Cryptonomicon

"Well, we provide state-of-the-art cryptographic services to all of our clients--even the ones with bones in their noses."

"Excellent! And now--as much as I hate to sign off on a dark note--I must say good-bye."

Randy hangs up, and the phone rings again almost immediately.

"Who the fuck are you?" Doug Shaftoe says, "I call you on the airplane, and I get a busy signal."

"I have a funny story to tell you," Randy says, "about a guy you ran into once while skiing. But unfortunately it will have to wait."

Chapter 79 GLORY

Bare-chested, camouflage-painted, trench knife in hand, Colt .45 stuck in the waistband of his khaki trousers, Bobby Shaftoe moves like a cloud of mist through the jungle. He stops when he can get a clear view of the Nip Army truck, framed between the hairy, cluttered trunks of a couple of date palms. A skirmish line of ants crawls over the skin of his sandaled foot. He ignores them.

It has all the earmarks of a piss stop. Two Nipponese privates climb out of the truck and confer for a few moments. One of them wades into the jungle. The other leans against the truck's fender and lights up a cigarette. Its glowing tip echoes the light of the sunset behind him. The one in the jungle drops his trousers, squats, leans back against a tree to take a shit.

At this moment they are supremely vulnerable. The contrast between the brightness of the sunset and the dimness of the jungle renders them nearly blind. The shitter is helpless, and the smoker looks exhausted. Bobby Shaftoe sheds his sandals. He emerges from the jungle onto the road behind the truck, strides forward on ant-bitten feet, crouches behind the truck's bumper. The weapon comes out of his hip pocket silently. Without taking his eyes off the smoker's feet--visible beneath the truck's chassis--he peels away the backing and slaps the payload onto the truck's tailgate. Then, just to rub it in, he slaps up another one. Mission accomplished! Take that, Tojo!

Moments later, he's back in the jungle, watching as the Nip truck drives away, now sporting two red, white, and blue stickers reading: I SHALL RETURN! Bobby congratulates himself on another successful mission.

Long after dark, he reaches the Hukbalahap camp up on the volcano. He works his way in through the booby-trapped perimeter and makes plenty of noise as he approaches, so that the Huk sentries won't shoot at him in the darkness. But he needn't have bothered. Discipline has broken down, they are all drunk and getting drunker, because of something they heard on the radio: MacArthur has returned. The General has landed on Leyte.

Bobby Shaftoe's response is to boil up some powerful coffee and begin pouring it into their signal man, Pedro. While the caffeine works its magic, Shaftoe grabs a message pad and the stub of a pencil, and writes out his idea for the seventh time: OPPORTUNITY EXISTS TO CONTACT AND SUPPLY FILAMERICAN ELEMENTS IN CONCEPCION STOP I VOLUNTEER FOR SAME STOP AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS STOP SIGNED SHAFTOE.

He gets Pedro to encrypt it and send it off. After that, all he can do is wait and pray. This shit with the stickers has to stop.

He has been tempted, a thousand times, to desert, and to go into Concepcion himself. But just because he's out in the boondocks with a band of Huk irregulars doesn't mean he's beyond the reach of military discipline. Deserters can still get shot or hanged, and despite the fact that he was one in Sweden, Bobby Shaftoe believes that they deserve to be.

Concepcion is down in the lowlands north of Manila. From the high places of the Zambales Mountains you can actually see the town lying amid the green rice paddies. Those lowlands are still totally Nip-controlled. But when the General lands, he's probably going to land north of here at Lingayen Gulf, just like the Nips did when they invaded in '41, and then Concepcion is going to lie right in the middle of his route to Manila. He's going to need eyes there.

Sure enough, the order comes through a couple of days later: RENDEZVOUS TARPON POINT GREEN 5 NOVEMBER STOP CONVEY TRANSMITTER CONCEPCION STOP AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS STOP.

Tarpon is the submarine that has been bringing them ammunition, medical supplies, I SHALL RETURN stickers, cartons of American cigarettes with I SHALL RETURN inserts in each pack, I SHALL RETURN matchbooks, I SHALL RETURN coasters, and I SHALL RETURN condoms. Shaftoe has been stockpiling the condoms because he knows they won't go over well in a Catholic country. He figures that when he finds Glory he'll go through a long ton of condoms in about a week.