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Kekepi, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0300 Local Time
The Kekepi rocked at anchor three miles south of Honolulu. In the salon of the Hatteras 100 Motor Yacht, the Niho Niuhi and Mr. L lounged in deep-cushioned sofas and club chairs. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected the interior lighting, acting as mirrors to those within. Besides the salon’s plush seating, the Hatteras featured mahogany-finished cabinetry and side tables, hardwood decking underfoot, and a fully stocked wet bar. The former owner had been a fan of the San Francisco 49ers and had decorated the walls and shelves with memorabilia, including a signed Joe Montana jersey behind glass—at least, that was where the jersey had been before Kimo had smashed the glass and taken it out.
“A little tight,” he complained, shrugging it on.
Kanoa paced the narrow strip of floor between the seating area and the windows, his twinned reflection keeping perfect time with his strides.
“Why did you bring the woman?” he growled at Kimo, not for the first time.
“Because I wanted to,” the rough-skinned giant told him. Not for the first time.
“You need to get rid of her.”
“In time, bruddah. In time.” Kimo’s legs stretched out in front of him, and he slumped in the seat, a beer clamped in one hand and a bowl of nuts resting on his belly, for all the world as though settling in to watch a football game on the big screen.
In contrast, Mr. L sat primly with his feet together, hands in his lap, poised on the edge of his chair. “You should relax, Kanoa,” said the dapper little spy in his neatly pressed suit. “We are ahead of schedule and the... complications have not thus far disrupted our timetable.”
“Man,” Kimo rumbled, “you talk like you in a James Bond movie, brah.”
Kanoa slashed the air with a hand. “You call twelve dead and six wounded complications? Maybe eighteen total available for the Golden Sun operation... and hey, brah, where’s Alapai?” This last he addressed to Kimo.
“I dunno.” The big man slugged a pull off his beer and belched. Peanut crumbs dotted the front of his Joe Montana jersey. “He didn’t make the meet at the beach. We left de bruddah a car too. He shoulda come down the mountain after us.”
Kanoa ground his teeth. He glared at Kenny and Hambone, both of whom drooped their eyes. “You ever think for a minute maybe these Special Forces guys might’ve got him? That maybe he rolled on us?”
“Nah, man. What’s he know?”
Kanoa paused, trying to think back on which plans the young and eager computer science major had been involved with and which he hadn’t. Although Kanoa had tried to compartmentalize the planning so no one person would know too much, he’d been forced to rely on Alapai’s computer skills a little too often. Had the kid helped him research the optimal intercept zone for the target ship? Did he know the coordinates for the planned rendezvous with the Golden Sun? Kanoa chewed his lip and paced the deck.
“We launch the inflatables in two hours,” Mr. L said. “Until then, we are holding at our staging area, well back from the intercept location. Radar will tell us if any Coast Guard or naval vessels are in the area. If your man has given up any intelligence under... duress, then we will know in plenty of time to abort and escape.”
“It is not aborting that concerns me,” Kanoa growled. “I want to complete this strike.”
“As I was about to say,” Mr. L continued with the air of one whose patience was not inexhaustible, “if the way is clear, we have plenty of operators to continue as planned. We anticipated casualties, and our numbers are more than sufficient to the task.”
Kanoa stopped and stared at his reflection in the window glass. Shadows painted his face in harsh planes. “I just don’t like this intervention by these mystery people. They hit us hard. Who are they? Super soldiers?”
Hambone spoke for the first time since coming aboard. “Hawaii is full of haole troops, K-man. One of the reasons we’re fighting the occupation, right? Coulda been some Delta guys, y’know, out on a hike. Or SEALs—something like that.”
“Fog of war, brah,” Kenny said. He spoke less than Hambone.
Kimo lifted a butt cheek and farted his opinion of the matter. He stood and stretched. “Whatever, man. I got better things to do with my time than listen to you ladies bitch. No more rubber-boat rides for me tonight. I’m gonna grab some Z’s then maybe plow a red-dirt road. Da kine?”
#
THE GUPPY, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0520 Local
“Doesn’t look promising.” Monalisa had her eyes glued to binoculars while standing in the cockpit of the Guppy. The engines idled as they drifted on moderate seas, waves slapping the sides and the boat bobbing with a motion Yeager’s stomach wasn’t enjoying.
They had reached the coordinates provided by the kid from the camp more an hour earlier and found a big, fat nothing. Or put another way, they’d found ship traffic of all kinds but nothing that seemed an appealing target for terrorists. A high-stacked cargo carrier had steamed past about thirty minutes before at less than two miles distance, traveling west to east. It had proceeded without incident, sailing into the glow of false dawn and disappearing over the horizon. That was the largest vessel they’d seen.
“What’s this one?” Yeager asked. He had long since given up trying to identify any ships smaller than an aircraft carrier by examining distant lights through a wobbling pair of binoculars.
“Fisherman.”
Fishing boats spread out from the island and motored away in every direction. Several had passed them without pausing, dropping nets like water wings and chugging hard in the swells. Motor yachts of varying sizes had crisscrossed the water, none bigger than the forty-foot Cobalt and none “acting strange” as Monalisa defined it. They ignored sailboats, both as potential targets and as likely candidates to be the illusive Kekepi.
Monalisa monitored the radar and kept one ear tuned to the radio traffic, somehow able to decipher the hash from the scope and the garbled crackling noise from the speaker. Yeager admitted to himself that he would be totally lost if left on his own to try to piece together the picture she tracked in her mind seemingly without effort.
Pettigrew and Victor were both racked out below, following the warrior’s dictate to sleep whenever possible. Yeager had nodded off on the bench seat next to the cockpit, but his forty winks had been more like ten, and those were filled with bad dreams. He had given up on sleep and instead downed cup after cup of the skipper’s rocket-fuel coffee. At that point, his nerves were a jangled mess, and acid filled his stomach, threatening to burn his windpipe with toxic sludge.
