The Big Kahuna

by Janet Evanovich

Kate and Jake silently hid in the underbrush a short distance away.

  The man reached the overlook and disappeared for a moment. He reappeared and called down to Jasper.

  “Horace is here,” he yelled. “Dead. Looks like the stupid Czech blockhead fell on his own knife.”

  Jasper turned to the man standing next to him. “Call the Remarkables on the sat phone. And we’re going to need a new helicopter out here first thing in the morning. Tomorrow we’re going into the valley and we’re not coming back without bagging a Kahuna.”

  Kate looked over at Jake. “They have a satellite phone.”

  “Of course,” Jake said. “We have one, too, right?”

  “We had one. It went down with the ship in Lahaina, and I didn’t get a chance to replace it.”

  “I don’t suppose you have service on your cellphone?”

  “No. Not that it matters, because I also don’t have any battery left.”

  “So, we’re unable to communicate with anyone to get help?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, that takes us back to basics, doesn’t it?”

  15

  Kate and Nick stood at the entrance to Mike the Hermit’s cave. The sun was beginning to rise over the valley. Jake had left a half hour earlier to check out Jasper’s campsite and try to gather a little intelligence. Everyone else was still asleep.

  “Rough night?” Nick asked Kate.

  “Just a little. Three hours of sleep in a cave isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “We were lucky Mike had a suture kit and some penicillin. I think Hamilton will be fine.”

  Kate nodded. “It’s going to be near impossible to get him out of this valley for the next couple days with his injury. I don’t think we have that much time to wait around before Jasper finds us.”

  “It’s going to be impossible, period. The only way out is along Crawler’s Ledge, and that’s impassable, even if it wasn’t being guarded by half a dozen mercenaries.”

  Cosmo and the hermit joined Kate and Nick at the entrance.

  “Where was I?” Cosmo said to Mike. “Oh, yeah. We were talking about hermits. So, I had a hermit crab for a pet when I was six. He was my best friend, and do you know what? His name was Mike too. Isn’t that a weird coincidence? You know, because you’re both hermits . . . named Mike.”

  Cosmo paused to catch his breath. “Is your beard itchy? Do you like hermit cookies? Have you ever heard of that band Herman’s Hermits? I think they sang that song ‘Henry the Eighth.’ It goes ‘I’m Henry the Eighth, I am. Henry the Eighth I am, I am. Second verse same as the first.’” He looked expectantly at the hermit. “‘I’m Henry the Eighth, I am. Henry the Eighth I am, I am. Third verse the same as the first.’ If you can’t remember the words you can just hum. ‘Hmm hmm-hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm.’”

  “Not that I don’t just love having company, but when are you planning on leaving?” Mike asked Kate.

  “Just as soon as we can figure a way out of the valley.”

  Mike cut his eyes to Cosmo. “If I can get you out of the valley, will you take him with you?”

  “Maybe,” Kate said.

  Mike’s shoulders slumped a little. “Only maybe? Okay, no matter. There’s a back way, but you have to be Spider-Man or Batman or something.”

  “No problem,” Nick said. “We just get Kate suited up in spandex and let her do her thing.”

  “Ha, that’s good,” Cosmo said. “Kate in spandex. Like Catwoman with the little pointy black ears. She was awesome. I think about Catwoman a lot when I’m, you know, alone. I mean, some people have a shoe fetish, which I don’t understand at all. Not that I’m saying I have a Catwoman fetish, but if I did have a fetish it would be Catwoman related. That’s okay, right? It’s not like I have a Jack Nicholson Joker fetish. That would be sick. Don’t you think it would be sick? I hope I’m not insulting anyone who has a Jack Nicholson Joker fetish.”

  “Okay, moving along,” Kate said. “I want to hear more about the back way out of here.”

  Mike pointed in the direction of the waterfall. “Sometimes we lower supplies from Kalepa Ridge down the mountain to the back of the valley. There’s no trail, and it’s really steep and really wet, but if you have some rock-climbing experience you might be able to make it up.”

  “And once we’re at Kalepa Ridge?”

