Operation Norfolk

by Randy Wayne White

  Watson dropped some teaser baits back and loaded the outriggers, the lines baited with big iridescent konas. He said they had to play the game at least until they were out of sight in case some other vessel was keeping an eye on them.

  The vigilante saw no other vessels, but didn’t mind the captain’s precautions. It was pleasant sitting in the big fighting chair, feet up, trolling along over the long greasy rollers of the South Pacific. Twice the outriggers snapped, and Hawker reeled in big mahimahi, the beautiful gold-and-turquoise fish he knew back in Florida as dolphin.

  He released both of them, then reset the outriggers.

  Sha reappeared after half an hour, still wearing the habit. She held onto the fighting chair, standing over Hawker’s shoulder, then looked up to see if Watson could hear. Satisfied he couldn’t, she said in a soft voice, “He taking us to Kira-Kira? It a very long way by boat, you know.”

  “I know. But he’s taking us to a place where we’ll meet a helicopter. The helicopter is going to take us to another island, one not far from Kira-Kira. We may have to stay on that island alone for a few days. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I no mind. But very hot in this clothes.” She adjusted her veil uncomfortably. “You must be saint to wear this.”

  “Was it your idea to dress like that?”

  “No. Sister Mary Margaret’s idea. Sister Mary Margaret very smart. Much trust for her, so I tell her what I do. No tell her we kill Cwong, that a mortal sin and she could not help. Just tell her we go spy, maybe help police stop him. She know what bad man he is. She worry for me, ask me to dress like this. A good idea, no?”

  “A good idea, yes—” Something had caught Hawker’s attention. Behind the skittering teaser bait fifty yards behind the boat, he saw the huge black fin and scimitar tail of a marlin. The fish was trailing the big artificial lure, its great bill swinging back and forth, knocking at it.

  Despite the seriousness of the mission they were on, it was still a thrilling sight. He yelled up to the flybridge. “Hey, Watson! Look at the size of that thing!”

  The charterboat captain glanced back, then did a double take. “Holy shit, reel in quick before he hits it—” Watson looked quickly at Sha, his face crimson. “’Scuse my language please, Sister, but that is one goddamn big fish!”

  It really was a big fish. Hawker yanked the rod out of the holder, shoved the fighting drag forward on the Penn International Gold reel, snapped the line out of the outrigger clip, and began to reel furiously, trying to keep the fish away from the bait. He was sorry as hell they didn’t have time to try to catch it.

  But reeling only seemed to enrage the fish, and the marlin surged after it, chasing the bait with great sweeping strokes of its tail, its fin up higher now, its body glowing a molten, iridescent blue. It suddenly dawned on Hawker that if he kept reeling, the fish might collide with the boat. That’s how determined the marlin was in its pursuit.

  He stopped reeling abruptly and the bait began to sink. The fish sounded, and then Hawker felt a tremendous impact, the rod bowing with a weight greater than he had ever felt, jerking him sideways onto the deck.

  The reel was screaming now as the fish ran, and Hawker looked up from the deck just in time to see the fish come out of the water. The neon-bright creature was massive. It looked as big as a car, its great head shaking as if in slow motion, its whole body sweeping this way and that like a dancer in midleap, throwing quarts of water that glittered in the sun like opals.

  Then it crashed back into the sea with a tremendous splash, and slow-motion time was over, everything after that happening at tremendous speed.

  “That fucking thing must weigh fifteen hundred pounds!” Watson yelled from above, then immediately looked at Sha again for forgiveness.

  “Fifteen hundred, hell,” she answered, unfazed. “Big bastard must weigh whole ton!”

  The surprise on Watson’s face turned to pleasure. “Goddamn right, Sister! A fucking ton!”

  Watson had locked both engines in neutral, and Hawker knew how tempted he must be to try to regain some line and catch the thing. The fish continued to run at an astounding rate, then jumped again, still looking huge even two football-field lengths away.

  When the fish dropped back into the sea, the vigilante pointed the rod tip directly in its direction, braced himself against the transom, then shoved the drag lever beyond the little safety ball bearing, locking the spool.

