Suddenly the truck engines revved up. They had to be reparked because they stood too close to the soft earth of the riverbank—the water here sucked away trucks and houses alike at whim. Lett, left in the dark a moment, used the opportunity to remove the shells from the cartridge of his M1 and slip them into a pocket, leaving the gun looking as lethal as ever.

He’d gotten the urge and simply acted on it. It surprised him. This was the opposite of what the bad feeling usually brought, which was a careful, machinelike preparation of his killing tools. He couldn’t explain his impulse. Something deep inside him simply commanded him to respond differently. To resist certainty. Clear the metal chamber. He had been thinking about how relieved he’d felt not having to carry a weapon at first, and how having to carry one now should make him grow ever queasier. In the truck he had pushed his M1 aside on impulse. So why not unload it, too?

Lansdale and his Japanese partner were inside the tent. Soon screams and cries came from another man inside: a mix of Tagalog, English, Japanese, denial, lament. Lett couldn’t make it all out. But what sounded like pleading turned to moaning, and yet no promises were made to the target as in a normal interrogation. Some might call this torture. Lett heard water pouring and splashing and gasping at one point. After a pause of quiet, there came the slowly mounting screech of a man having something peeled away.

***

Longer stretches of quiet came. Lett got sandwiches, more coffee. Near dawn, the steep slopes looming around him began to reveal themselves as an ever-higher series of ridges and mountains and the river as mostly mud.

The torture continued, an early morning shift. The conversations Lett heard from inside the tent sounded like monks praying, chanting. Lett heard words carrying a Filipino accent but muffled and wet. Then, silence again.

Lansdale pushed the tent flap open, stepped outside, took a deep breath of air and rubbed at his stomach and stretched as if having had the best nature sleep of his life. His sleeves were rolled up but otherwise he looked the same. He combed his thick dark hair, though it didn’t need it, his part still perfect. His eyes still had that sparkle, too, and they caught the first rays of sun shooting up into the sky through gaps in the high ridges—rays that beamed, Lett couldn’t help noticing, much like those of the notorious Japanese rising sun.

“Rifles down, men,” Lansdale told Lett and the commando a few minutes later. “Grab a shovel.” They took turns digging a pit at the base of the large mango tree. At one point, Lett, his arms and thighs burning, had the grim thought that he was digging his own grave, but he only pushed himself harder, letting the sweat roll down him, into his eyes, stinging.