“They don’t have to be my friends. They are there for me and I’m there for them. It’s the local deal. Besides, I got nothing else going on. Sixty-four dollars, my Pontiac, a cell phone and I’m not much living anywhere at the moment either. Under the pines at Sherwood Forest look pretty good to me right now.”
“Sherwood Forest,” Arch answered, wistfully. “I haven’t heard that phrase used in a long time. “They still take from the rich and give to the poor at Bellows?”
“Nah, all that went away when this high security shit came to the area,” Matisse said, turning so Arch could make our his words more clearly.
The public, meaning my people, get to use a little bitty piece of the beach but only on weekends and theirs no parking anymore. Used to be we could park under the pines or on the beach even. Now they have big rocks blocking everything. And video cameras everywhere. No more local fun.”
Arch got up to walk back toward the sand ridge on the other side of the flapping blue ten complex. He stared at the full stretch of Bellows Beach little more than a mile and a half over the chopping water. It was beautiful, back by multi-green colored foliage of all densities and description. The pines just back from the nearly white sand were achingly attractive until you looked up. The western side of the Koolau Mountain Range was simply breathtaking, especially with the fading rays of light bouncing up from the flora. The entire scene was almost artificial it was so beautiful. He thought about what he was trying to do. There was no longer any mission, if there ever was. In fact, he was planning on doing the same thing Matisse had been doing when the sky fell on him. Could Arch hope to threaten the government to the extent that they’d leave Virginia alone any more successfully than Matisse had threatened the federal judge? It didn’t seem likely. Matisse was an ignorant citizen and Arch was a player but that didn’t’ necessarily change anything. There was more firepower in a single Apache helicopter than Arch, Matisse and the entire Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement could bring to bear in a lifetime. Who was he kidding? Virginia was about to become as expendable as he himself, Matisse and the rest of them already had. The Hawaiians would no doubt already be dead from the “collateral” effects of drone Hellfire missiles except that Rabbit Island was such a visible beloved part of one of America’s most populated vacation destinations.
Arch entered one of the tents and was promptly handed a small plastic bowl filled with raw fish chunks. Poke. The word was pronounced PO-Kay, and it was a local Hawaiian staple. Ahi tuna was offloaded from local fishing boats where the best of it was filleted and cut into chunks. The chunks of fresh fish were marinated in a few ounces of Aloha Soy Sauce, a bit of ginger and the Hawaiian version of monosodium glutamate called Aginomoto. “Poke,” the woman said in handing him the bowl. “You need um energy for um swim. Eat all.”
Arch took the bowl out into the near dark beyond. There were not implements. He ate the chunks with his fingers and then cleaned the bowl and his hands in a nearby dune of blowing sand nearby. Although he’d eaten plenty of sashimi and sushi over the years no fish tasted better than local Hawaiian poke.
After dark, with only the waning gibbous slice of the moon offering any light at all, Arch and Matisse made there way down the winding but well worn path to the only possible landing or launching spot on the small island. A near perfect small horseshow beach appeared as they made their way through the final high scrub and bracken. The small island received only a small bit of the rain normal to Bellows only a mile or so away. The plant growth dry and brown in full daylight. On each of their backs were taped large clear plastic bags with clothing, wallets and cell phones inside. Arch carried the sim card to his iPhone in his wallet although he’d come to believe that any Apple product could be tracked by the government no matter what was done to it short of grinding it up on some junkyard disposal.
The water was cool at first but then warm with the wind blowing across its calm surface seeming almost frigid on their heads shoulders. They breast stroked out beyond the cover into rough water. The swells rose and fell all around them, tossing both men up and around. It took their full attention to keep their heads clear of the white caps foam tops and stay on course toward the lower end of Bellows. The plan was to land on that part of the beach normally used by the locals on the weekend and almost entirely avoided by the military at all other times. Matisse knew that area of the beach and interior foliage and trees well while Arch had clear memories of romping through almost all the rest of the base when he was in his early school years. The plan was to be on the beach in less than an hour.
What could go wrong, except for jellyfish and sharks, did go wrong. The tide was too low once they reached it. Both men were near sea sick from the constant jousting with the outer reef waters when they cross onto the reef. Much smaller waves, most less than two feet high, swashed across the quarter mile thick reef. They could not lie down and ride over the reef and they couldn’t’ get up and walk. The crabbed from one coral head, barely below the surface until struck by an incoming wave, to another a few yards away. It was the only way they could avoid serious injury. Neither man had been able to speak during the rough water crossing. Sharing a coral head and waiting for another wave set to pass gave them enough time and condition to speak.
“Man, you one tough Haole,” Matisse gasped out. “This kinda swim is awful. How you do it?”
“Conditioning and luck. I’m lighter than you. I float higher. We should have worn gloves and these rash guards are no match for the coral.”
They moved together but to different coral heads, once more waiting for another bigger set to wash over them, hoping they’d be able to hold on. Coral cuts, no matter how light, were extremely painful and almost always infected. They worked ever slower to clear the reef as the waves seemed to get higher and higher.
“Tide going up,” Matisse whispered over to Arch from ten yards away between sets. “Waves clearing the reef soon and then higher surf inside.”
