Koa walked into the room as Bolan tucked the razor in his shoe. “That is some old-school shit. You really know how to fight with one of those things?”
Bolan gave Koa a look.
Koa shook his head. “Right, dumb question.”
Bolan finished dressing and tucked his pistol, knives and spare magazines away. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Koa said.
The two warriors walked into the living room to find themselves serenaded by the sound of Marwin blissfully sawing logs on the couch. “Marwin,” Bolan called. “Up and at ’em.”
Marwin blinked, snuffled, wheezed and licked his chops like a Great Dane as he rolled his bulk into a sitting position. “What’s for breakfast?”
Melika padded out of the bedroom. “Loco Moco, you want hamburger or SPAM?”
Marwin rubbed his stomach. “SPAM!”
“Koa?” Melika asked.
“SPAM.”
“Coop?”
Bolan kept his expression neutral in the face of the Pacific Island love of Minnesota’s processed pork product. “Hamburger.”
Melika went into the kitchen and began rattling pans in preparation of one-bowl meals of rice topped with meat, topped with fried eggs and topped with gravy. Agent Hu came out of the tiny guest room wearing one of Koa’s shirts and carrying a .38 in each hand. She held out both to Marwin. “Here, you may need these, and I have more.”
Marwin looked as though he might cry. “Thanks, Peg!”
Hu reached into a shirt pocket and produced a handful of spare shells. She jumped as Tino’s fist slammed against the door. “Koa!” His voice sounded a little ragged as he called out. “Makaha! Marwin!”
Marwin went into bodyguard mode. He made his weapons disappear and answered the door. Tino filled it from top to bottom. “Hey, big man!”
Tino scowled and pushed his way inside. “Hey, fatty.”
Bolan eyed the big Samoan. He looked exhausted. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes and a peaked pallor beneath his normally bronze skin made it look ashy. His massive eyebrows seemed permanently bunched, almost as though he was in pain. “You all ready?”
Koa frowned. “About to have our morning grind, brah. Melika’s Loco Moco.”
“Tino!” Melika called out from the kitchen. “I know you like bacon on yours!”
Tino grimaced and went a little greener. “Nah, nothin’ for me, Meli.” Shocked silence reigned in the kitchen at this anomalous development. The Samoan shook his head in agitation. “We got no time for this. We gotta go, and we gotta go now. Saddle up.”
“But…” Marwin looked genuinely heartbroken. “Loco Moco…”
“Missing a meal won’t hurt your fat, Flip ass one bit,” Tino snarled. “Make yourself a sandwich and take it on the road, bitch!”
Marwin looked ready to do something about it, and he struggled to stay in character. Tino seemed too distracted to notice the danger he was in. He waved his hands in disgust at the room in general. “All you assholes get your shit together! The hos stay here! I’ll be in the van! The bus is leaving in five! Doom on you if you ain’t on it! And give me your phones!”
Bolan kept his expression neutral. Tino didn’t look good at all. Bolan, Koa and Marwin handed over their phones. The Samoan slammed the door behind him and his stomping echoed on the steps. Marwin turned to Bolan and jerked his thumb at the door. “Is he hungover or something?”
“He looks like shit,” Koa agreed.
“Did he just call me a ho?” Hu said.
Bolan was starting to get a very bad feeling. “Mel?”
“Yeah?” Melika came out of the kitchen as Bolan opened the package Kurtzman had delivered. He took out a white plastic device that bore a startling resemblance to a household wall thermostat. He ran the test mode. The device peeped all was in order, and Bolan disabled the alarm and audio sound prompts. He set the preferences and handed it to Melika “You got Alka-Seltzer?”
Melika took the device and gave Bolan a dry look. “I own and operate a bar.”
“Put on a robe, tuck this between your breasts but keep it covered. Take the Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water down to Tino. Chat him up for about thirty seconds. Lean in the window and make soothing noises. Then come back.”
“Okay…” Melika disappeared.
Marwin looked back and forth between Bolan and Koa. “What’s going on?”
Koa went all stone face. “Was that what I think it is?”
