by Rob Swigart
Freeman turned away, frowning. “Dewilliter,” he said, “what does this mean?”
Dewilliter shook his head. “I can’t say, Ward. Honest. You’re on the Cetus team. You tell me.”
“What does that mean? Does that mean there’s another team? Is that what it means? There’s another team?” Freeman was shouting.
Dewilliter shrugged helplessly. “I can’t tell you, Ward. I really can’t.”
Chazz was leaning forward wearily, elbows on his knees, the cup of hot coffee cupped in his palms.
Freeman turned to Renfrew. “He’s saying there’s another team. Inside two-twelve.”
Renfrew drew back on the bowstring. Freeman took a step back, holding up his hands; the arrow twanged vibrating into the wall beside Dewilliter. At the same time Chazz threw his coffee into No-neck’s face, pushed Patria toward the door, and in two steps was across the small room.
He moved swiftly toward Freeman by the window. The man, still surprised, backed away, and Chazz pulled the arrow from the thin wallboard. He drew its barbed point lightly across Freeman’s throat, leaving a thin red line. Freeman spilled back into Dewilliter, mewling in shock and pain.
Renfrew was trying to notch another arrow in his bow as Chazz swept his forearm across the table, sending the two kerosene lamps flying. Dewilliter and Freeman had fallen against the wall; the three escorts were moving toward Chazz. He saw Patria vanish through the door as the three closed on him, then he went inside himself, moving toward the closest of the three escorts. His right hand came up, the heel of his palm rising from beneath toward the man’s chin. Just as the first kerosene lamp snuffed out, the man saw the hand coming toward him and lurched back, losing his balance. He toppled into the second attacker and the two fell to the floor.
The second lamp exploded against the base of the far wall in a rush of flame. Chazz spun delicately around the two toppling bodies, lowered himself as he pivoted and picked up the third man across his hip, tossing him into the struggling heap now visible in the leaping kerosene flames on the far side of the cabin.
No-neck had cleared his eyes by now, but stood uncertain whether to fight the flames splashing up the wall and against the ceiling or come to the aid of the three men. He decided after momentary hesitation to rush at Chazz, who waited until No-neck was almost upon him, then dropped down and sideways, leaving a leg out. No-neck tripped and fell heavily. Chazz scooped up No-neck’s wrist and swept his arm in a circle. There was a sharp crack and the arm fell away limply.
Chazz scanned the room, but for the moment all attackers seemed to be otherwise occupied. Dewilliter and Freeman were struggling with the window, urged by the spreading flames. Suddenly the spilled kerosene from the first lamp ignited and another crump of flame joined the fire. He heard the sound of breaking glass.
There were incoherent shouts outside. Chazz let out a tremendous shout as he hurled himself out the door into the rain. In the midst of his aerial flip beyond the threshold, he glimpsed Dewilliter and Freeman frozen in outline against the flames. The window was smashed; they were both trying to climb through it at once.
It worried him that he couldn’t see Renfrew anywhere.
47
As soon as he saw the flames, Takamura stopped running. He held out his hand, and Sammy, behind him and to his left, ran into it and stopped. There was no way to contact the others in the mist and rain without breaking radio silence.
Takamura pointed toward the dim orange glow in the middle distance. Takamura shook his head. He leaned toward Sammy. “Fire,” he whispered. There was little chance he would be heard over the wind now moaning through the trees, but he took no chances. It was bad enough that his entire force consisted of him, two traffic patrolmen and three park rangers who had little taste for this sort of police work. It was not worth risking a warning to the quarry here. Yet there seemed little choice. The cabin was burning.
He cupped his hand around the radio and whispered, “This is Hawk One. All units. Hold back. Do not execute. Repeat, do not execute.”
The response almost deafened him. “What? Please repeat, Hawk One. We can’t hear you.”
The words were audible without the radio.
