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Molokai Forest Reserve
Sunday, 9 May
0642 Local Time
Danny Osterchuk considered himself a generally happy person. The list of things he loved far outstripped the list of things he hated. The guys at the auto-parts store he managed were always amazed by how he could deal with cranky customers and turn them into puppy dogs wagging their tails. His grandkids called him a foolio, which they defined as a big, goofy, lummox from Minnesota. He was okay with that. The grass where Osterchuk stood was always greener than anything over the fence, and his glass wasn’t just half-full—it was waiting to be topped off. Preferably with beer. Osterchuk liked beer.
Sleeping out in the open with no tent, no sleeping bag, and no cooler full of beer made the short list of things he did not enjoy. Fortunately, his wife had forced him to carry a backpack with water and granola bars... not enough granola bars, but—hell, granola bars? Ugh.
“Shoulda packed some Vienna sausages, you bet,” he muttered while digging into his pack for any granola crumbs that might have escaped into the crevices. Osterchuk liked Vienna sausages.
Gomer gave him that look—the one that said I didn’t hear you, but I’m gonna pretend I did. Osterchuk shook his head. It wasn’t important enough for him to repeat himself with the exaggerated, slow-lip movements that Ted could read. Gomer reclined against the bole of their sheltering tree, looking semi-awake and morose, having gotten up during the night six times to pee. Osterchuk had made five similar trips. Heavy dew had left both of them damp and chilled, Gomer more than him because he didn’t have nearly the padding. Osterchuk shivered a bit despite his bulk.
Early dawn had arrived, and none too damn soon. His ass hurt, his back hurt, and he needed to take a dump something fierce. Add toilet paper to the list of things not present, along with a porcelain throne like the one he had at home with the magazine rack and the super-strength exhaust fan. As a kid in Vietnam, he had never thought twice about relieving his bowels in the bushes. He and his buddies called it “leaving behind a memento of American digestion.” When you were deep in the boonies, it was just something you did... though come to think on it, back then he’d remembered to squeeze a roll of Charmin into his ruck.
Have to talk to Jan about that. No more hikes without some two-ply Charmin in the pack. And some real damn food, you bet.
It was time to move. Osterchuk stifled a groan as he climbed upright and waved for Gomer to get moving. Gomer stood and dusted off the seat of his shorts, which, given his spindly old-man legs, made him look like a chicken dressed in a man’s clothes. Osterchuk wore loose pants—Jan claimed no one should be subjected to the sight of his bare thighs. He didn’t object. He liked long pants as much as shorts, and more now that they kept his legs warm.
Osterchuk took point. There was no trail. For most of the previous day, they had paralleled the hiking trail, weaving back and forth as nature demanded. Staying off the tourist path had seemed conducive to not dying in a fiery hail of lead. But the options narrowed as they approached the overlook where the tour jeeps had dropped everyone off the previous day. The overlook was an overlook because—guess what?—it overlooked a damn big gorge. At some point, they would need to skirt the gorge and navigate their way to the trailhead. Where a smart man would have positioned troops to cut off retreat.
A shallow rain-cut gully went the right direction, and Osterchuk led the way into it. His instinct told him to keep low relative to the horizon and this wash—arroyo, whatever—fit the bill perfectly. His feet sank into the spongy soil, adding the benefit of keeping their progress quiet.
The chance of reaching the overlook and finding a pair of jeeps and drivers waiting with open smiles and open beers was a bit goddamn small. As much chance as a finding a creme-filled donut at church after services.
Osterchuk liked donuts, you betcha. His stomach growled.
The first indication their luck had run out came with the clackety-clack of an AK bolt being thrown. The sound was imprinted on Osterchuk’s subconscious, hardwired into his hindbrain. Reactions coded into his nervous system put him in motion before his mind could form a single Oh shit.
“Down!” he screamed, throwing himself backward and knocking Gomer flying.
A short burst ripped leaves where he had been standing. Osterchuk speed-crawled through the undergrowth, as graceful and agile as a walrus on a beach. Dirt and twigs scraped his belly, and he did not care one damn bit. He slithered with the same vigor and mud-eating drive he’d shown in boot camp, crawling under the barbed-wire obstacle with live fire overhead.
Osterchuk stayed on Gomer’s churning heels, the deaf bastard scrambling through dirt and debris as fast as his chicken legs could push him along. I guess you heard that, huh? Seven-dot-six-two cracking overhead. You didn’t need hearing aids for that sound.
They wiggled through the gully. Shouts in a foreign language sounded too damn close behind them. Osterchuk tasted dirt. He gasped for air. His heart rate was off the fucking charts. At least—so far—he had managed not to shit himself. That was a plus. Silver lining, meet black cloud.
The gully would peter out not far from the tree where they’d spent the night. After that, nothing but deep forest stretched for miles and miles in any direction. Assuming they could break contact long enough between here and there, they might be able to juke sideways and lose their pursuit. For the moment, though, the depression in the earth was keeping one damn big foolio from getting his king-sized butt filled with a lead enema.
