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Bolan met his own cobalt-blue gaze in the mirror. “What about the eyes?”
“I have three pairs of extended-wear browns for you, but since we’re already working you as a pleasing example of hybrid vigor, I’d stay with your oh-so-arctic blues. It’s downright striking, and you only have one chance to make a first impression. I say we throw off the opposition with your disturbing power.”
Bolan nodded at his reflection. “Koa?”
Koa let out a long breath as he took in Bolan’s transformation. “What Peg said. Given what the girl has done? You’ll have the power to seriously freak out some locals.”
Koa took a notebook out of his back pocket that looked as if it had seen heavy use in the past forty-eight hours. “Here’re some notes I made for you. It’s too late to teach you any slang much less the language—you’ll just screw it up. The good news is when my parents moved to the mainland some of our family was already there. I had a half cousin I barely knew. He dropped out of high school, moved to the east coast with some girl and just disappeared. You’re him.”
“What’s my name?”
“Makaha,” Koa said.
Bolan admired the randomness of it. “So we’re cousins?”
“That’s right. That gives me all rights to introduce you around and defend your ignorant, mainland-corrupted ways.”
“Nice.”
“I thought so.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“You’re looking for murder, mayhem and a native uprising?” Koa asked.
“That’s the current theory.”
“Then we go to my old stomping grounds. The most violent place in the Islands.”
“Where’s that?”
Koa nodded knowingly. “Happy Valley.”
Happy Valley, Maui
“You want to turn back?” Koa lifted his chin at the sliding-glass doors of the Takamiya Market as he drove. “This is where we U-turn.”
Bolan had spent the island-hopper flight and the drive studying Koa’s rather extensive notes on Hawaiian crime, culture and Bolan’s alias. He lowered the minor tome and gazed out the window of the ancient Toyota Land Cruiser the CIA had provided. Outwardly, the 1970s vintage 4 x 4 looked as if it was held together by rust and primer. Underneath the chassis, the engine and the suspension were tip-top. Bolan ran his eyes over the seemingly sleepy island borough. Happy Valley didn’t look like a ghetto, much less a slum. The heartachingly blue skies, lush hillsides and palm trees did a lot to dispel that, but there was obviously trouble in paradise.
The ironically named Happy Valley was a hotbed of drug dealing, prostitution and gang-related crime. At the end of the day, criminals who wanted to make a mark on the island had to come here and pay respect to the locals or try to carve it out of them. The local vibe was very strong, and the code of silence was even stronger. “This is where you did your damage?” Bolan asked.
“Back in the day, Matt.” Koa nodded.
“Then keep your eyes on the road.”
“Hell with that,” Koa countered. He took a right off the main drive. “I want a beer.”
“It’s not even noon!” Hu said.
“You want to meet the local royalty?” Koa asked. “Now is the time.”
“Is this like having cannelloni on a Tuesday with the dons in Jersey?”
“Yeah, except these dons don’t need help to break every bone in your body. Oh, and do me a favor, Matt.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t piss off the Samoans.”
Hu sighed. “That’s good advice.”
“Don’t piss off the Samoans,” Bolan repeated. “Got it.”
“Good, make that your mantra. I don’t want to die today.” Koa pulled up next to a wall that was blank save for a door and bracket where a sign had been torn off. Bolan noted three bullet strikes in the stucco. “Where are we?”
“Melika’s. It’s named after the woman who used to own it. I made a call, and her daughter owns it now.”
“What’s her name?”
“Melika.”
Bolan’s phone rang. It looked like an old, battered, first-generation ’droid, but it was actually state-of-the-art Farm technology. Bolan answered. “Bear.”
“You’ve stopped.”
“Yeah, Koa wants a beer.”
A picture appeared on Bolan’s phone. It was a satellite image of Happy Valley.
“You want to see something interesting?” Kurtzman inquired.
“Always.”
The satellite image zoomed in. Bolan made out the Land Cruiser. A superimposed green dot blinked on Melika’s. “Really.”
“The tracker you placed on your assailant in Chinatown is in that bar.”
“Well, that’s convenient. If I don’t contact you in half an hour, get worried.”
“I’m worried now.”
Bolan clicked off and nodded at Koa. “Let’s do it.”
Koa took point and they entered Melika’s.
