The village didn't appear so much as reveal itself.
One moment Mallory and his men were fighting through a wall of wet green, soaked to the bone and half-blind from sweat and rain.
And the next, the jungle thinned into a clearing ringed with bamboo palisades, low huts perched on stilts like wooden herons watching intruders from above.
Smoke drifted up from clay chimneys, carrying the scent of boiled rice, coconut ash, and old oil.
The guide raised his hand.
"We're here," he said.
Mallory scanned the perimeter looking for movement. And there he found shadows behind slits in the bamboo wall. Rifles were aimed outward, Not German, nor American.
The guide stepped forward and shouted in Tagalog, and the tension broke. Rifles lowered and men emerged from behind the barricades, barefoot, lean, sun-browned, wearing nothing but shorts, sandals, and bandoliers crossed over their torsos.
Mallory recognized the patterns immediately.