  “There’s an unofficial, unmaintained two-mile trail that leads along the ridge to Kalalau Lookout in Kokee State Park. Then you’re back in civilized society, if that’s your thing.”

  “There’s no way Hamilton could make it,” Kate said. “We’d have to leave him behind.”

  “Jasper and his thugs are searching for the Kahuna,” Nick said. “If we can successfully smuggle him out of the valley, they’re not going to stick around to look for Hamilton or anyone else.”

  * * *

  —

  Mike the Hermit occupied one of the larger caves in the area. He could stand without stooping. He had a ledge for his sleeping bag, an alcove that held a camp chair, and a tunnel leading to who-knows-where that was filled with endangered hoary bats. He kept his stash of canned goods at the entrance to the tunnel. There was a second chamber to the cave that was never used due to dampness, and this was the space allocated to guests. Vicky, Hamilton, and the Kahuna shuffled out of the cave and blinked in the sudden daylight.

  “Ow,” Hamilton said. “I feel, like, pain. And I’m wet. I think it rains in there.”

  Jake stepped out of the dense foliage a short distance from the cave and followed the path to where Nick and Kate were standing.

  “Jasper and the others are still at the campground, organizing themselves,” he said. “They’re going to start searching the valley this morning, and they seem pretty serious about it.”

  “Mike knows about a backdoor way out,” Nick said. “It sounds like it involves some serious climbing, so Kate and I are taking the Kahuna and leaving everyone else behind.”

  “You’re thinking to lure Jasper out of the canyon,” Jake said.

  “Yeah. We’ll drop some bread crumbs.”

  “And you’re leaving me behind to guard the Froot Loops,” Jake said. “Outstanding.”

  Nick slung his backpack over his shoulder and buckled the harness around his waist. “I’m taking the climbing gear and enough food and water for the day. We’ll send help as soon as we reach the ranger station at Kokee.”

  * * *

  —

  An hour later, Kate, Nick, and the Kahuna were at the waterfall.

  “I cut a path leading here that’s so obvious even Cosmo could follow it,” Nick said, putting the machete back in his pack. “I even dropped the bloody shirt we were using as a tourniquet for Hamilton last night along the way. There’s no way Jasper can miss us.”

  “Great. I love being bait for ruthless killers,” Kate said, looking up the cliff. “I can’t see the top. All I see is cliff and clouds.”

  “Kalalau Lookout is four thousand feet above sea level,” the Kahuna said. “It’s in the clouds most of the time. It’s probably raining up there too.”

  “What elevation are we at now?” Kate asked.

  “Around three hundred feet. Three thousand, seven hundred more to go.”

  Nick removed three climbing harnesses from his pack, passed one to Kate, and helped the Kahuna into another. “How long has it been since you climbed?” he asked Kate.

  “I had some military training, but not a lot of opportunities since then.”

  The Kahuna tugged on the harness. “I’ve tried rock climbing a couple times, but I’m more of an ocean than a mountains sort of guy.”

  Kate watched Nick as he got into his own harness. “How about you?”

  “Professional necessity. Back before I became a straight arrow and saw the errors of my ways, taking the stairs wasn’t always an option.” />
  Kate rolled her eyes. “Seriously. You do remember that I have a priceless diamond in my pocket right now? Did you steal it from the museum before or after you became a ‘straight arrow’?”

  “That doesn’t count. It was a romantic gesture.”

  “How about renting my apartment to naked hippies? How about stealing my boss’s identity?”

  “It was for a good cause. And I didn’t steal anyone’s identity. I signed as Karl Ketchup, not Karl Jessup.”

  * * *

  —

  The first hour of climbing was mostly good old-fashioned scrambling, using the vegetation growing out of the side of the mountain as support to scale the steep embankment. Kate looked down at the thousand-foot drop to the valley floor and then up at the three-thousand-foot nearly vertical cliff left to climb. The trees had all but disappeared and been replaced with wet, mossy walls of dirt and rock. Worse, the slope had gotten progressively steeper to the point where hands and feet alone were no longer an option. Nick had stopped to rest, and was digging through his backpack for climbing rope, camming devices, and carabiners.

