The Year of Counting Souls Read online

  They were almost through. A final man came straight at them on his bicycle. He flew up onto the hood and smashed into the windshield. His helmet fell off, and his face flattened grotesquely against the glass, blood running from his mashed nose. His face was only inches from Louise’s, and she turned away rather than stare at him through the windshield.

  “Get him off! Get him off!” Frankie screamed, even as rifle fire chased them down the road.

  Louise caught a glimpse of a Japanese soldier off his bicycle on the side of the road, shouting excitedly into a radio. Two men chased after the truck on foot, screaming a battle cry, but they couldn’t keep up. More gunfire, this time spitting from the tall grass to their left. Bullets pinged off the door and spiderwebbed the glass next to the driver’s head. Fortunately it was only rifle fire, not a machine gun, and none of it got through.

  Then they were free and in open country again, no enemies on the road. The Japanese soldier was still lying limply against the windshield. His legs splayed out in front of the driver, obstructing the view, and his arms stretched overhead, hands dangling over the other side by the nurses. The driver hit the brakes to get him to slide off, but he stayed wedged in the gap between the windshield and the top of the hood.

  “Don’t you dare stop!” a soldier shouted from the back. “Get us out of here, dammit.”

  “I cannot see, sir! I’ll drive off the road, sir.” The driver turned to Louise. “Miss, can you help?”

  Louise swallowed hard and nodded. She shifted Maria Elena off her lap and crawled over the top of Frankie, who unrolled the window for her. Louise leaned out. Thick tropical air rushed over her and tore her hair loose from the pins. It flapped and plastered against her face.

  Louise grabbed the dead soldier’s wrist and pulled. His hand was right in her face, and she could see the hairs on the back of his hand, read the time on the wristwatch with its brown leather band. A Zenith. It was the same watch her father gave her older brother when he graduated from Colorado A&M with a degree in agronomy.

  How strange to see the same watch on the wrist of this dead Japanese soldier. And the man’s face was all too human, not like the leering, slant-eyed sketches from propaganda leaflets. Just a boy far from home, struck dead while back home some family prayed for his safe return. Or whatever passed for prayer in that strange land.

  The truck hit a pothole and jarred the body loose from where it was wedged. It began to slide off the side of the hood, when suddenly the man’s hand shot out and seized her wrist. His other hand grabbed the top of the hood, and he struggled to keep his body from sliding off the end. Blood streamed from his nose as he lifted his head.

  Louise cried out in shock, and vaguely, over the whistling wind and the sound of distant gunfire, she heard Frankie and Maria Elena screaming. They tugged on her legs and waist, but they couldn’t get her free from the Japanese soldier’s grip. She clawed at him, but he wouldn’t let go.

  The man fixed her with his gaze. He opened his mouth, and out came clear, unaccented English. “Please help me.”

  Chapter Three

  The truck came to a halt, and Louise wrenched herself free at last. The Japanese soldier rolled off the hood and landed in a huge, mud-filled pothole. His legs were in front of the right tire, and as the truck rumbled back to life, it rolled slowly over them. The man cried out in pain as he was forced deeper into the mud.

  Louise was more than halfway out the window, and they’d let go of her waist once the enemy soldier fell. The truck was barely moving. Instincts kicked in, and she couldn’t help herself. Before she had a chance to think, she squirmed her way out the open window and flopped into the mud. Alarmed shouts came from her companions. Fárez’s dog barked excitedly from the other truck, which rolled to a stop with squeaking brakes.

  “Get in here, you idiot!” Frankie cried.

  She’d already thought of the wounded Japanese soldier as a human when she saw the wristwatch and his boyish face, but the moment he spoke English, something more profound snapped into place. He was no longer a Jap or an enemy; he was an injured man, and she couldn’t leave him here to die of his injuries.

  The man was moving his upper body and his back, so she didn’t think his spine was severed. He spat water and shook his head, then used his arms to drag himself out of the puddle as Louise helped. She turned her attention to his legs.

