The main guns were more than enough, but the armored unit was taking no chances and wasn’t satisfied with simply pulverizing the Japanese. A couple of the tanks were equipped with flamethrowers. They let loose with burning streams of jellied gasoline, hosing down the dugouts with fire. This napalm was horrible stuff, a sort of sticky lava that clung to everything it touched. A few clumps of napalm fell short and hit the field, setting the tall weeds on fire. The breeze fanned the flames and carried the fire and smoke toward the enemy position. Even from the outfield, Deke was pretty sure that he heard screaming as the enemy soldiers were burned alive, either by the flamethrowers or the spreading brush fire.
Faced with the awful threat of the flamethrowers, some of the Japanese ran headlong from positions around the baseball dugouts. The limited visibility from within the tanks meant that some of the enemy had managed to slip away unseen by the tank crews. However, the fleeing Japanese didn’t get far because not all the GIs from the ill-fated attack had been killed. They popped up now out of the long grass and weeds, firing at any Jap who made a run for it, taking their revenge.
Deke picked out a runner and squeezed the trigger, hearing the satisfying thunk of a bullet hitting home. It was a sound like a ripe watermelon breaking open — or maybe a fast ball hitting a glove. The Jap went down like a lifeless rag doll. Beside him, Juana grunted her approval.
Another Japanese ran to escape the horror of the flames, his tightly wrapped leggings already burning. The motion of his panic-stricken legs only served to feed the flames. Juana swung up her rifle, but before she could fire, they heard the deep boom of a 12-gauge shotgun. The enemy soldier collapsed in a heap.
“Honcho,” she said with a wry smile.
They watched as the one-eyed lieutenant racked another shell into the shotgun and waited patiently for the next target. He might have been hunting pheasants.
Once the tanks had finished their grim business, there was still one task remaining for the foot soldiers. What followed next was like a gopher hunt as they mopped up the Japanese still trying to hide in the stands. With the Americans now controlling the infield and outfield, there was nowhere for them to go except off the high upper rows of the stadium. A couple of them tried it and fell to their deaths.
The Japanese rarely left themselves an escape route. There was no plan in the Japanese mind to fight another day. They fought to the death. The American soldiers were glad to oblige them.
Patrol Easy were joined by more GIs for the mopping-up operation. They spread out in a rough line, from the upper rows down to the box seats, and worked their way through to find any Japanese snipers trying to hide among the benches. Sometimes the Japanese leaped up and ran at them, screaming bloody murder in a singular version of a banzai charge. They were quickly shot down. Some put up no fight at all, but remained hidden in hopes that they might somehow escape their fate.
From up in the stands, the soldiers could see the bodies of several dead GIs sprawled in the weedy field where they had been mowed down by the machine guns in the dugouts. None of those American boys would ever be going home again.
As they hunted down the last of the defenders, nobody bothered to ask if any of the Japanese wanted to surrender, not even Yoshio.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Smoke from dozens of small fires hung like a pall over the city, turning the setting sun bloodred, like a single angry eye squinting at the destruction. In addition to the smell of burning wood, the smoke stank of scorched rubber and sometimes roasted meat. By night, the GIs holed up in the ruins and slept fitfully even when they weren’t on watch, wary of any marauding Japanese. There was no electricity across Manila, but the darkness was interrupted by flickering flames and an occasional muzzle flash. The soldiers welcomed daylight, even if it only meant more fighting from one ruined block to another.
That was about to change. A runner arrived at daybreak with new orders for Lieutenant Steele. The soldiers of Patrol Easy were still licking their wounds from the battle at the baseball stadium, but it turned out that they been assigned a special task that took them all by surprise and would be one of their greatest challenges yet.
“Grab a seat,” Steele said, having gathered them all to hear what he had to say. Deke and the rest of the patrol, along with the Filipino fighters, could only guess at what they were being asked to do next. Deke glanced at Juana, who was watching the lieutenant intently, ready for anything. She looked up and caught Deke’s eye. Her lips were normally set in a grim line, but she gave him a slight smile. Deke did the same in return.
Philly had caught sight of that exchange and stared as if he had just witnessed two lumps of coal suddenly sparkle like diamonds. He opened his mouth to say something that he would probably regret, but at that moment the lieutenant started to speak and saved his bacon.
