The other platoons of the “Hukushuu unit” were already waiting in the thicket since over one day. A bright, thick moon had illuminated the jungle above the elite soldiers till dawn, now she slowly vanished to make room for the coming day.
The „Hukushuu II” platoon was still in the deep jungle and after a laborious creeping through the undergrowth, it had finally reached Arume. Now the fighters were lurking in a safe place in the thicket, while platoon leader Oda tried to contact „Hukushuu V“ that was hiding in a small forest south of them. After a while, the connection was established and Oda was informed that also the other two platoons had reached the center of the island.
The Japanese high command had arranged that every single platoon had to advance to the main base on its own. So far, this tactic had been successful.
Accordingly, Frank and Alfred were already exhausted and grateful, when they finally got the permission to make a longer rest.
„This damn jungle drives me insane“, groaned Frank, unrolled a dirty cover and crept under a bush.
Some ants had been startled because of his unheralded visit and ran confusedly over the sandy ground. Bäumer followed his friend and said. „Thank God, that we have officer Oda, otherwise we would get lost in that jungle. Everything looks similar here...”
One of the Japanese googled at them and showed Frank a little bottle. „No, thanks!“, gasped Kohlhaas. He just wanted to rest for a while. Meanwhile, Takeo Oda instructed his men to stay at this place for the next hours. Many of them were totally exhausted, because of the eternal march through the jungle. They slept half of the day in the protection of the large trees and bushes. Not even the drizzle which came from the sky, could awake them. Some of the Asians played some board games which Frank and Alf did not understand.
The platoon leader announced that they would soon reach the communication station of the GCF and the southern part of Okinawa, which was much more sentineled. Meanwhile, the tension started to rise.
When the shadows of the night took the island under their safe wings again, the soldiers continued their march through the jungle. Once, Frank would almost have shot an animal, that had come out of the thicket next to him. He became more and more nervous.
Enemies were not in the proximity, just the other Hukushuu platoons, that followed them quietly at some distance. They always crept straightforward through the thicket for several hours. Finally, the platoon stopped and hid between the trees, till the dusk came again.
“Have you heard something from the others? Where are they now?”, asked Frank his comrade Madsen.
„Oda has said nothing. But I think, that the other soldiers are somewhere in the jungle around us”, returned the tall man from Varde.
„The radio station is still ten or fifteen kilometers away from us. Dawn is breaking, we should sleep now“, meant Alf.
After some nervous hours, the morning sun rose up above the trees. A further marching was too dangerous now, because the hostile presence increased here, in the south of the island, slowly and constantly.
„We must do it all in one go! At first, we must destroy that radio station, and then we must attack the military base and kill general Williams”, groaned Kohlhaas and yawned. Madsen still wanted to play another chess game, but Frank and Alfred rejected.
They were too tired to be able to concentrate anymore and just wanted to rest. Meanwhile, the glaring sunbeams got on their nerves and they tried to find a dark corner, somewhere in the undergrowth.
„Buah!”, Bäumer startled up and put his head to the side. Between some plants a large, twinkling millipede was crawling through the sand, refusing Alf a sleeping-place under its bush.
“These fucking insects are everywhere! Hell!”, growled the man.
“This place is full of them”, ranted Frank and stood up too.
Beside them some Japanese whispered and volatilely looked at them. Tonight, the bloody and dangerous part of this mission would start.
The enemy was already close. Now it was valid, to attack fastly and to end the operation in the early morning hours. The other men made a nap or talked quietly, killing time till noontime. Finally, the scouts returned from the south. They told officer Oda that they had counted about fifty GCF soldiers around the radio station.
The platoon leader looked nervously around, took a silencer out of his backpack and stared thoughtfully at his MP5. Subsequently, he crept to his men and gave instructions.
„The radio station isn`t very well guarded, if I had understood that Japanese correctly. This sounds good to me. Nevertheless, there is a high fence which must be destroyed at first“, explained Kohlhaas after he had spoken with the platoon leader.
