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Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii
Saturday, 8 May
1340 Local Time
Kanoa Ino had chosen the meeting place to serve a purpose. Diamond Head Lookout presented a panoramic vista of Honolulu and Waikiki Beach and, by extension, modern Hawaii. Used in countless scene-setting shots for televisions and movies, the view represented an iconic image, instantly recognizable. High-rise condos, hotels, and offices. Smog and exhaust fumes. Blue ocean to the left. Rolling surf.
He could picture the scene in those distant resort hotels lining the beach: groups of island women in fake grass shorts swishing their asses to the sound of a tinny ukulele, mocking the spiritual hula kahiko dance, while fat, lobster-broiled mainlanders gawped at them... and men in anklets of grass, whirling lit torches, as if the Samoan fire dance was of Hawaiian origin instead of imported shtick canned and repurposed for the titillation of tourists.
Bobby Palakiko leaned his crossed arms on the rail next to him. “Aloha, Kanoa. You are looking massive as always.”
“Aloha.”
A stiff breeze off the ocean fluttered Palakiko’s Born Hawaiian T-shirt and flattened his cargo shorts against his spindly legs. Salty black hair whipped away from his comb-over. Next to Kanoa’s towering height and powerful physique, the diminutive old man seemed to be a different species. Tourists milled around the two of them like a constant flow of brightly colored beetles, oohing and aahing at the view or screeching at their hyperactive children. Adult haoles and their offspring bumped into Kanoa, heedless and unapologetic as they huffed along the concrete path.
An Asian tourist in a white, short-sleeved shirt stood slightly apart from the crowd. A pair of binoculars dangled from his neck. Kanoa kept his gaze away from the prim little Asian so as not to draw attention to him.
Sunlight glinted off Palakiko’s Ray-Bans. “A beautiful day.”
Kanoa shaded his watch with a palm, checking the time. He let the silence linger. The old man waited. A faint permanent-press smile creased his lips, as if everything in this world—including Kanoa—amused him.
He won’t smile for long.
“Did you hear about the Akaka bill?” Bobby offered at last. “It has a chance this time, I think.”
“It will fail. Again.”
“We will achieve the same status as Native Americans. You’ll see.”
“And earn the right to live on a reservation? Maybe sell beads to the haole?”
“Always such a downer, Kanoa. You should learn to relax. Aloha, brah.”
“This”—Kanoa spread a broad palm to include the world around them—“is what one hundred twenty-three years of aloha have wrought—a world full of haole, white Americans, yellow Japanese, black Africans, and sheet-wearing Muslims—massed on the beaches, bobbing in the waves, oiling themselves with suntan lotion. Snapping selfies, eating, drinking, puking, and pissing. Taking everything of value. Leaving nothing but trash... trash and money. Always money. And we’re complicit in our own degradation, prostituting ourselves for the price of a color TV and a case of Miller Lite—Hawaiian culture whored out three times daily with a matinee on Sunday. No, brah...” He sneered the word. “The time for aloha has long passed. It is time for Kūkaʻilimoku.”
Kanoa tracked the old man’s expression with his peripheral vision.
Palakiko sighed. “We are a people of peace—”
“And peace has killed us, old man!” A gaggle of Japanese ceased their chattering and gave Kanoa sideways looks at they edged past. Kanoa glared, and they hurried on. Time to show some fire. “Our language, dead. Our people, slaves. Our culture, gone. The imperialist conquest is complete, and all your hand-wringing does is salt the wound with a little more white-man guilt, which they will appease by offering us platitudes and half-measures, as always.”
“Why again with this argument, my bruddah?”
“We are tired of waiting.” Kanoa glanced at his watch. “My men are ready to do battle. Hawaii for Hawaiians, now and forever.”
“Your men?” Palakiko smirked. “What is the name these days? The Niho Niuhi—Teeth of the Tiger Shark? Whatever. Listen, my giant friend. The movement won’t allow you to tear us apart with violence.”
“I don’t need your blessing, Bobby. My men are ready, and Ku will bless our struggle with victory.”
The old man tilted his head back to match Kanoa’s stare. The crow’s feet radiating out from around his sunglasses deepened. “What do you mean?”
