“Sun, surf, some beer, some grind. What’s not to like?”
Uncle Aikane eyed Bolan shrewdly. “You look tired, Makaha.”
Bolan gave Melika a squeeze. “What’s not to like?”
Melika managed a giggle and blushed. This elicited some grunts of amusement from around the bar.
“The time for partying is over, Koa,” Uncle Aikane intoned. “Now is the time to walk the path.”
Koa disengaged himself from Hu and regarded Aikane with utmost seriousness. “I’m ready, and if I’m not, you will teach me what I need to know, Uncle.”
Grunts of approval rounded the bar.
Aikane turned his attention on Bolan. “And you, Makaha?”
“I have my cousin’s back, and my ohana. To the end.”
Very dangerous men nodded as the die was cast.
“Very well, Koa, you will come with me. Makaha? You will go with Rasul.”
The thin man nodded. Bolan kept his poker face. “Rasul” sure as hell wasn’t a traditional Hawaiian name. Bolan and Koa both nodded. “Yes, Uncle.”
Three men detached themselves from the bar. One was short compared to the roomful of big men but he made up for it by having the T-shirt-stretching physique of a national class bodybuilder. Between his muscle-bound short neck, short arms and short torso he looked like a human fire hydrant. The other two men were lanky and could have almost passed for twins. All three looked to be in their twenties and they all wore T-shirts, cargo shorts and all-terrain sandals. The men looked as though they were about to go hiking save that it was close to two o’clock in the morning. The fire hydrant confirmed Bolan’s suspicions by grabbing a knapsack.
Bolan turned to Koa and gave him the Hawaiian handshake the warrior had taught him. Koa was a past master of the stone face but his eyes conveyed he knew something was terribly wrong. Bolan grinned. “Catch you on the flip side, cuz.” He turned to Melika. Despite having been a bartender for most of her adult life her poker face was breaking. She looked as if only iron determination was keeping her from crying. Bolan gave her a big wet one right on the lips. He stood in front of the assembled Hawaiians and shrugged. “Let’s kick this pig.”
Fire Hydrant and the two brothers filed down the narrow bar toward the back exit. Tino dropped his bar towel and followed them. Rasul held out his hand to Bolan and beckoned. “Come, Makaha.”
Chapter 11
The forest, dawn
The van ground to a halt. Once again Tino was driving. Rasul smiled from the front passenger seat without an ounce of warmth. “We’re here.”
Fire Hydrant pulled open the sliding door. “Out.”
Bolan hopped out and stretched. He’d been in three fire fights in three days, crossed half the Pacific and back and spent precious little of it sleeping. His tank was on E and he was running on fumes. Rasul and the other two men got out of the van. Tino stayed behind the wheel. The two brothers unlashed a long, tarp-wrapped package from the luggage rack and laid it down reverently.
“This is an initiation?” Bolan asked.
Rasul eyed Bolan steadily. “Yes, Makaha.”
Bolan started to get a very bad feeling. They had taken his phone and his knife and he was ripe for an execution. The brothers unlashed the package at both ends and laid the tarp open. It contained five spears. Rasul scooped up a spear and tossed it to Bolan.
Bolan’s eyes widened slightly at its weight—it felt like polished stone. It was six and a half feet long and made of koa wood. The heavy shaft was topped with sixteen inches of swordfish bill, most likely Blue Marlin. The bill was wide and flat like a sword blade and wickedly pointed. Red rooster feathers formed a fringe around the socket. Bolan hefted the weapon and considered plunging it into Rasul’s chest. He had a further bad feeling that Rasul was ready for that. “For hunting.”
“Yes, Makaha.”
“Boar?”
“Yes.”
Bolan raised an eyebrow at Rasul. “This isn’t my initiation.”
“No, Makaha.” Rasul nodded at Fire Hydrant. “It is Ahmed’s.”
Koa’s Muslim/Hawaiian syncretism theory had just bloomed into full fruition. Ahmed stripped off his shirt to reveal his gym-forged physique. He took up a spear and began mad-dogging Bolan in earnest. Ahmed bugged his eyes and shifted from foot to foot as he flexed his massive muscles and shook his spear. The rooster feathers rustled. Bolan ignored the attempted intimidation and watched the spear. “And I’m the hunt.”