  He may have survived being run over by the heavy transport—the truck had merely pressed him deeper into the mud and water—but his right leg was badly broken. Even without cutting away his trousers, she could feel a fracture of the tibia. The initial collision had left his nose streaming blood, but it didn’t appear to be broken. Probing further, Louise discovered a gash on his abdomen. Between the blood and the tattered shirt and the mud, it was impossible to see the extent of it.

  Men and women were still hollering at her. A hand rested on Louise’s shoulder, and she thought it was someone come to haul her back.

  She tried to shrug free. “Let go of me, I—”

  “Miss Louise, it’s me.”

  Dr. Claypool. He frowned beneath thick eyebrows, but she felt relief to see his expression. It was the probing, scientific look that crossed his face when he examined a patient.

  Louise eyed the other men spilling out of the truck. They were injured soldiers and sailors, but they were all business now. They came limping over with intent clear on their faces. They meant to wrangle the doctor and nurse back into the truck so they could get off this long, straight stretch of highway. Here they were vulnerable to attack from the air and ground, with no friendly forces in sight. Louise was putting them all in danger, and she knew it. But she couldn’t leave this man, not now.

  Heavy drops of water fell from the sky, warm as bathwater, and splattered the back of her neck. It had been a brilliant tropical day, but now the lid was closing overhead, and as soon as it snapped shut, a deluge would inevitably follow.

  Dr. Claypool reached out to feel the broken leg as his eyes roamed up and down the man’s body, and Louise pointed out the gash in the man’s abdomen.

  “Ah yes. Good eyes.” His expression darkened as he probed the wound. “Could be serious.”

  He glanced at the approaching soldiers. “No,” he told them. “Give us a moment.” Then, to the nurse, “Miss Louise, you know we can’t.”

  The Japanese turned his head. “Please don’t leave me here to die.”

  Claypool blinked. “My God, he speaks English?”

  Fresh fear blossomed on the soldier’s face as he spotted the soldiers glaring down at him from behind her. Louise turned, followed his eyes. The soldiers’ expressions were ugly, weeks of frustration showing. One man had his sidearm out, and Lieutenant Kozlowski was there, too, his rifle leveled.

  “Stand back!” Kozlowski ordered the others.

  “Don’t shoot me!” the Japanese soldier cried.

  Hearing him speak English brought curses and shouts that they’d found a spy. The American soldiers—four in all—seemed suddenly determined to carry out their roadside execution. One grabbed Louise as she tried to shield the man’s body. He yanked her away.

  “Doctor!” she cried.

  Nobody had touched Claypool, and indecision twisted his face one way and then the other. “No,” he said at last. “We won’t harm him.”

  “We can’t take no Japs,” someone said. “Ain’t got no room, and none of the men would have him near if we did.”

  “He’s right,” Lieutenant Kozlowski said. “We’re on the run, we’ve got to drive all day to get to safety, and we’re stuffed full. If we had room, we’d have taken on some Pinoys, not a damn prisoner.”

  “Sir,” Louise’s driver called over to the lieutenant. “We’re not safe here, sir.”

  “We can’t be executing prisoners,” Dr. Claypool said. “This man is injured and unarmed. Let Miss Louise give him some morphine, and we’ll leave him for the enemy to find.”

  “Come on, Doc,” Kozlowski said. “The Japs come
up the road and he’ll tell them what he saw and where we went.”

  Kozlowski had remained calm, but Louise no longer saw that as a good thing. No emotion on his face. Only a cold, calculated decision hardening in his eyes.

  Louise pulled free of the soldiers and moved to shield the enemy soldier. “Don’t you wonder why he speaks English?”

  “He’s a spy, obviously,” Kozlowski said. “Or in charge of propaganda. An agitator. The kind that come in afterward and rile up the population to rat out the Americans. All the more reason we’ve got to take care of him now.”

  “I’m no spy,” the man said. “I’m not any of those things, I swear it.”

  “Yeah, right. Anyway”—the lieutenant jabbed his finger at him—“you shut up. Stand aside, miss. I’ve got to do it, and it’s not going to get any easier the longer we sit here jawing about it.”

  “What’s your name?” Louise asked the Japanese soldier.

