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Wallace allowed his head to break the surface
of the water, pushing aside the lotus blossoms that floated on the surface
of the pond. “Crikey,”
he murmured, “I’m going to be as wrinkled as new born possum if
I don’t get out of here.”
However, he made no immediate move to swim
to the shore and kept hold of the hollow reed he had been breathing through
for the last hour. He couldn’t
be sure that the Japanese were not still close by even though they had stopped
firing into the pond in the hope that their bullets might find
him. As a matter of fact there
had been no shooting for quite some time, perhaps half an hour or
so. Since he had no clothes and
his watch was on shore he had no way to be absolutely certain, but he was
good at judging time from the angle of the sun and it did not appear to have
moved much from the time he and the porters had entered the pool for a
swim.
“Wonder what the hell those bloody Jap
drongos are doing in this part of
Near the shore he could just make out a few
Japanese soldiers and a number of the porters who had survived the
attack. When the Japanese had
charged from the forest they had fired at everything that moved and a number
of the porters had been hit. Their
corpses still floated in the tranquil waters of the pool, moving slowly in
the eddies.
He had almost been one of
them. As the only white man he
had seemed to be their main target and only a desperate dive below the surface
of the pond had saved him. Bullets
had splashed all around him, but none had penetrated the surface more than
a few inches. Fortunately he
had noted the reeds on the far side of the pond when he had first entered
the water. He had managed to
swim into them and snap one off while still submerged and use it as a breathing
tube. He was prepared to duck
under the water again if need be, but hoped that he might be able to sneak
out once it got dark.
He guessed it was only a couple of hours to
sundown and it got dark quickly in the
rainforest. Much more important
to him was what had happened to the
Sheilas. They seemed to have
put up quite a fight, something that surprised
him. He had supposed that the
arsenal they had lugged with them was more for show than anything else, but
the Japanese had apparently had quite a bit of difficulty with them, finally
bringing up a mortar and lobbing shells into the upper
falls. That seemed to have done
the trick. There had been no
more shooting for over an hour.
It had been incredibly frustrating for him
to sit in the water while the Japanese did their damnedest to kill some of
the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes
on. “Bloody bastards,”
he thought. “If I could
just get to my rifle…”
But then
what? He couldn’t take on
the entire Jap army by himself. He
guessed that there were at least fifty or so Japo
soldiers. It would be suicide
to go up against them. The best
he could hope for was to try and work his way back to
Bertha. That would be one hell
of a lot of fun. Trekking through
the forest fully equipped had been tough
enough. How as he going to make
it back without a stitch of clothing or a single bit of survival
gear? “Crikey,” he
muttered. “I’m going
to have to make like an Abo.”
In the end he had to wait until
nightfall. The Japanese did not
make it convenient, setting up camp right next to the
pond. Moving as far away as he
could, he slid out of the water and onto the
bank. He lay there
shivering. It wasn’t really
all that cold, but sitting in cool water for several hours had drained the
heat from his body.
“Christ,” he thought.
“I’m not going to survive the
night.” He was going to
have to take a desperate gamble and try to sneak into the camp and retrieve
some of his gear, and he was going to have to do it before he died of
exposure. Shivering violently
and cursing the fates, he lowered himself back into the water and paddled
slowly toward the Japanese camp.
The concussion of the exploding mortar was
so close that Amy was almost deafened.
She knew from the instant that the first shell had exploded that her
and Ayashe’s position was untenable.
The best she could hope for was that Katie and the two other girls
might provide enough of a distraction that she and the Dene girl could
escape.
That hope was bolstered when the mortar crew
changed its target shortly after Katie’s crew gained the upper falls
and opened up on the Japanese, however, it soon became obvious that the three
women firing at the Japanese could not possibly free up the bottleneck that
she and Ayashe were in. It was
at that point that she decided to look for another way
out.
At first she thought to follow Katie, Lisha,
and Melissa up the slippery wall of rock flanking the falls, but discarded
that as an option when it became clear that the Japanese soldiers they had
been holding at bay were now moving
closer. She and Ayashe would
be sitting ducks if they were caught halfway up the slippery
climb. The only possibility seemed
to be to look for someplace to hide.
