The survivor (9 page)

Adam remembered the beak-nosed marine talking to him one night on the after platform. "That Jason is a real marine," Guns had told him. "He's one

marine who ought to have all the medals they've got. And just a kid."

"What'd he do?" Adam had asked.

*^^othing," Guns had said. "He didn't go running around killing off thousands of people and being a nuisance. He was just always where he was supposed to be, and you could count on him to stay there. No matter how bad it got, Jason would stay there. Nothing could shake him. I remember once they came pouring down on him—I tell you it looked Hke a million of 'em. I would've run a country mile. But Jason stayed." Guns stopped and thought a minute. "The way he's smart is hke that time. He figured that even these guys weren't attacking marines for the glory of the Emperor, or whatever. Somebody was telling 'em to, just like somebody was always telling us; somebody was leading 'em. So he sat there in a mudhole and picked off the ones he thought were the boss. He must've been right because, after a while, they stopped coming and went on back where they'd come from. He's a good man in a fire fight," Guns decided. "A real marine."

THREE THINGS wcrc Constantly in the minds of the marines as the long voyage went on: the air, the submarine, and finally the destination. As they got used to the terrible air of the days and the sweet air of the nights, and learned to endure the unendurable crowding and inconvenience (not one of them had had any sort of bath for four days

unless the sweat that poxired from them in the 100-degree heat could be called a bath), the destination began to emerge as the most important of the three things.

Each marine had his own idea of where they were going and what they were going to do when they got there. (One of them insisted that they were going back to the States, although the compass course which, unless they went around the world, would never bring this submarine to the States.)

"I figure it this way," Jason told Adam. "It's going to be a jungle someplace.*'

"What do we need with a jungle?"

"Well, it could come in handy," Jason said vaguely, not sure what we needed with one. "But it's going to be a jungle because we're the only marines who ever fought 'em in a jungle. They've got lots of parade-ground marines and recruiting marines in their striped pants, but we're all—except you, that is—First Regiment, First Division Marines. We're the first to have a stand-up fight with 'em. And we Hcked 'em. They're supposed to be red-hot in this jungle fighting, and I guess they are. Anyway, we licked 'em at the Tenaru. You know how to get their snipers out of the pakn trees?"

"Remember, Jason, I'm no warrior."

"You wiU be. Anyway, you get a hght tank and butt it against the trunks of the trees. The snipers fall out Hke coconuts and away we go. So, anyway I figure we're going to some jungle."

"We're going to Australia. We're going to do sentry duty on those kangaroos."

"W^eVe going back to the Philippines," the tech sergeant said. "MacArthur left his hat. So we're going to go back and get it."

"I think this is some kind of endurance test," one of them decided. "They put us on Guadalcanal and that couldn't kill us, so somebody in Washington got to wondering what could kill us, and so they decided to see if we could wear out. We're just going to ride around and around inside this iron cigar until we wear out."

The staflF sergeant spoke with authority. "It's a mission. It's a combat mission or they wouldn't have picked us. And, wherever we're going, it's going to be hot or we wouldn't be wearing these thin fatigues."

"Are we all there are?" one of them asked plaintively. "Just twenty of us—not counting you. Lieutenant? Maybe the whole regiment, maybe the division is coming along. Maybe all the Navy's subs have got marines in 'em."

"I don't think so," the sergeant said. "They picked us out, two by two, from aU over the division. Special Weapons men, R-2 people, gunnery sergeants, Com-Section men, v^dth fire teams and BAR men. That doesn't look Hke a big action to me. If they'd wanted a big action, they'd have said, TaU in, March Off!'"

"I don't think we're going to fight," another declared. "They're going to dump us on some barren rock as an occupation force and let us sit there with the gooney birds."

"I don't want to confuse everybody," Adam put

in, *l3ut it looks to me like I foul up everybody's theory. If we're an assault team—why me? I never assaulted anything. If we're going to occupy an island—why me? They paid about fifty thousand dollars to teach me to be a pilot Why throw aU that—and me—away?^

The tech sergeant looked at him for a moment and asked, sarcastically, "What can you do, Lieutenant?"

