Pele's Fire

As he arrived, one of the chase cars was accelerating toward Aolani’s crippled Datsun. It wasn’t going more than 20 mph by his estimate, but it would still cause damage on impact.

And it would provide cover for the last two shooters, coming up behind it while the high beams blazed their trail.

Bolan ignored the car, its lifeless driver, concentrating on the men behind it. They had revved the gas somehow, and maybe given the vehicle a shove to start, both of them clutching weapons now and sheltering behind the vehicle as it advanced. From Bolan’s angle, though, one of the hunters was exposed completely, and his companion was visible from the waist up.

It was enough.

He stitched the nearer of the gunmen with a rising burst, six rounds or so of 7.62 mm death leaving the AK’s muzzle at a speed of 2,300 feet per second. Downrange, his moving target crumpled as if he were made of paper, crushed within a giant’s fist. The dead man fell, firing a shotgun blast into his own foot as he dropped.

The hunting party’s sole survivor swung toward Bolan, ripping off a long burst from a lightweight submachine gun. Bolan could’ve ducked but didn’t bother, instead answering with a short burst from his Kalashnikov that nearly emptied the long curved magazine.

His target took most of it, jerking through a clumsy little dance that ended with a belly flop on gravel, while the car that he’d been following rolled on and nosed against the Datsun’s driver’s door. It wasn’t much of a collision, but it finally extinguished those annoying high beams.

Bolan advanced to find Aolani and her companion huddled on the far side of the Datsun, still staying put and keeping low. Not bad, he thought, all things considered.

She had done all right on what he took to be her first time under fire.

“It’s over,” Bolan said. “We need to leave now.”

“Leave?” she challenged him. “In case you haven’t noticed, they just shot the hell out of my car.”

“We’ll borrow one of theirs,” Bolan replied. “That one,” he added, pointing to the vehicle that stood alone now, headlights burning tunnels through the night.

“And leave mine here?”

“I’ll torch it. Take out anything you need that’s still inside.”

As Bolan spoke, he tore a strip of fabric from a lifeless gunman’s shirttail and removed the Datsun’s gas cap to insert the wick.

“Burn it or not, the cops will trace it,” Aolani said.

“No sweat. You’re out of town right now. How could you know some punks would steal your car and use it for a rumble with a rival gang?”

“Jesus. Okay, hang on a minute, will you? Let me get my purse and—”

She was scrambling, fumbling in the glove compartment, underneath the front seat, grabbing this and that before he lit the wick. They piled into the second chase car, and he had it rolling toward the Punchbowl’s exit when the Datsun blew behind them.

“This is really not what I had in mind,” Aolani informed him.

“Hey, you know the saying—life’s what happens while you’re making other plans.”

And death could happen, too.

Oh, yes.

They hadn’t seen the last of death, by any means.

3

Bolan drove back to the Royal Mausoleum State Monument, avoiding major streets with Aolani’s guidance. Their commandeered car was unmarked by gunfire, but Bolan didn’t want to take the chance that someone had reported it along their previous route of flight. If that turned out to be the case, and once the Punchbowl slaughter was discovered, the police would soon be searching for his ride.

And Bolan planned to be long gone by that time.

They rode in silence for the most part. Bolan couldn’t say for sure if Aolani was upset by all the bloodshed she had witnessed, frightened by the fact that she had nearly been among the victims, or enraged by the destruction of her Datsun. Maybe it was a bit of everything that kept her staring stiffly through the windshield, speaking only when she told him where to turn and then in husky monosyllables.

Polunu, huddled in the backseat, whimpered now and then, but otherwise stayed quiet, as if fearing what might happen if he drew attention to himself. That was fine with Bolan. Until they ditched the chase car and were back on safer wheels, he didn’t need distractions that would take his mind away from here-and-now survival.

He took his time on the second approach to their starting point at the monument. He saw no evidence of any stakeout, either by police or more would-be assassins, but he hadn’t seen the first ones, either.

Bolan boxed the block, then turned and did it all again, the other way around. When he was satisfied that no one lay in wait for them, he pulled into the spacious parking lot and drove directly to his rental car, parked one space over from it and got out to have a final look around.

No ambush didn’t mean there was no danger.

