by Mack Maloney
He located an airstrip on the northeastern end of the island and swept the area with his scope. There wasn’t a weapon nor a breathing human around. He quickly set the F-16 down and hid it in a forest of coconut trees located at the end of the runway. The landing strip appeared to be an abandoned Coast Guard air station. He found a paved road nearby which would carry him south and he began to walk. The sun was just coming up out of the sea on the eastern horizon. The sky was red—as red as the Aurora Borealis he had encountered at 90,000 feet several weeks before. He knew a red sky in the morning was a powerful omen for bad things to come. But to Hunter, the crimson sunrise meant another thing: the fighting had started to the east. Although he was thousands of miles to the west, he could smell war in the air. His mission just became more crucial, possibly more desperate. He quickened his step. He had to make the 25 miles to Honolulu by nightfall.
Hunter had been to Hawaii several times while he was touring with the Thunderbirds. The Honolulu he’d remembered was a nice, clean if overcrowded city. Now he was sure that had changed. According to the reports PAAC did get from Honolulu, the city was now a sprawl of honky-tonks, drugs, hedonism and crime. Gambling, never considered a vice in the old days, had been raised to the level of science on the islands these days. Yet there was no police force or government. Hunter was glad he’d made the trip packing both an Uzi and his trusty M-16. He also carried a small backpack that was filled with some of his best tricks of the trade.
He met his first Hawaiians about five miles into his trip. They were all wearing typical Hawaiian shirts and calmly manning a roadblock set up in the middle of the highway. It was the marking of the edge of their tribe’s territory. He knew from here on in, he’d have to deal with these gunmen. The one regret Hunter had was that Ben Wa, he of the island of Maui to the south, wasn’t able to accompany him on this trip. They would have made a great team, but a pilot of Wa’s caliber was much too valuable at the front.
Of the 10 men guarding the outpost, six were asleep. They were quickly roused when their partners first spotted Hunter, clad in a green, unmarked flight suit, baseball cap on his head, his flight helmet dangling from his belt, walking down the middle of the unused highway.
The pilot carried his firearms in full view as he approached the men. He heard the safeties click off their firearms—a variety of hunting rifles, M-16s and shotguns. Hunter walked right up to their railroad crossing-style barrier and asked the first man he came to: “Which way to Honolulu?”
The gunmen laughed at him. A man who appeared to be their leader emerged from a small hut and walked up to Hunter. He was a small, dark, obviously Hawaiian man of middle age. Tough and wiry, he carried a .357 Magnum on one hip, an extra-large machete on the other.
To this man, Hunter repeated his questions: “Is this the road to Honolulu?”
“Could be,” the man said in broken English.
Hunter got right to the point. “How much to pass through?”
“How much you got?” the man said.
“I’ll give you a thousand in real gold now,” Hunter said calmly. “Two thousand on the way out.”
The man grinned. “Lot of money. Why don’t we just shoot you now and get all three thousand?” A few of his men laughed in agreement.
“Ain’t got it all now,” Hunter said. “Gotta do my business in Honolulu first.”
“What kind of business?” the man asked.
“Drug kind of business,” Hunter answered. “As in blow. Coke. You guys get that stuff up here?”
The leader laughed again. “How much you got?”
“It ain’t how much I got,” Hunter said. “It’s what kind I got.” With that he reached into his backpack and produced a brick-sized piece of compacted brownish leaves.
“Jesus Christ, man,” the leader exclaimed. “You got a brick of …”
“Raw coca,” Hunter said, finishing the man’s sentence for him. “Now unless you guys got some processing works around here, you’d better let me through, so I can sell this shit.”
The leader knew Hunter was right. The chemicals needed to break down the raw coca were in short supply—ether especially. Handling a brick of raw coca would be useless—but breaking it down into pure cocaine could net them anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 in real gold, and that was only if they were stupid enough to sell it pure. And they weren’t that stupid.
Neither was Hunter. The leader thought for a moment, then said. “You go, two of my guys go with you.”
