Страница 99 из 128
But they were stupider than Peterson had figured them for. He thought the Americans were going to get away with their deception, and wondered how the Japs could fail to miss what wasn’t right in front of their noses. The answer wasn’t all that hard to find. Their officers didn’t want smart bastards here. They wanted mean bastards-and what they wanted, they got.
Still and all, the Japs would have had to be dumber than a pile of pebbles not to notice pretty damn quick that Charlie Kaapu wasn’t there. They were just about to let the POWs queue up for the miserable breakfast when a corporal let out a yelp, as if somebody’d poked him with a pin: “Kaabu!” When the Japs tried to say p, it mostly came out as b. Peterson had got used to being called Beterson.
Naturally, Charlie didn’t answer. The guards had the co
And they weren’t just mad at the POWs. They also screamed at one another. The men who’d been on watch during the night would surely catch holy hell. That didn’t break Jim Peterson’s heart. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
The prisoners didn’t get breakfast that morning. They got marched straight into the tu
They got no supper that night, either. Nobody dared say a word. If the Japs kept that up for another few days, they wouldn’t need to worry about escapes from the Kalihi Valley any more. All the POWs here would be dead.
A few months earlier, mistreatment like this might have prompted lots of men to try to escape. No more. Next to nobody had the strength. And the guards would be shooting at their own shadows now. The prisoners went nowhere. The timing was bad.
Just before sunup the next morning, two trucks came up to the camp in the Kalihi Valley from Honolulu below. Jim Peterson and the other prisoners stared in amazement. The trucks themselves were ordinary: U.S. Army vehicles the Japs had commandeered, painting over the white star on each driver’s-side door. But their being here wasn’t ordinary. They were the first trucks Peterson had seen since coming to the punishment camp.
And, instead of getting the prisoners to do the work for them the way they almost always did, the Japs unloaded the trucks themselves. The contents seemed harmless enough: crates with incomprehensible Japanese squiggles on the sides. The guards lugged them over to the mouth of the tu
“They treat that shit like it’s the Hawaiian crown jewels,” another prisoner remarked to Peterson.
“How do you know it’s not?” he said. “If their side’s losing, this is a hell of a place to stash ’em.”
He got a lesson in the way rumors worked. By the time the POWs assembled for roll call half an hour later, everybody was convinced the Japs were going to stow the Hawaiian crown jewels in the tu
Another thing everybody knew was that the Japs were going to be double tough on the count this morning. Peterson and the other POWs had only been guessing about the crown jewels. What everybody knew turned out to be dead right this time. No one presumed even to twitch as the guards stalked along the prisoners’ ranks. One luckless fellow who sneezed with a guard right behind him got beaten and kicked till he lay on the ground, all bloody and groaning.
Peterson shuddered to think what would happen if the Japs screwed up the count even though the prisoners were cooperating. For a wonder, the guards didn’t. For what felt like an even bigger wonder, they let the POWs line up for breakfast. As always, it wasn’t much and it wasn’t good. After a day and a half of emptiness and brutal labor, anything at all in Peterson’s belly seemed wonderful. He knew he was still a starving man. But he wasn’t starving quite so fast.
After the prisoners ate, the guards pointed toward the tu
When the Japs said, “All go!” they weren’t kidding. They routed out the cooks and sent them into the tu
More or less fortified by his more-or-less meal, Peterson attacked the rock face with a pick. Other prisoners scooped up the rock he’d torn loose, loaded it into baskets, and carried it away. Peterson heard gunshots from the direction of the tu
Work came to a ragged halt. One by one, picks and shovels fell silent. No guards lashed out with clubs or shouted, “Speedo!” and “Isogi!” In fact, no guards seemed to be in the tu
When Peterson realized that, ice ran through him. “The Japs don’t have the crown jewels in those boxes!” he shouted. “They’ve got dynamite! They’re going to blow in the tu
He threw down his pick. The steel head clanked on stone. A moment later, he picked up the tool again. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he couldn’t get a better one till he knocked a Jap over the head and stole his Arisaka.
“Come on!” he yelled. “They aren’t going to get away with this, God damn them!” He started back up the long, straight shaft the POWs had dug. Nor was he the only one. Everybody who still had the strength stormed up the tu
The Japs must have known something like that would happen. They’d shifted the machine guns that had protected those crates so they pointed straight down the tu
That wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was listening to the machine gu
“We’ve got to keep going!” he cried. “It’s our necks if we don’t!”
“It’s our necks if we do,” somebody else said, which was just as true.
“I’d rather get shot than buried alive.” Peterson wished he had some better choices, but those seemed to be the only ones on the menu.