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Molokai Forest Reserve
Saturday, 8 May
1955 Local Time
True to his word, Winston Pettigrew led Yeager along the path taken by the captors and their hostages. Occasionally, the older man would use the flashlight feature on his phone—shielded and filtered through his fingers—to point out a footprint or a broken branch, proving he was still on the trail. The man seemed to have a sixth sense for terrain and moved more quietly than anyone Yeager had ever hunted with. Yeager was, in short, impressed all to hell.
The trail crossed a fast but shallow stream, the water running knee-high at its deepest point and colder than Yeager expected. He sloshed through after Pettigrew, soaking his hiking boots and the bottom of his jeans. When they climbed the far bank, Pettigrew froze. He held up a barely visible fist, and Yeager turned to stone.
His nostrils flared at the smell of cooking food. Pettigrew’s eyes gleamed in the dark, expressing a silent question. Yeager nodded and motioned to go low. The skinny man eased down into a belly crawl, and Yeager mimicked his action. They oozed up the embankment at a pace that would put a snail into a coma. Pettigrew led the way, laboriously moving loose brush out of their path to avoid cracking branches or snapping twigs. Yeager inched along behind, senses itching for any input that would add data to his knowledge of the enemy’s position or condition.
Spotting sentries first would be a good thing.
Yeager and Pettigrew edged forward until they came to the edge of the undergrowth, where the vegetation had been chopped back with weed whackers to create a clearing between the trees. Yeager had a rabbit’s-eye view of four wooden huts that resembled the prefabricated buildings used for extra classrooms at overcrowded schools—or for barracks, come to think of it.
All four buildings were concealed under the spreading limbs of the surrounding trees, and above them, the night sky was blocked by a splotchy thicket of darkness that Yeager suspected was camouflage netting. Each building had a door at the narrow end that faced inward toward the center of the cleared space. More recon would be required to determine if back doors existed. High, narrow slots provided some cross ventilation, which would not be nearly enough to cool the interior.
Illumination came from a shielded amber light over the door of the nearest hut. The puddle of light spread in a narrow arc and was so dim that Yeager doubted it could be seen above the trees... assuming anybody was looking to begin with.
A hidden generator kicked on with a rattle. The amber light glowed a tad stronger, and the outline of a sentry materialized between the hut on their left and the next one over. The man leaned with his back against a tree, immobile and nearly invisible. He might as well have been a statue.
Professional soldier. Well trained.
Yeager tapped Pettigrew and pointed to the guard. Pettigrew tapped him back and pointed to the gap between the middle hut and the lighted one. At first, Yeager couldn’t see what Pettigrew was showing him—the amber light was blinding him to anything in that direction. Cold washed over him when another sentry moved, just beyond the light, and began patrolling a slow circuit around the two middle huts.
Was Charlie in one of the huts? He had no way of knowing.
He tugged Pettigrew’s sleeve, and they backed away from the clearing with all the breakneck speed of a landlocked glacier. Yeager led the way back across the stream and picked up the pace, moving another five hundred yards to a patch of ground covered in upthrust boulders and leaf-scattered soil. He eased down, rested his back against a boulder, and let the tension drain from his muscles.
Pettigrew hunkered beside him. He lit a cigarette, keeping the flame cupped behind his hand. The breeze blew at a slant, away from the campsite, so Yeager didn’t say anything. Pettigrew spoke in a barely audible tone. “Well, we found ’em. Not sure who we found, but that’s got to be their base camp.”
Yeager grunted. What the hell do I do now?
#
THE DOOR SHOVED CHARLIE in the back and forced her to step away as it swung open. Kong the Giant filled the doorframe. No exaggeration. His shoulders brushed the jamb on either side, and the tips of his spiky hair tickled the top of the frame. He ducked and entered the room, which had gone silent at his appearance. A collectively held breath seized all the women simultaneously. Charlie included herself in that suspended moment of dread, but she forced herself to exhale even though she wanted to crawl under a cot and curl up in a ball. The man’s piggish eyes roamed across the room, brushing over Charlie and leaving an oily stain on her nerve endings before moving on.
“You.” Kong pointed at Lu Kim. “Come with me.”