Gomer reached the point where the depression leveled out and twisted around. His face reflected the same barely contained terror that bloomed through Osterchuk’s bloodstream with the bongo drumbeat of his overtaxed heart.
Osterchuk risked a look behind them. Men called back and forth. Two of them. Eighty to a hundred yards away. The foliage lining the gully and the surrounding forest blocked them from view. In a mental replay, he guessed that the incoming fire had come from a copse of trees at least fifty yards from the point where Osterchuk first heard the racking of the bolt.
Huh. The team blocking the overlook had not charged directly after them as Osterchuk had assumed they would. Had they done so, they would have run straight up his backside and shot both him and Gomer without breaking a sweat. But they were coming on—silently now, but coming. He could feel it in his bones.
Now or never, amen and pass the ammo. Osterchuk hauled himself upright, grabbed Gomer by the shirt collar, and dragged the smaller man to his feet. Holding Gomer’s arm, he ran for the deeper forest as fast as his big, fat foolio legs would carry him.
#
HONOLULU, OAHU
Sunday, 9 May
0750 Local
Victor waited at a hospital near downtown Honolulu while Alex talked the administrator into letting her help. The hospital admin, an older Hawaiian man with an explosion of white hair around his crown and deep circles under his eyes, raised an eyebrow at her Mexican license before deciding to ignore where it came from and press her into desperately needed service.
Alex bussed Victor on the cheek after pulling on a loaner lab coat and rolling up its too-long sleeves. “Go. I’ll call you when I’m ready to go.”
Victor surveyed the madhouse of an ER and said, “Sure,” but she was already gone, wrapping a stethoscope around her neck and conferring with a fast-walking nurse. He sighed. “Some vacation.”
Victor fired up the rental sedan and followed the signs to Interstate Highway H1. That struck him as funny—an interstate highway in Hawaii. “Need one goddamn long bridge to be an interstate,” he said to himself.
He navigated a snarl of interchanges and headed eastward on IH 3, across the narrow end of Oahu. He tuned into talk radio to pass the time and agreed with the callers who wanted some balls nailed to the barn door over the downed plane, the Oceanus Delphinius, and all the other terrorist attacks. The most heated comments came from people who were raving mad about the destruction of the Arizona Memorial. It was December 7, 1941, all over again.
After reaching Kaneohe Bay, on the far side of the island from Honolulu, he pulled off the highway and hunted the side streets with the help of his navigation app. He found the place Cassidy had specified after Victor had found his number and called him. He was within two miles of Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
The restaurant was fashioned on a Denny’s model. Victor took the offered booth and ordered a pot of coffee to go with a stack of pancakes big enough to qualify for a building permit.
“Them carbs will kill you.”
Trayvone “Butch” Cassidy slid into the booth across from them. At six feet, two inches of oiled black steel, Cassidy could eat gunpowder and spit fire. Except for the man’s creepy and unnatural preference for fixed-wing aircraft, Victor considered him the second-best pilot the Marines had ever produced. More importantly, as S-2 for Marine Aircraft Group 24, 1st Marine Air Wing, Butch Cassidy would have his finger on the pulse of activity surrounding the situation in Hawaii.
“Hawaiian pancakes.” Victor wiped his hands on a napkin and reached out for his coffee cup. “I thought they’d taste like pineapple.”
“Well”—Cassidy glanced back at Victor and consulted his multidial watch—“you have exactly eight minutes to ask whatever favors you think a to-go order of breakfast burritos will buy, then I have to depart the pattern.”
“Busy, huh?”
“It is Charlie Foxtrot out there. Only my great pity for you as a rotorhead buys you the eight minutes. CO expects a report on available assets by yesterday. I’m damn near AWOL just by coming here.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Fucking bunch of home-grown terrorists ripped us a new asshole, is the situation. All commercial flights are grounded as of eighteen thirty last night. The ports are closed. Cruise ships are embargoed until the crews are vetted and the ships inspected. You see the news on the Delphinius? Jesus, what a nightmare those people are going through. The islands are a raging nuthouse. The stores are stripped bare, and the local warehouses are damn near sucked dry. The food reserves on Hawaii were never deep—they rely on almost daily shipments to keep the shelves stocked.”
“What about the tourists?”
“The brass has decided to start moving tourists off the island by military transport. We’re pushing a bunch of tin out there—C-17s and C-130s, along with some F-18s to fly CAP and some Apaches to rain down extra-strength hurt on any SAM that pops its head up. We’re off-loading relief supplies from incoming birds as I speak.” Cassidy glanced at his watch. “Four minutes.”
“Can you get me some intel?”
Cassidy paused. His eyebrows asked the question.
“I’m looking for a boat.” Victor asked. “How many burritos would it take for you to check on it?”