For all Bolan knew, there could’ve been a third carload of hostiles watching when they fled the monument with two chase vehicles in tow. He doubted it, but stranger things had happened.

Looking over his rental car, he could see his tires weren’t flat, and the locking gas cap had no signs of tampering.

What else?

He popped the hood and had a cautious look around, seeking any grim surprise package that might explode when he turned the ignition key or hit a designated speed.

Nothing.

As he prepared to look beneath the car, Aolani asked him, “What’s going on? You smell a gas leak? What?”

“Just checking,” Bolan said. “It won’t take long.”

“Checking for what?”

“For bombs,” Polunu answered softly. “It’s a good idea.”

“Not only bombs,” Bolan replied, while peering underneath the rental’s fenders, moving on to check the bumpers. “We don’t want to take a homer with us, either.”

“Homer?” Aolani said. “What’s that?”

“Tracking device,” Polunu said, surprising Bolan.

He would have to judge the turncoat terrorist more carefully, see what lay underneath the mousy, terrified exterior.

“All clear, as far as I can tell,” Bolan said, rising from the ground and dusting off his hands.

“As far as you can tell? That’s not very encouraging,” Aolani said.

“No bombs, definitely. As for homers, the technology is so advanced, I’d have to take the car apart and might not recognize it, even then. There’s nothing obvious. We either take our chances as it is, or take a hike.”

“They’re not through hunting us, I take it?” Aolani asked.

“I doubt it,” Bolan said.

“Not even close,” Polunu said.

“In that case, hiking’s out,” Aolani replied, moving around to take the shotgun seat as Bolan sprang the latches with a button on the rental’s key fob.

“Where to?” Aolani asked him, as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Not your place,” Bolan answered. “If they trailed you here, they’ve got you covered all the way.”

“You mean I can’t go home again?”

Choosing to ignore her question, Bolan said, “I want someplace where we can talk in private, without further interruption. Someplace no one would look for either one of you.”

“It isn’t far to Diamond Head or Kuilei Cliffs,” Aolani observed. “We shouldn’t have much company out there, this time of night.”

“None of the wrong kind, anyway,” Polunu said.

“That’s southeast,” Bolan said, not really asking.

“Right,” Aolani agreed. “We’ll pick up Kalakaua Avenue, not far ahead. Just follow it along the coast until it turns into Diamond Head Road. From there, you’ve got your choice of Diamond Head State Monument or Kuilei Cliffs Beach Park.”

Bolan followed the course she had described, keeping a sharp eye on the rearview mirror for pursuers as he put the miles behind him. He believed it was unlikely that they’d snag another tail, but likelihood and certainty were very different things.

And there was ample room to die between the two.

The coastal route to Diamond Head was beautiful in daylight, but it had a very different quality by night. The sea beyond the nearby shore, instead of sparkling silver, blue and green, showed only shades of gray and black, highlighted by a quarter moon. It was the kind of view that made some ancient mariners believe they could set sail from home and topple off the far edge of the Earth, falling forever through a silent, airless void.

So, was it Paradise—or Limbo?

Either way, the hulk of Diamond Head was coming up in front of him, and Bolan started looking for a place to park his car.

“ALL RIGHT,” Bolan said, when he’d found a dark place to park well back from the highway. “We’re breathing, but there are six men dead so far, and I still don’t know what in hell is going on. Somebody bring me up to speed. Right now.”

Aolani turned in her seat and spoke to Polunu.

“Okay, it’s my story,” Polunu said.

“Let’s hear it,” Bolan ordered.

“How far back should I go?”

“As far back as it takes,” Bolan replied.

“I’ll skip the childhood shit, if that’s okay with you. Or even if it’s not.” The tight look of defiance on his face was Bolan’s first hint that the turncoat had a backbone.

“Fair enough.”

“Okay. I grew up hating haoles. No offense, you having saved my life and all, but this is me. I hate the way you—they—take everything for granted when they spend only a few days on the islands. Leave their trash all over, put the make on native girls like they were Captain Cook, going where no man’s been before. Laugh at the stupid Polynesians with their funny hair and clothes. You know?”

“I hear you.”

