by Rob Swigart
Perhaps the driver’s door would be unlocked. He groped forward with his left hand, body pressed against the side; he felt the ornamental indentations in the panels, the line of the driver’s window, the ledge, the handle. Slowly he pressed the latch.
It clicked, releasing the door. He eased it open slowly, now holding his breath. There was still no sound from the interior of the truck. The door opened a foot, a foot and a half, then halted against a branch.
He felt outward onto the wood, pressing back leaves and twigs. The branch was wet. It must have rained out here earlier this evening. He tried breaking it, but it bent and sprung back, whipping his arm and hand. Once more he pressed the branch down and eased the door open past it. The branch swung up again, holding the door open now.
Suddenly the sound came again, the metallic whine of an antenna on the roof rotating to a new position. It was spooky in all that silence to hear a machine operate like that. Could it be on an automatic system of some sort? And for what purpose?
He reached out with his hand and felt the back of the driver’s seat. It was new vinyl. He gripped the metal headrest support and tugged. Cautiously he moved his foot to the threshold. Then he put his foot down again. Instead he leaned in, trying to see if there was an opening into the back of the truck, some way he could see what was in there without actually climbing in. Absently he noted that the whining had stopped, started briefly, stopped again, as if seeking a new alignment.
Suddenly a bright light came on and the door slammed against him, knocking his wind out. He fell forward momentarily, instinctively putting his hands out to break his fall. His left hand grasped the steering wheel, his right fell on the seat, touching something metallic and convulsively grasping it. As he turned it came with him. Distantly he thought it must be a flashlight, though he did not immediately feel the switch.
Again the door swung at him, but this time he was turned around enough to slip to his left, away from the door, and it slammed shut. The light was in his eyes now, though, and he could see nothing. As quickly as he could he moved back alongside the truck, toward the rear. The light moved to follow him.
“Watch him,” someone said, a man. “He’s going around the back.”
There were more than one, then. He turned away from the light, which now helped him see where he was going. The forest pressed almost against the back of the truck appeared impenetrable.
As he came around the back, someone seized his arm. Immediately he dropped his elbow and opened his hand, spreading the fingers and letting the energy flow through it. The hand on his wrist clamped harder. He opened his palm to the sky and rotated his wrist, nearly breaking his attacker’s grip. At that moment the attacker swung something at him. He parried the blow with the flashlight and felt it fly away. He reached for the hand still lightly holding his wrist, grasped it thumb over thumb, and twisted it counterclockwise in a nikkyo motion. He heard a yelp of pain as the man turned away. As he turned, though, his closest foot lashed out, and though Chazz lowered the hand he held, the foot connected with his thigh and he let go. He heard a door slam, then another, and the engine start. As he went after the man the darkness returned, disorienting him. The truck started to move away.
He grabbed the door handles and jumped on the bumper, hoping to hold on, but suddenly the driver stopped, shifted into reverse, and started to back into the trees. Chazz had to jump free, connecting painfully with a branch.
The truck roared, wheels spinning in the loose dirt and debris, spraying him with mud and small rocks. Then it turned hard to the right and continued on down the dirt road, bouncing on the ruts. It moved with only parking lights on and at a reckless speed. Soon he could hear only the whine of the engine, then silence again.
He climbed painfully to his feet and groped around for the flashlight that had flown off to his right.
Strangely he found it almost immediately and it worked. He could see the deep impressions of the tires, dug in where the wheels had spun. They threw long deep shadows away from the light when he knelt down to examine them.
The truck had turned right, not left, toward the driveway. That meant either they were trapped down there somewhere at a dead end, or they knew another way out of the DRC property.
He would bet on the second choice. He limped back up the road to the drive.
CHAPTER 19
ALOHA 234 GAPED AT THE crowded terminal, its door open to the night air. The stairs had been pulled a few feet away, as if reluctant to offer an exit. External airport lights threw pools of white detail into an impenetrable velvet darkness. Two more planes waited on the apron, unable to take off. No solution to the crisis was in sight.