There was a real jumble of boulders in the middle falls due to the
fact that a great deal of rock had broken away from the cliff side, but hiding
among the rocks would only delay the
inevitable. The Japanese would
certainly search the rocks until she and Ayashe were
found. They needed a better
place.
The falls seemed a last desperate
choice. Amy knew that sometimes
the falling water carved out a hollow behind
waterfalls. It was not a very
good choice, but it seemed the only one they
had. Ayashe saw her plan and
nodded. Firing a couple more
shots in the direction of the Japanese they clambered toward the
falls.
Amy went
first. If there was no refuge
there was no point in both of them getting
wet. The force of the falling
water almost swept her off her feet, but she fought for her balance and struggled
through. Behind the falls she
found herself in a waist-deep pool, but more importantly there appeared to
be a deeper cave leading back into the
rock. Clambering over the slippery
rock she moved into it deeply enough to see that it angled upward, and although
slippery with slime, was probably something that she and Ayashe could
climb.
Splashing back through the falls, she motioned
to Ayashe to follow and within seconds the girl stood beside her.
She let Ayashe go first, using
hand signals to make her intentions
known. The thunder of the falling
water drowned out all speech and in any case she did not want her shouting
to alert the Japanese as to her position.
The Dene girl crawled upward into the cave,
Amy following. For the first
few feet the going wasn’t too bad in spite of the fact that there was
a constant flow of water across the bottom of the cave and they had to splash
upward on their hands and knees.
But within a few feet conditions
worsened.
The slimy tunnel got steeper and eventually
Amy had to place her hands on Ayashe’s pert backside and push the girl
ahead while at the same time trying to hold her
position. Then the tunnel narrowed,
forcing Ayashe and then Amy to go down on her belly, each girl’s head
only an inch or so above the water flowing down the
tunnel. Scrabbling along by pushing
against the sides, and shoving their rifles in front of them, it was an
exhausting ordeal, requiring all of their
strength. In places Amy once
again had to resort to pushing Ayashe ahead of her and then had to grip the
girl’s legs and pull herself along afterwards.
The wet and grueling climb seemed to last
forever, and the farther they went the darker it got until they were moving
in complete blackness, feeling their way ahead of
them. Amy realized that night
had probably fallen while they were in the tunnel, making it difficult to
tell if they were anywhere near the end, but there was no choice but to go
on.
By now both women were shivering with the
cold. What had merely been
uncomfortable to begin with was now dangerous, threatening to chill them
to the point where they would be too cold to
function. Amy realized that their
desperate attempt to escape might end in a horrible death from
exposure. Desperately she forced
herself forward, at the same time realizing that her strength was being drained
from her body. It was at that
point that Ayashe gave a sudden cry of sheer terror.
Shards of steel tore at the rock that shielded
them. Their little diversion
had worked well, bring the full fury of the Japanese down upon
them. Melissa realized that their
position was hopeless. They
couldn’t even peer over the edge without attracting the fire of a dozen
or more Japanese soldiers. Even
worse, it was apparent that Katie’s sortie had
failed. They had heard nothing
from her which seemed to indicate that she had been even less than
successful. There was no evidence
that she was even alive and it was quite apparent that she and Lisha might
soon be corpses as well.
“We’ve got to get out of here,”
Melissa said. Lisha
nodded. She was a woman of few
words, a factor compounded by her difficulties with English, but she understood
what Melissa had said.
Melissa gathered up her rifle and prepared
to climb down in a similar direction to the route Katie had
taken. It was just possible that
the blonde beauty was hiding somewhere below, having realized that there
were too many Japanese to take on.
There were certainly a lot more than Melissa had imagined there might
be in such a remote area of the world.
As she prepared to move Lisha tapped her
shoulder. Melissa turned and
saw that the ebony skilled girl was holding out her ammunition
pouch.
“You take,” Lisha
said. “You better with this
thing.” The girl touched
Melissa’s rifle.
Melissa did not
argue. She only had about ten
rounds left and knew that Lisha was
right. The Ullabomba maiden did
not like firearms and had proven to be only a mediocre
shot. Melissa would make much
better use of the extra rounds than she would.
Still, she felt a bit of a pang
when Lisha set down her rifle. It
was a splendid weapon, capable of easily hitting a target at several hundred
yards. The problem was Lisha
could barely hit the broadside of an elephant at fifty
yards.
