“I don’t think so. Well—”
“All right, men!” If it weren’t for the wind, the Mayor’s voice would be heard all the way back in Onofre, it seemed. He limped over to me, and I had to look up at him. His hair danced over his shadowed face. “Tell us where they’re landing, and we’ll be off.”
Steve said, “We can’t tell you till we’re up there.”
“None of that!” said the Mayor. Steve looked at me. The Mayor went on: “We’ve got to know how far away they’re landing, so we can decide whether or not to take the boats.” So, I thought, they had boated up the coast to get past Onofre. “You men have got guns, and you’re part of the raid. I understand your caution, but we’re all on the same side here. I give you my word. So let’s have it.”
The circle of men stood around us silently.
“They’re landing at Dana Point,” I said.
There it was. If they wanted to leave us now, there was nothing we could do about it. We stood watching the Mayor. No one spoke, and I could feel Nicolin’s accusing gaze, but I kept staring into the underlit face of the Mayor, who looked back at me without expression.
“Do you know what time they’re landing?”
“Midnight, I heard.”
“And who’d you hear from?”
“Scavengers who don’t like the Japanese.”
Another silence followed that. Danforth looked over at a man I recognized—Ben, his assistant.
“We’d better get going,” Danforth said after this silent conference. “We’ll go on foot.”
Steve said, “It’ll take a couple hours to walk to Dana Point.”
Danforth nodded. “Is the freeway the best route?”
“Up to the middle of San Clemente it is. After that there’s a coastal road that’s faster, and less exposed to scavengers.” Now that he was sure we were going, Steve’s voice was filled with excitement.
“We don’t have to worry about scavengers tonight,” Danforth said. “They wouldn’t attack a party this size.”
We climbed back up the shoulder into the hot dry blast of the wind. Like me, Mando carried a gun in his hand; Steve and Gab had room in their coat pockets for theirs. When we were all on the roadway the San Diegans started north, and we followed. A few men disappeared ahead and behind us. They had all sorts of guns with them: rifles, pistols as long as my forearm, little fat guns on tripods.
Trees swayed on each side of the road, and branches tumbled through the air like injured night birds. The stars winked brightly in the cloudless black sky, and by their light I could see a great deal: shapes in the forest, the whitish slash of the freeway stretching ahead through the trees, the occasional scout jogging back down the road to us, to report to the Mayor. The four of us kept right behind Danforth, and listened silently as he discussed things and gave orders in a voice calculated to warn every scavenger in Orange County. Walking down the middle of the road, we topped the rise where brick walls tumbled into the freeway, climbed over them and were in San Clemente itself.
“I expect the wind will slow them coming in,” Danforth remarked to Ben, unaware of the boundary we had crossed, the boundary I had promised Tom I would never cross. “I wonder how much they had to pay those patrols to let them through? What do you think the going price is for a trip to the mainland, eh? Do you think they tell them it could cost their lives?” Nicolin kept right on the Mayor’s heels, soaking in every word. I fell farther and farther back, but I could still hear him when the three men in the rearguard climbed out of the brick tangle and one said, “Either stay up there with them or get off the road with us.” I picked up my pace and rejoined the Mayor’s group.
Up and down, up and down, over the hills. Trees bounded in place under the wind’s hard hand, and the wires still in the air swung like jumpropes. Eventually we came to the road Nicolin had mentioned, that would lead us through San Clemente to Capistrano Beach and Dana Point. Once off the freeway and down in the rubble-filled streets I was obsessed by thoughts of ambush. Branches flew out from between broken walls, planks slapped each other, tumbleweed ran at us or away from us, and time after time I clicked over the safety of my pistol, ready to dive for cover and shoot. The Mayor highstepped over the junk in the middle of the street easy as you please. “That’s our point man,” he shouted to us, aiming with his pistol at a silhouette dodging through the street ahead. “There’s tails a block behind us, too.” He gave us the whole strategy of our positions in the street, which seemed like accidents of the moment. The men all had their rifles at the ready, and they were spread out well. “No wreckrats are going to give us trouble tonight, I don’t believe.” He kicked a brick in the road and stumbled. “Damn this road!” It was the third time he had nearly fallen. In all the rubbish it was necessary to watch every step, but he was above that sort of thing. “Doesn’t the freeway go right to Dana Point?” he asked Steve. “The maps showed that it did.”
