In Danger's Path (63 page)

“Done,” Brewer said. “What we have to do, I think, is' elect officers.”

“Elect officers?”

“We'll talk about that, later. What we have to do now is start to pack essentials on wagons we know won't get stuck.”

“
We
start doing that? You and me and my Marines?”

“Everybody,” Brewer said.

“Okay.”

“The first thing we have to do is decide what has to go and what doesn't.”

What had to go with them was food, the bare necessities of clothing, the air-cooled Browning .30-caliber machine gun, and a gasoline generator and twenty gallons of gasoline to run it.

The Yangtze sailor who had been a radioman first on the
Panay
had a shortwave radio. He didn't know how well it worked, but Brewer thought that they should take it with them. Maybe they could establish contact with a radio station someplace.

They left Baotou eighteen hours later.

It took them a month to reach and cross the Altai mountain range, and then to reach the edges of the Gobi Desert.

There Brewer called a meeting; and here they all agreed to a command structure.

With the election of officers came the division of responsibility. Sweatley and his Marines, plus several able-bodied Yangtze sailors and several of the 15th Infantry retirees, provide the armed force to protect everybody. They'd be, so to speak, “the soldiers.”

The rest—under Staff Sergeant Cawber—would be responsible for feeding everybody.

The “soldiers,” in pairs, mounted on the small Mongolian ponies, went on what amounted to permanent perimeter guard duty. One pair preceded the main body of wagons. One pair moved on each side of the wagon train, left and right. And the fourth pair brought up the rear. Everybody did four hours at a time, but the reliefs were on a staggered schedule. Every two hours, one man was sent out from the caravan to relieve one of the men on each two-man team. No “guard post” was ever unmanned.

Almost as soon as they began their trek, they encountered caravans moving toward China. Most were camel caravans, but a few were like their own with ponies pulling rubber-tired wagons and carts. After the second week, they were overtaken and passed by camel caravans headed toward either India or Russia. On the one hand, they were encouraged that their caravan closely resembled so many others. On the other hand, they were surprised at how quickly the camel caravans overtook and passed them. They seemed to move at least twice as fast as their horse-drawn wagons.

It was three weeks before they risked having dealings with the other caravan people. When one of the perimeter guards caught sight of a caravan coming up on them, Brewer's wife and one of the other Chinese women who spoke Khalkha, would wait on the road, and half a dozen Marines would take the air-cooled Browning .30 and hide away in the rocks where they could come to their aid, if necessary. The gold they had went very far, but they didn't have much gold. They bought sheep, goats, and pigs; food for the animals; firewood; and animal fat for their lamps.

One day was much like any other.

Chief Brewer shot the sun with a sextant whenever the night sky was clear. The chart he kept showed their slow movement across the desert. They were making, on average, about five miles a day.

The radioman first did somehow manage to get his shortwave radio working, or so he thought, but there was never a response to his calls.

The women and some of the children spent most of their days scrounging for wood to feed their fires. Some of the larger wagons kept small fires burning inside on the move. People climbed in and out of these wagons to keep warm.

And there were some bad times: One of the 15th Infantry retirees died of a heart attack. The German woman committed suicide after two of her children succumbed to a sickness no one understood. Some people began to talk of just going back into China and turning themselves over to the Japanese. The Jap prison camps were supposed to be truly awful, but they couldn't be much worse than living the way they were now, at the edge of starvation, in bitter cold, and with no real hope of things ever getting better.

So when the first winter snow of 1942 came, Chief Brewer gave permission to three Yangtze River sailors, the chaplain's assistant, and two of the 15th Infantry retirees to take their families back to China. He gave them horses, wagons, and enough food to make the journey.

And then the caravan moved off again, headed for whatever it was whatever-it-was-they-were would find at the far side of the Gobi Desert.

Corporal Douglas J. Cassidy, USMC, formerly of the Marine Guard, U.S. Legation, Peking, China, rode slowly up to the third rubber-tired wagon of the caravan and swung easily out of his lambskin saddle. His horse looked hardly large or sturdy enough to carry the big Marine. Cassidy was wearing an ankle-length sheepskin coat, fur side out, a lambskin hat, the ear flaps tied under his chin, and lambskin boots. A M1903 Springfield 30-06-caliber rifle hung, muzzle down, from his saddle. A USMC web cartridge belt hung across his chest. He tied the reins of the horse to a rope dangling from the side of the wagon, then climbed up onto it. He pushed aside the double camel skin covering the canvas body of the wagon, ducked his head, and went inside.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. There were no openings in the body of the wagon except for the one around the chimney over the stove. It was May, but it was still bitterly cold. Since the chimney did not adequately exhaust the smoke, the interior was smoky. An oil taper burning in the center of a table with very short legs provided very little light. The “chairs” for the table were pads of sheepskin.

This wagon, one of the four-wheelers, served as the command post of the caravan. Cassidy was not surprised to find the Chief, Sergeant Abraham, Staff Sergeant Cawber, and Sergeant Sweatley there. One of the four was always in here; often all four of them.

He made his way to the stove and used a government-issue mess cup to ladle tea from a large cast-iron pot into a bowl. Then he used a mess-kit spoon to add brown sugar to it. He took several sips of the tea before looking into the face of Sergeant Abraham.

“Something really weird on the road,” he announced.

“Like what?” Staff Sergeant Cawber asked, not very pleasantly.

“Two wagons, rubber-tired, each with two camels pulling—both rubber-tired, both two-wheelers. Eight more camels. Three men riding the camels.”

