Brave Hearts (22 page)

Clouds scudded across the face of the moon. The storm had moved on as quickly as it had struck, but the PT boat slanted sharply to port and didn't move. The gargantuan wave had lifted the boat, then slammed it down onto a ridge of coral. When the wave receded, Jack knew that he and Spencer had survived, but nobody now had a ticket to Australia.

They were all congregated, looking at Miller in the fitful moonlight.

“We've got to get the women to shore,” Jack said.

Miller didn't answer.

Spencer was propped against the bulwark. His voice was groggy but determined. “We have to wait until the tide comes in. We might float free.”

“We'd have to check the screw for damage,” Miller replied.

“Dawn comes in two hours,” Jack said tensely. “We're three hundred yards off Mindanao, and Mindanao is crawling with Japs. Some Photo Joe will fly by in the morning, spot us, and it will be goodnight. We've got to get the women to shore.”

“We don't know what's onshore,” Spencer responded with equal anger.

“There's no hiding place out here, Cavanaugh. We'll be pop-up targets in a shooting gallery.”

“So what do you suggest, Maguire?” Cavanaugh said sarcastically.

“Get the hell off this boat. Now.”

“I'll give the orders,” Miller said brusquely.

Jack clenched his hands in tight, hard fists. He looked across the moonlight-dappled water. He'd said three hundred yards. It might be five hundred.

There were two dinghies.

Jack turned to Miller. “Catharine and I are leaving now.”

Cavanaugh pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. “Oh, I say, Maguire, you're forgetting whose wife she is.”

Jack took a deep breath. “Your wife. Not your chattel. She'll come with me.”

The anger and antagonism between the two men pulsed in the darkness.

Miller moved between them. “I'll say who leaves when.”

“Then say, for God's sake,” Jack demanded. “If we wait until dawn, we're dead.”

Miller nodded slowly. “I understand that, but first, we'll try to get free one more time.”

The motors roared to life, violent and harsh in the predawn quiet. Miller put the PT into reverse. The motors strained until the boat rocked back and forth.

Jack waited tensely. The noise was a dead giveaway if any Japs were near. His head swiveled around; he stared through the shiny darkness. He could see the women standing near the port gun, a gun that had no shells and was as useless as a chalkboard mock-up. Jack felt a sudden explosion of weariness. His body ached. How he had managed to hang on, to save himself and Spencer, he would never know, but he was paying for it. He wanted desperately to lie down and let exhaustion engulf him. Instead, he walked stiffly toward Billy Miller.

It was enough—even though the future held nothing but terror—to know Jack was there, only a few feet from her. Catharine watched him turn to walk toward Miller. She could feel the pain in his body. Very dear and brave heart. He was brave and gallant as few ever can be. She knew it because she had seen that wall of water. She'd broken away from the seaman, rushed up the companionway to the deck, and seen that mountainous wall of water break with a demon's thunder. The water had knocked her down the steps of the companionway. She'd feared they were lost, Jack and Spencer. When she found them there, Jack still clinging to the unconscious man, she'd known that she would never be more proud of a human being in her life than she was of Jack at that moment.

Now, once again, he was setting out to do battle, and he was exhausted. She knew it. Catharine took a step away from the nurses.

“Where are you going?” Sally asked, her bright eyes curious.

“I'm going to see what's been decided,” and she moved toward the bow.

The first dinghy to shore carried Catharine, the two nurses, and fifty pounds of gold. A sailor paddled expertly through the clear patches picked out in the moonlight. The reefs protected the cove from the force of the thunderous surf. No one spoke when the dinghy slid up on shore. Catharine and the nurses splashed out of the raft to the sandy beach, then looked tensely around.

Catharine felt a hot lick of fear. Was the beach patrolled? They had no idea where they'd wrecked. This cove could be a stone's throw from the road into Davao, which was occupied by the Japanese. It could be a deserted cove far from any habitation. Mindanao was huge and very sparsely populated.

The choppy breeze rustled the dark vegetation that stretched beyond the beach.

The sailor moved past them and dumped the crate on the sand. The second dinghy slid onto the shore. Spencer and another sailor began to unload boxes of gold.

By the time the last transfer was made, sunrise flooded the water with a sheet of bright orange. The three women rested and watched in the shade of a coconut palm.

“I used to daydream about being shipwrecked on a desert island,” Sally Brainard said ruefully. She offered a cigarette to Catharine and the other nurse, Frances Kelly.

Frances looked nervously at the gray mass of the jungle. “Do you think we should smoke? I mean, what if there are any Japs around?”