  There was a stunning jolt, and then nothing.

  The vigilante reeled the line in, studying it where it had broken above the Bimini twist that had been tied to the swivel and leader. He looked up and saw how disappointed Watson was. “You tie good knots, Captain Watson,” he said. “Line broke exactly where it should have.”

  “That was the fish of a lifetime,” Watson allowed. “The fish of a damn lifetime. I’ve never seen a bigger marlin in my life. Never. And I’ve seen a lot of them.” He shook his head miserably. “The bloody damn things I go through for the bloody damn good of the cause—’scuse me again, Sister.”

  Hawker wondered what cause Watson was talking about but didn’t ask. Instead he said, “Maybe when all this is over, we’ll go fishing again. He’s still out there. That hook will corrode out in a couple of days, and he’ll be ready to feed again.”

  But all Watson would say as he pushed the boat up to full throttle was, “Not that fish, Mr. Hawker. Not that fish. A man only gets a chance at a fish like that once in a lifetime.”

  Hawker sat back in the fighting chair, his heart still pounding. The woman pressed her hand on his shoulder, patting him. “I glad,” she said softly. “I glad he get away. Big fish deserve freedom too.…”

  An island lifted out of the sea, lifted and fell with the rhythm of the waves.

  Then Hawker could see a single cement wharf loaded with oil drums and a shack with a tin roof beyond the white beach.

  He was back on the flybridge with Watson now. Sha was below, resting.

  “That’s it, Mr. Hawker. There’s the island where the chopper will pick you up. Doesn’t look like it’s there yet, but we made a little better time then I thought we would. Even with the fish, it only took us two and a half hours. Good sea today.”

  “I meant that about fishing again when I’m done with this,” Hawker said. “I’d like to take an honest shot at a big blue.”

  “You make it back, Mr. Hawker, and I’ll get you plenty of shots at big blues. But that fish today—”

  “Don’t even say it.” Hawker laughed. “It’ll make us both miserable.”

  As Watson worked the pleasure craft through the reef to the dock, Sha came above. She was no longer a nun. She had metamorphosed, trading her habit for satin shorts and open-neck blouse, looking lean and lithe and beautiful with her black hair hanging down.

  Watson looked at her and was speechless. He almost failed to back onto the dock quickly enough, and the boat hit the pilings hard.

  Sha already had both of their bags, and as she stepped off nimbly, she waved gaily at Watson.

  “Christ,” Watson whispered to Hawker. “That is the most beautiful nun I’ve ever seen. What is she, in disguise or something? What a bloody great body—”

  “Don’t say anything you might regret, Captain,” Hawker warned, trying not to smile.

  “I just don’t see how you’re going to spend them long hot nights on a tropical island without … without …” Watson almost blushed. “Without, you know.…”

  Hawker stepped off the boat onto the wharf. “Discipline,” he said, pushing the bow of the boat away again. “I’ll just think clean thoughts and remind myself what a bad habit that would be to get into.”

  “Good luck with that!” Watson called after Hawker.

  At dusk they flew low over the Pacific, the atoll reefs colorful mounds of green and blue.

  The pilot gave Kira-Kira a wide berth, then banked north until a tiny island of white beach and jungle, all encircled by coral, came into view. They came in at palm-tree level and landed
on the beach.

  Hawker jumped out, took the bags and Sha’s hand, and ran away from the chopper.

  The pilot waited while Hawker trotted quickly into the interior, found the fallen tree that had been described to him, looked beneath it and pulled the tarps away.

  Hidden there were four big crates. Using his Randall attack knife to knock the lid off one of them, Hawker saw that the weaponry he had wanted was there. He trotted back to the beach and gave the thumbs-up sign.

  The pilot returned the sign, and the helicopter lifted away, banking and then disappearing into the blood-red glow of sunset.

  The silence that remained was complete. They could hear nothing but the wash and whoosh of the surf beyond the reef and the chatter of monkeys far back in the jungle.