Something was happening at the cabin. The door was open and figures were pouring out. There were confused shouts. “All the demons of the seven hells,” Takamura said softly, running toward the cabin. He pulled out his gun as he ran. Sammy moved in his swift waddle beside him. Takamura heard the sound of breaking glass, the hiss of moisture on open flame, his own breath. He saw a figure near an ancient ohia lehua tree moving toward them and halted.
“Stop,” he called. “Stop or I’ll shoot.” The figure ducked behind the tree, and Takamura lowered his gun. “Don’t shoot,” he said to Sammy. “That could be Koenig.”
They moved slowly just within the line of trees parallel to the cabin, edging closer without exposing themselves. Yet the confusion at the cabin kept urging Takamura on. Finally he broke from the trees and moved toward the cabin. He could make out two people moving away toward the woods. He shouted, “Stop,” but his shout was only one of many; the figures vanished into the trees and mist without pausing.
More people appeared at the door to the cabin. Sammy moved swiftly toward the door. He appeared out of the fog like an apparition, and two of the men stopped when they saw him. They were reaching for their own guns when Sammy very quietly told them to raise their hands. They obeyed, moving away from the increasing heat of the flames.
There was enough of a suspension of the shouting for the whirring sound of the arrow to be plainly audible. It made a hard, brutal sound when it hit Sammy’s body. He watched, surprised, as the gun fell from his hand; he sat suddenly on the muddy ground and reached for the arrow sticking from his chest.
Takamura hadn’t seen Sammy get hit, and the men in front of the cabin scattered as soon as they realized their captor was down. Takamura fired a shot in the air, but the sound, ordinarily so loud and authoritative, was a muffled sput in the swirling mist and rain, the roar of flame and wind. Smoke billowed from the cabin, and his eyes were tearing. He tripped on Sammy’s outstretched legs, recognizing him only when he bent down.
“Sammy!” Crouched beside his partner, Takamura held Sammy’s shoulders. Sammy looked at him with pain-filled eyes.
Men appeared around the corner of the cabin, sidelit by the flames. “We got these two,” someone called. Takamura nodded, a gesture lost in shadows.
Takamura looked at the two prisoners. A tall man with very pale hair, and a shorter rather pudgy one. Neither looked particularly threatening. He nodded. Gradually the patrolmen and three rangers gathered around. Takamura was not prepared to try to remove the arrow. A ranger tended Sammy, checking the wound. He looked at Takamura over Sammy’s shoulder. The look said he didn’t know.
“I’ll hike back,” one of the others said. “We need a doctor.”
Sammy winced when he spoke. “No,” he said. “Wait. There’s a hunter. Dangerous.”
“I know this area,” the ranger said. “Don’t worry.” He looked at Takamura, who nodded. The ranger melted into the fog.
Sammy didn’t notice him go. He sighed. “’Man has learned much who has learned how to die,’” he quoted.
Takamura smiled. “Charlie Chan does not die,” he said. “Neither does The Kukui Nut. Too tough.”
Sammy waved a hand, then winced. “Maybe,” he said.
The roof of the cabin collapsed while they were moving him and a shower of sparks vanished downwind into the mist. “Any danger of this spreading?” Takamura asked the ranger. He shook his head. “Not this year, certainly. Probably never. I’m surprised it’s burned this long.”
Sammy grunted. “At least it keeps me warm,” he said.
“Be quiet, Kukui Nut,” Takamura said.
“Yes, boss.”
“You’re going to be all right.”
“Yes, boss.”
“So shut up and rest.”
“Yes, boss.�
�
“Take care of him,” Takamura said. He went over to the group huddled under another clump of trees. Water dripped steadily from the leaves, but it was slightly dryer there. “Who are these two?” he asked. He took off his porkpie hat and looked at it sadly. It was sodden and shapeless. He ran his finger around the limp brim, removing water. Then he put it back on.
“This,”—the patrolman guarding them gestured at Dewilliter— “claims he has nothing to do with all this. The other won’t say anything.”
“Are you in charge here?” the other asked Takamura, ignoring the patrolman.
Takamura nodded.
“I must warn you,” he said. “You don’t understand the implications. This is a national security matter.”
