Yeager's Getaway, page 16
part #3 of Abel Yeager Series
If all of us rush him at once, right now...
The thought died the moment it was born. Not only was it problematic that all the able-bodied people in the hut could make a dent in the block of granite in the doorway, but they also had a forest full of armed men to contend with. They would all be shot to ribbons before they made it a hundred yards.
The warm sweat on her body turned to ice as the giant stepped in and surveyed the group. His narrow, puffy eyes lingered on the women.
“What do you want?” Dave Draper marched forward. His short, pudgy body contrasted with the monster at the door like a mouse approaching a tiger. “You’re not touching another—”
Smack!
Charlie jumped. The man’s hand had moved faster than her eye could follow. The backstroke caught Draper alongside his head and sent him reeling into a cot occupied by the German tourist, Schweighofer. Both crashed to the floor as the German tried to catch the congressman.
Kong pointed. “You. Come with me.”
“No!” Melissa shrieked.
An ugly sense of relief flowed through Charlie when that sausage-sized finger pointed at Melissa. A pang of shame at her own cowardice followed. She pushed the nail in her hand to poke out between her fingers. Maybe, if she could hit him in the eye...?
Austin stood as Kong approached. “Wait, wait, wait. We can talk about this.” He held up a hand like a traffic cop, and the giant caught his wrist and twisted. The bones in Austin’s arms shattered with a sound like gristle crackling. He screamed and went to one knee.
The monster kicked him aside and reached for Melissa, who squealed and shrank into a ball at the end of her cot. She jerked and kicked when he reached for her, looking like a small child afraid of a shot. Ed Collins and the baker, Migliozzi, ran over and jumped on Kong’s back. Even skinny little Montelle raced in and swatted at the giant, slapping ineffective punches into any open space he could find.
Charlie stalked forward, her fist tight and slick with sweat. The nailhead dug into her palm. She sidestepped a rolling Migliozzi as he was pitched off the terrorist’s back and flung across the floor. Cots banged and crashed together in the melee, further tangling the approach with obstacles. Charlie picked her way through the debris. She dodged a pair of captives who were escaping the area. Screams and shouts from the others faded into the background of her perception.
Kong shrugged off Ed Collins and swatted down him as easily as knocking over a toddler. The big man ignored Montelle, who rained feathery blows on the monster’s back. Like King Kong after Fay Wray, the Samoan zeroed in on Melissa and caught her by the ankle. He dragged her across the floor.
“Not me! Not me!” the blond woman screamed. Wet eyes rolled in her beet-red face. They landed on Charlie, who was sliding up from the giant’s left rear. “Her! She’s the one,” Melissa wailed. “She has a weapon! Take her!”
Kong glanced around. Saw her raised fist.
Damn you, Melissa. Charlie rushed in and punched at the man’s piggy left eye. Her fist smacked Kong’s palm. It felt like hitting a side of beef. The protruding nail stabbed deep. The man took no notice. His meaty hand snapped closed on her bunched fist like a Venus flytrap. Warm blood—his, she hoped—seeped around her knuckles.
Kong’s lips curled up on one side. “I like you,” he rumbled. “You’ve got spirit.”
He squeezed. The bones in her hand cracked like small twigs. The pain registered as cold white heat firing through her fist, followed by a blast of agony that ripped a scream from her guts. Charlie’s eyes blurred, and her legs gave out. When the giant released her, she fell at his feet, all the fight crushed out of her. Her hand burned with pain. She cradled it against her body.
Kong’s voice came from a distant shore. “Now, you, little bitch—I don’t like a tattletale. C’mon, honey. We’re gonna go play.”
Charlie was vaguely aware of Melissa howling as she was dragged past. The woman clawed at the floor, digging grooves in the soft wood with her fingertips. A wet, bloody bit of metal fell by Charlie’s knee. Her nail. Tossed back to her in a show of contempt.
The door slammed shut, and the lock clattered home.
Charlie rocked her broken hand and blocked out the gabbling of the other hostages. Salty wet tears splattered the floor. Hers, as it turned out.
