| |
Molokai Forest Reserve, Molokai
Saturday, 8 May
1410 Local Time
To Charlie, the mood of the hike had turned from happy to funereal. Expressions of delight at the natural wonder and beauty of the island paradise had all but died off, and reactions from the hikers seemed subdued, contained. It felt wrong, somehow, to celebrate and enjoy their time here while others were suffering the shock and agony of brutal, unprovoked attacks.
Yeager had said terrorists wouldn’t ruin their honeymoon, but truly, they’d already done so. And so many people had had more than their vacations ruined. Guilt knifed her heart. How shallow was it to complain about her mild unhappiness when others were dealing with the loss of loved ones? She couldn’t even imagine the horror they were enduring.
The trail pinched to single file and wound through a series of switchbacks. No one had spoken in the last few minutes, and Charlie noted with surprise that she and Betty Pyle had fallen behind. Lu Kim, Tom from Rhode Island, and the California vegans had disappeared ahead of them, lost around a bend in the trail.
They separated further when Betty Pyle stopped to tie her shoes—a serviceable pair of Magellan hiking shoes, Charlie noted. She’d looked at that exact style before upgrading to a pair of Merrells prior to the trip. The older woman also wore a pair of unflattering desert-brown shorts and a tan cotton T-shirt under a green Eddie Bauer short-sleeved shirt that had seen better days.
Betty squinted up at Charlie as she tightened her laces. “Abel seems a little under the weather today.”
Charlie smirked. “War wounds from last night’s stories.”
“Hah! Well phrased.”
“I’ve never actually seen him drunk, so this was a first for me. And hopefully a last. It wouldn’t bother me except for the whole romantic honeymoon thing.”
“He seems to dote on you, so I doubt you need worry.” Betty finished with her shoes and straightened, brushing out her shorts. “Besides, we have to give our Marines a little slack. They have a bond you and I will never understand. Ted recognizes a kindred spirit in your Mr. Yeager. It’s like they can smell each other—smell the death and bloodshed and sense the weight of the shield they bear to protect the rest of us from harm.”
“I know, I just—”
Pop-pop-pop!
Gunshots. Loud and close. Charlie was an instant behind Betty Pyle in hurling herself to the earth. She scrambled after the spry old lady as both of them sought cover off the trail. Screams laced the forest where Lu Kim and the others had disappeared. Charlie squeezed into a dense growth of ferns, pushing past Betty, who had her cell phone out, peering at the face of it.
“Signal?” Charlie whispered.
“Nothing,” Betty said equally quietly.
“Damn.”
“Damn is right.”
“What happened?”
Betty nudged her shoulder, pointing out a natural tunnel through the brush that led in the direction of the yelling, angry voices. “Let’s go find out.”
Before Charlie could voice a protest, the older woman belly-crawled forward. Charlie watched the soles of her Magellans worm past and disappear into the undergrowth. Swishing brush marked the older woman’s path as she crawled off the trail and up an incline toward the deadfall.
Charlie hesitated. Heading toward the sound of gunfire had never seemed the wisest course of action. Hunkering down and staying invisible seemed more prudent, considering they were unarmed.
The voices had gone quiet, but the trees rattled with the squawks of disturbed birds. The scent of loamy earth tickled Charlie’s nostrils, and she wiggled her nose to stifle a sneeze. The soil was soft and deep, and staying put seemed like a really, really good idea.
Charlie huffed out a frustrated breath. She wiggled forward, following Betty Pyle’s crawl marks. She found Betty hiding under the remains of a dead tree that lay at a forty-five-degree angle and was held up by its neighbors like a drunk at a party. It overlooked the hiking trail, and the gap under the vine-covered tree proved an excellent vantage as matted brush packed the triangular space under it and allowed a green-filtered view of the scene below. Charlie wormed her way up next to the older woman, who patted the air, gesturing for her to stay down.
As if she needed to be told.