After the brilliant sunshine the bar’s interior felt like a photographic darkroom. Hawaiian slack key guitar lilted over the sound system. A trio of withered old men sat at the bar drinking their social security checks. A giant Samoan man with an Afro held down bouncer and security duties. He gave Bolan and Koa a hard stare. He leered at Hu. The woman behind the bar was tall, Polynesian, and had a smile that lit up the dingy surroundings. Bolan sat at the counter. “You must be Melika.”
“That’s me. What can I get you before you get your asses killed?”
“Primos. The lady will have an appletini.”
Melika shrugged. “Coming right up.”
Bolan locked his eyes with the Hawaiian crime patriarchs holding court at the booth in the far corner. One was built like an aging Olympic shot-putter. The other man filled half the booth like a retired sumo wrestler. Shot-put wore a red-and-blue aloha shirt and his iron-gray hair was cut in a shag. Sumo was a monstrosity in a men’s XXXL pink-and-black bowling shirt and had his hair pulled back into a short ponytail. Bolan kept his face stony as alarm bells rang up and down his spine.
Also seated in the booth was Man-mountain with his hand in a cast and a dressing behind his left ear.
The Samoan moved around the bar and loomed over Bolan. He gave Koa a disgusted look. “You seem a little lost, kolohe.” The Samoan leaned in and mad-dogged Bolan. “And I don’t know who this lolo haole is, but I don’t give a shit.”
Bolan’s cram sessions told him that he’d just been called an idiot white man and Koa had been called a troublemaker. The stone face of the morbidly obese man in the booth cracked as he squinted at Koa in recognition. “Luke?”
Koa nodded. “Uncle Aikane.”
Melika clapped her hands. “Luke!”
The dangerous men in the booth suddenly smiled.
Bolan knew “uncle” or “aunt” was a term of respect in Hawaiian for any elder or better. “Aikane” was the Hawaiian word for friend, and it was a much stronger word than the English version. “Uncle Friendly” the crime lord had just recognized Koa. Bolan was starting to get the impression that Koa had earned himself a reputation way back when.
The Samoan bouncer’s eyes widened disbelievingly. “Koa?”
Koa stared at the Samoan without an ounce of warmth. “Remember you, Tino. From back in the day, and that’s my cousin you’re talking to.”
Tino’s eyes flared. “Hey, brah, I—”
Bolan spun up from his bar stool and hurled a right-hand lead with every ounce of strength he had. The Samoan’s nose was already flat as a squid and took up nearly half his face. Bolan felt the cartilage crunch beneath his knuckles and saw the tear ducts squirt. Tino pawed for the bar and failed to find purchase. He fell backward and landed hard on the ancient linoleum.
Bolan sat on his bar stool and regarded the Primo beer Melika had set in front of him with grave consideration. “Guess I need a new mantra…”
Uncle Aikane held up a huge hand in friendship and as a sign for the violence to end. “Who is your cousin, Luke?”
In Hawaiian, “cousin” could mean any number of relationships both inside and out of kinship. The other side of the coin was that the Islands were small, and a great deal of mixing had been going on. There was a joke that when local singles met they had to compare family trees to make sure they weren’t breaking any laws of man or nature.
Koa stared at Uncle Aikane with great seriousness. “Makaha is my half cousin, Uncle.”
Wheels turned behind Uncle Aikane’s eyes. The massive killer suddenly smiled happily. “Little Luana! Married that sailor boy! Years ago! Moved to the mainland!” He nodded at Bolan. “You Luana’s boy?”
Bolan nodded. “Yes, Uncle.”
The leaner, older man clapped his hands. “You are Makaha!”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Makaha!” Uncle Aikane laughed. “Your uncle Nui only pretends he knows you!”
“I remember Makaha well!” Nui protested. “He was even whiter in his crib!”
“How is your mother, Makaha?” Aikane asked.
“Many years in the grave, Uncle.”
“Mmm.” Uncle Aikane, Nui and the Lua master all nodded gravely. “Your father?”
Bolan put a terrible look on his face. “I don’t remember him.”
U.S. soldiers and sailors marrying local girls, having children and then disappearing was not exactly an unknown story in the Hawaiian Islands. The elders received this information with equal gravity. Dignity required the subject not be pursued. Aikane returned his attention to Koa.
“You are back, Luke.”
“I heard my cousin was in a bad place. I went east and got him out of it. And then? We decided there was nothing on the mainland for us. We came home.”
The elders nodded. After World War II there had been a significant diaspora, and among the Hawaiian expatriates even onto the second and third generation there was a powerful desire to return. Uncle Aikane nodded very slowly. “Aloha, Koa. Aloha, Makaha.”
