He hears tommy gun fire on the other side of the hotel. It must be his buddies. He creeps around to a corner of the hotel and listens again, trying to figure out where they are—somewhere in Rizal Park, he thinks. But then MacArthur’s artillery opens up hell-for-leather and the world begins to heave beneath him like a rug being shaken, and he can’t hear trench brooms or screaming women or anything. He has a view east and south towards the parts of Ermita and Malate from which they have just come, and he can see big pieces of debris spinning up from the ground over there, and gouts of dust. He has seen enough of war to know what it means: the Americans are advancing from the south now as well , pushing towards Intramuros. Shaftoe and his band of Huks were operating on their own, but it appears that they have inadvertently served as harbingers of a big infantry thrust.