“Nobody's shot at us yet,” Catharine said. She lit the cigarette and welcomed the sharply dry flow of smoke. She smiled her thanks at Sally. “Have you lost your taste for desert islands?”

“Yeah,” Sally replied.

The three of them scanned the cove. In the early, misty light, it looked primeval. Only the unmoving bulk of the PT on the coral was a link to the world they knew.

Catharine managed a cheerful smile. “Oh, well, we've lived to fight another day. Who knows? Maybe we'll strike out from here and find Shangri-La.”

“I'd trade Shangri-La for one day in Louisville,” Frances said wistfully.

“What would you do if you could go home to Louisville?” Catharine asked, because anything was more cheerful than staring at the wild, unbridled jungle growth that surrounded the cove.

Frances drew slowly on her cigarette. A smile touched her eyes. “I'd go to Pop Boynton's Drug Store and order a chocolate malted.”

“That sounds good,” Sally said.

The harsh, explosive sound of breaking wood echoed across the water.

The women jerked around and looked out toward the stricken PT. A sailor rhythmically swung an axe, smashing in the side of the boat. Two sailors swung fifty-gallon cans of fuel high into the air to fling them overboard. The dinghies plied steadily to and from shore, transporting the food supplies.

Catharine and the nurses didn't look at one another. The boat was their only link with the life they'd known and their only hope of reaching Australia. Every rending blow of the axe hurt.

“What would you do if you could go home, Sally?” Catharine asked, her voice unnaturally high.

Sally took a deep breath and talked about St. Louis, trying hard to mask the sound of the rhythmic pounding.

The boat sank an hour after sunrise. The small band of refugees sat on the beached dinghies and ate a cold breakfast of salmon and rice.

“The first thing to do,” Spencer said when they'd finished, “is to find natives who can carry the gold for us.”

“The first thing to do is find out where we are and get the women as far from the Japs as we can,” Jack said determinedly.

Billy Miller ignored both of them. “We've got enough food for five days, maybe a little more. Everybody has a canteen of water.” He looked at Spencer, then at Jack. “My orders were to transport the gold—and the passengers—to Australia. I can't do that now, but I'm still in command until I get this party—and the gold—to a senior officer.”

“Billy, that gold weighs at least fifty pounds a box. We've got ten boxes. We can't carry it through the jungle. Why don't we bury it,” Jack suggested.

“We aren't leaving the gold behind,” Spencer said quickly.

“We might as well tie weights to our ankles as try to move that much stuff through the jungle. It won't help to have the damned gold if the Japs catch us. We've got to move as fast as we can to have any chance,” Jack urged.

“We can't leave the gold behind,” Miller said shortly, “but we can't carry the gold ourselves. We've got to get help.”

Catharine scraped the last bit of salmon from her tin plate and ate it slowly. She shut out the sound of the men wrangling. It was odd to think that their lives were going to be tied to the fate of the heavy, dark lumps of metal that had lain in that vault on Corregidor. But she knew that the linkage went farther back than that, back to Spencer's hunger for success at whatever price. If she'd never met Jack in London, he would be safe. Her heart cried out at the thought. But she knew it was true. It was her fault that Jack was in danger now. Yet, he'd argued with her over that, told her he made his own decision to follow her—and never regretted it.

She looked up and saw his eyes watching her. She smiled. He smiled in return.

Perhaps those smiles made all the fear and danger worth the price. But the price would be higher yet. She knew that. There could be no safety for them on Mindanao. They were lost on a Japanese-occupied island. They had no arms. They had food for only a few days.

But Jack smiled at her and she smiled in return.

Love has moments of glory that only those who love can understand. Eyes that meet honestly and smiles that are as profoundly touching as any caress belong to a time and space that nothing can destroy.

Then Jack spoke. “I'll go with them, Catharine, to find native carriers,” and fear closed again around her heart.

Night fell with the suddenness of the tropics, swathing them in impenetrable darkness. Catharine rested in the smoothed-out shell she'd prepared in the sand. After the blistering heat of the day, the gentle breeze off the ocean was cool and refreshing.

Why hadn't Jack and the other men returned? They might be hopelessly lost in the snake- and boar-infested jungle. They might already be prisoners of the Japanese.

They might be dead.

“Catharine.” Sally's voice was thin on the night air.

Catharine's mind came back from its nightmare haunts. “Yes?”

“What will we do if they don't come back?”