Charlie winced at the variety of crawly things motoring around the earth under the dead tree. Steadfastly refusing to look at a beetle the size of a walnut that waddled past her nose, she peered through the foliage at the leaders from their hiking group. She spotted Lu Kim and the two vegans sitting hunched together, hands laced over their heads. A trio of Asian gunmen hovered nearby, index fingers alongside their trigger guards. They wore black tactical clothing and black berets, and they carried stubby carbines that were either automatic or semiauto. Unlike Abel, Charlie wasn’t into gun porn, so she couldn’t tell what they were by sight alone.
The trio became a crowd when six more appeared from the surrounding forest, including one brutally ugly specimen with a face as harsh as an Easter Island statue. That one appeared to be in charge. He issued a string of orders in a singsong language that—to Charlie’s untrained ear—could have been anything from Mandarin Chinese to Korean to High Klingon. One thing it didn’t sound like was Hawaiian.
At his direction, two men forced Lu Kim and the California couple to their feet. With pushes and prods, they marched the three captives away, heading north, perpendicular to the marked trail. The leader moved a few steps farther away.
Only when he toed the unresponsive foot of someone lying prone did Charlie take a closer look. Tom from Rhode Island lay sprawled in the ferns. Clearly dead.
She bit back a gasp.
The ugly giant barked more orders, and two more gunmen hustled over and dragged Tom off the trail. His head lolled on slack muscles, confirming her snap judgment. Dead. The leader dispatched two others back down the trail—toward Abel!
“Dammit,” she hissed under her breath. Charlie and Betty exchanged glances, sharing a silent communication. The guys would be walking right into a trap. No, correct that: Abel had undoubtedly heard the shots. He would be running directly into a trap.
“We need to draw them off,” Charlie said into the older woman’s ear. “Are you up for it?”
Click.
The tiny metallic sound from directly behind her froze the blood in Charlie’s veins. Somebody kicked her foot, and a guttural voice said, “Up. Up. On feet.”
Charlie risked a look over her shoulder. A black-clad soldier stood behind them, holding a rifle against his shoulder, his cheek pressed to the wire-frame stock. His finger was inside the trigger guard.
“Well,” Betty said. “Hell and damnation.”
#
AT A HUNDRED YARDS, Yeager was already feeling it—legs straining, breath coming hard. He hated running—always had—and the last few years of avoiding it had exacted a toll. As a boot, he’d come in dead last on company runs time and again, as the DIs had frequently reminded him. Speed it up, Yeager. Get your ass in gear, you maggot.
That had been many years ago in a body younger, stronger—and let’s face it, leaner—than the one he hauled up this narrow, humid trail at an altitude where it was already hard to breathe.
Running parallel to the trail, dodging, ducking, and twisting through heavy foliage, low-hanging limbs, and clinging vines was its own special edition of hell on earth. And he couldn’t just blunder through the brush. He had to remain somewhat quiet so as to not alert the shooters. If they heard him coming, it would be game over in a heartbeat.
Speed it up, Yeager.
With an application of will power, Yeager managed to hold his pace—slower than a jog, faster than a walk. Any more speed was out of the question. The grade angled uphill, adding to his misery. It canted steeply enough that at times he was digging in with his fingers to keep moving forward. The trail roughly followed the contour of a ridge as it switchbacked up to its highest elevation. On his right, the brow of the ridge topped out and angled sharply downward to the depth of a canyon below, while to the left, the grade sloped away more gradually.
The vegetation was a green blur.
Yeager topped out on a lip overlooking a wide spot in the trail. He stumbled to a halt and braced a hand against a fallen tree. Spent brass cartridge cases littered the soil. Churned and trampled earth marked the trail.
The shooters, whoever they were, had departed the scene. Yeager remained still and tried to control the heaving gulps of air his lungs clamored for.
No bodies. Whoever fired had either missed or—no, check that.
A pair of hiking boots, toes up, poked from the weeds beside the trail. Yeager clenched his galloping heart with a steel fist and sidestepped down the incline, moving slowly so as to not draw attention. The booted feet came into view, followed by hairy legs and men’s hiking shorts. John. Or Tom. From Rhode Island.
