Although his mind vaguely registered the fact, he didn’t realize just how much danger he was in. At any moment a Japanese sniper might spot him. The machine gun atop the building might open fire again once its crew had been replaced. His short life might be over in an instant.
But he was in too deep to go back, entirely on his own in this no-man’s-land of a battleground. He had no choice but to stick with the plan that he had set for himself.
Little did young Roddy know that he was on a collision course with the Japanese.
Back in the shadows of the bank building, Lieutenant Steele announced that they were going to send out a search party for the boy. In their hearts, Patrol Easy knew it was the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it.
“Let’s face it, that dumb kid is probably dead,” Philly pointed out. “He had no business being with us in the first place.”
Deke glanced at Juana, who was normally stoic. He knew that, like Honcho, she had grown fond of the boy in the short time that he had been part of their patrol. She looked stricken at Philly’s words.
“Shut up, Philly,” Deke muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Philly looked as if he wanted to say more, but he glanced at Deke and went quiet.
“Look, fellas, I don’t like this any better than you do,” Honcho explained. “But I don’t like the idea of leaving that boy out there if there’s any chance he’s still alive. What are we going to do, get his father away from those Japs and then break the news to him that we got his son killed?”
It was a valid point.
In the end, Deke and Philly volunteered to look for the boy.
“I thought you said the boy was as good as dead?” Rodeo said.
“If Deke wants to go look for him, that’s good enough for me,” Philly said. “Besides, somebody’s got to keep him from getting his crazy cracker ass shot off.”
Rodeo wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure it’s not the other way around? Seems to me that most of the time Deke is the one saving you.”
Philly did his best to look indignant. “Are you being serious right now?”
Juana wanted to go along to help look for the boy. Deke’s first instinct was to say no, but then he thought better of it. He realized that he somehow felt protective of Juana. He wondered where in the hell that feeling had come from. She was as good of a soldier as any of them. Maybe even better than most. Juana was tough, reminding him of his sister, Sadie. What would Sadie have said if Deke had tried to keep her from doing something because he thought it was too dangerous? Hell, she would have belted him in the gut, that was what. He was sure that Sadie and Juana were cut from the same cloth.
Grinning at Juana, he nodded. “We’ll take all the help we can get with the Japs so close,” he said.
Deke glanced at Danilo, but their Filipino guide didn’t meet his eyes. This was uncharacteristic of Danilo, who was usually up for anything. However, it was clear that the city unsettled him. Danilo preferred the mountains and jungle to the dusty rubble and the stinking burned wreckage of vehicles and buildings. His element was the natural world, not these choked city streets. Deke knew just how he felt, but a soldier couldn’t always choose his ground. Besides, how terrifying it must have been for that boy to be out there on his own. If he was out there, Deke knew that he had to at least try to get him back.
Juana pointed them in the right direction. “This way,” she said. As it turned out, she had been one of the last to see the boy, just when he had taken off on his own. Fortunately, the machine gun on top of the legislative building remained silent. Even the snipers they had spotted before in the windows seemed to be giving them a break.
Then again, nobody thought this was going to be easy. There was a lot of ground to cover if they wanted to find the boy. Deke just hoped that the boy wasn’t already dead.
What the search party — and Roddy — couldn’t have known was that at that very moment, the Japanese inside the legislative building were preparing a patrol led by Sergeant Inaba to counter any attacks on their flanks or rear — the exact approach routes that the boy’s mind had conjured. Ideally, Inaba would be able to leave pairs of soldiers in the outlying rubble as forward observers, or the equivalent of outposts, to detect any approaching threats.
Sergeant Inaba carried his submachine gun again, while one of his men carried an Arisaka rifle with a telescopic sight. Inaba was hoping against hope that his sniper would have a chance to use it against the American sharpshooters. Such was his confidence in the superior abilities of Japanese troops that he had no doubts that his sniper would prove to be the better shot. He took twelve experienced soldiers with him, more than enough to handle any enemy patrols they encountered.
