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Honolulu, Oahu
Sunday, 9 May
1540 Local Time
Victor stopped his rental car at the entrance to the crowded parking lot of Heeia-Kea Harbor, where it looked as though a mass exodus of Oahu was underway. Apparently, those people who could tow trailers had brought their boats to the harbor. A line of six deep waited for a turn to launch off the small boat ramp, and empty trailers attached to vehicles occupied every extra-long slot or were jimmied in wherever they had room, regardless of the marked spaces. Along both docks, cars without trailers filled most of the available spots, and people hustled aboard their craft, dragging coolers and suitcases and grocery tote bags. Watercraft from a forty-foot sport fisher to a green-hulled johnboat motored toward the harbor mouth.
Victor blinked at the two guys puttering along in the johnboat. You dudes gonna drown.
A pair of Super Stallions thundered overhead, crossing Kaneohe Bay from the Marine Corps Base Hawaii at wave-top level. Victor spared a quick thought for Butch Cassidy, less than two miles away on the other side of the bay, probably mainlining coffee and machine-gunning his keyboard in an effort to keep his people up-to-date on current intelligence. Here’s some intelligence, Butch: everybody on the island is bugging out. Victor parked his car beside the road, got out, and thumbed the remote to lock it.
Heeia-Kea Small Boat Harbor featured two concrete docks that stuck out into the shallows of Kaneohe Bay like thin fingers. The Kaneohe Sandbar protected the harbor from the heavy rollers of the Pacific Ocean, making it a great spot to berth and launch the smaller craft its name referred to. Victor hiked onto the left-most dock, to the side of which was moored the larger craft—primarily sport fishers with flying bridges riding high over the waterline and festooned with poles and long whip-like appendages that Victor suspected had something to do with catching fish. Despite being a Marine, the most Victor knew about the ocean was that it was wet.
“Aloha, jarhead,” called a broad-shouldered woman from a lounge chair on the rear deck of a low-riding sailboat. She held a steaming mug in one hand, which she raised in salute. “Want some coffee?”
“Did you make it, squid?” Victor stood at the edge of the dock, hands on hips, and cocked his head at Monalisa Montgomery, former petty officer, USN. He stepped onto the deck of the boat, uneasy at the sway under his feet. “If so, I’ll pass. I filled up on 10W-40 this morning.”
“Wimp.”
“Hag.”
“C’mere, you.” Monalisa stood to accept Victor’s backslapping hug. A head taller than Victor, Monalisa was not a small woman, and her hugs tended to be of the crushing, full-contact variety. The feel of her body, along with the smell of the apple-scented shampoo she favored, activated Victor’s guilty conscience. He stepped back so fast the woman nearly spilled her coffee.
“Hah!” Monalisa barked a laugh, eyes dancing. “You’re seeing someone, aren’t you?”
“Uh...” Victor looked everywhere but at Monalisa. “Beautiful day here, huh? This your boat?”
“No, I stole it.” She squinted one eye. “I’m a pirate, arrr.”
The boat ran a good thirty-plus-feet long with a low, enclosed cabin that extended from near the prow to past the midpoint of the deck, lined with portholes. Dead center stood a mast tall enough to make a monkey dizzy. Lines and turnbuckles rattled in the breeze, tinking the aluminum pole with a sound like wind chimes.
“Your dream, right?” Victor asked. “Sailing around the world?”
“Aye, aye, Lieutenant.” With cropped brown hair bleached by salt and sun, her eyes flecked with green and gold, Monalisa Montgomery appeared born of the sea. In a tank top and shorts, she showed off her wrestler’s build—wide in the shoulders and hips, stout, and muscular.
Both gym rats, she and Victor had met at NAS Whiting Field when he offered to help spot her on the bench. She was pressing one twenty over and over and over, regular as a piston. Monalisa spared him a sidelong look. After a pause, she said, “Fuck off, jarhead. I don’t date Marines.”
“What gave it away, chica?” he asked. “My low forehead or my obvious disregard for death?”
“Your T-shirt says”—pump, relax—“Marines Do It Hard.”
Master-at-Arms US Navy Petty Officer Monalisa Montgomery and Second Lieutenant US Marine Corps Victor Ruiz had come together like a pair of jumper cables—shooting sparks and lighting up the ionosphere with high-voltage discharge. Despite her contention that she didn’t date Marines, Monalisa back-heeled him into bed with a judo throw and didn’t let him back up until he’d pulled a groin muscle and strained his abs so badly he walked bent over the rest of the day. They went at it hot and heavy for six weeks while Victor learned how not to crash helicopters, and they parted only when he graduated and went on his first tour of the mountain wonderland known as Afghanistan.