“Yes, Makaha.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me?”
“You are the boar, Makaha. Ahmed needs to make his first kill, and partake of the sacrament.” A cold wind blew through Bolan at the word “sacrament.” Rasul shook his head derisively at the two brothers as they took up their spears. “And Osama and Salman need more practice at bundling.”
“Where’s Koa?” Bolan asked. “You hunting him on the other side of the mountain?”
“Koa is true ohana. He is a soldier. He has many skills we need. He will be brought into the inner circle.”
Bolan hefted the spear in his hand. “I just don’t think Koa’s going to approve of any of this, brah.”
“Koa, like you, expressed his willingness to step into the volcano if asked. You will serve your purpose this day, Makaha, and Koa will be told, truthfully, that you failed to survive the initiation. Then he will be forced to make a decision. That will be his test.”
Bolan searched his eyebrows for a moment as if he was doing math. “Yeah, but what if I survive?”
Rasul actually laughed. So did Ahmed, Osama and Salman. None of their spears wavered. “Well,” Rasul mused, “should you succeed in killing all four of us? There is a man who will want to talk with you. Though what happens to you after that? Allah knows, but I do not.” Ahmed, Osama and Salman roared at this new height of Hawaiian-Muslim-Jihadist-syncretism humor.
Bolan knew if he wanted Rasul to monologue any further he was going to have to force it. Failing that, he needed his opponents to make a mistake if he was going to have any hope of surviving. “You’re cowards.”
The laughter stopped.
Bolan spit in Rasul’s face.
Ahmed and his initiation buddies roared and stepped forward. Rasul held up a restraining hand. The killer actually regarded Bolan with a grain of respect. “You have no idea what kind of courage it takes to walk our path, much less to face the destiny at the end of it. You never will. Nevertheless, you are of the ohana, Makaha. Tainted as your blood is by the white haole and degraded as you are in spirit by mainland ways and filth, you are going to be given an honorable death, one that will serve your people. Your courage in the face of death has been noted, and the ohana will know it.” Rasul wiped the spittle from his face.
Bolan considered the foursome. Despite being vertically challenged, Ahmed looked as though he could bench press a baby elephant, but Bolan doubted the younger man’s lungs would last during a long chase. Osama and Salman appeared to be in pretty good shape, probably from some hardcore training in their ancestral arts. Rasul was clearly Bolan’s elder by at least a decade, but his whiplike frame indicated a martial artist at the peak of his powers. Bolan gazed through the windshield at Tino. The Samoan shook his head sadly and looked away. “Do I get a thirty-second head start?” Bolan asked.
Rasul nodded. “Of course. Or you may stand and fight. If you do, I give you my word we will engage you one at a time.”
All ego aside, Bolan knew he was an excellent bayonet fighter; but traditional Hawaiian spear fighting with six-and-a-half-foot weapons was out of his purview—he wasn’t going to win four individual spear duels this morning. Bolan spun and bolted into the forest. Laughter and catcalls chased him. Rasul broke into genuinely happy laughter. “Run, Makaha!”
Ahmed shouted out, “Run as fast as you can!”
Osama and Salman joined the chorus.
They had taken him to this place at night, and through the twisting and turning of the forest paths Bolan had lost his compass points. The canopy was too thick for him to find a mountain and he had no other points of reference. He was sure Rasul knew this forest like the back of his hand. Bolan also suspected the initiates had been well prepped for this morning’s hunt. They had bottled water and snacks and Bolan was all out of luck in that department. He stopped behind a tree and listened. There was no discernible sound of pursuit. It seemed they really were giving him a head start.
