“Mi soldado,” she murmured. “Mi guerrero.”
Like any inexperienced young man, Deke had always worried about what to do that first time he made love, but everything happened naturally and urgently. Afterward, they lay sticky and spent under a blanket despite the warmth of the tropical night. It was the part that came after that was harder, at least at first. Deke ran through several emotions ranging from embarrassment about giving in to his urges, to wanting to go off by himself to process what had just happened, to the desire to do it all over again — but that wasn’t going to happen because he felt pleasantly limp as a shoestring and empty as a sack turned inside out.
Deke had often imagined what it would be like to be with a woman, and now that the veil of mystery had been lifted tonight, he decided that it was everything he had imagined — and then some. He was glad that he had waited to find someone whom he cared about rather than running off to the whorehouses like some of the boys had done back in Hawaii. With his scarred face and body, he had doubted that he would ever experience a night such as this without having to pay for it. Juana had given him a great gift tonight.
She murmured something and wrapped herself around him, soothing his restless mind. They heard the occasional thump of artillery or the rattle of a machine gun beyond the walls, but that all sounded far away and they felt safe enough in this house, with their armed companions on watch in the next room, isolated for a few hours from the war. Juana’s steady breathing soon indicated that she was asleep. Deke closed his own eyes, then slept deeply.
But the Japanese wouldn’t leave him alone, even on this night of all nights, haunting his dreams. He kept seeing the enemy snipers shooting at them, hearing screams as men went down around him. Deke tried to shoot back, but in his dream there was always something that wasn’t working right. Sometimes his rifle wouldn’t fire. Other times his finger couldn’t even pull the trigger, as if locked in rigor mortis.
All the while the grinning face of an enemy sniper taunted him through the rifle scope. Again and again he felt the terror of imagining enemy crosshairs on him, helpless to get out of the way, his heart hammering in his dreams. Even as the noose closed around the enemy, the Japanese seemed to grow more powerful.
He woke in the morning because he felt Juana’s eyes on him. Her face lay inches away, the two of them breathing the same air. He stroked her warm body under the blanket, pleased that his fingers worked just fine despite the unsettling dreams.
It was already light, dawn filtering in through the shattered windows. In a few minutes Honcho would be rousting everyone for another day of war. They still had those hostages to rescue. Time was running short for these prisoners. But for now it was just the two of them. Just as with Honcho the night before, he realized how little he really knew about Juana. Did she have any family? What had her life been like before the war?
Finally, he wondered if what they had done together now joined them in some way. At the same time, he knew that this one night might be all that there would be for them. It had been a sojourn for them both, a renewal, a reminder that they were young and alive. It was all so distracting, given the business at hand.
“Juana, I—” he began.
But Juana was having none of that. She touched his lips to silence him. “Do not think of me today,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “That will get you killed. Muerto. Think only of how true your bullets will fly. I know your heart, mi guerrero.”
“We’re still chasing those damn Japs—”
“No mas,” she said. “That ends hoy dia. Today you will know victory, mi soldado. Today you will kill our enemies.”
Reluctantly, Deke disentangled himself from Juana’s arms and slipped out from under the blanket. Juana did the same, and he got a quick, glorious glimpse of her naked body. They dressed in the dim light, the candle having melted down until the wick lay sputtering in a puddle of wax, signaling the end of the dark night, and he felt his old resolve returning like the rising sun itself.
The night with Juana had renewed something deep within him. His eyes glinted as he bent to blow out the candle and then reached for his rifle. Deke’s sense of determination had returned stronger than ever.
He decided that Juana was right. The fight would end today, one way or another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sun rose on another hot and muggy morning. Instead of the promise of a new day, the rising sun revealed a city that was a battleground. In the distance, they heard scattered gun shots and the boom of artillery like the thunder of an approaching storm. Normally, birds would have greeted the new morning, even in the city, but their singing among the shattered trees had either been drowned out by the sounds of war or the winged songsters had done the smart thing and fled.
Patrol Easy had been surprised by the arrival of a messenger from headquarters. He was a slight young man, a real bantamweight built for speed and stealth, the perfect candidate for messenger duty, or what in army slang was called a “carrier pigeon.” He had come to remind them about the looming deadline for the artillery barrage to resume. The colonel hadn’t bothered with a written message, considering that what he had to relay was short and to the point.
“The colonel says you’ve got two hours. He says that after that, he’s going to open fire no matter what.”
“All right, we’ll take what we can get,” Lieutenant Steele said. “Did you run into any Japs getting here?”
Helmets were all the same size, and the runner’s seemed far too big for his head to the point that only his nose, the whites of his eyes, and his bright white teeth were visible from the hidden depths under the helmet brim. “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t, but dead men tell no tales,” the messenger said with a grin, brandishing his carbine. Then he slipped out the door and was gone.
Philly watched him go. “Do me a favor, Corn Pone. Next time I complain about anything, remind me that I could be a carrier pigeon instead.”
“Aw, you’d complain even if you got hanged with a new rope.”
“Sounds about right.”
Deke stepped outside the house where Patrol Easy had sheltered for the night and took a deep breath. The damp morning air smelled of dust, rotting vegetation, and the faint hint of bodies decomposing in the ruins. He longed for the clean smell of mountain air, redolent of green leaves and high-country meadows, or at the very least, the earthy aroma of freshly plowed fields. The mountains were what he yearned for, but battle-torn Manila was what he had.
He turned to the wall and relieved himself. The smell of warm urine mixed with the other pungent smells of the ruined city. The boy, Roddy, sat on a chunk of stone in the morning sun and gnawed at one of the chalky tropical chocolate bars, using both hands in a way that reminded Deke of a chipmunk attacking an acorn. Danilo came out, leaned against the wall just beyond spattering distance, and lit a cigarette, oblivious as the contents of Deke’s bladder streamed down the wall and puddled in the dust. Rodeo was relieving himself nearby, all of them so used to living in proximity that they didn’t give bodily functions a second thought. Besides that, wandering off to relieve yourself might put you in enemy crosshairs.
Deke realized that was something else he missed — privacy. The only real private space a soldier had was between his ears.
He buttoned up his khaki trousers and turned to find Juana offering him a hot cup of coffee, something of a miracle in these circumstances, but Juana and the other guerrillas were always resourceful. They had built a tiny, smokeless fire under the portico of the grand house.