Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2)

by Chris Bauer

  “We are checking, Oyabun,” the soldier said into the phone to Yabuki.

  Blood had splattered the floor, the ceiling, the conveyor belt, the executioner’s hazmat suit dripping with it, from headgear to shoes. No body, just squishy mush underfoot and multiple white Styrofoam coolers lined up along a back wall, a cloudy mist above them from dry ice, their lids ajar, bloody handprints on them.

  He elbowed the doctor-cleaner out of the way, began pulling open cooler after cooler, finding splayed arms, hacked feet, minced buttocks, strips of muscle and bone, a gloppy mixture of internal organs, grimacing at the sight inside each cooler, having to quit after only a few, unable to stomach the search. He yelled at the doctor. “The head? Where is the head?”

  Their grim reaper located a certain cooler, lifted off the lid, reached inside with both gloved hands. He gripped the head in front and in back, lifted it, a profile reveal only: black, blood-soaked hair, blood-smeared face, neck as far south as the shoulder line.

  Yabuki’s voice came screaming through the phone’s speaker. “Did you forget about me? Answer me! Is it done?”

  “Yes, Oyabun, it is done.”

  “Excellent. Now bring all of her to me. I will give that Yankee dog Lanakai what he wants. Next, listen carefully. Have the men take my yacht and motor over to that unholy island. It’s time for us to tidy it up a bit.”

  Each man’s ticket out of the bloodbath of a room was to carry a cooler full of body parts slop. With the bucket brigade of coolers winding down, only a few left, Yabuki’s man texted his oyabun: What do I do with the exterminator?

  He waited for a response, did a slow turn to see where their hazmatted contractor was. Not here. Not in the next room. Not in the next. Gone. He retraced his footsteps. Nowhere to be found. He went to a window.

  A steep drop started a few feet beyond the ledge, leading away from the abandoned building camouflaged by heavy vegetation, hiding in virtual plain sight. Seventy-eighty yards away at the bottom of the hill sat a quiet business park and a neighborhood, all connected by paved streets, the only vehicle on the road an idling street sweeper.

  The return text from Yabuki: Eliminate him.

  He swore in Japanese, stopped cursing only when he saw a blur of blue hazmat on the bottom half of the hill, scrambling to stay upright, then finally sliding the last few yards onto the curb. Tucked under the man’s arm was one of the white Styrofoam coolers. More cursing, which was interrupted by a drawn pistol that sprayed semiauto gunshots down the hill, zipping through the tree canopy, the bullet spray reaching the street sweeper, pinging the metal. The blue target got to his feet and scuttled to the protection of the other side of the truck, climbing into the driver’s side door.

  The Yakuza man’s screams echoed his carelessness, him now needing to scramble around this horrific blood-filled room, flipping lids off the remaining coolers, their dry ice mist escaping. He pulled the top off the last cooler…

  Finally he exhaled, said hai to himself, Japanese for yes. The severed head was still there. He grabbed the hair in one hand, lifted the head out to see the victim for himself, again, to get the full impact, to appreciate the spoils. Still salvageable as a completed task for the oyabun; all was not lost. Another prayerful Shinto thanks was in order. He lowered the head, then stopped short when he saw the Adam’s apple.

  Philo pulled at the tarp with one arm, two edges gathered together in his hand, Kaipo inside it. He slid her along the jungle floor amid wild tropical overgrowth and over bumps of twisted tree roots and patches of volcanic ash hardened into rock. The blue tarp was good for it, was heavy and durable, and it helped that she was still unconscious, much like the exterminator doctor they’d spared after they had him cut up Mifumo’s body at gunpoint, rendering him a genderless, unidentifiable mess. The executioner now rested outside the slaughterhouse window, beneath the sill, unconscious and underdressed.

  Kaipo mumbled, then came an agonizing groan, then came more mumbling, then an ouch.

  “Sorry, didn’t see that rock. Hang in there, Kaipo, we’re almost down the hill…”

  Kaipo mumbled more, spoke words this time, kept speaking until she was almost fully lucid. “I… I can smell you…”

  Philo eyed her face, her closed eyes while he grunted through his steps, saw her REM-ing through her dream state that now mostly wasn’t. “You… you what?”

