The Final Storm Part 9

Ushijima felt his patience slipping, but there were too many ears in the offices around him, and he would not reveal any anger to the staff, to the many secretaries who labored close to the map room. He held his breath for a short pause, fought to calm himself.

"There will be no shame for any soldier who kills his enemy. You would agree with that?"

"Oh, most definitely, sir! I should expect my own death to come while taking ten or a hundred of the enemy with me! I can think of no greater gift ..."

"I would rather not have this army meet their ancestors just yet. Even the most junior private understands that if we are all dead, there is not much of a fight we can offer."

Cho seemed unwilling to respond, and Ushijima knew the moment had come.

"You are dismissed, General. Thank you for your counsel. Your spirit is most valuable to this army, and I trust you will continue to inspire our men. Perhaps you should inspect the caves closer to the Naha airfields. That is a key position in our defenses ... in our quest for victory. I will have no weakness there. Do you agree?"

Cho seemed to brighten.

"Sir! I will inspect the Naha caves. There will be no weakness! I will stand that ground myself, if the enemy requires it!"

Cho turned crisply, was gone, and Ushijima felt himself sagging, his usual reaction when Cho left the room. He glanced at the two officers, silent, respectful, and he thought of returning to the tea. He stared at the map once more, the thick chalk line across the island's waist. The ground shook slightly beneath him, and he heard a distant rumble, an echo that drifted through the vast network of caves.

"Those are our guns, yes?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Excellent. I must take time to mention this to Colonel Yahara. He has done a magnificent job in building these positions." He moved out into the corridor, thought, I must also apologize to him for ordering Cho to march out there and stare over his shoulder. But one officer's pleasure often comes at another's grief. Right now I have had enough grief for one day.

He looked into one of the smaller offices, an aide snapping to attention.

"Summon the guards to escort me to the opening of the primary cave."

"Right away, sir!"

The man hurried out of the office, and Ushijima saw the others looking up at him, two women, backed by three other men, all of them sitting at small desks, papers stacked neatly in front of them. He knew they were dealing with the enormity of the supply problems, finding the means to move food, water, and medical a.s.sistance where it was most required. He felt a stab of guilt, knew that those in the north could not be reached at all. Two nights earlier they had attempted to launch small boats in the darkness, carrying food and ammunition northward along the east side of the island. But the Americans were vigilant, patrol boats with searchlights scouring every beach, every cove. Ushijima had not heard anything more from the small flotilla, had to a.s.sume that the Americans had destroyed them. So, those men in the north will fight with what they have.

The guards were there now, eight men, heavily armed, stiff at attention. He moved past them, knew they would allow him ten meters before they marched behind. It was the usual routine, ordered of course by General Cho. Ushijima accepted the added security grudgingly, thought it ridiculous, had yet to hear any reports of a.s.sa.s.sins lurking in the cave beneath the castle. But he had learned to save his energy for the battles that mattered.

To save power, the offices were dimly lit, and he moved past the doorways quickly, did not want anyone's show of fealty. The thick mustiness of the deeper caves gave way now to fresher air. He glanced to one side, another, smaller corridor, and he changed course abruptly, knew the guards would adjust. Yes, I will see this for myself. Another sharp thump rolled through the corridor, much louder, and he was carried forward by the power, the energy of that. Talk is tiring, he thought. There is much more value in artillery fire. If these men are firing, it means they have a target. I should like to see it. He laughed silently, hid the smile. Cho will tell them I have visited their battery because I am so brave.

The pa.s.sageway narrowed, and he saw hazy sunlight, heard voices, a quick shout, men suddenly scrambling into position to one side of their gun. He knew he had surprised them, regretted that, had no interest in a show of obedience to some mindless inspection. He wasn't there to see the men at all. The officer stepped forward, and Ushijima put up his hand, said, "Captain, please relax your men. I am here to examine your field of fire."

The man stood straight, a perfect show of respect.

"As you wish, sir. You honor us with your inspection!"