Bolan nodded. “Yeah.”
Melika reappeared in a tantalizingly short kimono that she’d pulled demurely tight across her collarbones. She carried a glass of water and a packet of extra-strength Alka-Seltzer. She gave Bolan a questioning look in passing and went downstairs.
Marwin folded his huge arms across his equally huge and sagging chest. “So?”
“Like Tino said—get your shit together. And he might be right. Make yourself a sandwich. Make three if you would.”
“I can do that.” Marwin shucked into his sandals, filled his pockets and went into the kitchen.
Koa muttered low, “So I’m thinking this is bad.”
“Keep your fingers crossed that I’m wrong,” Bolan advised. “Praying might be appropriate.”
Bolan and Koa gathered their few belongings that would pass scrutiny. Marwin came out of the kitchen with a serving tray laden with white-bread sandwiches consisting of SPAM, peanut butter and mayonnaise, with sodas on the side. The saving grace was that Marwin had cut off the crusts and sliced them diagonally. Bolan silently muttered the soldier in the field’s mantra “fuel…” and took a sandwich and an orange soda. “Thanks, Marwin.”
Marwin beamed. “You’re welcome!”
Koa tucked in as though there was nothing wrong with any of this. Melika came back in with an empty glass. She opened her kimono and produced the device. “He drank it. He burped. He seemed pathetically grateful.”
Bolan took the device. He looked at the readout and his blood went cold. He had felt a little bad about what the extra-strength aspirin in the Alka-Seltzer might do to Tino’s possibly bleeding insides, but that was now the least of the giant Samoan’s problems.
Melika clearly didn’t like the look on Bolan’s face. “So what is that thing?”
“Digital radiation monitor.”
Melika’s eyes went wide. Marwin’s jaw dropped. Koa let out a long breath as his worst fears were confirmed. “And?”
The DRM’s readout was a numeric obituary. The soldier steeled himself for what was to come. The readout might very well be Bolan’s own obit before this mission was finished. “Tino’s going to be dead within the next twenty-four to forty-eight,” he answered. “And if we don’t find out what he’s been into, I’m thinking thousands of people in Hawaii are going to be the same.”
The forest
Tino drove the van unerringly through barely perceptible jungle paths. Once again, despite a hard-earned sense of direction Bolan did not know which way they were going. Bolan and his team still had their weapons. Tino had their phones but Bolan had removed the GPS tracker so even if Kurtzman and his team couldn’t see him or talk to him, they knew where he was. The tracker did have one communication function Rind and Kurtzman were monitoring. If he pressed the button it meant “FUBAR—converge on my signal.” Bolan’s misgivings grew. Tino was constantly coughing into a blood-stained bandanna. “How’s it hanging, big man?”
“Screw you,” Tino muttered.
“Maybe we should be driving to a hospital,” Bolan suggested.
“Screw you.”
“Brah, you don’t look good.”
Tino stood on the brakes. The Samoan turned red-rimmed, broken-vesseled eyes on Bolan. “Make me say it a third time, Makaha! Make me say it again and watch what happens! You sucker-punched
me at Melika’s! You think you can do it again? Any of you assholes think you can?”
Koa and Marwin were silent. Bolan shook his head grimly at the dying Samoan. “No, brah. Next time we tangle? I only want your best.”
Tino turned and rammed the van back in gear. “My best is behind me, brah…” He broke off into another fit of coughing. Koa shot Bolan a look. Marwin looked as though he might start crying. For a morbidly obese Filipino enforcer, Marwin was surprisingly sensitive.
Bolan watched the terrain. It was getting darker and more crowded beneath the trees. They were definitely headed downhill. They’d repeatedly splashed through streams on their journey, and Bolan deduced they were probably in a valley that led to the sea.
Bolan smelled the ocean before he heard it and the first thing he heard was the pop and crack of rifle fire in the distance. The forest ended like a knife cut and the van came to a stop on a yellow sand beach. Half a dozen Hawaiian men of various ages were practicing with M-16 A2s. Uncle Nui seemed to be overseeing the proceedings. Sawhorse tables had been set up beneath the trees and weapons were racked. The firing line was literally a line drawn in the sand under the palm trees. The targets were two-liter pop bottles set up beneath a cliff. Uncle Aikane waved and walked over. He gave Tino a very grim once-over. “How are you, Tino?”
