“Withers,” Whittaker said, making up his mind. “If I’m not back in twenty-four hours, go to Mindanao.”
“What about Mount Vesuvius?” Withers asked.
“Fuck it, let someone else do it. Go to Mindanao.”
“You’re counseling this man to desert?” the captain said.
“Fuck you, Captain,” Whittaker said. “Mind your own business.” He took the Colt.45 revolver from his belt and extended it, butt first, to Withers.
“You better keep it, Lieutenant,” George Withers said. “You never know.”
Whittaker put it back in his belt.
“I hope to come back,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” Withers said. He put out his hand.
Whittaker had another thought. He had the only watch. He took it off and handed it to Withers. It was the Hamilton he had received in Cambridge from Chesty Whittaker on his graduation.
“I hope I can give this back to you sometime,’ “Withers said, and then he surprised Whittaker by tossing him a very snappy paradeground salute.
“Good luck, Lieutenant,” he said.
The captain was surprised to see tears in the eyes of the Filipinos when they shook Whittaker’s hand. They saluted as they drove away.
Between Abucay and Mariveles, what the captain had heard kept gnawing at him.
“You don’t really think your sergeant is going to make it to Mindanao, do you?”
“They’re going to give it a good try,” Whittaker said.
“They’d need a boat,” the captain said. “Where would they get a boat?” And then, when it became obvious Whittaker wasn’t going to reply, he went on: “You sonofabitch, you’ve got a boat, don’t you?”
Whittaker looked at him but said nothing.
4 4Where?”
“So you can go requisition it?” Jim Whittaker asked. “I told those men if they would stick with me to the end, I’d do what I could to get them out of here.”
“I don’t want to surrender,” the captain said. “The Japanese have the Bushido notion that soldiers are supposed to die, not surrender. Surrender is disgraceful; those who surrender are treated accordingly.”
“You’re going to be ordered to surrender,” Whittaker said. “How are you goina to reconcile disobeying an order like that with your officer’s code of honor?”
“Not easily,” the captain said, “but I am not going to surrender.”
“I realize how absurd this sounds,” Whittaker said, “but if I tell you where the boat is, will you give me your word of honor you won’t try to stop them?”
————-TRIM LAST MERGES 3a3
“What I was thinking of doing was going back up there and telling them you told me to take over,” the captain said. “My colonel will let me go, if I give him half an excuse.”
“If you knew where the boat was, Withers would believe you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t ‘ ” Whittaker said, “Are you going to tell me?” the captain said.
“Let me think about it 5” Whittaker said.
There were half a dozen pleasure cruisers tied up at Mariveles. Two of them were still capable of making the run between Mariveles and the island fortress of Corregidor.
As he waited to board a thirty-two-foot Chriscraft whose interior had been stripped to the hull ribs by a fire, Whittaker turned to the captain.
“I want those guys to try for Mindanao,” he said. “Withers believes that Corregidor can hold out until help comes. I don’t think help’s coming. Corregidor’s going to fall, and everybody on it is going to be captured. If I tell you where the boat is, will you try for Mindanao?”
The captain nodded. Whittaker asked the captain for his name, and then wrote a note to Withers. The captain read it. It said that he was going to help them get to Mindanao.
“It doesn’t say where the boat is,” the captain said.
“I don’t want you to suffer a relapse of officer’s honor’ 5′ Whittaker said. “When it’s time to go, Sergeant Withers will show you where the boat is.”
The captain met his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said. “Good luck on the Rock.”
“If you see a large flash and hear a large bang, that’ll be me Whittaker said. “I think I made the mistake of letting the brass know that I’m very good at blowing ammo dumps.”