Cryptonomicon

Shaftoe guns it across the runway. A flaming Zero, traveling at about half the speed of sound, impacts the runway a few hundred feet away and disintegrates into a howling cloud of burning spare parts that comes skittering and rolling and bounding across the runway in their general direction. Shaftoe falters. The General yells at him. Reckoning that he can't avoid what he can't see, Shaftoe turns into the storm. Having seen this kind of thing happen before, he knows that the first thing to come their way will be the engine block, a red-hot tombstone of fine Mitsubishi iron. And indeed there it is, one of its exhaust manifolds still dangling from it like a broken wing, spinning end-over-end and spading huge divots out of the runway with each bounce. Shaftoe swings wide around it. He identifies the fuselage and sees that it has plowed to a stop already. He looks for the wings; they broke up into a few large pieces that are slowing down rapidly, but the tires broke loose from the landing gear and are bounding along towards them, burning wheels of red fire. Shaftoe maneuvers the jeep between them, guns it across a small patch of flaming oil, then makes another hard turn and continues towards their objective.

The explosion of the Zero sent everyone back down behind their sandbags. The General has to climb out of the jeep and peer over the top of the barrier. He holds the antiaircraft shell up above his head. "Say, Captain," he says in his perfect radio-announcer voice, "this arrived on my end table with no return address, but I believe it came from your unit." The captain's helmeted head pops into view over the top of the sandbags as he jumps to attention. He is gaping at the shell. "Would you please look after it, and make sure that it has been properly defused?" The General tosses the shell at him sideways, like a watermelon, and the captain barely has the presence of mind to catch it. "Carry on," The General says, "let's see if we can actually shoot down some Nips next time." He waves disparagingly at the burning wreckage of the Zero and climbs into the jeep with Shaftoe. "All right, back up the hill, Shaftoe!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Now, I know that you hate me because you are a Marine."

Officers like it when you pretend to be straight with them. "Yes, sir, I do hate you, sir, but I do not feel that this need be an impediment to our killing some Nips together, sir!"

"We agree. But in the mission I have in mind for you, Shaftoe, killing Nips will not be the primary objective."

Shaftoe's a bit off balance now. "Sir, with all due respect, I believe that killing Nips is my strong point."

"I don't doubt it. And that is a fine skill for a Marine. Because in this war, a Marine is a first-rate fighting man under the command of admirals who don't know the first thing about ground warfare, and who think that the way to win an island is to hurl their men directly into the teeth of the Nips' prepared defenses."

The General pauses here, as if giving Shaftoe an opportunity to respond. But Shaftoe says nothing. He is remembering the stories that his brothers told him on Kwajalein, about all the battles they had fought on small Pacific islands, precisely as The General describes.

"Consequently, a Marine must be very good at killing Nips, as I have no doubt you are. But now, Shaftoe, you are in the Army, and in the Army we actually have certain wonderful innovations, such as strategy and tactics, which certain admirals would be well-advised to acquaint themselves with. And so your new job, Shaftoe, is not simply to kill Nips, but to use your head."

"Well, I know that you probably think I am a stupid jarhead, General, but I do think that I have a good head on my shoulders."

"And on your shoulders is exactly where I would like it to stay!" The General says, slapping him heartily on the back. "What we are trying to do now is to create a tactical situation that is favorable to us. Once that is accomplished, the actual killing of Nips can be handled by more efficient means such as aerial bombardment, mass starvation, and the like. It will not be necessary for you to personally cut the throat of every Nip you run into, as eminently qualified as you might be for such an operation."

"Thank you, General, sir."

"We have millions of Filipino guerillas, and hundreds of thousands of troops, to handle the essentially quotidian business of turning live Nips into dead, or at least captive, Nips. But in order to coordinate their activities, I need intelligence. That will be one of your missions. But the country is already crawling with my spies, and so it will be a secondary mission.

"And the primary mission, sir?"

"Those Filipinos need leadership. They need coordination. And perhaps most of all, they need fighting spirit."

"Fighting spirit, sir?"