“Bodyguards?” Hunter said. “That’s great, my man. You just got yourself an extra thousand.”
“At least,” the man said, grinning.
Twenty minutes later, Hunter was sitting in the back of the gunmen’s speeding jeep, enjoying the scenery. Not only had he parlayed himself a ride for the final 20 miles into Honolulu, he also had a way to pass through the seven further checkpoints between him and the city. At each stop, the gunmen—known as the Tau Fin—were routinely waved through. A peaceful, if shaky, coexistence was in force among the tribal gangs, or at least the ones who controlled this roadway. Between roadblocks, his escorts remained silent, which was fine with Hunter. He sat back and let the warm late spring sunshine soak through him.
They reached the outskirts of Honolulu about an hour later. From the top of a hill, Hunter could see the island that used to be the Pearl Harbor naval station. He was too far away to see if there was any military activity at the base. His earlier radar sweep revealed nothing heavy, but he hadn’t yet discounted the possibility of some kind of presence at the base.
He had to reach the USS Arizona Memorial, but first he had to rid himself of his chauffeurs. He didn’t feel that he was justified in shooting them, although they had foolishly left him alone in the backseat of the open vehicle with his M-I6 and Uzi, both fully-loaded. Instead, he would put the two to sleep.
“Stop!” he yelled in the driver’s ear as they drove into the very outskirts of the city.
The passenger gunmen turned around quickly, his sawed-off shotgun at the ready.
“What?” he yelled over the sound of the motor.
“Stop,” Hunter yelled again. He had reached into his backpack and produced a small plastic bag of white powder. He waved it in front of the passenger-side gunman.
The man smiled broadly. “Coke? We do a line?” he asked as his partner slowed the jeep.
“We do many lines,” Hunter said, producing a mirror and a razor blade.
The jeep had slowed down and stopped by this time. The gunmen smacked their lips as they watched Hunter expertly pour a small pile of the powder onto the mirror and start chopping away with the razor blade.
He fashioned the resulting fine powder into six long, thick lines. A straw was produced. Hunter handed the mirror to the passenger-side gunman who took a long, noisy sniff, pulling the entire stretch of white stuff up his nose in one swipe. “Ahhhhh!” he said with evident satisfaction.
His partner grabbed the mirror and repeated the process. His reaction was also one of delight. “Goooood stuff,” he said, snorting the stuff back into his nostrils.
In two seconds, both he and his partner were knocked out cold.
“You mean ‘Goooood night,’” Hunter said, jumping out of the jeep and hauling the two limp bodies out of the vehicle. Thorazine pentathol, Hunter’s own concoction of sleeping powder, looked, cut and tasted like cocaine. The gunmen would sleep for almost 24 hours, he figured. That’s what they get for being so greedy with their lines.
“See ya, chumps,” Hunter said as he disarmed the men, got behind the wheel of the jeep and roared off toward Honolulu.
He was across a makeshift bridge and at the fence of the old Pearl Harbor base less than an hour later.
Passing through the city of Honolulu had been an experience in itself. The place had so many gambling casinos even Louie St. Louie would have blushed. There were people in the streets although it was still barely 9 AM. Every one of the men were armed and it seemed every one of the women were
topless. Ben Wa would have been proud.
He had found the road to Pearl with no problem. Driving slowly long the perimeter fence, he saw little evidence of military activity inside the base. There were a few military vehicles such as APCs, halftracks and even an old M-60 tank. But he saw very few people walking inside the base.
He reached the main gate and found it manned by a lone sailor. With his white uniform, complete from upturned hat to black boot leggings, the man looked like something out of World War II. He was also sound asleep.
Hunter climbed out of the jeep and approached him. He was precariously balanced on an old chair leaning against a small guardhouse.
“Excuse me, sailor,” Hunter said in a voice that was half a shout.
The man didn’t stir.
“Hey, Navy!” Hunter said, a little louder.
Still asleep, the man brushed an imaginary bug from his nose.
