Jock kept opening and squeezing a fist. “They took us to this one hill,” he said. “It was green like jungle but only a thin veneer, all rock underneath. There was a cave or a cavern or whatever. We holed up. Tents. Anyways, they must have known I don’t do so well with caves and caverns, what have you, so they kept me posted outside. The others went inside that hill. They took a prisoner in there with them. A local. Just a boy.”

“Hold on,” Lett said. “When was this? How long were you there?”

“No more than a day. They kept us in reserve for a couple days before that. Put us up in some rural inn for the duration, real shithole. But I had a suite. Well, you know me—I went on a bender of that rum they got and that basi wine they got or whatever the local hooch is called.”

That meant Jock and others were made to wait for his own operation to finish.

“Who was all there?” Lett said.

Jock just shook his head.

“Lansdale there?”

“Early on he was. Right down to that class ring of his and his irritating, peppy slogans.”

Lansdale wore a class ring, Lett recalled, a big one. Jock had an eye for things. That meant Lansdale was shuttling between their operations after Reuben.

Jock added, “I already didn’t like how that Lansdale was showing off to ol’ Dugout Doug back at that special meeting we guarded. But this? This was different. And, there was another one there.”

“Describe him.”

Jock described Frankie, the tattoos, the hulk of him. “He looked part Flip maybe, hard to tell.”

“The one from the Hilo boat?” Lett asked, to confirm. He had to be sure. That meant Frankie was still in country after Reuben. But if Frankie or Lansdale were flying back, they could beat them by days.

“The very one,” Jock said.

“I saw him, too. His name is Frankie.”

Jock didn’t speak a while. Maybe he was waiting for Lett to elaborate. Lett waited it out. They stared out at the shifting, rolling sea.

“Over the course of that day,” Jock continued, “I heard screams coming from inside that hill, had to be their prisoner, and sounds that might have been electricity, and others like hammering, but tapping-like, what have you . . .”

“Any engineer types show up, Corps of Engineers, Seabees even?”

“Nope. Not a one.”

“Where were you?”

“Not too far from where Dugout Doug had that special meeting. Still Cagayan Valley.”

“He ever show up again? The general himself?”

Jock smiled. “You kidding me now or what?”

Lett just shrugged.