“We’re being asked to do a job that requires some finesse,” Steele began. “HQ wants us there because we are good shots, but there may not be any shooting. In fact, it would be better if there wasn’t.”
Philly spoke up as usual. “With all due respect, Honcho, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m getting to that,” Steele said. “I’m talking about a hostage situation. Our boys have a bunch of Japanese surrounded at an old university near here, but it turns out the Japanese are holding prisoners there. A lot of those prisoners are Americans, and they are threatening to shoot them unless we give the Japanese safe passage.”
“Safe passage where?”
“They just want us to let them go. I’d imagine that they’re hoping to link up with the rest of their friends, planning to make a last stand in the old quarter of the city.”
“Why should we let them do that?” Philly wondered. “We’ll just have to fight them later.”
Steele shook his head. “Remember those hostages I mentioned? It all comes back to that. Anyhow, none of that is up to me. Our job is to pick off the Japanese if it comes to that. The brass doesn’t want to start shooting randomly with machine guns or artillery. We’d have a lot of dead prisoners then, including Americans. Some of the prisoners are women, from what I hear.”
“Who is going to negotiate with the Japanese?”
He nodded at Yoshio. “We have an interpreter, remember? That’s just in case they don’t speak English, although we know a lot of their officers do. But don’t worry, HQ is sending an officer to lead the negotiations.”
“It figures,” Philly said. “What’s the matter, Honcho? Doesn’t anybody trust us?”
“Look at this way, fellas. If any of the prisoners get killed, it’s on him,” Honcho said. “As usual, our job is mainly to shoot Japs — if we’re needed to do that.”
Steele explained that the negotiator was slated to meet them at the campus. Within the hour, they were moving through the increasingly ruined city, heading in the direction of the university. Once-proud buildings had been reduced to rubble during the fighting, mostly the result of artillery that was being used to systematically destroy any structure harboring the enemy. So much dust hung in the humid air that the sunlight turned a strange burnished sepia tone, like it was filtering through a faded yellow curtain at Grandma’s house.
Bodies of dead Japanese soldiers lay strewn here and there, but there were many more dead city residents, a grim reminder of the price that Manila had been paying. The Filipinos who hadn’t fled worked to gather and bury the bodies, but it was hard to keep up. Nobody bothered with the enemy dead. Stray dogs with their ribs sticking out nosed through the ruins, hoping for scraps.
“It looks like the surface of the moon,” Yoshio said sadly.
“I haven’t been to the moon, but that sounds about right,” Deke replied.
Where the fighting had quieted down, bulldozers were at work, pushing the rubble aside to clear the streets so that tanks and supply trucks could advance more easily. Their loud engines and belching smoke only added to the chaotic feel of destruction.
“Keep your eyes open,” Lieutenant Steele warned. “There’s no telling if there are still a few Nips around.”
“They’re as hard to wipe out as sewer rats,” Philly muttered.
Seconds after Honcho had issued his warning, a shot rang out, targeting one of the nearby bulldozers. Deke literally saw the spark as the bullet glanced off the dozer’s heavy frame. Inside the cab of the roaring dozer, the engine noise was so loud that the operator didn’t even know that he was being shot at.
Honcho waved at the man to get down, but the operator either didn’t see him or didn’t know what was going on.
The next shot was right on target, hitting the dozer operator square in the chest. The man slumped behind the controls, and the dozer rolled on as if it had a mind of its own, finally coming to rest against the stout wall of a building, engine grumbling, smoke pouring from the exhaust.
Another shot echoed along the street, but Patrol Easy had taken cover behind some of the larger chunks of rubble. The street-clearing crew had come to a stop, having seen what had befallen the other dozer operator.
“Anybody see where that sniper was at?” Philly called, scanning the remains of the hollowed-out buildings nearby nervously.
“On it,” said Deke, who thought that he had seen movement in the empty window of a building that still stood at the end of the block. He put his rifle to his shoulder and the scope to his eye, praying that the sniper gave himself away.
Sharp-eyed Juana had seen something too. “There,” she said, pointing, before swinging her own rifle up. She had found cover behind a chunk of concrete not more than a couple of yards from where Deke hid, his rifle resting on a stone block to steady it.