“Any more good news?” Arch shot back.
“Keep your voice down,” Matisse force whispered back.
“Voice down?” Arch yelled back, laughing out loud. “Why, are we the only idiots to be dumb enough to be out here in the middle of the night?
A wave washed Matisse from his perch. Arch watched him wash away and then disappear. He gentled himself down onto the surface of the water into the rising trough of another incoming way. He surfed along with it, more inside the water than riding the outside. Suddenly, he plunged over a small waterfall. They were inside the reef. Both men paddled together but there was no celebration. Both men were nearly exhausted and they had the surf line to deal with after a half-mile swim.
The surf line proved to be no challenge once they’d negotiate the water in between. The swells were running to five feet but the waves had no real power once they broke. The inside break was worse than the outside one simply because there was an inshore hole. Both men got stuck in the hold and had to swim down the beach until they could clear it where a small creek, bordering the edge of the base, exited out into the open ocean.
Arch checked his Breguet watch. It had taken them three hours to travel little more than a mile. Both men lay on the sand, battered, cut up and too tired to crawl under the pines without rest. Arch crawled forward. He knew their bodies would register as black objects against the reflected near white of the soft sand. They’d also register that way on any night vision device, if anyone were bothering to look. Marines never took security lightly, especially when it came to protecting their own property and space. The Marine Corps was notorious for stealing equipment from other services while they made stealing from the Corps next to impossible.
The plan had been to get securely and deeply in among the pines just off the beach area. There both men would freshen up using the stream water, dry off as best they could and get their clothing on. From there they’d proceed inland toward the high security to see where they could get over or under the barbwire fence. It was a plan of simplicity depending up
on substantial amounts of serendipity and it never got off the ground. Arch and Matisse made it in under the pines, took another break and did not wake up until dawn. The swim had done them in.
Arch woke up first, almost instantly realizing he’d not awakened from the sound of the surf but from another sound much louder and more threatening. He hit Matisse on the shoulder and jumped to his knees, turning to face back toward the water they’d come out of only hours before.
“What’s that?” Matisse got out, crawling out from under the big pine they’d slept under. Arch followed. Both men stood standing in the same attire they’d arrived in earlier, watching a big flat air boat sweep in over the reef and head directly toward their position.
“What is it?” Matisse asked, in wonder.
“LCAC, land craft air cushion,” Arch answered in a despondent voice.
The hovercraft, capable of carrying sixty tons of men and equipment took only seconds to cross the water from the reef to the sand. Once there it swept huge billowing clouds of sand upward, stopped and then settled into a whining near silence. A wide front door began to swing down from the gray hovercraft.
“Cool,” Matisse said, almost in a whisper. “It’s like the War of the Worlds. What’s in it? What’s gonna come out? Why is it here?”
“I think we got their attention,” Arch responded, gathering his unopened plastic bag together and beginning to walk toward the vehicle.
Matisse ran to catch up with him in the soft sand. “We going to check it out?” he said, his voice excited.
“I guess you might say that,” Arch replied, watching a full company of Marines beginning to run outward from the hovercraft, already beginning to form a growing perimeter that would soon include them.
The Marines came out of the hovercraft hatch at a run, racing toward Matisse and Arch. Both men stood too stunned to move. The Marines came within a few feet of them and then split to run right by. From just beyond where they stood the Marines pealed off and formed what resembled a fast opening flower. In only a few seconds they were surrounded, the Marines settling in with their weapons pointed outward, as if to defend them from some unknown enemy.
A single officer walked out of the hovercraft and made his way slowly toward Arch and Matisse. He stopped when he was a few feet away, and then saluted. He was wearing silver captain’s bars on his combat utilities and two black bars held by Velcro to the center of his helmet.
He snapped his right hand to his side and said only one word: “Gentlemen.” He waited at a position of attention.
“What’s the deal captain,” Arch said, when it appeared the neither the captain or anybody else was going to say anything further.
“Well sir, it would appear that General Crow would like to announce his compliments and invite you for a short visit at his quarters up near the secure part of this base,” the captain replied with a smile, although he maintained his position of attention.
“Stand at ease,” Arch ordered. “Why the drama?”
“What drama, sir?” the captain replied, relaxing his body and coming to a loose parade rest position. “The drama of your difficult swim into the beach in the dark or the landing of our amphibious vehicle?”
Arch got the Marine humor realizing there was no way he and Matisse could have drowned or much else without a bunch of Navy Seals dropping from the sky to rescue them. Their travel from Rabbit Island had no doubt been recorded in detail real time and the subject of considerable humor.
“All this to take us less than half a mile up the beach,” Arch said, smiling back at the captain. “You didn’t need guns and a hovercraft battle ship for that.”
“Actually, my orders were to transport you with full security if you agree,” the captain replied. “Mike Company is here for your protection. You aren’t being forced to do anything. The general is asking for an audience. You have full freedom to reply as you wish although once you leave Bellows we would no longer be able to provide security. What’s your pleasure, sir?” The Marine returned to a noticeable position of attention.
“Maybe they give us ride back to the island?” Matisse said, hopefully, his eyes round and large as they continued to take in the Marines, machine guns and the huge monster of a landing craft.
