Fortunately there were no machine guns in the mix, or they would have all been goners, caught as they were in the open. The intense rifle fire was punishing enough. The crackle of rifles on both sides punctuated the air.
The enemy had known they were coming and had been ready for them. Perhaps the Japanese had heard the patrol hacking its way up the trail, or maybe they had even glimpsed the lights and activity in the abandoned bunkers the night before. In any case, the trap had been set, and they had waited for the Americans to blunder right into it.
Desperately, Deke looked around for a target. He couldn’t see any of the enemy, so the best that he could do was fire at the muzzle flashes visible in the shadows. He fired, once, twice, three times, until there were no more shots from that section of the forest. More shots came from the hut, but Rodeo tossed in a grenade, and that was that.
Meanwhile, the Filipinos weren’t about to stay pinned down. They made a dash for the forest, closing the distance to the trees in a mad sprint, bolo knives flashing in their hands. It was clear that the guerrillas planned to finish this fight up close and personal. Deke shuddered at the thought.
Directly to his right, he heard a wet chunk, a scream, and then silence. The guerrillas swarmed among the trees, seeking out and ending the enemy one by one. The fight was over in minutes. As the shooting died out, Deke and the others straightened up and looked around wearily, all of them exhausted as they started coming down from the sudden rush of adrenaline and coated in sweat.
One of the enemy soldiers had managed to stagger back into the clearing before he collapsed and died. Deke was surprised to see that the man was in rough shape. He looked too skinny, and his uniform was practically in tatters. Something about the condition of this soldier, and this remote collection of huts near the abandoned bunkers, just didn’t add up. What were these Japanese doing out here, so far removed from the active fighting on Leyte?
“I’ll bet that these are deserters,” the lieutenant said, seeming to guess Deke’s thoughts. “They were probably out here, waiting out the war. We just happened to stumble across them. I guess maybe not all the Japanese are determined to fight until the end.”
There wasn’t anybody left alive to interrogate.
“Too bad for them,” Philly said.
Nonetheless, the short fight had not been without casualties. The rifle firing from the hut had claimed one of the guerrillas. Deke didn’t know the man’s name, but he was a fellow soldier all the same. As he watched, the priest knelt and gave the man last rites, even though he had already passed.
A quick search of the huts seemed to support Lieutenant Steele’s theory that this was a community of deserters. The Japanese soldiers that they had come across until now seemed to have adequate food and supplies — certainly they had plenty of ammunition. Some were even relatively fresh troops, rushed to the fight from elsewhere in the Japanese war effort. These men, however, had very little. There was even some evidence that they were trying to survive off the forest by hunting and eating small game, although that was a challenging task.
Were these men already convinced of Japan’s defeat, or were they simply without hope? No one would ever know. Of course, the soldiers had put up a fight against the patrol rather than simply surrendering or running away, but maybe they’d felt as if they had no choice. The war had reached the point where survival was not a foregone conclusion after you surrendered to the enemy. There was too much anger and loss on both sides for that.
It was a shame, Deke thought. These men had tried to take themselves out of the fight but hadn’t quite made it out to the other side. In another month or two, the men who had been hiding out in this hamlet might have been able to walk out of the forest and surrender once the fighting had ended and bitter feelings toward prisoners had eased. Now they would never leave this place.
Neither would the dead guerrilla. The other Filipinos used their bolo knives to hack a shallow grave among the jungle roots. Never mind the fact that those roots would soon grow back and envelop his remains. He and the dead Japanese would remain here until Judgment Day. Of course, no energy was wasted burying the enemy dead.
The only consolation was that this place remained peaceful and quiet when there wasn’t a skirmish being fought. Already an orchestra of insect and bird noises was building. A tropical breeze stirred the tree fronds overhead.
Deke recognized the man but did not know his name. There wasn’t even so much as a blanket that the man could be wrapped in. Instead, his arms were arranged neatly at his sides, and his hat was used to cover his face. His comrades looked glum but evidently had come to accept that this was the price of freedom that must be paid on occasion.
Father Francisco said a few prayers, and the grave was filled in; then a rough cross was lashed together out of two sticks and stuck into the ground.
“Let’s move out,” Lieutenant Steele said once the man was buried. He picked up his shotgun, which had been leaning against a stump. “I want to get as close to that POW camp as we can before nightfall.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Deke led the way as the patrol moved fast down the trail, making up for lost time. Danilo kept pace beside him, his eyes alert for any sign of the enemy. Philly tagged along in their wake, hurrying to keep up.
A few miles beyond the spot where the fight had taken place among the huts, the jungle path emptied onto a dirt road in the way that a creek merges with a larger stream. As the road gradually widened, they could see where tire tracks had been pressed into the road when it had been muddy after a rain, but the ruts had then dried into ridges, only to be flooded again by last night’s rain. Because these ridges hadn’t been disturbed, it didn’t appear that the road received much traffic. A few weeds growing in the middle of the road also testified to that fact.
“I’d say that with this ride getting wider, we must be getting closer to something,” Philly said. “I’ll bet it’s that POW camp.”
“From the looks of this road, there’s not a lot of coming and going,” Deke replied.
Danilo held up a hand to indicate that they should all be quiet. Although they had been moving silently other than exchanging a few words now and then, the soldiers and guerrillas held their breath. To be detected at this point would mean giving up the element of surprise and losing every advantage.
They moved forward cautiously, weapons at the ready.
The trees thinned out, and they had their first glimpse of the Japanese POW camp.
The soldiers and guerrillas spread out and kept under cover, taking in the POW camp. The sight before them did little to put them at ease. What they saw was a compound that contained several low, squat buildings enclosed by a high fence strung together out of rusting, tangled wire. At one end stood a tall guard tower that presided over the whole affair.
The overall effect was of something crude and sinister, as if it had all been pieced together out of the surrounding forest, either by primitive man or the forgotten survivors of some apocalyptic event, and the jungle couldn’t wait to take it back.
“I’ll be damned,” Philly muttered. “Will you look at that? They’ve got our boys penned up like monkeys at the zoo.”
“You can be damn sure there’s a machine gun in that tower,” Deke whispered. “From up there, he can hit an ant if it looks at him sideways.”
Philly raised his binoculars. “I think I see somebody in that guard tower. At least, I think I can see somebody. There’s a lot of shade. The question is, Deke, can you pick him off if you have to?”
“Does the sun come up in the morning?”