  If only she could make the others see what she’d seen, he might have a chance. He was a man like they were, doing his duty. An injured man.

  “Sammy.”

  One of the soldiers jeered. “If he’s named Sammy, then so is my gram.”

  “He knows English,” Louise said. “He might help us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kozlowski asked. His expression had not softened.

  “I mean he can tell MacArthur what the Japs are up to, where they’re invading and the like. Can’t you?” she asked the Japanese. “You’ve got all of that information, right?”

  The man looked away without answering. It was a desperate attempt by Louise, and he hadn’t helped matters.

  “Just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it,” one of the soldiers said.

  “No,” Dr. Claypool said at last. “Miss Louise is right. We’ll get him into the truck, make room for him somehow. Apart from the fact that he’s injured and helpless, he might have valuable intelligence.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Kozlowski said.

  “It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” Claypool said steadily. “That is my medical decision.”

  Unlike the nurses, doctors had an official military rank, and Claypool outranked the lieutenant. But maybe this was a battlefield decision, and Kozlowski could overrule him. The doctor and the young lieutenant stared hard at each other for a long moment; then Kozlowski grunted and looked to the others.

  “You heard the doc. Get this ugly Jap into the truck. Search him first, make sure he’s not armed. If he’s got so much as a pair of chopsticks on him, that’s it. Peterson and Balboni, change over to the other truck to make room. Now move it!”

  The lieutenant loomed over the doctor and nurse, who’d knelt in the mud over the wounded man. “And if he does try something funny, it’s on your heads. Got it?”

  Dark gazes and muttered oaths greeted the Japanese soldier in the truck, and there was a near riot when the other patients found out they’d have to move aside so he could be given their precious space and medical supplies. Only Kozlowski’s shouted order and the respect they had for the doctor kept them in line.

  Louise and Dr. Claypool had everything they needed but clean syringes for administering morphine. Those were in the other vehicle, and they’d set off so quickly there was no time to get any of it. Clearing out as much room in the back of the truck as possible, they laid their tools and instruments on the laps of the patients squeezed onto the benches on either side.

  She took off the Japanese soldier’s khaki shirt, which revealed the ugly abdominal wound. Doctor and nurse scrubbed their hands with alcohol, irrigated the wound with iodine, and then Claypool began exploring. The injured man hissed in pain. His face was pale.

  This brought jeers from the Americans, most of whom had suffered painful injuries at the hands of the Japanese.

  “Bloody Jap’s a coward,” one man said.

  “Cut his balls off while you’re at it, Doc. If he’s got ’em.”

  “Will you monkeys lay off?” Claypool said. “We have a job to do.”

  “There’s nothing for the pain?” the injured man asked in a thin voice. “Ether?”

  “We’re not going to put you under,” Louise said. “Come on, where is that Japanese warrior spirit they’re always going on about? What is it—Bushido?”

  “That’s not Bushido. Anyway, I never had it. Never had any of it—you’ll have to talk to my brother if you want any of that.”

  She got a needle and sutures ready, but Claypool snapped his fingers impatiently. “No, no, the number-two sutures. The bowel is perforated, and I need to stitch it up first. Good, like that. Keep him talking, he moves less.”

  “Your brother is in the army, too?” she asked. His eyes drifted away, as if he either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer the question. She tried a different angle. “Is your name really Sammy?”

  “Sachihiro Mori.” He managed a clench-jawed smile. “In your country they called me Sammy. I figured that might be a better name to tell the soldiers if I wanted to stay alive.”

  This brought more mutters from the other soldiers.

  “I knew it,” Louise said. “Your English is too good to have learned it in school. Where were you living, San Francisco? I heard there are a lot of Japanese.”

  “Mostly Honolulu.”

  Her eyes widened as she thought of recent events. “Really? What were you doing there?”

  Uncertainty flickered across his face, and his mouth closed. Claypool tugged on the thread to tie it off, and Sammy grimaced but didn’t cry out.

  “Of course he was in Honolulu,” one of the watching soldiers said. “He’s a damn spy. Probably waving in the Zeros as they came at Pearl Harbor. This one should be strung up, boys.”

