Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “Oh, thank God. Is Dr. Silver here? I’m sorry, I’m Patria Koenig. They sent me… thank God you’re here. There’s an emergency at the lab, people hurt. I’ve got to find Dr. Silver. Is he here?”

  “Why, no. No, he isn’t. Oh, dear. What’s happened?”

  “There’s no time, no time. We have to contact him right away. My husband… Dr. Morgan… the others. Horrible.” Andrea put down her spoon on an end table. It held a telephone. “Wait here. Please. I’ll call him right away. He’s at… I’ll call him. Please, just wait.” She hurried into the back. Patria waited. When she heard Andrea pick up the phone, she lifted the handset in front of her, placed the microphone of her minirecorder against it and pressed RECORD. She could hear the tones spill onto the tape.

  “Ben’s at the Naval Facility,” Andrea began, “He’ll… Oh!” The living room was empty.

  The man in the car had a device. “It’s quick and dirty, but it works. There was no time for a tap.” He played the tape and read out the numbers on the small LED screen. Then he put in a radio call. He started driving very fast with one hand.

  The dash clock indicated 10:38. “Come on, come on,” he murmured. “We don’t have much time.”

  They were already passing Sinner’s Head when the call came back. “Write it down,” he said abruptly. Patria nodded, and scribbled the directions as they crackled over the radio.

  “Good!” They cornered through Kekaha on two wheels. “Now the map.”

  She unfolded the map of the Pacific Missile Approach Network. “Where’d you get this?” It was extremely detailed. “Emergency services.” He shrugged. “Just in case. They might have a fire someday. Besides, Hawaiian Bell installed most of their equipment. We owe Lieutenant Takamura a favor or two.” His teeth showed in the dash light.

  “It’s classified.” She gestured at the red warning.

  He shrugged again but said nothing. The car slowed as they approached a curve, spun suddenly to the left.

  The dirt road, barely a road at all, headed toward the beach. Around here roads like this always went to the beach. The car stopped at the edge of the surf. The waves were high, broad swells that broke on the steep shelf just offshore. They seemed to be very far apart, deep lulls between them. A black object bobbed in a trough. “There they are,” he said. “Good luck.”

  By the time she reached the sand, the car was gone. The Zodiac rode a wave in, and Chazz, a vague shape in black, climbed out. Takamura was behind him. The old man was invisible, hunched beside the motor. A pencil-thin flashlight beam stabbed at the map in Patria’s hands. She pushed her scrawled notes up beside it.

  “Here,” she said, moving her finger in from the numbers along the edge. “And here.” She found the second coordinate and fixed the V-shaped building. “NBL-212.” She and Chazz memorized landmarks, directions.

  “Good,” Chazz said, folding the map. “NBL-Navy Biological Laboratory? There’s a lot of activity around here. Cobb’s goddamn fish detector has been clanging all night.” He helped her into the Zodiac.

  64

  Along the shore by the facility, they had to stay just beyond the break line, wallowing low in the troughs.

  “There,” Takamura hissed. The Zodiac curved slowly in toward the promontory. Waves were crashing on the rock with sullen booms muffled by kelp. It was too dark to find a landing place. Chazz looked at Takamura, who nodded. A pencil beam leaped out, showed a circle of rock, wandered along the high-tide line. Chazz gestured, and the Zodiac edged along the breakers toward a dark patch concealed by rockfall. The combers rolled smoothly from south to north, breaking off the end of the promontory, trailing out to sea. Spray hid the stars.

  Shinawa said nothing. The rock wall fell back, revealing a cave of collapsed cliff face, no good. The boat moved on, pushed by the nearly silent electric motor. The thin beam danced across the black-wet volcanic tuff. Spindrift glowed ghostlike. At last the beam stopped. Chazz glanced back and Shinawa nodded. They rose on the crest and rode the wave in, gravel and sand grating under the rubber hull. The silence between waves was abrupt and short-lived.

  Patria read the compass in the pencil light. Then she led the way northeast, into the facility, and the sound of the surf faded behind them.

