Another thing rattled him. Lansdale had simply ignored him, all of them. He hadn’t shown the team the slightest nod. It was as if he’d never spent time underground with Lett, talking things out like they did. Lansdale had just shaken Frankie’s big tattooed hand and ducked into the Packard.

And then, the question lingered: what was in those trucks?

The entire operation had lasted a couple hours. Lett and the other four climbed back into their truck. They followed the two loaded and unmarked deuce-and-a-half trucks, but at a distance. The sedans traveled up front, led by the Packard with Lansdale and Frankie inside. They, too, traveled at a distance ahead. This was clearly intentional, so as not to resemble a column. The team had to keep their M3 guns, and Lett and Jock Quinn the MP garb.

On the way back, the few clouds had cleared out and the sun was high and hot. A couple of the team complained about the heat under the canopy. This led to Jock the Marine complaining, again, about having to wear what were clearly inferior Army fatigues and gear.

“Just what you’d expect from Dugout Doug,” Jock muttered.

He told Lett about the Pacific grunts’ derisive nickname for their wartime Supreme Commander, Douglas MacArthur. The name came from Dugout Doug’s so-called prowess at retreating but also from reports that he hid out in tunnels when the Japanese overran Corregidor in the Philippines in ’42. An Army man, the great general didn’t want to help the Marines stranded above when it came down to it. A couple of the others overheard and nodded solemnly.

Then they sang songs, Jock leading the Pacific Theater guys in a ballad that had many names, from “Bless ’em All” to “The Long and the Short and the Tall” to their own version: “Fuck ’em All.” Their suitably crude and defiant lines called out MacArthur for abandoning them wholesale. But it really told most all generals and lords and masters just where to stuff their brass and gold and shiny medals—if they and their fellow Marines were doomed to bite the dust, then they’d do so in any damned way they pleased.

Lett offered up the version he knew from the ETO, which had plenty more to do with women than bossmen, and they sang that one, too. They laughed and slapped shoulders and someone should’ve had a bottle. After that, they quieted down as if drunk from that make-believe bottle, deep in the memories and nightmares such a song brought.

Lett found himself talking with Jock as if he were Lansdale himself right here next to him. He free-associated about everything from the slaughter in the Normandy hedgerows to the tree bursts in the Ardennes. Jock launched into a story of his own about fighting the Japanese in caves. They smoked them out with whatever they had, grenades, flame throwers, phosphorous.