“Right as rain,” the Samoan rasped. Bolan and his team piled out of the van. Aikane gestured. “Come over here.” The huge Hawaiian led them to one of the tables. He pointed at a faithful copy of an M-16. “You remember these, Koa?”
“Like an old friend.” Koa hefted a rifle. “Just like what I carried in Germany.”
“And you, Marwin?”
Marwin sighed at the unfamiliar weapon. There just weren’t any gold-plated British submachine guns on the beach today. Aikane nodded. “Koa, you will teach him today. We don’t have much time.”
“I’ll whip him into shape.”
Aikane eyed the trio. “Do any of you know how to use a scope?”
“Makaha told me he did some hunting back east,” Koa ad-libbed.
Bolan took the ball and ran with it. “I had a stepfather who taught me. He belonged to a deer camp. I got a buck every season. Took a black bear once, before I moved on.”
“Good.” Aikane nodded. “Very good.” The crime lord went to the table and unzipped a battered leather rifle bag. Bolan beheld an old Remington 600 Magnum. “Nice.” He took up the 1960s antique. Despite its name the little rifle had a very short eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel and used a short action. The laminate stock showed a great deal of wear from years of use. Bolan worked the bolt. It was glass-slick from obvious heavy use and care. He brought the rifle to his shoulder and traversed the shore, scanning the breakers through the old Leupold 4X mountaineer scope. Bolan squeezed the trigger and it broke cleanly with a sharp click and almost no creep. He dismounted the rifle and glanced at the three old cardboard boxes of squat, soft-pointed bullets. The .350 Remington Magnum cartridges would make the little carbine kick like a mule. “It’ll do,” Bolan stated.
“Good. It should be sighted in, but you can take one box of ammo and get familiar with it. Save the rest.”
“Thanks.”
“Your shooting is going to be very important. A hundred meters is a short distance in the scheme of things, but you’re going to have to be fast, and you cannot afford to miss. Not once.”
Bolan examined what this might mean. “I will practice.”
“I want you to show us now.”
Bolan took up a box of ammo. The cardboard was weathered and falling apart. He shook out five fat shells and began loading the rifle. Bolan shot Aikane a sly grin as he clicked the safety.
“Nui! Clear the line!”
“Tell them to set five.”
“Set five, Nui!” Aikane called out. He grunted at Bolan in approval as Nui put out five fresh bottles and the shooters moved back into the trees. “Show me.”
Bolan began walking. Aikane and Koa followed and Marwin hustled his bulk to catch up. “Hey! Wait for me!”
Bolan paced out along the tree line until his sniper’s eye told him he was at three hundred. He suddenly swung around and fired. The soft-point bullet caught plastic and the bottle flew upward as though an invisible angler had suddenly yanked it up. Bolan flicked the bolt and fired again. The next bottle shredded as if struck by a sword. Bolan fired again. The third bottle kicked over and spun away as if he was bowling and had picked up a spare.
The men in the trees cheered.
Bolan flicked the bolt and deliberately let the fourth shot kick up sand a few feet in front of his target. “Damn!”
A groan of disappointment came from the trainees.
Koa took the hand-off. “You’re out of practice. Steady down.”
“You can do it, Makaha!” Marwin enthused.
Bolan took several long moments and fired his fifth shot and the fourth bottle did a back flip. The men in the trees whooped. Bolan flicked open the action and let smoke curl out. Aikane looked at Bolan with admiration. “Very good, Makaha.”
“Pop bottles at three hundred meters with a scope, Uncle. If you were taught right—” Bolan closed the action “—it’s not hard.”
Koa spoke iron wisdom. “Pop bottles don’t fire back, Makaha.”
Bolan nodded. “That’s why we got you, Koa.”
Aikane smiled with pleasure at the exchange. “It is good to have real warriors back in the ohana. We have lost too many, and many of the new generation are weak and foolish.”