  He found a crack in the rock face, inserted a cam, and tethered himself to it with the climbing rope. “I’ll take the lead and run two ropes, one for you and one for the Kahuna. My rope is two hundred feet long, but I’m going to try to place my cams no more than ten feet apart. That way, if I lose my grip, the most I’ll fall is twenty feet. Any further and the risk of injury increases drastically.”

  Kate nodded. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll belay you on the way up. Are you sure you can do this with your injured arm?”

  “Yeah, it’s down to a dull ache. Good thing I’m such a tough guy.”

  Nick scrambled up the rock wall while Kate managed the rope, letting out just enough for Nick to continue to climb, but not so much as to leave any slack in the line. Every ten feet, Nick inserted another cam in the cliff and clipped himself in. Finally, there was no more rope to let out, and Nick was perched on a little ledge two hundred feet above Kate and the Kahuna.

  Nick attached a Petzl Reverso to the last anchor he’d placed and gave Kate a thumbs-up. “You should be good to go. I’ll belay you and the Kahuna on the way up, and I’ll keep all the slack out of your lines as you climb.”

  “You go first,” Kate said to the Kahuna. “I’ll follow around fifteen feet behind you and remove the cams as I pass them.”

  By the time Kate and the Kahuna were halfway to Nick, their progress had slowed to a near standstill. “How are you doing?” Kate asked the Kahuna. “Do you need a break?”

  The Kahuna wiped some sweat away from his forehead. “This has got to be one of the most radical things I’ve ever done. My arms feel like jelly.”

  “Try to use your legs and back as much as possible. You’ll wear yourself out if you try to pull yourself up the whole way.”

  A gust of wind swept along the mountain, and Kate watched as the Kahuna’s grip gave out. He fell away from the cliff and plunged five feet or so before Nick arrested his fall. He swung back and forth on the rope before colliding into the cliff face and finding a handhold.

  “Like I said.” The Kahuna looked up at Nick and then down at Kate. “Radical.”

  A half hour later, Kate and the Kahuna joined Nick on the little ledge and sat down to rest.

  “Two hundred feet down. Just a little more than two thousand left to go,” Kate said, handing the bag containing the camming devices she’d collected on the way up back to Nick.

  “Two thousand feet divided by two hundred feet of rope. That means we’ve got to do this another ten times before we reach the top.” The Kahuna looked at his watch. “It’s ten A.M. now. At this rate, we won’t be done before dark.”

  “I’m hoping we won’t have to lead climb the whole way,” Nick said. “It looks to me like the pitch becomes more manageable after another five hundred feet of elevation gain.”

  “And, then we’ll be able to scramble up using only hands and feet?”

  “I’m hoping so. It seems like there’s more red dirt than rock as we get higher. It’s going to make finding secure anchor spots for our cams a lot harder.”

  The Kahuna dug his hand into the crumbly dirt. “What happens if one of the cams fails?”

  “Best-case scenario, you fall thirty feet before smacking into a cliff wall.”

  “That’s like falling off a three-story building. What’s the worst case?”

  “All the cams fail, one after another, like dominoes, and all three of us plummet thousands of feet to the valley floor.”

  Kate stood up and gathered the rope. “Then we’d better not fall. I’ll take the lead on the next two hundred feet.” She looked at Nick. “You did the first section in, what, thirty-five minutes?”

  “I don’t really keep track. More like thirty-three.”

  “Yeah. I don’t keep track, either.” She checked her watch and started climbing. “See you soon. Let’s say thirty-two minutes from now.”

  Twenty-nine minutes later, Kate was done with her section. And thirty minutes after that, Nick and the Kahuna joined her at the top.

  “Do you have any binoculars with you?” Kate asked Nick.

  “Sure.” Nick rooted around in his daypack and handed them to Kate. “Why?”

  Kate aimed the binoculars toward the base of the mountain. “It looks like we have company.” She handed them back to Nick. “You might want to see this.”

