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Molokai Forest Reserve
Sunday, 9 May
2140 Local Time
“You know where you’re going, right?” Yeager asked.
“Dude, quit asking me that. You’re making me all nervous and shit.” Victor hunched over the Jeep’s wheel, squinting at half-remembered landmarks.
He had pushed hard coming out of the backcountry, and the Jeep had taken a beating. The engine temp ran high, and the oil pressure had dropped. There was a strong smell of hot metal and burned motor oil coming from under the hood, along with an ominous knocking that signaled either a crapped-out lifter or damage to something more vital.
Fortunately, the route to the harbor was a pretty straight shot once they reached the main highway and made the left toward Kaunakakai. The Jeep had smoked and rattled along pretty well as they cruised into town, then Victor had slowed, looking for the turnoff to the marina.
“So who is this woman skipper who owns the boat?” Yeager asked.
“You never met Monalisa. You was already off in Fuckmenistan, getting your ass shot at, when I was in flight school. We, uh, had a thing for a while.”
Yeager sketched an attempt at a grin. “Alex know you’re out playing first mate to an old girlfriend?”
“I... you know, left her a voicemail.”
“Brave of you.”
Victor shifted in the seat. A glance in the dash-mounted rearview mirror showed that the old man, Winston of the Blade, had wedged himself among the buckets and bails filling Jumbo’s cargo space and appeared to be snoozing. His head bobbed loosely with every bounce. Victor resolved to aim for every pothole he could find, just to see how hard he could make Pettigrew’s head fly. The slashes on his hand and collarbone still stung like a motherfucker.
“She cool?” Yeager asked. “She gonna be okay with us grabbing her boat and taking off after the bad guys?”
“Man, Monalisa’s hard as they come. She should’ve been a Marine, you know?” Victor spotted a gas station he remembered. They were near the harbor road. “We close, man. It’s... gotta... be around... there!”
The tires squalled through a hard right turn. The narrow two-lane road was poorly lit until they reached the finger that extended into the harbor. The sound and smell of the ocean washed over them as they broke out of the gloom and into the open stretch of road. From there, it was a few hundred yards to the berth where the Guppy was tied off, parallel to the pier.
The boat appeared dark and deserted, but then a shape moved on the rear deck, and Victor recognized Monalisa, the ever-present mug of coffee steaming in one hand.
She stood as they approached. “You exchanged Jumbo for some more shady characters, I see.”
“Worse than that,” Victor told her. “I brought the Marines, and we gotta get to a fight, chica.”
#
ABOARD THE Kekepi, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0213 Local
Charlie’s thoughts surfaced one by one, like corks floating up from a deep black pool. She became conscious of her world swaying and rolling in a nauseating way, followed by an awareness that she lay facedown on a real bed with real pillows. Though she wasn’t under the covers, the warmth of the bedding nestled her in a place of comfort and kept her covered in a blanket of lethargy. She didn’t want to move. Movement would bring awareness, and awareness would require action. Movement would bring pain. Throbbing aches radiated at the edge of wakefulness. Jarring any part of her body would result in a penalty she was unwilling to pay.
Not again. That was a strange thought. Why not again? The answer refused to come. She could not remember how she’d come to be in this place.
Charlie’s last memory was of being pinned between two hulking men in the back of an SUV as it bounced and bumped down a trail carved out by the white beams of the car’s headlights. No... wait. There was a house... on the beach.
A beach...? The memory wouldn’t come. As more thoughts gathered, so did the dull ache at her temple. Stickiness tacked her hair to the side of her face. She could feel it when her weight shifted as the boat rode the waves.
She was on a boat! Duh. Of course. The motion made sense now. But why did she feel such panic at the idea of being on a boat?
Kimo. He had dragged her from the camp and... somehow gotten her to a ship at sea.
Charlie cracked an eye open... and needn’t have bothered. The room was dark. No windows? Wait, yes. A single porthole, high on the wall, a pearlescent gray oval cut into a black backdrop. By the dim, watery light, Charlie recognized shapes in the room: a night table with drawers separating twin beds, the opposite bunk empty and neatly made. A gooseneck lamp built into the wall over the night table.
Turning on the light seemed like a good idea. If only she had the energy. Weariness weighted her muscles as though gravity had tripled somehow, making every movement an effort requiring the concentration and willpower of a person she remembered but couldn’t summon.
The need to urinate forced her up from her nest. A narrow path between the bunks led her to a small vestibule with a door on the right and a short hall with a washbasin, toilet and shower. Charlie used the toilet without turning on the light. She had no desire to see her face in the mirror over the basin. Rummaging through the drawers proved fruitless—someone had cleaned them out, leaving not even a Q-tip behind.
She tried the door next, and to her surprise, it opened... only to reveal a sleepy-eyed guard with a gun who growled at her in a foreign language. She closed the door and rested her back against it.
Where is Abel...? Cold sweat washed over her face. Charlie shivered as memories cascaded out of the darkened room of her subconscious.
She was on a boat. At sea. Abel was somewhere back on Molokai with no idea where to find her. She was on her own, the captive of a sadist. The parallels to her time in an abandoned convenience-store cooler just a few short years earlier did not escape her—locked in a small, dark space. Waiting for rape.
Charlie slid onto the bed, curling into the still-warm hollow in the covers. That person in the cooler had had the determination and willpower to fight back. To kill her captors and escape. She had dug deep and found a resolve beyond any she believed she possessed. It had taken luck and daring and a willingness to do horrible things to other human beings, but in the end, she had won. Charlie had come home to David and to Abel. It had taken years of love, and not a little counseling, to exorcise the fear and trauma.