  Sha stood watching the chopper disappear, looking a little forlorn. Hawker said, “It’s going to be okay, Sha. There’s everything we need here. Food, a gas stove, a tent. Even a radio.”

  She looked up at him. “Just one tent?”

  “I’ll sleep out on the beach. Don’t worry.”

  “Good,” she said. “That good. I get dinner ready. You light stove.”

  The vigilante opened the three remaining crates. He took out the tent and lit the stove.

  eleven

  Three days on a tropical island, just the two of them.

  Cwong’s shipment would be delivered two days late. Hawker got the message on the portable UHF radio the agency had provided. He got the message in simple code during his first check-in time. He called someone—he didn’t know who, or where—at 7 A.M. and 7 P.M. every day.

  Since Harper had wanted to arrive on Kira-Kira the day before the delivery, that meant they’d have an extra day to fill on this tiny unnamed island.

  Hawker insisted they not spend the days doing nothing.

  Boredom was a killer—making people slow and sluggish, obstructing the thinking process. Hawker put them on a schedule and insisted they stick to it.

  Every morning, the vigilante ran. He ran on the beach and even hacked a trail through the jungle so he could run there too. He wanted to run in the water, but there were too many sea urchins.

  Hawker even got Sha to run. She wore a pale-orange French string bikini that made her look as dark as a Negro. Hawker could see her ribs undulate, could see the taut buttocks muscles flex with each stride, could see her round breasts bounce and fall, the nipples sharpening with the rhythmic caress of the thin bikini top.

  He could smell the musky-sweet girl-odor of her when the sweat started pouring; it was a different odor than Occidental women produced, spicier, more delicate. That odor hit Hawker hard, making him want her so much that he had to charge on ahead and leave her behind, for fear of starting something he would later regret.

  Every day it was like that.

  Sha never asked why. Sha accepted everything without complaint or question. She would talk about the weather or the birds she had seen on her run. Once she talked about a great black shark she had seen working inside the reef line. Big as a horse, she had said.

  There were sharks, all right.

  Plenty of sharks.

  Every day, during the glassy afternoon calm, the vigilante swam half a mile out to the reef with mask and fins. He would dive the reef, enjoying the sumptuous Disney World colors of both the coral and the exotic fish.

  Hawker had made a Hawaiian sling, which he used the first day to spear a few fish for dinner. But the sharks immediately had come in on him, come in fast over the reef, their heads swinging and ready to hit.

  Hawker had dropped the fish, letting the sharks take them. He had swum slowly away from the bloody frenzy.

  He never speared fish after that. He used the sling to gig lobster, but nothing else.

  The sharks didn’t bother him anymore. It got so that he enjoyed watching them, even the big oceanic white tips, come gliding in over the reef like aircraft.

  Sha spent the first and second afternoons finishing a palm-thatched hut, a place for him to sleep off the ground. He protested, telling her they would only be staying a couple of days, that he didn’t need anything that nice.

  “You nice to give me tent,” she insisted. “I be nice back.”

  She made the roof out of palm thatch, weaving it together tightly. It kept out most of the rain during the afternoon showers. To make him a bed, as well as a place for him to sit, she lashed limbs together. Hawker had to admit it was a nice place to read when the rain came pounding down in a silver sheet, very cool and dry. Plus, it smelled great.

  In the two hours of light after supper, Hawker insisted they go over the charts. They reviewed them again and again, picking out primary and secondary rendezvous points in case they got separated and each had to make it off Kira-Kira alone.

  Privately the vigilante had been trying to come up with a plan to hit Cwong not only on Kira-Kira but at his two drop islands, Tongo and Mokii, too.

  Trouble was, those islands were nearly thirty nautical miles away over open sea—not far in a car, but a hell of a long way to go at night in unfamiliar waters.

  The inflatable boat and engine in one of the crates was no toy: an Avon Military MKII, seventeen feet long with an aluminum deck, an inflatable keel, and a seventy-horsepower Yamaha outboard. The literature said the boat weighed only four hundred pounds, and Hawker guessed it would do maybe fifty miles an hour in a pinch.