“The Anglos have not listened to us. They annexed the islands illegally, by force, for the benefit of the sugar barons. They have ignored us ever since. Raped our land. Destroyed our people. Beguiled us with bullshit promises. For too long, we have waged peace and begged for scraps. No more. Kūkaʻilimoku demands blood. The Niho Niuhi will honor him with it.”
“An ancient Tiki god demands blood? Did he send a text or what? You been smoking some primo weed, brah.”
“We are tired of waiting. Bumpy promised us things would change, yet even he sits and talks instead of doing things. Nothing changes through peace. Nothing. Aloha!” Kanoa spat over the railing. He checked his watch again.
As if to punctuate his expectoration, a fiery flash blew out from the side of a beachside skyscraper, followed by a dirty-white billow of smoke. Seconds later, a flat crack traveled up the coast. A rumble followed, vibrating the air. On the heels of the first explosion, a sequence of four more blasts shook the distant skyline.
“The targets just hit,” Kanoa stated, “were the Marriott Resort, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Ala Moana Mall, the Outrigger Reef Resort, and the Hyatt Regency Waikiki.”
Tourists crammed the guardrails of the overlook. They shouted and pointed. Many held up cell phones to record the wounded buildings as they were wreathed in brown fog. It was too far away to hear the screams of the injured, although the wail of alarms drifted to Kanoa’s ears, thin and remote. Bobby Palakiko gripped the rail, more to keep himself upright than anything else, Kanoa suspected. The old man seemed frail enough to blow away on the wind.
“Those were the first shots fired,” Kanoa continued. “The Niho Niuhi will rain blood throughout these islands, and we will keep bringing the pain until all the haoles have gone. Hawai’i will again be ours.”
Palakiko’s head cranked around as if on rusty bearings. Gape-mouthed and pale, the old man regarded Kanoa and, without a word, collapsed in a dead faint.
Kanoa spared a quick glance at the Asian tourist dressed in white. They exchanged minuscule nods. Phase One, complete.
#
VILLAGE OF LA MANZANA, Chiapas, Mexico
Friday, 7 May
1650 Local
Approximately Twenty-Three Hours before the Honolulu Bombing
Victor’s Law Numero Uno: Get too happy, bad shit happens.
Case in point: there he was, sitting under the lifted rear hatch of the green Ford Explorer, his feet dangling over the sandy asphalt main street of La Manzana, Mexico—population 601 people, fourteen goats, and enough chickens to stock a KFC franchise—enjoying the warm, satiny breeze off the ocean and really getting into a game of Toss the Pebble into a Pothole. He was about as happy as he’d ever been, if he wanted to be really honest with himself.
The village was La Manzana—the Apple. Victor thought they should name it La Manzana Podrida—the Rotten Apple. Dr. Alexandra Lopez, aka Dr. Hot Stuff, was inside the clínica, doing medical stuff with stethoscopes and probes and wicked hypodermic needles. Soon she would come out of the one-room building and jump in the Explorer with him. They would zoom off to a rented beach condo with a postcard view of the Pacific Ocean. After cocktails and before dinner, they would engage in profound and spiritually moving carnal knowledge of the vigorous and sweaty variety.
Maybe twice, if we skip the appetizer.
After a warm night of post-dinner cuddling—and maybe more belly bumping, if he could recharge in time—they would get up, have breakfast, zoom to the airport for a series of flights out of the ass end of Mexico, and enjoy a weekend in Hawaii with their friends, Abel and Charlotte Yeager.
“Why exchange a cheap ocean view for a wildly expensive one?” he had asked.
“Because I’ve never been to Hawaii,” Alex had told him.
If she wanted something, Victor would eat broken glass to see she got it. She was that kind of woman. “And now look,” he said to himself. “Extreme buzzkill, incoming.”
Three young men swaggered up the hill with the gangsta-cool strut that was stamped into the DNA of amateur thugs everywhere. T-shirts stamped Bangers ’R’ Us would have been less obvious. Instead, they wore the uniform of every Mexican male under twenty—shiny football jerseys over sloppy pants. They sported all of the national team’s colors—green, white, and red—as if a flag had decided to go for a walk dressed as three punks.
Not punks, Dr. Alexandra Lopez would say. Misguided youths.
Victor shook the half-dozen pebbles in his hand like dice and waited for the wayward youngsters to make their approach. The youth in the middle stopped a few feet away, out of arm’s reach, and his amigos spread out in a flanking maneuver. A splattering of orange soda stains decorated the white jersey of the guy in the middle, who smiled and revealed the most disgusting teeth Victor had seen on a human.
