by Toby Neal
Chapter Forty-Three
More than twenty-four hours later, strapped into her seat in the eight-passenger FBI chopper, Lei couldn’t help having a huge grin as she looked around at her companions. Nothing quite like going on a raid with some of your favorite people in the world.
The pilot and an FBI sharpshooter, Agent McKendrick, occupied the two front seats, Torufu and Bunuelos the next three with a gear bag between them, and Lei was sandwiched between two of her friends, FBI agents Ken Yamada and Marcella Scott, deployed by SAC Waxman to help with the case.
During the time she’d been off-duty, the FBI had ramped up the investigation with the name and location Lei and Torufu had extracted from Ramsey, and planned a multi-agency takedown of the pirates. A combined FBI and MPD SWAT team preceded them in another chopper, the Coast Guard had already moved into ocean position, and Big Island PD were blocking escape on land.
They were all headed for the Pirate King’s likely location, a remote valley on the towering northeastern shore of Hawaii, under cover of darkness. Official maps showed the area as uninhabited, but it was owned by a corporation: Waikoa, Inc. Ramsey had given them the single name of Kabo, owner and CEO of that company.
Satellite imagery had revealed a small, sheltered bay with an unpermitted cement block bunker perched on the ridge above. Satellite images had been used by the team to plot the raid—they’d studied the structure; its entrances and exits. The only land access was a narrow dirt road. Close-ups of the bluff above the bay showed a perilous series of ladders leading to a sea cave.
“That’s where they’re hiding their craft,” Commander Decker had said at the planning meeting. “We’ll block their ocean escape. The FBI will storm the building by air, and Big Island PD will hold them by land. They’ll be sitting ducks, trapped in their hideout.”
Lei privately hoped they wouldn’t have already fled like in the last raid. There’d been no time for her to even follow up about a possible leak in the law enforcement personnel going after the pirates.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Waipi`o Valley,” Ken’s voice came through her helmet, echoing in the comm unit. “It’s gorgeous. Sophie and I had a super intense case there.”
“I’ve been to Waipi`o, of course. You forget—I started out with Hilo PD,” Lei said. “But this location isn’t in the valley itself, is it?”
“Nearby. A couple of ridges over,” Bunuelos chimed in from the front. “This whole side of the Big Island is steep cliffs and valleys.”
They’d reached Hawi, a northern point, just a sprinkle of lights on the dark bulk of the island. The demarcation of the wet versus dry sides of the island was starkly apparent in daylight; baked-golden slopes ascended to heights, where water-bearing clouds caught on the ten thousand foot slopes of Mauna Loa.
But at night, it was all just shapes of dark and darker, lit by the occasional light of civilization and a faint moon glow on the water far below.
They circled the edge of the island and headed toward cliffs, rising with height and splendor on their right.
Everyone was dressed for the raid in emblazoned protective vests and helmets. Lei had already checked that her standard issue Glock 40’s magazine was fully loaded and made sure her little ankle rig was also ready. A couple of clips of extra ammo weighed down her vest pockets. Beside her, Marcella counted the rounds in her ammo clip, then shoved it home in the semi-auto pistol she favored. “Too bad it took pirates to bring us all together again,” Marcella said.
“Any excuse for a reunion, right?” Ken gave his handsome, triangular grin. “I miss working with you, Lei.”
“We gotta get together more often,” Lei agreed. “After this is over, I want you both to come to the house for a meal before you head back to O`ahu.”
“Most definitely.” Marcella was as beautiful as ever; she reminded Lei of the actress Eva Mendes, with her lush curves and luminous smile.
Lei was glad she had taken a Dramamine earlier as the chopper bucked, hitting an updraft from the island. This larger chopper was more stable than the small Bell Jet Lei was more familiar with, but still it swayed and bounced as the pilot drew a line low along the cliffs.
“Radio silence from here on out,” the pilot said. “We’re within scanner pickup range of the target.”
