Pacific Creed

by Don Pendleton

  “You are back, Luke.”

  “I heard my cousin was in a bad place. I went east and got him out of it. And then? We decided there was nothing on the mainland for us. We came home.”

  The elders nodded. After World War II there had been a significant diaspora, and among the Hawaiian expatriates even onto the second and third generation there was a powerful desire to return. Uncle Aikane nodded very slowly. “Aloha, Koa. Aloha, Makaha.”

  Koa nodded in return. “Aloha” was another Hawaiian word with a lot of meanings. It could mean hello, goodbye, welcome or even I love you. In this setting Bolan perceived at the very least it meant “Welcome, returned ones.” Bolan and Koa were in, and their covers were hanging by threads.

  They both responded in unison. “Aloha.”

  Chapter 3

  The Annex, Stony Man Farm

  “They’re in,” Kurtzman confirmed. Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, gave the computer expert a look, and he sighed. He felt the same way she did. Bolan had been on some very deep-cover missions before, but the Hawaiian job was pushing the limits.

  “You really think they can pull this off?” Price asked.

  “You saw the picture of Mack after Agent Hu got through with him. Are you going to walk up to him in a bar in Waikiki and tell him he’s not Hawaiian enough?”

  “No, but the locals have a very strong vibe.”

  “I know. That’s why Koa came up with the story about a prodigal son lost to the mainland and returning to his heritage. It will explain lapses, and Bolan has Koa to smooth things over for him. Plus if it looks like he’s desperate to prove himself, the bad guys may accelerate him into the inner circle of evil.”

  “Yes, and just who are the bad guys again?” That was the million-dollar question. The mission was troublingly vague. Price looked at the converging data streams. “We have young female tourists disappearing—that implies white slavery—and two intercepted gun shipments.”

  “Girls for guns.” Kurtzman scowled. He found the sex-slavery trade particularly abhorrent. “It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before.”

  “In the United States? In Hawaii?”

  “If it’s true, it’s bad,” Kurtzman agreed.

  “I’m still trying to figure out the spike in violence against tourists and military personnel.”

  “Hawaii has had locals-only trouble before,” Kurtzman countered.

  “Yeah, and this is swiftly reaching the levels of the bad old days in the ’70s.”

  Kurtzman nodded. Hawaiians were now a minority in their own islands, and they also made up the poorest segment of the Aloha State’s extremely cosmopolitan society. Their native discontent had sporadically manifested itself in violence, mostly against tourists, despite the fact that tourists and the U.S. military presence were two of the major pillars of the Hawaiian economy. Now the violence was spiking precipitously, and no one was talking. In fact, locally, a lot of people seemed scared. “We’ve heard ‘drive out the colonizers and invaders’ before. The Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement and its rivals and affiliates mostly send papers and delegations to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations demanding reparations. We definitely have something new going on here.”

  “I know.” There was nothing about this mission that Price liked. The chatter was that something very big was going on in Hawaii, and something related was happening in the Pacific. She tapped a very thin file on her tablet. “This is the most troubling. The hints of a massive strike against the invaders. We’ve never heard that before.” Price brought up a sore point. “And so far all we have is a hula master who likes to beat up G.I.s.”

  “That’s a Lua master,” Kurtzman corrected. “And we have a tracking device in his hand. Mack is working his way up the food chain.”

  “I prefer it when Mack swoops in by surprise, mops the floor with the bad guys and then buys me dinner in D.C.”

  Kurtzman smiled. “Yeah, that works for me, too.”

  “He’s operating on U.S. soil and he’s almost never been this thin on assets.”

  “We have full war loads in strategic locations.”

  “But unless he breaks cover right now all he has is his phone and his fists.”

  “And Koa.”

  Price nodded. She liked the Hawaiian and she’d been infinitely relieved that he had volunteered to be on Mack’s six. “So they’re acquiring equipment locally?”

  “We went ’round and ’round on that. Fact is Mack may not get a chance. As you mentioned, this cover is about as deep as it gets and as thin as it’s ever been. Until Mack proves himself, he and Koa might be ambushed or hit with a drive-by.”