Charlie experienced a tiny flutter of relief that the thug wasn’t interested in her. Shame, followed by anger, broiled her face. She knew that if she looked in a mirror, her neck and cheeks would be cherry red.
Lu Kim shrank back. Betty Pyle stood with her, chin lifted in defiance. The other captives exchanged looks of fear and dread—and outrage, in some cases. It was too sudden, the reality of violence too foreign to many of the hostages. They didn’t know how to react, and no one wanted to take the lead. The crowd dithered.
Charlie swallowed sandpaper. “Leave...” The word came out as a whisper. She sucked in a deep breath and tried again. “Leave her alone!”
Kong barely glanced her way. His backhand whipped at her face so fast it blurred. He hit her with the speed of a whip snapping. Crack!
Charlie was on her butt on the floor, with no memory of falling. Her lips blossomed with acid pain. Her teeth ached. Migraine-strength bolts of purple agony rocketed through her skull. When the lights stopped flaring behind her eyes, Kong was pulling Lu Kim through the door. He held her by the wrist and hauled her along like a reluctant child. Betty held her other arm, dragging back in a one-sided tug of war. Kong barked a threat and jerked the small woman loose from the older lady’s grip.
Betty screamed at the top of her lungs. Others were shouting. The sounds rang hollow in Charlie’s ears.
The door slammed, leaving the hut murky with shadows.
Blood dripped off Charlie’s chin. It left bright red blotches on her yellow blouse.
A hand touched her shoulder. Betty Pyle. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
“No,” Charlie said, looking up through shimmering vision. It hurt to speak. It hurt worse to think of Lu Kim in that monster’s clutches. “I’m not all right. Not at all.”
#
YEAGER VOICED HIS THOUGHTS aloud, testing his theories with Pettigrew. “Those middle barracks... the hostages are probably in the middle barracks.” His mind skittered away from the image of Charlie locked in a hot, stinking cabin. “The two guards seemed to be hanging close to the middle one.”
“And at least one is the barracks for the... what the fuck are they? Terrorists? Chickenshit North Koreans invading Hawaii?”
“Let’s go with terrorists for now. I’m thinking there has to be a connection with the attacks in Honolulu.” Yeager grimaced when his stomach grumbled. “What do we know about them so far? At least five, probably more, individuals. How many could they house in one of those barracks?”
“Eight, maybe twelve. More if they stack the bunks.”
“Worse case, forty-eight. Probably less, but we can’t count on that until we know. Armaments include AKs and sidearms. Men professionally trained, with good discipline.”
“Asian for sure. Not Vietnamese, and that’s a fact. I know me some Cong, and these ain’t them.”
“At least one guy was Polynesian,” Yeager said. “Probably native Hawaiian.”
“Strange mix.”
“Objectives?”
“Unknown.”
“And why take hostages from the Breezes? It would have been easier to shoot them all, like they did Tom.” Yeager ignored the clutch in his chest. He had to compartmentalize—put Charlie in a mental box, lock it, and bury the box down deep. Otherwise, he’d be incapable of acting—damn near incapable of thinking.
“We don’t have enough intel,” Pettigrew said.
“And we got shit for resources. No food, no weapons, no comms.”
“And lookie here—I’m damn near outta butts.”
“We’re fucked,” Yeager said.
“Roger that.”
For a time, Yeager did nothing. The rock scuffed his back when he shifted, and the sourness of his own sweat wafted up to him. Night birds he’d never heard before called to one another. Smells he couldn’t identify drifted on the breeze. It was as dark as only a place far away from modern electrical service could get.
He felt alone in a dream universe that he didn’t understand and didn’t like. The last time he’d felt this way, he’d been a boot in Buttfuckistan, wide-eyed and near peeing himself at every owl hoot and goat fart.
Charlie had used a good word the other day when they were touring that damn volcano on the big island, Mount Waka-waka or whatever Hawaiian vowel-job name it was. “Surreal,” she’d called it. Well, this was for damn sure a big can of surreal, opened up and poured over his head. Surreal as shit.
Yeager’s head snapped up.
“Did you hear that?” Pettigrew asked. “Sounded like—”
“Screams. Coming from the camp.”