Lei’s heart rate accelerated. She practiced calming nose-breathing deliberately, even as the helicopter dropped and danced in drafts off of rugged lava cliffs that plunged from dramatic heights down to a churning ocean. The smaller valleys that would eventually open up to the major chasm of Waipi`o were cleft by waterfalls, some of which spilled from the bluffs, silver feathers in the moonlight. Others gleamed at the backs of the gulches like veins, almost hidden by jungle.
The Pirate King’s house hunkered like a gray barnacle on the top of the bluff next to the little bay Lei recognized from the satellite photos. Ahead of them, the SWAT chopper hovered over the building and dropped its team down a rope onto the roof.
She was glad they had other orders.
Lei scanned the water and spotted a Coast Guard craft, just outside of the bay and invisible from the house’s line of sight. As they passed the building and turned inward onto the land, the dirt road leading to the house was dimly visible—a potholed, muddy mess screened by overhanging trees. She couldn’t see any activity there, but the island’s police would be blocking the road’s access to the main highway while hanging back—just as the Coast Guardsmen were, letting FBI’s Strategic Weapons and Tactical take the lead.
Their chopper dropped down beside a prefabricated metal barn, likely a storage area. Satellite thermal imaging had shown the barn to be empty of personnel, but the house was occupied, and likely there were more hostiles in the cave below.
Lei and her compatriots got their night vision goggles on, exited the chopper, and it lifted off again. Agent McKendrick already had a vantage point near the road picked out; he quickly surged up into the branches of a huge koa tree. Lei turned to face the house, the barn at her back, getting a sense of the area. She was assigned to cover the barn, and she was the odd one out as Ken and Marcella ran to the right of the house, running low and using cover, while Torufu and Bunuelos went left in the same manner.
Their roles were to secure the exits around the building as SWAT tackled the hostiles from the inside, and a smattering of gunfire from the direction of the house told Lei the sweep was well underway.
Lei trotted around the barn, doing a quick survey for the best spot to hunker down.
The roof appeared intact, but the whole structure was rusting in the heavy Big Island rains, beginning to sag into a lowering dip of ground. The barn was equipped with two large exterior doors and one small one. Lei tried the small one, startled to find that the push handle moved under her hand and the door opened easily on oiled hinges.
A mildew smell assaulted her nostrils along with the distinctive smell of the sea. She peered around. The NV goggles weren’t great for detail, but it didn’t much matter because most of the space was filled with boxes holding unknown contents. An entire half of the barn was filled with pieces of salvaged parts and equipment from boats. Lei spotted the name of the Golden Fleece emblazoned on a furled sail. “This is where they store the loot,” Lei murmured aloud, moving around the junk. None of it appeared to be of much commercial value.
On the other side of the mountain of salvage, Lei spotted a small, two-man heavy duty Rhino all-terrain mini-truck, parked facing the doors. “Those tough bastards can go anywhere. This is an escape vehicle,” Lei murmured, the hair rising on the back of her neck.
Someone was going to come for this vehicle. All she had to do was wait. She pulled back behind a refrigerator-sized box near the door to ambush anyone coming in.
She didn’t have to wait long, but she’d chosen the wrong spot to wait for her quarry.
Chapter Forty-Four
Lei heard a soft scraping sound coming from the ground near where the ATV was parked.
“Shit,
” Lei hissed. They had a tunnel!
She felt her way forward to the pile of salvage, picking her way on tiptoes around it as she heard a murmur of voices and light oozed through the pile of junk. She reached the edge of the pile, staying hidden, and peered around it.
Two silhouettes had climbed up out of a square hole in the ground directly behind the ATV. One of them shone his light around the space. The beam was so bright that it seared Lei’s eyeballs as it momentarily struck her, blinding her behind the NV goggles.
She froze.
The light moved on. “It’s clear,” he said.
Lei dropped her goggles to hang around her neck—with the laser-bright flashlight beaming around, they were more of a hindrance than a help.
The other silhouette ran forward to roll back the door.