Koa nodded in return. “Aloha” was another Hawaiian word with a lot of meanings. It could mean hello, goodbye, welcome or even I love you. In this setting Bolan perceived at the very least it meant “Welcome, returned ones.” Bolan and Koa were in, and their covers were hanging by threads.
They both responded in unison. “Aloha.”
Chapter 3
The Annex, Stony Man Farm
“They’re in,” Kurtzman confirmed. Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, gave the computer expert a look, and he sighed. He felt the same way she did. Bolan had been on some very deep-cover missions before, but the Hawaiian job was pushing the limits.
“You really think they can pull this off?” Price asked.
“You saw the picture of Mack after Agent Hu got through with him. Are you going to walk up to him in a bar in Waikiki and tell him he’s not Hawaiian enough?”
“No, but the locals have a very strong vibe.”
“I know. That’s why Koa came up with the story about a prodigal son lost to the mainland and returning to his heritage. It will explain lapses, and Bolan has Koa to smooth things over for him. Plus if it looks like he’s desperate to prove himself, the bad guys may accelerate him into the inner circle of evil.”
“Yes, and just who are the bad guys again?” That was the million-dollar question. The mission was troublingly vague. Price looked at the converging data streams. “We have young female tourists disappearing—that implies white slavery—and two intercepted gun shipments.”
“Girls for guns.” Kurtzman scowled. He found the sex-slavery trade particularly abhorrent. “It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before.”
“In the United States? In Hawaii?”
“If it’s true, it’s bad,” Kurtzman agreed.
“I’m still trying to figure out the spike in violence against tourists and military personnel.”
“Hawaii has had locals-only trouble before,” Kurtzman countered.
“Yeah, and this is swiftly reaching the levels of the bad old days in the ’70s.”
Kurtzman nodded. Hawaiians were now a minority in their own islands, and they also made up the poorest segment of the Aloha State’s extremely cosmopolitan society. Their native discontent had sporadically manifested itself in violence, mostly against tourists, despite the fact that tourists and the U.S. military presence were two of the major pillars of the Hawaiian economy. Now the violence was spiking precipitously, and no one was talking. In fact, locally, a lot of people seemed scared. “We’ve heard ‘drive out the colonizers and invaders’ before. The Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement and its rivals and affiliates mostly send papers and delegations to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations demanding reparations. We definitely have something new going on here.”
“I know.” There was nothing about this mission that Price liked. The chatter was that something very big was going on in Hawaii, and something related was happening in the Pacific. She tapped a very thin file on her tablet. “This is the most troubling. The hints of a massive strike against the invaders. We’ve never heard that before.” Price brought up a sore point. “And so far all we have is a hula master who likes to beat up G.I.s.”
“That’s a Lua master,” Kurtzman corrected. “And we have a tracking device in his hand. Mack is working his way up the food chain.”
“I prefer it when Mack swoops in by surprise, mops the floor with the bad guys and then buys me dinner in D.C.”
Kurtzman smiled. “Yeah, that works for me, too.”
“He’s operating on U.S. soil and he’s almost never been this thin on assets.”
“We have full war loads in strategic locations.”
“But unless he breaks cover right now all he has is his phone and his fists.”
“And Koa.”
Price nodded. She liked the Hawaiian and she’d been infinitely relieved that he had volunteered to be on Mack’s six. “So they’re acquiring equipment locally?”
“We went ’round and ’round on that. Fact is Mack may not get a chance. As you mentioned, this cover is about as deep as it gets and as thin as it’s ever been. Until Mack proves himself, he and Koa might be ambushed or hit with a drive-by.”
“Tell me they’re armed.”
“Armed and waiting,” Kurtzman confirmed. “And now the ball is in the bad guys’ court.”
Wailuku Town: “Pakuz”
“I told you not to piss off the Samoans,” Koa muttered.
Bolan sat in the tiny den and cleaned his CIA-provided pistol. The old GI .45 came from Hawaiian National Guard storage. The soldier suspected it had been WWII issue. It showed a great deal of holster wear but as a National Guard weapon not a lot of use. The bore was clean and with a little oiling the action was slick. “I didn’t piss off the Samoans. I punched Tino in the face. Then I bought him a beer. Now he loves me. He’s calling me cuz. What’s not to like?”
“That did go better than expected,” Koa admitted. The Hawaiian had a similar pistol and was scrupulously checking the quality of the magazines they’d been issued.