Cobb still leaned against the bulkhead, his posture casual and calm. At the other end of the cabin, Grant Welter sweated. The barrel of his rifle jumped erratically. “You lied,” he shouted for the third time. “They are dying here. If not yet, then soon. Now you’re gonna die, too.”
Cobb spoke softly. “If you shoot me, it’ll be all over, Grant. You’ll be a murderer, and no matter what happens after that, you’ll go to prison and probably die there.” Cobb did not remind him Hawaii had no death penalty.
Welter glared at Cobb. Suddenly he pushed the muzzle of his rifle into the cheek of the passenger in the last aisle seat. The man sat rigidly, staring straight ahead, both his hands gripping the edge of his lap table, which held a copy of Time magazine open to the movie reviews. “Take out your gun. Carefully. I want to see it. Throw it out the door,” he said.
Cobb reached back and slowly pulled his automatic from its holster. He held it carefully by the barrel. “Grant,” he said, looking at it sorrowfully, “I paid almost five hundred dollars for this gun. I wouldn’t want it to break.”
“Throw it out or I’ll shoot. Now.”
Cobb shrugged and tossed the gun underhanded out the open door. It flew across the gap and clattered on the metal stairs.
The silence that followed lasted a long time. A child in the front seat began to cry. Her mother hushed her. The rest of the passengers were motionless, as if motionlessness might confer invisibility.
Cobb glanced around. He could neither move forward nor retreat. He could possibly step into the galley, but that clearly provided little protection for him, and left only the passengers to attract Welter’s attention. Besides, the galley was small and was occupied by a stewardess who stared at him with wide eyes.
“Grant, you have to believe me. I haven’t heard about any deaths on the island, from poison or anything else.”
“Don’t worry about how I know. I just know. There was something on that satellite, something deadly. They were testing something up there, in space, and it’s come down.” He raised the rifle again. “No more stupid questions, Mr. Policeman.”
“Ah. Charlie Chan once said, ‘Don’t rub sore finger with sandpaper’.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble, Grant. Stay calm, and no one will get hurt. You’re upset. I understand that. Don’t do anything more to make trouble for yourself.”
Welter did not answer. Instead he waved the rifle at Cobb and a shot skimmed along the ceiling, cutting a long furrow in the plastic paneling before vanishing into the lighting fixture, which went dark. Fragments of white trim fluttered down.
He fired two more shots in rapid succession.
The first plowed into the ceiling near the galley, but the second hit the bulkhead on the galley side and severed a hot-water line in the coffee maker, releasing a cloud of steam into the galley. The stewardess yelped and dropped quickly to her knees, clutching a scalded hand. A long, gradually subsiding spray of hot water exploded out onto the three passengers in the bulkhead seat—the mother with her child and an elderly man. They flung themselves out of their seats and hid, kneeling in a growing pool of spray and condensation. The child began to cry again.
Cobb barely moved. He still leaned against the wall beside the galley with his pose of confident relaxation, as if he and Grant
were in friendly conversation. “That was foolish, Grant. This is becoming a really uncomfortable situation. We can try to get you off the island, you know. But there really is nothing to fear. There’s no toxin loose. You’ve been misinformed.”
“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Policeman. I heard them. I saw them.”
Cobb frowned. “My name is Cobb, Grant. Cobb Takamura. You know me. You know I wouldn’t lie.
Welter said nothing. He was staring down the aisle, his rifle leveled.
After a few moments, Cobb asked, “Who did you see when you were taking your walk?”
Cobb raised the rifle and squinted down the sights at Cobb. The silence grew longer and more tense. Cobb prepared to throw himself back and sideways, into the galley if possible. The stewardess was clutching her scalded hand to her breast, crouching below the level of her work counter. She stared out at Cobb as if expecting him to fall at any moment, as if he were already dead, or more than dead, a ghost already fading.
Could he see the man’s finger tighten on the trigger, the intent to fire again growing in his mind, the tension of the spring about to release the hammer onto the cartridge? Could he anticipate the small pellet of lead whining down the aisle, too fast to dodge? Could he feel the sudden sharp impact?
