Mahu Fire

by Neil S. Plakcy

  The four of us clustered around the table with my father, who leaned heavily on the table. His hospitalization, and the death of Uncle Chin, wore heavily on his big frame, and though he was clearly healing, I felt very protective of him. I wanted to make him go home, lie down and rest, but there was too much to do and we needed whatever help he could provide.

  “See how the Wa’ahila trail continues up the ridge?” he said. “There are some old homestead cabins up there, just outside the park boundary. No one lives up there full time, but people still use the cabins.”

  “So somebody set one of those cabins on fire,” Sampson said.

  “Looks like it. The good news for you is that there’s only one road in or out of the area. It leads down into the park.”

  “My partner from Waikiki, Akoni Hapa’ele, and another guy from Organized Crime have already gone up there to coordinate a blockade and any evacuation.”

  My father continued. “The bad news is that the road snakes back and forth up the hill. So if your suspects are on foot, they won’t bother using it. There are at least two trails that lead down the mountain, but go in different directions.”

  Akoni came walking into the kitchen then. “We’ve got a bunch of black and whites, and a SWAT team at the park entrance, ready to head in.” He’d hitched a ride over with some campers who were leaving. “Tony’s over there, but he needs to know what to do.”

  “Lui, Haoa and I can each take a team into the park,” I said. “We know the trails and the road better than anyone, from all the time we’ve spent hiking and camping in the park and up on the ridge as kids.”

  Sampson looked grim. “I don’t like to involve civilians, but we’re in a crisis situation here,” he said. “Let’s head out.”

  We went out front, and I saw the elderly gamblers were still there. Their duty was to protect Uncle Chin’s corpse, and nothing short of flames licking at their heels was going to drag them away.

  Behind us, my parents, Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang clustered around the front door. My father leaned against the door frame, and my mother stood close to him, fiercely protective, clearly torn between her responsibilities to him, to her sons, and to her lifelong best friend.

  Lui, Haoa and Sampson took Haoa’s panel truck again, and Akoni climbed in with me for the ride down the hill and around to the park entrance. For a couple of minutes it was like we were partners again. There was so much that I wanted to tell him and no time.

  By the time we reached the park entrance, the smell of smoke was overwhelming. The narrow neighborhood roads were crowded with black and whites and undercover cars parked in driveways and on grassy verges, as every available unit had been called to the ridge to help search for the fugitives. We could barely snake through in my truck.

  The two-lane entry to the park was lined with tall Norfolk pine trees, with wild roosters and hens wandering around below them. We parked next to a stone wall by the wooden park gate.

  I assembled the cops and my brothers into a semi-circle. “We all know what we have to do.” I pointed at my brothers. “You guys remember, you’re tour guides, not cops. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Haoa knelt down to finger some leaves, then held them up to us. “This mountain is dry as a bone. If you see a small fire, you can try to stamp it out, but anything bigger you’ve got to get the hell away.”

  I thought of Mike Riccardi then, and hoped he would be all right. I didn’t like the idea of him running into forest fires, but then again, he probably didn’t like my going after bad guys with guns either.

  I took Akoni, Lidia Portuondo, and Gary Saunders, a uniform I’d known in Waikiki, on my team. I punched Saunders in the face after he called me a faggot once, but at least I knew him, his strengths and weaknesses. He was a big, strong guy, too, which might help us if we ran into somebody up on the ridge who needed to be restrained.

  Haoa took Tony Lee, Frank Sit, Steve Hart and another uniform, and Lui got Alvy Greenberg and three uniforms.

  I was just ready to pull out when Mike Riccardi arrived, loping up the hill from where he’d parked his truck. I was so damn glad to see him—but at the same time, I knew that his presence meant he was about to go into that fire.