“Yes, we will see, buddy”, answered Alf and closed his eyes. Meanwhile, he had a headache, because of the sustained marching and the lack of sleep.
The soldiers tried to kill time. Many of them knew that these hours would be the last of there life. Death was waiting for them, deep in the woods.
Frank regarded his Japanese comrades. Most of them appeared tense and aggressive. But they tried to calm down. Some drank a few sips of sake which they had transported in small bottles in their backpacks.
Actually, alcohol was strictly forbidden and who was caught drinking, got a very hard punishment. But now, this order was ignored by many of the Japanese. Kohlhaas had also observed one of the Japanese who had emptied a bottle of sake, but he did not tell it to the platoon leader. No, he was just silent.
„Fuck it all!”, he thought and looked at the cloudy sky which was filled by the afterglow. It was a strange horde of men that had been recruited for this special mission.
Next to Frank and Alf were some Japanese who quietly hummed like in trance, tieing scraps of cloth, which were painted with characters, round their heads.
Others murmured prayers in their alien language, while they rubbed their faces with dirt and mud, staring with hate-filled eyes into the jungle. A soldier came to them and grinned maliciously. He hissed something in Japanese and clapped Alf on the back. That sight, these 100 men, who lay in wait here in the thicket, gearing up for the fight, was really weird. Anger and despair ruled their minds.
The Japanese high command had selected a lot of men who had lost their relatives and friends during the bomb attacks of the GCF, beside the particularly courageous soldiers, who had been noticeable in the last battles. About 40 men were from Kagoshima. And these soldiers had only one thing on their minds: Revenge!
They had obviously already arranged with death. At that moment, Frank thought that he was not really different from these warriors, who were driven by hate and vengefulness. He was just one of them. A lost soul in a lost age.
„Here!”, Kohlhaas pointed at a puddle in front of him and dug his hands deeply into the dark mud. Alfred bent down as well and began to rub his face with mud too.
After a few minutes, they looked like orcs, with scary faces and watchful eyes. The platoon still waited for a while until Oda gave the order to sally. Frank tried to heat up himself.
He remembered his father and his sister who had been executed by the rulers of this world, and he thought about his captivity in the holo cell. Slowly, he piled up his inner hate, piece by piece.
When he crept through the walls of leaves of the jungle, he blustered himself into anger. He had to do it, because without rage he was not able to fight.
Kohlhaas drowned his mind in all the bad thoughts and pushed his lower jaw forward, while his teeth twinkled like the tusks of a predator between the bushes.
„Faster! Come on!”, platoon leader Oda propelled his men.
The scouts had told him about a small outpost behind the next piece of woodlands.
„Silencer!”, whispered the Japanese officer, while Frank, Alfred and the other foreigners nodded and screwed their silencers on their weapons.
Shortly afterwards, they recognized the outpost. About a dozen GCF soldiers stood next to a few sandbags. Behind the emplacement, a small piece of jungle had
been cleared and a narrow road was leading into the forest. The soldiers paused for a short moment. Oda gave further orders and his men swarmed out like a wolf pack, encircling the outpost within a few minutes. Frank gritted his teeth and waited.
„Uiek! Uiek! Uiek!“
What sounded like the call of a jungle bird, was the signal to attack. The elite soldiers jumped out of the dark thicket and pounced within seconds on their enemies. Completely surprised, the GCF soldiers emitted only some cries, then they were already perforated by bullets. They did not have a chance against the 100 men who attacked them in the rear. One or two Japanese took their knives to stab all those, who were not immediately dead.
Frank and Alf crept forward and saw a Japanese who tried to cut off the head of a GCF soldier with his machete, while he was snickering insanely.
This guy looked like an Uruk-hai, driven by bloodlust. Officer Oda finally kicked the man in the back and shouted at him. The soldier finally threw his machete away.
“What a psychopath...”, commentated Madsen the scenery.
They pulled the bodies of the dead GCF soldiers into the undergrowth of the jungle and continued to rush forward. It lasted not very long until they could see the radio station.