The rifle was a .22 caliber, the same kind of rifle that had killed Victor Linz. The bullet that killed Linz had a hollow point, which after impact had exploded and thrown shrapnel in all directions inside his gut, severing major arteries and poisoning his system. Cobb narrowed his eyes, feeling his own question take shape. Did Grant Welter kill Victor Linz? Is that why he was so desperate to leave Kaua’i? Cobb no longer doubted if Welter were capable of murder.
Still, it seemed unlikely. Welter was panicked, true. Something had scared him very badly, but he did not look like a cold-blooded killer.
On the other hand, killers seldom did. He had fired shots.
Cobb looked out the open door at the dark apron and brightly lit terminal compound. Vague forms flitted from shadow to shadow as the uniformed officers took up positions. He knew Kaua’i’s best marksmen were looking for vantage points from which to draw a bead on the man in the rear of the plane, but Welter instinctively sought a place where there was no clear line-of-sight access to him. They would have no real opportunity to shoot unless Cobb could maneuver the hijacker into the open somehow. Under the present circumstances, that seemed a remote possibility.
Welter now held the rifle to his eye as if he were an experienced hunter, another quirk Cobb had not expected. He realized he had been stereotyping the man— an accountant, a bean counter, lank-wristed and sedentary. The small dark bore that stared from the other end of what seemed an infinitely long aisle straight at Cobb’s belt buckle told a different story. The barrel did not waver. Welter’s earlier panic was gone.
Cobb cleared his throat. “Do much hunting, Grant?” he asked in a conversational tone. He still had not shifted his position from the bulkhead. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the hissing of water escaping from the pipe inside the galley.
Welter made a quick barking sound and lowered the gun slightly. “Are you serious?” he asked. The threat from his rifle seemed to recede very slightly.
“I just wondered,” Cobb said. “That’s a twenty-two. Not really a hunting rifle. More for target practice, I would think.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” he shouted. He lifted the rifle again.
“Really, Grant. I’m serious. You must have picked it up here on Kaua’i. There are a couple of stores. One was broken into this afternoon. Was that you? Did you steal that gun, Grant? Or did you have one here all along? Not that it matters. I’m just curious. Is that your weapon? You don’t really seem used to it, you know. Not like a familiar gun, one you use for hunting. How long has it been since you went hunting, anyway?” Without waiting for an answer he pressed, “Who were the people you heard? The ones who made you think the air was poisoned?”
Welter made that curious barking sound again. “They had a truck. It was dark when I saw them. They were talking, parked by the road, and the back door of the truck was open. ‘The thing’s loaded,’ I heard him say. He had on— a suit, like a surgeon, a helmet and white suit. ‘It’s loose in the air,’ the man said. I heard him. I ran then. I know what it is. I’m not supposed to, but I do. We’re all going to die.”
Cobb nodded thoughtfully. “How about the name Jack-rabbit?” he asked.
The rifle came back up. “Don’t play games with me.”
A voice outside called over a bullhorn. “Lieutenant Takamura! Are you all right?”
Cobb looked down the length of the aisle. “If I don’t answer there’s going to be a lot of trouble.”
“Go ahead. No funny stuff. I want us off the ground. Soon.”
Cobb held out his hands in an ambiguous gesture. It could have been compliance. Or it could have been doubt.
“I’m all right,” he shouted through the open door.
“Grant Welter still in there?” the voice was distorted by the amplifier.
“Still here,” Cobb said. They were testing. Where else would he be? They wanted him to hear.
“Tell him we’ve talked to his ex-wife.”
Cobb looked at Welter. It seemed the man aged before his eyes. Welter might have been in his early forties, but suddenly he looked closer to sixty. His boney forehead and cheekbones only partially sheltered his frightened, weary eyes. His hands, seemingly so steady on the rifle stock and trigger, were now shaking badly.
Cobb raised his eyebrows in a question. “They talked to your wife, Grant. She lives on the mainland.”