Victor cringed. Orange soda must not cut plaque.
“You with the doctor?” said Teeth.
“Yes.”
“She treats the people? For free?”
“Yes.”
“Mi madre...” Teeth spoke without inflection, not even trying to sell the lie. “She has a headache. You have some drugs for that?”
“You sure you’re not looking for the dentist?”
“What?”
“I mean, shit, hombre. Have you been eating dirt all your life, or you just start lately?”
Teeth traded glances with Green Shirt, to his right, and jacked up his belligerence a notch by edging closer and practicing his baby-faced intimidating loom. The open hatchback of the Explorer forced the kid to dip his head, negating some of the loom’s effectiveness. The pull strap dangled in the kid’s face, and he ducked around it.
Victor stifled a smile. He’d been loomed over by the best, and this kid had a long way to go before he could call himself a quality loomer. Assuming he lived long enough.
“Give us the drugs, cocksucker,” Teeth growled.
“All the drugs,” Green Shirt chimed in. Red Shirt said nothing, but then again, Victor supposed that was only natural—Red Shirts weren’t important anyway, and the kid’s slack expression made him look as if he had some kind of mental impairment on top of that.
Victor squinted and cocked his head to one side. “You boys need to go home. Play with your narcotrafficante action figures or with the PS4. This is not a game for you to be playing.”
“You think I’m playing?” Teeth pulled up his soda-stained shirt to show off the butt of a revolver tucked in his waistband. “This is not a ga—ahh!”
Victor’s hand snapped out, whipping pea gravel into the kid’s face like shrapnel. Teeth jerked back, flinging up a belated forearm block. Victor powered off the SUV’s back deck in a fullback rush, driving his shoulder into the kid’s midriff. His hand snaked out and tugged the revolver free of the punk’s waistband.
When Victor stopped, the kid didn’t. Teeth hit the street on his back, head cracking against the pavement with an audible smack. Victor spun and leveled the revolver at Green Shirt, whose hand had disappeared into his back pocket.
“Don’t do it, amigo.”
Green Shirt froze. Red Shirt frowned as though vaguely confused.
Victor sidestepped to keep Teeth in his peripheral vision. “You pendejos are lucky. I have a friend, this Marine? He would have chop-sockyed all you pricks to oatmeal and fed you to the hogs. He does not have restraint. Not like me. Lucky for you, he is on vacation.” Victor waggled the pistol. “Now, pick up your friend, and don’t let me see you outside of Sunday school again. ¿Entiendes?”
He backed up and let the two would-be henchmen gather their dazed and fallen leader. As they slunk away. Green Shirt scowled as if to say, We’ll be back to kick your ass—a look common to dick-punched thugs everywhere.
After they’d gone, Victor resumed his seat, his happy mood tarnished. He inspected the weapon, a vintage Smith & Wesson Model 10—something Humphrey Bogart might have carried in one of his old black-and-white gangster movies. The bluing had worn off to bare metal on the cylinder and barrel, and the wooden grips shone from a hundred sweaty palms handling it. Victor flipped open the cylinder and discovered three cartridges, the brass shells tinged with green corrosion.
“Damn thing. Blow my hand off if I shoot it.” Victor punched the ejector and pocketed the shells. He tossed the gun into a milk crate loaded with boxes of Johnson & Johnson gauze, tongue depressors, and tape. “Throwing you in the ocean, Mr. Smith & Wesson.” The happy mood oozed back into his soul, and a grin tugged at his cheeks. “After sex, of course.”
Victor’s Law Numero Dos: “Make love as soon as possible.” He’d made that one up on the spot.
All of Victor’s clouds were lined with silver, unlike that doofus Yeager, who carried the whole world on his shoulders. Although come to think of it, the big, dumb jarhead had gotten almost goofy with happiness since he’d hooked up with Charlie. Victor could roger that. Alexandra Lopez injected pure joy right to his heart with just a smile and wink. Not even a trio of knuckleheads like the tricolor-shirt gang could put off Victor’s happy state for long.
One of a million of La Manzana’s ubiquitous chickens clucked her way across the road, keeping a wary eye on him as though he might fancy a chicken dinner. “Go on, el pollo. You’re safe for now.”
The hen didn’t look convinced.