High steel masts rose up into the night sky and the dark silhouettes of some guards appeared in the distance. The platoon stalked up on the complex and stopped then.
Officer Takeo Oda crawled behind a tree and whispered something into his radio. „Hukushuu V” probably lay in wait some hundred meters away in another part of the jungle. The attack had to be coordinated again, because it had to be fast, quiet and effective.
After a while, the assault started. Three men from every platoon crawled towards the enemy camp from different sides, in order to cut some holes into the high fence. They made no sound and soon the work was done. Frank believed to hear a quiet clicking in the darkness. A moment later, two big holes were cut into the protection fence.
„Move!”, hissed Oda and shooed his men out of the jungle. Like slowly creeping shadows, they encircled the communication station. Suddenly a cry resounded.
Some soldiers of the “Hukushuu V” platoon had probably been discovered by a guard. Several shots followed.
„Shit!”, whispered Bäumer and scurried with the others through the hole in the fence.
Now the outlines of buildings could be recognized in the darkness and the guards also discovered the other platoon. „Hey, there!“, screamed a GCF soldier and fired nervously around. Officer Oda shouted something in Japanese, while his soldiers returned fire.
„Pttt! Pttt! Pttt!”
The improved silencers which had been developed by the Japanese, swallowed the noise of the fire hail to a great extent. Some enemies tumbled over, while the attackers rushed forward towards the buildings. The headlights of two watchtowers danced among them, then the enemy fired again. A friendly platoon had already reached the buildings and stormed inside. Frank heard cries and some of the men fell to the ground.
„We must reach the hall!”, Frank jumped behind some barrels and shot an enemy in the back. Alf, Madsen and some Japanese followed him and the firefight increased.
Soon the main building of the radio station was in front of Frank and his comrades. They moved down a group of surprised GCF soldiers with their assault rifles, while the Japanese threw some hand grenades.
Several explosions followed, cries resounded and further men came out of the smoke, in order to be shot down in the next second. A bullet just missed Frank`s head and hit the chest of a comrade. The Japanese screamed and staggered against some barrels. Kohlhaas looked back in a blink of an eye, but the man was already dead.
„In there!“, screamed Frank and shot at the entrance of the building. They killed the last GCF soldiers in front of the hall and finally recognized their comrades of the “Hukushuu V” platoon. Meanwhile, the remaining enemies had entrenched themselves in the rooms of the main building. The men of the “Hukushuu unit” swarmed out between the barracks in the protection of darkness and crawled forward.
Some of them were hit and broke down crying. Shortly afterwards, another volley of gunfire let the windows burst and the GCF soldiers in the main building hit the dirt.
The Japanese finally destroyed the front door and hurled hand grenades into the entrance hall. Now also the rest of the unit rushed forward.
A short fight followed, then the central complex was taken. The Japanese searched the building for enemies and killed everyone to leave no witnesses.
“I hope, that nobody had escaped us. Otherwise the main base in the south will be warned”, imagined Frank and looked out a broken window.
Officer Oda and the leader of the „Hukushuu V” platoon conferred in a corner, then they went into the room with the computer systems for the radio station. They destroyed everything and came out again after some minutes.
„We have 30 dead men in both units!“, explained Oda with concern.
Some of the soldiers who were already pronounced dead by him, were just heavily injured. But here, in the middle of the jungle, nobody could help them anymore. Time pressed and they had to reach the main base as fast as possible. So the poor soldiers were just left alone – dying. Officer Oda uttered a curse under his breath and finally gave the order to march off.
Frank and Alfred gasped, totally exhausted, and listened to the desperate wailing of a comrade who was lying badly wounded on the ground. There was no more help for him, he would soon be dead – as Frank hoped.
Meanwhile, Kohlhaas tried to think about nothing, because the really bloody part of this operation would start now. He tried to switch off his mind like Oda had done it with the computer system of this radio station. But it did not work...
Hukushuu