Yeager allowed his heart to start again. Tom was no longer going back to Rhode Island, except in a box. Three entrance wounds, clustered center mass, made sure of that.
Yeager conducted a careful sweep of the area, staying out of the soft soil where many tracks crisscrossed the trail. Save those for later. At the moment, it was more important to determine if there were any other casualties.
When he could safely say that no one else from the group—including Charlie—remained in the vicinity, Yeager worked on calming his breathing and reading the scene laid out before him. The footprints varied in number, size, and quality. He picked out several heavy-tread patterns that he classified as military-grade boots.
A dozen cartridge casings littered the scene—a lot of brass for only one victim. Who were they shooting at, and more importantly, did their targets get away?
Where is my wife? Yeager checked his phone. No service.
Think, Yeager. Think. He clubbed his forehead with a palm, trying to knock loose the frozen gears. He started a circuit of the trail, staying in the grass along the sides, trying to read the profusion of tracks. An imprint of Lu Kim’s tiny footprint led him to a spot where clearly three people had sat together for a time. Round impressions of butts—along with deeper angled divots where heels dug into the soil—suggested as much, anyway. He was no Apache tracker, but he believed the trio had been escorted away to the left of the trail, down the easy slope of the ridge.
That accounted for four of six people, leaving two...
“Yeager!” Pettigrew and Pyle stumbled into view and stomped over part of the tracks before Yeager could signal them to stop.
“What the hell?” Pettigrew wheezed, holding his chest, bent at the waist.
“Ambush of some kind. Best guess. Or our people ran into some bad guys up here. Tom’s dead,” Yeager said with a gesture to the corpse. “But I can’t find any other bodies or blood trail.” That he’d dispassionately described the lack-of-blood situation with Charlie at peril surprised even him. The warrior brain was waking up, taking over operations from the gibbering husband without a clue. Yeager welcomed the change, allowing his emotions to recede into the background, feeling the coldness steal through his mind and shunt any negative thoughts into a box to be opened later.
“We have three of our people moving that way”—he pointed with a bladed hand—“under escort of two. Four to eight OPFOR total. Disposition of remaining enemy unknown.”
At Pyle’s baffled look, Pettigrew transferred the message, cupping a hand close to the man’s ear. He concluded with, “We don’t know where Betty is.” By then, Osterchuk had appeared, red-faced and blowing hard, so Pettigrew repeated the message.
“Listen up,” Osterchuk wheezed. “I saw a couple of guys with AKs headed back down the trail. They didn’t see me.”
Yeager nodded and continued sweeping the area in slow passes, moving in a wider and wider spiral from the point of contact—which he identified as the pile of brass.
Osterchuk picked up one of the casings and examined it. “Seven-six-two by three-nine. From one of the AKs, I imagine.”
“That helps not one damn bit,” Pettigrew griped. “Every ass-lickin’ commie and terrorist on the planet uses AKs.”
“I know that,” Osterchuk countered. “I was just making an observation.”
“Your observation ain’t helpful.”
Yeager reached the pair in two long strides, caught them each by the shirt collar, and jerked them together. “Stow it, both of you. We have people missing, and y’all are acting like this is a picnic.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” they chorused.
Pyle looked on, squinting in concentration. He nodded his understanding.
“The three of you, haul ass off this mountain.” Yeager released the two men. “Hump the trail as fast as you can without dying. Get some help. I’m gonna see if I can track down where they took our people.”
“Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant,” Osterchuk said.
“I tracked Victor Charles back in the day,” Winston said. “Like an injun, only of the darker variety. I’d rather come with you if it’s all the same.”
Yeager hesitated.
“Take him,” Osterchuk said. “That way, when you find our people, you can send him back with the coordinates.”
“All right.” Yeager nodded. “That makes some kind of sense. Let’s—”
Voices. They came from the top of the ridge, speaking in a foreign language.
“Scatter,” Yeager hissed. “Get Pyle. Go to ground.”