Five weeks later, Nez and Begay were huddled in a ditch on Guadalcanal. Machine-gun fire rattled around them.
They cranked up the radio and sent their first message: “Enemy machine-gun nest on your right flank. Destroy.”
A minute later, the big guns roared to life. The Japanese machine guns fell silent.
“You see that?” Nez asked.
“Sure did,” Begay replied.
For a brief, triumphant moment, Nez forgot about the rain and the bullets. Code talking was what he had trained to do, and he’d done it perfectly.