“These might,” she replied.
Burr frowned while he managed a quick calculation. “Did you say the Japanese occupied this Ruka in February of ‘42? That was nearly two years ago. Where have you been during all this time?”
“A prisoner of Colonel Yoshu.”
He cocked his head and eyed her speculatively. “You seem to make a habit of being a prisoner of the Japs.”
She was silent for a long second while she worked on a properly humble response, then, not finding one, said, “Perhaps I am talking to the wrong man. I need a big man, y’see.”
Burr scowled. “It don’t matter how big a man you talk to, Sister. No American’s going to a cockamamie island to palaver with some crazy Japanese colonel. Tell you what. I’ll talk to General Smith and see if he will give you a ride to Australia. There you can go about your business, praying and the like. You can leave the Japanese to us.”
She worried with the rosary beads that hung from her cincture, then shook her head. “Beg yer pardon, sor, but I would like to talk to this General Smith. Not sometime later, neither. Now.”
“It’s not going to happen, Sister.”
“But—”
“Just a minute,” Burr interrupted and started yelling at the crew of a Higgins boat who had managed to snag their craft on the reef even though the opening through it was clearly marked with bobbing buoys. He snatched a passing marine by his collar. “Get out there and tell those idiots to rip off their stripes, boy! Ever last man jack of ‘em, you hear me?”
Burr allowed a great, exaggerated sigh, then turned back to the nun. “What else can I do for you, Sister?” he asked, nearly politely. “As you can see, I’m a very busy man.”
“This man,” she said, nodding toward Josh, “pray let me care for him.” When he wakes up, she thought, he’ll find me a big man and not give me yer guff.
“You’re a nurse?” Burr asked.
“Nay, sor, though I have attended to the sick.”
Burr shook his head. “He don’t need your care, Sister. What he needs is to be under lock and key. When he comes awake, I fear he might pick up a shovel and brain someone important and crucial to the war effort. Look, go to Australia, I tell you. There you can talk to your archbishops, subpopes, or whatever and wait out the war. The entire Pacific will be clear of the Japanese, given time.”
“And how much time would that be?” she demanded, her eyes flashing before she forced her expression back toward one of deference.
Colonel Burr was happy to answer her, for he had recently given that question some thought. He had walked his mind up the various island chains and then contemplated the home islands of the Japanese and what it would take to beat them even with a good pounding of their cities by saturation bombing. “Eight years,” he concluded. “Maybe a little more. We’ll have to kill nearly all of them before this is done, but we’ll get it done, with God’s help. The United States Marine Corps, you see, is the right arm of God.”
Sister Mary Kathleen looked around and saw all the dead marines bob-bing in the sea or sprawled facedown on the sand. “Then it appears God’s right arm is terrible hurt today, Colonel.”
Burr’s face clouded over at the perceived insult to his beloved Corps. “Is there anything else?” he demanded bitterly.
She raised her chin. “I could use a priest. An American one will do.”
“A Cat-licker Holy Joe? There’s got to be one or two landed by now. What do you need one for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I have need to make me confession.”
“Confession of what?”
“Me sins, of course.”
Burr scratched his jaw. “I thought being a nun and all, you weren’t allowed to sin.”
“We are all sinners, sor,” she replied. Then she added, all humility forgotten, “The priest, if ye please?”
“All right, Sister,” Burr growled and then barked at his marines to move Thurlow into the pillbox and don’t forget the barbed wire, by thunder, then collect all those men still floating in the sea and lying dead in the sand and, oh yes, go find the little nun here a fish-eating Holy Joe and he meant all that to be done right now toot sweet!
17
As soon as the sun expired into the Pacific with its usual gaudy display of pink spokes and scarlet-rimmed clouds normal to those latitudes, Ready made up his mind. He told his little band of marines they were going to move. “Move where?” Sampson demanded, brought awake by Ready’s command.
“To the beach,” Ready replied. “Jap knows where we are. Won’t be long, he’ll be sneaking in.”
“My foot is killing me,” Sampson complained. “I can’t walk.”