“The ohana calls to its own,” Koa intoned. “The Islands call to their own.”
“It is no accident that we are here now,” Bolan finished. “I can feel it.”
Aikane was clearly moved. “Koa, I want you to watch the men shoot.”
“I will, Uncle.”
“Makaha, practice a little more. Your uncle Nui went diving this morning and speared good fish and octopus. We will eat together and then take our ease in the hammocks beneath the trees. This afternoon, there is something I want to show you.”
Chapter 17
The training camp
Mack Bolan found himself in the shadow of Musa Jalaluddin. The Hawaiian had shaved off his “mad prophet of the desert” wild locks and beard, and from his anvil jaw to the top of his massive skull his head gleamed like forged bronze. His eyes still bore the unmistakable flash of the crazy holy warrior. Jalaluddin wore nothing but a sarong. His arms and legs were sleeved in tattoos of entwined native Hawaiian, Christian and Muslim symbols. Bolan rated him an ongoing concern at around six foot four and a chiseled two hundred and fifty pounds. Jalaluddin perked a bemused eyebrow at Bolan as he lay in his hammock. “At last, Makaha. We meet.”
Bolan decided on boldness and met the Hawaiian’s powerful gaze with his own. “Who the hell are you?”
Jalaluddin threw back his head and laughed. “For a half haole, you have balls.”
“You know, I get really tired of hearing about that.”
“This is Hawaii, Makaha. We can teach the Italians something about breaking each other’s balls, but looking at you I bet you didn’t get much of it on the mainland.”
For a sociopathic, possibly cannibalistic, religious terrorist, Jalaluddin was remarkably charming. Bolan smiled back ruefully. “No, I didn’t, but I’ve been getting my balls broken nonstop since the second I set foot in Happy Valley.”
The man laughed again. “I hear you’ve done most of the ball breaking, most of the bone breaking, as well as breaking most everything that isn’t nailed down. You know? I like you, Makaha.”
“You’re kind of scaring the shit out of me, brah.”
Jalaluddin shrugged. “You want some grind? Nui’s slicing up poke as fresh as it gets.”
“Definitely.” Bolan rolled out of the hammock and fol
lowed Jalaluddin over to two long tables pushed together and surrounded by the men of the camp. He was greeted heartily and clapped on the back by anyone within reach. Koa and Marwin were already there. A young man not out of his teens stared at Bolan as if he was star-struck. “I have heard all about you!”
Koa made a noise and the other men laughed.
The young man was undeterred. “I am Keolakupaianaha!”
Bolan shook his head. “Just going to call you Keo.”
Keo beamed. “Everyone does!”
“And everyone calls me Makaha.”
“Makaha!”
Bolan settled in for some grind. Nui presided over a huge wooden bowl filled with well over a dozen pounds of freshly caught fish and octopus. Bolan could smell the kukui nuts Nui had roasted and chopped in. Red seaweed was the main garnish and Bolan saw the traditional Hawaiian black salt made of sea salt mixed with charcoal. There were no Pan-Pacific flourishes. It was about as simple as poke got. Bolan tucked in. It was the best poke he’d ever had.
The men laughed and ate and talked about the morning’s training. Jalaluddin was mostly silent as he ate except to make a pointed remark about one warrior or another’s abilities or lack thereof. Bolan laughed with the men. The man was funny as hell, and Bolan knew it was another one of the reasons the warriors loved him. Keo and the younger warriors hung on his every word. Jalaluddin was a born leader of men.
Jalaluddin looked proudly at the dozen men around the table. “People thought the Hawaiian spirit was extinct. They thought koas were extinct, that there were no more warriors in the Islands. We are living proof that people are wrong, and we are going to teach them their error.”
Warriors whooped and cheered. Nui watched the young warriors eating his grind with pleasure. Aikane was beaming. Bolan could smell the kava that was brewing somewhere in camp and he was pretty sure some of the older men had dipped in early. “It is a shame, Koa,” Aikane sighed, “that you came too late for the Lua training.”
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