“So what’s the Lua guy’s name? I didn’t catch it.”
“Me, either, and he scares the shit out of me. I think you got real lucky the other night, and even luckier he didn’t recognize you.” Koa grunted in amusement. “Though I think he liked it when you broke Tino’s nose.”
“I think the entire Island of Oahu liked it when I broke Tino’s nose.”
“There is that.”
Agent Hu gave Bolan a knowing look. “Melika sure liked it.”
Bolan began wrapping beige rubber bands around the .45’s grip. If he was going to pose as a low-level Hawaiian hoodlum who was willing to turn terrorist, a carry rig was out of the question. His options were front-of-the-waist or small-of-the-back, and he needed some friction to hold the big steel piece in place. He nodded at Koa. “Everything went better than expected, cuz, admit it.”
Koa’s brow bunched as though he was getting a headache. “Don’t call me that.”
“It’s our cover. Get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it.”
“You want the grease gun or the kidney-buster?”
Koa nodded at the old Ithaca 12-gauge riot gun. “I’ll take the shotgun. I qualified expert on those. Not that model, but how much different can it be?” Koa warily eyed the ancient piece of ordnance on the coffee table next to the 12 gauge. “Those? Man, back when I was in this man’s army, the only people who were issued those were tankers or truckers, because they never expected to use them.”
Bolan put down his pistol and took up the antique
M-3 submachine gun, which did bear a striking resemblance to a mechanic’s grease gun. It was also inaccurate, unwieldy and notoriously unreliable under field conditions. It wouldn’t have been in Bolan’s top five hundred choices for armament, but if you had to defend a Hawaiian bungalow on the wrong side of town, the men who kicked down the door were in for a very nasty surprise.
“Pakuz,” as the locals called it, was a suburb of Wailuku Town. It had a straight shot to Main Street but the foreclosed bungalow the CIA had acquired abutted the foothills. It was just slightly off the beaten track and left several escape routes open. Pakuz was right next to and half the size of Happy Valley and, like the aforementioned and ironically named area, was a hotbed of crime and violence. If Hawaii really was spawning terrorist cells then any economically depressed areas could be hothouses where the revolution’s foot soldiers would be nurtured and grown.
“What did you do with the revolvers?” Bolan asked.
Bolan had requested some backup weapons in case they got arrested or had to hand over their weapons. The CIA had come up with four 4-inch Smith & Wesson Military and Police .38s of dubious vintage.
Koa slid shells into the Ithaca. “Put one in a waterproof bag in the toilet tank. Buried two in the backyard next to the banana tree.” He nodded at Hu. “The fourth one I gave to her.”
“Pegarella Hu, CIA agent, groomer…” Hu grinned. “Gun moll.”
Someone banged on the door as if he was about to knock it off its hinges. “Koa!” Tino roared. “Makaha!”
Bolan rose and tucked his pistol into the back of his waistband. Koa took up his shotgun and stepped to one side to give himself a lane of fire down the tiny hallway. Bolan opened the door and found himself staring down the two men he had delivered beat-downs to in the past twenty-four hours. Both Tino and the man-mountain whose name Bolan didn’t know stood in front of him on the landing. A third man—a thin-as-a-whip Polynesian—stood scowling by the driver’s door of a red VW van. Tino grinned past the bandaged bridge of his nose. “Aloha!”
“Aloha, Tino,” Bolan said. “You wanna come in? We got beer and chicken.”
“No, brah.” Tino shook his head. “Bring your grind. You and Koa are coming with us. You got people you need to meet. People who want to meet you.”
The Lua master nodded. It had been dark on the streets of Chinatown, and Bolan had been blond, with a totally different voice, demeanor and complexion and wearing a uniform. If this was the big fat kill, the Hawaiian and the Samoan were hiding it with the skill of trained intelligence agents. “Hey, Koa!” Bolan called. “Tino says we gotta go!”
“I wanna come with!” Hu called out.
The thin man by the van spoke for the first time. “The bitch stays.”
Hu stopped short of hissing like a cat. Bolan muttered a low “Hey, Tino?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s Prince Charming?”
Tino made an amused noise and answered softly. “Best you don’t ask a lot of questions, Makaha. Not yet, anyway.”
“Got it.”
Koa came to the door sans shotgun and holding a six-pack and a bucket of chicken. He called back over his shoulder to Hu, “Don’t know when we’ll be back!”
