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Māmala Bay, off the Coast of Oahu, Hawaii
Saturday, 8 May
1730 Local Time
Hawaii for Hawaiians, now and forever.
Kamahalo Makani braced one foot on the gunwale of the thirty-foot sport fisher. The boat bobbed in the light chop of Māmala Bay, drifting with the current half a kilometer from the tip of runway 8R/26L—also known as the Reef Runway—of the Honolulu International Airport. To Makani’s surprise, Homeland Security and FAA officials had halted flight operations into and out of the airport—commonly referred to as HNL—for only two hours, despite the attacks in nearby Waikiki. With more than seven hundred daily takeoffs and landings, HNL was small by global standards, not even making it into the top fifty of the world’s busiest airports. It was, however, the top tourist gateway to the islands, handling an approximate twenty-five thousand tourists per day on four runways. News reports showed the terminals jammed with people fleeing the islands. Lines for security screening extended outside and along the sidewalks. Shutting down the airport would have meant mass chaos and pandemonium.
Had they closed the airport, Makani would have had to abort his mission. They had not, so he would have to go through with it. Makani examined the kernel of unease in his gut and was surprised—but not surprised—to find that it was dread. He had never killed anything bigger than a cockroach, yet that night, he would kill several hundred people.
A string of twinkling lights hung in the evening sky, indicating a steady stream of incoming air traffic on approach from the east. As Makani watched, a 777 with Delta markings roared into the setting sun, climbing for altitude and banking out over the ocean. The thunderous rumble of the twin GE90 turbofan engines vibrated Makani’s chest, adding to the near-panic thudding of his heart.
The time had come. He had to act. Hawaii for Hawaiians.
Kanoa had said, “Makani, you will be the sole person in strike team four. You will be on your own. Alone. Harden your heart to the necessities of the mission.”
Instead of being hardened, his heart threatened to blow out of his chest. The salty spray of the ocean mixed with sweat beading his face, and the breeze sent shivers through his cold, damp flesh. He wished he’d had a teammate, someone to share the pressure. And the blame.
He believed in the cause. Hawaii should be free. The unlawful annexation of the island kingdom by the rapacious, greedy whites had been facilitated by the peaceful nature of the rightful inhabitants. Well, no more peace. No more aloha. It was time for war.
Makani lifted the North Korean copy of the Russian-made 9K38 Igla, man-portable air-defense missile system to his shoulder. The Igla used a heat-seeking warhead to track and kill its prey, zeroing in on the hot exhaust of rotary or fixed-wing aircraft. The detachable trigger mechanism was already assembled to the blocky, breadbox-sized control seated at the front of the weapon. The launcher tube extended backward over his shoulder. A simple sight and even simpler trigger made it usable by the most illiterate peasant soldier, and the missile itself was truly a fire-and-forget device. The operator merely had to point it toward the target, achieve a lock tone, and shoot. Then he’d drop the launcher, crank up the boat’s twin 250s, and scoot for safety the second the missile exited the tube on its plume of fire.
The instructor had explained in broken English that Makani would probably only be able to strike one aircraft, incoming or outgoing. For outbound air traffic, due to wake-turbulence separation minimums, a jetliner would not depart until the preceding aircraft had reached at least four nautical miles and perhaps as many as eight. The heavier the preceding aircraft, the longer the next flight needed to wait before departing, to avoid any risk of hitting the wingtip vortices of the previous plane. Wake turbulence had been cited as a cause of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 into Belle Harbor, Queens, in 2001, and ever since, ATC had been scrupulous about minimum separation distances. Four nautical miles was about thirty percent beyond the Igla’s fifty-two-hundred-meter range, meaning jet A would be out of the engagement envelope before jet B left the runway. If Makani chose inbound traffic, the line of approaching aircraft would see the strike and veer off before getting into range. In any event, the first exploding aircraft would no doubt disrupt traffic and divert all aircraft out of the kill zone.
Meaning one shot, one kill.
Truthfully, even if more planes were within range, Makani knew in his heart that he wouldn’t have the guts to reload, aim, and fire a second missile. Shivers racked his body and he urgently needed to urinate. Though there were many targets to choose from, he would have the strength for one shot and one shot only.
“So pick one,” Makani said to himself.
#
AIRBORNE, ON APPROACH to Honolulu International Airport
Saturday, 8 May
1745 Hours Local
After an unexpected layover at LAX due to the hotel-bombing disruption in Hawaii’s inbound traffic, Victor Ruiz was getting goddamn sick and tired of sitting on planes. At LAX, they had watched the news of the attacks along with the other passengers. The airline allowed people the option to change tickets to alternate destinations without a fee, and the check-in desk was mobbed in minutes.
