Cryptonomicon

By this time it had become evident that some Germans had retreated behind a gentle swell in the earth just off to one side of the road and were taking potshots from there, so Mikulski swung the muzzle of the Vickers up into the air at a steep angle and shot the bullet-stream into the sky so that the bullets plunged down like mortar shells on the other side of the rise. It took him a while to get the angle just right, but then he patiently distributed bullets over the entire field, like a man watering his lawn. One of the SAS blokes actually did some calculations on his knee, figuring out how long Mikulski should keep doing this to make sure that bullets were distributed over the ground in question at the right density--say, one per square foot. When the territory had been properly sown with lead slugs, Mikulski turned back to the roadblock and made sure that the truck pulled across the pavement was in small enough pieces that it could be shoved out of the way by hand.

Then he ceased firing at last. Shaftoe felt like he should make an entry in a log book, the way ships' captains do when they pull a man-of-war into port. When they drove past the wreckage, they slowed down for a bit to gawk. The brittle grey iron of the German vehicles' engine blocks had shattered like glass and you could look into the engines all neatly cross-sectioned and see the gleaming pistons and crankshafts exposed to the sun, bleeding oil and coolant.

They passed through what was left of the roadblock and drove onwards into a sparsely populated inland area that made excellent strafing territory for the Luftwaffe. The first two fighters that came around were torn apart in midair by Mikulski and his Vickers. The next pair managed to destroy the truck, the big gun, and Private Mikulski in one pass. No one else was hurt; they were all in the ditch, watching as Mikulski sat placidly behind the controls of his weapon, playing chicken with two Messerschmidts and eventually losing.

By now it was getting dark. The detachment began to make its way cross-country on foot, carrying Mikulski's remains on a stretcher. They ran into a German patrol and fought it out with them; two of the SAS men were wounded, and one of these had to be carried the rest of the way. Finally they reached their rendezvous point, a wheat field where they laid down road flares to outline a landing strip for a U.S. Army DC-3, which executed a deft landing, took them all on board, and flew them to Malta without further incident.

And that was where they were introduced to Lieutenant Monkberg for the first time.

No sooner had they been debriefed than they were on another submarine, bound for parts unknown or at least unspecified. But when they turned in their warm-weather gear for ten-pound oiled-wool sweaters, they started to get an idea. A few claustrophobic days later, they had been transferred onto this freighter.

The vessel itself is such a pathetic heap that they have been amusing themselves by substituting the word "shit" for "ship" in various nautical expressions, e.g.: let's get this cabin shit-shape! Where in hell does the shit's master think he's taking us? And so on.

Now, in the shit's hold, an impassioned Bobby Shaftoe is doing his best to create a ransacked effect. He strews rifles and tommy guns around the deck. He opens boxes of .45 cartridges and flings them all over the place. He finds some skis, too--they'll be needing skis, right? He plants mines here and there, just to throw a scare into whatever German happens along to investigate this shitwreck. He opens crates of grenades. These do not look very ransacked, sitting there full, so he pulls out dozens of them, carries them abovedecks, and throws them overboard. He tosses out some skis also--maybe they will wash up on shore somewhere and contribute to the overall sense of chaos that is so important to Lieutenant Monkberg.

He is on his way across the upper deck, carrying an armload of skis, when something catches his eye out there in the fog. He flinches, of course. Many strafings have turned Bobby Shaftoe into a big flincher. He flinches so hard that he drops all of those skis on the deck and comes this close to throwing himself down among them. But he holds his ground long enough to focus in on this thing in the fog. It is directly in front of them, and somewhat higher than the bridge of the freighter, and (unlike plunging Zeros or Messerschmidts) it is not moving fast--just hanging there. Like a cloud in the sky. As if the fog had coagulated into a dense clump, like his mother's mashed potatoes. It gets brighter and brighter as he stands there watching it, and the edges get more and more sharply defined, and he starts to see other stuff around it.

The other stuff is green.

Hey, wait a minute! He is looking at a green mountainside with a big white snowfield in the middle of it.

"Heads up!" he screams, and throws himself down on the deck.