The African girl hefted her
spear. “We go now,”
she said, smiling slightly.
Melissa
nodded. Lisha with a rifle was
of questionable value. Lisha
with a spear was astonishing. It
was an impressive weapon, consisting of a six-foot hardwood shaft tipped
with a two-foot wide-bladed spear.
The tempered steel blade was as big across as her palm where it was
joined to the shaft and tapered to a needle
point. Both sides of the spearpoint
were sharpened, making it resemble a two foot sword on top of a
pole. The end of the spear shaft
had a large wooden knob about the size of a woman’s
fist. Melissa had witnessed Lisha
practicing with the weapon and had been more than
impressed. At close quarters
she would not have wanted to be the one to go up against
her.
The worked their way down the jungle shrouded
slope, keeping an alert eye for Japanese
soldiers. It seemed very unlikely
that the Japanese would not have tried to encircle them. Melissa was almost
certain that Katie had blundered into a Japanese ambush and did not want
to share the same fate.
In this situation Melissa let Lisha take the
lead. The ebony-skinned beauty
had an uncanny ability to move through the jungle vegetation without making
a sound, but at the same time seemingly aware of everything around
her. If there was anyone waiting
in ambush it was unlikely that they would take her by
surprise.
They were halfway down the rocky, thickly
forested slope when Lisha froze.
Melissa froze also, and then moved slowly forward as Lisha motioned
that she should do so. They crouched
low behind a screen of wide-leafed ferns and watched as several Japanese
soldiers came into view. They
were working their way upslope, moving as quietly as they could, but no doubt
making considerable noise by Lisha’s standards.
They remained hidden as the men passed and
then continued to work their way toward the bottom of the forested
slope. They went even more carefully
now, well aware of the fact that there were Japanese behind as well as in
front of them.
A few hundred feet father on Lisha froze
again. This time there was but
a single Japanese soldier, however, he was standing between two massive boulders,
blocking the path of their descent.
Melissa knelt beside Lisha and assessed their chances of working their
way around the guard. It would
not be that easy or convenient, requiring that they backtrack and then detour
around the massive blocks of stone.
It would probably take them at least an hour, but there seemed to
be no other choice.
At least, that was what Melissa
thought. Lisha, however, had
a different opinion, one that she acted upon before Melissa could stop
her. Rising from her hiding place
she drew back her arm and hurled her
spear. There was an ugly double
“thunk.” The first
as the blade of the spear pieced the chest of the unsuspecting Japanese soldier
and the second as the point emerged from his back and sank deep into the
trunk of a tree, pinning him like some insect specimen in a entomologist’s
collection.
Melissa stared in horror, but Lisha seemed
quite unconcerned. Stepping out
from behind the screen of vegetation that had shielded her, she wrenched
the spear from the dead soldier’s chest and let him
fall. After wiping the blood
and gore from the blade on the soldiers uniform the tall African maiden turned
to Melissa. “We go now,”
she said simply.
Melissa felt a little
ill. She resolved to make sure
that she always stayed on Lisha’s good
side. Nevertheless, she had to
admit that the ebon-skinned beauty had neatly solved their
problem. They were now moving
toward the middle falls. This
was the area from which the Japanese had launched their attack and Melissa
had no doubt that it would be crawling with Japanese
soldiers. However, it was also
the area that Katie had sought to
outflank. If they were going
to try and find what had become of her they had little choice but to explore
it.
Melissa couldn’t help feeling that she
and Lisha were being completely
foolhardy. They should logically
be trying to escape the Japanese, not infiltrate their lines, but with Lisha
in the lead, she felt a bit more confident in their
success. If anyone could find
a way through and not get caught it was the Ullabomban
maiden.
It was now late afternoon and the forest was
beginning to darken, making their mission less
dangerous. However, they now
had to pass close to Japanese sentries that Lisha could not take out as they
were within sight of one another.
They were forced to go down on their bellies and snake their way toward
the camp.
“This is crazy,” Melissa
thought. “We’re bound
to be seen.” Lisha, however,
was undeterred, sliding forward silently until they were within clear sight
of the lower falls and the Japanese camp.