Ushijima knew the man, one of his former students at the military academy, knew the man's family as well. He stepped past him, glanced at the mound of new ammunition, thought, General Wada has done his job, certainly. He will not leave any one of his batteries unprepared.

The piece was one of the larger cannons in Ushijima's a.r.s.enal, a 150. The long, heavy barrel was supported by two spoked wheels, which rested on thick wood planks that led straight to the mouth of the cave. He stepped past the muzzle of the cannon, the smoke thinning, felt the heat from the barrel, moved close to the mouth of the cave, the opening shrouded by camouflage cloth, just a small hole visible.

"What is your target, Captain?"

The man moved up beside him, said, "Sir, we have put several rounds toward that destroyer closest to the sh.o.r.e. They have foolishly moved into range."

"Have you been ... successful?"

"We ... uh ... no, sir. I was attempting to adjust the range when you arrived. But I shall do what I must until the enemy has been destroyed. I am confident in these men, sir. We can destroy every ship in the enemy's fleet."

"Is that so? Then please tell me why you have not already done so?"

The captain seemed surprised at the question, and Ushijima stared out again, did not like embarra.s.sing the man.

"Sir, I apologize. We shall find the proper elevation. My orders are to attack targets as they present themselves. Most of the enemy fleet is well beyond the range of this piece. The destroyer moved within acceptable range ..."

"Never mind, Captain. You must follow the orders you have been given."

"Sir, permit me to inquire ..."

"About what?" The captain hesitated, and Ushijima looked at him, knew he had been a good student, had a serious mind for military studies. "I a.s.sure you, Captain, General Cho is nowhere close. Ask what you wish."

"Sir, I have heard that the Imperial Air Force will arrive here at any time. The reports say that the enemy fleet will be forced to abandon their ground troops by sailing away, and if they do not, their ships will be destroyed. My men ... the others in our battery are greatly pleased to hear that. I was wondering if you could reveal when this might happen. I do not wish to expend ammunition if it is not called for. We shall require every sh.e.l.l if the ground troops approach our field of fire."

Ushijima appreciated the man's logic, but the question was infuriating.

"Captain, you have heard no reports. What you have heard is rumors. The Imperial Air Force, along with the Imperial Navy, has been a.s.suring me for many days now that the enemy fleet is to be utterly destroyed by vast waves of our finest planes and a mighty armada of our finest warships. They have not yet provided me with a timetable for such a wonderful scene of destruction."

The man bowed.

"I understand, sir. It is not my place to know such details. I should not have asked about matters beyond my responsibility. Please forgive my impudence, sir."

Ushijima absorbed the man's words, thought, he believes it still. Perhaps they all believe it. And perhaps that is a good thing, good for morale. I wish I believed it.

THIRTY-SECOND ARMY HEADQUARTERS.

BENEATH SHURI CASTLE, OKINAWA.

APRIL 6, 1945.

It was his favorite lookout, the wide opening of his primary cave, safe from enemy fire only at night. During the day the opening that dug straight into the mountainside was covered by the thick mat of camouflage, designed to look exactly like the brush that surrounded it. Despite the shattering carpet of explosives the Americans had draped across the area, the opening had seemed to escape detection by the American spotters completely.

The sun was just beginning to set, the western sky a blaze of pink and orange, the reflection on the ocean broken by the shadows of the American ships. He held a teacup, heard nothing from the security guards standing in rows behind him, lining both sides of the corridor.

"When this is over, I should look forward to sharing moments like this with all of you. You have been loyal and efficient. Perhaps if I am allowed to return to teaching, some of you would consider attending the Imperial Military Academy. It would require the recommendation of someone in ... authority." He turned, saw the surprised faces. "I suppose I qualify."

The lieutenant closest to him bowed deeply, said, "Thank you, sir. From all of us. We shall leave this place with the enemy's blood on our swords. I would be honored to learn the art of war at your hand."

"Your loyalty is appreciated. All of you."

Ushijima said nothing more, knew very well he would never see the academy again.