“Do we get to keep our weapons?” Arch asked,
“Absolutely, sir,” the captain responded, instantly
“You know we don’t have any weapons, don’t you?” Arch said, with a sigh.
“Yes, sir,” the Marine answered, with no change of expression, his smile long gone.
“Cell phones?” Arch continued.
“Of course, sir. Suppressed, however,” the captain actually seemed sympathetic about that.
“My I.D. still good?” Arch finished.
“Which one?” the captain replied, his small nearly invisible smile returning.
“We walk up the beach?” Arch pointed, there being no reason he could think of to test the captain’s word. Oahu was all of five hundred and ninety square miles. There really were almost no place to hide for any length of time, not from the CIA and the Marines.
“Of course not, sir,” the captain snapped, immediately pulling out a small radio and keying in some code. In only a few seconds a battle command Humvee pulled under the trees and made its way through the soft sand like it was built for just such a mission, which it was.
“What’s going to happen?” Matisse whispered to Arch, as the vehicle drove through a break the Marines made for it in their defensive perimeter. The defensive ring closed as soon as the Humvee was through.
Arch looked over at the frightened Hawaiian before approaching the back door of the truck, already swinging open to accept them. “Saying I don’t know would be a huge understatement, but I’ve got a feeling that you are about to be my only friend for quite some time to come.”
IX
The Humvee proved to be empty, an enlisted Marine wearing no rank exiting the vehicle as Matisse and Arch got in. The heavy armored door slammed shut and the driver took off. There was nobody else in the Humvee.
Arch looked through the bulletproof glass, as they four-wheeled over the packed pine needles to the road. The scenery was surreal to him. It was exactly the same and in exactly the same small area he’d camped with his Boy Scout troop so many years before. He’d been afraid of snakes and nobody could tell him that there were no snakes in the Hawaiian Islands. Only the coming of the completely sewn in canvas bottoms to scout tents, and zippered mosquito nets, had allowed him to sleep the nights through without constantly waking to check for slithering monsters. The only benefit of having such an irrational fear had paid him was that he alone, other than Torres, the scoutmaster, had had his own tent.
“General’s quarters down at the end of the base?” Arch inquired of the driver, not necessarily believing the company commander back at the big hovercraft.
“Sir,” was all the Marine replied, his voice cut off and terse, as if the last thing he wanted was any dialogue with the two he was carrying in the back seat.
“Why all the guns facing out back there?” Matisse asked Arch. “What were they guarding us from? Is somebody other than them after us, or what?”
“Intimidation,” Arch answered, with a knowing smile. “Didn’t you feel it? A display of power and force. Shock and awe. Indirect threats are sometimes much more effective than direct threats. Didn’t phase you a bit though, did it?”
“Nah,” Matisse replied, softly. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Whatever they want to happen. I guess it was that way from the start but missions never go the way they’re supposed to so I’m counting on some serendipity to help.”
“Serendipity? That doesn’t sound so good,” Matisse said.
The Humvee was doing no more than fifteen miles an hour so the trip took more than just the few minutes it would have taken if they’d been making any kind of reasonable speed. Arch thought they might be experiencing more intimidation but he wasn’t sure. The whole thing, w
hatever it was, just didn’t seem to have that kind of advance planning or experienced players at work. The Marines landing from the hovercraft had been regular Marines except for their lack of rank markings. It just didn’t seem that Arch and Matisse, no matter what they might do, could be important enough to spend much time or assets over.
The Humvee didn’t slow for the gate guards, much less stop. The guards didn’t wave or acknowledge the vehicle’s passing except to stare as it went by. The base had changed. There were no off duty personnel swimming, getting gas at the on base station or even hanging about the many small rental cabins maintained by the Air Force for any active duty or retired military personnel who might want to avoid the outrageous room rates charged in Waikiki. The road ended at the base of a rather laid back looking home constructed almost entirely of fitted black lava rocks held together by mixed concrete, like many of the local walls to be found around all the islands. The Marine stopped the vehicle and waited. Matisse and Arch climbed out. The Humvee departed with both rear doors swinging shut due to the acceleration force of the departing vehicle. The Marine driver was obviously returning to his duty station at a much higher rate of speed than he’d used to deliver his charges.
“I guess we knock?” Matisse asked, approaching the single barred gate set deeply into the stone. There was a small courtyard beyond the bars but no one there.
“Enter,” a tinny voice said, emitted by a small speaker set at head height by the edge of gate. The door buzzed open a few inches.
“Cool,” Matisse said, and then pushed the gate fully open.
Arch looked around for a rock to prop the door open. There were no loose rocks so he grabbed a nearby bench and put it in the gap so the door couldn’t close after them.
They climbed some steps, and then turned a corner and had to climb some more. Arch didn’t slow or turn when he heard the gate behind them snap shut with a loud click. Evidently there were personnel somewhere unseen in the courtyard, probably stationed there for the specific purpose of making sure whoever came in was supposed to be in and whoever was in was staying until dismissed. There would be no quick rush out of the residence to make an escape, but then Arch hadn’t expected any.
Down In The Valley Page 7