fists, knives, and teeth. Farris grabbed one Japanese soldier by the throat and strangled him until something hit him on the top of his head and he fell to the muddy bottom of the trench. More bodies piled on him and he tried to claw his way up. There was an explosion and something slammed into his shoulder. He blacked out as excruciating pain overwhelmed him.
Gavin’s second defense line consisted of any soldier who could fire a weapon, along with the Alaskan Volunteers and a number of other local people who’d signed up for the duration. He watched in horror as the human wave of enemy soldiers ignored brutal casualties that would have stopped a normal army and overwhelmed much of the first line. Of course they would ignore their own casualties, he thought angrily. They came here to die.
Many of the forward bunkers held out, but others could not. Fleeing American soldiers ran toward him, comingled with charging Japanese.
Gavin’s people began firing as quickly as they could, even though they were aware that some of their shots might hit their own men. It was that or die themselves, he thought bitterly.
His artillery, mainly 105mm pack howitzers that had been carried to Fairbanks by mule the last few miles, fired as rapidly as they could, shooting over sights that were set as low as the gunners could make them. “Open sights” was the next order he heard and never thought he would hear in his lifetime. It meant the enemy was almost too close to shoot at.
Gavin was in an open bunker with Bear and Ruby, among others, and they kept shooting, mowing down the Japanese who wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop charging. Bodies piled up in front of them in a writhing mass. Ruby was beside him, blazing away. Gavin recalled telling her that women shouldn’t be on the firing line, and her telling him to go screw himself.
A screaming Japanese soldier stood directly in front of him, a grenade in his hand. Ruby shot him and he fell backward. The grenade exploded, shredding the Japanese soldier.
Both Americans and Japanese hurled grenades as if they were snowballs in a schoolyard fight. Yet another Japanese soldier appeared a few feet away and someone cut him down with a burst from a BAR.
“This can’t go on forever,” Bear said, gasping in pain. There was blood on his leg and he was having a hard time standing.
A Japanese soldier jumped the sandbags and stumbled forward. Gavin fired, but he clicked on an empty chamber. He was out of ammo. “Down,” Ruby ordered, and shot the Japanese in the head as Gavin ducked.
Gavin reloaded, wheeled, and looked for a new target. There weren’t any. The ground in front of the bunker was piled sometimes three deep with Japanese dead and dying. He looked at the other positions in the second line and saw much the same thing. The firing was dying out and all around an unnatural silence was beginning to fall. Two tanks were burning in front of his first line, and another had been destroyed to his right. The Japanese armored threat was over, but what about their infantry?
Gavin clambered to the top of the sandbags and looked farther. The few Japanese soldiers left were still screaming their fury, but running aimlessly and were cut down as he watched.
Bear climbed up and stood beside him despite the wound in his leg. “Fuck me, colonel, if we haven’t just run out of Japs.”
Gavin grunted and gave the order for his men to move out. It was time to retake what they had lost.
A thin wave of men and a handful of women moved slowly across the battlefield. A grenade exploded and a man screamed. A Japanese soldier had just killed himself and taken an American with him.
“Make sure they’re dead,” someone yelled. “Kill them. Kill the fuckers!”
Gavin wanted to stop it, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His men had a right to protect themselves from Japanese lunacy.
As they moved to the original defense line, their walk was punctuated with sporadic gunfire as guaranteed death was delivered to the Japanese. Their wounded were put out of their misery before they could kill more Americans. Japanese prisoners, Gavin thought ruefully, would be few and far between. It might not be what the Geneva Convention said was correct, but blame belonged with the Japanese.
As they reached the outer line of bunkers, American bodies began to be found among the Japanese. Some had tried to retreat and been shot and hacked for their efforts, while others were clearly facing toward the enemy. Gavin seethed. He wondered what else he could have done to save his men. He had little artillery, no armor, and the weather had stripped him of any air cover, or even the ability to shoot the Japs at long range. The sight of so many American dead would haunt him for the rest of his days.
A number of bunkers had been bypassed by the Japanese human wave, and the Americans inside them were too shocked to do anything but wave feebly in relief.
A few yards in front of the first defense line, a dead American sergeant lay sprawled and mangled in front of a charred Japanese tank. He looked vaguely familiar. What had happened? Had the American killed the tank? He hoped they would somehow find out. The dead American might just deserve a medal.
They came to a trench filled with Japanese bodies. The arm of an American soldier, recognizable thanks to his skin color and his uniform, pointed to the sky.
“Poor bastard,” Gavin muttered and looked away.
“Hey, the guy’s hand just moved!”
Gavin and other soldiers moved quickly and feverishly to pull Japanese bodies from the trench. Several American bodies were removed, but they were clearly dead. Finally, they came to the man who owned the arm. He was breathing but covered with blood. A medic jumped into the hole and started to treat him. Like the sergeant by the tank, the GI looked familiar. Gavin finally put a name to this face—Farris. He’d been one of the first to make it through from the south.
The medic looked up in dismay. “Jesus, Colonel, I sure as hell hope not all of this blood belongs to this poor guy.”
CHAPTER 18
DANE’S CURRENT JOB WAS TO SIT BY THE PHONE AND WAIT FOR the late Wilhelm Braun’s assistant, Krause, to call back so he could give him the answer from Washington. The FBI was ready to trace the call, but it was assumed that the call would be brief and from a pay phone, and, therefore, effectively untraceable.
Dane didn’t think Krause would be unhappy with the response. Harris had bumped upward the German’s suggestion that he be given a full pardon and freedom in return for information that would lead to the destruction of the Japanese fleet, and gotten the only possible response possible—go for it. Dane recalled that Churchill said something to the effect that he would praise the devil in Parliament if it would ensure victory against the Nazis, and this was indeed a devilish pact.
In Dane’s opinion, Krause was a saboteur and a cold-blooded murderer of Americans, and he was going to go free in return for his help. So be it. If it saved American lives, it would be worth it. If Krause was going to be punished, it would be in another life. If he cooperated, the United States would have no interest in his future. Nor did his efforts have to result in the enemy’s destruction, which was a vague and subjective term. All Krause had to do was make a good-faith effort.
Amanda had also agreed as they discussed it over dinner at a local restaurant. “I’ve seen too many wounded young men. Do whatever can be done to end it, Tim, even if it means paying such a price.” She had paused thoughtfully. “In fact, I don’t think it’s much of a price at all.”
The war had also gotten even more personal. Dane had heard from a friend that his nephew Steve had been badly wounded in the battle against the Japanese in Alaska, which the radio and newspapers were trumpeting as a great victory. It had been reported that the Japanese army assaulting Fairbanks had been annihilated. This was no surprise to Tim as he’d predicted there would be few if any prisoners taken and this had been borne out.
It had indeed been a victory but at a great price. Several hundred Americans had been killed or wounded in the final battle. He had no idea how bad Steve’s wounds were or if he would recover. If using a Nazi like Krause helped end the slaughter, so be it. Amanda’s friend Sandy had been informed that her erstwhile boyfriend had been wounded, but seemed strangely unconcerned, leaving Tim and Amanda to think that any ardor they’d felt was