The day had been rainy, but the storms had cleared now, remnants of clouds to the south. He knew that the poor weather had been to his advantage, the rains deepening the mud that would slow any advance by the Americans. For his own men, the rains provided much-needed fresh water, which was lacking in most of the caves. With the setting sun, his work details waited near the mouths of the many caves, preparing for darkness, when they could retrieve the tubs and empty the cisterns. They had learned long ago that there were few wells anywhere near the mountains, but the army had its needs, and on Okinawa the wells were on flatter ground. Thus, whether the farmers offered up the water on their own, the soldiers knew where the wells were found. But carrying the precious water to the caves was a long and treacherous job by night, and nearly impossible by day. The American fighters had continued their patrols, and so far the thunderstorms had been too brief to ground the fighters for long. Each time the thunderstorms subsided, they had come again, a swarm of blue bees rising up from the distant aircraft carriers. Once it was dark the soldiers could emerge from underground once more, not to do the actual work, but to supervise the legions of laborers. They were Okinawans mostly, along with the Koreans and Chinese that had been brought over to a.s.sist in Colonel Yahara's enormous construction projects. Any hope of building a pipeline had long been dismissed, Yahara as certain as his commander that the American bombs would destroy it in short order. So the laborers hauled the water in buckets. Ushijima had warned his officers not to brutalize the Okinawan farmers, that their work in the fields was essential to providing food for his own troops. He knew the order had been disobeyed, suspected that General Cho had overseen some of the occupation of the farmhouses for officers who remained out beyond the caves. Reports were many that Okinawan homes had been established as comfort stations for the officers, local women and their daughters hidden away with one purpose, to serve the needs of his men. He had known of such things in China, and everywhere the army had been, most of the High Command blithely looking away, as though such activities were completely acceptable, so long as the women were not j.a.panese. Ushijima had forbidden this behavior around his own headquarters, knew that the women he saw daily in his offices were performing valuable work. Others, mostly Okinawan, were serving the army as nurses, a service that could only grow more crucial as the days pa.s.sed. I cannot stand guard over everything this army does, he thought, no matter how stupid. The best officers are those who are educated, and in this army there are too many who have risen to the ranks because we have no choice but to put them there. Too many good men are gone, and the luxury of choosing one's own subordinates has long pa.s.sed. The field officers who worship men like Cho have learned only the ways of the training camps, conscripts taught to be soldiers by sergeants who exercise the authority of the whip and the fist. The soldiers perform their duties because they are afraid not to. It has become the way of this army, and that is stupid as well.

He missed teaching at the military academy, missed the brightest minds, those so privileged to attend, some of those, like the artillery captain, officers under his command. He had tried to convince himself that he had made the army much more professional, more efficient, more skilled, but the illusion had been shattered too many times by what he had seen in China. The brutality and savagery of his own men had been horrific and unstoppable, even the officers partic.i.p.ating in the worst acts of inhumanity imaginable. He thought of Cho, all the man's talk about victories. How can you claim to have achieved such honorable victory when you destroy a nation in the process? What have you won? You exterminate an entire race of people, just because you can ... and so you congratulate yourself on your glorious conquest. None of that was in the lessons I learned, the lessons I taught my cadets. And yet men like Cho don't give it a second thought.

He sipped the tea, the taste suddenly unpleasant. Behind him his servant seemed to read him, was close now, a hand holding a small tray. He set the cup down, never looked at the girl, caught a smell of her, some fragrance. He pushed that from his mind, heard her shuffle away, thought of Cho again. There had been talk all through his headquarters of the parties, that despite Ushijima's orders, Cho had made it a practice to abuse many of the women who worked in the offices. The noise had been kept far away from Ushijima's quarters, and he felt paralyzed to press the matter, would not wander down through the labyrinth of caves seeking out the dirty secrets of his officers. He knew that Cho had a loyal following, and those men would accept Ushijima's authority as long as it did not interfere too much in Cho's own world. A knife in the back, he thought, or a pistol shot to the temple. It would happen in my room, in the still of the night, one of the guards perhaps, tempted by glorious promises, a special place in the Yasukuni Shrine. The killer would most likely take his own life right beside me. He felt disgust, Cho's bleating cheers a sickening reminder of the worst of the army. They sent that jackal here to get him away from ... someone else, someone with more political influence than I have. It is the system. All that talk of Bushido, all the glorious history of the samurai. What we are is men, mortal and flawed, and we serve our emperor because it is what we are taught, and there can be no other way.

