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

"Things happen that way, Mr. Weston," Everly said.

"How long ago did the Japs go by?"

"You really didn't see them?" Everly asked wonderingly, and then an-swered the question. "About two minutes ago. They was walking slow. Your ass starts to drag in a hurry, walking through sand."

"I'll take them out when I hear your shot," Weston said. "You make sure whoever's in that rubber boat doesn't leave."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

They rose to their feet and left the protective cover of the jungle. Weston started trotting up the beach, keeping as close to the vegetation as he could.

Within a minute, he realized that Everly was right again. Walking through sand-not to mention trying to run through it-does in fact cause the ass to start dragging in a hurry.

In three minutes, the Japanese came into sight. None of them seemed at all attentive to anything. Weston began to close the distance between himself and them, taking as much solace as he could from the knowledge that his was not the only dragging ass.

When he came out of the jungle, Everly had concealed himself-flat on his stomach-behind a massive outcrop of rock. Suddenly he got to his feet.

The two men were no longer in the boat. After a moment, Everly spotted their heads in the water, and then they began to rise higher and higher from the water, dragging the boat behind them. Finally, they were on the beach. They were dressed in what looked like utilities dyed black, and they had some kind of black grease rubbed on their faces. Even so, one of them looked familiar.

Everly stepped from behind the rock.

"McCoy, is that you?" he called.

"Who's that?"

"Everly."

"Give us a hand with the boat," McCoy ordered.

Everly walked quickly to the edge of the water. Up close, the man with McCoy looked seventeen years old.

"We got a problem," Everly announced.

"What kind of a problem?"

"Four Japs, about five hundred yards down the beach," Everly said. Then he raised his Thompson to his shoulder, raised the muzzle into the air and pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out.

Weston had been waiting for the signal. The four Japanese soldiers were walk-ing slowly in a file, not more than twenty yards in front of him. Weston was really surprised that they didn't seem to have any idea that they were being shadowed.

He was carrying the Thompson-with growing difficulty; he was running out of breath-much like a quail hunter carries his shotgun when he expects a covey to flush. He was prepared to fire instantly.

He was aware of the analogy, and the differences. Quail hunters do not usually run through sand; no shotgun he had ever held was nearly as heavy as the Thompson; and quail flush, they do not turn and shoot back.

He had the Thompson to his shoulder and had drawn a sight on the lead Japanese before the first Japanese, hearing the shots, turned in the action of unslinging his Arisaka rifle from his shoulder.

Time seemed to move very slowly.

The first Jap bent his knees and dropped in his tracks. The second and third Japanese in the file fell over forward. The last Japanese, in the act of shoulder-ing his Arisaka, took a four-round burst in the chest and fell over backward.

Weston ran forward to them, the Thompson still at his shoulder. The first and third Japanese showed signs of life. Without really thinking what he was doing, Weston took his Nambu pistol-already carrying a round in the cham-ber-and shot both of them in the head.

A little sanity returned. He felt a twinge of nausea at the sight of the blood and brain matter on the sand.

And then, in a reflex action, Weston stripped each of the bodies of their ammunition, gathered up the Arisakas, and, staggering under the weight, started back to where he had left Everly.

"What the hell..." McCoy asked just before they heard the four bursts- three short and one long burst-from Weston's Thompson.

"Captain Weston was waiting for my signal before taking them out," Ev-erly said.

McCoy turned to the kid.

"Koffler, go see if you can help down there," he ordered.

"Aye, aye, Sir," Koffler responded, pulled a Colt.45 pistol from under his dyed-black utilities, and started to run down the beach.

"He's a little young, isn't he, McCoy?" Everly asked as he and McCoy dragged the rubber boat across the narrow beach and into the jungle.

McCoy didn't reply.

"Is it safe enough to bring in a couple more boats?" he asked.

"Your call, McCoy," Everly replied. "I think that was all the Japs for right now, but I don't know that."

McCoy took a black bag of some kind from the boat, then took a knife, a daggerlike weapon, from a sheath strapped to his arm and sliced at the bag.

Jesus Christ, I'll be a monkey's uncle if that isn't the same knife he used to cut those Italian Marines! Everly thought in wonder.

Then McCoy had a microphone in his hand and was pulling what looked like an automobile antenna out of a black box.

"Coffin, Coffin, Columbus, Columbus."

"Go ahead, Columbus. Read you five by five."

"Coffin, send in two repeat two boats."

"Understand two boats. On the way."

"Who the hell are you talking to, Killer?" Everly asked.

McCoy didn't reply, directly.

"I guess they didn't hear that Thompson," he said. "Otherwise I probably would have been talking to nobody."

Then he touched Everly's arm, and when Everly looked at him, nodded out to sea.

The conning tower of the Sunfish rose from the sea. Before her deck broke water, there was activity on her bridge.

Two officers appeared-identifiable by their brimmed caps. And then four or five sailors. A.50 caliber machine gun appeared and was quickly put in its mount. There was the glint of gleaming, belted cartridges as the gun was charged.

The national colors sprouted on a mast, their red, white, and blue suddenly vivid in the early-morning sun against the wet gray of the Sunfish. The officers and sailors in the conning tower saluted as the wind whipped the flag straight.

A port in the conning tower burst open and sailors poured out, some to man the four-inch cannon mounted forward, some rushing to open ports in her deck. Two rubber boats suddenly inflated on the Sunfish's deck, and were quickly put over the side.

"Shit!" Everly said, his voice breaking. "Look at that fucking flag, will you?"

Weston and Koffler came running back down the beach while the two rubber boats making their way to shore were still a hundred yards offshore.

"Got them all!" Weston reported excitedly, even jubilantly. "We dragged the bodies off the beach."

"Mr. Weston, th1s is Killer McCoy," Everly said.

"Fuck you, Everly," McCoy snapped.

"McCoy, this is Captain Weston," Everly said.

McCoy, smiling, saluted.

"Lieutenant McCoy, Sir," he said. "Captain, you need a shave."

"I'm Sergeant Koffler, Sir," Koffler said to Captain Weston. "We didn't have time for introductions back there."

"How do you do, Sergeant?" Weston replied formally.

"You're a sergeant?" Everly asked incredulously.

"He's a staff sergeant," McCoy said, chuckling. "Zimmerman-he's in one of those boats-is a gunny."

Weston looked out to sea and saw the rubber boats and then the Sunfish, with her colors streaming proudly from her mast. And then he realized that tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his chest was heaving with sobs he couldn't control.

[THREE]

"Do you have any people with you, Captain?" McCoy asked.

"No. It's just Lieutenant Everly and myself," Weston said.

" 'Lieutenant' Everly?" McCoy asked.

"The General commissioned me, McCoy," Everly said.

"What were you before the war, Captain?" McCoy asked.

"I was a lieutenant. I'm an aviator," Weston said.

Hearing what he said, he realized that he no longer felt like an aviator. It seemed impossible that he had ever done anything like that.