Lei raised her weapon and opened her mouth to call out, but the one holding the flashlight spoke. His voice was guttural, foreign-accented. “We should’a fuckin’ been warned.”
“Yeah.” The one at the door rolled it open. “But they might have got to him.” This voice sounded young and American. The rusty metal door hardly made a squeak as it rolled open on a well-maintained track.
The young man ran back and got into the ATV. The other man got in the other side. The driver switched on the lights, and the brightness flared.
This was her chance! They wouldn’t be able to see her, and she could see them clearly, backlit silhouettes framed as if in a photo, by the roll bar of the ATV.
“Freeze! Police! Hands in the air!” Lei bellowed.
“Go!” the accented voice yelled, as he spun in his seat and fired a fusillade of bullets from an automatic that Lei hadn’t been able to see him holding.
Lei hit the ground shooting at them.
The Rhino roared into life and leapt forward.
Lei continued to fire at the silhouettes, even as the automatic sprayed around her.
The Rhino was already through the door and out into the dark when the guttural-voiced man fell out of the vehicle with a harsh cry, rolling on the ground.
Lei fired the rest of her clip at the ATV, and heard it swerve and screech. She jumped up and ran to the door of the barn, and watched in satisfaction as the mini-truck rammed into the tree the sharpshooter was in, flinging the unbelted driver out of the open vehicle onto the ground.
“Put your hands on your head!” Agent McKendrick yelled at the driver from above. What a surprise that voice must be! Lei pulled her goggles up and peered through them—she could just make out a shape on the ground, his arms like pale green noodles as he lifted them on top of his head. “Roll over on your belly!” McKendrick commanded.
Keeping behind the barn as cover, Lei reloaded a fresh magazine, and dropped the goggles around her neck again. She took her flashlight off her belt and lifted her weapon, approaching the perp she’d shot cautiously and keeping the light on him.
The man who was likely the Pirate King lay sprawled on his back on the hard-packed dirt. His mouth was open on a scream that had never ended, and his dark eyes were wide and fixed. A spreading blood pool beneath him soaked the solid ground like oil.
Lei kicked the man’s automatic weapon, a Kalashnikov, away from the body with her foot. She touched his neck with two fingers, checking for a pulse.
Nothing.
Six foot, muscular, with thick matted hair and skin so dark it absorbed the light.
Kabo, the Pirate King, was not Hawaiian.
She eyed the Polynesian tribal marking that encircled one of his arms. She squatted, picked up a twig, and gently scratched at the tattoo. It peeled away easily.
“Fake,” Lei muttered. “Just a publicity stunt.” Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t Kanaka Maoli.
Lights came on around the driveway. The battle in the house was resolving.
Lei left the body and trotted over to secure the other prisoner as Agent McKendrick stayed in the tree, alert for any other attempted escapes.
Lei recognized Keo Avila immediately as she approached the man lying on his belly. His handsome face was crumpled with pain. Blood gleamed on the back of his shoulder in a greasy slick under the harsh lights. “You shot me, bitch,” he moaned. “I can’t move my arm.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.” Avila’s weapon was out of reach, but she kicked it further away and frisked him briskly, removing a knife and another pistol. Avila moaned as she cuffed him and zip-tied his legs.
“I bet the whole ‘Pirate King as political activist’ was your idea, you little sociopath,” Lei said. “Kabo didn’t even sound American. You coached him!”
“I want to make a deal,” Avila panted. “I know something you’ll want to know.”
“Yeah.” Lei squatted beside the prone young man. “Who’s the mole? Who’s been feeding you and Kabo intel?”
Avila jerked. “How did you know?”
“I figured it out. Tell me his name.”
“No. I want a deal. It’s all I’ve got to bargain with . . .”
She was so damn tired of all these deals. Why couldn’t just one of these perps be sorry for their awful acts and do the right thing? But this guy was a psychopath. He’d never had a conscience, even according to his mother.
Her body screening the sharpshooter’s view from above, Lei leaned on the bullet wound in Keo Avila’s shoulder. He squawked.