  THE HARDINGS

  Lui’s team and Haoa’s team went up the mountain in separate directions, so it wasn’t long before I lost sight and sound of my brothers. I worried about them, but I knew they both were smart and strong and knew the park well. I turned my attention back to Mike, who was explaining the fire department’s plans to Lieutenant Sampson

  “Air-1’s in for repairs, so we’ve got Air-2 on the way,” he said. I knew that those were the names of the Honolulu Fire Department’s two helicopters. “Air-2 has the Bambi Bucket.”

  “You’re trying to rescue deer?” Sampson asked.

  Mike laughed and shook his head. “The Bambi Bucket is a lightweight collapsible container, for water drops on brush fires,” he said. “We’ll scoop up water from the ocean and ferry it over here. The bucket can pull out of places as shallow as a foot deep. Though this wind might be trouble.”

  For the first time, I paid attention to the wind around us as something more than a carrier of smoke. “I’d say we’ve got gusts of up to 30 miles an hour,” Mike said. “Might make it tough to get the bucket in. But we’ll see.”

  We looked up to the mountain, and saw rust-red and white clouds of smoke as well as lines of orange flames moving over the hills and into the park’s gulches.

  Mike’s radio crackled and he listened for a minute. “Roger that.” To us, he said, “The state’s sending the DNR chopper too.” That was good; the park, as protected land, came under the auspices of the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

  “The chief’s worried about the houses in St. Louis Heights,” Mike continued. “We’ve got front end loaders coming up to build fire breaks where we can, but it’s tough to get access to a lot of the park. And even if we build them, the wind may just jump the breaks.”

  I thought of my parents’ house, which backed on the park, as well as Uncle Chin’s house, where his body still rested, watched over by my parents, the gamblers in the front courtyard, Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang. “Will there be evacuations?” I asked.

  “Not sure yet. We’ll see how the fire breaks go. We’re also going to be hosing down the back yards, trying to create a water curtain.”

  Meanwhile, engines from the Five, Twenty-Two and Thirty-Three companies were pulling up, disgorging fire fighters in yellow suits, their company number on their yellow helmets. Many were already wearing masks, with oxygen tanks on their backs.

  The Battalion Chief got out of his car, and Mike leaned over to whisper to me, “You know what CHAOS stands for?”

  I shook my head.

  “The Chief Has Arrived On Scene,” he said, and laughing, left to confer with him. It was time to take my team up the mountain, leaving Lieutenant Sampson at the command post.

  Lui’s team was the first to find anything. After about half an hour of climbing, they came upon the abandoned Volvo that the helicopter had spotted. They radioed the license plate and VIN number in to Sampson, and he called in for an identification. I heard him radio back, “It belongs to an Eli Harding of Palolo,” he said. “I’m trying to track down the Hardings. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Before the report could come back, though, Lui’s team ran into Harding himself, along with his wife. My team wasn’t far from them, and I met up with Lui to take charge of the Hardings and see what they had to say.

  When my team connected with Lui’s, I could see that Alvy Greenberg wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t have the time—or the interest. Harding was a short, stocky guy in his early thirties, with wiry, sandy blonde hair. His wife was about his age and height, a bit slimmer, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. They looked like an ordinary suburban couple, and I could see why Kitty had trusted them enough to go off on a picnic with them and their kids.

  They were
frantic about their two children. Lui was good with them, talking with quiet power about his own kids, and how he understood completely what the Hardings were going through. “My brother knows what he’s doing,” Lui said, handing the Hardings off to me. “He’ll get your kids back.”

  I wished I felt as sure, but I smiled and said that Lui was absolutely right. He took Greenberg and his two uniforms and went back into the brush, and my team and I started down the hill with the Hardings.

  Finally, Eli calmed down enough to tell me what had happened. “My grandfather built this cabin, just one big room, about twenty feet on each side, with ten-foot ceilings, in the 1930s, when you could claim a piece of the mountain land by building on it,” he said, as we made our way down the narrow, overgrown path. The smoke was heavy around us, and the heat was almost blistering.

  “I grew up going there for holidays and summers, and when my father died I inherited it. I was talking about the place with Jeff White last week and he said he’d like to see it, so we made plans for this picnic.” He was wearing shorts and a fake military shirt in a khaki color, the kind with epaulets and lots of pockets, and the sweat was dripping down his forehead.

