The Far Reaches (14 page)

Burr smirked. “That may be so, little sister, but lately Thurlow has become something of a nuisance. Say, what are you doing here? I had no intelligence there were missionaries on this atoll.”

She drew herself up before forcing herself to subside, even allowing her shoulders to slump in deference. “Faith, sor, I am not a missionary, for they are grand, adventurous people in service to our Lord. My order's purpose is not to convert but to care. In the Forridges on the isle of Ruka, we operated a small clinic and also taught the children to read and write.”

Burr was distracted by a young officer, heard his report with a sour expression, then sent him running, propelled by a following stream of foul-mouthed invectives.
“Toot sweet,
you hear?
Toot sweet!
God damn these shavetails, Sister. They're as worthless as teats on a boar hog.”

“Aye, sor,” she replied brazenly. “Or as an English landlord, I'd wager.” Internally, she berated herself for the snappy answer.

Burr squinted speculatively at her, chewed his cud of tobacco, spat, then grinned and said, “Or the nooky on a nun, eh?”

She looked the odd little marine officer in the eye to let him know she was not offended, as surely he'd meant for her to be. She'd heard far worse as a young girl whilst serving the men their malts and various liquors in the town's only pub. The colonel was testing her, just as they had. “As you say, sor,” she answered, her eyes lowered.

Burr asked, “Where did you say you were from?”

Quietly,
she admonished herself. “The Forridges, sor. Some call them the Far Reaches.”

“Never heard of the place. A group of islands, I presume?”

Sister Mary Kathleen nodded, keeping her eyes downcast. “Yes, sor, that is correct, named for the Englishman Ansel Forridge by Captain Cook his-self. I think the captain owed him money or some such.” She raised her eyes to see the colonel still grinning at her. “Anyways, three hundred or so miles nor-nor'east of here they are, sor. ‘Tis the merchant sailors and yachtsmen who call them the Far Reaches. They're great green hills that push out of the bluest sea God in His mercy ever made, not like these nubs, these skinny flat atolls of Tarawa.”

A trickle of tobacco juice escaped from the corner of Burr's mouth. He delicately wiped it away with a finger and said, “Thank you for the travelogue, Sister. So how was it you came to be here?”

“My fella boys and I sailed in outriggers. We heard the Americans were here. It was a bit of a surprise to find only Japanese.”

“It's a relief to hear even the Catholic Church sometimes has lousy intelligence. I presume, therefore, you were made a prisoner by the Japanese?”

“Indeed, sor. For two days before ye landed.”

“Did they abuse you, Sister?”

“Nay, sor. They were too busy getting ready to fight to bother much with me and me fella boys a'tall. They put us up in a big sand fort but scarcely said a word otherwise, except for a kind lieutenant who saw to our needs.”

“I would have thought they would have at least raped you,” Burr said, sounding disappointed. “What made you sail all this way? To find Americans, is that what you said? What for?”

She tried to speak with detachment, but her enthusiasm for the subject defeated her. “One of our islands—its name is Ruka—was taken over by the Japanese in February of ‘42. The commander is a man by the name of Colonel Yoshu. I came here to tell ye that if ye will send an armed force there, I think he will surrender.”

Burr snickered. “I'll see if the Second Marines is available for the required negotiations.” He shook his head. “Sister, what you're saying is nonsensical. The Japanese don't surrender.”

“These might,” she replied.

Burr frowned while he managed a quick calculation. “Did you say the Japanese occupied this Ruka in February of ‘42? That was nearly two years ago. Where have you been during all this time?”

“A prisoner of Colonel Yoshu.”

He cocked his head and eyed her speculatively. “You seem to make a habit of being a prisoner of the Japs.”

She was silent for a long second while she worked on a properly humble response, then, not finding one, said, “Perhaps I am talking to the wrong man. I need a big man, y'see.”

Burr scowled. “It don't matter how big a man you talk to, Sister. No American's going to a cockamamie island to palaver with some crazy Japanese colonel. Tell you what. I'll talk to General Smith and see if he will give you a ride to Australia. There you can go about your business, praying and the like. You can leave the Japanese to us.”