“My partner,” Takamura said slowly, “is over there with an arrow in his chest. It is possible he will die. That is more than a national security problem. That is a personal problem. For him, and for me. There are other matters— kidnapping, murder, attempted murder, robbery, breaking and entering, probably arson, and several dozen other crimes. I’m responsible for the security of this island; I really don’t care much about national security at this particular point, sir. You two are under arrest. When we catch them, the others will be under arrest as well. Then, perhaps, we might worry about national security. Perhaps.”
“You’ll regret this,” the man said.
“So, perhaps, will you,” Takamura told him. He gestured for the third ranger. They stepped away, and Takamura asked him about the others.
He shook his head. “They’ll be impossible to track in this weather. The swamp is a tough place to find people, anyway. It’s very easy to get lost in there, especially when it’s foggy like this. We’ll have to wait for daylight.”
Takamura checked his watch in the dying light of the burning cabin. He nodded. “Two hours,” he said. “Then we start.”
48
The Alakai Swamp fed into the Wai’ale’ale caldera. The swamp was a soggy depression running some fifteen kilometers diagonally across the top of the island. In places it was only a couple of kilometers wide. The volcanic rock underneath was impermeable, and the tremendous rainfall there collected in this natural basin. The crater itself, at the southeast corner, was the wettest spot on earth, averaging 465 inches of rain per year.
It was a maze, the Alakai Swamp, a random collection of bogs and points, spits of relatively dry land interspersed by waist-deep mud, graceless ponds, twisted, distorted vegetation, trees growing dwarfed, stunted and gray. Water collected in pools reflected the leaden sky, sometimes merged with the sky when the clouds closed in, as they had this night.
Only the hardiest of the ancient Hawaiians ventured here, and then only to collect plants or perform religious ceremonies; they never stayed. The swamp was inhospitable, wretched, wet, hauntingly beautiful, rich in steamy life adapted to this unspeakable damp, its twiggy branches clutching at the clouds, and a thick carpet of fern and bog plant concealing hidden pools.
The trails created by the park service were well marked for hikers, a series of poles stuck in the ground during World War II for military communications, or brightly colored brown and white pipe markers indicating relatively firm ground. Unfortunately, they were all invisible in the cloud and darkness of night. No one hiked the Alakai Swamp in this kind of weather, at this time of day, ever.
Even in the best of weather, during those rare intervals of sun and clear sky, daylight and good visibility, it was necessary to circle around pools of mud or water along the trail. In this darkness, though, Chazz and Patria must move by touch, with constant false steps and terrible caution. Progress was slow, yet behind him Chazz felt pursuit, he sensed Renfrew, and his nape stood up, panic clutched him more tenaciously than the mud. The only saving grace was the impossibility of this trail.
He thought in the hours since they fled they could not have covered much ground. Yet he wanted to put some distance between himself and the cabin. Their flight was random, and it was fortune that had led them here and not toward park headquarters, or down the cliffs. Chazz wanted to avoid the obvious directions, had known their route to the cabin, so had a general sense of which way to go. Hide out in the swamp, he thought. Take the difficult way, and perhaps Renfrew would not follow.
He could feel rather than see that the forest around them was thinning, flattening, disappearing. Patria clutched at his hand, trailing behind him when he slipped in a bog. From time to time they could smell a sharp scent of anise from the mokihana tree.
Finally there was an imperceptible brightening of the thick fog around them, a lightening of the wind that had moaned through the night, and dim shadows appeared, the almost shapeless clutch of trees and ferns.
“We’ve got to stop soon.” Chazz’s breath was ragged with fatigue; they had been running on fear, and their reserves were gone. Finally he could see Patria’s face, spattered with mud. Her clothes were soaked, her face pale and drawn. He tried smiling at her, and she tried smiling back. The effect of the two of them struggling to be cheerful was suddenly funny, and they began to laugh, a little hysterically. The laughter sounded loud and strange, and stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
They began to look for some sheltered high ground where they could rest. Ragged clumps of cloud blew by, hiding, then suddenly releasing, the landscape. When they could see any distance, they saw only flat and level swamp. There was no sign of a trail, no sign of man’s presence at all. It was a primordial chaotic world before them, made of water and demented life, fern gulches, dead branches and shrubs, twisting vines. The tallest trees, if they could be called that, grew no higher than Chazz’s head and offered little shelter.
