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Molokai Forest Reserve
Sunday, 9 May
1610 Local Time
Yeager gathered the older Marines into a circle at the edge of the forest. He passed out all the trail bars and shared the bottled water from the soldier’s backpack. The blood smeared on the bottles didn’t seem to bother anyone. Yeager inspected his firearm while he chewed, confirming that the action wasn’t fouled—he had a full mag seated, a round chambered, and the safety on.
He took stock of the other men. Osterchuk seemed worst off. Overweight, red-faced, and sweating buckets, the big Minnesotan sat with his head down, hands hanging loosely over his knees. Gomer Pyle wasn’t in much better shape—he leaned back against a tree with his eyes closed, breathing with his mouth open as if he couldn’t get enough oxygen.
Pettigrew knelt, using his captured AK as a prop. He had found a strangely marked pack of foreign cigarettes on one of the bodies. He tapped out a butt, lit it up, and winced at the first drag. “Harsh.”
They all carried scavenged rifles. Pyle and Osterchuk had pistols tucked in their waistbands, whereas Pettigrew had a double-edged dagger in a belt sheathe. Everyone had extra ammo in shoulder harnesses, and the two smaller men wore flak vests taken from the enemy dead. None of the vests they’d found so far would fit Yeager or Osterchuk.
“Well,” Yeager said. “Ain’t we a bunch of badasses.”
“What now?” Osterchuk asked without looking up. “We going back or what?”
Yeager sucked his teeth and spat out a bit of trail bar. “I aim to do just that. You boys...” He sighed. “I don’t think that’s wise.”
Gomer, who had opened his eyes when Yeager spoke, said in his overloud voice, “My wife is still up there. I’m going.”
“Yeah,” Pettigrew added, “we da four musketeers, baby. One for y’all, y’all for one.”
“Look here,” Yeager said. “I reckon it’s an hour hike back to the ridge. We gotta figure they’ll have that back door locked down, so any assault up the chute will be opposed.”
“Talk about Heartbreak Ridge,” Osterchuk said.
“Exactly.” Yeager nodded. “So I have to scout another way up, which will take... well, I don’t know how long that’ll take. You boys—no offense, but y’all look about done in.”
“Au contrary,” Pettigrew said. “I’m ready to go.” He tapped the butt of his knife with a thumbnail and grinned with yellowed teeth. “Me and Little Bessie will slip up dat chute and slit us some throats. In the dark, they won’t never see me coming.”
“I...” Yeager drew a breath, searching for the right words.
“You know what I hate the most?” Pettigrew directed the question toward Osterchuk and Pyle, both of whom looked up in expectation. “The pity. People today, they ashamed—some of them are—of the way they treated us when we came back from overseas. They look at us now, and they shake they heads, thinking about how they acted like babies and smoked dope and ran off to Canada. They ashamed of being class-A pussies. Liberal white guilt.” Pettigrew ground the last of his unfiltered cigarette into dust under his heel. “Or they say... they say, ‘Aw, them poor dumb fucks. They didn’t know what they was getting into. Gub’mint sent ’em off to war and’—how’s that song go?—‘sent them off to kill the yellow man.’ Like we was fighting some race war even back then. They make documentaries and write books, make us look stupid that we went to Viet-fucking-Nam. Shee-it.”
“Amen, brother,” Osterchuk said.
Pyle, who had probably heard one word in three, nodded.
Yeager’s face scrunched up. “How’s that help this situation—”
Pettigrew held up a pink palm. “Excuse me a sec here, Staff Sergeant, and listen up. Hear me true. The three of us here are not victims of the military-industrial complex, sent to war so General Motors could sell more tanks. We are not baby killers. We fought with honor and dignity and a goddamn ferocity not seen since the Spartans held the Hot Gates against that fascist bastard Xerxes. We are not each and every one fucked up by post-traumatic bullshit. We serve our country every day, every week, every goddamn minute. We are ready to step the fuck up and lay down our lives for our people. Our fellow Americans. We do the hard thing so overpaid asswipes can kneel during the national anthem and whine about how tough they gots it. We are not ex-Marines, as they ain’t no expiration date on Marines, Staff Sergeant Yeager. No, we goin’ up that hill, and we gonna kill enemy combatants until they ain’t no more left to kill. You hear me clear, Staff Sergeant Yeager? You best not expend one ounce of pity in my direction, cause I had it up to fucking here with pity.” Pettigrew accompanied the last statement with a hand at eye level.