“Move!” he admonished his men. “Ugoku!”
Major Tanigawa stood nearby, looking on with approval as Sergeant Inaba organized his men. The major’s samurai sword hung from his belt, and he held his prized double rifle in his hands. Although it was not a military weapon, it was perfect for this kind of urban fighting, able to get off two quick shots that would pack quite a wallop, considering that he was using a cartridge designed for big game.
“I feel like I am about to go on a hunting trip!” he said, a rare grin touching his face.
Inaba nodded at his superior officer, then led his patrol into the smashed ruins surrounding the building where the Japanese were planning to make their last stand.
The battle had reached the point where it went without saying that they didn’t plan on taking any additional prisoners, whether they were American GIs, civilians, or boys. As for the hostages they had taken, they were still alive, but at a command from Major Tanigawa, that would no longer be the case.
Inaba looked forward to that moment.
“We will split up,” the major said. “That way, we will cover more ground. Take some of the men and make sure that the gaijin are not hiding in the rubble or the alleys on the far side of the square. If you run into trouble, I will bring up the rest of the patrol.”
“Hai,” Inaba said, and began to lead his men forward, finger on the trigger, ready to shoot anything that moved.
Not that far away, Roddy picked his way through the ruined square. He wore gray dungarees and a red-and-white-striped shirt, which hardly helped him blend into the strewn rubble and debris. He passed wrecked vehicles and a handful of bodies. He knew better now than to look at them too much, but he couldn’t resist staring with fascination at the bodies.
Most were dead Filipinos, although a few were Japanese. The clothes of the dead Filipinos were shredded and sometimes pulled open as if they had clawed at themselves in pain. It was hard to know how they had died. Some of the bodies of the women were bloody in places that his innocent mind found hard to fathom. One thing for certain, whether the dead were Filipino or Japanese, the buzzing flies had found them all. As for the smell — he walked away quickly, gagging. He didn’t know it then, but it was an odor that he would never be able to forget. He hoped that he wouldn’t end up the same way. It seemed a horrible way to be dead, lying out here in the open.
He felt sorry for them all, mostly for the kind and friendly Filipino people, but also a little for the dead Japanese. There had been at least a few Japanese soldiers during the occupation who had been easygoing enough, even kind, at least toward harmless kids. You could never paint every Japanese soldier with the same brush. Roddy was still of a tender age, and like the innocent boy that he was, he had listened in church enough to believe that there was good in all people, at least deep down. He didn’t yet know that this wasn’t true. In particular, the Japanese occupiers overall had shown that they were capable of cruelty in ways that were hard to understand.
Even though his father had been imprisoned, his family had remained relatively insulated from the worst that the Japanese had to offer. From time to time, an officer and a couple of soldiers appeared at their door, politely asking the names of all who lived there, including their two servants. Roddy hadn’t felt much fear or anger toward the Japanese, but really just boyish curiosity, being more interested in the rifles that the soldiers carried and the pistol on the officer’s hip. Any boy found weapons fascinating. The Japanese had been polite rather than threatening. The Japanese soldiers had never given them any trouble after his mother provided that information, made courteous apologies, and quickly left.
But times hadn’t always been easy, and they had steadily gotten worse. They were sometimes allowed to visit their father at the university compound, and Roddy recalled how his father had asked his mother what had become of her diamond stud earrings.
“My earrings?” she’d said vaguely, touching her bare ears as if in surprise, when they all knew very well that she never went anywhere without them.
“The ones I bought for you in Brisbane before the war,” he’d said, looking at her with sad eyes, as if he had already guessed the truth.
Tearfully, his mother had admitted that she had traded them for a two-pound can of dried milk. Roddy hadn’t had any idea that the food he and his brothers were eating had been so dearly bought. Years later, Roddy would wonder what else his mother had given up to provide for and shelter her family. One by one, their family heirlooms and the pretty objects his mother had collected had quietly disappeared.
More than once, his mother had pointed out that they were lucky because they still had at least