  Low scrub grew on the dunes behind the rock promontory. From the top they could see parts of the facility spread out before them: roads with sparse traffic, control towers, a forest of radio masts, satellite and tracking dishes, radar dome, the empty twin lines of runway lights. Scattered groups of two story beige wooden barracks. Takamura guessed that the distant building under construction, with a web of naked scaffolding over a visibly ornamental facade pocked with dark, empty window sockets, was the Officers’ Club. Shinawa moved ahead, vanished from sight below the edge of the dune. Takamura’s watch read 11:52.

  They could hear the distant whine of truck engines, muffled loudspeakers. An abbreviated whoop of a siren, cut short. Chazz and Patria had the map spread on the sand. They traced their location. Chazz drew a line with his finger to NBL-212. It crossed two roads and at least one fence. Shinawa reappeared, holding something.

  Chazz gave him a quizzical look. Shinawa smiled, turning it over, a small black plastic case with two leads. “Ultrasonic detector,” he whispered, pointing.

  “Go off?” Takamura asked.

  Shinawa grinned, shook his head. “No. Ninja walk is very quiet,” he said. “Besides, I completed the circuit. No problem. Gadgets, pah.” He tossed the box down the dune. It made a sound like a small rodent scrambling on the sand. Someday a sailor on a walk would find it.

  He led the way, showing them how to move, an irregular motion, sometimes swift and tripping, sometimes slow and bent crabwise down the dune. He showed them where the detector line was, his completed circuit. They stepped over it.

  “They’ll have infrared, too,” Chazz said. Shinawa shrugged, sure. But the dunes were still heated from the day, radiating like crazy into the cooler night sky. No one would bother to watch: a waste of time. They were just part of the cooling earth, vague shapes dancing in pale heat haze.

  The first road was empty. They crossed, single file, swathed in black, invisible.

  Around a low rise a group of floodlit garage buildings appeared, surrounded by Cyclone fence. Not on the map. The yard was filled with parked dark blue vehicles, sedans, pickups, panel trucks. There were two identical Subaru Brats parked at the end. “Damn,” Chazz murmured, backing up. “They moved the motor pool.”

  Shinawa put a hand on his shoulder, melted into shadows and was gone.

  He was back in minutes, shaking his head. They retreated, moved off east. This meant an extra fence. They could hear the current-click in it, electrified.

  “How do we get through?” Patria asked.

  Shinawa was unwrapping the black material of his obi, his wide cloth belt. He wrapped the wire, found a stick and propped two strands apart. “The way you make love to a porcupine. Very carefully,” he whispered, showing her how. One hand through the gap found the ground. Bent over, supporting himself on both sides, his leg went through, then the other hand, the other leg. The current hummed and clicked. He stood on the other side. She reached through, and he guided her hand to the ground, a clear space. She made it. Takamura made it.

  Chazz was big. He used his face wrapping to cover the bottom wire, squeezed himself through. Sparks jumped blue in the dark, but he made it. Carefully they let the wires relax, unwrapped them and moved on. It was 0014 hours, Tuesday.

  There was a roar, a sweep of light, and they flattened into shadows in the desert. A Navy Grumman went overhead at fifty feet, climbing. They were a hundred meters from the end of the runway, faces in the dirt. The plane circled, headed southeast toward Oahu. Shinawa led them on.

  “Halt,” snapped a voice to their left. “Who goes there?” They stopped.

  A figure stood fifteen meters away with a rifle leveled at them. They stopped, the four of them, and turned to face him. His face was hidden in shado
w, but the weapon was visible.

  “Very good, sailor,” Chazz said genially. “Your partner wasn’t this alert. Very good.”

  “What’s the password?” the sailor demanded. His voice betrayed him, though. He’d always feared this would happen when he was on guard duty. Intruders. He had to run through the Identify-Friend-or-Foe procedures, a process he found, in peacetime at least, embarrassing even to contemplate. Yet here they were. “What’s the password?” he demanded again. The rifle did not waver. Chazz had doubts it was loaded, but they had to assume it was. After all, Silver had been warned: Andrea had called him at the lab. By now he would suspect the emergency was a deception, and that Koenig was involved, but he could not know for sure. Hawaiian Bell had ensured that the lines were temporarily out to the Douglass Research Center.