Yeager surveyed the determination in the faces confronting him. One corner of his mouth lifted in a grin. “Well, okay, then. Best strap your shit down tight, Marines. We have a long walk in the jungle, followed by a gunfight against heavily armed opponents.”
“Been there, done that!” Pettigrew crowed. “Let’s go get some more.”
#
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1730 Local
Charlie sat on the floor and studied the nail in her palm. Pathetic. A weapon of minimal destruction.
Her—ahem—weapon was two inches long, max. She pushed it between her ring and middle finger, making a fist so the nail stuck out like a unicorn horn. Maybe she could punch somebody in the eye or throat. Would it be enough to incapacitate a giant like the one who’d taken Lu Kim? That guy would laugh off anything except a nuclear strike to the forehead.
Better than nothing, though, right?
It had been quiet in the camp for several hours. Parties of soldiers had arrived and disappeared into barracks. Some moved the bodies out of camp and came back an hour later without them. A burial party, evidently. Aside from a doubling of the guards, nothing much had changed since Abel—and she knew in her gut it was Abel—had raided the camp.
The prisoners had maintained watch through the high windows, one at a time volunteering to balance on a cot and keep tabs on their captors. Everyone took a turn except, of course, Austin and Melissa and their small group of followers, who nattered on and on about reasoning with the terrorists, finding common ground, and using persuasive words to avoid rape, torture, and certain death. When it came to that triumvirate, Charlie preferred a more direct response: shoot the bad guys until they didn’t breathe anymore, then shoot them some more. It was a mystery to her why some people thought terrorists were reasonable but misguided people who only needed enlightenment to be productive members of society. As far as she was concerned, terrorists could provide the most benefit to the world by becoming fertilizer.
Charlie rubbed the pads of her fingers, which ached from hours of patient effort to recover the nail she now held. Across from her sat Dave Draper, his wife using his thigh as a pillow as she slept. Betty Pyle curled up on the cot next to Charlie, sweat plastering her blouse, outlining her thin ribs. Whether or not she was asleep, Charlie couldn’t tell.
The other so-called leaders of Camp Molokai—as Betty had nicknamed their place of incarceration—had drifted off to their own cots, their own thoughts. Montelle stood watch, his calves flexing to remain upright on the rickety cot. It creaked with his movements. Ed Collins had fallen asleep, his eyes buried in the crook of an elbow. Migliozzi, the baker from New Jersey, picked through the remains of his boxed meal, digging out single grains of rice and popping them into his mouth. He looked up and gave her a wink when her gaze fell on him.
Trapezoidal blocks of light from the late-afternoon sun tracked up the eastern wall of their barracks. Nightfall was only a few hours away. What would happen at nightfall—business as usual at Camp Molokai, or Kong returning for another toy to help him pass the night? Who was next on his playlist? Sarah Rae Draper? Melissa? Or Charlotte Buchanan Yeager?
Or would Abel storm the camp single-handedly and get himself killed trying to save her? Lord knew he was hardheaded enough to try such a stunt. Charlie’s gut clenched, and her body chilled at the thought of her husband tangling with Kong one-on-one. Abel was a warrior, surely—a killer even, given the right circumstances. She had no doubt he was tough, resilient, and a badass to the core. All that was a given.
But... the man who had slapped her and taken Lu Kim was a different order of magnitude—a bigger monster than Charlie had ever imagined. Skeeter Davis, the man she’d killed with a box cutter and her bare hands, was a pussy compared to the Samoan. It gave her chills to think of Yeager taking him on without a platoon of Marines at his back.
“Something’s happening,” Montelle hissed. He leaned forward on tiptoes, fingertips gripping the open window frame.
“What?” Charlie demanded when Montelle refrained from saying more.
“Uhh, a soldier just came running in from the north. He was bleeding all down the side of his face. He went to the soldier’s dorm and went inside.”
A minute passed, then another. Charlie was on the point of relaxing again when Montelle reported, “No, wait—now he’s coming out with an older guy. Uhhh... they’re going to the boss’s hut.”