“Any idea where we are?” Patria asked.
“No,” Chazz said. He pointed. “Stay here a minute. That looks like a spot.” A small gulch of ferns backed against a relatively dry hummock. He pulled out the ferns and made a nest. “Come,” he said. They settled as comfortably as possible in the driving mist and light rain. The storm was moving around them somewhere, but here, for now, was a moment of safety.
“As I see it,” Chazz said, “we have to wait. We need sleep. By noon it might clear up enough to see where the sun is, or figure out directions. Then we need to find our way to high ground. This swamp is crisscrossed by trails. We ought to find one. Then we follow it. We get out of the swamp, find a road. Very simple.”
“Yes,” Patria said. “Very simple.”
He felt worse after some sleep. Patria was shivering, drawn and sullen; and the cloud was as thick as ever. He took sight on the outline of a tree; they made their way to it, perhaps ten meters or so. It took ten minutes to get there. He tried to maintain the direction, find another landmark, struggle to it. Keep the heading, find another, go there. It was painfully slow, and he felt the thick clutch of despair drag at him; they were lost, their resources were depleted, Patria was shivering violently. They were suffering from exposure, and he knew they could not keep this up much longer. Yet he plowed on.
They stopped often to rest. The stops grew longer and more frequent. They were hungry and thirsty. Then they were no longer hungry, no longer thirsty. They were no longer cold and tired and dirty.
They were no longer moving.
It seemed like a long time in the dream before Chazz considered that the shouts he heard might be real, that the voice calling his name might belong to Cobb Takamura, that someone might be looking for them. He answered in the frail croak his voice had become; after that it took forever before anyone appeared. The fog had closed around them all in a fist of woolly indifference, and they dropped off at last into a long, slow spiraling descent into pleasant darkness where nothing mattered anymore.
PART III
PURGATORY
49
Too many dead, Takamura was thinking as he climbed the broad cement steps. Too many in the hospital. His head was down against the tangible wind whipping spray around the corner of the modern gray bulk of the building. Debris littered the empty
streets. Too many disabled. He knew what he was up against now, and it wearied him, dragging him more than the relentless wind and damp.
The silence inside the hospital was startling. The lobby, a cavernous imitation-marble expanse, was cool with echoes. He felt an almost spiritual relief when the doors closed behind him.
“You’d think it would be busier here, with the storm,” he said to the receptionist. She’d seen a lot of him the past few days, and nodded. He was making conversation.
“Try Emergency,” she suggested. “They’re busy.”
“That’s all right,” Takamura said. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Despite the calm of the lobby, he had to wait for the elevator. A cardboard sign taped beside the door stated that the hospital had to go on and off emergency power and there might be delays at the elevator. If the matter was urgent, use the stairs.
The matter, Takamura thought, is urgent, and the stairs won’t help. He was powerless to rush anything.
The elevator arrived at last. Two frowning doctors came out, gave him a nod and headed down the west wing toward pulmonary care. Takamura smiled thinly in the car, thinking this would be a busy time for pulmonary care. Pneumonia galloped in weather like this.
There was more activity on the fourth floor: patients on gurneys, nurses hurrying with trays, the general level of barely controlled crisis. Takamura saw Dr. Shih in conversation and moved toward her. She looked up when he appeared, tilted her head to one side questioningly.
He lifted his eyebrows in answer.
“Do you always answer a question with a question?” she snapped.
He nodded.
“I’m here because there is a shortage of doctors today. Two staff are down, one with a broken bone – a branch fell on him or something – the other has a something or other they thought I might be able to fix. I fixed his something or other, and now they want me to stay up here. I must say it’s a change of pace for me, dealing with live people. I don’t like it.”
