The Reckoning

The Filipinos feed and hide them, provide them with fresh clothes and finally put them ashore at Luzon. Pete and Clay find their way to the Resistance encampment in the mountains. Along the way, they encounter some injured Japanese soldiers and kill them without hesitation or remorse. Pete and Clay are welcomed at the American encampment. They are fed, doctored, and given clean clothes, but Pete continues to have flashbacks to the prison camp.

The West Luzon Resistance Force is commanded by British General Bernard Granger. When Pete and Clay recover from their privations, Pete spends some time playing cribbage with the general and discussing the military situation. The general’s group has plans to set a trap for a Japanese convoy.

Pete and Clay join the team headed down to the lowlands. They lay out the trap and wait for the Japanese convoy. They destroy the convoy and capture two supply trucks. One of the trucks carries hundreds of pounds of TNT, which the guerrillas use to set a second trap for the Japanese search party that arrives to investigate.

The resistance continues to strike at Japanese supply and troop convoys. Pete is given a squad of 20 men. After one mission, they come to a village whose residents have all been murdered by the Japanese, who accused them of helping the Americans. One boy who survived screams at Pete and his soldiers that they are to blame for the Japanese atrocities. Pete later has nightmares about the scene. All the Americans in the resistance camp have similar stories to tell, and the enemy’s savagery only makes the resistance hate them more.

Back in Clanton, Pastor Bell drops in on Liza several times a week for coffee and a devotional prayer with Nineva hovering nearby.

In Luzon, General Granger concocts a plan to disarm the Japanese Air Force. Pete and his men move down the mountain, avoiding Japanese patrols until they reach Fort Stoltenberg, where they find countless Japanese planes, virtually unprotected. Banning and his men shoot their way into the camp, plant bombs on 80 of the planes and retreat. Soon thereafter, the bombs detonate, destroying the planes.

General Granger plans an assault on a bridge crucial to Japanese troop and supply movements. Pete takes a team and steals a covered truck. They park the truck in the middle of the bridge and jump into the river as the truck explodes, destroying the bridge. Pete is swept downriver and slammed into boulders, splintering his left leg.

Pete is forced to lie bed for weeks, unable to join in the fighting. The US Sixth Army lands near Luzon and begins sweeping the Japanese forces inland. Pete recovers enough to join his men on raids, but he is wounded again. He can’t make it back to Granger’s camp, but he and Clay rendezvous with a troop of American soldiers. Pete is doctored and finally sent home.

Pete’s wife and children are overwhelmed to learn that Pete is alive and back in the states. He is transferred to the hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, where he spends several months recovering. His shattered leg heels, but it still gives him chronic pain. He is haunted daily by nightmares and flashbacks, and his mood swings wildly from euphoria to depression.