Dragon of the Mangrooves (15 page)

Resisting nausea, Kasuga asked, “What’s all this about?”

“I don’t know. But this is Japanese. It’s too white for Burmese,” answered Tomita in a low voice.

Kasuga regained his composure a little, and showed Tomita the mess kit. “I picked it up over there, Sarge.”

Tomita opened the lid. Kasuga also looked but could find nothing but a few grains of rice. Tomita closed the lid and tied up the mess kit to his belt. Then he put his palms together in prayer toward the leg and started a thorough inspection of it without a wince. When he lifted up the thigh, a calf half-buried in the mud came out. It wore a leather boot—clearly not a private’s gear. Kasuga watched with his lips closed firmly.

Tomita asked, “Is this mess kit all, Kasu? Did you find any other belongings?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Likely a part of the company commander’s remains.”

“I think so. The mess kit and the boot—both are for an officers’ use,” Kasuga agreed.

But he still had some doubts about the state of the leg. From the first glance, his eyes had been focused on many deep incisions, each about an inch long. He thought they were postmortem wounds, since all the gashes had lost color evenly.

Who had made those, and for what purpose? Why did this severed left leg lie alone here?

Tomita raised his head and asked, “Where are the other parts?”

“I don’t know. How would I know?”

Tomita said with confidence, “No way only this left leg could be here! The rest should be somewhere near. Let’s find it quick!”

Kasuga and Tomita found a flat place, slightly higher than the others, behind the big tree. Accumulated mud formed a natural trapezoidal stage that looked like an embankment. They saw few vertical roots on the stage, quite a difference from the rest of the mire. Kasuga supposed that place might not submerge, even at high tide.

The two climbed on the embankment to get a better view, and they found it about thirty square meters. It was covered sporadically with miscellaneous weeds.

“Oh, it’s terrible,” Tomita blurted out a hoarse voice.

When Kasuga heard it, his eyes had caught a reddish-brown blotch at his feet.

There spread a puddle of half-clotted blood like a bubbling jelly. Its breadth, extending to at least four square meters, eloquently told the story of its possessor.

The mud around it had been churned up entirely, which allowed anyone to figure out that something had dismembered the kill there. The two gazed silently at the puddle of blood for a while.

The sun had now set completely, leaving only a faint violet light in the western sky. Nevertheless, it was still stiflingly muggy in the humid mangrove. In the foul air, Kasuga’s nose caught an odor. The area reeked of something rotten—the smell of something like meat and mud commingled. It didn’t come from the amputated leg, or from the half-coagulated blood. He knew he had smelled it before a number of times. It reminded him of the story of Myinde told by the rudgi. The golden eye with a vertical slit flashed in his mind.

He felt his whole body become gooseflesh. “Sarge.”

“Yeah?”

“I think the rest of his body has been already taken away somewhere. It’s a waste of time to search. No! It will be a waste of our lives unless we stop moving around right now,” Kasuga stated.

“What?”

“I don’t know when the accident happened,” Kasuga continued, “but I’m certain something ferocious attacked First Lieutenant Kishimoto.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Tomita, his face enclosed with the darkness.

“I think a crocodile got him.”

He had seen a crocodile in the creek at the foot of Hill 353 and smelled the strange odor, the same one he had first caught near Myinde. And if things went on as he was told in Myinde, drifting around them now would be the distinctive odor of a man-eating crocodile. Kasuga explained the story to Tomita quickly.

Tomita quietly listened for a while, but abruptly raised his hand to cut Kasuga off. “All right, Kasu. Maybe what you are saying is true. They say tigers caught and devoured some guys in the Arakan Mountains. This is a tropical area, and it’s no wonder surprise if such a terrible animal lives here.”

“I’ll bet it does.”

“But think! What will happen if we report this? This is a case of usual KIA. He was killed in action! You see?”

“Killed in action?”

“Yeah! Having been eaten by a croc merely means an accidental death, doesn’t it? His family can’t get a sufficient pension.”