He had not seen her since.
She asked him, “So what happened to ‘I’ll call you?’”
“I did call.”
“Yeah, half an hour ago. Nothing for eight years, and bing! I get a call from Por Que Ruiz, famous dickman of the”—she made a cross-eyed face—“Ew Es Maw-reeen Corpse.”
“That’s stickman, not dickman.”
“Whatevs.” Monalisa rolled her eyes. “Never mind, dude. I’m just fucking with you. I didn’t expect anything, didn’t want anything, and it all turned out anyway.” She waved a hand in a Vanna White impersonation. “I got my boat. I’m doing what I want.”
“You make it around the world?”
With a hand on her hip, Monalisa struck a suggestive pose, her tongue poking into her cheek. “I go round the world alla time, sailor.” She laughed. “No, seriously. I stopped here for an overnight two years ago. Haven’t left yet. I’m in no hurry. The world will be there when I decide to kick it loose and move on... or so I hope. So what’s up? On the phone, you sounded like this was more serious that a booty call.”
“I need to go to Molokai.”
“¿Por que?”
“Find a missing ship.”
“I repeat: por que? Why?”
Victor sighed. Hands on hips, he studied the sky, following the flight of a gull dipping and curving on the breeze. The putter of small engines filled the air, along with a dead-fish-and-diesel-oil smell. After a time, he looked at her. “I don’ know, chica. I got a bad feeling, is all. Can you take me there?”
“To Molokai? Sure. How fast?”
“Faster is better than slower.” Victor eyed the mast. “How fast will this thing go, anyway?”
“Not fast enough for what you want. Minimum six hours to Molokai if the winds are in our favor the whole way.”
“Six hours?” Victor shook his head in disgust. “Madre de Dios.”
“But...” Monalisa’s freckled nose wrinkled in a grin. “Lucky for you, I have boyfriends with big toys.”
#
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1548 Local
Yeager braced for impact when an AK opened up from the bottom of the hill. His first thought was that the third man had made an appearance. He had to reconsider when no rounds impacted his position. Instead, greenery erupted near the place where he suspected the left flanker was hiding.
The man leaped from cover, popping out of the low grass like a jack-in-the-box, twisting with a hand held against his back. He ripped off a burst downhill, firing one-handed and spraying lead into the trees—wild, un-aimed fire. Dust flew from the man’s flak jacket, and red sprayed from his throat as more rounds from the shooter down below impacted him.
Pettigrew. Who else could it be?
Yeager put the top of the front sight at knee level and added his own counterpoint to the deadly barrage hammering the enemy soldier. Pummeled from above and below, the soldier pirouetted in an almost delicate fashion, blood spraying in an arc from a huge hole in his neck.
The right-hand flanker jumped up as well. He stitched a burst into the tree near Yeager’s cheek, turned, and ran at an oblique across the face of the hill—away from both Yeager and Pettigrew. Yeager chased him with a pair of snap shots, but the distance, angle, and speed of the running man worked against him. Pettigrew—assuming that was who it was—sent a few rounds in that direction. Holding hard against the tree, Yeager braced his rifle, led the target, and... crack!
The soldier dropped like a bag of rocks.
Winston Pettigrew stepped out into the open and waved his weapon overhead in an exaggerated all-clear signal. Yeager stalked, stiff legged, down the hill. He paused by the left flanker, who was clearly dead, and stripped the man’s body of extra ammo. He helped himself to the backpack as well. A quick examination revealed it contained some water and energy bars. Yeager’s stomach grumbled at the sight.
Pettigrew had hiked toward the right side. He stood near the spot where the second man had gone down and scratched his head, wearing a puzzled expression, as if he’d misplaced his reading glasses. When Yeager trekked across the hill, Pettigrew looked up. “It was here, right?”
“Near enough.”
Hunters often misjudged the spot where game had dropped. Birds fell into brush when shot and sometimes disappeared as if they’d fallen into the earth. Deer would go down from the first strike, then recover and run away before the hunter reached them, leaving a blood trail and nothing else. Wounded men were the same, though when one was well armed, trailing him into the brush was a stupid as poking along after a wounded tiger.
“Watch your ass,” Yeager growled. “He could be sighting in on you right now.”
Pettigrew grunted and dropped to one knee. Yeager joined him. The brush came to chest level, offering concealment if not cover. Nothing moved across the open hills except from the sway of a light breeze.
Sweat dripped off Yeager’s nose. “Glad you came along when you did.”
Pettigrew offered him a sly look. “I got one from behind. Ssskit!” He made a throat-cutting motion with a thumb.
“Humph.”
“They weren’t real good at watching they ass.”
