Chapter 25

Twenty minutes later, the plan was put into effect.

They parked one of their trucks in the middle of the road just past the northern entrance. Jacky made it look as if it had engine trouble. Several men milled around the truck as if fixing it or just taking a break from riding on it.

As the two heavily laden trucks slowed as they approached, Blair stood in the middle of the road and directed the vehicles off into the rest area that was now clearly visible to the drivers.

The Japanese were delighted to see a camp set up and other Japanese soldiers sitting around having tea. As the men got out of their lorries, they found themselves being restrained and subdued by the other Japanese soldiers. It happened so fast they barely had time to realise it was a trap.

When the soldiers came to, they were on the side of the road, and they all felt an urgent need to go back to Dili and then home to Japan. Their sergeant formed them up and started marching them back the way they came. None of the men questioned this command.

“That is creepy when you do that, Jacky,” Gazza said as he watched the soldiers march away in perfect formation with their rifles on their shoulders.

“Saves us from having to dig graves,” Jacky replied, and the men couldn’t dispute that as they all hated burial duties. That was the stuff of nightmares.

They checked over the guns and found they had enough ammunition on the trucks to fire them a dozen times in total. It wasn’t much, but it was what they had. Jacky looked at the guns and grinned.

“I know you said the other road was harder travelling, but what if we turned the trucks around, load them up with our gear, and my team will head to Cassa. We can set them up there, and while the demolition crew head to Beco, we can guard the bridge at Cassa.”

“If the Japs turn up from Same, we can blow it up and head back using the back road. I doubt they would send the whole platoon back to find us. Probably one truck at best. Then probably another if they don’t turn back up in a couple of days.”

The men all looked at each other and started grinning. Blair knew why Jacky wanted to use his team.

Blair stated, “It would be best if Gazza and I, at the least, came with you. We do know the area and the people.”

Some of Blair’s people weren’t too happy to be left behind, but they could only take so many, and as far as Jacky was concerned, his team stayed together. Even Blair’s people knew the advantages of a well-trained squad working in unison, and Jacky’s people had displayed this many times already.

So, they hurried to get the explosives for the bridges and loaded up the trucks with extra supplies. Jacky’s two vehicles would stay in the rest area. Blair handed the compass to find this camp over to Lieutenant Smith and told him how it worked. Smith was dubious, but he accepted it.

Blair gave the other compass to Bean, the storeman. Bean gave Blair a strange look but didn’t question that the compass would lead them to the hidden stores on the southern coastal road near Betona. Bean was quite aware that the compass didn’t point to the north but southeast.

Blair told Smith and Bean that if they weren’t back in a week, they were to contact the General and get orders from him. They did communicate at random, with the next contact time established by code when the last call ended, to make it hard for the Japanese to intercept their communications.

Lieutenant Smith wasn’t as gung-ho as Blair, so he was happy enough to stay behind, especially since they had food again. He just wanted a ship to take him off this damn island of pestilence. However, he did like being left in charge.

Bean just kept his thoughts to himself.

The two drivers knew that something was different in how these guns travelled behind them as soon as they headed down the road.

As they looked behind, they were sure that the road was smoother than it had appeared in front of them. Even so, they kept the pace at a comfortable 25mph where they could and slowing as required as they went around a large number of bends in the road.

An hour later, they had reached the intersection and turned off to take the road to Cassa. It was another twenty minutes before base camp radioed them to say that two trucks loaded with troops had just driven past the rest area heading to Dili.

Once they turned off, Jacky had obscured their tracks. It was only if one of the villagers saw them after the turn-off and said something that the Japanese would know they had turned off and not gone ahead to Dili.

It was late in the afternoon when they radioed back in to say they were set up at the Cassa river crossing. They had camouflaged the guns and made camp. The demolition team would head to Boco near sunset.

So far, the mission was on track.

Blair had wanted Gazza on the mission because he was a whizz with explosives.

Hence, they both got to go with Jacky and David in one of the trucks to the crossing at Beco. They hit a village several miles short of Beco. They soon realised the road from the southwest had recently had some upgrades done to it.

As they approached Beco, Jacky had them pull off the road into the scrub, half a mile short of their destination. He got out and looked south.