Cryptonomicon

Another bird or something flashes out of the shadows, headed nearly straight down toward the water at tremendous speed. Amy makes a funny grunting sound. Randy's just turning to look her way when a tremendous, hammering racket opens up from above. He looks up to see a blossom of flame strobing out of the slotted flash arrestor on the muzzle of John Wayne's assault rifle. Seems like he's shooting directly across the river. Jackie Woo gets off a few shots too. Randy, who's squatting, loses his balance from all of this head-turning and has to put out a hand to steady himself, which fortunately doesn't come down on top of a mine. He looks over at Amy; only her head and shoulders are showing out of the water, and she's staring at nothing in particular, with a look in her eyes that Randy doesn't like at all. He rises to his feet and takes a step towards her.

"Randy, don't do that," says Doug Shaftoe. Doug has already reached the shade, and is only a couple of paces from the curtain of vegetation that hangs over the riverbank.

There is a piece of debris riding on the surface of the river not far from Amy's face, but it is not being moved by the current. It moves when Amy moves. Randy takes another step towards her, putting his foot down on a big silt-covered boulder whose top he can make out through the milky water. He squats on that boulder like a bird and focuses again on Amy, who is maybe fifteen feet away from him. John Wayne fires a series of individual shots from his rifle. Randy realizes that the piece of debris is made of feathers, bound to the butt of a narrow stick.

"Amy's been shot with an arrow," Randy says.

"Well that's just fucking great," Doug mutters.

"Amy, where are you hit?" says Enoch Root.

Amy still can't seem to speak. She stands up awkwardly, doing all the work with her left leg, and as she rises the arrow emerges from the water and turns out to be lodged squarely in the middle of her right thigh. The wound is washed clean at first but then blood wells out from around the arrow's shaft and begins to patrol down her leg in bifurcating streams.

Doug's engaged in some furious exchange of hand signals with the men up above. "You know," he whispers, "I can tell that this is one of those classic deals where what was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance suddenly turns into the actual battle."

Amy grabs the shaft of the arrow with both hands and tries to snap it, but the wood is green, and won't break cleanly. "I dropped my knife somewhere," she says. Her voice sounds calm, putting some effort into making it that way. "I think I can deal with this level of pain for a little," she says. "But I don't like it at all."

Near Amy, Randy can see another silt-covered boulder near the surface, maybe six feet away. He gathers himself and leaps towards it. But it topples under the impact of his foot and sends him splashing full-length into the streambed. When he sits up and gets a look at it, the boulder turns out to be a squat cylindrical object about as big around as a dinner plate and several inches thick.

"Randy, what you're looking at is a Nip anti-tank mine," Doug says. "It is highly unstable with age, and it contains enough high explosive to essentially decapitate everyone in our little group here. So if you could just stop being a complete asshole for a little bit, I'm sure that we would all appreciate it very much."

Amy shows Randy the palm of one hand. "I'm not looking for you to prove anything," she says. "If you're trying to say you love me, send me a fucking valentine."

"I love you," Randy says. "I want you to be okay. I want you to marry me."

"Well, that's very romantic," Amy says, sarcastically, and then starts crying.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Doug Shaftoe says. "You guys can do this later! Will you ease up? Whoever fired that arrow is long gone. The Huks are guerrillas. They know how to make themselves scarce."

"It wasn't fired by a Huk," Randy says. "Huks have guns. Even I know that."

"Who fired it, then?" Amy asks, working hard to get her composure back.

"It looks like a Cayuse arrow," Randy says.

"Cayuse? You think it was fired by a Cayuse?" Doug demands. Randy admires that Doug, while skeptical, is essentially open to the idea.