Bolan eyed his spear. It wasn’t going to do him much good in this configuration. He stuck the point into the soft loam and rammed his heel into the socket. Being a traditional Hawaiian weapon, it was bound and glued rather than riveted in place, so the swordfish bill snapped off. Bolan knelt and unwound the olona fiber. He now had a dagger, a staff and slightly more than six feet of cord. Bolan ripped off his left shirtsleeve and tore a shoulder-to-wrist strip from it. He wound the strip around the base of the swordfish bill to protect his hand and tucked his new shank under his belt. He pocketed the rest of the cloth and the cord, took up his staff and began an easy lope through the forest. The soldier made no attempt to cover his tracks as he plunged through the underbrush and picked up a game trail. Game trails often lead to water. Rasul would be expecting him to search for water and blunder down easy trails.
“I know where you are, Makaha!” Ahmed called out. “I know where you’re going!”
Bolan loped ahead and found his spot. The game trail suddenly turned into a three-foot ledge that dropped into a stream. The soldier yanked out the olona cord and tied it around the base of a sapling just off the trail.
“Makaha!” Ahmed called. “Makaha!”
Bolan dug a trench with his finger across the forest path and buried the cord an inch deep and a foot from the drop-off. The length of cord ended conveniently behind a clump of rocks.
Bolan took up his staff and jogged back up the winding trail a few dozen meters, put his hands on his knees and bent over as if exhausted. He suspected his opponents were better martial artists than he was. His opponents suspected he was probably a tough guy, but a punk criminal from the mainland. What they did not know was that Mack Bolan was quite possibly Planet Earth’s most lethal living jungle fighter.
“Makaha!” Ahmed caught sight of his prey and charged through the trees with his spear leveled.
Bolan broke into a run. While his stamina held, he was faster than Ahmed and he managed to break line of sight for a moment. He hit the creek and jumped into it with a splash loud enough for Ahmed to hear. Bolan rolled behind the rocks and wound the end of the cord around his fist.
Ahmed whooped as he spied the creek. “Coming for you, Makaha! Coming for y—”
Bolan yanked the cord up to shin height and tight against the rocks. Ahmed hit the trip cord and went airborne into a Looney-Tunes-worthy pratfall. He nose-dived and ate the creek face-first. Bolan dropped the cord and drew his sailfish short sword. Ahmed came up sputtering and the soldier’s boot to the face knocked the initiate onto his back. Ahmed gasped and let out a scream as Bolan lunged.
His enemies intended to spear him, bundle him and barbecue him. There was no room for mercy in the Hawaiian forest this morning.
The soldier spiked the swordfish bill through the thick plate of Ahmed’s left pec then drove the weapon through his heart. Ahmed’s eyes rolled and his corpse subsided bonelessly into the stream. Bolan left the swordbill in Ahmed’s chest and relieved him of his bottle of water, energy bar, phone and wallet. He retrieved his cord and staff and took up Ahmed’s spear.
“Ahmed!” The initiate’s scream had been heard and the rest of the dead man’s team called out frantically as they charged through the trees. “Ahmed!”
Bolan faded into the forest.
* * *
“Bismillah!” Rasul stared at Ahmed’s corpse where it lay heart-spiked and gently undulating with the creek’s current.
Salman howled.
“Dead!” Osama screamed to the heavens and shook his spear in rage. “Do you hear me, Makaha! You’re dead! I’m going to—”
Six and a half feet of polished, weapon-grade koa wood flew like a thunderbolt out of the trees and struck Osama between the eyes. The heavy wood shaft made a terrible thump as it collided with the Hawaiian’s skull and then fell to the stream with a splash. Osama’s eyes crossed and his eyelids fluttered. His mouth worked several times and he collapsed into the water beside Ahmed. Rasul and Salman crouched in fighting stances with their spears poised. Rasul just caught sight of the quarry through the trees and then the man he knew as Makaha disappeared.
Rasul nodded at Osama where he lay fallen. “Salman, see to your brother.”
Salman knelt beside his brother and howled as he checked his pulse. “He’s dead!”
Rasul took out his phone and tapped in a number. It was a call he dreaded. The man on the other end answered on the first ring. “It is done?”
“No.”
“Makaha lives?”
“Yes, and Ahmed and Osama are fallen.”
“Makaha has done this?”