“Who else do we need to check out?”
“There’s something big coming up over the horizon. Course would put it headed for Kalaeloa Harbor to the west of Honolulu.”
“The what harbor?”
“An industrial harbor. Lots of cargo off-loaded there.” Monalisa bumped the throttle and sent the Cobalt boring toward the radar contact at a moderate speed. “Let’s go check it out.”
#
KEKEPI, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0530 Local
Running feet thundered on the deck overhead, jarring Kimo out of a deep sleep. The king-sized bed in the yacht’s guest suite was one of the most comfortable he’d slept on in his entire life; seconds after closing his eyes, he’d conked out and snoozed for... wow. His watch read five thirty a.m. He’d sacked out for more than two hours.
Heh. Too much exercise last night.
Pounding at the door brought him upright. He scrubbed his eyes and yelled, “What?”
Kanoa stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “We’re about to launch.”
“Da kine.”
“You’re gonna be here with L and four of his guys. Kenny and Hambone too.”
“No shit. So?”
Kanoa leaned his back against the door, scratched an ear. “I don’t trust him not to leave us swinging, brah. You need to be ready to blow his damn head off if he tries to run, yeah?”
The extraction plan would rely on the Asian spy bringing the Kekepi in close to the target ship after the boys had done their job. The inflatables would get the hijack crew off, but they had limited range, so making it to the sub would require the motor yacht.
“You think he’d run off and leave all his guys?” Kimo asked.
“I think he’d run off and leave his mama. This guy’s a snake, no two ways.”
“You’re leaving Kelly, dipshit. What’s that make you?”
Kanoa straightened, his fists tightening. “Kelly volunteered,” he growled.
“Okay, but...” What about the woman? The run out and hijacking would take some time. Getting things set up and the ship in position would take a couple more hours. If he got started after the boats launched, he could maybe have his fun and still have time to take care of the spook if need be. “Yeah. No problem. I gotcha, brah.”
“C’mon,” Kanoa ordered. “Help us get the boats launched.”
“Aye, aye, Skippy.”
#
THE Guppy, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0540 Local
“Ahhh...” Yeager gawked through the binoculars. “Is that an LNG carrier?”
“Yep,” Monalisa said. “Big one too. One of the megacarriers.”
The craft resembled a flat-bottomed boat loaded with giant beach balls, except it was nearly as big as a shopping mall. At a distance of three miles, the carrier filled a good portion of the binoculars’ field of view. A long dark-blue hull with a blocky superstructure in the rear, the ship carried four moon-sized white domes lined up lengthwise, all connected via a construction of rods and pipes along the top.
“Could be the target,” Yeager said. “Can they blow it up?”
Monalisa cut the throttle, and the Cobalt drifted forward on momentum alone. A line appeared between her eyes as she frowned. “I... don’t think so. No. Not easily. Trying to remember a briefing from back in the day...” She drummed on the wheel with a quick bongo riff and bit her lip. “Liquid natural gas doesn’t blow up so much as it burns really, really hot if you can vaporize it and set the vapor on fire. The ships are super-safe, and the containers are engineered against impact or spillage, but...”
“But what?”
“Terrorist attack is one of the worst-case scenarios. If... wait.” Monalisa swiveled in her chair and rubbed her temples. “Let’s say terrorists hijacked an LNG ship and ran it aground in, like, Honolulu. Maybe Waikiki Bay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And let’s say they were smart terrorists and knew how to build shaped charges that could penetrate both walls of the liquefied gas container so the tank could boil off its contents in a vapor cloud. Now, the third thing the terrorists would have to do is rig some sort of delayed explosive to light off the vapor cloud. There would be a big fireball, very hot, and a sustained fire near the ship that would burn until the gas ran out.” She leveled a serious look at him. “I don’t know how much of the city would burn. Not all of it, for sure.”
“But they could righteously fuck up a big section of beach-front property, true?”
“Very true. Look at the chart. It’s right outside the mouth of the Pearl Harbor’s channel. Hitting Pearl could be what your informant meant by ‘blow it in place.’”
Informant seemed an overly charitable description of the leaking, damaged terrorist from the camp. After Pettigrew had finished his carving, the youngster had spewed information like a twenty-four-hour news service. Yeager let it pass.
The orange ball of the sun peeked over the horizon, streaking bands of high, thin cirrus clouds with morning light. A gull faced the wind off the starboard bow, frozen in place by the breeze and the perfect alignment of wings and feathers. As Yeager watched, the bird dipped and wheeled away.
“It’s this one.” Yeager nodded toward the LNG carrier. “Has to be. It’s the right coordinates. It’s the right kind of potential for mass destruction. I’m feeling it in my gut.”
Monalisa regarded him with narrowed eyes. “But what if you’re—wait.” She snagged the binoculars, focused them directly ahead, and watched for a long count of five then handed Yeager the glasses. “You’re a psychic son of a bitch.”
Yeager lifted the glasses and panned ahead, following Monalisa’s pointing finger. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth hurt when the jiggling view settled on the thing she had seen. Six or seven hundred yards to the west of their position, two inflatable boats skimmed across the surface of the ocean. The details weren’t clear by the light of dawn, but he could make out enough to identify numerous people in each boat. The craft arrowed across the open water, headed straight for the LNG carrier.
Yeager tracked back along the line of travel. The breath he’d been holding hissed out. There it was, smaller than a black dot on the flaming orange sea. “You see that on radar?”
After a pause, she said, “Yep. Looks like a ship. About the size of a yacht. Better go wake up the two sleeping beauties.”
Yeager nodded, his throat too tight to speak.