Road to Purgatory Read online

  ROAD TO

  PURGATORY

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2004 Max Allan Collins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 0997832304

  ISBN 13: 9780997832303

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253,

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Also by Max Allan Collins from Brash Books

  The Perdition Saga

  Road to Perdition

  Road to Paradise

  Black Hats

  Red Sky in Morning

  FOR DANIEL OSTROFF—

  who launched the O’Sullivans

  on the Hollywood road

  WE WHO WALK THE DEMON’S PATH ARE NO LONGER ORDINARY MEN.

  Kazuo Koike

  WE’RE THE BATTLING BASTARDS OF BATAAN; NO MOMMA, NO POPPA, NO UNCLE SAM.

  War correspondent Frank Hewlett

  ONE IS LEFT WITH THE HORRIBLE FEELING THAT WAR SETTLES NOTHING; THAT TO WIN A WAR IS AS DISASTROUS AS TO LOSE ONE.

  Agatha Christie

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A TIP OF THE FEDORA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Bataan, the Philippines

  March 1942

  Even before the banzai attack, the young corporal Captain Arthur Wermuth had taken under his wing, some months ago, was already something of a legend on the peninsula.

  Michael Satariano of DeKalb, Illinois, had seemed so slight, such a child at twenty, that Wermuth had given in to protective feelings about his charge, which were not wise in war. The boy was about five ten and slender, his tanned skin due not to an Italian heritage but the tropical sun that they all endured; his hair and eyes were dark brown, his face blessed with such an angelic innocence that the Filipino Scouts—who were so impressed with the lad’s exploits—had taken to calling him un Demonio Angelico.

  Any affection the captain nurtured for the soft-spoken, taciturn lad—any fatherly concern he might harbor—was offset by the deadpan ferocity Satariano brought to combat. The boy’s battle-field commission reflected his bravery during the withdrawal from Luzon to Bataan; Satariano—his behavior emblematic of General MacArthur’s “stand and fight, fall back and dynamite” strategy—had waited until the last moment to dynamite a key bridge.

  Cut off from the demolition experts of the engineers, Wermuth had dispatched the young man to do his best, and witnessed from a safe distance images he would never forget: the little yellow men in brown uniforms halfway across the rickety, rotting suspension bridge, and the kid firing into the pile of leafy-branch-camouflaged wooden boxes (red-stenciled: DYNAMITE—DUPONT), followed by a thundering plume of orange and white and gray, wires snapping, planks flying like knocked-out teeth, enemy soldiers tumbling, those still alive screaming, arms wind milling, as they fell the fifty feet into a patiently waiting riverbed.

  And the boy turning to trot back and rejoin the Scouts with an expression as coldly bland as a chilled glass of milk.

  Wermuth—a heavyset dark-haired man of thirty-three whose nondescript features and tiny twitchy mustache masked a grizzled combat veteran, his 1918-vintage tin helmet worn rakishly to one side—led the 57th Filipino Scouts, also known as the Snipers. The boy from Illinois was the only other white in the 57th, which was not unusual on Bataan, where the American forces numbered around five thousand to thirty-some thousand Filipinos, about half of which were the well-trained Scouts, the rest rather hopeless untrained native recruits.

  A two-man sprinkling of khaki amid the coarse blue fatigues of the Filipinos, Wermuth and his young sidekick supervised the Snipers, their usual mission reflected by their name, Satariano the keenest shot of them all, captain included. Of late their duty had shifted, as General Wainwright had sent them out on patrol in the no-man’s land extending across the breadth of Bataan, scouting for signs of enemy build-up or imminent attack.

  Twenty-five miles long, twenty miles across, the peninsula of Bataan jutted into Manila Bay like a mini-Florida, its tip pointing to the nearby looming island fortress of Corregidor, MacArthur’s HQ. Like twin spinal cords, two mountain ranges thick with jungle ran the peninsula’s length—between them lay a narrow valley crisscrossed by streams, ravines, and gullies…on either side, narrow coastal plains.

  To Captain Wermuth, Bataan seemed a primitive sort of paradise in which to be fighting a modern war. The peninsula had its share of vividly glorious vistas—terraced rice fields, shimmering blue rivers, purple-peaked mountains—with civilization represented by the occasional village of thatched-roof nipa huts on stilts, dogs sharing the interior, pigs snoozing below. Boys chased chickens around and around just within the stone-wall periphery of such villages, a thigh-high barricade that wouldn’t keep a monkey out, much less the Japanese.

  The jungles through which Wermuth, his sidekick Satariano, and their Scouts patrolled were snarls of palms, ferns, snake-like vines, and brush, a steamy hot hell. But just when the rugged terrain was at its most unforgiving—the temperature and exhaustion and mosquitoes and hunger combining to test the limits of endurance—a cool stream could rush down out of the mountains, to make it up to you.

  Such had been the case that muggy afternoon, and the captain instructed his dozen Scouts to catch some chow and some rest. They would take off their tin helmets and splash the refreshing stuff on their faces and arms and hands and drink as greedily as a desert wayfarer who discovered a mirage really was an oasis. Even as they ate, however, many of the Scouts at least half-reclined, their eyes on the trees…

  …not enjoying the glimmering green tropical beauty, but rather keeping an eye out for the glint of a rifle barrel amid high branches. As snipers themselves, they had a practical paranoia.