She worried with the rosary beads that hung from her cincture, then shook her head. “Beg yer pardon, sor, but I would like to talk to this General Smith. Not sometime later, neither. Now.”

“It's not going to happen, Sister.”

“But—”

“Just a minute,” Burr interrupted and started yelling at the crew of a Higgins boat who had managed to snag their craft on the reef even though the opening through it was clearly marked with bobbing buoys. He snatched a passing marine by his collar. “Get out there and tell those idiots to rip off their stripes, boy! Ever last man jack of ‘em, you hear me?”

Burr allowed a great, exaggerated sigh, then turned back to the nun. “What else can I do for you, Sister?” he asked, nearly politely. “As you can see, I'm a very busy man.”

“This man,” she said, nodding toward Josh, “pray let me care for him.”
When he wakes up,
she thought,
he'll find me a big man and not give me yer guff.

“You're a nurse?” Burr asked.

“Nay, sor, though I have attended to the sick.”

Burr shook his head. “He don't need your care, Sister. What he needs is to be under lock and key. When he comes awake, I fear he might pick up a shovel and brain someone important and crucial to the war effort. Look, go to Australia, I tell you. There you can talk to your archbishops, subpopes, or whatever and wait out the war. The entire Pacific will be clear of the Japanese, given time.”

“And how much time would that be?” she demanded, her eyes flashing before she forced her expression back toward one of deference.

Colonel Burr was happy to answer her, for he had recently given that question some thought. He had walked his mind up the various island chains and then contemplated the home islands of the Japanese and what it would take to beat them even with a good pounding of their cities by saturation bombing. “Eight years,” he concluded. “Maybe a little more. We'll have to kill nearly all of them before this is done, but we'll get it done, with God's help. The United States Marine Corps, you see, is the right arm of God.”

Sister Mary Kathleen looked around and saw all the dead marines bob-bing in the sea or sprawled facedown on the sand. “Then it appears God's right arm is terrible hurt today, Colonel.”

Burr's face clouded over at the perceived insult to his beloved Corps. “Is there anything else?” he demanded bitterly.

She raised her chin. “I could use a priest. An American one will do.”

“A Cat-licker Holy Joe? There's got to be one or two landed by now. What do you need one for, if you don't mind me asking?”

“I have need to make me confession.”

“Confession of what?”

“Me sins, of course.”

Burr scratched his jaw. “I thought being a nun and all, you weren't allowed to sin.”

“We are all sinners, sor,” she replied. Then she added, all humility forgotten, “The priest, if ye please?”

“All right, Sister,” Burr growled and then barked at his marines to move Thurlow into the pillbox and don't forget the barbed wire, by thunder, then collect all those men still floating in the sea and lying dead in the sand and, oh yes, go find the little nun here a fish-eating Holy Joe and he meant all that to be done right now
toot sweet!

As soon as the sun expired into the Pacific with its usual gaudy display of pink spokes and scarlet-rimmed clouds normal to those latitudes, Ready made up his mind. He told his little band of marines they were going to move. “Move where?” Sampson demanded, brought awake by Ready's command.

“To the beach,” Ready replied. “Jap knows where we are. Won't be long, he'll be sneaking in.”

“My foot is killing me,” Sampson complained. “I can't walk.”

“You can walk,” Ready said, “because nobody's going to carry you.” “You got that right, Bosun,” Tucker said, “but you're wrong about the Japanese sneaking in. I figure it'll be a big
banzai
attack. They're probably out there drinking sake and stuff right now, getting themselves all worked up.”

“Three riflemen and a fellow without a rifle or even a shirt ain't worth a
banzai
attack,” Ready replied. “Them Imperial marines will just wait till dark and then come over here and cut our throats.”

Tucker smirked. “Well, ain't you the optimist!”

Garcia withdrew his K-bar from its sheath and fondled it. “Let them come,” he said menacingly. “I'll take a few with me.”

Ready ignored both Tucker's sarcasm and Garcia's bravado. “Pick up your traps and let's go,” he ordered. “You get one more round of griping and then I don't want a peep out of any of you until we get to the beach. And if you got a canteen that rattles or anything else, fix it so it don't make any noise. We got to be like shadows.”