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1800 Local
Yeager returned from his reconnaissance, following the sound of the waterfall back to the pool where he had left the others. It was the same pond where he and Pettigrew had spent a very short night. He had left the older men to rest and rehydrate while he scouted a way up the ridge that didn’t involve a suicidal assault on a defended position. The three men were resting in the shade of a massive tree. Osterchuk sat up as he approached, and Pettigrew toed Pyle awake.
“Okay, Marines. I found a way up.” He settled on a rock next to the pool, dropping like a sandbag. He stuck his face in the water and drank his fill. He shook off the water and used the front of his shirt as a towel. “Let me draw y’all a picture.”
With a stick as a pencil and a patch of wet sand as his drawing board, Yeager diagrammed the camp layout. He drew five rectangles like the spread fingers of a hand. “Here are the four barracks and a smaller hut. They all face a central clearing. From here”—Yeager poked a hole in the middle of the clearing, where the palm of the spread hand would be—“starting left and reading clockwise, barracks A is at the nine o’clock. B is at straight-up twelve. The hostages are in this one. A guard post is in between those two, next to a big tree. Next up, we have this little building—call it C—here at the one o’clock, but it’s set back from the others. At the two o’clock position is barracks D, and E is at the three o’clock position. Clear so far?”
“Sounds like an IKEA project,” Osterchuk said.
“Wait until we start inserting tabs into slots,” Pettigrew said with a chuckle.
“On the south side of the camp is a creek.” Yeager drew a wiggly line. If the buildings were a spread hand, the line would slash the wrist. Well above the fingertips, he drew a second line. “On the north side is the ridge. I suspect the creek is the source of the waterfall here—it must bend north at some point. Off to the east of the waterfall, away from the camp, there’s a game trail that goes up to the top. We’ll climb that and make our approach by following the stream from the top of the waterfall back toward the camp.” Yeager looked at each man in turn, making eye contact. Weighing. Assessing. If there were any doubts, the older men hid them well. “Okay, then,” he said. “Here is where it gets tricky.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Guppy, Off the Coast of Molokai
Sunday, 9 May
1822 Local Time
Victor, scanning the ocean with binoculars, saw it first. He pointed. “There.”
Monalisa nodded and canted the wheel to port, aiming for a small cruise ship riding the ocean swells about five hundred yards away. It looked like the picture of the Fair Breezes she had pulled up on her phone from the company website—emerald-green hull and white superstructure with green accents. She gripped the wheel with one hand and toggled the radio mic with the other.
“Guppy calling Fair Breezes. Guppy calling Fair Breezes. Coming up on your stern, Breezes. How copy?” She repeated the call as they approached. No one answered from the cruise ship.
“This don’ feel good, mi hermosa.” Victor trained binoculars on the ship. Even with them braced against the dashboard, the image juddered around with the Guppy’s motion. “No one on deck. No passengers, no crew, no nobody.”
Monalisa cut off the forward throttle at a hundred yards and let inertia carry them closer. She used the joystick-driven motors to jockey them in close to the well deck on the cruise ship. The well deck was a drawbridge-like ramp at water level that allowed the cruise ship to launch and recover kayaks and inflatables. It could be raised or lowered as needed, though at the moment, it was lowered. And unattended.
Monalisa brought the Guppy in close and turned it side-on to the bigger ship.
“We’ll never fit in the boat well. Hold it here,” Monalisa told Victor. “I’m going to throw out the fenders so I don’t scratch Thad’s paint.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
Monalisa ran out of the cockpit, opened lockers on the yacht’s starboard side, and draped thick bumper pads over the rail. When the fenders were out, she yelled to him to bring them in closer. Victor joggled the controls, and the yacht bumped into the Breezes’s stern. When the sides touched—well, slammed together—Monalisa picked up a coiled rope, one end of which was tied to a davit on the Guppy’s side rail. Nimble as a goat, she jumped the gap of blue water and tied off the line to a similar davit on the bigger ship.
Victor monkeyed with the joystick, trying to keep the Guppy from bashing into the cruise ship while keeping it close enough for Monalisa to jump back. It was harder than it looked.