The sun was sinking low, the bright colors fading. He stared out toward the city of Naha, could not quite see the airfield there, the primary field on the island not yet captured by the Americans. More stupidity, he thought. It is just like this on every place we have added to the vast reaches of our empire. Let us create airfields, countless airfields. No matter that our air force refuses to use them, or perhaps our strength is so depleted that we have more airfields than usable fighters. Ah, but we must take pride in them. And the enemy admires them as well. So, we shall make the Americans happy by offering them such wonderful temptation, so many fine airfields on every island, every outpost, our smiling invitation for the Americans to come, to see our airfields, and should they wish, to take them for themselves. And we shall be powerless to stop them.

He heard the roar of a plane, high above, out of his view, knew the sound. One of their carrier planes, he thought, with the strange gull-shaped wing. We have nothing to compare; not even the Imperial Air Force can maintain the illusion that our Zero is the finest plane in the world. He stared out at the distant ships, thought, Tokyo promised me you would be blasted to oblivion, that the Imperial Air Force would come here as one mighty unstoppable wave, erasing your planes from the sky, showering your ships with bombs until every one was sent to the bottom of the sea. What a marvelous fantasy. It is what comforts our emperor every night when he goes to sleep, visions of our might, our victories, our endless glory, and the glory of our ancestors. A marvelous fantasy.

He heard another engine, closer, and he stepped back from the opening, instinct, but the sound grew louder, pa.s.sing close overhead. There were more now, many more, and he caught flickers of movement out to the north, planes dipping and rolling, streaks of machine gun fire, combat in the air. He was curious, moved to the edge of the cave's mouth, sought the best view, thought, what is happening? The Americans do not make raids at night, and it will be dark in minutes. But those ... those are our planes. He saw more of them now, rolling up and over the mountain, a swarm of angry insects. The swarm continued to grow, emerging from behind the mountain, some dipping low, flowing out past the city of Naha, past the distant beaches, spreading out in a chaotic pattern, no formation. He began to feel a sharp stirring in his chest, saw a flash of light, a burst of flames, then another. The ships were responding, streaks of anti-aircraft fire rising up, hundreds of ships answering the swarm with a swarm of their own, the streaks lighting the sky like strands of fiery straw. In the corridor behind him were boot steps, coming quickly, but he kept his stare out to sea, to the battle that was erupting right in front of him. Yes, there could be glory here! They have come at last!

"Sir!"

The voice was Colonel Miyake, another of the staff. The man stood silently for a long moment, absorbing the sight, and Ushijima said nothing, watched the distant bursts of fire, the impacts of so many bombs ... and then he began to see, the planes were dropping low, close to the water, and the stirring inside of him turned colder, a sudden clarity, the sickening reality. He had seen this before, but only single planes, began to understand what the battle meant.

"Sir! Forgive me for interrupting ... but we have received a report. What we have been told has finally happened, sir! Tokyo reports the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum. They are attacking the enemy fleet! It is as we have heard, sir! The Divine Wind! Kamikaze!"

Ushijima had received the coded messages from the Imperial High Command that the air force was mobilizing every available plane, an attack that was as the rumors described, wave upon wave of a.s.saults upon the American fleet. So far the reports had been empty promises, rumors that inspired the men, and frustrated the one man who had the responsibility for defending Okinawa against what he now knew to be the enemy's overwhelming superiority. He had kept the hope inside of him, his own fantasy, that someone in Tokyo would live up to the promise, that the ocean would be cleansed of the ma.s.sive fleet. But the anti-aircraft fire and the bursts of flame revealed now what Operation Floating Chrysanthemum truly meant. The planes were not dropping bombs. They were the bombs.