  “Tell me they’re armed.”

  “Armed and waiting,” Kurtzman confirmed. “And now the ball is in the bad guys’ court.”

  Wailuku Town: “Pakuz”

  “I told you not to piss off the Samoans,” Koa muttered.

  Bolan sat in the tiny den and cleaned his CIA-provided pistol. The old GI .45 came from Hawaiian National Guard storage. The soldier suspected it had been WWII issue. It showed a great deal of holster wear but as a National Guard weapon not a lot of use. The bore was clean and with a little oiling the action was slick. “I didn’t piss off the Samoans. I punched Tino in the face. Then I bought him a beer. Now he loves me. He’s calling me cuz. What’s not to like?”

  “That did go better than expected,” Koa admitted. The Hawaiian had a similar pistol and was scrupulously checking the quality of the magazines they’d been issued.

  “So what’s the Lua guy’s name? I didn’t catch it.”

  “Me, either, and he scares the shit out of me. I think you got real lucky the other night, and even luckier he didn’t recognize you.” Koa grunted in amusement. “Though I think he liked it when you broke Tino’s nose.”

  “I think the entire Island of Oahu liked it when I broke Tino’s nose.”

  “There is that.”

  Agent Hu gave Bolan a knowing look. “Melika sure liked it.”

  Bolan began wrapping beige rubber bands around the .45’s grip. If he was going to pose as a low-level Hawaiian hoodlum who was willing to turn terrorist, a carry rig was out of the question. His options were front-of-the-waist or small-of-the-back, and he needed some friction to hold the big steel piece in place. He nodded at Koa. “Everything went better than expected, cuz, admit it.”

  Koa’s brow bunched as though he was getting a headache. “Don’t call me that.”

  “It’s our cover. Get used to it.”

  “I don’t want to get used to it.”

  “You want the grease gun or the kidney-buster?”

  Koa nodded at the old Ithaca 12-gauge riot gun. “I’ll take the shotgun. I qualified expert on those. Not that model, but how much different can it be?” Koa warily eyed the ancient piece of ordnance on the coffee table next to the 12 gauge. “Those? Man, back when I was in this man’s army, the only people who were issued those were tankers or truckers, because they never expected to use them.”

  Bolan put down his pistol and took up the antique

  M-3 submachine gun, which did bear a striking resemblance to a mechanic’s grease gun. It was also inaccurate, unwieldy and notoriously unreliable under field conditions. It wouldn’t have been in Bolan’s top five hundred choices for armament, but if you had to defend a Hawaiian bungalow on the wrong side of town, the men who kicked down the door were in for a very nasty surprise.

  “Pakuz,” as the locals called it, was a suburb of Wailuku Town. It had a straight shot to Main Street but the foreclosed bungalow the CIA had acquired abutted the foothills. It was just slightly off the beaten track and left several escape routes open. Pakuz was right next to and half the size of Happy Valley and, like the aforementioned and ironically named area, was a hotbed of crime and violence. If Hawaii real
ly was spawning terrorist cells then any economically depressed areas could be hothouses where the revolution’s foot soldiers would be nurtured and grown.

  “What did you do with the revolvers?” Bolan asked.

  Bolan had requested some backup weapons in case they got arrested or had to hand over their weapons. The CIA had come up with four 4-inch Smith & Wesson Military and Police .38s of dubious vintage.

  Koa slid shells into the Ithaca. “Put one in a waterproof bag in the toilet tank. Buried two in the backyard next to the banana tree.” He nodded at Hu. “The fourth one I gave to her.”

  “Pegarella Hu, CIA agent, groomer…” Hu grinned. “Gun moll.”

  Someone banged on the door as if he was about to knock it off its hinges. “Koa!” Tino roared. “Makaha!”

  Bolan rose and tucked his pistol into the back of his waistband. Koa took up his shotgun and stepped to one side to give himself a lane of fire down the tiny hallway. Bolan opened the door and found himself staring down the two men he had delivered beat-downs to in the past twenty-four hours. Both Tino and the man-mountain whose name Bolan didn’t know stood in front of him on the landing. A third man—a thin-as-a-whip Polynesian—stood scowling by the driver’s door of a red VW van. Tino grinned past the bandaged bridge of his nose. “Aloha!”