“Yeah, you hear me, but you haven’t lived it. Anyway, a friend of mine—name’s not important—told me all about this group that’s gonna turn the clock back. Maybe turn it forward to a better day, depending how you look at things. The guys who organized it called it Pele’s Fire.”

“A home-rule group,” Bolan said.

“Home rule’s part of it,” Polunu said, “but we have groups like that all over. Talk and talk is all they do, until I’m sick of hearing it. Get off your flabby ass and do something, okay? Now, Pele’s Fire, they’re doers. Absolutely.”

“I’m aware of certain bombings, things along that line,” Bolan said.

“Sure. Why not? You haoles killed the red men and enslaved the blacks, then set them ‘free’ and segregated them until they couldn’t take a piss without permission from the government. Stole half of Mexico, and now you bitch about the ‘wetbacks’ sneaking back into their own homeland. Locked up the Nisei in the Big War, when they had no more connection to Japan than you do. All to steal their homes and land. Haoles need to take their lumps for a while. I still think that.”

“Which begs the question—”

“Right. Why did I split? Why am I here, right now, talking to you?”

“Exactly.”

“Haoles need a lesson, man. I still believe that. If they left the islands overnight, I wouldn’t miss a one of them. But getting rid of haoles doesn’t take some mass destruction deal, you know?”

“Not yet,” Bolan replied. “You haven’t told me what they’re planning.”

“That’s the thing, okay? I don’t know what they’re cooking up, exactly, but I’ve heard enough to know it’s too damned big. Like catastrophic big, okay? And not just for the haoles. Man, I’m talking wasteland, here.”

“That’s pretty vague,” Bolan said.

“Don’t I know it? When you start to hear this shit, you shrug it off at first, or you go along and say it’s cool. But when you start to ask around, like I did, for the details, they look at you like you’ve picked up the haole smell. Know what I mean?”

“I get the drift,” Bolan replied.

“So, when this friend of mine who brought me into Pele’s Fire comes up one day and tells me, ‘Polunu, Joey Lanakila thinks you might be working for the Man,’ I know it’s time to bail, okay? I got no future in the revolution, anymore.”

“So, all you have is talk about the outfit planning ‘something big’?”

“Not all. Did I say all?”

“If you’ve got any kind of lead for me, this is the time to spit it out,” Bolan said. “Or you can take it to your grave.”

“Is that a threat, haole?”

“No need. Your own guys want you dead. You want to play dumb, we can say goodbye right now, and you can take your chances on the street.”

“Hang on a minute. Shit! You heard about the missing haole sailors, I suppose?”

“Go on.”

“Six of them, I was told.”

“I’m listening.”

“They’re dead, okay? I give you that,” Polunu said. “I wasn’t in on it, but word still gets around. May turn up someday, maybe not, but Lanakila’s snatch squad got their uniforms. Don’t ask me why, because I’ve got no frigging clue. But something stinks.”

Bolan agreed with that assessment, but it still put him no closer to the solution of the riddle that confounded him. He clearly needed help that Polunu and his den mother could not provide.

“I need to make a call,” he said, clearly surprising both of them. “Five minutes, give or take, and then we’ll hatch a plan.”

He turned to Polunu, pierced him with a cold, steely glare. “If you’ve omitted anything, let’s have it now. Once we’re in motion, second-guessing’s not allowed and there’ll be no do-overs.”

“Man, I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Not yet,” Bolan replied with utter confidence. “When I get back, I’m going to ask for names and addresses. If you don’t have them, it’s aloha time.”

He took the satellite phone and the ignition key, and left them sitting in the dark.

Washington, D.C.

THE NATION’S CAPITAL lies six time zones east of Hawaii. When Japanese dive bombers attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, just before 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, most residents of Washington, D.C., were already digesting lunch.

It came as no surprise to Hal Brognola, then, when he was roused from restless sleep by a persistent buzzing, which he recognized immediately as his private hotline.

Scooping up the cordless phone, he took it with him as he left the bedroom, padding through the darkness and avoiding obstacles with the determined skill of one who’s done it countless times before.

“Brognola,” he announced, when he was halfway to the stairs.

“It’s me,” Bolan said.

“How’s the vacation going?”

“More heat than I expected right away, and heavy storms anticipated,” Bolan told him, speaking cagily despite the scrambler on Brognola’s telephone.