The temperature in the bungalow dropped precipitously. “Whatever…”
* * *
The van bucked and bumped through the darkened back roads. Bolan hadn’t known there was such a thing as angry Hawaiian rap music, but Tino blared it loud enough to wake the dead. They had driven out of Happy Valley and entered state forestland. Bolan knew they were no longer traveling on state-maintained roads. Leaves and branches scraped the sides of the van. The forest formed a thick, sheltering canopy above when it wasn’t so low it scratched the roof. This was a smugglers road, most likely barely maintained by the local marijuana growers. Tino appeared to know the route like the back of his hand.
He killed the lights and spent the next ten minutes driving through the pitch black seemingly led by sense of smell. The white-knuckle ride ended as the van broke into a clearing and Tino brought the VW van to a halt beneath the stars. “We’re here.”
The Lua master turned around in the shotgun seat and held out his good hand. “The guns, bruddahs.”
Bolan smiled in the moonlight coming through the windows. “You can tell?”
“I don’t see everything, Makaha—” the Lua master smiled back “—but you’d be surprised what I do notice.”
Bolan withdrew his .45. He gave it 50/50 they’d been compromised the minute the Lua master had seen him in Melika’s bar. The soldier rolled the dice and gave himself to fate as he handed over the pistol. “Man, I thought I was all slick and shit.”
“You’re not bad.” The Lua man shrugged his mighty shoulders. “But I’m better. The knife, too.”
Bolan shook his head ruefully and handed over his knife. Koa gave up his gun. “You’re not going to put sacks over our heads and walk us into the volcano, are you?”
The thin man spoke. He sat in the backseat by himself, and Bolan had felt his eyes and his gun pointing at his back the entire ride. “We wouldn’t drop you in the volcano. But would you jump in if you were told?”
Koa met the thin man’s stare. “You know? I had just about enough of being told when I was in the army.”
The Lua man spoke quietly. “Would you jump in if you were asked, Koa?”
Bolan matched the man’s tone. “I would, if the right man asked me. For the right reason.”
Tino and the Lua master both nodded at the sagacity of Bolan’s words.
“What he said,” Koa agreed.
The Lua man got out and slid open the VW’s cabin door. “Then come out.”
Bolan stepped into the Hawaiian night. He still had his phone and his bare hands, which was far more armament than most would suspect. But they wouldn’t save him from a bullet in the back.
The Lua master nodded. “Follow me.”
Bolan and Koa followed as Tino and the thin man took their six. They walked out of the clearing into the darkness. The Lua man was barely discernible but he moved unerringly down a clearly cut and maintained path. Soon Bolan both smelled and heard the Pacific. They came to a clearing about the size of a large recreational vehicle. Overhead military camouflage netting stretched to form a canopy thickly interwoven with the boughs of overhanging trees. A pair of red military emergency lights lit the forest encampment. Solar panels stacked to one side told Bolan the camp was powered by batteries. It would give off little or no recognizable heat signatures to imaging satellites and there wouldn’t be any light leakage visible to passing aircraft. Nor would the red lights ruin the night vision of anyone in camp if they suddenly went lights off.
It was a very professional setup.
Three sawhorse and plank tables were piled with very suspicious-looking, four-foot-long military crates. The Lua master, Tino and the thin man waited. Bolan and Koa stepped forward. Bolan unboxed a rifle. It appeared to be a 1980s or ’90s vintage M-16 A2. He held up the weapon as if he were admiring it. Bolan had fought with this type of rifle many times. If it hadn’t been parkerized black, the rifle would have glittered with newness. The M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel was new, as well. There were no serial markings, which told the soldier it was most likely a Chinese or Philippine knock-off.
“Sweet,” Bolan proclaimed.
Koa racked the action on a rifle and peered through the sights. “Same model I learned on in basic.”
The Lua man nodded. “We need a lot more of them.”
Koa set the rifle on his shoulder. “I know a little something about smuggling. AKs would be a lot cheaper. Shit, they’re disappearing from Iraqi and Afghani inventory by the day, and for that matter the Russians and Chinese sell to anybody.”
Bolan knew the answer but kept his mouth shut. The weapons mimicked U.S. National Guard issue. A real insurgent force wanted the same weapons as their oppressor, so they could steal compatible parts, ammo and magazines. On a secondary note, until one of the weapons was taken from a captured or killed Hawaiian secessionist, the sight of them would send U.S. law enforcement scrambling to find out what military depot in the Islands was hemorrhaging storage guns. That would give the smugglers a few more moments of cover.