  “Aloha, Tino,” Bolan said. “You wanna come in? We got beer and chicken.”

  “No, brah.” Tino shook his head. “Bring your grind. You and Koa are coming with us. You got people you need to meet. People who want to meet you.”

  The Lua master nodded. It had been dark on the streets of Chinatown, and Bolan had been blond, with a totally different voice, demeanor and complexion and wearing a uniform. If this was the big fat kill, the Hawaiian and the Samoan were hiding it with the skill of trained intelligence agents. “Hey, Koa!” Bolan called. “Tino says we gotta go!”

  “I wanna come with!” Hu called out.

  The thin man by the van spoke for the first time. “The bitch stays.”

  Hu stopped short of hissing like a cat. Bolan muttered a low “Hey, Tino?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who’s Prince Charming?”

  Tino made an amused noise and answered softly. “Best you don’t ask a lot of questions, Makaha. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Got it.”

  Koa came to the door sans shotgun and holding a six-pack and a bucket of chicken. He called back over his shoulder to Hu, “Don’t know when we’ll be back!”

  The temperature in the bungalow dropped precipitously. “Whatever…”

  * * *

  The van bucked and bumped through the darkened back roads. Bolan hadn’t known there was such a thing as angry Hawaiian rap music, but Tino blared it loud enough to wake the dead. They had driven out of Happy Valley and entered state forestland. Bolan knew they were no longer traveling on state-maintained roads. Leaves and branches scraped the sides of the van. The forest formed a thick, sheltering canopy above when it wasn’t so low it scratched the roof. This was a smugglers road, most likely barely maintained by the local marijuana growers. Tino appeared to know the route like the back of his hand.

  He killed the lights and spent the next ten minutes driving through the pitch black seemingly led by sense of smell. The white-knuckle ride ended as the van broke into a clearing and Tino brought the VW van to a halt beneath the stars. “We’re here.”

  The Lua master turned around in the shotgun seat and held out his good hand. “The guns, bruddahs.”

  Bolan smiled in the moonlight coming through the windows. “You can tell?”

  “I don’t see everything, Makaha—” the Lua master smiled back “—but you’d be surprised what I do notice.”

  Bolan withdrew his .45. He gave it 50/50 they’d been compromised the minute the Lua master had seen him in Melika’s bar. The soldier rolled the dice and gave himself to fate as he handed over the pistol. “Man, I thought I was all slick and shit.”

  “You’re not bad.” The Lua man shrugged his mighty shoulders. “But I’m better. The knife, too.”

  Bolan shook his head ruefully and handed over his knife. Koa gave up his gun. “You’re not going to put sacks over our heads and walk us into the volcano, are you?”

  The thin man spoke. He sat in the backseat by himself, and Bolan had felt his eyes and his gun pointing at his back the entire ride. “We wouldn’t drop you in the volcano. But would you jump in if you were told?”

  Koa met the thin man’s stare. “You know? I had just about enough of being told when I was in the army.”

  The Lua man spoke quietly. “Would you jump in if you were asked, Koa?”

  Bolan matched the man’s tone. “I would, if the right man asked me. For the right reason.”

  Tino and the Lua master both nodded at the sagacity of Bolan’s words.

  “What he said,” Koa agreed.

  The Lua man got out and slid open the VW’s cabin door. “Then come out.”

  Bolan stepped into the Hawaiian night. He still had his phone and his bare hands, which was far more armament than most would suspect. But they wouldn’t save him from a bullet in the back.

  The Lua master nodded. “Follow me.”