The big Fed got the message. “Are you dressed for it?”

“Not really. I may pick up an umbrella in the morning, if I find something I like. Meanwhile, there’s news from Cousin Polunu.”

“Oh?”

“He heard about the rowing team,” Bolan went on, “but doesn’t know where they’ve run off to. It’s a group thing, as suspected, but I can’t begin to guess when they’ll be back in town.”

“Staying away for good, you think?” Brognola asked.

“I’m guessing that’s affirmative.”

“And how does that impact your business on the island?”

“Still unknown. I’m thinking I should reach out to the locals. Find out what they have to say about it, when they’re motivated.”

“You think that’s wise?”

“Looks like the only way to go, right now,” Bolan replied.

“Well, you’re the expert,” Brognola replied. “I hope they’re willing to cooperate.”

“It’s all a matter of persuasion.”

“Right. If you need anything…”

“Not yet. They threw a welcome party for me, and we got to schmooze a bit. I’d like to pay them back with a surprise.”

Brognola reckoned that meant there’d be news on CNN, within the next few hours. How many dead so far? He’d have to wait and see.

“I’ll be here if you need me, anytime,” Brognola said.

“I’m counting on it,” Bolan said, and broke the link on his end.

Brognola checked the nearest clock and found he didn’t have to be awake and on the move for three more hours yet. Whether he could go back to sleep again, after the call, was anybody’s guess.

He shuffled to the kitchen, turned a small light on above the sink and took the makings for a cup of cocoa from the cupboard. It was too early for coffee, and he needed something that would calm him, not rev his overactive mind.

While he waited for the kettle to heat, Brognola thought about the intel Bolan had supplied in their brief conversation. First, the hostiles had been ready for him when he hit Oahu—or, perhaps more likely, they’d been trailing one or both of his contacts. In either case, there had been bloodshed that would have the cops and media on full alert. The weapon Brognola had managed to provide for Bolan on arrival came in handy, but it wouldn’t be sufficient for his needs as Bolan forged ahead with more elaborate plans.

The worst news, he supposed, was that the missing seamen had apparently been killed, not simply snatched for ransom by the terrorists of Pele’s Fire. Brognola had been half expecting it, but hoping for the best against his better judgment. Bolan couldn’t say with perfect certainty that they were dead, of course, but Brognola trusted his gut instinct and was prepared to write them off.

The question now was, why had they been killed?

If they were simply targets, handy stand-ins for the federal government Pele’s Fire despised, wouldn’t the killers crow about their triumph, claiming credit for the kills? Why would they make the sailors disappear, and then say nothing whatsoever that would link the snatch to Pele’s Fire?

It didn’t track, and Brognola had learned that when things didn’t track, most times it was because they didn’t fit.

His water boiled, and Brognola poured it into a mug with two liberal spoonfuls of powdered cocoa. While he stirred the creamy brew, he focused on the minds behind six murders, tried to crawl inside those twisted brains.

Or, viewed another way, if secrecy was critical, why grab six men at once, when it was sure to make a headline splash. Why not pick off one at a time, over a period of weeks and months, if you were simply looking for a body count?

“Because they had something in common,” Brognola said, talking to his cocoa and himself.

Now, all he had to do was find out what that common factor was.

Kuilei Cliffs Beach Park

WHILE COOPER WENT to make his phone call, Aolani turned to face Polunu, huddled in the farthest corner of the rental car’s backseat.

“Polunu, did you know we were being followed to the monument tonight?”

He gaped at her in horrified surprise. “You think I set that up? Man, they were after me. If I want to die sometime, I’ll go with pills, you know? Drift off to sleep and have an open casket at the funeral.”

“So, how’d they find us?” Aolani challenged him.

“I don’t know, damn it! Maybe they were tailing you. You ever stop and think of that? I never see you check the rearview when we’re driving. You could have a convoy on your ass and never know it.”

Aolani wondered whether that was true. But even if Polunu was correct, it still left one glaring question unanswered.

He got there first. “And anyway,” he said, “if they were trailing us, why wait to make the hit? We sat there at least fifteen minutes before your haole friend showed up. Then they came down on us. How do we know they didn’t follow him?”