“You can walk,” Ready said, “because nobody’s going to carry you.” “You got that right, Bosun,” Tucker said, “but you’re wrong about the Japanese sneaking in. I figure it’ll be a big banzai attack. They’re probably out there drinking sake and stuff right now, getting themselves all worked up.”
“Three riflemen and a fellow without a rifle or even a shirt ain’t worth a banzai attack,” Ready replied. “Them Imperial marines will just wait till dark and then come over here and cut our throats.”
Tucker smirked. “Well, ain’t you the optimist!”
Garcia withdrew his K-bar from its sheath and fondled it. “Let them come,” he said menacingly. “I’ll take a few with me.”
Ready ignored both Tucker’s sarcasm and Garcia’s bravado. “Pick up your traps and let’s go,” he ordered. “You get one more round of griping and then I don’t want a peep out of any of you until we get to the beach. And if you got a canteen that rattles or anything else, fix it so it don’t make any noise. We got to be like shadows.”
The three marines cheerfully accomplished the griping—none of them wanted to move out of their holes, and all of them said so—and then they grimly tore strips from the uniform of a nearby dead Japanese to muffle their gear. “Let’s go,” Ready said when he thought they were prepared. “And that’s the last word you’ll hear out of me until we get to where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?” Sampson demanded.
“The beach,” Ready answered.
“Why to the beach?”
“Because we may need to swim to save ourselves.”
The moon was new, just a sliver of it showing, and therefore didn’t cover the atoll with its usual Pacific silvery brilliance. It was dark as dirt, which Ready thought a good thing. He picked out a direction, easterly, and crept ahead. The marines followed, holding their bayonet-tipped rifles. Before it had gotten dark, Ready had calculated their course, one that would take them past a line of low scrub bushes of what he supposed was a type of sea grape. Now the shapes of those bushes, their dark darker than the rest of the dark, loomed very near. He stopped, and the marines behind him stopped, too. Ready strained his eyes toward a shadow off by itself, and then he saw, or thought he saw, it move.
Then he thought he saw another of the shadows move, just a nudge. Holding his breath, he looked so hard at the shadows that his eyes hurt. There! Now he was certain. The shadows were not bushes but men, a conjecture almost immediately proved when something hard and sharp pushed into Ready’s bare right arm, which held his K-bar. It was a bayonet, tipped he supposed on a long Japanese rifle, and it slowly slid along his arm. Then the bayonet stopped, withdrew, sliding back across. Ready and the man holding the rifle were close enough now that Ready could hear the man breathing, and it had the smell of sake on it, too. Tucker had been right about the Japanese drinking their courage. Ready caught movement out of the corner of his eye and realized he and his marines were all mixed up with the Japanese who had probably been on their way to cut their throats. Coincidentally, they had chosen similar paths. Now each man, American and Japanese, was wondering what to do.
The rikusentai slowly nudged Ready’s arm. Perhaps he still wasn’t convinced he was facing a man—but then came a rifle shot, and the Japanese marine stepped back, and disappeared into the gloom. Th
en Ready heard a cacophony of grunts, spews, and shrieks until finally there was nothing but the sound of heavy breathing. “Marines?” Ready called, fearing the answer.
“I got mine, Bosun,” Tucker replied from the ground.
“I got one,” Garcia gasped, still catching his breath.
“I killed one and wounded another,” Sampson answered. “I think he crawled off somewhere.”
“Mine got away,” Ready confessed. “I think there must be at least two more.” Just as he spoke, he heard the scramble of boots on sand, then running sounds that gradually diminished.
“They’re running back to their camp,” Tucker said. “They’ll tell the others where we’re headed.”
“Well, we’re still headed there,” Ready answered.
Nobody argued with him, so Ready led his marines off at a trot, leading them, like the good Killakeet boy he was, to the sea.
