| |
Fair Breezes Cruise Ship, Off the Coast of Molokai, Hawaii
Saturday, 8 May
0840 Local Time
Five Hours before the Honolulu Bombing
An epic hangover cracked Abel Yeager’s head like an egg. His yolk of good cheer dribbled out, leaving nothing but an empty shell of misery. A bowling ball squatted atop his shoulders, heavy and hard, while chimpanzees trampolined off his stomach lining.
The pocket-sized cruise ship, Fair Breezes, bobbed more than a cork on a fishing line, and the only thing keeping Yeager’s insides from erupting in a volcanic expulsion of stale beer and pretzels was the uncertainty of making it to the head without falling over from dizziness. The stateroom bed embraced him in sweat-damp sheets and held him in a plush cocoon. He planned to stay under the blankets until paramedics arrived.
A larger-than-normal wave rolled the ship. Yeager groaned and covered his eyes in the crook of an elbow.
“Serves you right.” With an e-reader braced on her belly, Charlie reclined near the balcony doorway, sunlight streaming through her coppery hair and a breeze ruffling the collar of the cotton cover-up she wore over her one-piece swimsuit. Her long legs were propped on the corner of the bed, crossed at the ankles, treating Yeager to a view of the soles of her feet. “How late did you stay up drinking with your new best friends?”
“I don’t know,” Yeager mumbled. “One o’clock, I think.”
“No, you came in at three.”
If you knew, why’d you ask? He kept his mouth shut.
“Reeking of beer, I might add.”
You just did. That, too, he kept to himself. The warning flags were out: Charlie was pissed off and didn’t need any nitrous oxide injections to get her fired off the starting line. Normally, Charlotte Buchanan Yeager was a joy to live with—smart, funny, and naturally happy. Like Victor. On the rare occasions when she did lose it, Yeager found it best to lock up the breakables and hunker down for a storm. His bleary-eyed reading of that day’s weather indicated a squall approaching, and it could either blow over or brew up to hurricane force.
“Just my luck,” Charlie said without looking up from her reader. “I finally ditch the kids and go on a much-delayed honeymoon cruise with my husband, who used to be a Marine. And guess what? The ship is packed with Marines.”
“Three is hardly packed. And those guys were salty.”
All three of them were Vietnam vets, telling tales of the Rockpile, Ca Lu, and Hill 881. Hue City... Khe Sanh. Who wouldn’t want to hear those war stories?
“And while you’re out swapping lies with the Leatherneck Legends, your wife is waiting up for you in her brand-new nightie. See-through, like you like it.” Charlie stabbed her reader with a finger and flipped an electronic page.
Yeager could almost hear the page snap. He lifted his pounding head with ponderous effort. “I’m sorry I missed that.” And he meant it. She could make his heart race when she was wearing a spacesuit and face cream. Charlie in sexy lingerie made him lose his mind. He groaned again and flopped back. “I really, really am.”
She must have taken pity on him, because she got up and brought him a bottle of water from the minifridge. “Here. Rehydrate, caveman. You’re going to need it today.”
“Why’s that—” A memory clawed its way up through the corpses of dead brain cells. “Wait. Oh, hell no.”
“Oh, hell yes, Staff Sergeant Yeager.” Charlie stood by the bed with her hands on her hips and a smug expression. “We hike the nature reserve today. Three hours of exercise should sweat all the beer right out of you.”
“God hates me,” Yeager groaned.
“God will forgive you. I, on the other hand...”
#
PUERTO ARISTA, CHIAPAS, Mexico
Friday, 7 May
2210 Local
Approximately Eighteen Hours before Honolulu Bombing
Dr. Alexandra Lopez stalked into the bedroom, muttering curses. One towel wrapped her figure, while another rode her head like a downy-white turban. Blood trickled a thin line along her thigh. She breezed by the bed, where Victor was nursing a full tummy and savoring the comfort of clean sheets and foam-filled pillows.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, though truth be told, his attention was arrested by the sight of Alex’s butt as she bent over and rooted around in the boxes of medical supplies lining one wall of the condo’s bedroom. The towel rode up the back of her thighs the way a super-short miniskirt would. Just a little more...
“I cut myself shaving my legs. You Americans and your damned fetish for shaving.” Alex opened a second box. “Where’s the box with the bandages?”
“Hmm? Oh. Next one over, I think. Deep in the box... no, really deep.”
“Aie! What’s this?” Alex popped upright with the old Smith & Wesson dangling from a finger by the trigger guard.
“Una pistola.”
His flippancy earned him a cocked eyebrow and a pursed lip. Alex crossed her free arm and propped the elbow of the one holding the firearm.
“It was Surrender Your Gun Day in Armlick, Mexico,” Victor said in English. “How lucky for us.”
“Mm-hmm,” Alex said, which Victor translated as Bullshit.