Hunter leaned down, cupped his hands and yelled into the sailor’s ear. “Hey! Swabbie!”
The man went over like a capsized ship. He was quickly to his feet, his hand wrestling with the .45 automatic he wore on his belt. When retrieving it failed, he foolishly took a swing at Hunter. The punch wasn’t even close.
Hunter’s Uzi was out and against the man’s nose in a split second. “Take it easy, Popeye,” Hunter said, his other hand seizing the sailor’s .45.
“Who the fuck are you!” the man screamed.
Hunter looked at him. He was unkempt, unshaven and, judging from the downwind, unbathed. The sailor was a disgrace to his uniform.
“Where’s your CO?” Hunter asked sternly.
“Where he always is,” the sailor said, trying to upright his fallen chair. “Shitfaced.”
“Where?”
The sailor pointed over his shoulder to a white two-story structure. “Up in his office,” he said. “Over there.”
Hunter snapped out the .45s magazine. It was empty. He shook his head and returned the useless gun to the sailor.
“You know something, I always bet on you guys in the Army-Navy game,” Hunter said angrily. “No wonder I always lost.”
For the first time the man looked embarrassed.
“Hey, listen flyboy, it ain’t always been like this.”
It didn’t matter what he said; Hunter was already hurrying toward the dirty white building.
He entered the unguarded structure and double-timed it up the stairs. He found an entire row of offices unoccupied. Then he came to a corner room and saw a man sitting with his back to him. He was turned around in a chair behind a desk, reading what looked to be a skin magazine. As far as Hunter could tell, the man was the only person in the building.
He walked in. “I’m Major Hunter, Pacific American Armed Forces. From back on the mainland.”
Startled, the man took one look at Hunter and instantly sprang to his feet.
“Commander … Josh … McDermott,” he said, his voice trembling as if from lack of use. “United Sta … I mean, United Hawaiian … National … Royal Naval Defense … ah, Forces.”
The man’s hand was shaking as he tried a salute.
While the sleepy guard was a wise-ass slob, this man was pitiful wreck. He wasn’t old. Hunter figured 43, maybe 45. Yet his face, his skin and his white hair were those of a man twenty years his age.
“Good to meet you, Commander,” Hunter said, reaching over the desk and surprising the man with a handshake.
The man calmed down a little. He was dressed in a tattered U.S. Naval dress white uniform that looked like he had worn it, unpressed, every day for the past five years. The office itself was shabby. Files long gathering dust cluttered the place. Paperwork lay discarded on the floor. The windows were so dirty, it was hard to see the water of Pearl Harbor that lay just a short distance from the building. Through the grime, Hunter spotted the white shape of the USS Arizona Memorial.
“What brings you our way, Major?”
“I’m looking for something, Commander,” Hunter said, reaching into his pocket for a photo of the Ghost Rider black box. “This box is very important to me,” he said, handing the picture to the man. “It’s hidden on the Arizona.”
“The Arizona!” the threadbare officer asked as he took the photo and studied it. “What is it, Major? A guidance system or something?”
Hunter looked at the man. He could tell that at one time, the guy must have been a savvy officer.
Hunter shook his head. He couldn’t hold it back any longer. “What’s happened here, Commander?” he asked looking around the disheveled office, a trace of sadness in his voice. “This is Pearl Harbor, for God’s sake …”
The man turned away and shook his head. A whiskey bottle stood on a windowsill nearby. He reached over and grabbed it, scooping up two glasses in the process. When he turned around the pitiful look had added the new dimension of apathy.
“Have a drink, Major?”
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Hunter declined.
The man poured himself a healthy one anyway.
“We were left behind, Major,” he said, bitterness evident in his voice. “Left behind after the armistice with no ship big enough to get back to the mainland.”
The explanation hit Hunter like a punch in the gut. In an instant, he realized the man’s tragic plight. “How about airplanes? Some must have come through,” he said.
