It didn’t talk about the deals the Big Three cut among themselves. Joe Steele got Trotsky to agree that, when the time came, the Red Army would help the United States invade Japan. At that point, Trotsky said, the neutrality treaty would be old galoshes. The translator helpfully explained that was Russian slang for a used rubber.
Trotsky wanted Russian hegemony over every square inch of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. After some effort, Churchill talked him into yielding dominant influence in Greece to England. Scriabin told Charlie how he’d done it: “He said to Trotsky, ‘There’s not an acre of the country the Royal Navy’s guns can’t reach. Your bloody Red bandits would have no place to hide.’ That did the trick.”
“I guess it would,” Charlie said. “Good thing we’re all on the same side, isn’t it? We’d have even more fun if we were enemies.”
“Strength matters to Trotsky. He’s like the boss that way,” Scriabin said. “And we’ll all stay friends till this war’s over. Hitler’s too dangerous for us to do anything else.”
Charlie nodded. “You said it. Some of the things the Russians are finding now that they’re taking back land the Nazis held for a while. . That stuff would make Genghis Khan lose his lunch.”
Of course, the Nazis screeched about the way the Reds fought the war, too. And in the Pacific, neither the Japs nor the Americans seemed interested in taking prisoners. The Japs would kill themselves before they surrendered. And the Americans had learned the hard way that it was better not to land in a Japanese POW camp.
It was, Charlie thought, better not to land in anybody’s prison camp of any variety. He was sure his brother could go on in far more detail on that theme than he could. Every once in a while, though, you were better off not knowing a subject exhaustively. This seemed like one of those times.
XIX
Mike had scrambled down the netting thrown over the side of the troopship. He and a good many other men bobbed in the amphibious tractors-amtracs, everybody called them-clustered by the troopships like ducklings around their mothers. They should have already been chugging toward the beach. The attack was supposed to go in at 0830.
But the Jap emplacements on Tarawa were supposed to have been silenced, too. The Japs were still shooting back with guns as big as eight inches. Somebody’d told him they’d hauled those here from Singapore. He didn’t know about that. He did know the shells kicked up enormous splashes. He didn’t want to think about what a hit would do to a ship.
At 0900, after more shelling from the Navy and bombing from carrier-based planes, the amtracs and other landing craft did get going. The Japs had smaller stuff, too, and started turning it loose as soon as the Americans came into range. Machine-gun bullets clattered off the amtrac’s armored bow.
“Those fuckers’re trying to shoot us!” Mike said. The surprise he put in his voice was a joke, but a grim one.
The amtrac clawed its way over a reef just at the waterline, then scrambled up onto the beach. Down came that armored front. “Out!” the sailors screamed.
Out Mike went, straight into hell on earth. They’d come ashore near a pier at the south end of the island. The beach was. . sand. Tarawa wasn’t much higher inland. There was grubby jungle-and there were Japs.
A bullet cracked past his head. As he’d been trained, he got as low as he could and crawled forward. Another bullet hit in front of him and spat sand in his face. Ice-blue Japanese tracers, very different from the red ones Americans used, sprayed across the beach.
He saw movement ahead. No Americans had got that far. He fired two quick shots with his M-1. Whatever was moving went down. Maybe he’d killed somebody. Maybe he’d just made a Jap hit the dirt.
Mortar bombs whispered in and blew up with startling crashes. Soldiers screamed for corpsmen. Not all the landing craft could make it over the reef. Marines and punishment-brigade soldiers waded ashore in the waist-deep water of the lagoon. Mike had thought of the amtracs as ducklings. Those poor wading bastards were sitting ducks. One after another, they slumped into the warm sea, wounded or dead.
“Keep moving!” Captain Magnusson shouted through the din. “We’ve got to get off the beach if we can!”
That made sense. There was cover ahead, if they could reach it. They’d all get shot if they stayed here on the sand. But there were Japs ahead, too. They already had the cover, and they didn’t want to give it up.
Machine-gun fire came from a dugout just inland from the beach. The American bombardment had swept off some of the sand that protected the roof of coconut-palm logs. It sure as hell hadn’t wrecked the position, though. No, that was left for the guys with the P’s on their sleeves.
Mike waved to a couple of men with submachine guns to give him covering fire. He scrambled closer to the dark opening from which the machine guns blinked malevolently. He tossed two grenades into it, lobbing them in sidearm so he could raise up off the ground as little as possible.
Screams came from inside when the grenades went off. The machine guns fell silent. There was a back door-a Jap burst out of it, his shirt in shreds and blood running down his back. One of the Americans with a grease gun cut him down.
Other dugouts lurked farther inland. The Japs had spent a lot of time and effort fortifying Tarawa, and it showed. Every position had another position or two supporting it. If you cleaned out a strongpoint and stood up to wave your buddies forward, a Jap in the next dugout along would kill you.
As usual, Tojo’s soldiers didn’t, wouldn’t, surrender. If you wanted to get past them, you had to kill them. You had to make sure they were dead, too. They’d play possum, holding on to a grenade that they would use to take some Americans with them when they joined their ancestors.
Mike hadn’t known how he would react to killing people. He was too busy trying to stay alive himself to worry about it much. And the Japs hardly seemed like human beings to him, not with the savage way they fought to the death. It felt more like clearing the island of dangerous wild beasts.
Night came down with equatorial suddenness. Tracers and artillery bursts lit up the darkness, but the enemy didn’t mount a big counterattack. Noticing he was ravenous, Mike gulped rations. When he smoked a cigarette, he made sure no sniper could spot the match or the glowing coal.
Captain Magnusson came by, taking stock of his company. “How’re we doing?” Mike asked, adding, “All I know is what’s going on right in front of me.”
“We’re still here. They didn’t throw us off the island,” Magnusson said. “Not all of us are still here, though. They’ve already chewed us up pretty good.” He chuckled harshly. “This is what we signed up for, right?”
“Maybe what you did,” Mike said. “Me, I signed up ’cause I was sick and tired of cutting trees down in the Rockies in the snow.” He managed a chuckle of sorts. “Ain’t fucking snowing here, even if it would be there. End of November? Oh, hell, yes.”
“Get whatever sleep you can,” the company CO told him. “If it doesn’t pick up tonight, it will come sunup. More Marines will land then, up at the other end of the island.”
“Oh, boy,” Mike said.
He did get a little rest. The Japs didn’t attack during the dark hours, though they were known for that elsewhere in the Pacific. They must have decided they could make the invaders pay a higher price by sitting tight.
Things did pick up at first light. The Marines made it onto the beaches farther north, putting the Japs in a nutcracker. From then on, it was bunker-busting and dugout-clearing and fighting from one foxhole to the next. Mike’s bayonet had blood on it. He wore a field dressing on his left arm where a bullet had grazed him. Unless it started dripping pus or something, he didn’t figure he’d bother the medics about it.