  “Smell you, in your SEAL hidey-hole… Miakamii…”

  Their conversation continued a few yards more, their re-introduction including complete sentences that sealed their shared history from Philly and Miakamii both, dating back to her time on the island as a teenager and his time as a SEAL. Philo was now running out of gas, his inflamed shoulder in torture overdrive. He couldn’t go on like this much longer—

  He lost his footing and fell on his ass, slid feet-first down the hill, grimacing from the pain in his shoulder, the vegetation slapping his face yard after yard until he hit bottom, spilling onto a curb. Kaipo, still in her tarp, bumped against him a second later. He took some deep breaths, grabbed the edges of the tarp again, ready to move. Ten yards to their left, a behemoth of a truck moved in their direction. He squinted to better the glare from the sun on its windshield, to get a look at the driver, was greeted with a smiling Patrick in hazmat.

  “Guess our ride is here, Kaipo,” he said, breathing hard.

  With Kaipo jammed behind the front seat and cocooned in the tarp, Philo hauled himself onto a running board, the sweeper on the move again, Philo holding onto the window ledge, a tight live-or-die grip with one hand only. The brown-faced guy riding shotgun greeted him with a nervous smile and big, wide eyes that said he was scared shitless, focusing on the gun tucked into Philo’s pants.

  “This is Marty the sweeper driver, sir,” Patrick said.

  “Hi, Marty,” Philo said, shouting to better the road whine. “Relax, you can go with us or you can leave, your choice. If you haven’t figured this out, we’re in deep shit, but trust me, we mean well. I’m really hoping you stay behind, Marty, ’cause I’ve got a big favor to ask…”

  “Good decision, Marty,” Philo said to himself. He checked the sideview mirror from the safety of the passenger seat, watched the uniformed sanitation worker at curbside stare at the departing street sweeper, a smallish white Styrofoam cooler at Marty’s feet. Marty stayed focused on his stolen truck while he made a phone call as it drove away.

  Shit… he’s dialing 9-1-1. Cops, damn it…

  Do me that favor, Marty, please. Follow through, bud…

  “Philo sir?”

  “Yeah, Patrick?”

  “You think Mr. Lanakai survived that gunfight?”

  “He owes me a lot of money, so yeah, I’m counting on it.”

  Philo refocused the mirror to see many blocks behind them, into the distance. A car bolted onto the rear horizon, a silhouette against the setting sun, came down hard on its shocks, sparks scattering.

  Company that wasn’t cops. Shit-shit-shit…

  “How fast does this thing go, Patrick?”

  “No idea, sir!”

  “Pick a left turn and make it, into a neighborhood, anywhere, we need streets with corners…”

  A sharp left and then more gas pedal, the sweeper approaching a stop sign, no cross traffic, a hard right onto another street. Philo dialed 9-1-1.

  “What’s your emergency?”

  “See, we’re in a street sweeper on Kela Drive, in a residential neighborhood, being chased by pissed-off Yakuza mobsters… No, I’m not drunk… Philo Trout, retired SEAL. I know Chief Koo. Turn here, Patrick…!”

  “You sure you didn’t carjack that sweeper, Mr. Trout?”

  “Yeah, ah, no, well, maybe, but we’re not the bad guys here. These mobsters… we sprang their hostage…”

  At the next hard turn the phone jumped out of his hand, landed somewhere on the truck floor, out of reach. In the middle of the street, kids on skateboards. Patrick jumped the curb, started across the lawns, a bad move that would not en
d well for pedestrians. They needed to get out of the neighborhoods and stay out of them, find a stretch where they could accelerate, take their chances—

  “Turn here!”

  They turned onto a four-lane highway with a long straightaway, the first road sign, HOWLING SANDS – 4 MILES.

  “The Naval base, bud,” Philo said aloud. “Really goose this thing, Patrick—”

  “Yessir, Philo sir, fifty-five, fifty-seven—”

  Philo watched the sideview mirror a full thirty seconds, no activity behind them, hoped their pursuers hadn’t taken out any kids; he’d have so much PTSD trouble with that. They passed a Lamborghini, a convertible in neon blue on a lazy early evening drive along the coast. Philo touched the Sig to his forehead in a friendly salute before realizing how bad a look that was. The sports car driver slammed the breaks and let their truck have both lanes of the highway as a right of way.