“It turns inland about a mile from the harbor,” Steve said, his voice raised to carry over the clatter the wind was making.
He still sounded weak compared to the Mayor, who was talking in his everyday voice.
“That’s good enough,” Danforth declared. “I don’t like the footing in this junk.” He called to the forward scouts in a voice that made me wince. “Back to the freeway,” he told them. “We need to hurry more than we need to hide.” We turned up a street headed inland, and intersected the freeway after climbing over a fallen building. Once on the freeway we marched at good speed north, all the way through San Clemente to the big marsh that separates San Clemente from Dana Point.
From the south side of the marsh we could see Dana Point clearly. It was a curve of bluffs, not tall like the cliffs down in San Diego, but tall for our part of the coast, and the curve stuck out from the generally straight line of the land. Now it was a dark mass against the stars, not a light on it anywhere. Underneath the sheer part of the bluff was a tangle of marsh and island, trees and ruins, bounded by a rock jetty that protected a narrow strip of water. Once or twice when fishing to the north we had taken refuge there in storms. The jetty was invisible from where we stood, but Steve described it in as much detail as he could to the Mayor.
“So they’ll probably land there,” the Mayor concluded.
“Yes sir.”
“What about this marsh here? It looks like a good-sized river. Is there a place where we can cross?”
“The beach road has held,” Steve said. “It’s a high bridge over the rivermouth, so it drains right and none of it’s ever been washed out.” He said this as proudly as if he were the bridge builder. “I’ve been across it.”
“Excellent, excellent. Let’s get over it, then.”
The road leading from the freeway to the bridge was gone, however, and we were forced to descend a ravine, cross the creek at its bottom, and climb the other side. My pistol was getting to be quite an irritation in all this climbing, and I could see Mando felt the same. Danforth’s exhortations kept us hurrying. Once on the beach road we hurried over the thick sand that covered it, to the mouth of the estuary. As Steve had said, the bridge was still there, in good shape. In a low voice Gabby asked me, “How does he know all this?” but all I could do was shrug and shake my head. Nicolin had made night treks on his own, I knew that—and now I knew that he had come all the way up here, on his own, and had never told me of it.
Out on the bridge we caught the full brunt of the wind for the first time since we had entered San Clemente. It peeled over the bridge with a force that made us stagger, and it shoved the water of the river in choppy waves against the pilings. The waves burst into foam and rebounded into the channel, to be carried out to sea gurgling and sucking and hissing. We didn’t tarry there, and were quickly over the bridge and under the bluffs of Dana Point, out of the wind’s full power.
Tucked under the bluffs was the marshy flat that had once been the harbor. Only the channel directly behind the rock jetty was free of the sand and scrub that had drifted in and cove
red the rest of the little bay. We struggled through nettles and man-high brush to the beach facing the jetty, less than a stone’s throw away from it. Swells broke over submerged sections of the line of rocks, giving it a white edging and making it visible in the starlight. Weak remnants of the swell washed up the pebbly beach. The jetty ended almost directly across from us; we stood at the entrance of what remained of the harbor.
“If they land here they’ll have to get through this marsh,” Jennings said to the Mayor.
“You think they’ll sail in there, then?” the Mayor said, pointing up the channel to where it ended against the curve of the bluff.
“Maybe, but when the swell is small like it is tonight, I don’t see why they wouldn’t avoid all this and sail over to the beach back there.” Jennings pointed back the way we had come, at the wide beach stretching from the harbor south to the bridge.
“But what if we go there and they land here?” said Ben.