Motion at the tree line had Yeager snapping the rifle to his cheek.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Pettigrew laid a hand on Yeager’s shoulder. “I think that’s...”
Danny Osterchuk and Ted Pyle stepped into the clearing. Both wore huge shit-eating grins and carried scavenged weapons.
“Hey, hey,” Pettigrew said. “The gang’s all here.”
Jesus Christ, Yeager thought. Geriatric guerillas in Hawaiian shirts.
#
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1630 Local
“Some friend.” Victor braced one hand on a stainless-steel rail next to the dashboard of a forty-foot yacht. Monalisa stood behind the wheel and flashed a grin at him. She had the beast throttled down to navigate the heavy boat traffic zipping around the peninsula of Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Using a joystick near her right hip, Victor’s former girlfriend dinked and dodged the wedge-shaped sport cruiser—a boat she’d called a Cobalt A40—through a gaggle of fishers and sailboats. The inevitable comparison of a shark among a school of fat groupers came to his mind.
“Thad’s a good guy,” she told him. “A little spoiled maybe.”
Victor cocked an eyebrow.
“Okay, a lot spoiled,” Monalisa admitted. “But he lets me borrow the Guppy whenever I want. Yeah, I know. Don’t give me that look. Stupid name for a boat, right? But you gotta admit, she’s a fricking racehorse.”
“Roger that.”
With gleaming fixtures, elegant electronics, soft seating, and an enclosed cockpit, the Guppy was a forty-foot-long wet dream. All it lacked was Dr. Alex in a string bikini, lounging on the forward deck.
A six-foot-long duffel bag lay across the plush leather seats just aft of the bridge. It contained a big chunk of Monalisa’s personal arsenal—a 9mm Beretta, a souped-up Wilson .45, a Mossberg 12-gauge, and a wicked-looking Ruger M14 in .308 caliber—all nestled inside foam-filled cases. Another case held ammo for each.
As Victor had watched her pack the duffel bag prior to leaving her sailboat, he made a comment about being prepared for Armageddon.
Monalisa had grinned and told him, “Some girls like face powder.” She’d shrugged. “I like gunpowder.”
At the helm of the Guppy, Monalisa glanced at him. “Once we pass Moku Manu, we can hit the afterburners on this thing and really fly.”
“What’s Moku Manu?”
“See that big rock sticking up out of the water over there?” Monalisa pointed off the port bow at a wedge of weathered rock jutting from the Pacific, about the size of a block of condos, with a smaller cousin next to it. “Moku Manu is Hawaiian for Wreck Boat Here. My butt tightens up every time I run the gap with in the White Wing Dove. No worries with the Guppy. This thing will slip through a bedroom door without scratching the paint.”
Off to port, flight operations continued at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Victor worked his way around the pitching deck to get a close-up view as a pair of Hornets roared down the strip in tandem, their needle noses pointed almost directly at him. When their wheels were inches off the deck, the jets sat on their asses and burned aloft, howling into the sky. Victor watched them until they vanished in the distance. He felt like cheering.
“There’s some dry food in the galley,” Monalisa said. “Power’s been off, so nothing in the fridge and no ice. There’s warm beer and a gajillion kinds of booze in the bar, or you can make coffee.”
“No, I’m good.”
She fixed him with a look. “Or you can make coffee.”
“Dios, chica. You’re a caffeine junkie, entiende?”
“No way. I can quit anytime I want.”
Victor went below and found the modern-aesthetic galley filled with neat little fixtures and equipment, all ingeniously stowed in nooks to maximize space. He found a space-age coffeemaker in a cabinet, pulled it out, and puzzled out how to brew a cup of high-voltage dark roast. He carried it back up the swaying ladder and handed it off.
Not long after, they cleared the gap between the Mokapu Peninsula and Moku Manu, and she eased the throttles forward. The Guppy responded by nearly throwing Victor on his butt. The Cobalt A40 planed up atop the waves and did some howling of its own. The sleek yacht shed all respectability and gave every indication she intended to achieve escape velocity.
Monalisa whooped and pumped her fist. She stood with easy grace, muscular legs flexing in time with the boat’s movement. The wind through the cockpit window whipped her hair across her face and plastered her T-shirt across her breasts—which, he noted, had come to pointed attention.
Oh man. I’m on a million-dollar yacht. My ex-girlfriend’s nipples are standing out. Alex would rip my balls off if she saw me here and now.
He chanted a Hail Mary under his breath, praying for forgiveness and mercy from a woman who knew how to use a scalpel. It’s for a good cause.
“C’mon, buddy!” Monalisa’s teeth flashed in a wide grin. “Let’s go find your friend!”