  “Something I said?” Philo said, checking the sideview mirror, frowning.

  “I’d say it was the gun, Philo sir,” Patrick said.

  “I’d say so too, Patrick…”

  Another look in the sideview mirror. A sedan careened left out of the neighborhood and onto the highway behind them, now less than a quarter mile away. Philo needed his phone, it was on the floor somewhere, couldn’t find it. Patrick handed him his. He punched in some numbers.

  “Commander Malcolm here.”

  “Evan!” Philo shouted.

  “Yeah,” an annoyed response, “who’s this?”

  “Hey! We’re in a real fix now, bud, really need your help—”

  “Philo? You fucked me over about that bareknuckle fight, goddamn it. I’m with Lanakai’s people right now. They feel my pain, Philo. I want a piece of that prick Yabuki…”

  “I know, I’m sorry, Evan. Look, we’re on Kela Drive near Howling Sands Airport…”

  “Near the base?”

  “Yeah! Yabuki’s men, they’re right behind us. They catch us, they kill us, Evan. We’re in a fluorescent-green street sweeper…”

  “Sorry, bad connection, I thought you said a street sweeper.”

  “You heard right, damn it, which should make you realize we’re pretty much SOL. I need some support at the end of the line, bud…”

  He leaned out the window, looked behind them, was fired on. The gunshots dinged the side mirror, then more shots blasted most of the mirror into pieces, a large chunk knocking the phone out of his hand, the black plastic handheld disappearing behind them on the asphalt.

  Fucking damn it… Fuuuck…!

  The sedan was now only ten, eleven lengths back. Ahead of them—

  Howling Sands - 1 mile.

  “Patrick, lower your head, bud, get down in the seat, watch the road from inside the steering wheel…”

  Philo leaned over, checked the dashboard in front of Patrick. “What’s that button say?”

  “‘Engage brooms,’” Patrick shouted.

  “Brooms?”

  “The cleaning brushes, sir. The big brushes under the sweeper…”

  “Press the button!”

  All four circular brushes emerged from the underside on metal skeletons, two each side, on robotic arms that lowered them toward the asphalt while increasing the sweeper’s wingspan.

  “That red button there, Patrick, what’s it say?”

  “‘Eject brooms—’”

  “Do it!”

  Four heavy-duty brushes two feet in diameter with thick bristles embedded in circular wooden frames bounced off the road and away from the sweeper, then went airborne in their wake. Philo positioned a remaining sliver of side mirror to see two of them impact the car behind them, one a direct hit through the windshield. The car careened left, then right, then ran into the shoulder, skidding back out onto the highway where it flipped onto its side. Smoke and fire rose up, blurring the blacktop behind it.

  Philo howled in ecstasy, pounded the dash with his good hand. Patrick howled louder than Philo, adding, “I think I peed my pants, Philo sir!”

  Philo leaned over to squint at the red buttons on the dash to read the caution language next to them: Do not eject brooms while truck is in motion—a design flaw if he ever saw one…

  They heard a rumble behind them. Philo again glanced at the sliver of mirror still in place. Another sedan emerged from the smoke like a black bat out of hell, swerving around the crippled car, then accelerating.

  “Shit.”

  The Yakuza car roared alongside the truck, the men firing semiauto long rifles at will, taking out the side window glass, the bullets lodging in the padded interior ceiling, additional shots piercing the heavy-duty passenger door. Nearly flat in his seat, Philo saw the door’s interior metal stop the slugs just short of breaking through. The car inched ahead of them, the men now firing into the engine compartment, shots pinging wildly off the fenders and the hood, the engine beginning to smoke. Their final maneuver was to pass them and move into their lane, in front of the sweeper, maintaining their distance at nearly sixty miles per hour. The long guns came out again, this time from both sides of the sedan, the semiautos aimed at the windshield. The rata-tat-tat noise was deafening, obliterating the windshield and punching through the grill, glass flying around the cabin like they were in a tornado, more bullets and glass ripping the padded ceiling and pinging out through the broken side windows with Philo and Patrick crouched below the dashboard, showered by the debris. Their street sweeper now whined and wheezed and coughed up steam. It slowed, was rolling to a stop…

  Two handguns were in the truck, Philo’s and the one he gave Patrick. Impossible odds, facing off against multiple long rifles. Philo hazarded a peek over the dashboard, saw four Yakuza exit the sedan ten yards away, their AR-15s in play, leaning into a crouch, approaching the truck like commandos. He ducked back down, awaiting the inevitable, listening to sand and stone crunch under their approaching feet.

