Harris continued. “Okay, Lance Corporal Eppler, here’s what’s going to happen. You are not going to tell anyone about this conversation or what you saw at the card game, or you will spend the rest of your life in a desert counting scorpions. I don’t think your gambler friends are going to be talking to you about it, so don’t worry about that. If they do, we’ll take care of them. Same thing with anyone else in your outfit, particularly your officers and NCOs. If they get too nosy or don’t believe that you got hurt falling down, Captain Merchant is going to give you a note on Admiral Spruance’s stationery saying that they are to butt out, only a little more polite. Big thing, young man, is that you saw nothing, remember nothing, and this conversation never took place, got that?”
Eppler swallowed. “Got it, sir.”
“Good,” said Harris and slipped him a couple of twenties. “Maybe the night wasn’t a total loss.”
When the Marine left, they looked at each other. Dane started. “For supermen, those two Germans aren’t too fucking smart, are they? Jesus, if Eppler had been better at security, the krauts could have gotten hurt, if not killed. Maybe the gamblers would have fought back as well.”
Harris disagreed. “If security at the game had been better, they wouldn’t have tried. It does show, however, that the two Nazis are getting desperate. Jesus, from crashing trains to robbing gamblers? What a comedown.”
“I think we are genuinely closing in on them,” Merchant said, “and they are running out of time and options. Maybe we can get them and roll up the whole bunch, including the people in Mexico.”
Dane and Harris looked at each other. They had a preposterous idea they’d been discussing between the two of them. Since Harris was the civilian and couldn’t be chewed out by Merchant, he responded. “Y’know, Captain, just maybe we don’t want to do that, at least not right now.”
Farris’s small company was one of several ordered out on patrol. They were out doing recon work even though they still didn’t know all that much about it. Fortunately, they were assisted by a dozen Alaskan Volunteers led by the large man named Bear, and the Alaskans’ tracking skills were immensely better than theirs.
The Alaskans wore white cloths over their regular clothing, which annoyed Farris since his men hadn’t been issued any winter gear like that. When he asked Bear about it, the Alaskan had simply laughed. “We took the sheets off our beds and cut them up. Beats the hell out of waiting for the army to come through with the right kind of gear.”
A chagrined Farris decided he’d have his men do the same thing when they got back to base.
The Americans were helped by the fact that a couple of inches of wet snow had fallen, which meant that anyone travelling through the area would leave tracks. A light snow continued to fall, rendering visibility poor, but that worked both ways.
Colonel Gavin did not think there were large numbers of Japanese too close to Fairbanks just yet, but he was not going to take a chance. Along with Farris’s troops, several other company-strength patrols had been sent out to probe and upset any Japanese scouts who were trying to assess American numbers. Gavin had openly wondered why the Japanese hadn’t coordinated an attack on Fairbanks with the carrier raid that had caused so much damage to their meager resources. Had Japanese infantry attacked during the chaos, the American force could have been forced to give up the city and the base, or at best, suffered serious casualties. Farris could visualize hordes of screaming Japanese emerging from the forests and chopping American soldiers with their swords and overrunning them while they cowered in their foxholes.
Now, supplies to replace what was lost were arriving in a thin but steady flow, and these included a new squadron of P47 fighters. Because of the need to ship material to supply existing forces, additional manpower was given a lower priority. A trickle of reinforcements, including more men from the 36th Infantry Division and a handful of Marines, continued to arrive, taking the last miles on foot as the engineers attempted to lengthen the highway from the south.
The advance paused and a soldier near them lit up a Chesterfield. “Put it out,” snapped Bear. The soldier with the cigarette glared at him.
“What the fuck for?” the GI snarled. “You ain’t my mommy. Hell, you ain’t even in the real army. And besides, it ain’t nighttime so nobody can see the glow in the dark.”
Bear matched the soldier’s glare and the GI wilted. “Because you can smell cigarette smoke a mile away in the woods, that’s why, jerkoff, and that would alert the Japs that you’re coming so they can blow your worthless ass away.”
Farris was about to support Bear when the soldier simply nodded and put out the cigarette he’d been puffing on. “Pass it around,” Farris said, “no smoking.”
“But we’ll die,” lamented another soldier in a falsetto whine, bringing nervous laughter. Even Bear chuckled, while the GI who’d been scolded just turned away.
“The same thing with matches at night,” Farris added, “but you already know that. And keep the talking down, too.”
At Bear’s suggestion, they were formed up with two platoons in front and a third bringing up the rear. The understrength company still didn’t have enough men for a headquarters platoon. Stecher controlled a slightly overstrength squad that passed for one.
Even though there was no intelligence confirming that the main Japanese force was near, the patrol was a strong one because of a real concern that a decent number of Japanese might possibly be close by and could easily overwhelm a smaller patrol. At least that was the theory. Farris seemed to recall that Custer had more men than he at the Little Big Horn and a fat lot of good it had done him and the Seventh Cavalry. Of course, the Seventh didn’t have radios or air support, which might have proven useful.
One of the scouts emerged and gave the signal to halt. They froze. The scout had found footprints in the snow. “The Japs tried to cover their tracks,” the scout explained, “but they did a lousy job.”
Now moving with utmost caution and letting the scout and Bear lead, they followed the tracks. Both civilians estimated the Japanese force at maybe a dozen men, an augmented squad.
Again they called a halt. Bear pointed at a thicket about a hundred yards away. The dense forest and falling snow prevented them from seeing it sooner. “They’re in there and they can see us,” Bear said.
Just as Farris was about to ask what the Japanese were waiting for, rifle and machine-gun fire rippled from the thicket, crashing into trees and bushes, tearing off branches and bark. The Americans dropped to the ground. Farris grabbed his helmet and tried to melt into the earth. He got a mouthful of snow for his efforts. With macabre humor, he hoped it wasn’t yellow snow from where some Jap had pissed. He and his men started to recover from the shock of being fired on and began searching out targets. Close to seventy men soon responded with rifles, carbines, and light machine guns and BARs. Farris, almost overcome with excitement and fear, managed to remember to order the rear guard to keep facing the rear. He wanted no surprises creeping up on them.
“Are they going to retreat from there?” Stecher asked.
Bear grinned. “Retreat to where? We’re between them and safety. If anything we’re pushing them back to Gavin.”
Someone screamed and the call went out for a medic. One of Farris’s men had been hit. The Japanese fire began to slacken under the intense American shooting, and then it stopped. American soldiers crawled closer, maintaining a high rate of fire, shredding the thicket.