18
Colonel Montague Singleton Burr was having trouble getting to sleep. It was all the scheming that was keeping him awake, that and the terrible stink of the dead, not to mention all the awful popping and crackling of the gas escaping from their bloated bodies in the terrible heat that had not much dissipated after the sun had set. Burr had made his bed in a battered amtrac with the hope of getting away from the dreadful odors and sounds. Instead, the slap of the waves against the amtrac added to the general turmoil of his increasingly fever-ridden mind. There were many schemes playing through his head, but only one was insistent, and it had to do with Josh Thurlow. The idea made him chuckle under his breath when he thought about it, even though he kept telling himself no, he couldn’t do it, and it would be so wrong. But then he would tell himself yes, he actually could do it, and it would be for the best, anyway. In fact, it was probably something that was meant to be, and he was only a cog in the wheels of fate that had begun turning the moment he’d laid eyes on the little Irish nun in her dirty habit. Wiping the burning sweat from his eyes, Burr finally gave in to it. What else could he do? Kismet, he said to himself, even though he halfway suspected that his rising fever might be disturbing his logic. He sat up on the hard deck of the amtrac and yelled for his clerk.
A gray-haired marine rose from the beach and wandered sleepily across the sand to the amtrac. “You bellowed, Colonel?”
“Private,” Burr croaked, “how’d you like to get your stripes back?” Burr’s clerk was famously known for having sergeant’s stripes one day and none the next, depending on the whims of his boss. “I’d admire my stripes back, sure, Colonel,” he answered, stifling a yawn.
“Then, my man, get yourself a notebook and a pencil!”
The clerk already had a little notebook in his pocket and also a pencil. He showed them to the colonel, and Burr said, “I want you to write down all that is about to transpire for my daily log. You can type it up later. Savvy?”
“Savvy without doubt, sir.”
Snatching up a flashlight, Burr climbed out of the amtrac and led the way to the blasted pillbox that was Josh Thurlow’s prison. To Burr’s distinct displeasure, which caused a spate of grumbled curses, he saw neither barbed wire surrounding it nor any guards. Half-expecting Thurlow to have escaped, he went inside and was relieved to see the man lying unconscious on the sand with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around his grimy and sweat-damp face. “Sit him up,” Burr brusquely ordered.
Thurlow groaned as he was raised up, then sagged crookedly against the broken concrete, his chin resting on his dirt-caked chest. He was a sorry sight, which improved the colonel’s mood. “Now, Captain Thurlow,” Burr began in a condescending and syrupy tone, “some interesting intelligence has come my way that I think you should hear. Are you writing this down, Private?”
The clerk looked up from his pad. “Writing, aye, aye, sir.”
Burr nodded, withdrew a red bandana from his hip pocket to wipe the sweat from his face, and then continued his one-way conversation. “Some interesting information, as I said, Thurlow, and I knew you were the one to hear it. For despite your denials, I know you are in fact an intelligence officer sent out here by the great power brokers of Washington, DC. Am I not correct?”
Josh said nothing, mainly because he was unconscious, so Burr went on: “Well, says you, Colonel, you’re in the right of it, for certain. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else, says he, can Secretary of the fucking Navy Frank Knox, and Chief of Staff George C. for Christ Marshall, and maybe even God, otherwise known as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, know what they should do next? Says you, says I. Got that, Sergeant?
Read back our conversation so far.”
The clerk scratched his head with the eraser end of his pencil—and read: “And then Colonel Burr said, ‘Well, says you, Colonel, you’re in the right of it for certain. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else, says he, can Secretary of the fucking Navy—’ ”
“Hold it, Private!” Burr angrily snapped. “Are you an idiot, man? Write it down the way it’s being said, not the way you hear it!”
