“Indeed I do,” MacGregor said, reaching down to ruffle the boy’s hair, much as Honcho had done from time to time when the boy was helping to guide them through the city ruins. Roddy jerked his head away as if annoyed — acting like he was too old for that nonsense — but he was smiling as he did it. “Now we have a lot of rebuilding to do. This city is just about destroyed.”
“At least you won’t be doing it alone,” Honcho said. Already, in the distance, crews of army engineers were using bulldozers to clear the streets. General MacArthur had made sending help to Manila a priority, although any real construction would have to wait until the end of the war. Other crews made up mostly of Filipinos worked to bury the dead — of which there were far too many civilian casualties.
“We’re glad to have all the help that we can get,” MacGregor agreed. “As for you fellas, go give the Japs hell. If you get to Tokyo, give Hirohito a punch in the nose from me.”
Of course they were not the only prisoners glad to get home and see families and friends from whom they had been separated. No one rested for long because survival in the city ruins required nothing but hard work. The two Red Cross nurses, including the redoubtable Catherine Rooney, had immediately gone to work helping wounded soldiers and civilians. Rooney could be heard muttering under her breath about “conditions,” but that didn’t stop her from doing everything from bandaging a wound to holding the hand of the dying. Deke decided that the nurses were two of the biggest-hearted, toughest people he had met in Manila.
Another goodbye came when they buried Danilo. There was no one to claim his body, considering that his family was far away on Leyte.
“Dammit, I figured that nobody could kill that tough bastard,” Deke said.
“When your number’s up, it’s up,” Philly said. It was a philosophy shared by many soldiers, and in some strange way it made the loss easier to bear.
Considering that Danilo had died during the most critical moments of that fight in the square, Deke had blamed himself because his crosshairs had been focused elsewhere. But when he said something aloud about that, Lieutenant Steele had been quick to dissuade him of that notion. “You made the best of two bad choices,” Honcho said. “If you hadn’t acted, every last one of those prisoners might have died. Don’t forget, those prisoners were the reason for us being there in the first place.”
Deke shook his head. “But still—”
“Listen, Deke. The enemy killed Danilo. It had nothing to do with you.”
Looking down at the bundled blanket — a bundle that looked much too small to contain a force of nature like Danilo — Deke tried to decide how he felt. He would not have called Danilo a friend, because he had scarcely known him, but they had fought side by side. Danilo also had taught him a great deal of jungle craft in an environment so very different from the mountains back home. Maybe Danilo hadn’t exactly been a friend, but he’d certainly been a kindred spirit.
“I do know one thing,” Deke said. “Danilo would not want to be buried in the city.”
At Deke’s insistence, they managed to commandeer a jeep to take them beyond the city, to where the green hills began to march down to the slow-moving Pasig River. The soil here was soft, and they soon had a grave dug under a grove of banyan trees. Patrol Easy kept a wary eye out because it was no secret that some Japanese fighters had made their way to the outskirts of the city and were now hiding in the agricultural lands and forests.
Also, they were not alone. None other than Father Francisco had found them in the ruins of the city just the day before and had agreed to preside over the burial of one of his old guerrilla fighters.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine,” he said in Latin.
The first shovel of rich earth pattered down on Danilo’s body, making him forever a part of his beloved country for which he had fought and died.
Burying Danilo had been tough, but for Deke the hardest goodbye was yet to come.
Finally, the orders arrived for them to get down to the harbor, where they would be boarding a troop transport. He had been dreading this moment. It wasn’t the thought of what was next, but what he was leaving behind.
Juana would be staying in Manila, helping the occupation take out the few remaining Japanese defenders who had fled to the hills. At some point, she would put her rifle aside and begin the important work of rebuilding her country.
She accompanied them down to the port, where a ship was waiting to carry troops to the next islands, that much closer to Japan. The port was a flurry of activity, soldiers in olive green uniforms bustling about with the shouts of NCOs ringing in their ears. The ship stood tall and formidable, its drab metal exterior failing to look cheerful even in the bright sun. In the harbor beyond, the water sparkled a deep blue, its waves lapping against the ship’s sides. Considering that up until a few hours before the harbor front and surrounding city had been a scene of intense fighting, the peaceful setting felt surreal.