  Bolan and Koa followed as Tino and the thin man took their six. They walked out of the clearing into the darkness. The Lua man was barely discernible but he moved unerringly down a clearly cut and maintained path. Soon Bolan both smelled and heard the Pacific. They came to a clearing about the size of a large recreational vehicle. Overhead military camouflage netting stretched to form a canopy thickly interwoven with the boughs of overhanging trees. A pair of red military emergency lights lit the forest encampment. Solar panels stacked to one side told Bolan the camp was powered by batteries. It would give off little or no recognizable heat signatures to imaging satellites and there wouldn’t be any light leakage visible to passing aircraft. Nor would the red lights ruin the night vision of anyone in camp if they suddenly went lights off.

  It was a very professional setup.

  Three sawhorse and plank tables were piled with very suspicious-looking, four-foot-long military crates. The Lua master, Tino and the thin man waited. Bolan and Koa stepped forward. Bolan unboxed a rifle. It appeared to be a 1980s or ’90s vintage M-16 A2. He held up the weapon as if he were admiring it. Bolan had fought with this type of rifle many times. If it hadn’t been parkerized black, the rifle would have glittered with newness. The M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel was new, as well. There were no serial markings, which told the soldier it was most likely a Chinese or Philippine knock-off.

  “Sweet,” Bolan proclaimed.

  Koa racked the action on a rifle and peered through the sights. “Same model I learned on in basic.”

  The Lua man nodded. “We need a lot more of them.”

  Koa set the rifle on his shoulder. “I know a little something about smuggling. AKs would be a lot cheaper. Shit, they’re disappearing from Iraqi and Afghani inventory by the day, and for that matter the Russians and Chinese sell to anybody.”

  Bolan knew the answer but kept his mouth shut. The weapons mimicked U.S. National Guard issue. A real insurgent force wanted the same weapons as their oppressor, so they could steal compatible parts, ammo and magazines. On a secondary note, until one of the weapons was taken from a captured or killed Hawaiian secessionist, the sight of them would send U.S. law enforcement scrambling to find out what military depot in the Islands was hemorrhaging storage guns. That would give the smugglers a few more moments of cover.

  A few more moments might be all they needed. All evidence and Bolan’s hard-won instincts reaffirmed that something very bad was going to happen soon.

  Bolan kept the frown off his face. If they added a few stolen military uniforms to the mix, the secessionists would be able to drive up to a Hawaiian military base as if
they belonged and engage in some serious slaughter. “A lot more are going to cost a lot of money.” Bolan gazed meaningfully at the inland pot grower’s paradise. “Mary Jane going to pay for that?”

  The Lua master went Island-style stone face. “How bad you want to know?”

  Koa put down the weapon. “I trust you, and Uncle Aikane. Whatever it is, I’m down with it. All the way. Makaha?”

  Bolan nodded slowly. “You got me out of Pennsylvania, back to my island and back to my ohana.” Everyone nodded at the all-encompassing Hawaiian word for family. Ohana meant family by blood or otherwise, friendship, as well as race. “If I don’t have your six by now, then you should have left me. You decide to jump in the volcano? I’ll jump in right next to you.”

  “Good.” The Lua man nodded. “Good. Then follow me a little farther.” Bolan and Koa walked into the nearly pitch black once more. The ocean breeze began to blow stiffly in their faces. They broke out into starlight and found themselves on a cliff. The Lua man spoke over his shoulder as he vanished through a cleft in the rock. “Careful.”

  Bolan climbed down ancient steps cut into the lava rock. The Pacific thundered and crashed against the cliffs below. Happy Valley and Wailuku were close to the beach, but their shores were not tourist destinations. The locals were not particularly friendly, and the rip tides and undertows made surfing and swimming a suicidal proposition. The rest of the coastline was a series of jagged lava cliffs carved by eons of tidal surges.

  Bolan knew from experience that lava eruptions and the action of the ocean often meant caves.

  The steps were so steep they almost became a ladder, and then the ladder turned into a lava chimney. The Lua master’s voice spoke from below. “Six more feet, brah.” Bolan clambered down into the blackness. His bottom foot found empty air and a huge hand caught his ankle. “Just drop.”

  Bolan dropped and bent his knees as he hit soft sand. He found himself in a cave lit by a red emergency light, with the roar of the surf outside. The soldier grinned at the Lua man guilelessly. “You did that climb one-handed?”