“What's strange about that?” Chief Brewer challenged.

“Two women and maybe five, six kids in the wagons,” Cassidy went on. “One of the women is white.”

“How do you know?”

“They stopped for lunch. One of the women watched the fire and the kids while the other went to take a piss. A piss and a crap. The one who took a crap took off her robe when she did it. She was white.”

“Compared to what?” Staff Sergeant Cawber asked.

“Compared to the other one, who was yellow. And shorter. One of them was white.”

“They see you?” Chief Brewer said.

“Yeah,” Cassidy said. “I rode a little ways ahead and stopped, letting them see me, and one of the guys on the camels rode up and took a good look at me. He had a beard, a white beard, so he's probably white, too.”

“And?” Cawber asked impatiently.

“He let me see he had one of them Mauser Broomhandle pistols, the ones with a stock? But he didn't aim it at me or anything. So I just rode off until I was out of sight, and then I come here.”

“What do you think, Sergeant Abraham?” Chief Brewer asked.

“If anybody cares what I think,” Cawber said before Abraham could reply, “we should just let them go their merry way. If there's only that many of them, they probably don't have anything they'd be willing to sell. If Cassidy made sure they didn't see him turn back this way, they don't know we're here. Leave it that way, is what I say.”

“What is a white woman and maybe a white guy with a beard doing out here all alone?” Sergeant Sweatley asked.

“Making a lot better time than we are, Sergeant, I'll tell you that,” Corporal Cassidy said. “If we had camels pulling our wagons, we'd be a lot farther down the road.”

“I mean, what are they up to?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Cawber said.

“Maybe they have something we can use,” Sweatley said.

“And maybe they don't, and maybe they'll just get ahead of us and tell somebody that we're here,” Cawber responded.

“Sweatley, you curious enough to ride out there and have a look for yourself?” Chief Brewer asked Sergeant Sweatley.

“Shit,” Staff Sergeant Cawber said. “The last fucking thing we need around here is another woman, two women, to feed and worry about. Don't start thinking you're the Good Samaritan, Sweatley.”

Sweatley considered the question a minute, then said, “Yeah, I am that curious.”

“Shit,” Staff Sergeant Cawber repeated.

“Take Doto-Si with you,” Chief Brewer said.

“I think I'll have a look myself,” Sergeant Abraham said, rising to his feet.

“Cassidy, you're going to have to show us where they are,” Sergeant Sweatley said.

“I figured,” Corporal Cassidy said.

“Sweatley, you go roll two Marines out of the sack while I go find Doto-Si,” Sergeant Abraham ordered.

Father Boris saw the six riders on Mongolian ponies and didn't like it.

Two hours before he had seen the large man with a rifle, and now he was back, with four other men and what looked like a woman—all armed with rifles.

We are in God's palm
. Father Boris decided.
Whatever happens will happen
.

Turning the camel, he rode back to the first wagon and told Mae Su what he had seen. Both times.

“I will come with you,” she said, and reined in the camels pulling her wagon.

Father Boris brought his camel to its knees and slid off, then went to one of the camels tied behind Mae Su's wagon and tightened its saddle cinch and brought it to its knees.

By then Mae Su was out of the wagon, carrying her Broomhandle Mauser and a blanket. She climbed onto the camel and got it to its feet, then concealed the machine pistol under the blanket.

They rode toward the four horsemen and the woman. Their small Mongolian ponies were standing in a line halfway up a gentle rise.

It took them five minutes to get within shouting distance.

“We come in peace,” Father Boris announced, and then he realized that the five men were all white. Their faces were mostly hidden by scarves. But their skin was white, and they had Caucasian features.

“You are the Americans we have been hearing about,” Father Boris said.

“Who the fuck are you?” Sergeant Sweatley demanded.

“I am a servant of God, a priest, my son,” Father Boris said.

“You are Americans?” Mae Su asked.

“Who are you?” Sergeant Abraham asked courteously.

“I am the wife of Sergeant Ernest Zimmerman, Fourth Marines,” Mae Su said.

“You said ‘Ernie Zimmerman'?” Sweatley asked, obviously surprised.

“Yes,” Mae Su said.

“We talking about the same guy? Used to run the motor convoys out of Shanghai?”

“Sergeant Ernie Zimmerman,” Mae Su repeated, nodding her head.

“Shit, I knew him,” Corporal Cassidy said.

“I'm Technical Sergeant Abraham, retired from the Fourth Marines,” Abraham announced formally. “And these are Marines from the guard detachment, at the U.S. legation in Peking.”

“What are you doing out here?” Corporal Cassidy asked.

“Probably, my son, doing the same thing you are,” Father Boris said. “Trying to leave China, perhaps go to India.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Two of the priest's men, Chinese,” Mae Su said. “Another woman. And our children. How many are there of you?”

“Twelve Marines, some soldiers, and some Yangtze River sailors,” Sweatley said. “And wives and children.”

“In numbers there is strength, my son,” Father Boris said.

“The other woman. She's white?”

“She is Russian,” Father Boris said.

“She is the wife of Captain Edward J. Banning, of the Fourth Marines,” Mae Su said.

“How is it she didn't get out of China with the other officer's dependents?” Abraham asked.

“Because she is a Russian,” Mae Su said.

“You mean a Nansen passport Russian,” Abraham said.

“Yes,” Mae Su said.

“If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, Sergeant, I'm with you. Fuck Cawber,” Corporal Cassidy said. “Ernie Zimmerman is one of us.”

“Yeah, me, too,” another of the Marines said.

Abraham looked at the second Marine.