I wake up and wipe blood from my face, hoping it's not mine. It is. But I'll live. We're not moving anymore. It I make it through this mess, I'll have to fabricate a description of the actual crash when I write it up.

Jackson won't get the chance to offer the girl his last bullet, I discover. She's dead, a heap of blonde hair and skirt off in a twisted comer of the flight deck. Just as dead are Prideaux and the old Iowa farmer. But it's the radio that holds my eye; it looks like a cheap watch that's just been danced on by a troop of baboons. If the Air Force or Navy didn't get a fix on us before the crash, they'll never get one now.

Two other members of the crew are in dismal shape. Saavedra dies as we try to staunch the flow of blood. And Estenssoro is hurt. He says he's okay, but he has an arm that dangles like a broken railroad signal. Bong and Baptista fix him up with a crude splint.

Doran's recovery from his fiancée's passing on is impressive. But understandable. He has worries enough of his own, and enumerates them until Jackson tells him to shut up.

Several of us climb from the shadowy bomber out into daylight bright as the flash of a samurai sword. We're down in the middle of a wide, flat field, and there's a bitter cold wind blowing. Inside the heated bomber, I hadn't needed my flight jacket. Now I shrug deeper into it as white vapor curls from my lips on this crisp Thanksgiving morning.

The bomber slewed to one side as it came to rest. Now it lies almost at a right angle to its flight path which lies off the left wing. Looking southeast, I see the slightly raised earthen platform of a service road, and beyond that, the wooded foothills of the Chugoky Range. It was that elevated road which had caused us so much trouble. I can see where the bomber had plowed right through it. The ground between it and the plane looks as though it's been through a macerator.

Ernie starts taking a few pictures. I toe the soil with the tip of my shoe. Nothing but cold dry earth and scattered tufts of bamboo grass. No telling what once was planted here. Rice, maybe. If so, the years have disposed of all evidence of it.

"Colonel."

It's the way Montez says the word that makes ice crystals form in our blood. Bong looks. We all do. Behind us, and beyond the earthen road, is a stand of birch with a few maples mixed in. Just a moment ago, I hadn't seen movement there. Now I see more than that. I see people. Little people. Coming our way.

A bullet zings off the ship. We fling ourselves prone in what once must have been an irrigation ditch. The others seek shelter within the bomber.

"Must be fifty, maybe a hundred," growls Jackson. For the first time, he's free to smoke, but reaching for a pocket, he finds it torn and empty. He spits a curse as if it were his missing tobacco.

We're armed most of us, and waiting. Bullets whang off the fuselage behind us, or whoof in the dirt nearby.

"Don't waste ammo," warns Estenssoro, just beside me. His arm is hurting. He grimaces with pain, but continues. "Most of the ammo is tied up in the 50-cals, and there's no way we can bring them around to bear."

The shooting is steady now, and out there we can hear the Japs screaming like little yellow banshees. Bong shouts and we open fire. It doesn't seem to slow them down at all. They don't mind casualties, I decide. Just means more groceries in the pot tonight, that's all.

I don't know how many we kill. I don't even have time to notice our own people getting hit. The Japs are almost on top of us. I see scrawny bodies, shrunken moon faces, dirty clothing flapping in tatters. In another minute they'll be all over us!

"Damnit! Don't they know the war's over!" roars Jack-son, knocking another into the dust with a well-placed slug.

Suddenly, the first shrieking Japs are among us, and my gun is empty, or jammed, or something. My technology degenerates by a few thousand years as my M-14 becomes an expensive club.

But the Jap that's got my number doesn't come. None of them come, after the first few who fall to our bullets and gun butts. My mouth sags open almost like I'm disappointed. I'm not. It's just that I can't believe it. Then I bear the whir of rotors and understand. A couple of machine guns chatter, and a sweeter duo I've never heard.

The rescue 'copter beats down to a landing beside the ruin of our B-29. I recognize it as an H-21 Workhorse, probably from the Hornet, or another carrier operating in the area.

"Just like the cavalry!" shouts Jackson, elated.

Marines and medics run toward us.

"Haven't you people heard the war's over?" shouts a lieutenant in crisp khakis.

"Tell that to the Japs," one of the Bolivians answers in mangled English.

Turning, I discover that Bong has been killed. Estenssoro is already kneeling over him. He lies crumpled in the ditch near the bomber's nose, between the ship's Bolivian identification numbers and Donald Duck. Estenssoro doesn't say anything as the medics roll the body onto a stretcher. I tell Ernie to keep taking pictures, especially of the dead. They'll probably be the last casualties of this war, and as such, they're news.

I expect to see Doran emerge from the fuselage. He doesn't, not under his own power, anyway. A couple of medics, assisted by a crew member, dump his body out onto a stretcher. All are wondering how a Jap bullet, even a ricochet, managed to find the hole Doran hid himself in when the shooting started.

Dead, wounded, the miraculously unscathed, we're all hustled aboard the olive drab flying banana. And we lift away fast, despite the fact that jet aircover is on the way. The 'copter pilot tells us there's no sense taking chances; the Japs might he back with something bigger than pop guns.

The Donald Duck falls away from us like a broken silver crucifix. Behind me a wounded Bolivian groans, but I shut out the noise, thinking of my story. My BIG story. Getting it was nearly the death of me -- literally -- but now everything seems worth it. I'd started with stuff that made good, yet routine copy. But I'd been in the right place at the right time, and had ended up with the kind of story any reporter would trade his wife for.

Ignoring my aches and pains, I sit back and smile. Such luck a man doesn't deserve, and I've had it twice now. This thing might just put me back on top. I savor the thought. My exclusive on the Oak Ridge disaster and subsequent cover up took me a long way. No huge chunk of meteoric debris had fallen in those Tennessee foothills. And I proved it. It was my byline, in the end, that forced the government to admit that the nation's largest munitions plant had blown itself off the face of the earth.

But maybe this Jap surrender thing will take me even further. I know how to milk a good thing when I see it.