"Hold this old fool and keep him quiet a minute. We may need him," I
said to one of the boys. "The rest of you cover while Pak and I clean
out the power house." I stooped down and pulled the bag of explosives
from Kwong's body. Pak was away ahead of me. He was already going up
the steps and hit one guy in the belly with a couple of slugs as they
met in the doorway. Knives were no use now. We whizzed around inside
that place like a couple of squirrels playing tag. Up and down the
ladders, and everywhere we went we slapped beehive blasters with quick
fuses, on generators, transformers, anything that looked important. The
first ones were going off as we set the last and one of them blasted
me out the door with the shock wave. I picked myself up for the second
time, feeling like the last pin in a bowling alley, and looked about
for my burp gun. I found it just in time to join in a nice firefight.
The Reds had caught on by now. The doggoned alarm bell was making the
dickens of a racket and a bunch of soldiers came charging around the
corner from the railway yards. The boy with the Commissar fired first
and knocked down three and the kids covering us at the powerhouse got
two more as they scrambled for cover back around the corner. We started
for the gate with Benny Quong and Joe Park covering the rear. Meantime
some bright so-and-so had got up on the second floor and he leaned out
and dropped a grenade down between them. We got him right after the
bang but it didn't do those two any good. The shrapnel went up under
their helmets and caught their legs as well. I hope they died fast.
Sammy wanted to go back for them but I dragged him along with me. I
figured we had to get Anders out of there with the big secret and we
were expendable until we did.
"By now Pak was prodding the Commissar around the corner in front of
the guardhouse with a knife in his backside. We came in sight and found
the four guards watching for us--Anders was standing by the door."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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