Though reports had circulated through the American command of scattered suicide attacks by small numbers of j.a.panese planes, the first organized kamikaze a.s.sault against American warships had taken place in October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The apparent willingness of the j.a.panese pilots to crash their explosive-laden planes deliberately into the American ships had shocked the American commanders and inflicted considerable casualties, sending five ships to the bottom and damaging thirty-five others. As horrified as the Americans were, those attacks had been carried out by no more than a few dozen specially chosen pilots. At Okinawa the j.a.panese sent more than three hundred fifty planes against the American fleet and produced devastating damage to several small vessels. Despite the enormity of the attack, the results were not nearly the crushing blow that the Imperial Air Force had promised. The Americans had long ago broken the j.a.panese intelligence codes, and when the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum left their airfields, American fighter planes were waiting for them. Half of the j.a.panese planes were shot down far out at sea, and many of those who survived the gauntlet were shot out of the sky by a storm of anti-aircraft fire. With so much firepower aimed their way, the j.a.panese pilots mostly ignored their orders to target the largest ships, the carriers and battleships, and instead launched themselves at the first ship they saw. Because of the configuration of the American fleet, those ships were most often the outer ring, the picket line, including smaller gunboats, patrol boats, transports, and supply ships, and the occasional destroyer or light cruiser. Though the most valuable prizes were largely missed, the destruction on the smaller American craft was horrific. Hundreds of sailors were killed, and several ships were sunk.

As the carnage played out in front of him, Ushijima received word that he had long discounted, a communication from Tokyo that the Imperial Navy was finally fulfilling its own promises. They were coming to Okinawa as well. Most of the j.a.panese army commanders still believed that the navy far outcla.s.sed and outnumbered their enemies, but the admirals understood that the greatest naval battles they had fought were mostly one-sided affairs, and the j.a.panese fleets had suffered severely. What most j.a.panese never could be told was that the power of the j.a.panese fleet, the battleships and carriers, was simply gone. But there was one exception, one survivor, a ship that by its very size and strength inspired the j.a.panese people, their military, and their emperor. On April 6, that ship sailed out of the protection of her port and, accompanied by a fleet of support ships, made her way directly for the American anchorage at Okinawa. The Americans knew her to be the fiercest weapon the j.a.panese had in their a.r.s.enal, the largest and most heavily armed battleship ever built. It was called the Yamato.

The first American ship to spot the Yamato was the submarine USS Threadfin, who radioed that the mammoth warship had emerged from her home port of Kure, on j.a.pan's inland sea. She was accompanied by nine smaller ships: eight destroyers and one cruiser. It required very little imagination for the American command to predict the Yamato's destination. The Threadfin could not keep up with the faster-moving warships, and so the Americans responded by launching spotter planes to keep discreet track of the j.a.panese vessels. As the Yamato drew within two hundred fifty miles of Okinawa, the Americans were astonished to discover that the small fleet was steaming straight toward the island completely naked of air support. The response was ordered by Admiral Raymond Spruance, in overall command of the task force that included the fleet around Okinawa. The Americans launched an attack force of nearly three hundred planes, from eight different aircraft carriers.

The worst challenge for the American pilots was weather, a dense rain and cloud layer that kept their targets mostly hidden, but openings in the overcast were found. Midday on April 7, low-flying h.e.l.ldiver bombers struck the first blows, followed by Avengers, who launched torpedoes as they skimmed toward their target barely above the water's surface. The results were immediate and devastating. In a battle that lasted barely five hours, the j.a.panese cruiser and four of the accompanying destroyers were sunk, with the loss of more than a thousand crewmen. But the j.a.panese sailors who survived the carnage were witness to their final catastrophe. Stung by torpedoes and a continuing rain of bombs, the Yamato began to list severely, and in one great gasp, she rolled over and sank. As she disappeared beneath the sea, her magazine ignited in a mammoth blast that sent a fiery plume a mile high, a blast that ensured the end for more than three thousand of her crewmen. Those few j.a.panese sailors who survived the lopsided battle were rescued by their own ships after the American planes had gone home. Whether those rescued sailors regretted the complete absence of lifeboats, no one would dare complain. It was tradition on board j.a.panese naval vessels that lifeboats were a symbol of defeat, that sailors who did not die with their ship would suffer a shameful indignity if they survived.