“The guy came from the north?” Charlie looked at Betty Pyle, who had sat up and pushed damp gray hair back off her forehead.
“Was it the one of the soldiers who chased after our guys?” Betty asked. Like Charlie, she was convinced the morning raiders had been Abel and the Leatherneck Legends.
“I can’t tell,” Montelle said. “But he came from that direction.”
“Six went out.” Betty shared a significant glance with Charlie. “One came back.”
Charlie smiled for the first time in ages. “That’s our boys.”
#
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, May 9
1737 Local
Kimo Ekewaka had both hands wrapped around a ham sandwich when the command hut door banged open. Manu Ho, the senior commander of the Special Forces troops stormed in, followed by a bleeding commando in black BDUs and a muddy flak jacket.
If Kimo’s guess was right, the man called Ho was either a captain or a senior lieutenant in the Special Forces of the DPRK army, and his men where part of an elite unit acting undercover. Mr. L was undoubtedly their spook controller, and part of the North Korean State Security Department. How Kanoa had managed to connect with Mr. L was a mystery, but Kimo grudgingly admitted to himself that without their advisers, they would have never pulled off the depth, breadth, and devastating results they had achieved in the past few days.
Ho stomped to a halt in front of Kimo. “The men? Who are they?”
Kimo ground the bite of ham sandwich in his mouth, leaving the Korean to fume and glare at him. He swallowed and chased the bite with a slug of coffee from a tin cup. “What men?” he finally said.
“The soldiers who attack camp!”
Kimo frowned. “I only saw one man. Civilian, not military. Your guys should have wrapped him up by now.” His eyes flicked to the injured commando. “If they were any good, that is.”
Ho’s English became even more fractured as his temper heated. Kimo made out about one word in three as the troop commander blew up and ranted, but he managed to piece together an account of his patrol being chopped to shreds by at least two attackers and maybe more. They came under repeated ambushes from the one they chased, losing three men to direct assault. Another soldier had been taken from behind, killed with a knife. The wounded man had broken off contact when he and another came under fire from the rear as they assaulted a hill.
“These men soldiers! Soldiers!” Spit flew from Ho’s lips.
Kimo leaned back in the rickety folding chair. It creaked under his weight. “Could be,” he said. “Could be some off-duty military from Pearl or MCBH. Maybe they were out hiking or camping and found us sitting out here in the boondocks. Molokai don’t have many people, but that doesn’t mean it’s deserted either. Hunters and hikers are all over the place.” He checked the time on his watch. “Look, Ho. It’s nearly eighteen hundred. We were going to pull out under the cover of darkness, which is about... uh, three hours, give or take. We’ll move up the timetable a little. My guys will start packing up camp, burning what needs to be burned, then we’ll start doing the hostages. On video, like we planned, right?”
Ho nodded once sharply.
“You sprinkle your guys around the perimeter, right? You know...” Kimo twiddled his fingers like a man playing a keyboard. “Around the camp? That way, if these heroes come back, they’ll get their dicks caught by thirty guns. You know, brah? Like an ambush.”
Ho nodded again. He muttered a grudging, “Yes. Yes, good.”
Kimo took up his sandwich and bit into it to hide his smile. Elite unit might have been too strong a description. Dumbass Koreans. If the commander of the advisers needed Kimo, a guy who’d been kicked out of the Marines, to teach him basic tactics, then Kim Jong-un’s boys were harder up for military talent than he’d imagined.
Ho cuffed his wounded soldier and rattled off a string of orders. The captain was pissed, no doubt. Kimo got that. The man had lost seven troops in one day, which was probably a hanging offense back in the People’s Republic of Love and Forgiveness. He was probably scared his whole family would disappear one night over this fuckup.
Still, he had twenty-nine other men to go up against... what, two or three off-duty military types? The firefight, if the heroes came back, would be one-sided and short.
Kimo shifted in his seat. He dismissed Ho from his mind, instead thinking about what he could do with the three hours he had left before they wasted all the haoles and headed for the boat. Three hours meant he had time for only one bitch to play with, so he had to decide.
Blond or redhead? Maybe he’d flip a coin...