Aolani didn’t believe that, for several reasons. First, although she’d had a meeting set up by her government contact with Cooper at the Royal Mausoleum, Aolani knew nothing else about the stranger who had saved her life tonight. She had no idea where he was coming from, the flight he had booked, or its arrival time. In short, she knew nothing about the man except his general description and his name—which, she suspected, had been snatched out of a grab bag for her benefit.

More to the point, Aolani had spoken of the meet to no one but Polunu, and she’d told him nothing but the time and place where they would meet an unnamed man to ask for help.

Aolani was not the one who’d blown the meet. Polunu, conversely, might have passed on what he knew to someone else.

But why?

He had deserted Pele’s Fire. His former comrades wanted him dead, likely after interrogating him with methods Aolani didn’t even want to think about.

Unless it was a setup all along.

Or, what if Polunu cut a deal to save himself? He could’ve called someone from Pele’s Fire and offered two fresh victims for the price of one. Aolani didn’t suppose that she was someone Joey Lanakila or the others gave a damn about; if so, they could’ve killed her anytime they wanted to in Honolulu. But an agent of the hated federal government, dispatched specifically to bring them down, might be a prize that could revoke a traitor’s death sentence.

“Polunu,” she said, with cold steel in her voice, “if I find out you set us up—”

“You’ll what?” he interrupted her. “Kill me? Lady, you’ll have to get in line, and there are a lot of cats in front of you who’ve done wet work before.”

“But they don’t have you, Polunu. I do.”

“Hey, you’re sounding like we’re married now. What happened to my free will, eh? I can walk out of this thing anytime I want to.”

And to prove his point, Polunu settled one hand on the inner handle of the door beside him.

“Go ahead,” she said, calling his bluff. “But think about it before you split. Where will you hide from your old friends in Pele’s Fire? Maybe in jail?”

“Jail! What the—”

“Face it, Polunu. You’ve already said enough to mark yourself as an accomplice on six counts of kidnapping and murder. Since the victims were active-duty military men, that makes it federal. And you could be judged an enemy combatant, now that I think about it. So, you have to ask yourself if you’ll be locked up in the Honolulu federal building, or if they’ll just ship you one-way to Guantanamo.”

“You’re tripping now,” Polunu said.

“Am I? You know what Pele’s Fire has done, and even if you don’t have all the details of their next big score, you’ve said enough to stand trial on your own, as an accessory before the fact. You could get twenty years for that alone. Of course, you’ll never serve the twenty.”

“No?”

“Smart money says Lanakila finds someone to take you out before you ever get to court. Sound possible?”

“Hey, man.” Polunu whipped his hand back from the door handle as it was red-hot. “I never said for sure that I was leaving. We’re just being hypocritical, you know?”

“The word you’re groping for is hypothetical,” Aolani corrected him.

“Whatever. Look, I’m doing all I can, okay?”

“So far, Polunu, it isn’t good enough.”

“I can’t tell what I don’t know, right? Your boy don’t want me making shit up for the hell of it, does he?”

“You got that right,” Bolan said, emerging from the darkness behind Aolani. She was startled, almost jumped out of her seat.

Cooper was as quiet as a cat, she thought. He also had a cat’s reflexes and the killer instinct of a jungle predator. She was embarrassed to admire him for those traits and turned her face away as he slid into the driver’s seat.

Biting her tongue, she sat and waited for the stranger to proclaim her fate.

“ALL RIGHT,” BOLAN SAID, turning to face both passengers at once. “Here’s what we need to do.”

“Listen,” Polunu interrupted, “I didn’t mean that shit you heard, okay? I got nowhere to go if I bail out on you, and no one to look after me. I know all that, okay? What I mean to say is, I’m sticking.”

Bolan prolonged the moment with a frown. “The only thing I heard is that you plan to tell the truth. Now, if I’ve picked your brain for everything you know, and you want to be on your way—”

“No, man. Hell, no. I talked that out with Aolani. We’re all clear on that, okay?”

“Sounds fair to me,” Bolan replied. “But be aware of one thing, Polunu.”

“What’s that, man?”

“You try to set us up at any time, or run out in the middle of a fight in progress, then you’re nothing but another enemy as far as I’m concerned. And I’m not taking any prisoners.”