*1 drive plane pretty good," Adam said, not boasting.

All the marines looked at him then, and it gave Adam a funny feehng. They didn't look at him with scorn or even with superiority. They looked at him as you would a Christmas present from your httle old aunt, a prettily wrapped gismo that was perfectly useless to you. Adam felt strongly that he was out of place here. Even, perhaps, unwanted,

"The reason they didn't tell us where we're going," Gims said, "is because we don't want to know.

*TVo you don't. Rebel," he went on. "If they take you prisoner and start working you over, the less you know the better your chances of coming out of it. If they think you know something and won't tell 'em—then . . . well, you're in for a real going-over, and they know how to go over you too."

Jason said it for all of them. "I don't much care where we go, just get me out of here. Td rather be nailed down on some stinking beach than hve in this coffin."

On the fourth night, soon after the hatches were

opened and the air poured in, word came over the speaker for all marines to report to the forward torpedo room.

Adam and Jason, with four or five others, were taking their turn on the after part of the open bridge and hated to leave before their hour of the night sky, the rushing white sea, and the stars and the air was over, but, as one of them said, "This must be it."

In the torpedo room the colonel and the major were waiting as Adam and the rest shoved their way into the already packed room.

As the marines settled down, Jason whispered to Adam, "That's the colonel who led the Scouts on Guadalcanal, Real rugged."

"They had Boy Scouts on Guadalcanal?" Adam asked in a loud whisper.

Jason looked at him with scorn. *Teh. Boy Scouts. About nine feet tall." "With merit badges?"

"With merit badges. Like the Purple Heart and Medal of Honor. That's one you don't usually get until after you're dead." "Who needs it?" Adam said.

Across the room the colonel and the major were setting up big photographs and charts on the torpedo tubes. Looking over the heads of the others, Adam could see pictures of dark islands in an almost perfect circle. They were like a necklace with many small islands making a chain from which hung one big island, much darker than the rest. Adam decided that the colonel was neither very

polite nor very considerate. He made no apology for not telling them long ago what this trip was all about. He just started talldng, saying, "I haven't told you men where you are going or what you are going to do because it wasn't necessary for you to know. Until now." He swxmg around to the pictures. "TThis is where you're going. It's an atoll whose real name it is not important for you to know. It is held by the enemy. Only one of the islands—this one"—he pointed to the big dark pendant in the necklace—"concerns us, for that's where the enemy is. We're going ashore there."

To Adam the marines seemed only glad to hear the news. Glad, he supposed, because it meant getting out of this steel coflBn. But, he wondered, did they—or even the colonel—realize that there might be thousands of the enemy on that island? WTiat could a couple of dozen marines accomplish against odds like that?

This was a real nightmare. Somebody, somewhere, was fouling things up beyond belief.

The colonel was talking. "This is going to be a recon. We want to find out whether the enemy has built an airfield here. If so, what is it made of— crushed coral? Concrete? Wliat? How long is it? How wide? Taxi strips? Revetments? Hangars? Repair facilities? And, above all, the number and types of aircraft on the island, if any? Also, what will it take to put the strip out of commission—the size and type of bombs or shells.

"Next we've got to find out what sort of fortifications they've got, what we'll have to fight if, later,

we attack this place. Pillboxes? Where? How many? Above or below the ground? What are they made of? What's the best way to knock them out? Bombing from the air? Fire from siurface ships? Or do the Marines have to take them with rifles and flame? What's in the pillboxes? Machine guns? Big? Little? AA? Shore batteries?

"Next, we want to find out the strength of the enemy. How many? What sort of troops? Army? Marine? Navy? How experienced? What training? How armed?

"Next is terrain. What sort of place is it for fighting. Hills? Thick jungle or open jungle? Sniper positions? Concealed artillery?

"In short" the colonel said, "we're going to find out everything there is to know about the enemy on this place. Any questions?"

The Southerner looked around at his buddies for a moment, but since none of them had courage enough to ask he raised his hand. "Yes, sir, I have a question. Colonel."