  These Filipinos had been in their nation’s army for years, virtually signing up for life. Well-equipped with M-1 rifles, gas masks, web gear, bed rolls, and fine leather shoes, they could all muster at least a reasonable English dialect. Their worst sin, Wermuth knew, was a lack of initiative—in their culture, a guy couldn’t get in trouble for something he didn’t do. But with guidance, they could deliver merry hell on the enemy.

  The Scouts were the best soldiers on the peninsula, American and Japanese included.

  “Fellas,” the captain said, as his men lolled back luxuriously, savoring their three-eighths ration of rice beside the babbling brook, “we should be within spitting distance of the perimeter defense line.”

  With a nod toward the trees, Satariano said, “Light machine gun position up that way.”

  “The corporal and me’ll just drop by and say hello,” the captain said. He pointed. “Take your latrine off thataway…Heading out, we’ll try ’n’ remember not to walk there.”

  This was an old joke among these warriors
; nonetheless, the Scouts all laughed at the thought of stepping in their own mess. They were easily amused.

  Wermuth and his corporal stayed together, almost side by side, as they moved through the jungle, Satariano hacking with a Filipino bolo; despite the blade, big branches and vines slapped the faces of the men for their rude intrusion. Staying close was a necessity in such thick underbrush, visibility often less than a yard. The occasional scurry of animals was probably small monkeys and lizards, who moved as if word had spread that the rations-shy GIs were eating them; the jungles were said to be home to wild pigs, pheasant and quail, too, but you couldn’t prove that by Wermuth or just about any soldier on the peninsula. They did find the occasional water buffalo in a mud hole, though the flavor was about the same whether you ate the beast or the mud.

  Satariano wore a shoulder-slung Thompson submachine gun with a black asbestos protective glove on his left hand; the weapon was like something out of a Cagney picture, the spare pair of round ammo drums like mini-canteens on his webbing belt. The kid had a sidearm as well, a .45 army Colt that had been his father’s in the last war. Neither soldier carried grenades, because such a high percentage were duds, and depending on them was more dangerous than not having them. Wermuth, like his Scouts, carried an M-1, and his sidearm was also a .45 Colt, dating to the “Great” War.

  Wermuth wondered what it could be in the boy’s background to give him such a capacity for killing. Small-town kid Satariano had been one of the first group of recruits to arrive in the Philippines, back in April of ’41, and even trained here. He’d been a standout on the target range—obviously, somebody in the boy’s past had taught him to shoot; maybe he’d spent time on a farm.

  Not long ago, the life of a GI in the Philippines had been damn near idyllic, training till noon with afternoons free (including an hour for siestas), and plenty of nightlife. American bucks went a long way—food was cheap, a bottle of gin thirty cents! The people were friendly, and this included the females. Then after Pearl Harbor the soldier’s life of wine, women, and song ran headlong into the reality of what they’d been training for…

  That the Filipino Scouts could adjust to war came as no surprise, considering the violent history of the Philippines; it was harder on the American boys…though Satariano seemed an exception. Wermuth was well aware that the toughest thing about combat was learning to control your emotions. Fear and panic were bigger hazards than anything the enemy could throw at you.

  And emotional control included getting over the psychological hurdle of learning to take lives in combat; killing another human being required an adjustment that most people could never make in the civilian world, and thankfully never had to.

  How this kid, fresh out of high school, had developed that ability…from whence the boy had summoned it…Wermuth had no idea. The boy did not seem to be a psychopath; he had no meanness in him—he was, if anything, a sweet, quiet, generous kid, albeit one to keep to himself.

  The only exception to that solitary streak was the corporal’s devotion to his captain. Strange that this kid who was such a loner behind the lines made the perfect sidekick at the front. But Satariano seemed to crave someone he could look up to. Someone he could please. And Wermuth fit that bill.

  In less than ten minutes, Wermuth and Satariano had reached a small semblance of a clearing; whether the brush had been cut away or trampled into submission or cleared by mortar fire, Wermuth couldn’t venture a guess. Whatever the case, anyone who stepped out of the jungle into the relief of this open air would make an excellent target.

  As if to confirm the captain’s opinion, a foxhole had been dug at the edge of the clearing between the flange-like roots of a banyan, home to a trio of Scouts manning a light machine gun. Wermuth knew the three men well—they were under his command—and he was smiling as he approached the position, a greeting on his lips…

  …which froze into a grotesque grin as he and Satariano looked down into the foxhole, the three Scouts flung to its earthen floor, their bodies battered and ruptured from the butts of rifles, blue fatigues blood-soaked. Their heads were off and had rolled here and there, billiard balls unsuccessfully seeking a pocket.

  Hardened combat veteran that he was, Wermuth was nonetheless horror-struck; his mind shouted, Goddamn samurai swords! But the words did not emerge.

  Across from him, at the foxhole’s other edge, Satariano looked up sharply at the captain. “Fresh.”