“Get away from me.” Welter’s voice was tight.
The loudspeaker coughed again. “She says you’re mixed up in it, Welter. She says to tell you she knows you worked for him, that you know why she left.” There was a feedback squeal from the amplifier, followed by a brief garble of voices, then silence. Cobb stood away from the bulkhead. Welter was suddenly confused and irresolute. The rifle sagged in his hands.
“She’s lying,” he muttered. “She didn’t know.” He appealed to Cobb. “She couldn’t know. I thought it was just… we just didn’t get along. She didn’t understand…”
Cobb swallowed his frustration. He was close to something important, he could feel it, but Welter was so disoriented, so chaotic. “What didn’t she understand Grant? Who were you working for?” Cobb heard a stealthy tread on the staircase, and raised his voice slightly, both to warn off whoever was trying to come up and to cover the sound. “Take it easy. Don’t do anything foolish, now— she probably didn’t understand you.”
“They’re lying. She’s dead. I told you we’re all dead. This place is poison. Poison. We’re going to die anyway. She’s been dead for years.” He was talking more to himself than to Cobb, who took advantage of this moment of inattention to take a step forward. Immediately the gun came up again. “Oh, no. Stay there.”
The sound of steps outside stopped. Cobb could hear the slight creak of metal as someone shifted his weight. The stewardess hadn’t moved. She started to stand, but when she heard Welter speak, she stopped halfway and slowly lowered herself again. The tension stayed high.
The spray from the broken coffee maker slowed to a dribble, leaving another kind of silence behind. Cobb took another small step, as if shifting his own weight, despite the rifle aimed at him. In the process he checked his watch. It was almost ten.
“These people you saw, you said their truck was white?” Cobb returned to a tone of amiable conversation.
Welter stepped back between the rear lavatories. His weapon was lowered near his waist though still aimed in Cobb’s general direction. If he fired someone would be hurt. He peered carefully through the small porthole in the rear door. From this angle he could not see the stairs in front. He turned to Cobb. “Tell those cops to get away,” he shouted. “Tell them to get away or I’ll start shooting. I don’t care anymore.”
Cobb held out his hands again. He tur
ned to the open door. “Get those officers back inside the terminal,” he called outside, hoping the man on the steps would not be the one to answer.
Handel shouted down to move back, and another voice responded with something indistinct. Welter ran forward a few steps, as if trying to get to the stairs, then stopped, raised the rifle, and fired again.
He was hasty. His shot hit the bulkhead just above the passenger on the left side of the plane, behind the open door, went through the wall and hit something metallic. There was a yelp of pain from outside.
Cobb reached out and with a grunt Handel tossed his automatic through the door to him. He caught and leveled it in one quick, neat gesture. “Stop!” he commanded sharply. “Grant. Drop your weapon. This has gone far enough.”
“No.” Welter lifted the rifle. The two stood there aiming at one another.
“I can stand here only so long,” Cobb said. “Then, regrettably, I may have to shoot you. I would rather not do so.”
“I have nothing to lose,” Welter repeated. “Nothing. We got to get out. If I stay here I’ll die anyway.”
“Put down the gun. Then we can talk about it.”
“You’ll shoot me, won’t you? I put it down and you shoot.”
“Of course not. You have my word. Put down the gun and you’ll be all right. We just need to talk.”
Welter’s eyes were wide, showing white around the irises. His skin looked sallow under the fluorescent lights, highlighted with a sheen of perspiration. “Just talk?” he asked.
Cobb nodded seriously. “That’s all, Grant. Just talk. There won’t be any trouble. Then we can get you off the island. Where you’ll be safe. Everyone will be safe, then. Just put down the gun.” He glanced toward the doorway. “Are you all right, Sergeant?”
“Piece of metal nicked me, that’s all,” Scottie said. “Nothing serious.”
“It’s a good thing, Grant. If the sergeant had been hit by the bullet, we would have a much more serious situation on our hands. Now it’s not too late to settle this peacefully.”