“Even if they do land somewhere in here,” Jennings said, “they’ll have to go by us over there if they’re going to go up the valley to see the mission like we think they are.”
“Like you think they are,” Danforth said.
“Don’t you agree?”
“Maybe.”
Jennings said, “Well either way, if we’re over there we’ll have them. They’ll come by us wherever they land—they won’t be going up those cliffs.” He waved at the north end of the channel. “If we stay here and they land on that beach, they’ll be able to run inland. We want to trap them against water.”
“That’s true,” Ben said.
Danforth nodded. “Let’s get back there, then.” Everyone heard him, of course, and we tramped back through the thick shrubs cursing and struggling. Back on the road that led to the bridge, the Mayor called us together.
“We’ve got to be well hidden, because the scavengers might come to greet this landing, and they’ll be coming from behind us. So I want us all in buildings or thick trees, or some such shelter as that. We’re assuming they’re going to land at this beach here, but it’s a good long stretch, so we may have to move after we sight them. If there’s a group on the beach to greet them, we’ll be able to adjust sooner, but we’ll have to be very quiet about it.” He led us from the road onto the beach. “Don’t walk where fresh tracks will show! Now. Main force, over here behind this wall.” Several men followed his pointing finger, and walked over to a low tumbled-down wall of broken brick. “Get tucked in there good.” He walked south down the beach. “Another group in that clump of trees. That will make a good crossfire. And you Onofre men…” He came back north, passed the first wall, came to a pile of cement blocks. “In here. See, this was a latrine. Clear some of these out and hunker down in here. If they try slipping around into that harbor swamp, you’ll be here to stop them.”
Mando and I put down our guns, and we climbed into the blocks and weeds and tossed some blocks out to make more room for us.
“That’s good,” Danforth said. “We don’t want to make too much of a disturbance, they may have landed around here before, in which case we don’t want to change anything much. Get in that, let’s see how well hidden you are.” We climbed over the junk in the doorway and stood inside. Two of the walls didn’t meet anymore, and we had a good view through the crack of the beach and the water. “Good. One of you stay where you can see down the beach.”
“We can see through this break,” Steve said, looking through the crack.
“Okay. That might be a good slot for shooting through, too. Stay out of sight, remember. They’ll have night glasses, and they’ll have a good look around before they land.”
The rest of the San Diegans had disappeared in their various blinds. The Mayor looked around and saw they had dispersed; he checked the watch on his wrist and said, “Okay. It’s still a couple hours before midnight, but the scavengers may come earlier to greet them, and they may land early anyway. When you see them come in, stay down. Don’t even release the safeties of your guns until we fire on them, understand? That’s very important. When we fire is your signal to fire too. Don’t waste bullets. Lastly, if anything happens and we get separated in the fighting, we’ll all meet on the bridge we crossed, and go back through San Clemente together. You know where I mean?”
“Sure,” Steve said. “The big bridge.”
“Good men. I’m going to join the main group. Keep quiet, and keep one man looking hard.” He shook each of our hands in turn, leaning into the latrine to do it. Once again he crushed my hand. “One more thing—we’ll hold our fire until they’re all on the beach. Remember that. Okay? Okay, then”—clenching a fist and swinging it overhead—“now’s our chance to get them!” Then he was off, limping across the soft sand to the broken wall down the beach.
No one in sight. Steve stood at the big crack facing the water and said, “I’ll take the first lookout.”
We each slid into the best seat we could make, and began to wait. Gabby settled down on a pile of disintegrating cement blocks. Mando and I got as comfortable as we could, sitting on each side of him. There was nothing to do but listen to the wind batter the ruins. Once I stood and looked over Steve’s shoulder at the slice of the sea visible through the crack. Waves broke and sluiced up and down the beach; the offshore wind threw back a little spray, in white arcs barely lit by the starry sky. Whitecaps flecked the surface farther out to sea. Nothing else. I sat back down. Counted the bullets in my leather pouch. There were twelve of them. The gun was loaded, so theoretically I could kill eighteen Japanese. I wondered how many there would be. With my fingernails I could pluck the loaded bullets from their chambers and slip them back in, so I figured reloading wouldn’t be a problem. Mando saw me and began fiddling with his gun, too.