“Sure,” McDermott said, downing his drink. “Plenty of them in the first few weeks following the end of the war. All unauthorized. I was the fool. I decided to be all-Navy. I didn’t believe for a minute that the country—that our armed forces would go along with the New Order double-cross. I was sure the fleet … the real Navy … would come steaming over the horizon at any minute.
“Well, they didn’t. And those assholes in the Hawaiian National Guard went on a rampage and destroyed every workable piece of military equipment on the islands. Sank all the ships in port. Pranged all the airplanes. Busted up all the radios. I’ve been stuck inside here ever since.”
“You mean you never leave the base?” Hunter asked.
“I mean I never leave the building,” McDermott answered. “The Tribes—the Tau Fin—rule this island, and me and the twenty-five guys I got left are all mainlanders. We’re lucky they don’t burn the place to the ground.”
“Where are you from, Commander?” Hunter asked.
“Rhode Island,” McDermott said, pouring another drink. Then he looked up at Hunter and asked, “Is it still there?”
Hunter slowly shook his head. The man laughed bitterly. “Then why should I complain? I’m better off in the sun and fun of Hawaii.”
Hunter wanted to get out of the place. He started to get back to business and ask the officer if he’d mind helping him search the Arizona, when he felt a very familiar feeling.
“Commander, are you sure you don’t have any aircraft operating here?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” McDermott laughed. “There hasn’t been an airplane on any of these islands in three years.”
Hunter’s senses were tingling.
“Well, there is now,” he said, concentrating. “Heading this way. A lot of them.”
“Ah, forget it,” McDermott said, pouring his third drink. “No one within a thousand miles of here can fly a kite, never mind an airplane. Besides, it’s Sunday …”
Hunter walked to the window and rubbed off some of the grime. He looked out to the northwest. Twenty, thirty of them, he thought. Slow. Low. Carrying something. Bombs, maybe.
He turned and looked McDermott. “Got any enemies, Commander?”
The officer pondered the question. But Hunter didn’t have time to waste. “Get the hell of here,” he yelled to the man. Then he was out the door, down the stairs and running toward the Arizona Memorial. As he ran he could see the faint outline of a chevron of tiny dots approaching the island from out over the ocean. They were old airplanes, he knew. Prop jets.
He bounded down the pier next to the sunken battleship and
up the gangplank. If the airplanes were coming to attack, he couldn’t take the chance of the black box being destroyed. The message that Josephs left behind said the box was stashed in the base of the flag pole that sat at the very top of the partially-submerged ship’s conning tower.
Hunter scrambled up the ladder to the conning tower and was next to the flagpole just as the airplanes were turning toward the harbor. Two by two, the airplanes broke off and raced in low. They were old, but powerful A-l Skyraiders, similar to the ones back at PAAC-Oregon. The airplanes were dangerous. They were known for being able to carry more ordnance than B-17 bomber, yet were only slightly larger than the big fighters of World War II.
The first two airplanes streaked right over his head and released two bombs each. As if in slow motion, the four bombs slammed into a warehouse-like building two down from the dirty white officer’s building. Four individual balls of smoke and flame erupted from the structure. The two A-1s peeled off to the right together.
Suddenly, two more attackers were over his head. They too let go a total of four bombs, theirs falling short of the first group and hitting the little used docking area nearby. He could see that other pairs of Skyraiders were attacking other targets in the base and in the city nearby.
Hunter knew it was a matter of time before the unknown assailants attacked the Memorial. He kicked out a panel at the bottom of the flagpole base and looked inside the small wooden base.
Just like Josephs promised, there was a gray safelike box inside the hollow base. Hunter dragged it out. A padlock was squeezing the lid shit. If the contents weren’t so valuable he would have shot the lock off. But he chose to simply pick it instead. Using the stiletto he always kept with him, it twisted the padlock off and opened the box.
“Jesus Christ!” he had to exclaim. “It’s here!” The box was black—shiny black. He could tell by the various connections and receptacles on its side the box was the genuine article. It had a tiny red light on its top and it was blinking. It was then he realized that for the first time in his trip, he really believed that the long-distance recovery operation might just work.