The three marines cheerfully accomplished the griping—none of them wanted to move out of their holes, and all of them said so—and then they grimly tore strips from the uniform
of
a nearby dead Japanese to muffle their gear. “Let's go,” Ready said when he thought they were prepared.
“And that's the last word you'll hear out of me until we get to where we're going.”

“Where
are
we going?” Sampson demanded.

“The beach,” Ready answered.

“Why to the beach?”

“Because we may need to swim to save ourselves.”

The moon was new, just a sliver of it showing, and therefore didn't cover the atoll with its usual Pacific silvery brilliance. It was dark as dirt, which Ready thought a good thing. He picked out a direction, easterly, and crept ahead. The marines followed, holding their bayonet-tipped rifles. Before it had gotten dark, Ready had calculated their course, one that would take them past a line of low scrub bushes of what he supposed was a type of sea grape. Now the shapes of those bushes, their dark darker than the rest of the dark, loomed very near. He stopped, and the marines behind him stopped, too. Ready strained his eyes toward a shadow off by itself, and then he saw, or thought he saw, it move.

Then he thought he saw another of the shadows move, just a nudge. Holding his breath, he looked so hard at the shadows that his eyes hurt.
There!
Now he was certain. The shadows were not bushes but men, a conjecture almost immediately proved when something hard and sharp pushed into Ready's bare right arm, which held his K-bar. It was a bayonet, tipped he supposed on a long Japanese rifle, and it slowly slid along his arm. Then the bayonet stopped, withdrew, sliding back across. Ready and the man holding the rifle were close enough now that Ready could hear the man breathing, and it had the smell of sake on it, too. Tucker had been right about the Japanese drinking their courage. Ready caught movement out of the corner of his eye and realized he and his marines were all mixed up with the Japanese who had probably been on their way to cut their throats. Coincidentally, they had chosen similar paths. Now each man, American and Japanese, was wondering what to do.

The
rikusentai
slowly nudged Ready's arm. Perhaps he still wasn't convinced he was facing a man—but then came a rifle shot, and the Japanese marine stepped back, and disappeared into the gloom. Then Ready heard a cacophony of grunts, spews, and shrieks until finally there was nothing but the sound of heavy breathing. “Marines?” Ready called, fearing the answer.

“I got mine, Bosun,” Tucker replied from the ground.

“I got one,” Garcia gasped, still catching his breath.

“I killed one and wounded another,” Sampson answered. “I think he crawled off somewhere.”

“Mine got away,” Ready confessed. “I think there must be at least two more.” Just as he spoke, he heard the scramble of boots on sand, then running sounds that gradually diminished.

“They're running back to their camp,” Tucker said. “They'll tell the others where we're headed.”

“Well, we're still headed there,” Ready answered.

Nobody argued with him, so Ready led his marines off at a trot, leading them, like the good Killakeet boy he was, to the sea.

Colonel Montague Singleton Burr was having trouble getting to sleep. It was all the scheming that was keeping him awake, that and the terrible stink of the dead, not to mention all the awful popping and crackling of the gas escaping from their bloated bodies in the terrible heat that had not much dissipated after the sun had set. Burr had made his bed in a battered amtrac with the hope of getting away from the dreadful odors and sounds. Instead, the slap of the waves against the amtrac added to the general turmoil of his increasingly fever-ridden mind. There were many schemes playing through his head, but only one was insistent, and it had to do with Josh Thurlow. The idea made him chuckle under his breath when he thought about it, even though he kept telling himself no, he couldn't do it, and it would be so wrong. But then he would tell himself yes, he actually
could
do it, and it would be for the best, anyway. In fact, it was probably something that was meant to be, and he was only a cog in the wheels of fate that had begun turning the moment he'd laid eyes on the little Irish nun in her dirty habit. Wiping the burning sweat from his eyes, Burr finally gave in to it. What else could he do?
Kismet,
he said to himself, even though he halfway suspected that his rising fever might be disturbing his logic. He sat up on the hard deck of the amtrac and yelled for his clerk.