  They would all be jumpy.

  “Password?” Chazz asked. His voice indicated a frown. “Jesus Christ, didn’t they tell you?” He was moving toward the sailor. His hand moved, and the rifle barrel followed it. Shinawa vanished.

  “Tell me what?” The guard’s voice was suspicious.

  “About the password,” Chazz said. He had moved to the side a little. The rifle tracked him, but the others were out of the line of fire. Takamura was relaxed. Patria stood stiffly. She thought she would be no good in a fight.

  “What about the password?”

  “I can’t believe this,” Chazz said. “Nothing ever gets done right. Nobody told you?” He was incredulous. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, eh?”

  The rifle was still aimed at Chazz, though. “Don’t come any closer.” The sailor’s voice shook.

  “Sure,” Chazz said, gliding swiftly in beside the rifle barrel, turning his hips as he did. The guard’s finger snapped back and the rifle went off. His bullet spanged into the dirt and whined away into the darkness, trailing orange sparks. Chazz twisted his hips back into the guard, bringing the heel of his left hand up into the guard’s face, a fake atemi to the chin. Surprised, the man jerked his head back. Chazz had reached up behind him with his other hand. He casually took a few fingers full of hair at the sailor’s nape and eased him back over his hip onto the ground. Chazz had his hand on his throat.

  “You should be more careful,” Chazz suggested to the wide eyes. “Someone could get hurt. I can’t believe they didn’t tell you about the password.” He tied the sailor up with nylon cord looped at his belt. He cut the sleeve from the sailor’s fatigues and gagged him with it. Chazz picked up the fallen rifle and melted into the darkness.

  Shinawa nodded; he’d taken care of the other guard. Takamura came back up the road. He pointed. The second road was floodlit. Pickets were stationed along it every ten meters.

  There was no way across. In the distance they could see the lab.

  65

  Renfrew had found himself a rating. The rating’s nameplate said BRADLEY, N. R. in white letters. Bradley, N. R. was bleeding onto his Navy blue necktie at the moment, and his nameplate had lost one of its clips and hung at an angle. His eyes were wide and very frightened.

  Renfrew held up the half-eaten sandwich. “Spoils of war,” he said genially. He took a bite. It was Bradley’s dinner. “Sorry about the cut,” he murmured through a full mouth. “Excessive zeal, they used to call it. Come on, now, tell me the truth. You’re Blue Team, right?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at Bradley.

  Bradley, backed against the cement wall, shook his head vigorously, watching his captor. Drops of blood scattered in the narrow shaft of floodlight that fell across him. They looked black. The man must be a maniac. He was carrying the most complicated archery set Bradley had ever seen slung on his back. He was festooned with equipment. He had caught Bradley completely without warning, had the knife at his throat before he heard a sound. “I don’t… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Renfrew shook his own head sadly and took another enormous bite of Bradley’s sandwich. He didn’t really like liverwurst, but it was food. He hadn’t had anything but fruit and dried goat for some time now. “Look,” he said patiently, “I’m Red Team, see. War games. That’s why I’m made up like this. Camouflage, you know. I was supposed to infiltrate, but this place is a Swiss cheese, for Chrissake. It was too easy. Almost as if you weren’t even expecting me. But there must be a Blue Team. There’s always a Blue Team.”

  Bradley shook his head. “No. No, I’m sure…”

  Renfrew finished the sandwich and carefully folded the plastic wrapper into a tiny packet. “You know,” he said as he put the small colorless object in a pocket, “you can kill somebody with a sandwich wrapper.” His voice was dreamy. “This stuff is airtight and very flexible. Hell, it practically molds itself to the face. Suffocation. A nasty way to go.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Very nasty. It’s pathetic, really. You Navy people are hopeless on land. You need the marines. Well, my orders are: first, plant an explosive device on the emergency generator at the motor pool. I already did that. It’ll go off. No simulations on this mission. It’s just a diversion, though. Second, take a prisoner. That’s you. So, all I have to do now is take you, or someone else if you die or something, to the proper officer.”

  Bradley’s knees felt weak with relief. “I’m a computer technician,” he said.