Adam was surprised that there was now no trace of Rebel's southern accent. He sounded as though he came from Boston, Massachusetts.

"What is it, Stilesr

"How do we get home again?" Rebel asked.

"The major will give you the details," the colonel said. Then he stopped talking and slowly looked at the marines, one by one. When he began talking again his voice was lower, and the words came out slow and clear. "All of you were on Guadalcanal. AU of you except Lieutenant Land.

*1 told you, this is a recon. We are going to land on this island, get the information we want, and get off the island. Obviously, if the enemy sees us coming, we won't get ashore. If we get ashore and the enemy finds us, we won't get off the island. Understand?*'

Adam understood the words all right, but from the looks on the faces of the marines around him, he began to wonder if he really understood the significance. The marines seemed to be sharing some sort of secret among themselves, and he wondered what it was.

The colonel was looking at them again with that slow, steady gaze, his eyes looking into each man's eyes in turn. "The first shot you fire will kill us all," he said. "All right, Major, take over."

The men silently made a passage for the colonel and, as he approached, Adam stepped aside for him, but the colonel said, "Come with me, Lieutenant."

Adam followed him out of the torpedo room and down to the Httle cabin, where the colonel let him in and then closed the door.

"What sort of trip has it been?" the colonel asked.

**Well, lousy, sir."

The colonel smiled then and said, "I wonder if when we get through this war all we'll really remember about it is how uncomfortable it was." Now he turned again and smiled at Adam. "I'm sorry I couldn't explain all this to you back in Pearl, Land."

"I wish I knew more about this sort of thing," Adam said.

*T)on't worry," the colonel said pleasantly, "those marines are hand-picked, they know their job. You just go along with them."

"Colonel, why am I here at all?" Adam asked.

*Those IBM machines in Washington are pretty eflBcient," the colonel said. "I needed an aviator who could judge the air strength and facilities on the island. I also needed someone who could read and speak Japanese. The machine picked you because you had lived and gone to school in Japan. You were also a naval aviator. You were also available in Pearl Harbor. And expendable."

Adam thought to himself, this is the end of the dream. Then he began to wonder what the real nightmare was going to be hke.

"That is you, isn't it?" the colonel asked. **Your father was a professor at the University in Tokyo, wasn't he? You Hved there for four years, didn't you?"

Adam looked at him. 'That's me, sir. And I guess I'm expendable."

"Just a phrase," the colonel said with a hint of apology. "Now," he went on, "to spot the enemy armament, I needed a detail for inteUigence. I want you to go at this thing as though you were going to command the air attack against this island. Find out what resistance you can expect at the beginning, and then find out what facilities you will have for your own use when the island is ours. Try, too, to get any code books you can find or anything else that may help us. I will probably go along with or near you, because their air power is

the most important thing we want to find out/'

*When do we go, Colonel?^

^Tomorrow night. We will be in the vicinity of the atoll tomorrow afternoon. We'll find out as much as we can through the periscope, and then we'll make sure the entrance to the lagoon isn't mined. At nightfall we'll go into the lagoon, submerged, then surface and we'll go ashore in the rubber boats. We'll only have eight hours, Lieutenant. We've got to be off the island before dawn.**

'"The sub's coming back for us?"

*lt'll wait in the lagoon, then surface before dawn and pick us up. Get a good night's sleep."

"I'll try," Adam said, grinning.

When he got back to the torpedo room the major had gone, but the pictures and the charts were still there.

Adam had expected that the marines would be yakldng up a storm about all this. It was what he wanted to do. Just to hear them talk about it, he thought, would made the thing less enormous, maybe. Make it less terrifying.

But the marines were very quiet. Most of them were fooling with their rifles—again. Taking them apart, inspecting every inch of every piece, then putting them carefully back together again. Then cleaning them—rifles so clean already that it seemed impossible to get them any cleaner.

Adam found Jason sitting on one of the bunks-cleaning his rifle—and squeezed in beside him. "Well," Adam said, hoping that Jason would talk about it.