  Wermuth gazed down with new eyes, seeing the still-red blood, summoned from the gaping vacant necks, which spilled scarlet like kicked-over paint cans.

  The boy’s face under the tin helmet was void of emotion, but a tightness around the eyes spoke volumes.

  All the corporal said, in a whisper that was little more than lip movement, was, “Not a shot fired.”

  Satariano glanced toward the clearing, then back at his captain, and their eyes locked in shared understanding: the Nips had killed these sentries without firing a shot, to avoid attracting attention. Why? To take full advantage of that inviting clearing…

  Meaning, they’d be back—soon.

  Satariano was the first to climb down into the foxhole, ducking below its lip; and then so did Wermuth, finding a spot between corpses, though the wetness of blood leached unsettlingly through his khakis.

  The crunching of footsteps on beaten-down brush was followed by the sounds of laughter and conversation in that distinctive foreign tongue. When Wermuth risked a peek above the foxhole rim, he saw a sea of brown uniforms—at least twenty of them—as the enemy soldiers…in helmets, a few in puttees, most with bayonets at their side, some with shoulder-slung machine guns…relaxed and joked and smoked.

  Ducking back down, Wermuth looked at Satariano, who whispered, “Turkey shoot.”

  And there was no time for discussion, no chance to express a contrary opinion much less for Wermuth to exert his rank. The kid jack-in-the-boxed to a shooting posture and let rip with the tommy gun.

  As Satariano’s machine gun thundered, Wermuth aimed his M-1; but the captain held his fire momentarily, as every potential target seemed to be busy taking the boy’s bullets, doing an awful dance for an unseen puppeteer. Spurts of blood, like ribbons flung in celebration, slashed the green landscape and streaked wrapping-paper brown uniforms with scarlet, and cries of agony and surprise made dissonant music in a jungle otherwise gone silent.

  Toward the rear, the Nips were running for the jungle and Wermuth finally began to shoot, picking off one, two, three of them. A hot spent shell bounced off Wermuth’s cheek as the blank-faced boy went about his business.

  It took a full minute for the corporal to deplete the drum of .45 cartridges, and the captain fired rapidly with the M-1 while Satariano plucked another round magazine of slugs off the webbed belt. But then the clearing was empty of the living, though around twenty of the dead lagged behind. They lay in various awkward postures, snipped puppets now, and the smell of cordite singed the muggy air.

  The two men exchanged glances.

  Was that all of them? Was it over?

  “Cover me,” Satariano said.

  The captain followed the corporal’s order, as the boy rose from the grave-like foxhole to thread through the scattered corpses, making sure no living surprises awaited among the dead. The boy made a thorough job of it, occasionally bending over a body to check, and each time Wermuth felt his guts tighten.

  Satisfied, the boy began back, moving across the corpse-cluttered clearing in a cautious, circling-around manner, tommy gun ready, managing not to trip over any of the fallen. He was almost halfway when the jungle began to bleed brown uniforms.

  Dozens of Nips poured out between the trees, on the run, guns blasting, rifles, sidearms, some with swords upraised, shrill cries cutting the air like verbal blades, shrieking the all-too-familiar “Banzai!”

  Wermuth instinctively sprang to his feet and began firing the rifle at the onslaught, and when the bullet slammed through his chest and out his back, he tumbled back down i
nto the foxhole, where he damn well should have stayed. He wasn’t in much pain, but couldn’t seem to get his hands to work, couldn’t get himself in place to offer supportive fire to his corporal, out there in the midst of the banzai attack.

  But the boy did have that hot tommy and his cool head, and, at the rim of the foxhole, Wermuth watched in amazement as Satariano methodically mowed down the men, turning in ever so slow a pirouette to catch them as they came from all directions. There the young soldier stood, bullets flying all around him, carving into trees, ruffling fronds, lead bees zinging but not quite stinging, the corporal as yet unhit. Somehow Wermuth got his arms working and positioned himself and was taking aim when Satariano, finally, fell, dropping alongside an enemy corpse.

  Dread rose like bile in the wounded captain, who nonetheless noted the almost comical sight as the twenty or more Nips momentarily froze, their eyes wide with their adversary’s apparent death.

  And then Satariano rose up, firing—he’d only been out of ammo, and reloading!—and once again the enemy was toppling like dominoes, the choppy roar of the tommy gun echoing through the clearing, drowning out cries of war and pain.

  Wermuth picked off a few with the M-1, but it was his corporal who continued to rain death on the horde. When the second drum was empty, the boy calmly drew his .45 automatic—by this time only half a dozen enemy remained—and when that was spent, he unsheathed the Filipino sword from his webbing belt, and met a Samurai-wielding foe blade for blade.

  The would-be Samurai, however, did not know his way around the sword and missed Satariano in the most clumsy fashion. When the American swung around with the bolo, the blade met the enemy’s neck, and the soldier’s head went flying like a coconut shook from a tree.

  The corpse stood there for a moment, a geyser of blood rising to the gods; the dead man weaved, as if trying to decide what to do next, and then made the obvious choice by toppling.

  The remaining three fled toward the trees, but Wermuth got one of them with the rifle.