On Okinawa, word quickly reached Ushijima of the catastrophic naval battle. The particulars told him what he had suspected all along, that the navy had used the Yamato as a grand sacrifice, another show of glory for j.a.pan's legacy. It was a poorly guarded secret that the Yamato had not been given enough precious fuel for the round trip that would return her to her home port. Ushijima already understood what the others in Tokyo had to accept. The great attack against the American fleet was planned as a one-way trip.

What the j.a.panese commanders could not know was that this most crushing of defeats had come at a cost to the Americans of only twelve pilots.

11. ADAMS.

On April 1, the initial landings for the Sixth Marine Division had been staged by the Fourth and Twenty-second regiments, while the Twenty-ninth Regiment had been held back, to jump into the fray should major problems arise. With the invasion so strangely uncontested, the Twenty-ninth had come ash.o.r.e ahead of schedule, and now, alongside the Fourth, they had been given the task of sweeping enemy resistance off the Motobu Peninsula. Some units of the Twenty-second were sent in as a backup, mainly to perform mop-up operations, tackling those stubborn pockets of j.a.panese resistance that always seemed to escape detection. Other companies of the Twenty-second were sent farther north, their original mission to confront and then clear out any j.a.panese resistance, all the way to Okinawa's northern tip.

They marched as before, the beaches below them to the left, gentle hillsides of low, fat palm trees, the road undulating with the curves of the rolling countryside. The farms were still there, but not as many, and as they moved farther north the villages grew smaller. But they were no longer ghost towns. With the fighting so sporadic, civilians had begun to emerge, many of them old, some younger mothers with small children. Though the Marines obeyed the order to be as unthreatening as they could, offering food and an open hand, the Okinawans were mostly terrified. But hungry civilians had gradually accepted the handouts from the Americans, mainly the packages of food sent forward by the supply teams on the ships that had prepared for exactly this kind of operation. With the food came medical care, teams of corpsmen and doctors establishing aid stations, offering safe haven for the sick and injured far behind the lines of combat. To those Okinawans willing to accept American hospitality, special Marine and naval units trained in civilian relations sought to communicate that the Americans were in fact liberators, and not the enemy. Though some Okinawans still reacted to the advance of the Marines by retreating in a mad scamper back into the hills, many more were too hungry, too injured, or too fed up with the abuse from the j.a.panese. As more of the civilians found shelter with the Americans, the smiles appeared, and even though they were held in wire enclosures close to the airfields and beaches, many of the Okinawans seemed happy to accept the Americans as liberators. At the very least, they were much more content to be fed and cared for than ordered about.

With the doctors and corpsmen came interpreters, and to make matters easier, many of the Okinawans spoke English. The debriefings were useful, some of the Okinawans explaining where their rabid fear had come from. j.a.panese officers had taken great pains to portray the approaching Americans as savages of the worst kind, rapists and cannibals. The American cause had not been helped, of course, by the weeklong bombardment of the island, which caused significant numbers of civilian casualties. It was then that terrified Okinawan civilians had learned that the j.a.panese caves were mainly for use by the j.a.panese. Many of the Okinawans had to endure incoming sh.e.l.lfire by taking cover where there was no cover at all, hunkering down in their homes, or in the concrete burial tombs that spread around nearly every village. The tombs were a uniquely Okinawan tradition, crescent-shaped mausoleums where the remains of their ancestors would remain close to the families who revered them. During the bombardment, the concrete had become revered for another reason. It had been the best available protection for thousands of Okinawan civilians. It was not difficult for the American chaplains to understand that what some had expected to be the primitive heathenism of the Okinawan faith had actually proven powerfully accurate. Their ancestors had indeed protected them.