  Kozlowski snorted. “Think that through, won’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” the soldier said.

  “It’s a pretty trick to be in Hawaii on December seventh and taken prisoner in the Philippines three weeks later.”

  “They must have flown him out right after the attack,” the soldier said stubbornly. “Anyway, it don’t mean he’s not a spy.”

  “I’ll wager he is a spy,” Kozlowski said. “But let’s not be ridiculous about it.”

  Louise was torn between sympathy for her patient and sympathy for those she’d been caring for the past few weeks. Broken, crippled men, bombed on their ships and in the docks. Gunned down trying to stop the Japanese landings at Lingayen Gulf and Lamon Bay. Shot, burned, bayoneted. Some they saved; others died horribly. She had no illusion what would have happened had one of her boys fallen into the clutches of the Japanese back on the road. Probably tortured mercilessly, then killed when he could no longer give information.

  “Okay,” Claypool said to Louise. “Now the number threes. Get the dressing ready.” He grunted as the truck jostled. “Do you think the driver is trying to hit every last pothole?”

  In spite of the bumpy road, they soon had Sammy’s abdominal wound bandaged up and attended to the leg. Doctor and nurse shifted the broken tibia into place, while Sammy cried out in Japanese. They splinted it for now. Later they’d apply a plaster cast.

  Once they were done, Claypool allowed the soldiers to throw open the tarps and let the breeze clear out the tight, close air in the back. They’d apparently found their way back onto Route 3 leading into the Central Luzon Plain and were passing through a placid stretch of palms and grass-roofed nipa huts. There were Filipino civilians on the road, fleeing Manila, but little motorized traffic.

  It was early afternoon when they came upon a major defensive position of Filipino troops who stopped the trucks on the road. Men set up Browning machine guns, muscled small field pieces into position, and hauled sandbags out of mule-pulled carts. They’d pulled down two of the huts to use their wood for a palisade and set others on fire to deny cover to the enemy.

  It was a hive of work, but even Louise could tell that these men were green, untested. They were too clean, too fresh, with none of th
e battle-hardened, battle-shocked look of men who’d been in combat. They’d be facing veteran Japanese troops. Would they hold, or would they strip out of their uniforms and melt into the countryside?

  There weren’t any Americans about, and Lieutenant Kozlowski couldn’t communicate with the nervous Filipinos refusing them permission to continue north.

  “Where’s that Pinoy nurse?” he asked Louise. “Bring her up front.”

  Louise found Maria Elena with Clarice as the two were handing out quinine pills and changing dressings in the second truck. She led Maria Elena up to where the lieutenant was still trying to communicate.

  Some basic information came out at once. The Filipino troops were from the Fifty-First Division, tasked with holding the town of Plaridel. There was a tank battalion of Americans farther north in Baliuag.

  “Baliuag is where the hospital is,” Louise said. “How far is that from here?”

  “No more than five miles,” Kozlowski said.

  Her heart lifted. Only five miles. What a horrible morning, and no doubt there would be more dangers in the days and weeks to come, but if they could only get to Baliuag, they could enjoy a respite. Safe, protected by American tanks and this strong force of Filipinos to the rear, they could get their patients settled into real beds. Get them proper treatment, with ample supplies and clean, modern operating facilities.

  Kozlowski turned to Maria Elena. “Nurse, tell him we’re going to Baliuag. He’s got to let us through. We’ve got a prisoner, for one, a potential spy. And we’ve got injured men, we need that hospital. Make sure he understands.”

  Maria Elena translated, and the Filipino smiled in that obliging way that Louise had learned meant he was in disagreement without wanting to seem disagreeable.

  “He advises that we continue toward Bataan, sir,” Maria Elena said. “That we’ll be safe there, that the Fifty-First is charged with holding the road against the Japs until Manila can be evacuated, sir.” She looked nervous and cleared her throat. “And he wants me to remind you that he is a captain, and you are a lieutenant.”

  Kozlowski flushed, his calm wavering for the first time since Louise had met him. “I want a radio. Get me a radio, or so help me God . . .”