Catharine didn't answer for a long moment. She thought of the lost colony of Roanoke. What had happened to those who waited? When no one came, did one party strike out, then another? Eventually, when the ship came in, no one was there. It took every ounce of Catharine's will to answer calmly.

“We can't expect them to come back immediately. Don't worry, Sally, they'll return.”

When Sally spoke again, her voice was low and gruff. “Catharine, I'm frightened. I'm terribly frightened.”

Catharine raised herself up on her elbow and reached out for the younger woman. She slipped an arm around Sally's shoulders and felt them shake with tears. Catharine pulled Sally closer, cradled her head against her shoulder. She felt the hot wetness of tears through her blouse.

“They'll come back,” she said again, and she tried to believe it.

It was late afternoon on the third day when the curly-haired sailor from Michigan stopped his incessant pacing on the far end of the beach. He looked at the two nurses and Catharine sitting in the shade of the palms, at two other sailors swimming in the shallows, and at Wally Harris, the officer whom Miller had left in command. His mouth set determinedly, he crossed to the pile of sailors' belongings and picked up a bedroll.

“Jenkins.” Harris's voice was sharp.

The sailor ignored him and continued strapping his bedroll.

“What are you doing?”

Jenkins looked at Harris defiantly. “I'm getting out of here. I'm not going to stay here and starve.”

“We're under orders, Chris.” Harris's voice was gentle now. “We have to stay here.”

“Stay here?” The young sailor's voice rose and cracked. “Look around. This is nowhere. We'll stay here and starve. I'm getting out.” He turned toward the jungle.

“Jenkins.”

The sailor paused for an instant; then he ducked his head and broke into a lope. Within seconds, he was swallowed up in the thick jungle growth. For a few minutes more, they could hear the frantic sounds of his thrashing, uneven progress; then that, too, was gone.

No one spoke, but each of them knew the young man had gone to his death, Catharine thought.

It wasn't quite an hour later that movement sounded again in the jungle. They all scrambled to their feet and waited tensely.

Jack was the first to step out onto the beach. He looked quickly until his eyes found Catharine.

Everyone moved toward the returned men, and Catharine felt a surge of thankfulness. They all were back safely, Jack and Spencer and Billy. Behind them came a group of well-built Filipinos.

Jack came up to Catharine.

“Was it difficult?” she asked.

He nodded. “We wandered for a couple of days; then we found a track and followed it to a barrio. It was deserted, but we had been observed because some natives came up to us. They led us to another barrio and found some men who agreed to carry our stuff and lead us to some Americans hiding in the interior.”

“Hiding?” She knew what it meant, but she asked anyway.

Reluctantly, Jack nodded. “Corregidor fell on May sixth. Wainwright surrendered all the troops in the Philippines to keep the Japs from killing everybody on Corregidor, but a lot of Americans on Mindanao fled to the interior; miners, missionaries, and soldiers who didn't surrender.”

Catharine raised a hand to press against her lips. Corregidor had fallen and with it all the brave, wonderful people she'd known: the nurses, the doctors, the marines, the wounded. And Dennis. Oh, God, what had happened to Dennis?

Jack reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Don't think about it, Catharine,” he said gruffly. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, it means the Japs are in the saddle here, at least along the coast. They make sweeps into the interior, but there's plenty of room to hide. Unfortunately, we've landed not too far from Davao. There are Japs everywhere around here.”

“How can we avoid them?”

“There's only one way.” He reached down, picked up a broken palm frond, and began to trace in the sand. “Here we are.” He made an X. “The main highway runs here.” He sketched it in. “There are Jap patrols here and here.” Then he made crosshatches on a large area west of them. “Our only hope is to move through here.”

She looked at him, not understanding. “There aren't any Japs there?”

He looked down at the sand. “No, no Japs. If we can make it through, we can get to the mountains, and that country's so wild, we'll be safe.”

“If we can make it through . . .”

“Manuel's the leader of the Filipinos. He swears he knows a way through.” Jack shook his head. “We could see the swamp off to our left as we traveled, but we didn't dare enter. If you don't know your way in a swamp, you can travel in circles until you drop.”

The swamp pulsed with life: the harsh caw of parrots, the whirr of insects, the splash of rats and snakes. The water was turgid and smelled dank and foul. But worst of all were the leeches. Once an hour the travelers stopped to remove the bloated worms. No matter how tightly they tied their pants' legs, the leeches squirmed past the constricting bands to fasten into their skin and draw blood until their bodies bulged.

