Battle Cry - Leon Uris [129]
“I think he’s bluffing. What you got, L.Q.?”
“A pair of deuces.”
“I guess you weren’t bluffing, you win.”
Lighttower came running up to us excitedly. “Chow! Hot chow!”
“Hot chow?”
“Mama mia.”
“Craphouse mouse, hot chow!”
A mad scramble to the foxholes for mess kits and we soon settled back to our first meal in nine days. Spam, dehydrated potatoes, peaches and hot coffee—real hot coffee already mixed with sidearms. We were overjoyed.
“Peaches—how the hell did they get peaches?”
“I hear that the cook borrowed them from the Army.”
“Good old Army.”
“Good old cook.”
“Hmmmm, this steak needs a little tobasco sauce, if you please, Mac.”
“Side order of caviar, old bean, and pass the martinis.”
“Ya don’t drink martinis with steak, ya ignorant crumb.”
“Now watch my technique,” L.Q. said, holding a forkful of spam. He quickly brushed the swarm of flies off and shoved the mouthful in, then spat out a stray fly.
“Now there’s a man with right fuzzy balls, got it down to a science.”
“On a good run,” L.Q. bragged, “I can get it in without a single fly.”
“That will be the bloody day.”
“Truth, truth.”
Andy slapped a mosquito. “I don’t mind sharing chow with flies, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let these big bastard mosquitoes have any.”
“I hear say, cousin, a mosquito landed on Henderson Field and they filled it with a hundred gallons of gas before they found out it wasn’t a Flying Fortress.”
“That ain’t nothing,” Seabags said. “Two of them landed on me last night. One of them turned over my dogtags and said to the other, ‘Another damned type O. Let’s find an A.’”
“Why you dirty bastard, those must be the same two that came after me.”
“Say, I got me forty-six land crabs last night. I think that’s a company record. Fingerbowl, please.”
Tat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat…. Dirt kicked upon the rim of the ridge.
“Japs!”
“The dirty no-good stinking sonofabitch bastards…I ain’t drank my coffee!”
“They must have known we was having hot chow.”
We scattered to our foxholes, grabbed our weapons, and dashed for the ridge.
Danny and the Feathermerchant were dug in the rear near one end of the horseshoe, where it connected with a rifle company by a slim file of sentries. They snatched their Garands and wheeled about toward the ridge for the rest of us. Suddenly Ski stopped.
“Look,” he said to Danny.
“What?”
“There, coming through the grass.”
“Smart sons of bitches—drawing us up to the ridge while they slip one man in on our rear.”
They fell to the deck and lay quietly. A hunched figure sprinted through the tall grass a hundred yards from them. Danny felt a weird tingle in his body…a live Jap, not dead and rotten. This one was moving, moving at him and Ski. The sweat gushed into his eyes as the man weaved closer…two arms, two legs…why does he want to kill me? Maybe he has a girl, a Jap girl like Kathy. I’m not mad at him. They raised their rifles…fifteen yards…got him zero’d in, easy, this will be easy…sitting duck, right through the heart…Suppose my rifle won’t fire? Crack! Crack! Crack! The Jap dropped in his tracks.
“You got him,” Ski said. “Did you see that bastard fall?”
Danny sprang to his feet and put his bayonet on his rifle. Cover me, he’s probably wired.” He paced through the knee-high grass, poised. He moved over to the body of the fallen soldier. A stream of blood was pouring from the man’s mouth. Danny shuddered. His eyes were open. The Jap’s hand made a last feeble gesture. Danny plunged the steel into the Jap’s belly. A moan, a violent twitch of his body…. It seemed to Danny that his belly closed tight around the bayonet. Danny tugged at his rifle, it was stuck. He squeezed off a shot, which splattered him with blood and insides of the Jap. The eyes were still open. He lifted the gory weapon and with its butt bashed madly again and again until there were no eyes or face or head.
He staggered back to Ski and sat down and wiped his bayonet with his dungaree top.
The firing on the ridge stopped. Andy went to Danny. “I guess this belongs to you,” he said, handing him a Japanese battle flag. “He