“Some kids trying to be tough,” he said with a shrug. “Set it by the door so I don’t forget to throw it in the ocean.” Victor let his eyes drift closed as he listened to Alex bustle around, getting herself ready for bed. Her soft sounds had a domesticated feel that left him... content. Was this how Yeager felt with Charlie? It was really nice.
Not for the first time, the word marriage crept into his unguarded mind.
Shit, dude. Get a grip.
Alexandra was a doctor, with more degrees than a thermometer, brilliant and beautiful and accomplished. As for Victor, ever since his antique Huey had blown its engine, he was a helicopter pilot with no helicopter and a former United States Marine—Bronze Star, Purple Heart. He was also a part-time smuggler—of contraband only, not drugs or people—and occasional soldier of fortune.
And of course, don’t forget: galactic-class heartbreaker and lovemaker.
But hell, Yeager was a big, dumb jarhead without enough nickels in his pocket to buy a pack of gum, and he’d hooked a woman almost—almost—as pretty as Alex.
The bed sagged as she slipped under the covers. Her warm, very naked body cuddled up next to him, sending wakey-wakey signals to his sleepy pecker. Alex hooked a leg over his, and the heat from her sex warmed his thigh.
“Who were the kids?” she murmured.
“Huh? What?”
“You said some kids were trying to be tough. Who were they?”
Victor blinked and tried to focus. Punks with guns were about the last thing he wanted to talk about with two firm boobs pressed against his side. “Ahh. Just some misguided youths. I spanked them and sent them to bed without supper.”
Alex lifted up to look him in the eye. “You could have been shot. Again.”
“Not me. I’m bulletproof.”
“Bool shit.” She traced a ragged scar on his ribcage. “You almost didn’t make it last time, mi hermoso.”
“I had motivation.” Victor grinned and twisted around, pulling Alex tight to his chest.
“Mmm,” Alex hummed. “I feel your motivation poking me in the belly.”
“What can I say? You are extremely motivational.”
Much later, Victor sank into the fog of sleep, cocooned in cottony bliss. The only sound in the darkened room came from the ocean breeze buffeting the windowpanes, and the very faint shush of breakers rolling in from the west. His consciousness floated on a lazy stream, thoughts dissipating before forming, and his awareness ebbing on the outgoing tide of the ocean of sleep. In that state of near-unconsciousness, he thought he heard Alex whisper so softly that the puffs of air from her words tickled his shoulder, and her tiny voice came from a distance, so he wasn’t sure whether he actually heard her or only dreamed of her speaking: “Te amo.”
I love you.
#
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE, Molokai
Saturday, 8 May
1355 Local
Ten Minutes after the Honolulu Bombing
The combination of steamy heat and brilliant spears of sunlight stabbing his eyes treated Yeager’s head to a drum line of painful throbbing. He counted himself lucky to have managed a quiet morning of upchucking his toenails before Charlie dragged him from the cabin to join the platoon of tourists for the boat ride to the shore of Molokai. The brochure had represented Molokai as “emerald mountains lofting over blue diamond seas,” and Yeager could find no fault with the description. They landed at a boat ramp next to a white-sand beach. A bus idled in a nearby parking lot.
Soon after a drive in air-conditioned comfort, the hardier and more adventurous passengers of the Fair Breezes had piled out into the tropical heat and transferred to a trio of four-wheel-drive vehicles. After the gut-crunching drive, they reached an overlook to a deep gorge, where everyone supplied their oohs and aahs. Venturing past that point required permission, which the tour company had obtained, so the passengers shouldered their packs and followed their petite guide up a steep trail, heading eastward into the Molokai Forest Reserve. To their right, the mile-high tip of Kamakou and the East Molokai shield volcano dominated the skyline. To their left were trees and trees and more trees.
Wayward Ventures, the tour company that operated the Fair Breezes, billed their Hawaiian cruise as an “off the beaten path” experience. As a small ship that carried about forty passengers, the Breezes catered to a demographic that spanned middle-aged people to hardy seniors. The passengers tended to be younger and in better shape than the average cruise ship tourist. The three Vietnam vets and their wives were the oldest by far, whereas Yeager and Charlie fit near the other end of the age bracket. A vegan couple from Mountain View, California—who checked all the appropriate boxes on the social-awareness questionnaire—won the youth prize, clocking in somewhere under thirty.
Only nine passengers, including the Leatherneck Legends—as Charlie called them—had opted in for this hike. As hikes went, it could make a Boy Scout cry. “Vigorous” was how the pamphlet described it.
Fucking miserable was how Yeager labeled it.
By the middle of the six-mile hike, even the California vegans were starting to flag. The tour leader called a halt, and everyone milled to a stop on a shaded section of narrow trail. Yeager parked his butt on a boulder bordering the path and mopped sweat with the back of his sleeve. He flexed his left hand, which had started tingling again. After taking a partial blow from a machete to the forearm, the hand had never really been right again. Of course, whenever Charlie asked about it, he claimed there was no numbness at all.
