Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5) Read online

  “No shit,” Simpson replied. “Looks like there’s only one way to pull that off now…”

  He yanked the throttle of the undamaged starboard engine to idle. The Cat became nothing more than a reluctant, muttering glider, wings level at least, but sinking steadily back down to earth.

  The floodlights of the Japanese airfield builders were now behind them. Below was nothing but an indefinable darkness.

  “We can’t possibly be over water again,” Simpson said.

  “Believe me, we’re not,” the navigator replied. “There’s miles of Biak still ahead of us.”

  “We’re putting the tip floats down, anyway,” the pilot said.

  Wishful thinking…

  The first new sound was an intermittent scraping, as if a stiff brush was scouring metal.

  The second was a sickening CRUNCH, like a boat being smashed against rocks by an unforgiving sea…

  Followed by the violent deceleration that swirled everyone and everything around the cockpit like rag dolls…

  And then nothing but a damning stillness.

  Chapter Two

  As Jock regained his senses, one thing became obvious: they hadn’t crashed in the water. His hands found a flashlight; its beam revealed they weren’t quite on the ground, either—at least not the forward fuselage. It had sheared from the rest of the airframe and was wedged high amid a stand of trees, its nose angled sharply upward. The first challenge would be to not fall to earth through the gaping hole where the cabin bulkhead used to be once he freed himself from his seatbelt.

  As he struggled with the buckle, one thought filled his mind: This was supposed to have been a desk job…a game-legged infantryman helping the Air Force make better maps for us dogfaces.

  Nobody, though, had forced him to fly recon missions like this one, which had just come to its unceremonious end. Going on flying status had been his decision and his alone.

  But aside from aching like he’d just taken a thorough beating in the boxing ring, he knew he wasn’t badly hurt. Even the leg seriously wounded months ago—the wound that was supposed to keep him out of combat—still felt serviceable.

  Hell, I hardly limp at all anymore.

  Reaching beneath his seat, he was relieved to find his Thompson submachine gun still there, its strap still wrapped around the seat frame.

  And these Navy guys gave me funny looks when I brought this tommy gun on board, like it never occurred to them we might land in the wrong place and need some serious firepower. All they carry are those sidearms…and I bet they can’t hit anything more than five feet away with them.

  Making the uphill climb through the cockpit on hands and knees, he found Hector Morales helping Sid Baum from beneath the wreckage of his radar set.

  “You guys okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Major,” Morales replied, and then asked Baum, “You sure you’re not hurt, Sid? There’s a hundred pounds of crap laying on you.”

  “Nah, Hec, I’m good, I think. Nothing’s broken. Ain’t heard much out of the officers, though.”

  Jock climbed farther into the cockpit and found out why: Becker, the navigator, was dead. His head lay against his chest as if attached by nothing more than rubber bands.

  Broken neck, the poor bastard, Jock told himself.

  Simpson, the pilot, and Richards, the copilot, were just coming around, moaning softly, still strapped to their seats. They were covered with plexiglass splinters from the shattered cockpit windows. Miraculously, neither appeared to have suffered more than superficial cuts. Jock went to work freeing Simpson from his seat harness.

  The pilot’s return to lucidity was as abrupt as if a switch had been thrown. He fixed Jock in an accusing glare and announced, “This isn’t my fault, you know. It was all your idea.”

  “Save that crap for the pilots’ lounge,” Jock replied, helping him from the seat. “Nobody gives a shit whose fault it is at the moment. Now hang on to something real tight or you’ll slide right out of here. We haven’t figured out how far it is to the ground yet.”

  “Yeah, we have, Major,” Morales’ voice replied out of the darkness. “We played out some rope, and we’re about twenty-five feet up. But we’ve got other problems…the chief’s hurt. Looks like he busted his arm. Must’ve hit his head, too, because he thinks he’s back in Cleveland. And I just got a pretty good whiff of hundred octane.”

  “EVERYBODY OUT,” Lieutenant Simpson said, pushing past Jock in a great rush to slide down that rope.