That Charlie had disappeared, vanishing somewhere in the long night with her failure to stop Kimo taking Melissa. She’d wound up here, alone at sea, surrounded by evil. Her hand throbbed. The beating of her heart sent bolts of random pain shooting up her wrist and thumped a bass drum in her temple. Air whistled through her swollen sinuses so that even breathing seemed a chore, and nausea threatened to empty the contents of her stomach at the slightest trigger.
Dread crushed the soul of this strange person occupying her flesh. Not again.
Of course it was happening again. And this time, she could no more stop it than run from the room, dive overboard, and swim to Tahiti. The Charlie she needed to be wasn’t around anymore. Was she ever coming back?
#
THE Guppy, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0230 Local
Twin Volvo Penta diesels drove the Cobalt over the Pacific swells at forty-five miles per hour. Monalisa Montgomery claimed she could normally get a tiny bit more out of her, but the seas were running high, and pushing the throttles to the max wouldn’t necessarily squeeze any more speed out of the boat. Yeager ground his teeth and clenched his hands to prevent them from shoving the woman out of the way and jamming the throttles fully open.
As it was, the Guppy pounded every wave with a hammer blow, forcing Yeager to hold on to a rail with one hand while he studied the touch-screen display in the dash. Monalisa sat at the helm, her pleasant, broad face lit a soft green by the dashboard glow. Pettigrew and Por Que had gone to raid the galley for sandwich fixings. The occasional clanking, banging, and cursing filtered up from below as they were tossed around the small space.
Wind whipped Monalisa’s hair in streamers. She yelled over the roaring engines and pointed at an electronic chart display. “We’re here. South of Molokai.”
“Got it,” Yeager said. The Fair Breezes had been on the south side of Molokai as well. Victor had filled him in on the fate of the cruise ship, twisting Yeager’s knot of anger another notch tighter.
“We’ll head due west for forty miles or so then cut west-northwest toward Honolulu. Your guy said to aim for a spot about five nautical miles south-southwest of Nanakuli.”
“Any idea what’s there?”
Monalisa shrugged a broad shoulder. “Empty sea, as far as I know. Shipping traffic is pretty heavy there.”
“The guy Pettigrew questioned said they were after a ship. No idea which one.”
“Could be anything from a cruise liner to a cargo ship.”
“So no way to know what these fuckers want,” Yeager said, half to himself. Pettigrew had told him the kid back at the camp had no idea regarding kind of ship they were after or what they would do once they reached it. All he had was the name of their yacht—the Kekepi—and the approximate coordinates of the intercept with their target ship. Kanoa—the purported leader of the Niho Niuhi—had kept the planning for the final strike between him, the huge and ugly Kimo, and a guy named Mr. L, who was some kind of spook. Mr. L had supplied the men, material, and logistic support to make the Niho Niuhi attacks possible.
Pettigrew appeared and handed Yeager a plate with a double-fisted sandwich piled on top and set a travel mug into a cup holder next to him. “Coffee in there. According to your buddy, go easy on it. He says this cutie-pie here makes coffee could send a man to the moon without a rocket ship.”
“Cutie-pie?” Monalisa favored them with a half-smile and an arched eyebrow.
“I call it like I see it,” Pettigrew said.
“You need glasses, you old salty dog.”
“How long?” Yeager asked around a mouthful of bread and sliced turkey.
Monalisa squinted at the display. “Two hours, maybe two and a half. Question is: what do we do when we get there?”
Yeager grunted and washed down his bite of sandwich with a swallow of scalding black coffee. “I’m working on that.”
“We could use the radio,” Monalisa suggested. “Call the Coast Guard.”
Pettigrew shook his head. “Uh-uh. The bad guys hear that transmission—”
“They kill Charlie,” Yeager continued. “Dump her overboard and head for open sea. It’s why we didn’t call before we left Molokai. If they even get a sniff of a US Navy vessel...”
Monalisa fought the helm as a rogue wave pitched the boat into a twist. “And should we split up? Go after the ship they plan to board, assuming we can find it? No offense, Abel, but I’m not willing to risk a mass-casualty event in Honolulu.”
“No,” Pettigrew said before Yeager could unlock his jaw. “The kid said they would trigger the quote-unquote final strike from the Kekepi. Once they position their hijacked ship, the hijackers will exfil and leave it to be blown in place. Whatever that means. And no, the punk didn’t know either.”
“So taking the Kekepi is vital,” Monalisa said. “Which begs the question: how do we approach a ship full of terrorist assholes on the open sea, get close enough to board their vessel, and not get blown up in the process?”
Pettigrew scratched his chin and leaned into the bulkhead. “Can we get ahead of them and get to these coordinates before they do?”
“Depends on their speed. I doubt they’re hauling ass like we are.” She patted the top of the dashboard. “Not many things can outrun my baby here. But I don’t know how far ahead they are either. Could be we’re already too late.”
“They’ll see us on radar,” Yeager said. “We have to be on an almost parallel course.”
“Lots of boats out here,” Monalisa told him. She pointed at the blips on the radar sweep. “I’m seeing all kinds of traffic.”
“So if we come up on them...” Pettigrew narrowed his eyes and stared at Monalisa, apparently lost in thought. For her part, the lady skipper pushed her hair back and concentrated on driving the boat. There was a loud clang and an extra-loud curse in Spanish from below.
Yeager sat on the vinyl bench seat to the left of the helm and stuffed his face. It had been a long time since he’d eaten anything more than an energy bar, and his hunger had flared back to life at the first bite of sandwich. While he chewed and swallowed food and swigged coffee, he watched Pettigrew. “What are you thinking, old man?”
Pettigrew’s eyes glittered. “I think I have an idea how we can get close.”