Deke peered through his rifle scope and immediately felt less confident, despite his bold words. Sure enough, he could make out the barrel of a Nambu machine gun jutting from the tower. The platform at the top of the tower was surrounded by a low railing lashed together out of bamboo, which wouldn’t offer the machine gunner much protection. However, it did provide enough cover to make it a difficult shot. Philly was correct that the interior of the platform was deeply shaded, so it was hard to make out any target.
Deke was sure that he could neutralize the machine gunner if he had to, but it might take a few shots. Meanwhile, the Nambu would be hammering away at targets below.
More troubling than the compound itself was what lay behind it. On the northwest side of the compound, beyond the fence, was a patch of open ground with several fresh graves marked by roughly made crosses. It seemed likely that this graveyard was the only way that anyone had managed to escape the confines of the camp.
To make matters worse, a quick count revealed that the contingent of camp guards was twice the size of their own patrol. They would have to watch the camp for a while to determine how many more guards might be off duty in the barracks shacks or even out supervising a work crew.
The way things were shaping up, this wasn’t going to be an easy job.
The sight of the prisoners was tantalizing. On the other side of the fence, they could clearly see the men whom they were supposed to rescue. If they could just free those men, they could all go home. And yet the prisoners remained out of reach.
“Look at those poor bastards,” muttered Philly, watching the prisoners through the binoculars. “They’re nothing but skin and bones. I’ve seen skid row bums that were dressed better.”
Deke didn’t have much experience with skid row bums, but he had seen plenty of scarecrows guarding farm fields. To his mind’s eye, the scarecrows were exactly what the prisoners resembled, right down to their tattered clothes flapping around sticklike arms and legs. A strong breeze might blow them over. In comparison, the Japanese guards looked beefy and well fed. Whatever food the enemy soldiers had at this point as the noose tightened around the Japanese, they were clearly reserving it for themselves.
Indeed, the handful of POWs they could see appeared thin and ragged. One thing for sure, Deke thought, they would not be able to rely much on the prisoners for help in overthrowing their Japanese guards.
He knew that Lieutenant Steele had been hopeful that the POWs would help to turn the tide once they joined the fight. However, the prisoners that they could see looked too weak to wrestle a kitten, let alone stage an uprising.
It was hard to believe that the decrepit men within the camp had once been proud American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen. They were truly shadows of their former selves thanks to their treatment at the hands of the Japanese.
“Goddamn bastards,” Philly muttered.
He didn’t have to explain — they all knew what he meant. Deke kept looking through the scope, feeling a slow burn of anger building. It was more than clear that the Japanese were starving the American POWs.
With an effort, he took his finger off the trigger. He lowered the rifle. There would be time later to exact a price from the captors. For now, the priority was to liberate the prisoners from this camp.
Fortunately there were no sentries on the road, and the Japanese seemed oblivious that anyone was watching the camp. The last thing that they seemed to fear was an attack from the outside. You couldn’t blame them, considering that the camp was far off the beaten track. Between the fence and the machine gunner in the tower, all the Japanese efforts seemed intent on keeping the prisoners contained rather than on defense.
As they watched, a work party approached the camp, making their way across a clearing. The men were stripped down to loincloths in the Japanese style, the skin of their arms and shoulders tanned the color of dark leather by the tropical sun. These men were clearly shadows of their old selves, their bones showing in a way that was painful to look at. In fact, it was a wonder that some of them were still on their feet.
Each man had a pole across his shoulders, with a bucket hanging from each end of the pole. The buckets were loaded with rocks, a burden so heavy that many of the men staggered under the weight.
One of the guerrillas had spied previously on the camp and said something to Father Francisco, who relayed to the rest of the patrol that the men were hauling the rocks from a riverbed up the side of a steep jungle hill. According to the guerrilla’s observations, the work crew went out at first light and labored until dark. It was believed that the rocks were going to be used to construct either a road or an airstrip.
No matter the intended use, it was backbreaking work.
One by one, under the watchful eye of a Japanese soldier who wielded a rifle with a bayonet, the prisoners in the work detail dumped out the contents of their buckets into a growing pile of rocks.
When one man did stumble, a Japanese sergeant stepped forward and beat him across the back with a cane, the way that a cruel farmer might beat a mule. All the while, the sergeant screamed at him in Japanese in a voice so loud that it carried all the way to the hidden patrol.
Deke couldn’t understand a word of it, but Yoshio did.
“He is telling him to get up and work, or he will die,” Yoshio interpreted.
It was unlikely that the prisoner understood the words, either, but he certainly understood the meaning. He struggled to get up, unsuccessfully. This seemed to further infuriate the guard, who rained yet more blows down on the prisoner with such force that Deke could hear them clearly as drumbeats.
He put the rifle to his shoulder. Mission be damned, it was time to put an end to that Japanese son of a bitch. He put his sights on the officer’s throat.
Philly caught sight of what he was doing and muttered a warning, “Deke, don’t do it. You’ll get everybody killed, including us.”
Deke wasn’t sure that he cared as long as he could shoot that guard. The sergeant in his sights was broad shouldered and powerfully built, looking as if he could snap most of the prisoners in half if he wanted to. Deke ached to shoot that guard in the worst way. His finger touched the trigger.
Beside him, he felt Philly go tense and heard him say, “Aw, hell. Here we go.”
But Deke held his fire.
He kept his finger on the trigger. Deep down he knew that Philly was right. He’d just have to be patient.
Another one of the prisoners had interceded in the beating, reaching down to help the fallen man. He received several blows from the cane for his trouble and what sounded like curses, but he was able to get the other prisoner back on his feet, and they both managed to reach the rock pile and dump their loads.
The sergeant was still shouting, and the guard with the rifle looked disappointed that he hadn’t been able to shoot anybody. Judging by the number of graves in the boneyard, it was likely that he would get another chance sooner rather than later.
Deke shook his head. This was slave labor, pure and simple. Lieutenant Steele would have explained that it went against every rule set by the Geneva Convention. They already knew that the Japanese didn’t care about that. The few prisoners taken by American forces were treated decently and not expected to work.
But worse than that, what the Japanese were doing was cruel, even vicious. Deke felt his anger sticking in the back of his throat as if he’d swallowed a bone.
It was hot and humid enough hiding out in the dappled shade offered by the jungle. Deke couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to be working in the hot sun.
Reluctantly, he eased his finger off the trigger and lowered the rifle.
“I’ll get you yet, you son of a bitch,” he muttered.