  Nick looked through the eyepiece. Jasper was standing at the base of the waterfall, staring up at them through his own set of binoculars. “I guess they found us.”

  “What should we do now?” Kate asked.

  “No worries. I have a plan.” Nick handed Kate back the binoculars. “Could you hold this? I kind of need both hands.” He leaned forward over the cliff and gave Jasper the double middle finger.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “How did it work?”

  Kate stared through the binoculars. Jasper was waving his arms and shouting instructions to the half dozen men who had joined him at the waterfall. Two of them started climbing. Another two ran off into the forest back in the direction of the beach. “That depends. Was your plan to piss him off?”

  Nick gathered up the ropes. “That was just phase one. Phase two is we get the heck out of here . . . in a big hurry.”

  Kate held up the cams. “You’re going to need these.”

  Nick shook his head. “Not this time. We’re about halfway to Kalepa Ridge. It’s a good head start, but we’re going to have to take some shortcuts if we’re going to get to the top as soon as possible.”

  “Shortcuts like a two-hundred-foot free climb with no safety net? If you make one mistake, you’re dead. I can’t let you do that,” Kate said.

  Nick scrambled up the cliff and was twenty feet above Kate before she could finish objecting. He turned his head and flashed her a crooked grin. “What’s the matter? Scared I’m going to break your record?”

  The sound of bullets being fired from the valley echoed off the mountain, but Nick kept methodically climbing higher.

  “At this distance, firing uphill and into the wind, hitting a target would be a one in million shot,” Kate said to the Kahuna. “They’re just trying to scare us.”

  The Kahuna flinched as the sound of more gunfire reverberated through the valley. “They’re doing a good job.”

  Nick continued higher. “Give me some slack,” Nick called down from one hundred feet above. Kate let out a little extra rope, and Nick jumped to an adjacent handhold and resumed the climb.

  A bullet bit into the red dirt just beneath Nick’s feet once he was about fifty feet from finishing the section, sending debris showering down on Kate and the Kahuna. “That was too close,” Kate said. “It looks like they’re starting to figure out how to compensate for the distance and wind.”

  The K
ahuna brushed some of the fallen dirt off his head. “I’m going with lucky shot. It’s the only way I can keep from messing myself.”

  Kate watched Nick pull himself up onto a ledge and secure the Reverso to the cliff. “Seventeen minutes,” he called down. “It’s got to be some kind of a record, if you’re into that sort of thing, which I’m not.”

  Kate checked on the Kahuna’s tether and sent him up ahead of her. “If it is, it comes with a big asterisk. It’s amazing how fast you can go when you’re being chased by killers,” she shouted up to Nick as she started to climb.

  “I think we’re about to test that theory,” Nick said. “The two guys Jasper told to follow us up the mountain are catching up. They’re almost at the base of the cliff.”

  Kate looked down at the two men trying to assess the best way up the cliff, and then looked up at Nick. She was already halfway to him. The Kahuna was nearly there. “We’re still at least six hundred feet above them. They have a lot of hard climbing to do before they reach us. As long as nothing else goes wrong, we’ll be at the top long before them.”

  The Kahuna pulled himself up onto the ledge and sat down, trying to catch his breath. Kate joined them a minute later and aimed the binoculars down the mountain. “So, you know how I was just saying if nothing else goes wrong, we’re looking pretty good?”

  Nick and the Kahuna looked at each other. “Yeah,” they said in unison.

  “Well, something else went wrong,” Kate said. “The two guys Jasper sent off into the forest are back. They’re carrying a big box, and Jasper looks pretty excited to see it. I’ve got a really bad feeling about that box.”

  Kate watched through the binoculars as Jasper unloaded a base, a bipod mount, a telescopic sight, and a long narrow metal tube. “I think they’re either building a telescope or a mortar.”

  The Kahuna was flat on his back with his eyes closed. “I’m going with telescope. Come on, telescope.”

  Kate shook her head. “If it’s a telescope, they’re going to have a heck of a time loading it with the whole crate full of eighty-one-millimeter shells sitting right next to it.”