After each pause, Manuel would once again signal a march, swing­­ing his bolo knife to cut through a seven-foot wall of grass, each stalk an inch thick and wiry. He cut a narrow path, and the sharp-edged swamp grass sliced at their bodies, scratching and tearing any exposed skin.

Every step in the waist-deep water exhausted. It was an effort to move against the sluggish water, an effort to pull water-logged shoes from the mucky bottom. Hour followed hour, and their involuntary grunts of fatigue were a dull counterpoint to the squashing sound of their steps and the thock of Manuel's bolo knife.

Spencer wavered once or twice, and Catharine knew the ugly gash at the back of his head still throbbed. She and Sally and Frances stumbled forward, the humid heat draining their strength. Insects swarmed over them, biting all exposed flesh, raising huge welts on their faces and hands. But Jack stayed close to her, always ready to help her through particularly difficult patches.

They finally stopped in midafternoon for food, clambering up onto an enormous fallen tree trunk. Catharine stared down at the murky brown water. How long could they bear to move through it?

They drank from their canteens and shared three cans of Vienna sausages among the nine Americans. The cargadores, each of whom carried a crate of gold, rested, too, but none of them seemed weary. They laughed and talked quietly among themselves and shared a lunch of rice and camotes, a kind of sweet potato. The food, little as it was, gave them the energy to start again when Manuel signaled time to move on.

The afternoon was a burning misery of heat and fatigue. Catharine no longer thought in terms of how long. She bent every effort to lift one foot at a time, step after step after step. At sundown, when they stopped, she stood unmoving in the water, too tired even to look for a place to rest. Jack took her elbow and helped her up onto a fallen log to wait while the men built a platform of vines and saplings so they could sleep out of the water. When it was finished, the women climbed up and collapsed on the uncomfortable springy platform, too tired even to think of food. Jack brought them a mixture of rice and salmon served on plantain leaves.

Each day, they moved more slowly, the physical strain telling ever more deeply on their malnourished bodies. One foot after another, day after day.

Finally, the fourth day, the water fell to their thighs, to their knees, to their ankles. They looked at one another, their faces and hands inflamed with insect bites, their skin mealy from the water, their legs pocked with marks from the leeches, and hope flickered in their eyes. They'd come through the green hell. They'd reached the end of the swamp. One last time, they performed the familiar sickening ritual, the men turning away to provide the women some privacy as they made their leech search.

Catharine was last. She didn't want to look, but she could feel the bloated black bodies on her skin. Sally held a burning match to a leech embedded in Catharine's calf. She shuddered as the worm contracted and fell away, slipping down her leg.

Billy Miller was already waving them into a huddle. “Manuel says we need to move fast. A Jap patrol may be along here any time now. We've got to get past it and get up into the mountains. If the Japs catch us, they'll intern civilians, kill military personnel.”

So one fear supplanted another. Now they no longer watched for snakes, stripped away leeches, and fought the insects and heat. Now they listened for the thud of approaching feet or the crackle of gunfire.

They skirted the villages, keeping to rough paths and trails. Once they hid, faces pressed into the dust, bodies hugging the ground, as a Japanese patrol rattled by. Then Manuel, prodding them to run, led them across the road and ever upward into harsher country—climbing, always climbing.

Catharine thought it would be better in the mountains, but their shoes, rotted by swamp water, fell away from their feet; the tender skin blistered in angry red and white patches as they stepped on nettles and rocks. Their muscles, abused by the muck of the swamp, throbbed as their legs, unaccustomed to climbing, struggled to keep pace. At first, the cooler air was invigorating after the stultifying heat. But it grew ever cooler as they climbed higher. They began to shiver in their worn cotton clothes and wore any extra pieces of clothing they still possessed. The terrain worsened: steep-sided canyons; sharper, tougher gradients; overhangs; and impassable slopes.

Manuel led the cargadores at a tireless pace. Spencer and Billy Miller followed close behind, the sailors and nurses came next, and Catharine and Jack brought up the rear.

One afternoon they came to a shallow stream, icy water swirling over a pebbled bottom. Catharine dropped down, eased off her shoes, and plunged her blistered feet into the sharply cold water.

“I wish I could stay here.”

Jack looked up at the enormous hardwood trees towering into the sky, their limbs so thickly leaved the afternoon sun couldn't pierce the canopy. It was dim, cool, and very quiet. He grinned. “Actually, I'd be happy to trade for Chicago—and a beer at Delancey's Saloon.”

Catharine didn't smile. She shook her head. “This is all crazy.”

He studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “I know. Destination to nowhere. But what else can we do?”