  He started to cough, and Fran grabbed his hand. She continued the story. “The kids were playing outside, and Eli and I were standing by the kitchen counter putting sandwiches out on a platter when Jeff and Sheila walked in.” Her arms and legs were scratched, and her white shirt and plaid shorts were smoke-stained.

  “The bastards were holding a gun on us,” Eli said indignantly. “I’m the one took Jeff out shooting at the range, and he had this 9 millimeter aimed at Fran, while Sheila came over to me carrying this rope. I said, ‘What’s going on, buddy? What are you and your wife doing?’”

  He started to cough again, but stopped after a moment. “He said, ‘She’s not my wife, she’s my sister.’ I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.”

  “He made us lie down on the floor,” Fran said. “They said that they were going to tie us up so that we couldn’t follow them.” She reached over and used her shirt sleeve to wipe Eli’s brow of sweat.

  “We asked them about Cole and Caitlin,” Eli said. “At least we wanted them to bring the kids in with us. But Sheila said they were taking the kids for a ride with them. Jeff took the keys to the Volvo from my pocket.”

  “We started fighting them,” Fran said. “I couldn’t believe they were taking my babies away from me. Sheila hit me in the head with her gun.”

  We came to a narrow place on the trail, where there was a steep drop-off to one side, and we all had to stop talking and go single file until the danger had passed. The brush crackled under me, dry as tinder, and tiny pebbles skittered away whenever anyone stepped down. When I took deep breaths I felt a stinging in my throat.

  The strap of Fran’s left sandal was torn, and it caught beneath her as she walked. She lost her balance and nearly fell down the side of the ravine, but Lidia was right behind her, and she caught Fran and helped her stand up again.

  Sweat was pooling under my arms and dripping across my forehead. I couldn’t see how Mike could work in this kind of environment. Not just the infernal heat and the sweat, but not knowing where the fire was, and where it might strike next.

  After Hurricane Iniki destroyed Kauai in 1992, a lot of people talked about leaving the islands. Cousins of mine moved to Southern California. I figured that at least with a hurricane, you knew what was coming and you had time to prepare. An earthquake could strike any time, without warning. That’s the way I felt about this fire—that at any moment a tongue of flame could spring up, trapping us or turning us into crispy critters. Give me a good old fashioned tropical storm, wind and rain lashing the palm trees, any time.

  When we’d passed the narrow spot, we stopped for a minute to regroup. I looked at the map my father had given me, and tried to estimate where we were. If I was right, the park entrance was just below us. If I was wrong, we were screwed—lost in the dry scrub with fire raging around us.

  “Did the Whites start the fire?” Akoni asked, as we started up again.

  “They set the cabin on fire,” Eli said. “The bastards. They stacked charcoal and kindling along one wall, and poured lighter fluid over it. I could hear and smell what they were doing, and we kept calling them and begging not kill us.”

  “Sheila tied lousy knots,” Fran said. “It took a few minutes, but we managed to get untied and get out of the cabin before the fire caught.” She caught her breath in a little gasp. “But the car was gone, and the kids. They’ve got my babies.” She started to cry.

  I tried to imagine what might have happened if the Hardings hadn’t been able to get out of the cabin before it burned to the ground. Chances were we’d get there eventually, and in the ashes we’d find two bodies, a man and a woman. We’d discover the charred wreckage of both the Whites’ vehicles, and the easy conclusion would be that they had died in the fire.

  We crested a hill, and below us I saw the bottom of the trail. Lidia took calm charge of the distraught couple, leading them off to get cleaned up.

  “What about our kids?” I heard Fran ask.

  “We’re going to find your kids,” Lidia said. “And when they see you, you want to be all cleaned up, don’t you? You don’t want to frighten them any more than they have been.”

  Meekly, Fran Harding nodded.