They saw that their own camp was still
there. The Japanese had merely
appropriated the tents. Most
of the porters were there as well, those that had not been
killed. A number of corpses floated
in the pool and several of the porters were in the process of fishing them
out. Although disturbed by the
fact that several of the innocent villagers had been murdered, Melissa was
relived to see that there was no sign of
Wallace. She had grown to like
the big, bluff, Aussie and hoped that by some miracle he might have
escaped.
And then she saw something that completely
chilled her. Katie was being
marched toward the tents by a villainous looking thug that did not appear
to be Japanese. The once proud
blonde appeared completely beaten.
She was naked, her hands tied behind her back and a crude bamboo gag
was jammed into her mouth, forcing her jaws
apart. She stumbled as she walked
and it was clear from the blood on her thighs and the bruises and bite marks
on her magnificent breasts that she had been
raped.
Melissa felt a surge of anger that was so
intense that she almost fired her rifle into the unsuspecting
Japanese. Melissa couldn’t
see Lisha’s face, but she felt the black girl’s body stiffen and
knew that she was experiencing the same
emotions. Helpless do save their
companion, they watched her marched down to the water where the scar-faced
escort untied her gag and cut the ropes binding her
wrists.
Katie was watched by several Japanese soldiers
as well as the man who had escorted her.
There was no chance for her to escape and in any case, she appeared
to be in no condition to even consider such an
action. The scar-faced man said
something to her and pushed her toward the
water. It was apparent that she
was to clean herself up and that was further affirmed when she was actually
tossed a bar of soap while the scar-faced man waited on the edge of the pond
with a towel.
It seemed rather strange behaviour to
Melissa. First they tie Katie
up and rape her and then they help her
wash? It didn’t seem to
make any sense.
Katie finally finished her bath and the scar-faced
man motioned her to return. Then
under heavy guard she was marched off toward the
tents. It was apparent from her
movements that she was close to breaking.
She moved with her head up, but her halting stride indicated that
she could walk only with difficult.
“Bastards,” thought
Melissa. “They’ll pay
for that.”
There was only one consolation in the horrific
scene and that was that Katie was at least alive, but Melissa knew that they
had to rescue her as quickly as possible.
She had no doubt that having raped her once there would be little
to stop the Japanese from raping her
again.
Lisha seemed to think so
too. Without a word being said
the two tall women shifted their position, taking advantage of the darkening
woods to move toward the part of the camp where Katie was being
taken. It was a dangerous
gamble. There were Japanese soldiers
on all sides. All it would take
was a single mistake and they would be
discovered.
As it turned out, it was not even a
mistake. Melissa and Lisha had
snaked their way to the outskirts of the
camp. They saw that in the centre
of the tents was a crude jail constructed out of lengths of bamboo roped
together. They now knew where
Katie had been taken. Using hand
signals Lisha and Melissa developed a simple
plan. They would wait until it
was completely dark and the Japanese had settled down to sleep, and then
they would make their move.
It might have worked had not a Japanese soldier
decided that the patch of vegetation in which they had taken shelter decided
that it was the perfect place to relieve
himself. He paid for that simple
act with his life, but not before he sounded the alarm.
He unbuttoned his trousers just two feet from
where Lisha was lying. The
dark-skinned warrior did not wait for him to complete his call of
nature. She stabbed upward with
her spear, driving the two foot blade completely through
him. Unfortunately, in the dark,
her timing was just slightly off.
The man screamed in agony as he died, attracting the attention of
every man in the camp.
Lisha leapt to her feet, tearing the spear
from the soldier’s body and setting herself to face the other soldiers
rushing toward the disturbance. A
wild melee ensued. Lisha was
like a lioness, using her spear with deadly
effect. In the semi-darkness
it was not immediately apparent to the attacking soldiers what they were
up against and they held their fire, afraid of hitting their own
comrades.
Neither Lisha nor Melissa had such limits,
but they were completely surrounded.
Lisha went first, struck down from behind by a rifle
butt. Melissa, using her own
rifle and her martial arts techniques went next as she went to the aid of
her companion. One of the soldiers
slammed the stock of his rifle into her midriff, knocking the breath from
her body. Then a second blow
struck her head. Just before
she blacked out Melissa had a fleeting vision of what was about to happen
to her and that vision was far from pretty, then her senses faded and she
knew no more.
