W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

"I'll go," Weston said immediately.

"Can you ride a motorcycle, Mr. Weston?" Lieutenant Everly asked.

"It can't be that hard," Weston said. "It's only a bicycle with a motor, right? I can ride a bike."

"I'll go," Everly said. "I can ride a motorcycle."

"You'll both go," General Fertig said. "You will both attempt to make your presence known to the submarine, if there is a submarine. If there is a submarine, Captain Weston will remain on the beach to do whatever has to be done, and Lieutenant Everly will get back on the motorcycle to establish con-tact with the patrol which Captain Hedges will be leading from here, and lead it to the rendezvous point. If there is no submarine, Lieutenant Everly will meet Captain Hedges, who will then return the patrol here. In that circumstance, you will have to get back here by yourself, Weston."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"We will have to establish, right now, the path of the patrol, and Everly will have to memorize it. It would be best, Weston, if you were unaware of the patrol's route."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

The thinking behind that isn't hard to figure out, Weston thought. There is a very good chance that I'll be captured. If I don't know the patrol's route, then I can't tell the Japanese, no matter what they do to me.

"When the patrol leaves, we will relocate Headquarters, USFIP," Fertig said. "If this maneuver proves successful, I will get word of the new location to you. If it doesn't, it won't matter whether you know where we are or not."

"Yeah," Lieutenant Everly said thoughtfully, and quickly corrected him-self: "Yes, Sir."

"Captain Weston, would you please give my compliments to Captain Hedges and ask him to join me?"

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Sergeant LaMadrid, would you please instruct Lieutenant Everly in the operation of your motorcycle, and then, using the new Marine Hymn substitu-tion code, transmit the following message to both Australia and Pearl Harbor: 'We'll bring the hot dogs. Fertig.' "

"Sir," Weston said.

"What is it?"

"May I suggest the message be 'We'll try to bring the hot dogs'?"

"Oh, ye of little faith," Fertig said. "Send 'We'll bring the hot dogs,' Sergeant LaMadrid."

"Yes, Sir," Sergeant LaMadrid said.

[TWO]

Approximately 30 miles south of Boston

Davao Oriental Province

Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines

0501 Hours 24 December 1942

It was raining. It had alternated between raining and drizzling all night. The road was slippery and they spilled five times, but suffered nothing more than damaged egos and Christ only knew how much mud and slime forced into the actions of their weapons.

United States Forces in the Philippines, having decreed a state of martial law, had issued an order that all road signs that might be useful to the Japanese be destroyed, removed, moved, obliterated, or otherwise rendered unusable. The Filipinos had carried out the order with an efficiency that disheartened and frustrated Captain Weston. Since they couldn't go into Boston and start count-ing from there, he needed road markers to tell them how far they were south of Boston.

The next-to-last spill occurred when Weston spotted a nearly concealed concrete mile marker the Filipinos had missed. He applied the brakes too sud-denly when he wanted a closer look.

Using Mile Marker 19 as a reference point, they continued 10.0 miles far-ther down what had been Highway 1. And then, hiding the motorcycle a hun-dred yards off the road-in a spot where Weston was convinced it would next be seen by archaeologists in the year 1999-they proceeded on foot through the rain-soaked jungle until they heard, but did not see, the surf crashing on the beach.

They then proceeded at approximately a hundred yards' distance from the beach-and the Japanese patrols that might be on the beach-until they reached the tip of what Weston would never forget was called a promontory.

Not without effort, they climbed the tallest trees they could find that might offer a view of the shoreline and ocean, then climbed down again when they could see nothing but other trees. Everly fell the last twenty feet and sprained his ankle. This would pose problems when the time came for him to return to the motorcycle, presuming he could find the motorcycle.

Then, with one hundred yards separating them-if there was a patrol, one of them might stand a chance of escaping-they crawled through the steaming slime to the end of the vegetation, and there took up their vigil.

To protect them both against an inadvertent discharge in case the trigger snagged in the vegetation, Captain Weston had carried his weapon without a round ready to be chambered and fired when he pulled the trigger. Now, his heart leaping, he pulled back the bolt on the Thompson, rolled over on his back, and prepared to fire at whatever was coming through the jungle at him.

"Easy, Mr. Weston," Everly hissed. "Easy does it."

"You scared the shit out of me."

"Did you see the Japs?"

Weston's heart jumped. He shook his head, no.

"Four of them, headed north," Everly said. "A corporal and three pri-vates."

"They've gone?"

Everly nodded.

"Then what's the problem?"

"There's two people out there in a black rubber boat," Everly said.

Weston looked. Visibility was very poor, and the sea very wide, but eventually he saw two men, dressed in black, in a small, black rubber boat, their backs bent to lower their silhouette, paddling slowly through the black water toward the shore.

"Jesus Christ!"

"The Japs may come back, or they may not," Everly said. "Your call, Mr. Weston."

"What do you mean, 'my call'?"

"Do you want to take the chance that they won't come back? If they do come back, they're going to see the boat for sure. If they haven't already seen it, and already started somewhere where they can report it. They didn't have a radio that I could see."

Weston thought the situation over.

"I don't think they're just marching down the beach," Everly went on. "A truck must have put them off down that way." He pointed south. "They'll have a walk on the beach, and the truck will pick them up somewhere down that way." He pointed north. "Unless they climb a telephone pole and tap into the line, which I don't think is likely, they're going to have to go someplace, in the truck, to get on a telephone. Even if they seen the boat, four of them aren't going to do anything; they'd want more people, and they sure as hell are under orders to report something like this."

"Yes," Weston agreed, feeling grossly incompetent.

"So the question is do we want to take them out, in case they seen the boat, or in case they come back? If they do, they damned sure will see the boat. Or are we going to hope we're lucky?"

"I think we had better take them out," Weston decreed, with what he hoped was far more assurance than he felt.

"That means you'll have to take them out, by yourself," Everly said.

"Your goddamned ankle!" Weston said.

"I didn't do it on purpose, Mr. Weston," Everly said. "And one of us is going to have to stay here anyway. If those guys in the boat hear shooting, we don't want them paddling back to the sub."

"Shit!"

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"Of course."

"You go after the Japs. If you stick close to the jungle and don't make too much noise, you ought to be able to catch up to them without them suspecting anything. It's going to take those guys in the boat five minutes to make shore. That'll give you enough time to catch up with the Japs, unless they decide to turn around. When the boat makes shore, I'll fire a shot. Then you take out the Japs. They're all bunched up; you should be able to do it easy. And then we'll take it from there."

"Goddamn it, why did they have to patrol this lousy section of beach right now?"