#
THE BLACK-CLAD ASIANS came down the slope like professionals—darting from cover to cover and maintaining overwatch positions and doing it... quietly. No talking, no radio comms. Hand signals only. Yeager’s opinion of their professional demeanor cranked another notch higher. The oncoming operatives were either Spec Ops or the equivalent of Army Rangers. Not, of course, as good as Force Recon Marines, but still pretty decent.
Yeager shifted aim, chasing the point man as he flashed in and out of view. He’d have a split second to locate the man, center the sights, take up trigger slack, annddd... no. The man would vanish behind cover. It was like a game of whack-a-mole using live ammo. Yeager wanted a one-shot hit. Killing him would be best, though a wounded man might pull in other heroes to try to save him. In any event, the instant Yeager pulled the trigger, return fire would obliterate his position. And letting the entire squad of six troops reach the valley floor unscathed would be unacceptable. He had to even the odds before they spread out and flanked him.
Pettigrew watched from the safety of the rock to his right. The old man’s nasal passages whistled faintly from sinus congestion, although his breathing stayed slow, or only slightly faster than normal. Yeager could feel the old veteran’s glittering eyes fixed on him.
Patience, Yeager cautioned himself. The last twenty yards of the trail were bare. Anyone wanting to reach the tumbled field of boulders would need to cross a kill zone of gravel-covered slope. Yeager placed the AK’s sights on a point midway down, selector on single shot. No doubt, the commando would hit the last patch at a dead run, depending on speed to keep him alive.
Can’t outrun a bullet, son.
The commando burst from cover right where Yeager expected him.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Three shots banged his shoulder. Three hits. The enemy soldier rag-doll tumbled down the slope. Yeager rolled left before the body came to rest, not a second too soon. Leaves and twigs at his previous position blew apart in a hurricane of bullets. Had he remained, Yeager would have been ripped to shreds.
“Fuck,” yelled Pettigrew. He lay curled in a ball, ears covered with cupped palms. “These guys are good!”
Yeager scrambled to another crevice that afforded a view of the slope. Two men approached the open ground. Yeager cranked off a couple of snap shots at the nearest one, who disappeared under cover, probably untouched. Incoming fire cracked the stone next to Yeager, peppering his face with hot shards of rock. He flinched and dove away.
The terrorists used suppressive fire to cover their movement. At least two would maintain a base of fire, spattering the rocks in random bursts, while the others would move. Whenever Yeager found a firing lane, rounds would impact nearby. He was forced to duck back and seek different vantage points. The soldiers coordinated their actions with hand gestures. Silent, disciplined, and deadly. Hell yes, they’re good. They were better than any opponents Yeager had ever faced, by a wide margin.
“Plan B!” Yeager yelled to Pettigrew. He got a thumbs-up in return.
Yeager backed away from the tumble of boulders, eeling through cover as fast as he dared. Between the forest and the field of boulder lay a strip of open ground, about two seconds’ worth at a sprint. Two seconds was a long time to be exposed to well-aimed fire from professional soldiers. Yeager’s only advantage was that the enemy would need to compensate for his appearance at a different location than they expected. There would be a delay while they acquired the target—him—and sent rounds downrange.
Would it be long enough to keep him alive?
“Let’s find out,” he growled softly and bolted for the trees.
A shout came from the hillside. Yeager hit the gap between a pair of old-growth eucalyptus trees as instant chips of bark exploded near his shoulder. He juked right, putting the largest tree at his back. Zips and zings of probing bullets followed him into the vegetation, while still more rounds thocked into the spongy bark.
He didn’t pause to check on Pettigrew. Their hastily improvised plan was for Yeager to lead the surviving enemy soldiers into the forest, where he would find ambush points, whittle down their numbers, and eventually break contact. Pettigrew would go into hiding until the squad passed. When all was clear, he was to scavenge any dead bodies—hopefully not Yeager’s—and slip away, unseen. They had planned to rendezvous back at the waterfall ASAP after dark.
Yeager ducked through slapping fronds at a run, one hand up to shield his face. He breathed savagely, already winded. Sweat slicked his face, which felt overheated. Dehydration was a serious complication. He had no canteen and would be forced to rely on streams found along the way to keep from stroking out.
Yeager had the confidence of a born warrior. He was a weapon, shaped and honed by a cadre of the proudest, toughest sons of bitches on the planet: a United States Marine. Tested in battle. Hammered in the hottest flame. A protector of the flock. A knight tempered with honor, blessed with skill, and trained by the best. America’s enemies feared him. Their widows hated him.
And for the first time since he was a kid in Afghanistan, a tight knot of self-doubt settled in his belly and took root there. His opponents had him outgunned and outnumbered and were highly trained. Disciplined. Skilled. Head-to-head, he would put himself up against any single one of them. But there were five of them firing at him. And how many more waited above in the barracks where his wife was being held captive?
Just how in the hell was he supposed to do this?
The First Law: Come home at the end of the day.
But home had never looked so far away.