Cryptonomicon

He reports back to his ship, and is not granted any more shore leave. He does manage to have a conversation with Uncle Jack, who pulls up alongside in a small motorboat long enough for them to shout a few sentences back and forth. Uncle Jack is the last of the Manila Shaftoes, a branch of the family spawned by Nimrod Shaftoe of the Tennessee Volunteers. Nimrod took a bullet in his right arm somewhere around Quingua, courtesy of some rebellious Filipino riflemen. Recovering in a Manila hospital, old Nimrod, or 'Lefty" as he was called by that point, decided that he liked the pluck of these Filipino men, in order to kill whom a whole new class of ridiculously powerful sidearm (the Colt .45) had had to be invented. Not only that, he liked the looks of their women. Promptly discharged from the service, he found that full disability pay would go a long way on the local economy. He set up an export business along the Pasig riverfront, married a half-Spanish woman, and sired a son (Jack) and two daughters. The daughters ended up in the States, back in the Tennessee mountains that have been the ancestral wellspring of all Shaftoes ever since they broke out of the indentured servitude racket back in the 1700s. Jack stayed in Manila and inherited Nimrod's business, but never married. By Manila standards he makes a decent amount of money. He has always been an odd combination of salty waterfront trader and perfumed dandy. He and Mr. Pascual have been in business together forever, which is how Bobby Shaftoe knows Mr. Pascual, and which is how he originally met Glory.

When Bobby Shaftoe repeats the latest rumors, Uncle Jack's face collapses. No one hereabouts is willing to face the fact that they are about to be besieged by Nips. His next words ought to be, "Shit then, I'm getting the hell out of here, I'll send you a postcard from Australia." But instead he says something like "I'll come by in a few days to check up on you."

Bobby Shaftoe bites his tongue and does not say what he's thinking, which is that he is a Marine, and he is on a ship, and this is a war, and Marines on ships in wars are not known for staying put. He just stands there and watches as Uncle Jack putt-putts away on his little boat, turning back every so often to wave at him with his fine Panama hat. The sailors around Bobby Shaftoe watch with amusement, and a bit of admiration. The waterfront is churning insanely as every piece of military gear that's not set in concrete gets thrown onto ships and sent to Bata'an or Corregidor, and Uncle Jack, standing upright in his boat, in his good cream-colored suit and Panama hat, weaves through the traffic with aplomb. Bobby Shaftoe watches him until he disappears around the bend into the Pasig River, knowing that he is probably the last member of his family who will ever see Uncle Jack alive.

Despite all of those premonitions, he's surprised when they ship out after only a few days of war, pulling out of their slip in the middle of the night without any of the traditional farewell ceremonies. Manila is supposedly lousy with Nip spies, and there's nothing the Nips would like better than to sink a transport ship stuffed with experienced Marines.

Manila disappears behind them into the darkness. The awareness that he hasn't seen Glory since that night is like a slow hot dentist's drill. He wonders how she's doing. Maybe, once the war settles down a little bit, and the battle lines firm up, he can figure out a way to get stationed in this part of the world. MacArthur's a tough old bastard who will put up a hell of a fight when the Nips come. And even if the Philippines fall, FDR won't let them remain in enemy hands for very long. With any luck, inside of six months, Bobby Shaftoe will be marching up Manila's Taft Avenue, in full dress uniform, behind a Marine Band, perhaps nursing a minor war wound or two. The parade will come to a section of the avenue that is lined, for a distance of about a mile, with Altamiras. About halfway along, the crowd will part, and Glory will run out and jump into his arms and smother him with kisses. He'll carry the girl straight up the steps of some nice little church where a priest in a white cassock is waiting with a big grin on his face--That dream-image dissolves in a mushroom cloud of orange fire rising up from the American base at Cavite. The place has been burning all day, and another fuel dump has just gone up. He can feel the heat on his face from miles away. Bobby Shaftoe is on the deck of the ship, all bundled up in a life vest in case they get torpedoed. He takes advantage of the flaring light to look down a long line of other Marines in life vests, staring at the flame with stunned expressions on their tired, sweaty faces.

Manila is only half an hour behind them, but it might as well be a million miles away.

He remembers Nanking, and what the Nips did there. What happened to the women.