The conversations with the Okinawans also revealed how the j.a.panese treated these people, long regarded as second-cla.s.s j.a.panese citizens. The intelligence officers learned of the brutality, so many of the villagers made to dig in the hillsides, hauling dirt and rock for the j.a.panese tunnel system. The Americans had heard these kinds of stories before. The lack of young women among the refugees was testament to the particular usefulness that kept them hidden away alongside the j.a.panese troops. The young men were mostly gone as well, and the Americans were told that although the Okinawans might not want to take up arms against the Americans, with j.a.panese officers leading the way, and j.a.panese bayonets at their backs, they might have no choice.

NORTHERN OKINAWA.

APRIL 12, 1945.

"Hit the deck!"

Adams didn't need the instructions, dropped down hard. He held his breath, dirt in his face, the rocky ground beside him cracking into splinters. He started to move, to scramble back, a desperate slithering crawl, his heart racing, looked for any kind of cover, but the firing came again, a hard ping off the rock beside him. He lay flat again, paralyzed by the terror, felt like screaming, the spray of lead now slapping the rocks just behind him. He spit out the dirt in his mouth, gasped for air, a loud shout down the hill behind him, Ferucci.

"Get back here! Run!"

Adams started to rise up, heard the crack of the bullet past his ear, lay flat again. The burst from the j.a.panese machine gun came again, tapping high on the hill like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Ferucci continued to shout, a manic tirade.

"Where is that son of a b.i.t.c.h? Anybody see him?"

No one responded, the spray of lead splitting the air overhead, still pinning Adams tight to the ground. He was breathing dust, choking, the terror freezing him, Ferucci again, "Find that b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Where's the BAR? Give him h.e.l.l!"

The rock beside Adams's head cracked again, a shower of lead ripping past just above his back. Behind him rifle fire began, men taking aim at nothing, peppering the hillside, desperate, useless. The machine gun continued, seeking new targets, and Adams's brain screamed at him to move, to run. But there were other voices too, Ferucci again, "He's gotta be hit! Lay down fire! I'll get him!"

Adams tried to think, his body still frozen, his arms pulled in tight, and he shouted through the dust in his throat, "No! Stay back!"

The men behind him kept up their fire, and Adams closed his eyes, utterly helpless, his face jarred by the thumps and pops in the rocks. The machine gun kept firing, shattering the ground just past his feet, seeking targets farther down, the men along the road behind him. His brain tried to work, fighting through, shouting orders ... maybe the j.a.p thinks I'm dead. Don't move, don't do anything. He's shooting at them. Just ... wait.

And then, the machine gun stopped.

"Run! Now! Get down here!"

Adams waited for a long second, stayed perfectly still, his brain focused on the silence from above. The springs uncoiled now, and he pushed himself up with his arms. One hand still gripped the rifle, and he crawled backward, slid down the slope on his stomach, his dungarees ripped by the rocks, sc.r.a.pes against his knees. But he was down now, tall gra.s.s, larger rocks, saw the faces of the others, the entire squad staring at him, more men out beyond the road, still searching for a target, aiming up at the unseen gunner. He tried to breathe, still spitting dirt, coughed again, Ferucci's voice, close to him, "You hit? You got blood on your face."

He realized Ferucci was talking to him, but he couldn't speak, coughed violently, put a shaking hand on his nose. He looked at the blood on his dirty fingers, saw the torn pant legs, more blood at his knees, took a breath, no pain, no other blood on his clothes.

"I'm okay, I think. b.l.o.o.d.y nose. I think that's it."

"Get a corpsman up here! I'm not losing anybody today! Why the h.e.l.l didn't you run? I told you to get your a.s.s back down here!"