He drained his sixth bottle of water. Winston Pettigrew appeared at Yeager’s elbow. At an age when most men wanted a rocking chair and a nap, Winston—one of the three Leatherneck Legends—had the energy of a hyperactive four-year-old. He reminded Yeager of a brisket left on the grill too long: lean, black, hard, and gnarly. He wore a too-big cap with “Vietnam Vet” stitched in yellow on the forehead, and he huddled inside an ancient Members Only windbreaker despite the heat.
“That’s your wife, right?” Pettigrew hitched his chin to where Charlie stood next to the couple from California. All three heads were together, looking at Charlie’s phone. By the couple’s rapt expressions, Yeager gathered his wife was showing baby pictures of John Riley Yeager, seven pounds, four ounces. Charlie couldn’t get enough of showing off the kid to anyone who would hold still long enough. To Yeager, the boy resembled a miniature Edgar G. Robinson—pissed off and scowling.
“Yes, it is,” Yeager said.
“Shee-it, boy. I had her back in my cabin, I’d never come out.”
Yeager snorted. “I wish I’d thought of that before this here Bataan Death March.”
“Whaddya think’s going on?” Pettigrew had a gravel-mixer voice from a fifty-year Marlboro habit.
“With what?”
“Lu Kim. She took a call on her sat phone, and now look at her.”
The activity director from the cruise line, Lu Kim was as chipper a person as he’d had ever met. He suspected the tiny Korean woman’s blood could be used to cure hatred in the Middle East. Yeager leaned out and craned his neck to find Lu at the front of the pack, distancing herself from the rest by hunching over her phone with a finger in the other ear. Her posture resembled that of someone sucker punched in the gut.
His scalp prickled. “I don’t know. Bad news, looks like.”
Danny Osterchuk wandered within range, waving a hand in front of his nose. “Hoowee. That heat don’t halfway leave a man drooping, don’t she?” A Minnesota-bred farm boy, Osterchuk was Winston Pettigrew’s genetic opposite. Six-two with the girth of a polar bear, Osterchuk hadn’t missed a buffet since mustering out in 1971. Sweat slicked his ruddy face and soaked the collar of his XXXL Hawaiian shirt. Early on, Yeager had voted him most likely to collapse of a heart attack. “I can’t believe we’re paying good money for this. Uncle Sam used to pay me to hike in the damned jungle. I should have stayed on the ship with my wife.”
“Look on the bright side,” Winston said. “Ain’t nobody shooting at you. No malaria, no booby traps, no crotch rot. No two-dollar hoes with the ten-dollar clap.”
“But enough sweat to drown an alligator.” Yeager squeegeed his forehead with a finger and flicked the droplets away. “Fair warning, Osterchuk: you fall out, ain’t nobody doing CPR.”
“If I fall in a combat zone,” Osterchuk chanted, “box me up and ship me home.”
Pettigrew broke into a greasy cough, bending double and holding his knees. “Need a butt,” he wheezed after the spasm passed.
“No smoking here in God’s garden, ol’ buddy.” Osterchuk thumped a meaty palm on Pettigrew’s back. “We can’t fuck up that volcanic tang with yucky cigarette smoke.”
“Uh-oh. Check this out,” Pettigrew said.
Lu Kim was waving her arms for everybody to gather around. In cuffed shorts and a tan work shirt over a tank top, Kim stood at a whopping five foot one.
“There’s been a terrorist attack in Honolulu,” Kim announced. Though pale and shaky, she spoke with a firm voice and appeared to have her wits gathered. A stir passed through the passengers as she continued. “Several bombs exploded at Waikiki locations. An unknown number of dead or injured.” She held up a hand to halt the first sputtering questions. “If you have friends or family in the Honolulu area, transportation will be made available to you immediately. And of course, we should have cellular phone coverage and Wi-Fi once we return to the ship.”
“Who did it?” asked a passenger Yeager didn’t know.
“I don’t have that information at this time.”
“Fucking ragheads,” muttered Pettigrew.
“What if we want to go home?” That question came from a Rhode Island insurance salesman named Tom or John or something. “Do we get a refund?”
Yeager tuned out the answer and found Charlie then put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned in, resting her head on his chest. Yeager sighed and held his wife close. “Honolulu’s two, three hundred miles away. We’re safe here. And should be even safer on the ship.”
“I know.” Charlie hugged him. “More random violence. And for what?”
“No good reason, I’m sure.”
“How can we keep going? Can we have our honeymoon and enjoy ourselves when America’s been attacked? I don’t feel like having fun, knowing what those people are going through.”
“We don’t let the terrorists win, for one thing,” Yeager said. “We’ve planned this trip for months. I’ll be damned if I’ll cut it short because some fanatic is killing people to make his sick point.”
Charlie searched his face with her clear blue eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” Yeager grinned and planted a wet kiss on her forehead. “No terrorist is going to spoil our honeymoon. Besides, Por Que and Alex are coming. I’d hate to miss seeing them.”