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If they hadn't fired by nowHe felt fatalistic...
12:04 AM, Monday 12 April 2010
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If they hadn't fired by nowHe felt fatalistic about itThere was no way to cross an open field in the moonlight without being seen
Martinez glided across the rest of the distance separating him from the groveOnce inside the trees, he paused again, flattened himself against a trunkHe waited until his eyes became acclimated to the darkness and then he crept forward from tree to tree, separating the brush with his hands in his passageAfter fifteen yards he came to a path and stopped, peering to left and rightThen he paced along it to the border of the grove again, halting before a small emplacement, into which he kneltThere had been a machine gun there several days before -- he reasoned this by the fact that the holes for the studs of the tripod were no damper than the surface of the emplacementBesides, the machine gun had pointed toward the rock ledge; the Japanese would have used it that afternoon in the ambush if it had still been cartier ballon bleu price there
Slowly, cautiously, he examined the periphery of the groveThe Japanese had left, and by the number of empty ration cartons, the size of their latrine trench, he estimated that they must have made up a full platoonRecon had run into much less than that; it could mean only that most of their platoon had been withdrawn a day or two before, and the men who had attacked them were a rear guard, who had retreated up the pass shortly afterward
Why?
As if to answer him, he could hear faintly the sound of the artilleryIt had been firing frequently all that dayJaps go back to help stop attackThis seemed reasonable, and yet he was perplexedSomewhere farther up the pass there might or might not be some JapaneseMartinez shivered, holding the damp rotting cardboard wrapper of a ration in his handHe had a vague rather frightening vision of soldiers moving in the darkness, stumbling from place to placeHe would go groping into thatHe shook his omega replica watches head like an animal bridling at an unexpected sensationThe silence and darkness of the grove were wearing upon him, eroding his courage
Martinez wiped his foreheadHe was sweating and he realized with surprise that his shirt was quite wet and very chillHis tension had subsided for a moment or two, and it made him aware of his fatigue and the nervous shock of being awakened an hour or two after he had fallen asleepThe hamstrings of his thighs felt taut, quivered a littleBut he did not consider at all the idea of turning back
Carefully he followed the trail through the grove toward the passIt extended for several hundred yards through brush and forest not quite thick enough to be jungleOnce his face brushed against a long flat leaf and a few insects darted in fright across his cheekHe flicked them off, his fingers moist with anxietyBut one of the insects held on to his fingers, and then began to slide up his forearmMartinez flung it off, tiffany co jewelry stood shivering in the darknessFor a few seconds everything was in balance; his will to move forward was frustrated by the irrational terror the insects had caused, the more concrete knowledge of the Japanese there must be ahead, and most of all by the increasing deadening weight of all this strange earth he must explore at nightHe breathed deeply several times, moving his weight forward to his toes and then rocking back on his heels againA dull sluggish breeze stirred the leaves slightly, caressed his face with a momentary breath of coolnessHe could feel the perspiration coursing down his face in separate extended streams like the lines formed by tearsHe said this automatically but it released new currents of willThe resistance he had created inside himself mounted against it and then collapsedHe took a step forward, then another, and the effect was brokenHe moved on down the crude footpath the Japanese had worn in the grove, denim louis vuitton handbag debouched after a minute or two into a clearing beyond the forestHe was in the pass now
The cliffs of Mount Anaka had taken a turn to the right, were parallel again to his routeOn the other side, to his left, were some steep, almost precipitous hills which rose abruptly into the Watamai RangeThe channel through the mountains was about two hundred yards wide, an ascending avenue lined by tall buildingsIt was uneven with rolls and dips, great boulders and slattern mounds of earth, pocked here and there in the rock crevices with spates of foliage like the weeds that grow from the cracks in concreteThe moonlight was clearing the invisible peak of Mount Anaka, lancing downward into the pass and dappling the rocks and knolls with shadowsIt was all very bare, very cold; Martinez felt a thousand miles from the stifling velvet night of the jungleHe moved out from the protection of the grove, advanced a few hundred feet and knelt in the shadow of a hermes birkin 35cm boul
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