  He decided to leave out the aluminum decking, in order to cut the weight of the boat to under two hundred pounds, not counting the engine. That would add a little speed and make it easier to drag up and hide on the beach.

  But they had supplied him with only thirty gallons of gas in five six-gallon tanks. If he and Sha had to make a long emergency run from Kira-Kira, they’d need every drop of the fuel. They couldn’t afford to risk it in a sixty-mile round-trip sabotage run.

  Finally, though, Hawker hit upon an idea. It meant waiting maybe an extra day on Kira-Kira before he attacked, but that would give them that much more time to familiarize themselves with Cwong’s compound. He didn’t tell Sha anything about the plan. But he did get her to help with the assembly of the Avon, making sure she knew how to run it, switch fuel tanks, get the thing started with the pull rope, and use the choke.

  He didn’t want her stranded on that island if something happened to him.

  They left for Kira-Kira just before sunset on the third day, heading out into big turquoise rollers with Hawker at the throttle and Sha hunched on the bow, wearing a baggy black wool sweater. All the weaponry he could possibly need was packed neatly beneath a tarp, everything tied down to the raft. He had made his last check-in call on the portable UHF and packed that too—although he wasn’t sure why. If he got into trouble on Kira-Kira, there was no way anyone would—or could—bail him out.

  Hawker found the most comfortable speed, finding the rhythm of the sea beneath. He opened the rubber boat up once, just to see what it would do. The boat seemed to gather buoyancy as it gained velocity, launching itself off the top of every wave. It jarred their kidneys and loosened their teeth, screaming along at what was easily fifty miles an hour.

  The speed was there, all right, if they ever needed it.

  Hawker dropped back to a comfortable thirty or so, checking his big luminescent diver’s wrist compass every now and again, enjoying the bronze-streaked sky and the fresh sea wind in his face. It was a big ocean out there. It made him feel tiny, and he enjoyed that too.

  Kira-Kira lifted out of the horizon almost immediately. It was a lot closer than the vigilante had expected. He slowed the craft enough so they would approach under darkness. They actually had to stop and drift for a while, waiting, not wanting to take the least chance of being seen. Then they peeled way out around to the back side, the side of the island with a rind of beach and then jungle climbing up the sheer mountain wall.

  Sha pointed and said, “That the place. That the place where I come out when a little girl. Find my way out to that beach, saw some fishermens in a boat. Th
ey pick me up when see me wave at them, take me to next island. Take me five days to get to New Guinea. Little girl begging rides on boats.”

  When it was dark, Hawker took the boat in over the reef. The reef came up within two feet of the surface on low tide, and the surf was huge. They had a wild surfboard ride in, with Hawker gritting his teeth, scared he’d lose it, pitchpole, and dump all his gear.

  But they made it.

  It was completely dark now, stars glittering above, a three-quarter moon making the beach milky white.

  While Hawker pulled the boat up and cut branches and banana leaves to camouflage it in the jungle, Sha strung the jungle hammocks.

  They ate a cold supper of C-rations, burying the cans. Afterward they sat shoulder to shoulder in the chilly wind, watching the surf roll in. Hawker put his arm around her once and held her for a time. She seemed comfortable enough, leaning her head against him. But then she broke away suddenly.

  “I go my hammock now. Very sleepy. I take you across mountain tomorrow. Okay?”

  “That’s fine,” said Hawker. “Just fine. But do me a favor. Take the revolver I gave you to bed. I may go out in the boat for a while.”

  “You not do anything crazy? You not try spy on Cwong this soon?”

  “I won’t do anything crazy,” Hawker said. “I’m just restless, that’s all. I’d go for a walk, but this place is probably thick with snakes.”

  Sha said, “Snakes last thing you got to worry about on this island.”

  Hawker pulled on his black wool sweater and darkened his face with military greasepaint. He loaded mask, fins, scuba gear, and the explosives he would need into the boat. He placed the Colt Commando assault rifle, fully loaded, at his side. Then he pushed the boat back out into the water, hopped in, and started the engine.