  “Not so damn fast,” Jock said, holding him by the arm. “You and Mister Richards take the thirty cal from the nose turret. Grab as many ammo belts as you can carry, too.”

  “NO TIME! WE’RE GONNA BURN, DAMMIT,” Simpson replied. “WE GOTTA GO.”

  “There isn’t anything in this part of the airplane to burn, Mister Simpson,” Jock said. “In case you haven’t noticed, the wings aren’t with us anymore. They got ripped off—and if memory serves me right, all the fuel is in those wings.” He tightened his grip on the Navy man’s arm. “Now get ahold of yourself, Lieutenant. Welcome to the ground war. The fun’s just getting started.”

  They left Becker’s body in the cockpit. “We’ll get him out and bury him once we get our bearings,” Jock told the others.

  It wasn’t hard to find the rest of the airplane, even in the dark. Jock took Baum and backtracked down the line of broken trees that extended some fifty yards from the severed forward fuselage. It was all there: two torn-off wings, forming a ragged V with the tail section inside. The battered bodies of Minsky and Benedetto, the two aft gunners, were there, too, lying amid the wreckage. The odor of aviation gasoline Hector Morales had detected while they were still hanging in the trees was overpowering; leaking fuel was forming widening pools on the ground.

  As they dragged the dead gunners clear of the twisted metal and puddled fuel, Baum asked, “You’re going to get us out of here, aren’t you, Major Miles? I mean, Mister Simpson may be a decent pilot and all, but down here, well…”

  His voice trailed off. Further explanation seemed unnecessary.

  Before Jock could answer, they heard the growl of a motor vehicle engine, barely above idle, far off but growing louder.

  “Shit,” Jock said, “I think someone heard our arrival.”

  Baum asked, “Shouldn’t we be seeing some glare off his headlights or something?”

  Jock replied, “Ain’t that funny? They’ve got their airfields lit up like Times Square, but a solitary vehicle driving around in the bush is practicing blackout discipline. That’s why they’re going real slow…they can’t see a damn thing in front of them.”

  “How far away do you think that truck is, sir?”

  “Can’t tell for sure. Maybe half a mile. Leave these poor guys here for now. Let’s get back with the others.”

  They didn’t have any trouble finding the others—Simpson, Richards, Morales—in the darkness of the rainforest. All they had to do was home in on the racket those three men were making.

  Three men. There should have been four.

  “Knock off the noise, dammit,” Jock said. “We’ve got company coming. And where the hell is Chief Parmly?”

  “Don’t know,” Simpson replied. “We were trying to make a splint for his arm, and he just kept babbling about going to some bowling alley to meet some dame. Next thing we knew, he was gone.”

  The pilot was all jittery motion, ready to vanish like his flight engineer. “We heard that truck,” he said. “It’s coming this way. We’ve got to get the hell away from the ship.”

  “Hold on a minute, Lieutenant,” Jock said. “The truck’s not that close. Not yet, anyway. Maybe you’d like to hear about the rest of your crew first, so you won’t be worried you lost track of them, too? ”

  “What? Are they dead?”

  “Yep.”

  “Their fifty cals…can we use them?”

  “No, they’re all twisted up in the wreckage. Besides, they’re too heavy for the handful of us to carry a
round. The thirty cal from the nose is a lot more practical.”

  Richards, the co-pilot, wasn’t even a shadow of the cocky young pilot he’d been in the air. He whined, “But don’t we need a tripod to fire that thing?”

  “Believe me, Mister Richards, we won’t need a tripod. Who’s the best shot with it?”

  All the Navy men pointed to Hector Morales.

  Jock said, “Good. You handle it, Morales. Everybody else, strap a belt of ammo around yourself, just like this…” He draped one around his own torso to demonstrate. “Now, did you get everything else we need out of the plane?”

  “Yeah,” Simpson replied, “we’ve got the survival kit, the canteens, the code book, the Very pistol…but we’ve got two more little problems.”

  “Only two? Now there’s a miracle. So what’s the deal?”