“But the left leg alone isn’t enough to prove KIA…”

“Listen! We found a corpse seeming like First Lieutenant Kishimoto. The remains had been badly damaged, so we completed his burial on the spot. First Lieutenant Kishimoto appeared to have suffered severe attacks from a hostile gunboat during his reconnaissance duty around Myinkhon Creek and died a glorious death in the battlefield. I’m going to report it so, with his mess kit and boot as pieces of evidence. It’s fine. Never mind! As long as we keep our mouths shut, no one will get in trouble,” Tomita said decisively.

So strongly persuaded, Kasuga had no option but to agree. He nodded meekly.

But the spark of fear ignited deep inside his mind wasn’t as easily extinguishable.

Unbelievably, all of Tomita’s concern was limited to treatment for the officer’s bereaved family. Tomita seemed to have no fear of the crocodile since he had no clear image of it. But Kasuga’s own image was quite different.

Kasuga feared he might well end up the same way as Kishimoto if he stayed too long in such a place. He said, “I got it, Sarge. Now that all has been settled, let’s bury him right away.” Kasuga went back to the big tree and lifted up the leg.

He began removing the boot without the slightest hesitation. A putrid smell of crumbled flesh decomposing inside the leather seared his nose, but he knew it was no time to let that stop him. He didn’t even remember he had been feeling nauseous until then.

Looking back, he called Tomita, saying, “I don’t have my shovel here. Lend me your dah. I’ll dig a hole with it by myself.”

Tomita looked surprised at the initiative Kasuga displayed out of the blue, but soon presented him with the billhook. Kasuga mowed a few vertical roots with Tomita’s dah and madly dug the mud. The flesh of the leg had many exposed sores. He managed to lay the leg in the hole in the mud. Tomita then gave him a hand, helping to cover it with mud and soil.

When the two completed the burial and prayed to Kishimoto’s spirit together, deep darkness had settled around them.

No one anticipated they would find Kishimoto so early, so they couldn’t meet Kayama and Tada until ten o’clock, the first appointed communication time.

Nevertheless, the two—having nothing to do anymore—silently began retracing their way through the pitch-dark mangrove to the meeting place.

All of a sudden, Kasuga heard strange sounds in the darkness—intermittent, sharp sounds like the snapping of dry twigs. He concentrated all his attention on the sounds, which sounded like something were crunching a bone. Then he heard another sound, like gurgling. He thought it might be the gulping of a huge animal devouring a chunk of meat. At least, that’s how it sounded to his frightened ears. Unable to stand it anymore, he called Tomita, who was walking ahead of him. “Can you hear that sound, Sarge?”

“What sound?”

“Like something crunching a bone.”

“A bone? It can’t be. Maybe it’s just a twig being broken.” Tomita also seemed to have noticed it, but his tone delivered neither fear nor urgency.

“A crocodile is swallowing the corpse of the lieutenant somewhere near here,” Kasuga said.

“You obsessed idiot! It’s just a monkey making its way through the woods.”

“What on earth is that gurgle then? Does a monkey make such a noise?”

“I don’t know! Stop it! Are you trying to scare me? If the damned croc comes at you, give it a grenade. That’s all.”

Kasuga wanted to get out of there at once. He truly thought he must if he wanted to live. No British-Indian forces existed in his mind then. Neither the malaria nor the shrapnel wound existed. Only the golden eyes he had witnessed lingered in his mind—again and again.

A man-eating crocodile laid somewhere in the darkness. Every other terror faded out in the face of this reality.

There was no moon or stars in the sky on this deep, dark night. Second Lieutenant Yoshihisa Sumi called out to Pondgi in the dense woods.

“Hey, where are you?” Sumi knew loud voices must be avoided there, unlike the remote hilly area.

“Master Sumi, I’m here,” Pondgi replied. “I found Master Yoshitake.”

Sumi slowly took a breath upon hearing the familiar voice coming from the darkness.

