“Blue six, call a fire mission to help you break contact. Make it high-explosive and willie pete. Keep fighting those guys while we set up for the ambush. Let me know when you link up with Red’s left flank, over.”
“Roger!” Barker sounded confused and anxious.
Zachary was placing a great burden on Barker to fight an essentially even-ratio battle, guard the company’s left flank, and join the anti-armor ambush. It was too much, but he had no other choice.
Zachary moved with Kurtz along the back side of the wooded ridge. He found Taylor and told him he was in charge of the overwatch element, that he and Kurtz were going to move about three hundred meters to the east and try to extend the company’s position. Taylor was already sighting his antitank weapons. Each man carried an AT-4, the successor to the light antitank weapon, and his platoon had fifteen Javelin missiles for six command launch units.
Zachary pulled Kurtz and Slick with him as they jogged down the back side of the hill. At the bottom he stopped, put on his goggles, and turned on the bright green world.
“Holy shit,” Zachary said, sighting at least thirty tanks moving in single file along the road nearly two miles away. The low, flat ground made for excellent observation. In the darkness, though, the hulking beasts traveled slowly, as if they feared something.
“C’mon, follow me,” Zachary said. Kurtz and his men jogged behind the commander as he raced across the level hardstand into the clearing. They ran with increasing speed, sounding like a small herd of buffalo trampling across the great open plains.
Zachary had run almost six hundred meters when he suddenly fell, his head jerking backward, and landed in a shallow pool of warm, stinking water. Some of the other troops followed suit, while others tried to stop, each man stumbling over the next like Keystone Kops.
“Rice paddies,” Zachary said. “Perfect.”
He could still hear Barker’s platoon fighting off the enemy about a kilometer away, maybe more, as he called Taylor and changed the plan.
Chapter 86
Takishi was through with the games. His forces had practically destroyed the paratroopers, who had so whimsically thought they could tangle with his armored division. Fools. They are all fools. The Americans, the Filipinos, the Rolling Stones. The world.
But then, a report from General Nugama in Manila had given him great cause for concern. Apparently the Marines were about to close on the Presidential Palace. Losses had been heavy on both sides in the street-to-street fighting of Manila. The Americans, Nugama had told him, were bringing more troops into Subic Bay by the minute, and he had no contact with any of the other ships north of the Luzon Strait to reinforce him. The only saving grace for the Japanese was that their air force was still intact and had exacted a heavy toll on the American pilots.
That and the fact that Takishi had a fresh division.
“Quit messing around with those light forces, let the bastards have the prisoners, and come to Manila,” Nugama had told him. “I need you now!”
But that had been two hours ago. It had taken Takishi that long just to organize his units for movement at two in the morning. He had decided to leave the prisoners locked in the buildings to rot. Nearly six thousand Filipinos wailing, screaming, and crying. He had a headache. He had slammed the door to the big building and locked it, drowning out the collective sounds of agony and pain. It was as if the country had been screaming in unison, shouting, “Enough.”
Takishi spoke through the small microphone attached to his combat-vehicle crewman’s helmet and told his driver to lead the column to the east. They would button up their hatches and destroy the light infantry soldiers and blow down the road to Manila to defeat the Marines. No problem.
His tank creaked along the cement road, crushing week-old rice that had been laid out to dry in the searing sun. The sun would rise in an hour, meaning he needed to make as much ground as possible before then. Somehow he felt safer in the darkness. Like pulling the bedspread over your head when you’re scared, it seemed protective to him.
He sat inside the buttoned-down hatch and watched the world pass through the high-definition thermal sight. Slewing the turret left and right with the commander’s override, he made out low ground to either side of the road.
“Be careful,” he said to Private Muriami, his young driver. The driver slowed, then Takishi said, “Not that careful,” realizing he needed to make time and fight the worthless light infantry, the least of his worries. They had an opportunity to deal the Americans a crushing blow.
He slewed the turret to the left as he passed through the Fort Magsaysay gate, then fully behind him, and watched with pride as all two hundred tanks of his task force were lined up, crawling slowly along the dirt road that met with the main avenue. He had left behind two infantry battalions and sixty fighting vehicles to hold off the Rangers while the tanks moved toward Manila. He had given the brigade commander instructions to maintain light contact, like a feint, while they discreetly slipped away from the Rangers until they had cleared Cabanatuan. Then he could move his two battalions along the same route, eventually effecting linkup.
As he watched, he saw a group of AH-X helicopters lift slowly off the airfield and take up positions on both flanks of his column, hovering like drone bees around the queen. He told Muriami to pick up the pace, and like an arrow, he slung the entire column to the east.
Chapter 87
“How many do you count, Slick?” Zachary asked, as they crouched low in the water.
“From the first one, I see about fifty, then there’s a bunch of hills. Sounds like there’s a helluva lot more,” Slick said with a nervous edge on his voice. They could hear the tanks whining, tracks squeaking on the cement.
“No shit.” Then turning to Kurtz, Zach said, “Mike, spread your guys out along these dikes. Put your men with AT4s closer to the road, about two hundred meters. Keep your other Javelin guys back about six hundred meters — about where we are now. We’ll let Taylor and the boys knock out about the first twenty tanks, then the whole column will be stuck right here with nowhere to go.”
“Got it, sir,” Kurtz said, anxious to enact the plan. The tanks were rapidly approaching and he needed some time to brief his men. He would not have that time, though. He would only be able to tell his men where to go and when to shoot. Sometimes, that’s all it took.
Zachary had called Major Kooseman for backup attack-helicopter support, but received only a “wait, out” from the major, who was busy orchestrating the fight in Cabanatuan. “There may be no fight if you don’t get me those birds,” Zachary had told him, “I’ve got tanks heading in your direction.”
“Bravo six, this is Red six, over.”
Zachary responded to Taylor’s call.
“I’ve got two civilians in my AO. They’re Americans. Might be two of the hostages we heard about. One’s wounded pretty badly in the leg. What should I do with them?” Taylor asked.
So far, he had successfully put the issue of his brother on the back burner. He had been cognizant of it, but had forced himself to deal with the matters at hand. Taylor’s call had served to rotate the turnstile, as if his mind could only handle the array of events one at a time. First, the war, then his brother, next the war, then his brother. He envisioned an usher taking tickets as the thoughts strolled through the stile. Brother, war, brother, war, and so on.
Kneeling in the stinking mud and water, he called back to Taylor.
“I’ll call a medevac for them. Have two troops move them to checkpoint three-one for pick up.”