Barry had no intention of getting in their way. He found some aspirin for himself, swallowed two of the pills, swabbed iodine on his cut cheek, and left. In his crew’s shelter tent he found Curly and Fred arguing about the raid. He sank down on a cot beside them. “There’s something queer about those parachute troops,” Curly declared. “The Japs didn’t drop them just by accident. They had some very important job which only suicide squads could do. If only we knew what it was....” “Don’t worry, sir,” said the red-haired sergeant. “They didn’t accomplish it. We’ve just searched the field and found only four live Japs. They were all wounded. Two of ’em opened fire on us and were blotted out. Number Three played dead until one of our boys tried to turn him over. Then he set off a grenade that blew both of ’em to pieces. Number Four struck with his teeth—just like a rattlesnake—and bit a medical-corps man’s cheek. He’s the only one that’s still alive.” “I wouldn’t be too sure that they didn’t accomplish anything important,” said Curly Levitt. “A few of them may still be loose in the jungle. I have a hunch that we’ll hear from them yet.” “I’m inclined to agree with you, Curly,” Barry Blake put in. “I’m not so much worried about the few Jap parachutists that may have escaped to the bush. To be sure, they could do plenty of damage. But if immediate damage had been their purpose, we’d have had two or three times as many to fight. I have a hunch that this bombing and skirmishing on the field was just a trick to cover up some other maneuver.” “You mean a Jap landing on the beach, sir?” asked Fred Marmon. “That thought hopped into my head, too—but it’s no good. Our boys have that coastline guarded so well that wild pigs couldn’t get through without raising an alarm. Their scouts would have brought us warning.” “Let’s try to get a little shuteye, then,” Curly Levitt yawned. “We won’t help matters by worrying or arguing all night. ’Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’” At dawn the field was roused by a third bombardment. This time it was a shelling from medium-heavy field guns. It plowed the already bombed runways until the field looked like a map of the moon’s craters. Two swift fighter planes tried to take off before the last smooth strip of ground was blown up. One of them ground-looped. The second, by clever dodging of bomb holes, managed to take the air. Fifteen minutes later it returned, riddled with bullet holes. The pilot nosed over trying to land on the field’s least plowed end. When they pulled him out of his wrecked fighter he said that he had flown over the enemy positions at less than five hundred feet and had a pretty good look at them.