If the soldiers hadn’t been so tired or more given to consider the philosophical nature of things, rather than trying simply to avoid getting shot, they might have reflected on how history simply repeated itself, war and violence being the common denominator. Like Mark Twain once said, history might not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
They weren’t the only ones preparing to enter the city. Ahead of them, a rumbling Sherman tank bulled its way through the rubble. When it couldn’t go around the chunks of rock and scattered timbers, or even a twisted bicycle or two, it stubbornly went right over top of them. The presence of a tank always made foot soldiers feel better, like a big brother backing you up with a baseball bat.
“We’ll let those boys go first,” Steele said, referring to the tank. “If there’s a welcoming party, I’d rather have a tank crash it than us.”
“Honcho, I like how you think,” Philly replied. “Maybe those boys can track down those Japs for us?”
“Don’t push it, Philly.”
Ahead of them, the sturdy Sherman tank squeezed through the gate in the walled city, its steel flanks nearly scraping the stone. Not so much as a single rifle shot greeted its arrival.
The question was, Where had the Japanese gone? They had last seen Major Tanigawa and his men slipping away through the city before being forced to temporarily retreat. Deke was reminded of rats scurrying to hide when the door of a corncrib back home was flung open. Unfortunately, the rats in this case were herding prisoners. Both the Japanese and their hostages had simply melted into the landscape.
The tank and the GIs parted company, with the tank having to keep to the more open areas of the streets so that it could navigate between the piles of rubble. Patrol Easy struck out in the direction where they had last seen Tanigawa’s contingent. There was no sign of them anywhere. How could they have disappeared so quickly?
It was Danilo who spotted it, just when they were feeling lost. A Red Cross nurse’s cap hung from the branch of a shattered street tree. This was the best kind of breadcrumb that they could have hoped for. In fact, Deke guessed that one of those brave nurses had done this on purpose, leaving them a sign to follow.
“Aqui!” Danilo shouted.
The Filipino guide raced ahead, Deke and Philly trotting after him like hunting dogs with a whiff of the quarry in their noses. Danilo was as tough as monkey meat left to dry in the sun. However, Danilo was such a creature of the mountains and jungle that he looked out of place in the ruined city. But he was adapting, as they all were. Manila was just a stone and concrete jungle, after all.
They were reminded of this fact as they picked their way cautiously through the ruins. The shelling that had already taken place had left the city a mess. Deke moved down what must have once been a street, with the tall stone facade of a building to his right. Each block of stone must have weighed hundreds of pounds, all of it joined together with thick layers of mortar. No wonder the building still stood when the shelling had ripped its surroundings asunder.
If the street had once been paved, it was hard to tell because the surface of asphalt and cobblestones now resembled a freshly plowed field. Deke was reminded of the fact that he sure as hell didn’t want to be here when the big guns resumed firing.
The sun was still up, casting long shadows across the rubble. Although the artillery barrage had been suspended for now, much of this inner city had already been severely damaged by shelling and aerial bombardment.
He walked under an overhang of corrugated metal with holes punched through it by shrapnel. Deke had a passing thought that he hoped the flyboys had also gotten the message to hold off — the last thing they needed were bombs falling around their ears.
It was shadowy under there, but the shrapnel holes let daylight filter in. To his left, where the plowed street was located, more tangles of sheet metal clogged the area. The big, corrugated sheets lay every which way, resembling metallic leaves blown into piles by storm winds. The whole mess smelled of burned metal, charred wood, cordite, and unpleasant whiffs of hidden corpses rotting in the warmth.
Deke kept his eyes peeled because there were so many potential hiding places for the enemy. It was the perfect environment for an ambush if Tanigawa’s men intended to slow them down — or wipe them out. He had the unsettling thought that one hidden Jap with a machine gun or a grenade could have cut them all down, especially if he was willing to die himself in the process. That never seemed to be an issue with the Japanese.
“Easy, easy,” he called to Danilo. He struggled to summon a word from his limited Spanish vocabulary. “Cuidado.”
But the tough guerrilla guide was too intent on pursuit to listen. Deke cursed under his breath and hurried after him.
Leaving the tunnel of corrugated sheets behind, they emerged into an open area that appeared to be a city square. That’s when they caught their first glimpse of Tanigawa’s group.
Danilo whooped and fired a shot, which set the events that followed in motion.
Although they were strung out, the problem was that Tanigawa had nearly one hundred men with him, each determined to die like the good little samurai they imagined themselves to be. Several still herded the prisoners along with bayonets. As soon as Danilo fired, a handful of Japanese soldiers turned to fight a rear-guard action, meeting their pursuers with gunfire. Deke realized that they’d been foolhardy and had badly overreached. They were so outnumbered that if the Japanese had decided to fight in force, they might easily have wiped out their pursuers. To make matters worse, Patrol Easy was basically moving in a straight line because they had all been so eager to follow Danilo.
“Spread out, spread out!” Lieutenant Steele managed to shout, right before the deep boom of his 12-gauge shotgun echoed between the buildings.
The Japanese returned fire, bullets whining and ricocheting off the rocks and rubble. Up ahead, the main force of the Japanese kept moving. Tanigawa seemed to have a destination in mind.
Deke crouched behind a stone block — not a moment too soon, it turned out, as a bullet struck the stone and sent chips flying. The enemy’s smaller-caliber Arisaka rifles had a sharper, higher-pitched report, making the shots from their side sound like a crackling fire.
Briefly, he looked around to check the position of the others. Honcho was not far behind, in the process of shoving the boy’s head down. The stupid kid had apparently been curious to see what all the shooting was about.
Philly crouched right behind him, sharing the stone block for cover. But where was Juana? He didn’t see her right away and felt a momentary pang of concern, right up until he glimpsed her taking cover behind a tangled pile of corrugated metal sheets. He checked himself, wondering why he cared so damn much. But now wasn’t the time to ponder that.
“Ready?” he asked Philly. “I’ll shoot right, you shoot left.”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three!”
Both men popped up, shooting at the Japanese. They got off two rounds each, working the bolt in between. Lucky for them, the enemy troops also had bolt-action rifles. Deke squeezed off a third shot at a Japanese who was turning his rifle in their direction.
“Got one,” Philly said. “You?”
“One, maybe two.”
But they hadn’t gotten all the Japanese, who were soon returning fire. More bullets hit the stone that they were sheltering behind. Lucky for them, it would have taken an artillery shell to get through that block. Off to one side, Honcho’s shotgun boomed again.
“They’re falling back,” Honcho shouted. “Let’s go!”
They had taken out some of the rear guard, but more peeled away to replace their fallen comrades, and in greater numbers. The sniper squad was at a disadvantage because they relied on precision rather than firepower. Undeterred, the Americans pressed forward as best as they could, firing, advancing a few feet, taking cover, then doing it all over again. Deke shot a Japanese, whose arms flung wide as dramatically as a dead man in a movie. Two more took his place.