“Tell me the name, and I’ll get you first aid.”
“No, I can’t!”
“You won’t, you mean.” Lei leaned on him again. This time Avila passed out, going limp as a dishrag. Thinking of Avila’s loving mama and her confusion over his lies and cruelty, thinking of all the runaways this man had lured into metal boxes to be shipped overseas, Lei didn’t even feel sorry.
Lei removed a small canteen from her belt and poured some water into her palm. She splashed it on Avila’s face. “Wake up. You were giving me a name.”
“You’ll give me something if I tell you?” The young man blinked puppy dog eyes at her. Cute dimples and long lashes hid his black heart.
“I absolutely will, starting with uncuffing your arms and giving you some emergency first aid—and more of this water.” Lei dribbled a little liquid into his open mouth. He gulped thirstily. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. The EMTs can’t come until the raid is fully over, and who knows when that will be? You could bleed out by then.”
“Everything okay down there?” McKendrick called. “Need some help subduing him?”
“Nope. Just got a few questions for this guy,” Lei called, and leaned on Avila’s shoulder with her elbow.
Avila squeaked like a mouse being stepped on. “Okay! I’ll tell you. It’s Decker in the Coast Guard. Decker’s getting kickbacks from the Changs. He lets us know when there are rich targets headed our way, and he makes sure the patrols and inspections of cargo miss our containers.”
“You’re talking about the Chang human trafficking operation, right? But the pirates are a new thing.”
“Yeah. I’ve been working for the Changs for a couple of years now. Kabo reached out to me. He was new to the area, wanted to get established.” Avila shut his eyes. “It was just going to be short-term.”
“No, it wasn’t. You were going to keep working with that killer as long as you could get away with it. You were building a whole new operation with you as middleman, bringing Kabo together with the Changs. But hey, a deal is a deal.” Lei unfastened his cuffs. Avila moaned with relief as his arms dropped to his sides. She cut away his shirt with her combat knife, took out her emergency medical kit, and slapped a pressure bandage over his wound. She rolled him onto his back, and stuffed his folded shirt under the wound. “Don’t move. Your body weight pressing on this is decreasing the bleeding.”
“Okay.” Avila panted in shallow breaths, pale with pain.
Lei refastened the cuffs on Avila in front. “Did you know that Kabo was a contract killer? That’s how we ended up getting onto him.”
Avila cursed. “He never said anything about that. Just that
he wanted certain ships. Decker gave him the info and then . . . the whole thing was way more than I bargained for. I told him it was going to bring too much heat, we had to lie low between jobs, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Lei glanced toward the house.
The gunfire had stopped. She turned her radio back on, and it crackled with voices reporting in, calling for help, and reporting pockets of resistance, particularly down inside the sea cave, where a standoff had developed.
Lei addressed McKendrick. “Special Agent, can you cover this guy for me? Pretty sure the man down is the Pirate King, and he’s dead. I’ve got this guy treated and secured.”
“Roger that. Got him and the driveway covered,” McKendrick said.
Lei gave the man a little salute and stood up. She prodded Avila with her toe. “Remember. Don’t move. Keep pressure on the wound.”
Avila groaned in answer. Probably going into shock.
She had to reach someone with the name she’d been given, in case something happened to her.
Chapter Forty-Five
Lei wasn’t sure what was clear near the house, so she returned to the barn. In its sheltering cover, she took her phone out of the zippered pocket inside her vest and thumbed to the number of the only man she could think of that might have the authority to order an investigation of a Coast Guard commander: Special Agent in Charge, Ben Waxman.
She still had SAC Waxman’s cell number from her FBI days, and he’d be monitoring the raid. “Texeira. Your team is in the middle of an op. Why are you calling me?”
“I’m at the site of the op.” Lei slid her free hand into her pocket and fingered the smooth curve of the bone hook. “I’ve got some information you need to know.”
Her eyes scanning the house, alert for danger, Lei told Waxman about Decker. “You’re the only person I could think of that might have enough authority to order an investigation into him.”