“Do you think these things shoot straight?” he said.
“If you’re close enough,” said Gabby.
We waited some more. Leaning back against the cement wall I even dozed a bit, but I had one of those waking dreams, a quick vision of a green bottle tumbling my way, and I jerked awake again, my heart pumping. Still, nothing was happening, and I almost drifted off again, thinking in a disconnected dreamy way about the bricks of the latrine. Who had made such once-perfect bricks?
“I wish they’d get here,” Mando said.
“Shh,” Steve said. “Don’t talk. It’s getting close to time.”
If they come at all, I thought. Overhead the stars flickered in the velvet black sky. I shifted to the other side of my butt. We waited. Off on the bluffs a pair of coyotes matched yowls. A lot of time passed, heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath. Nothing slower than time passing, sometimes.
Steve jerked and reached a hand back to snap in our faces. He leaned over, hissed “scavengers” in a whisper. We jumped to our feet and looked through the crack, peering around Steve.
Dark. Then against the white gleam of the shorebreak I made out figures moving down the beach. They stopped for a while near the wall where the San Diegans were hidden, then moved north, until they were between us and the water. Their voices were almost loud enough to be understood. They clumped together and then moved south again, stopping before they had come even with the San Diegans. One of them leaned down and struck a lighter near the sand, and by its tiny flame several pants legs were illuminated. They were dressed in their finery: in the little circle of light were flashes of gold, ruby, sky-blue cloth. The man with the lighter lit five or six lanterns and left them on the sand with several dark bags and a couple of boxes. One of the lanterns had green glass. Another scavenger took that one and a clear one, went to the water and swung them overhead, crossing them once or twice. By the lanterns’ light we could make out parts of the whole crew, silver flashing from their ears and hands, wrists and waists. Several more appeared, carrying dry brush and some bigger branches, and with difficulty they started a fire. Once it was going the kindling burst into flame, and the bigger pieces crackled and spit burning pitch into the sand. Now in the bouncing light they were a
ll clearly visible: fifteen of them, I counted, dressed in yellow and red and purple and blue and green, and weighted down with rings and necklaces of silver and copper.
“I don’t see any boat out there,” Steve whispered. “You’d think if they were signaling we could make out the boat.”
“Too dark,” Mando whispered. “And the fire cuts what we can see.”
“Shh,” Steve hissed.
“Look,” said Gabby in an urgent whisper. He pointed past Steve’s shoulder, but already I saw what he meant: there was a dark bulk rising out of the water, just off the end of the jetty. Waves rolled over this dark shape, defining it.
“It’s coming up from under the water!” Gabby said tightly. “It didn’t sail in at all.”
“Get down,” Steve said, and we crouched at his sides. “That’s a submarine.”
The man on the beach waved one lantern overhead now, the green one. Their fire gusted in the wind and the bright light bounced off yellow coats, emerald pants.
“So that’s how they get past the coast guard,” Gabby said.
“They go under them,” Steve agreed, awe in his voice.
“Do you think the San Diegans see it?” Mando said.
“Shh,” Steve hissed again.
One of the submarine’s lights came on, illuminating a narrow black deck. Figures came out of a hatch onto this deck, and in the water beside it they inflated big rafts. Others piled out of the submarine into the rafts. The scavengers’ firelight reflected off the oars as the rafts were rowed to the beach. Two scavengers welcomed the raft by wading into the water up to their waists, and pulling it up the beach beyond the white wavefoam. Several men jumped out of the raft, and a couple more of them lifted packages and wooden boxes out of it. Scavengers handed them jars of amber liquid that glistened in the firelight, and as the Japanese visitors drank we could just hear the scavengers’ greetings, raucous and jovial. The Japanese all looked very round, as if they were wearing two coats each. One of them looked just like my captain.