#
OPEN SEA, LOCATION Unknown
Saturday, 8 May
2147 Hours
For longer than she believed possible, Jan Osterchuk had stroked toward Molokai. For every yard forward, the current carried her a foot sideways. She rested after every hundred strokes, floating on her back and closing her eyes against the intense sun. The rest periods carried her even farther away from the island, but it couldn’t be helped. She needed to catch her breath.
The salt water was colder than she’d expected, and it drained her strength faster than the exercise of swimming, which was bad enough. Spitting seawater and blinking her burning eyes, Jan fought through bouts of shivering.
At last sighting, the island had been nothing but a blob on the far horizon.
As the sun sank into the west and darkness swallowed her, Jan admitted to herself for the first time that she wasn’t going to make it. She was tired. So very tired. And she could no longer fight the current or tell which direction to swim.
Jan rolled over on her back and gazed at the blanket of stars covering the night sky. She felt at peace. God was there, waiting for her. The beauty of the night sky provided more than ample evidence of that, if one knew how to see with the heart instead of the eyes. The vastness of space and the tiny mote of her own existence convinced her she had nothing to fear from death. Who else but God could have created such wonder?
But Danny. Poor Danny. What will he do without me?
Jan wept at the pain he would experience at losing her. The man could barely find his shoes and socks without help. How could cope without her being there to keep him safe and well? Their youngest daughter, Cindy, lived close by. She would check on her dad from time to time. Hopefully, it would be enough.
“Goodbye, Danny,” she said to the stars. “I love you with all my heart.”
#
AFTER KONG HAD LEFT, their captors recorded videos of each of the captives. A scrawny boy barely out of his teens had used a compact digital camera with a light grip attached to record each person giving his or her name and place of residence. Two stoic guards with automatic rifles flanked him throughout the process. He needs the protection, Charlie thought. Even I could knock this kid out flat with a solid right cross.
That was two hours earlier, and three hours since the brutally ugly man had taken Lu Kim. Charlie had no illusions about what the man intended. Her lips flattened into a grim line, and goose bumps prickled her skin.
I’ve seen that movie up close and personal. Don’t want a sequel.
The long shadows had swallowed the room as night fell. Two dim LED lanterns provided enough light to navigate the interior of the barrack. Charlie leaned her back against the closed door and surveyed the room.
Sixteen cots. Seventeen people. One five-gallon pee bucket. No paper.
“Fricking awesome,” she muttered.
A memory popped into her head: the dinner table back at their home in Texas, deep in the Hill Country. She had been just starting to show her baby bump. Abel was still having difficulty with his left hand, having survived his latest venture into Mexico by the skin of his teeth and with the sacrifice of a few good men. Charlie cut his meat, listening as Abel told David a story about being cut off in Afghanistan and how he’d made it out alive.
“What would you do,” Abel had asked David, “if you were walking in the woods out back of the house here, and it came up a storm? A big mother—a big whopper of a storm. Gobs of rain. Lightning. Winds like to tear your hair off.”
David frowned. “I’d run for home?”
“It’s dark as hehhh—heck. You can’t see nothin’. Anything. You can’t find your way home, and you get lost.”
“Umm. Find shelter?”
“That’s good. Yep. But what do you do first?”
David’s eyebrows drew together. Charlie smiled, liking how Abel was letting David find the answer on his own. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
“That’s right,” Abel told the boy. “You think first. Take a minute, no matter how much noise and light and scary sh—stuff is happening around you. Stop and think it through. Make a plan. Work on your plan. If things change, change your plan.”
The discussion had continued throughout the meal, Abel coaching David on how to survive in adverse circumstances. Her boy—their boy now, as Abel had adopted her son—had soaked up the lessons, coming up with the right answer more often than not.
Now it was her turn. She had to think, plan, survive—just as she’d done in that cooler in the convenience store when the maniac, Skeeter, had come for her. There she’d created a plan of pure desperation. She had dug down deep and tapped into a fiery core of strength she didn’t know she possessed. Armed with nothing but a box cutter, Charlotte had fought the dragon. And won.
“Now,” she said to herself, “if only I had a box cutter.”