  “Patrick, bud, they’re either gonna kill us or capture us…”

  “I know, sir. Love you, Philo sir.”

  “Love you back, son.”

  The crunching sand and stone noises stopped, then quickly picked up again, but were now receding. The car doors opened and shut and the tires squealed. Philo lifted his head, hazarded another peek past the windowless dash in time to see the sedan screech into an about-face fishtail, catch rubber, then whip past them in a hurry.

  Whup-whup-whup-whup…

  Overwhelming the horizon, a helicopter gunship closed in.

  Philo kicked the sweeper door open and rolled out of the cabin, dropping onto the asphalt. He locked his elbow as he steadied his Sig, stiffening his arm as he drew down on the retreating sedan. The Navy gunship roared overhead, blotting out the sky above the crippled sweeper. When Philo fired his weapon, the cracks of his shots were drowned out by the Seahawk’s dual M60 machine guns taking their measure, strafing the speeding sedan until it veered out of control, flipped end over end, burst into flames, then exploded. Philo lowered his gun, wanting to believe his steady and precise sharpshooting took out the driver and the men in it before the explosion did, no accounting for the hundreds of expended machine gun shells that littered the highway in the Seahawk’s wake.

  Police vehicles with piercing sirens pursuing the sedan slammed past him and Patrick, the two of them standing outside the stolen truck. One police SUV stopped alongside them. Chief Terry Koo exited, gave Philo the visual once-over. He directed one of his cops to Philo’s side to give him something to lean on, then he spoke.

  “You said something about a hostage, Trout?”

  His 9-1-1 call.

  “Yeah. Back seat, Chief, a woman wrapped in a tarp. They drugged her, then they cut her open. She would have been the next evisceration murder. She needs an ambulance—”

  “You have a name for her?”

  He looked at the street sweeper, the truck full of bullet holes, all its glass shattered, its engine compartment hissing steam, and one front tire flat. His disjointed conversation with Kaipo was still
fresh in his mind. Mostly incoherent, it had been coherent enough, especially the promise he made to her.

  “Yes. First name is Aiata, last name Hauata.”

  35

  Ella Waumami’s husband Ben pushed the small, overburdened buckboard wagon out of the storage space in the rear of the church, then closed the double door, not bothering to padlock it. He guided the wagon outside the church, where Ella’s horse Kumu awaited him. Full moon; Ben didn’t need a flashlight. He spoke to Kumu in a soothing tone, then hitched her up to the wagon, her disposition changing as soon as Ben climbed into the buckboard seat, with her becoming all business. She met his command for her to pull with eagerness and determination. They made a stop at the settlement’s community garden to retrieve bushel baskets of gathered vegetables: squash, cucumbers, onions, some sweet potatoes. Ben deposited the baskets in the back of the buckboard, filling in whatever empty space remained around a tightly tarpaulined payload.

  A yacht coasted quietly into the sleepy Miakamii lagoon, no running lights, almost no wake, under moonlit skies. The engine shut down. Six men climbed overboard into an inflated skiff and motored away from the cruiser. They beached, climbed out, and assembled on the sand, overdressed in dark business suits, and over-armed, on so peaceful an island, with AR-15s. One man took command, said “Follow me” in Japanese, and they filed in behind his lead.

  They entered the interior scrub on a dirt path, the leader demanding they stay quiet. A clearing spread open before them, the island’s school, church, farmland, vegetable gardens, and smelly, decomposing livestock carcasses, and the crashed helicopter halves strapped and chained on large sleds, ready for transport to the beach, closer to the ocean. The dead copter pieces generated muted conversation, the men grabbing parts from tables and large canvas bags, winging them in all directions into the jungle, snickering at their cleverness, their disdain for the investigation and for this island full of backward, simple, vulnerable people. They dragged cardboard boxes off folding tables, tipped them over and spilled them out, then urinated on the littered helicopter parts.