Father Francisco offered to marry them on the spot, but after considering it briefly, they shook their heads in unison. They both knew that fate was carrying them far apart, rather than together.
Juana stood stiffly as if holding in her emotions, still carrying her Arisaka rifle slung over one shoulder. Deke had the Springfield slung over his own shoulder. Birds of a feather, he thought. For a long moment they simply stood facing one another. Then something passed between them, and they stepped closer and embraced. They would have melted into each other if they could have. Then the moment passed and they stepped apart. It was only a short step, yet it felt as if the entire world had slid between them in that instant.
“Take care, mi soldado,” Juana said, reaching out to trace her finger down the unscarred side of Deke’s face.
He put a stray tendril of hair over her ear. “You do the same, mi guerrera.”
Then Deke turned and started up the temporary quay toward the waiting ship. He didn’t look back, because that was bad luck.
Once they were aboard, Deke stood at the ship’s rail and finally looked back toward the spot where he had left Juana, but she was gone. He felt a sudden emptiness, as if a piece of him had been removed. It was an unexpected feeling, and he took a moment to try to understand it.
After all, Deke had always reckoned that he was destined to live a lonely life, that he didn’t need anyone in it. He recalled the softness of Juana beside him, her warm body, even the smell of her skin and hair. Just maybe, he realized, he’d been wrong about never needing anyone.
“I guess that girl finally got through your shell,” said Philly, who was standing next to him. “Maybe Deacon Cole isn’t as tough as he lets on.”
“Just keep it up and you’ll find out,” Deke said, some of the old steel back in his voice. But after a moment he wondered, “Do you think I’ll ever see her again?”
“We’re still in the middle of a war, Corn Pone. None of us know if we’ll live to see the next sunrise. Right now we’ve got to cross an ocean that’s crawling with Japanese submarines and a sky that could fill up with Zeros any minute. I wouldn’t go buying any green bananas.”
Deke nodded. He supposed that Philly was right and he was better off not counting on seeing Juana again. Hell, they hadn’t even agreed to write to each other, although it seemed unlikely that their letters would find one another in the chaos of war. If nothing else, he had his memories.
Having boarded the ship that was crossing Manila Bay bound for the vast South China Sea, Patrol Easy was leaving another chapter of the war behind. The fight had left them battered and bruised, having lost three men over the months of bitter battles, including Danilo. It was all a bitter pill to swallow. And yet it was satisfying to know that the Philippines was finally being restored to American hands.
“Hey, Honcho, where are we headed?” Philly asked. He had spotted the lieutenant on deck, coming away from a powwow with a handful of other officers. They all looked dead tired, maybe Lieutenant Steele most of all, considering that he was clearly the oldest of the bunch.
“We’re going to the Ryukyu Islands to handle some trouble there,” the lieutenant replied. “It’s a place called Ie Shima. Among other things, rumor has it that the Japanese Navy has a base there with suicide speedboats that they are sending out against our navy.”
“I guess when they need a job done right, they know who to call. No rest for the weary.”
The lieutenant clapped him on the shoulder. “Gee, Philly, you’re finally catching on.”
There were a few bright spots now that they were leaving Manila behind. Aboard the ship, they were reunited with Private Egan and his war dog, Thor. Deke realized that Patrol Easy had suffered even more losses, if you included Egan’s first war dog, Whoa Nelly, killed in the fighting. While the rest of Patrol Easy had been engaged in Manila, Egan and Thor had been doing guard duty at the port, alert against Japanese saboteurs as American vessels began to fill the waterfront.
Deke reached down and scratched Thor’s ears. “Nice to see you again, boy,” he said.
Egan had been watching with some concern, ready to pull back on Thor’s leash. “Thor doesn’t let just anybody do that, you know.”
“I reckon he’s a good judge of character,” Deke said, who continued scratching Thor’s ears. He always had liked dogs and had mixed emotions about them getting dragged into the war.
“There’s something to be said about that,” Egan agreed. “He knows he can trust you.”
Deke gave Thor a final pat and then looked out to sea, where diamonds of sunlight tipped the waves. Overhead, a formation of fighters buzzed low, serving as their eyes and ears as the small flotilla steamed forward. There was nothing out there but water, but he knew that on the other side of that vast ocean lay another island, and more islands beyond that, stretching all the way to Japan.