With just his eyes and the top of his head
above the water, Wallace edged closer to the edge of the
pool. Several times he had approached
the shore only to have to move back when Japanese soldiers had moved to edge
either to refill their water bottles or just splash water on themselves to
cool off. Now he was making one
more attempt.
“Bloody hell,” he
thought. One more man was
….
“Bloody
Hell!” Wallace almost
shouted the words aloud.
A battered Katie Reddel was being pushed toward
the pond. She had been stripped
naked and bound, a crude gag jammed between her
teeth. Her thighs were
smeared with blood and it took very little imagination to guess what had
caused that. Large purple bruises
stood out on her heavy breasts, and even from where he was he could make
out the teeth marks on either side of her erect nipples.
Wallace gritted his teeth in
rage. He had fantasized about
seeing the beautiful blonde in the altogether, but not like
this. Suddenly he was no longer
cold as he seethed with rage, but he was helpless to do more than watch as
her scar-faced escort cut her bonds and shoved her into the
pond.
It was all he could do not to swim toward
her with some absurd idea of grabbing her and hauling her to safety, but
common sense and self-preservation
prevailed. Instead he moved father
away from her, shielding himself from discovery while the wretched women
cleaned herself.
She was allowed only fifteen minutes before
being ordered out of the water, and then under escort she was led away.
Wallace remained where he
was. There were still several
Japanese soldiers near the edge of the
pool. Desperate to get out of
the water, Wallace vowed never to go swimming
again. He now had more than just
himself to think about. Somehow
he had to find a way to get Katie out of the clutches of the
Japanese. Now seething with
impatience he was forced to wait while the cold once again took
over.
“Crikey,” he mused, “me nuts
are going to be the size of raisins if I don’t get out of
here.”
Suddenly there was a commotion from the
camp. Wallace had no idea what
it was all about; all he knew was that the Japanese soldiers loitering near
the edge suddenly grabbed their weapons and ran toward the
disturbance. Wallace wasted no
more time. He was so cold he
could hardly move, but he found the energy to wade to the shore and the place
where he had left his clothing. To
his acute surprise it was still there, even the boots although his Bowie
knife and revolver along with his ammunition belt were
gone. Apparently his clothing
was too big to fit any of the Japanese.
Whatever the reason he was glad that it was there and he snatched
it up like a starving man discovering a hidden cache of
food.
He didn’t bother to
dress. He just took his clothes
and moved off into the forest. It
was one step at a time. First
get away from the Japanese; then dress; and finally figure out what to do
about the Japanese and Katie.
All did not go quite according to
plan. He had hardly gone a dozen
yards into the forest before he ran straight into a Japanese
soldier. Fortunately, the Japanese
was more surprised than he was.
Wallace had almost been expecting such an encounter; the soldier was
not. Wallace was not trained
in combat, but he had boxed in his early
twenties. He had given it up
as a bad job when he had made enough cash to buy his first
plane. However, the skills he
had developed in the ring were still
there. One huge fist crashed
out, shattering the soldier’s nose, breaking off a couple of teeth,
and lifting him off his feet.
Wallace stopped just long enough to finally
get dressed, and expropriate the unconscious soldier’s rifle and bayonet
along with his ammunition pouches.
He also took his pack, hoping that there might be some field-rations
or the Japanese equivalent, and then moving as quickly as he dared he slipped
into the forest.
He kept on moving until he was out of earshot
of the Japanese camp. He was
exhausted after his long ordeal in the pool and needed a place where he could
count on not being disturbed.
Stumbling about in the forest
at night was not easy, but he finally came to a spot he considered
safe. It was the intertwining
roots of a massive forest giant. It
provided some shelter, and he hoped, a place where
he might be able to get some sleep.
He started to slip between the roots and then felt a sharp pain in
his back. He stiffened
and then felt another prick and then
another. He went very
still. He had never experienced
such a sensation before, but he knew instinctively what it
was. Someone – actually
several someones - was gently prodding his back with the tip of a
spear. He suddenly realized that
his grandiose plans of rescuing Katie from the Japanese were probably going
to have to wait. Slowly he raised
his hands over his head and waited for the pleasure of his
captors.
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