Shaftoe’s actually glad to see some real Nips; he has been getting nervous, because the lack of opposition has made the Huks giddy and overconfident. Then half a dozen Nip Air Force troops spill out of a store which they have evidently been looting—they are all carrying liquor bottles—and stop on the sidewalk to set fire to the place, fashioning Molotov cocktails from stolen bottles of firewater. Shaftoe pulls the pin on a grenade and underhands it down the sidewalk, watches it skitter for a while, and then ducks into a doorway. When he hears the explosion, and sees shrapnel crack the windshield of a car parked along the street, he jumps out onto the sidewalk, ready to open up with the tommy gun. But it’s not necessary; all of the Nips are down, thrashing weakly in the gutter. Shaftoe and the other Huks all take cover and wait for more Nipponese troops to arrive, and help their injured comrades, but it doesn’t happen.