“You promised me Hawaii,” Alex said when he asked her if she wanted to abort.
“It’ll be nuts there.”
“You’ll fit right in.”
Somehow, he had the middle seat again. This time, an obese woman had claimed the armrest and part of his seat and seemed determined to keep both. Her flesh pressed into his side like a squishy pillow. Immediately after takeoff, the woman had popped in earbuds, turned on the seat-back movie system, and reclined her seat as far as it would go.
Victor had emptied two tall bottles of water while waiting then switched to beer after they were airborne, and now he was back on water. All the liquid had the predictable impact on his bladder, meaning he had to disturb the sack of pudding in the aisle seat and stand in line for the head every hour or so. The last time he’d interrupted the woman’s movie marathon, her glare had been so cold it should have frozen the pee inside his bladder.
Make it a pee-sicle.
The shuffling and bumping of his return woke Alex from her latest nap. When not working, she could sleep more than a house cat. She wiped her mouth with a grimace and looked at him with puffy eyes. “Are we there yet?”
Her question was punctuated by a ding and the captain’s announcement that they were beginning their descent. Through the porthole, Victor saw nothing but black ocean and a faint indigo smear of horizon. The wing’s flashing light strobed the darkness.
“Finally.” He checked his watch. “A hundred or so hours since we woke up in Mexico.”
“Funny.” Alex stretched her hands straight up as if surrendering. Her shirt tightened across her chest in a way that Victor found distracting. “But I’m not tired at all.”
“Amazing.”
She leaned close and whispered, “Can you ask the lady on the end to get up? I need the toilet.”
#
WEST COAST OF MAUI, Hawaii
Saturday, 8 May
1745 Hours
On the western edge of the island of Maui, dozens of resort hotels lined the beaches from Lahaina to Honokowai Point in a near-solid line of luxury development stretching more than five miles. The properties were designed to pamper tourists with pineapple-flavored drinks and white-sand beaches, offer them fluffy towels and turn-down service, feast them with luaus, and adorn them with leis.
The man known as Manu Ho began the slaughter at the sliding-glass entrance doors of the Hyatt Regency Spa and Resort. He led two other supposed Niho soldiers toward the lobby of the hotel overlooking Kā’anapali Beach. His men followed him toward the valet-parking apron in front of the Hyatt. The members of the strike team wore black pants and T-shirts and covered their faces with black ski masks. They each carried a Type 88-1 automatic rifle with a thirty-round banana-shaped magazine, along with a Baek-Du San copy of the CZ 75 pistol and their blade of personal choice. Manu Ho’s choice was a pineapple-harvesting machete with a plain wooden handle and a fifteen-inch blade that thickened toward the tip.
His group was one of four teams striking targets all along the Maui coastline.
An overweight white woman and a teenager lingered to the left of the Hyatt entry, gazing into their phones. Ho triggered a burst from the hip, ripping the woman from her stretch pants to her colorful headband. A tiny swivel brought the Type 88-1 in line with the daughter. Ho stitched a compressed burst of fire into the younger woman, punching holes through the phone she held and slamming her into the portico’s support column. She slid to her butt, painting a streak of crimson on the white stucco.
His men fired in controlled bursts. More tourists dropped. The screams began.
The team split around a Cadillac Escalade parked in the drive. A native Hawaiian valet, not old enough to shave, froze halfway out of the SUV’s door, dark eyes bulging wide. Ho twitched his head. Go! He bypassed the black vehicle and led the way into the lobby.
“Hawaii for Hawaiians,” Ho shouted. “Now and forever.”
#
AIRBORNE, ON APPROACH to Honolulu International Airport
Saturday, 8 May
1750 Hours Local
Victor pinched his nose and cleared the pressure on his ears. The attendants roved up and down the aisles with trash bags, admonishing those with laptops to power down and put them away. The aircraft engines whined, and the flaps groaned. Victor caught glimpses through the porthole of sparkling lights set against a velvet-dark sea.
Alex took his hand and grinned. “This is going to be so much fun!”