  “Well, first off, Ensign Richards has lost his forty-five.”

  “Yeah,” Richards said, “the stupid thing must’ve fallen out of its holster when I was sliding down the rope.” Like a confused schoolboy, he added, “I can’t find it in the dark.”

  Jock took the .45 from his own holster and handed it to Richards. “Here, use mine,” he said. Unslinging the submachine gun from his shoulder, he added, “I’ll get by with Mister Thompson here. What’s the second problem?”

  Simpson replied, “Morales never sent that mayday I ordered him to. I’m going to make sure he rots in the brig as soon as we—”

  “Balls, Lieutenant,” Jock interrupted. “Do us all a favor and put a lid on that bullshit right now. You sound like some shithouse lawyer—and the law doesn’t mean a whole lot out here in the bush. Neither do those pilot’s wings.”

  “Oh yeah? Then enlighten me, Major…what does mean a whole lot in the bush?”

  “Watching out for each other’s asses and not doing anything stupid, Mister Simpson.”

  The vehicle was close enough now to hear the driver grinding its gears.

  “C’mon, let’s go south,” Simpson said, checking the compass in his shaking hand. He looked ready to break into a sprint.

  “No,” Jock replied. “That would be one of those stupid things I was just talking about. We’re not running anywhere…not in the dark. It’s bad enough the chief’s already stumbling around out there.”

  Simpson’s whispered reply sounded like a muffled shriek: “So that’s your plan, Major? Stay here and die?”

  “No, Lieutenant, that’s not it. Now listen up—first, we’re going to get about fifty paces from this nose section and set up a perimeter.”

  “But there’s only five of us.”

  “That’s plenty, Mister Simpson. Everyone, follow me.”

  They could hear the Japanese shouting in the darkness. “Sounds like they’ve found the wreckage,” Jock whispered. “Just remember…if they come at us, let the thirty cal do the talking. Those pistols will be useless unless you can reach out and touch the bastard.”

  He crawled closer to Morales on the machine gun and added, “If you’ve got to shoot, keep it low. Good troops will go to ground at the first shot. Make sure they stay there.”

  “Got it, sir. But the tracers…won’t they give our position away? I tried to swap them out but there’s not enough time…and I can’t see what the hell I’m doing.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Morales. Close as we’re going to be, they’ll see the muzzle flash, anyway. That’s good thinking, though. Keep it up.”

  A crack, like a footstep crunching through the underbrush, very close.

  A man’s scream from the other side of the perimeter.

  Multiple shots from a .45 pistol, GI issue.

  And then the insane racket of so many different weapons, shooting wildly.

  More men screaming, near and far.

  Bullets flying, ricocheting off the ground, the trees, the mangled metal that used to be the Cat.

  The strobe-like flash of Morales’ machine gun, its tracers etching lines of brilliant light as they deflected like speeding pinballs off invisible bumpers.

  Jock’s mind sorted the chaos with a swiftness born of hard experience: The Japs aren’t on top of us…they’re by the wings and tail.

  In the middle of all that gasoline…

  He grabbed the Very pistol, slipped a flare into its chamber…

  Skip it like a stone, Jock.

  The flare was startlingly bright as it streaked from the pistol, a low line drive piercing the darkness that concealed the wreckage, dipping, bouncing…

  But the broad circle of fire that erupted as it careened through puddles of fuel seemed brighter still.

  They watched in open-mouthed awe as the dark silhouettes of men danced crazily in the flames…

  Until they seemed to evaporate, drifting with the embers into the night sky.

  The only shots being fired now were the random cook-offs of rounds caught in the blaze, aimless but no less deadly.

  “Keep your asses down,” Jock said, “and follow me.”

  They’d only low-crawled a few yards when Sid Baum moaned, “Oh, geez…”

  He’d bumped into the lifeless body of Chief Parmly.

  Baum hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do, until he realized there was only one choice. He left the body where it was and scurried away after the others.

