Cryptonomicon

He thinks he is on the floor now. He is next to the corpse, at any rate, and the corpse was strapped down.

He lies there for several minutes, just breathing and thinking. Air whistles through the holes in the fuselage, loud enough to split his head.

Someone-some madman-is up on his feet, moving about the plane. It is not Root, who is in his little nook dealing with a number of facial lacerations that he picked up during the aerobatics. Shaftoe looks up and sees that the moving man is one of the British flyboys.

The Brit has yanked off his headgear to expose black hair and green eyes. He's in his mid-thirties, an old man. He has a knobby, utilitarian face in which all of the various lumps, knobs and orifices seem to be there for a reason, a face engineered by the same fellows who design grenade launchers. It is a simple and reliable face, by no means handsome. He is kneeling next to the corpse of Gerald Hott and is examining it minutely with a flashlight. He is the very picture of concern; his bedside manner is flawless.

Finally he slumps back against the ribbed wall of the fuselage. 'Thank god,' he says, 'he wasn't hit.'

'Who wasn't?' Shaftoe says.

'This chap,' the flyboy says, slapping the corpse.

'Aren't you going to check me?'

'No need to.'

'Why not? I'm still alive.'

'You weren't hit,' the flyboy says confidently. 'If you'd been hit, you'd look like Lieutenant Ethridge.'

For the first time, Shaftoe hazards movement. He props himself up on one elbow, and finds that the floor of the plane is slick and wet with red fluid.

He had noticed a pink mist in the cabin, and supposed that it was produced by a hydraulic fluid leak. But the hydraulic system now seems hunky-dory, and the stuff on the floor of the plane is not a petroleum product. It is the same red fluid that figured so prominently in Shaftoe's nightmare. It is streaming downhill from the direction of Lieutenant Ethridge's cozy nest, and the Lieutenant is no longer snoring.

Shaftoe looks at what is left of Ethridge, which bears a striking resemblance to what was lying around that butcher shop earlier today. He does not wish to lose his composure in the presence of the British pilot, and indeed, feels strangely calm. Maybe it's the clouds; cloudy days have always had a calming effect on him.

'Holy cow,' he finally says, 'that Kraut twenty-millimeter is some thing else.'

'Right,' the flyboy says, 'we've got to get spotted by a convoy and then we'll proceed with the delivery.'

Cryptic as it is, this is the most informative statement Bobby's ever heard about the intentions of Detachment 2702. He gets up and follows the pilot back to the cockpit, both of them stepping delicately around several quivering giblets that were presumably flung out of Ethridge.

'You mean, by an alliedconvoy, right?' Shaftoe asks.

'An alliedconvoy?' the pilot asks mockingly. 'Where the hell are we going to find an alliedconvoy? This is Tunisia.'

'Well, then, what do you mean, we've got to getspotted by a convoy? You mean we have to spota convoy, right?'

'Very sorry,' the flyboy says, 'I'm busy.'

When he turns back, he finds Lieutenant Enoch Root kneeling by a relatively large piece of Ethridge, going through Ethridge's attache case. Shaftoe cops a look of exaggerated moral outrage and points the finger of blame.

'Look, Shaftoe,' Root shouts, 'I'm just following orders. Taking over for him.'

He pulls out a small bundle, all wrapped in thick, yellowish plastic sheeting. He checks it over, then glances up reprovingly, one more time, at Shaftoe.

'It was a fucking joke!' Shaftoe says. 'Remember? When I thought those guys were looting the corpses? On the beach?'

Root doesn't laugh. Either he's pissed off that Shaftoe successfully bullshitted him, or he doesn't enjoy corpse-looting humor. Root carries the wrapped bundle back to that otherbody, the one in the wetsuit. He stuffs the bundle inside the suit.

Then he squats by the body and ponders. He ponders for a long time. Shaftoe kind of gets a kick out of watching Enoch ponder, which is like watching an exotic dancer shake her tits.

The light changes again as they descend from the clouds. The sun is setting, shining redly through the Saharan haze. Shaftoe looks out a window and is startled to see that they are over the sea now. Below them is a convoy of ships each making a neat white V in the dark water, each lit up on one side by the red sun.

The airplane banks and makes a slow loop around the convoy. Shaftoe hears distant pocking noises. Black flowers bloom and fade in the sky around them. He realizes that the ships are trying to hit them with ack-ack. Then the plane ascends once more into the shelter of the clouds, and it gets nearly dark.

He looks at Enoch Root for the first time in a while. Root is sitting back in his little nook, reading by flashlight. A bundle of papers is open on his lap. It is the plastic-wrapped bundle that Root took out of Ethridge's attache case and shoved into Gerald Hott's wetsuit. Shaftoe figures that the encounter with convoy and ack-ack finally pushed Root over the edge, and that he yanked the bundle right back out again to have a look at it.

Root glances up and locks eyes with Shaftoe. He does not seem nervous or guilty. It is a strikingly calm and cool look.

Shaftoe holds his gaze for a long moment. If there were the slightest trace of guilt or nervousness there, he would turn the chaplain in as a German spy. But there isn't-Enoch Root ain't working for the Germans. He ain't working for the Allies either. He's working for a Higher Power. Shaftoe nods imperceptibly, and Root's gaze softens.

'They're all dead, Bobby,' he shouts. 'Those islanders. The ones you saw on the beach on Guadalcanal.'

So thatexplains why Root is so touchy about corpse-looting jokes. 'Sorry,' Shaftoe says, moving aft so they don't have to scream at each other. 'How'd it happen?'

'After we got you back to my cabin, I transmitted a message to my handlers in Brisbane,' Root says. 'Enciphered it using a special code. Told them I'd picked up one Marine Raider, who looked like he might actually live, and would someone please come round and collect him.'

Shaftoe nods. He remembers that he'd heard lots of dots and dashes, but he had been out of whack with fevers and morphine and whatever home remedies Root had pulled out of his cigar box.

'Well, they responded,' Root went on, 'and said 'We can't go there, but would you please take him to such-and-such place and rendezvous with some other Marine Raiders.' Which, as you'll recall, is what we did.'

'Yeah,' Shaftoe says.

'So far so good. But when I got back to the cabin after handing you over, the Nipponese had been through. Killed every islander they could find. Burned the cabin. Burned everything. Set booby traps around the place that nearly killed me. I just barely got out of the damn place alive.'

Shaftoe nods, as only a guy who's seen the Nips in action can nod.

'Well they evacuated me to Brisbane where I started making a stink about codes. That's the only way they could have found me-obviously our codes had been broken. And after I'd made enough of a stink, someone apparently said, 'You're British, you're a priest, you're a medical doctor, you can handle a rifle, you know Morse code, and most importantly of all, you're a fucking pain in the ass-so off you go!' And next thing I know, I'm in that meat locker in Algiers.'

Shaftoe glances away and nods. Root seems to get the message, which is that Shaftoe doesn't know anything more than he does.

Eventually, Enoch Root wraps the bundle up again, just like it was before. But he doesn't put it back in the attache case. He stuffs it into Gerald Hott's wetsuit.

Later they emerge from the clouds again, close to a moonlit port, and dip down very close to the ocean, going so slow that even Shaftoe, who knows nothing about planes, senses they are about to stall. They open the side door of the Dakota and, one-two-three-NOW, throw the body of PFC Gerald Hott out into the ocean. He makes what would be a big splash in the Oconomowoc town pool, but in the ocean it doesn't come to much.

An hour or so later they land the same Gooney Bird on an airstrip in the midst of a stunning aerial