His guts refused to settle, and not all of that was from seasickness. There was no response from the cruise ship to their radio calls. No response to the yacht pulling up to their back door. No activity on the decks.
“Hey, what was that famous ghost ship?” he said when Monalisa returned to the bridge. “The Frying Dishpan?”
“Flying Dutchman.” She shoved him off the controls. “And yeah, the same thought crossed my mind. Can you jump it?”
“You kidding? They don’t call me the Mexican Superman for nothing.”
“Ow. I rolled my eyes so hard they broke. You want a gun?”
“Always. You should stay here. Be ready.”
“Always,” Monalisa said.
Victor claimed the .45 and tucked it in the back waistband of his jeans. He climbed onto the gunwale, eyed the gap, and jumped before he could think about it. He splashed into ankle-deep seawater on the rubberized surface of the ramp and clambered up the sloping incline, past the pivot point, and onto the deck proper, which was more like a wide back porch than a deck.
Overhead, a sundeck jutted out partway over the launching ramp, like an awning over the porch. Racks of kayaks hung from brackets on the port side, and bundles of paddles were tied to the railings. Empty brackets on the starboard side looked big enough to hold an inflatable boat.
Flotation rings and gaffing hooks hung from the back bulkhead, and a closed door was located closer to the starboard side than the port. A stairway—or ladder, as the squids called it—slanted from port to starboard and connected the well deck to the deck above.
A crew member’s jacket with a Fair Breezes logo sewn on the breast pocket sloshed in the water surging across the well deck. A sleeve button was caught in the joint between the ramp and the deck. Seeing it there, lifeless and empty, gave Victor the major willies from his gonadal region all the way to his chest.
Chingade tu madre, he thought. Fucking ghost ship.
He hesitated, a hand on the lever that opened the door. Loud and stupid—or sneaky and dangerous? If he went in loud and stupid, and everybody was playing Yahtzee and drinking mai tais, no harm done. If there were nefarious characters involved—he liked the word nefarious—then going in loud and stupid would get him killed.
Sneaky it is. Victor checked Monalisa, who remained on the Guppy’s bridge, one hand shading her eyes as she followed his progress. Sweat trickled down his back. He pulled the gun from his waistband, thumbed off the safety, and held it low against his thigh. His left hand eased down the lever until he felt the latch give way. Victor raised the weapon and oozed through the smallest gap possible.
A narrow passageway led to a dining area with tables covered in white cloth and place settings arranged with precise care. Doors opened on either side, leading to what appeared to be cabins for paying passengers. The passageway was painted a soft ivory and splattered with crimson.
On the deck at his feet lay an older man in white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and white socks. He wore one sandal—the other appeared to be missing. So did a large chunk of the man’s head.
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1900 Local
When someone banged on the door to his cabin, Kimo left the woman and stomped to answer it, not bothering to put anything on. He flung open the door to find Alapai and Manu Ho. Kimo grinned when College Boy’s eyes flicked down to check out his swinging dick.
“Uhh...” Alapai’s cheeks flushed, and he locked gazes with Kimo.
“What is it? I’m in the middle of something.”
Manu Ho said, “News report say boat killed. Strike team three. Everyone dead.”
“Makani?” Kimo asked.
Alapai shrugged. “We have to assume he’s gone.”
“Then there’s no reason to wait, hey, brah?” Kimo said. “Start burning shit—”
“Already started,” Alapai said.
As if conjured by his words, Kenny Po and Hambone exited the command hut with arms full of paper, which they piled into a fifty-five-gallon drum they had placed there previously for just that purpose. Flames flickered up from the barrel, and Kimo smelled the faint tang of smoke.
Manu Ho spoke up. “Half men go to beach. Security for boats.”
“And the three at the overlook?”
“At beach.”
Kimo scratched his bare ass. “That’s it then, huh? Gimme a minute.”
He closed the door and started dragging on his clothes. When dressed, he looked around. Patted his pockets like a man ensuring he had his wallet and keys. Kimo considered the skinny blond on the bed. Her blue eyes were watery and dull as though her soul had already departed. Nobody home.