Each member of the Sumi rescue party was supposed to gather in the woods after he had broken through Payadgi-Ramree Road. But it wasn’t easy for them to adjust to the complete darkness. It took more time to identify each other than he thought it would under the shadow of foliage. When they gathered, Sumi noticed Lance Corporal Yoshitake was missing. Worried, he had just dispatched Pondgi in search of Yoshitake. Pondgi had not only his good eyesight, but he could also see at night to some extent.

Shortly Pondgi emerged, pushing his way through the leaves. Sumi saw Yoshitake tailing and addressed him frankly. “Yoshitake, where on earth were you?”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I got lost for a while,” Yoshitake replied.

“You said Engli were all night-blind,” Sumi laughed. “Now you’re worse.”

The soldiers snickered; Yoshitake himself also smiled, embarrassed.

The rescue party cut through the dense woods in the darkness. Sumi thought over how the plan was progressing. It was amazing that they could have crossed Payadgi-Ramree Road within a whole day and night since they had departed Taungup. He was very satisfied that they had infiltrated deep into the island, although they had paid a high price in Murakami’s life.

A hilly terrain lay between Ramree Town and the east coast, including Hill 509, where Ramree Garrison had taken up positions until February 13. In order to head for Yanthitgyi, Sumi must decide either to go over the hills or to go along the foot of the hills.

Of course, the former was the short course. But he wanted to avoid advancing into the coastal area on the very route the enemy might have taken. It was dangerous. His party might be blocked by minefields, abatis, or barbed wires installed by friends. He needed to determine the likelihood of such an ironical result since he didn’t know where the Japanese defense installations were. Now that they had called it an all-round, that position in Hill 509 should have been a fair stronghold. There was every likelihood that an enemy occupying there was utilizing it as its own. It would be a fair adventure to cut across under its nose.

Sumi finally decided to take the latter course cutting through the plain eastward between Ramree Town and the hills, which should lead them to the sea. They would be able to get to Yanthitgyi, provided that an excursion northward along the coast was added. Almost all the roads were level. They would avoid the pain of a mountain trek but would find few places to hide themselves as a result. Sumi expected that any action in broad daylight would involve considerable danger.

Besides, he found the map given by the infantry regiment quite untrustworthy. It had many mistakes, which annoyed him. It wasn’t a legitimate survey map issued by the Land Survey Department of Army General Staff Headquarters, but a rough copy of a map looted from the British. The details were inaccurate. A broad marsh might wait for them in the coast. Sumi was concerned that he might be forced to cover a boundless lowland with the aid of a map like that.

He soon heard a few soldiers in the rear whisper something to each other.

When he looked back, Sergeant Shimizu had already scrambled toward him.

“Somebody is inside the growth over there, Lieutenant,” Shimizu said under his breath as he pointed to the right.

Sumi saw a deep black shrubbery stretching on the ground where the tall trees got sparse. “Foes?”

“I don’t know yet. But I saw the growth move and heard some birds flying off from the growth. Somebody is hiding in there for sure,” answered Shimizu.

Sumi held his breath. The shrubbery in question was twenty to thirty meters away. He asked Shimizu, keeping his eyes fixed on it, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t take it as a foe. It’s too stealthy. It might be a local farmer.”

It wasn’t normal behavior to hide in the dark shrubbery like an animal. Sumi thought it might be a friend. Timidity made sense, if he was a remnant soldier coming under fire. Having made up his mind to take a chance, he drew his Nambu fourteen. Shimizu was also holding his handgun beside him.

“Load it, Sarge. Let’s aim together.”

“OK!”

Faint clicks of cocking traveled through the darkness.

Tension ran high. A sharp metallic sound came from the right shrubbery—the loading sound of a rifle. Sumi could tell it was the reaction of a combatant. He boldly questioned, in a loud voice, “Are you there, Japanese soldiers?”

A deep silence dominated the woods. Sumi crawled on the ground and approached the shrubbery. Behind him, Pondgi and Yoshitake aimed at the shrubbery in a prone position. Shimizu seemed to have already outflanked and held the left side.