivouac of the Scouts.

“You come highly recommended by Captain Wermuth,” the general told the corporal, as they stood beside the open scout car. “And you’ll be back in action as soon as he is.”

“Good to hear, sir,” the boy said in a clear second tenor.

So this was the one the Filipino Scouts called un Demonio Angelico . My God but he was young-looking! Satariano — what was that, Sicilian?

“This isn’t a tommy gun,” the general said, handing his personal Garand rifle to the boy, “but I know it will be in good hands. And so will I.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Accompanying the general were his aides, Lieutenant Colonel John Pugh and Major Tom Dooley. Pugh, black-haired with close-set eyes and a spade-shaped face with perpetual five o’clock shadow, rode in back with Wainwright. Dooley — whose keen dark eyes in his narrow handsome face seemed to miss nothing — rode in front with the young driver. The Garand rifle leaned between them.

Dooley said to Satariano, “Keep an eye on the sky. It’s a perfect day for strafing.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said, and slipped on sunglasses.

In back, Pugh said to the general, “Do we know what MacArthur wants?”

“No clue.”

The drive to Mariveles — home to the naval base, or anyway the remnants thereof — should take an hour and a half, or would with a driver not afraid of his own shadow. The general was pleased the boy, taking the trip at a good clip, seemed an experienced wheelman.

The first leg took them along a single-track road down the rather bare hillside, and the lower they went, the thicker the underbrush, which seemed to swallow the great naked trees. Before long the command car pulled onto the main road.

As usual, Wainwright passed the time quizzing his two aides on cavalry tactics and military strategy. The war felt far away, distant firing punctuating the conversation, and giving weight to the points the general made.

The last leg of the journey took the open vehicle under a cooling canopy of foliage so thick, the sun was blotted out. Military traffic was light this morning, but the leaves nonetheless wore a coating of dust, as did the vines and bushes, reflecting the heavy use this main highway received.

“I will speak frankly,” the general was saying, “if I may have all of your discretion.”

Everyone but the driver, apparently not listening, nodded.

“Ranking officers failing to visit troops at the front lines,” Wainwright said, “is a blunder.”

The general did not have to mention MacArthur by name.

“All we have to offer our people right now is morale,” Wainwright continued, the vehicle finally exiting from under the canopy of foliage into bright sunlight.

General Wainwright’s lecture had the attention of everyone in the car, with the exception of Michael Satariano, who was looking directly at the sun through squinting eyes and tinted glasses.

The corporal, though he said nothing, had noticed a black speck on the sun, like a blemish on its fiery surface.

But then that speck grew larger, ever larger, as it hurtled down out of the blazing ball into the blue and — growing wings, which dipped from side to side — bore in on them.

Satariano said, “Brace yourselves!”

The brakes screamed, and the vehicle jerked to a stop, each man flung forward but restrained by his safety strap.

“Out of the car!” the driver yelled. “Now!”

For a split second, the general and his aides were frozen in shock.

As the engine/propeller thrum grew to a roar, Satariano turned and in a blur of motion unfastened the safety strap across the general’s seat and seized the man by the arm and pulled him from the car like a fireman’s rescue in a burning building. Locked in their sudden embrace, the corporal and general rolled down a ditch into a thorny bush.

Dooley and Pugh followed unceremoniously, diving in for cover just as machine-gun chatter joined the thrum and swoop, and the percussive music of bullets chewing up metal and shattering glass told the story of an empty vehicle receiving a welcome meant for all of them.

As the officers clung to the bushes, Satariano, rifle in hand, ran up and out of the ditch and into the road.

“Corporal!” Pugh yelled. “It’s coming back.”

“I know,” Satariano said, positioning himself just behind the shot-up car, taking aim.

And down the Jap Zero came, for another strafing pass, so close the Rising Suns on the wings and its retracted landing gear were vividly apparent, and bullets danced down the road, making powdery impressions.

Satariano stood his ground, aiming, and the plane was about at treetop level when the corporal fired three times and the Zero fired many more than that, chewing up the car. Then, behind spiderwebbed blood-spattered glass, the pilot slumped forward, swooping by.

This was a sight the general and his aides could see very well, from their front-row position.

The plane slammed hard to earth nose-first, just to the right of the roadside at the edge of a cane field, the crash both sickening and satisfying as metal met the ground, a sound that disappeared within the larger explosion as orange flame and billowing smoke marked the spot.

The general — giddy with the thrill of having survived this assault and witnessing a remarkable feat of courage — strode out of the ditch with his aides bringing up the rear.

But the boy was no longer standing.