“Sorry, babe. I can’t stay.” He shot her in the head, once. Then Kimo walked out to join his crew in clearing the camp.
THE Guppy and Fair Breezes, Off the Coast of Molokai
Sunday, 9 May
1900 Local
Victor hopped back aboard the Cobalt yacht. “Call the Coast Guard.”
“What the actual fuck,” Monalisa barked. “You’ve been gone forever. I had no idea—”
“They’re all dead.”
“Who? Who’s all dead?”
“The passengers, the crew.” Victor drooped his head like a sad hound dog. “Everybody.”
“Oh no.” Monalisa touched his arm. “Your friends?” she whispered.
Victor perked up, a rekindled spark. “No. For true, that’s what took so long—checking the bodies. No Yeager, no Charlie. I found this, though.” He held up a sheet of paper. The back was stamped with a bloody boot print.
“What’s it say?”
“Today’s activity: A hike into the Molokai Forest Reserve.”
“So they might be...?”
Victor shrugged. “I have to hope so, chica. I need you to drop me off at this...” He squinted at the pamphlet “Cow-and-caca? No, Kaunakakai Harbor. Then call the Coasties. I need to go up in this Molokai Forest thingy.”
“What? And leave me to deal with this mess?”
Victor cupped Monalisa’s broad, open face in his palms. “Ah, mi que linda pirata, you have done your job, yes? You have delivered the marine to fight. This is what the navy does. You must stay and watch over the dead, mi hermosa.”
“Aw, hell. I know when you start using Spanish on me, I’m getting a snow job. Your act is not as charming as you think it is.”
“Call the Coast Guard,” Victor said. “Call the Molokai police or—what is it? The forest rangers? Yeager and Charlie, they’re probably sitting around with a bunch of tourists, waiting for a boat ride back to the ship, going ‘What the fuck?’ Or they came back, saw the situation, and left already.”
Monalisa narrowed her eyes. “You’re doing that macho shit again, trying to protect the little lady. Need I remind you, Lieutenant, I was a master-at-arms in the navy.”
“Then you know your duty,” Victor said with a wink. “Never leave a crime scene.”
Her mouth opened... and closed. No words came out.
“Hah!” Victor laughed. “Gotcha.”
Monalisa’s shoulders slumped. “Asshole.”
“Sea hag.”
“Cast off the line. I’ll give you a head start, then I’m calling the Coast Guard from Kaunakakai Harbor.”
MOLOKAI FOREST RESERVE
Sunday, 9 May
1910 Local
Yeager advanced through the trees. Pyle flanked him on the right. The older man moved well enough, though he was breathing hard and his face glowed red from exertion. Pyle appeared “switched on”—eyes sweeping, weapon ready, alert to danger. Even though he couldn’t hear a plate drop on a tile floor, he seemed totally engaged in movement to contact.
The sun had fallen below the hills to the west, though it hadn’t truly set. Darkness seeped into the spaces under the vegetation. Before long, Yeager would be traveling by feel more than sight.
They had swung wide south to approach the camp along the same trail he and Pettigrew had used the night before. It had the advantage of both familiarity and decent cover, at least until they reached the stream bordering the south side of the camp. Having scouted the camp, Yeager had a fair guess as to the likely position of any observation posts or ambush sites. He very much intended not to blunder into either.
Yeager heard the trickle of water before he saw the stream. The scent of water carried through the foliage moments later. He held up a fist to halt the advance. Pyle took a knee by his side. The acrid tang of sweat wafted from him, and Yeager knew his own body smelled like a dead goat. At least the breeze quartered in from the east, carrying their scent away from the camp. One of the things he learned early in Afghanistan: sweat stink gave away a stalking enemy as often as sight or sound.
Yeager leaned over his watch—a cool-looking G-Shock with dials and buttons and a rubberized case that Charlie had bought him for Christmas. A teeny button that Yeager’s thumb always fumbled over activated a dial light.
“Nineteen ten,” he whispered then remembered to hold the watch where Pyle could see it. He motioned Gomer to a prone position. “We’ll hold here. Take a breather.”