  Sampson let all the units know that the suspects were now known to be armed, dangerous, and holding two small children that they might use as hostages. “Be very careful,” he said into the radio. “I want no accidents.”

  I led Akoni and Saunders back up the trail, going off onto a side path we hadn’t explored yet, and I heard someone crashing through the trees just above us and waved the other cops with me to stop. We took up positions on either side of the trail, our weapons aimed and ready. My throat was dry and the smell of smoke was everywhere around us, though we still had decent visibility.

  Just ahead of us, I could see two adults blundering through the underbrush. I pulled my gun and stood in the shooter’s stance. “Come out with your hands up!” I called.

  The bush parted and the two figures stepped out.

  JIMMY AND KITTY

  “Don’t shoot,” Jimmy Ah Wong called. “Please.”

  He had his arm around Kitty, and she limped down the trail, favoring her right foot. I didn’t know if they were armed, but I was sure they had to be scared. Slowly, I stepped into the trail path a hundred feet ahead of them. I whistled, and Kitty looked up.

  I hurried up the trail to them. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said when I reached them. “The Hardings invited Jeff and Sheila White along on the picnic, and we were right, they’re crazy.”

  I hugged her, so glad to find that she was all right. She was wearing a light blue polo shirt, torn and stained by smoke, khaki shorts, and sneakers. Then I turned and hugged Jimmy. He looked like crap, wearing a torn and stained t-shirt, board shorts and flip flops. His face was scratched and there was a trail of blood dripping down one cheek.

  We started going slowly back down the trail. Akoni led, me with my arm around Kitty, Jimmy almost dancing around us on an adrenaline rush, Saunders covering our backs. Much as I wanted to find the Whites and the kids who were with them, I had an obligation to get Jimmy and Kitty to safety.

  Kitty said she’d be better off walking on her own, holding on to the trees for support, and I let her lead the way, watching her carefully, Akoni right beside her. The trail was rocky and narrow, and in places we almost lost it. When I was a kid roaming those paths, they were always so cool and green, overgrown with trees and vines, like another world.

  Now that world was a frightening one, the smoke blocking our visibility, every tree root and pebble a hazard. It was hard to catch my breath, and I couldn’t get my heart rate to slow down.

  I radioed down to Sampson and told him that I had the two of them, that we were on our way down the trail. I could hear the stress in his voice when he said, “B
e careful. The fire’s building all around you.”

  Lui and Haoa both radioed in, too, telling me their teams were still hunting. I hoped one of them would find the Whites and the Harding kids before it was too late.

  As soon as I was finished on the radio, Jimmy started to talk. “I was walking down Kalakaua this morning. This guy was cruising in his truck, and he pulled up next to me, going real slow.” He looked over at me. “You know.”

  I knew.

  “He rolled down his window and said ‘Hey.’ We talked for a minute or two and he said he was going to get some beer, and asked if I wanted to come along.”

  Jimmy lost his footing for a minute, and I grabbed his arm. He looked over at me, and there was such sadness in his eyes that I wanted to hug him again and promise that it would all be better soon. But we had to get out of the fire before we could think about anything else.

  “He said his name was Jeff, and I told him I knew a place we could go.” He lowered his voice so that Kitty and Akoni couldn’t overhear us. “I started fooling around with him, and he was really into it. I got him to drive to the Ala Moana Mall and park in the back of the garage, behind a pillar. Then we, you know.”

  I smiled at him, encouragingly. Ahead of us, Kitty was moving slowly, and I could see that every time she touched her right leg to the ground her body shook in pain. Behind us, Saunders was swiveling his head left to right and back again, looking for the fire we were all sure was right on our tails.

  “I leaned over to, you know, suck him, and this piece of paper fell out of my back pocket,” Jimmy said. “It was this flyer I picked up at the rally at Waikiki Gateway Park on Monday. I didn’t even remember it was back there.”

  I didn’t have to ask—I knew it was the sketch of the sweaty guy we’d been handing out. The sketch of Jeff White.