  Once they’d escaped the fire’s light, they got up off their bellies and walked as swiftly as the darkness and the rainforest allowed. Jock led; the Navy men followed, each with a firm grasp on the shadowy form in front of him. To lose that grip—and become lost, separated from the rest—could be as good as a death sentence.

  Thick undergrowth snagged their feet constantly. Each man had tripped and fallen countless times, pulling down the man in front and behind like a sagging chain. Every tumble sapped a little more of their ebbing strength. Jock called them to a halt. They needed a break.

  “Give me a perimeter just like we had back at the wreck,” Jock said.

  They complied without a word, too terrified to do anything else.

  Baum began to say, “The chief…he’s—” before Lieutenant Simpson cut him off.

  “We know, Baum. We know…he’s dead.”

  Even in the dark, Simpson could feel Jock’s eyes boring into him.

  “You have a problem with me, Major?” he asked.

  Jock replied, “Just wondering who popped off with the .45 back there and started that little shitstorm.”

  “What are you saying? You think I shot Chief Parmly?”

  “I’m not saying anything, Lieutenant. But ears don’t lie. It came from your side of the perimeter. What were you shooting at?”

  “Dammit, I don’t know…I saw something—someone,” Simpson replied. “He was right there”—he held out his arm to indicate the closeness—“and you were the one who said don’t shoot unless you can reach out and touch the bastard.”

  Morales mumbled, “Even if the bastard was one of our own guys?”

  Mumbled or not, everyone heard it.

  “Now just a damn minute,” Simpson said, “I’ve had about enough of you, Morales, and—”

  “Shut up, Mister Simpson,” Jock interrupted. “Here’s the deal—you fucked up when you lost track of Chief Parmly. If he’d been where he should have, he might not be dead right now. You understand what I’m telling you?”

  Simpson gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “I take it that’s a yes, Mister Simpson?”

  “Yes…sir.”

  He may have hesitated to say it, but his use of the word sir managed—finally—to convey every ounce of respect the term deserved.

  “Good,” Jock said, “because there’s nothing we can do about the chief now, just like there’s nothing we can do about Mister Becker, Minsky, or Benedetto. Let’s see if we can get the rest of us off this rock while we’re still drawing breath. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Okay,” Jock continued, “let’s get reorganized. Anyone have any pistol ammo left?”

  Aside
from Hector Morales, who’d been firing the machine gun, none of the Navy men did. They’d shot every last bullet they had.

  “Morales, divide up what’s in your magazine to the others,” Jock said. “That’ll give you a couple of shots each. But don’t waste them. I’ve still got one full magazine for the Thompson…and it looks like we’ve got a belt and a half for the thirty cal.”

  “That’s not a whole lot, sir,” Simpson said.

  “You’ve got that right,” Jock replied, “so let’s try and stay out of trouble.”

  They were ready to move again in minutes. Lieutenant Simpson asked Jock, “What’s the plan, sir?”

  “We’re going to head east.”

  “Why east, sir? The south coast is a lot closer.”

  “Because the south coast’s got the best beaches for an amphibious landing, even better than where we saw the Japs landing a couple of hours ago.”

  A couple of hours ago—already it felt like a couple of years, Jock thought.

  “The Japs know a good beach when they see one,” Jock added, “so they’ll be in force down south, waiting for MacArthur to come. We’ll take our chances going east. Intel says some Dutch planters may still be hiding out there. If they are, maybe we can hook up with them.”

  “Are you going to be able to walk very far on that leg of yours, sir?”

  “Just watch me, Mister Simpson.”

  Chapter Three

  With the sunrise came the ability to pinpoint their position. All one of them had to do was get his head above the dense rainforest so he could see Biak’s prominent mountain peaks. “I’m not the tree climber I used to be,” Jock said, “not with this leg. So who’s it going to be?”

  Arthur Simpson didn’t look like much of a candidate. He was burly, looking every bit the tackle he’d played on the Annapolis varsity. Sid Baum was a big bruiser, too—an urban brawler if there ever was one.

  Either one of them would probably snap the top of a tree right off, Jock thought.