#
MĀMALA BAY, OFF THE Coast of Oahu
Saturday, 8 May
1754 Local
Makani eyed the traffic and made his choice. He sighted on an inbound Delta flight, but his hands were shaking so badly that, by the time he’d gotten a lock, the plane was on the ground. He gingerly set the launcher on a bench seat and hunched over to light a cigarette. He had never smoked... until the day he was selected for this mission. The instructor had handed him a smoke right after his first successful training session. Despite his hacking and coughing, the nicotine had seemed to soothe his jittery nerves.
He decided to have another and see if that helped with the shakes.
#
AIRBORNE, ON APPROACH to Honolulu International Airport
Saturday, 8 May
1800 Hours Local
They landed with a double-thump, and Victor breathed out a sigh. Not for the first time, he wished he could sleep on a plane. Being airborne with someone else at the wheel left him edgy and paranoid.
Victor creaked off the jet bridge with sweat patches under his arms and two carry-on bags under his eyes. Alexandra, in contrast, was fresh-faced and chipper. They wheeled their luggage into the terminal a little after six o’clock in the evening. Two pretty girls in flower-print dresses handed out leis. Their smiles seemed brittle and forced.
The airport teemed with extra security. Police officers in full SWAT gear patrolled the concourses, dogs at their heels, M4s slung across their body armor. The lines at the TSA checkpoints meandered through mazes of black stanchions, hundreds of people deep—tired parents with fractious children and couples holding hands. Conversation was muted, the eyes of the departing passengers haunted. The buzz of tension was so strong that it vibrated on the back of Victor’s tongue.
“Looks like everyone else is leaving,” Alex said.
“Should mean a good deal on a hotel,” Victor muttered through a yawn.
“That’s awful!”
After a stop at the rental counter, they drove to a chain hotel near the airport and checked into a room with a king bed. Victor changed into shorts and a T-shirt, found the hotel’s gym, and used the elliptical. He followed that with a few sets of curls, flies, push-ups, and crunches. By the time he showered and changed clothes, he’d shaken off travel-induced zombie-ism.
Too tired to go out, they ate an overpriced meal at the hotel’s restaurant. On the television over the bar, a newscaster standing at an airport lobby was speaking into a microphone, looking grave. People were running around in the background. The screen showed a video of the night sky, shaky and out of focus. The sound was muted and the TV too far away for Victor to read the crawl. It looked like bad news anyway, and he wasn’t in the mood for bad news.
“I tried calling Charlie,” Alexandra said as they waited for their order.
“Anything?”
“No answer.”
“Probably out of range.” Victor sipped a cold Modelo. “Or, you know, they’re dancing at a fancy-dress ball on their cruise ship.”
“Can you see Abel dancing at a ball?”
“Hah!” Victor added in English, “Only if somebody was chooting at his feets.”
Alex pulled a face. “Will you stop with the Chicano gang-banger accent? You know I hate it when you speak like a moron.”
“Is how I talk. Besides, I thought you liked that I was a not as esmart as choo.” Victor winked. “Anyway, we’ll see the Yeagers tomorrow morning sometime. I’m sure they’re just busy partying and whatnot.”
“You’re right, I know.” Alex glanced at her watch. “We should go to bed.”
“What? You slept, like, a hundred hours on the plane!”
“You really aren’t very bright, are you? I said go to bed, not go to sleep.”
#
MĀMALA BAY, OFF THE coast of Oahu
Saturday, 8 May
1830 Local
Makani was ready. This time for sure.
A whining roar cut the night as an Aloha Airlines 757 spooled up on the tarmac. Makani sighted on the jetliner and steadied his breathing, which was coming in fast gulps. He blocked out the line of portholes, refusing to picture the passengers in their seats, heads bowed over magazines or engaged in conversation with their neighbors.
The 757 started its takeoff roll, gaining speed from a walk to a jog to a run then to a full-out sprint. Thrust from the engines powered out in twin shimmers of overheated air, driving the airframe down the runway in a thunderous crescendo of percussion. At V1, the jet’s nose tilted up, followed in seconds by V2, whereupon the twelve-thousand-ton monster lifted from the earth.
Makani pressed the first stage of the trigger, panning the missile tube from left to right to keep the Aloha Airlines Boeing framed in the optical sights. With a squeal, the missile locked. A spasm of terror clutched his heart. Doubt swept through him. The lives of at least two hundred people hung by the weight of his trigger finger. Once done, there would be nothing left of the old Kamahalo Makani. There would only be the mass killer Kamahalo Makani. His jaw trembled, and he forgot how to breathe. His insides clenched, and his bowels threatened to flood his shorts with shit.
Hawaii for Hawaiians. Makani clenched his eyes closed. And fired.