The clerk looked stupidly at Burr for a long second, then licked the point of his pencil and smeared out what he had written. “You’re right, Colonel,” he apologized. “I guess I’m going a bit deaf. All these artillery rounds, I suppose.” He scribbled a bit and then read, “Captain Thurlow replied, “ ‘You’re in the right of it, Colonel Burr. I am sent out here to find out all I can, for how else can Secretary of the Navy—’ ”
“Very good, Sergeant,” Burr interrupted. With a grim smile, he continued: “Now, Thurlow, this nun, this little snot-nosed Catholic sister, has come to me with a most interesting story. It seems the Japanese have occupied a group of islands known as the Forridges, a.k.a. the Far Reaches. That means we have the enemy placed in our rear, a terrible thing. Well, Colonel Burr, Josh replies, says you, says me, says he, that would be a terrible thing indeed. Perhaps I should go out there and take a look. Why, Captain Thurlow, says I, do you think so? I mean, after all, you are terribly wounded, man! Yet, (I’m shrugging, Sergeant, and most reluctant—take note of it) you know your duty better than I, of course. Says he, I tell you what, Colonel, where is that fucking common little nun? Does she have a boat? If she does, I’ll ship along with her, take a run up to those islands, see what’s what and be back here in a jiffy Well, all right, Captain, says me, says I, if you think that’s best. I’ll call the little Irish creature over right away to talk about it. Read me that last line, Private.”
The clerk stopped his scribbling and cleared his throat. Josh fell over on his side, and his breathing became even more labored. Both men ignored him. “ ‘I’ll call the nun, God bless her,” the clerk read from his notes, “to brief us on the situation in the Forridges immediately so that you can decide what you should do.’ ”
“Very good, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The nun is obviously required at this point,” Burr said. “Go get her.”
“Where is she?”
“How the hell should I know? Find her!”
The clerk tucked his notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket and went off to find the nun, wherever she might be. She wasn’t far, as it turned out. A marine trying to sleep on the beach pointed to where she and her savages had made camp, which was close by a shattered Higgins boat. Behind the Higgins, the clerk was surprised to find three large outrigger canoes. The nun was kneeling in the sand in front of them, not at her prayers but with an M-l rifle in her hands. Beside her, in the light produced by a hissing kerosene lantern, was a towheaded and helmetless young marine. The marine was saying, “That’s it, Sister. Now, try it again.”
The astonished clerk watched as the nun disassembled the rifle, carefully placing the various parts on a palm frond mat beside her, then reassembling them all in the same order. She finished with the receiver slapping shut.
“Was that done well enough?” she asked the marine.
“Yes, ma’am. They’d be proud of you on Parris Island.”
 
; “May I keep it?” she asked of the rifle. “And some ammunition?” “Don’t see why not. There ain’t no shortage of rifles lying about. Here’s a couple of clip bandoliers.”
The clerk cleared his throat. “Sister? Colonel Montague Burr would have a word with you. Will you follow me?”
“Will ye follow Christ?” she retorted.
“If Christ will lead me off this atoll, ma’am, I’ll follow him or any other damn god you name.”
She looked at him with big, disappointed eyes, and the clerk mumbled, “Don’t mean no disrespect, Sister. I’m just a bit tired.” He paused to assess the situation. “What are you doing with that rifle?”
She ignored the question and turned to the marine beside her. “Would you please place my rifle and ammunition on that canoe? Yes, that one there. Thank you.” The young marine carefully wrapped the rifle in the mat and then used the ammunition bandoliers to strap it all together. Sister Mary Kathleen turned to the clerk. “Will ye take me to Colonel Burr, then?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Then someone, for no apparent reason, popped a flare over the atoll, and as it floated down, streaming smoke, the clerk saw in the dancing shadows naked men covered with tattoos crouched about what appeared to be a body. Their hands were busy with flashing knives. “What in God’s name are they doing?” the clerk gasped.
The nun looked over her shoulder, then said, most serenely, “They are flaying one of their fella boys so that he might be carried home.”
“Flaying? You mean removing the … the flesh?”
“Aye. Bones they can carry, but not the flesh. They will feed the meat to the fish. It is their way. Do not look if it bothers ye.”
It did indeed bother the clerk, so he took her advice and didn’t look anymore. Instead, he quickly led the nun away from the beach to the pillbox, where Burr was still contemplating, with some obvious satisfaction, the fallen, sweat-soaked, and thoroughly filthy Josh Thurlow, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. The nun knelt at Josh’s side. “He is worse!” she said in an accusing tone. “Have ye not called a doctor for him as I asked, then?”