  Renfrew shook his head. “Great,” he muttered. “Well,” he said pleasantly, “there are really only one or two little obstacles to the completion of my mission, you understand.”

  Bradley nodded yes. He understood.

  “Good,” Renfrew agreed. “Very good. One of those insignificant obstacles is this little cut on your neck. It’s not supposed to be there. Is it?”

  “No,” Bradley squeaked, “it’s not.”

  “No.” Renfrew shook his head. “I thought not. I don’t really know what to do about that cut. If it’s not supposed to be there, I mean. Now, as I look at it, there are two things possible.” He held up the blade of his bayonet to illustrate his points. “One…” He waved the tip in the air. Bradley watched it intently as it dipped through the shaft of light. “One, you could say you cut yourself shaving.” Renfrew nodded as if this were an appealing notion. “Of course, it is a bit long for a shaving cut, and a little deep unless you shave with a straight razor. They might not believe you. Gosh, you’d have to be awfully convincing.”

  He looked at Bradley, who said nothing.

  Renfrew leaned back. “Two,” he continued. “I could widen it a little. Deepen it, too. Then you’d bleed to death, sooner or later, depending on how the wound is adjusted. That would be unfortunate, and a lot of extra work for me, because I would have to dispose of your body. It wouldn’t do to have the body found. You would go kind of AWOL, you see.”

  Bradley tried to shake his head, but failed. His voice didn’t work either.

  “All in all, I suppose, I lean in favor of option two, despite the extra work. What do you think?”

  Bradley said nothing.

  “Of course,” Renfrew reflected, “you might be able to help me. Yes, I think there might be something you could do for me. That could make keeping you alive almost worthwhile. What do you say?”

  Bradley nodded wildly.

  “Good,” Renfrew said. “We have a deal. Now here’s my problem. My instructions are to find a specific man, an officer. That’s okay, except I don’t know his name. Red Team was not given the best of intelligence for this exercise. I can tell you what he looks like, though. I can tell you where he might be found, around some kind of biological facility, a lab or something. Of course, he might not, too. But if you can help me get to him – you see, we have to kind of sneak up on him – then perhaps we can find some way to convince them that really is a shaving cut, and not a nearly severed jugular. You’ll have to be very clever, though. We’re probably going to have to enter restricted areas and stuff like that.” He frowned. He was still hunkered down near Bradley, but the point of his bayonet was resting very lightly on the ceme
nt ground. He twirled the blade a couple of times, watching the play of light on the vanadium steel.

  He looked up, slid the bayonet into its sheath. “Red Team’s mission is clear. We’re testing security here at PACMAN. This is a serious test. A real test. Security’s very lax, but that could be a trap. You’re going to have to be very clever. Think of it as a patriotic duty, though. You’ll be helping your country. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

  Even before the full-alert sirens and searchlights came on, Bradley had agreed that it was a good thing.

  ***

  PACMAN was on full alert. Sentries patrolling the road blocked access to NBL-212. The four black-clothed figures hunched in the drainage ditch watched as moving floodlights washed the scene in a high-contrast light, blackening the shadows in which they hid.

  “They’re worried. And they’re about to move. Dewilliter was right.” Takamura’s whisper was a small scurrying in the darkness.

  “Diversion,” Shinawa suggested.

  Takamura illuminated his watch: 0147. “Not much time.” Patria moved away toward an intersection thirty meters away, removing her black face muffler as she did. She stood, dressed in black, and jogged toward the nearest sentry. The others, crouched in the shadows, could not hear what she was saying, only the urgent rise and fall of her voice as she pointed away down the road. She could have been a security officer, dressed the way she was. The sentry held his rifle at port arms and jogged off the way she had indicated.

  They rose up and moved swiftly through the gray area where the two floodlights almost overlapped. Patria was already in the scrub on the other side. Light sand and stone crunched underfoot.

  “Kunoichi!” Shinawa hissed. “Female ninja. Good.” He tapped her shoulder and they moved on toward the biology lab. To their right was the new Officers’ Club.

  Traffic began moving on the road behind them. A blue Jeep raced, trailing a plume of dust into the shafts of floodlight. The men in it were armed.