The press made great play on "the new Tobruk," and "the new Bastogne," even though the latter hadn't happened yet. But that was just propaganda-what Colonel Jones called "spin." Small teams of Special Forces were operating up and down the coast, disrupting the Japanese rear areas with great effect, and the reports they sent back of atrocities against the civilian population were enough to reduce the prime minister to tears in his private moments.
The PM was staring at a map in the briefing room-a lecture theater that had yet to hold its first class. Paul Robertson, his principal private secretary, wondered what the other men and women in the room saw in that map. MacArthur seemed fixated on his great defensive line, the arc of Allied Forces blocking the Japanese drive south. Jones and the senior 2 Cav officer, Brigadier Barnes and his SAS colleague, Major Horan, undoubtedly saw hundreds of miles of exposed Japanese flank, just begging to be ripped open. He knew that General Blamey, the contemporary Australian land force commander saw twenty thousand miles of largely indefensible coastline. New Zealand's senior representative General Freyburg probably saw the distance that remained between the leading edge of Japanese expansion and his homeland across the Tasman Sea.
As for the others, about a dozen staff officers, two of them women from the Multinational Force, the former banker had no idea.
"We are attriting the enemy into defeat," MacArthur insisted, repeatedly flicking the screen that one of Brigadier Barnes's young ladies had set up. Robertson wondered where he'd picked up that terrible word-attriting. "He's bleeding out, I tell you, gentlemen. He cannot sustain these losses and he cannot be reinforced. We don't want to risk upsetting this excellent arrangement by letting Colonel Jones and Brigadier Barnes go gallivanting across the countryside. Their remote-sensor coverage and fire support are in large part responsible for denying Homma the city. Every time he moves, we hit him. Soon there will be nothing left to hit."
Barnes remained silent and unmoving, but Jones bowed his head and rubbed wearily at his eyes. "General," he rumbled in a deep bass voice. "We are not going to remove all of the surveillance assets from the line, nor the Crusader guns. They will remain in place and be staffed by our specialists to make sure you retain full coverage. But we can roll up the Japanese in a fraction of the time if we get our armor on the move, and around into their rear."
MacArthur's thinly compressed lips warned of an explosive retort, but Prime Minister Curtin calmed him down with a gesture. "General, you've had my full support at every point in this campaign, but I must tell you I am not willing to allow these animals an extra day's grace. While we sit here jawboning, they are torturing and raping and murdering with impunity, up and down the coast."
MacArthur was becoming visibly angry, but he maintained a better working relationship with Curtin than he had with anyone in the Roosevelt administration. "Prime Minister, I can understand that," he said in a placatory tone. "But it won't be that much longer. We can-"
"If I might, Mr. Curtin."
Everyone turned to face Brigadier Michael Barnes. High spots of color flared on MacArthur's cheeks at being interrupted so abruptly, but the Australian continued in his flat nasal accent.
"This morning we received an encrypted burst from a long-range SAS patrol around Bundaberg. You need to see this."
Barnes thumbed a control wand, and the theater map disappeared, replaced by a movie, quite obviously shot in stealth. The cameraman-or woman, Robertson supposed-was lying in scrub, on a raised position overlooking what appeared to be a schoolyard. A number of civilians, maybe three dozen of them, were being bruted into a rough circle by a platoon of Japanese soldiers.
Major Horan provided a commentary. "This vision was taken by a four-man patrol. The Japanese have established a major garrison and staging post at Bundaberg, which had a prewar population of approximately thirteen thousand people."
As the officer spoke, seemingly without emotion, two soldiers in the movie clubbed an old man to death in front of the other prisoners. Robertson felt ill just watching it. The PM's face twisted with revulsion. Most of the time travelers, he noted, did not react with anything like the same intensity, although Brigadier Barnes's jaw muscles were moving slowly, as though he was grinding his teeth.
"The civilian population have been separated from the small contingent of Allied personnel who were based in the town, all of whom, as best we can tell, have been executed. The civilians are being held in a large open area on the banks of the Burnett River. During the day they are employed building earthwork defenses. There is very little food or water, and casualties are estimated at thirty percent to date."
"Good God," breathed the prime minister. "Are they giving any succor to the women and children, Major?"
"None whatsoever," replied Horan. Brigadier Barnes handed him the video control, and the officer brought up a new window within the main display. Hundreds of children, some of them little more than toddlers, were shown working in a large excavation. The focus zoomed in on two small boys scraping away at the dirt with toy shovels. Their arms were engulfed in spasms. When one stopped digging, the other appeared to encourage him, but to no avail. The picture began to shake a little, but steadied itself again. The lower half of a Japanese soldier appeared and kicked the child who had stopped working in the head. Audible gasps filled the briefing room, followed by several groans and protests when the other boy attacked the soldier, only to be run through with a bayonet.
Robertson heard a strangled sob somewhere nearby, but he couldn't identify the source. It may well have been Curtin. The fight seemed to have gone out of MacArthur. He was standing, his shoulders slumped, his face a picture of pure horror. Robertson recalled that the general had a son of about the same age as the boys in the video.
Horan closed the pop-up window, returning them to the scene at the schoolyard, where Robertson was mortified to see that many of the prisoners had been killed. An untidy scattering of headless bodies lay in front of the survivors, mostly women, who were silently screaming as a boy-who couldn't have been more than ten years old-was forced to his knees in front of a Japanese officer wielding a long sword.
Curtin's voice boomed out. "I think we've seen enough, Major Horan."
The screen went blank, for which Robertson would be forever grateful.
"Was there nothing your men could do, Major?"
The PM's adviser was surprised to find that he himself had asked the question.
"It's a four-man patrol, sir, under orders to remain undetected. They have endeavoured to collect enough identifying material so that the responsible enemy combatants may be sanctioned when the opportunity arises."
"We're still a long way from war-crimes tribunals," said Freyburg, the New Zealander.
Brigadier Barnes replied before Horan could speak. "Actually, sir, under ADF Standing Rules of Engagement, enemy combatants apprehended in the course of, or after the commission of, crimes against humanity are to be summarily executed without recourse to appeal."
The statement fell into empty space, the implications tumbling over and over in everyone's minds.
Nobody spoke for what felt a long time, until MacArthur broke the spell. "Colonel Jones, do American forces operate under the same rules?"
The giant marine nodded his shaven head. "Something like them, General. The effect is the same. President Clinton signed an executive order in two thousand nine. Congress passed its own legislation a year later."