Rasul sighed grimly. “It seems Makaha is a warrior, after all.”
“That is a shame.”
“Yes, perhaps he would have served us well.”
“I believe it is too late for that. I fear he will not forgive us. Can you take him?”
Rasul had absolute faith that once he closed with Makaha, the haole was finished. “I have looked into his eyes. He is weary. He spent three days drinking and fornicating and Allah knows what else. He cannot hide his trail from me. I will run him down. I will put my spear through his stomach, bundle him, and bring him still alive to the imu pit for roasting.”
“Try to avoid his bowels,” the voice advised. “It ruins the taste of the meat.”
* * *
Bolan was exhausted. Too many battles. Too many explosions. Too many fist fights, and far too many midnight rides in ships, planes and automobiles. He had spent the past four hours at a good, ground-eating lope but he wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer, and he was leaving a trail a child could follow. The terrain had risen—he was in the hills—and it was sapping his strength. The enemy had made no attempt to overtake him. Bolan knew he was probably heading exactly where they wanted him to be.
It was time to take the battle to the enemy again.
He stopped and polished off his water bottle and considered his resources. He’d eaten the energy bar hours ago. Bolan took out Ahmed’s phone. It had dried off a bit but still wasn’t functioning. The phone was a very valuable intel asset, but he would have to live long enough to get it to the Farm for data extraction. He had a spear. Once again he broke off his spearhead and pocketed the cord. He wrapped more sleeve around the base to make a handle, and then began awkwardly climbing up the worst part of the hillside while juggling a staff heavy enough to be made out of stone.
Bolan found his spot at the hill’s summit. It wasn’t a vertical climb but it was steep. Anyone following his trail would have to walk on a patch of earth shaped like a step. Using the swordfish bill, Bolan swiftly dug a hole the size of a shoe box and three times as deep. He worked about a foot of the swordfish bill down into floor of the hole and packed the earth tight around it with his fist.
Bolan removed his shirt and tore it in two.
He took one half and stretched it out over the hole. He pinned the four corners with twigs and pushed them down level. Bolan scooped dirt out from under a tree root and put about two centimeters of soil over the fabric. He reached up and grabbed a liana vine to support himself and very lightly pushed his heel down over the trap. The fabric held and went taut again. Bolan leaned back and admired his handiwork. What he saw was a scuffed step in the hillside with
a boot print on it. With luck whoever followed him would instinctively follow his steps up the steep terrain.
Bolan gave it 50/50 whether Rasul would fall for his punji stick pit. On the other hand he would be willing to bet good money that Rasul was running Salman slightly ahead of him to try to tempt Bolan into attacking. The soldier clambered up to the top of the hill. He found himself in a little flat-topped glade girded by trees almost like a cathedral. The sun came down through the hole in the canopy. He leaned on his staff, let his breathing return to normal and waited.
Bolan didn’t wait long.
Rasul’s voice spoke quietly at the bottom of the hill. “Be careful, he may be waiting at the top.”
“He will get one spear cast, Uncle,” Salman declared. “And then he will die. If he is stupid enough not to cast his spear and fight me? Then he will die badly.”
“Be wary. I am right behind you.”
Bolan took his staff in both hands and stepped into view, on the crown of the little hill. “I am going to kill you, Salman.”
The two Hawaiians looked up from the base of the hill. Rasul gave Bolan a shrewd look. “He has broken off his spearhead again. He carries it behind his back. Watch for it.”
Salman hit the steep hillside like a mountain goat. He never broke eye contact with Bolan. “Go ahead! Cast your staff, Makaha! Coward! I dare you!”
Bolan watched his would-be assassin with grim finality. “I will not kill you until you are within my reach. I give you my word.”
“Fuck you, Makaha!”
Salman took the hill like a staircase. “You die, Makaha! For what you did to Ahmed! For what you did to my brother!”
Bolan stood waiting. “Bring it.”
“We will feast on you as the warriors of old!” Salman grabbed the liana vine hanging from the trees above and did a Tarzan-worthy leap to the prepared step. “You will die in my fire! You—”
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