II
Kaneohe Marine Base on the Windward Side of Oahu is among the best kept and most squared-away of all Marine bases. Nothing is out of place. Absolutely nothing out of place. Lawns are mowed with white rocks precisely set around their borders. Everything is so freshly painted that the Hawaiian trade winds are filled with the aroma. There is not one pothole on any of the streets. A civilian had once asked him how the Marines keep their bases so clean and tidy. Arch had just laughed. The man could not understand just how tight the discipline and work ethic of a Marine organization really was. There was no hired help. The Marines worked all the time when not training, eating or sleeping. It was simply part of being in the Corps.
“Stop here. I don’t want you anywhere near the gate. Gimme your cell phone number and wait for my call. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this misunderstanding.” Arch climbed from the back of the slowing Bonneville without opening the door. He jumped down just as the behemoth came to a halt. Matisse scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
“You got my six?” Matisse asked.
Arch locked eyes with the man. He reminded Arch of the character ‘Angel’ on Rockford, but even Angel had had some good traits. He nodded, and then turned to jog a half a mile to the Kaneohe main entrance.
At the gate, with no identification and in his disheveled state, it was little wonder the guards took him for some sort of interloper. He had to wait ten minutes for three Humvees to show up. That was no surprise. The cuffs and ankle chains were a shock, however. He said nothing, his anger overcoming every rational thought he could conjure up. They didn’t even remove the Ghost of Christmas past ornaments when he was safely tucked into a concrete and steel cell. It took hours for Virginia to show up. Frank, his former ‘partner’ was with her.
They entered with two civilians wearing suits. Arch sat tucked in against the corner farthest from the stainless steel sink and toilet. He looked at the four impassively. The two civilians removed all the cuffs and chains, and then existed without comment, leaving the three of them alone.
“I suppose you want to know what this is all about?” Virginia began.
Arch stared for a moment before speaking. “Get him out of here. Whatever you are up to his conduct cannot and will not be forgiven or forgotten.” No partner in a field operation ever abandoned his opposite number. That partner had to be the one person in the world who could be counted on. No matter what the mission Frank’s conduct was unforgivable, and Arch intended that all of his acquaintances still with the Agency know about it.
Virginia nodded to Frank, who then turned and left, casting a contrite look over his shoulder as he went.
“Why’d you have me come to you? Did you think I wanted to run one last mission for the Gipper, or what? I came to Oahu because I’ve been in love with you for years, and you know it. I did this mission for you because of that. I’ve no idea of what you can possibly say about this or even why you are still standing in front of me in this cell?”
“We needed you to gain the trust of Matisse, Ahi and their movement.”
Arch shook his head, the contusion on the side of it reminding him that he still needed some medical care.
“You were raised out here. You are both Haole and local. You can cross the cultural barriers. We can’t recruit from his faction of the Sovereignty Sons Movement. Your treatment had to be convincing.”
“To the point that I was knocked unconscious? With a contusion, double vision and the whole works that goes with Traumatic Brain Injury?” Arch muttered, his voice low but his tone scathing.
“This is a violent business, as you know. You’ve been a player for a long time and you know the risks, which were minimized in this case.” She moved closer to where he sat. He could see mid-thigh up her skirt from his position on the floor. Even with what had happened and hating it Arch still felt her animal attraction. “We need you, and only you, just as I do.” She knelt, cupped Arch’s chin and kissed him full on the lips. Standing and backing away she extended one hand. A plastic card was held between her fingers.
Arch took the card and examined it. It was a hotel key to a room at the Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore.
“We’re done here. You have to decide. Room is two seventeen and I’ll be there at seven tonight. You can go home or work with me on this. It’s your call.”
The door opened without her touching it and remained open. One of the civilian suits stepped inside, handed him a large grocery bag, and then departed leaving the steel door ajar.
Arch examined the contents of the bag. Polo shirt, Ralph Lauren shorts. Underpants, form fitting, and a set of Teva sandals were inside. Cash. About five hundred in twenties plus a Hawaii Driver’s License, which he did not rate, and a military I.D. card. Everything was in his size and the data on the I.D.s correct. Inside the pocket of the shorts was a throwaway cell phone.
Arch stepped out of the cell. The civilian duo was stationed outside the door.
“Showers?” he asked.
They both pointed down the hall.
Shark’s Cove on the North Shore near Sunset Beach has no sharks. Never did have any. Just a neat place of rough lave-reefed holes, just up from Waimea Bay. It’s only for looking at when the winter waves crash onto the rocks. Any entry into such waters would be near instantly fatal. Arch, Matisse and Ahi sat on the edge of the park overlooking the scene. People scrubbed up nearby at the only fresh water shower publicly available for miles.
“Tell me,” Arch said, breaking a silence punctuated only by breaking waves and the insistently hissing shower. “All of it. I’m the only thing keeping you alive. We can’t be friends without candor. Just because I have your six doesn’t mean we’re friends. And if we become friends it’ll probably only be because you don’t have any others.”
Matisse shifted uncomfortably. “You don’t seem to be doing too great in that area either,” he intoned. “Ahi, go look for sea shells on the beach.” Matisse pointed to a lone twenty-foot square patch of sand a couple of hundred yards away. He waited several minutes while the big islander made his way toward the sand.
“We’re taking Rabbit Island, off Bellows Beach. My people are digging in on the backside right now. We’re bringing in water and plenty of food for a long stay. Succession is what we plan, until the United States accepts our terms. And if they want to play rough then we’ll go public with the nuclear stuff or whatever it is.”
Arch rubbed his face, and then his hair. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “It’s called Secession, not succession,” he replied. “You’re taking Rabbit Island? How the hell do you expect to hold it? You can’t just occupy an island two miles offshore and stay there. It’ll never be allowed.”
“We got rifles. We got explosives. We got right on our side,” Matisse answered waving his hands before him like he was directing a symphony. “What the police got? Small boats and some zodiacs. Won’t last twenty minutes on the only small exposed beach there.”
“Oh, I love this,” Arch responded, laughing out loud. “Ah, I think you forgot about that little organization set up all over and behind Bellows. The United States Marine Corps, which has one simple mission in this world and it’s called amphibious landing and assault.”
“Nah, Brudda, da Marines are Federal. Rabbit Island is local. We got the comitatus working for us.”
“I can’t believe we might be friends. You are such an idiot. How can I save you from you? One phone call from the governor and you’ll have a thousand Marines all over that island. And your rifles and explosives will be like cap guns and fire crackers. Posse comitatus only applies if the governor doesn’t declare you a state of emergency. This friendship is going to be a very short one indeed.”
Arch watched Ahi on the beach below, working at something in the sand. The huge man was crawling around on hands and knees looking for seashells. Arch felt like he was living a bad Sesame Street script. His partner and Virginia were not what or who they claimed to be, not in Arc
h’s life, while his supposed new friends were completely ignorant idiots.
“They haven’t a clue,” Matisse pointed out, accentuating the phrase with one finger raised into the air. “Not one.”
“Gee, you don’t suppose they might be watching your idiot friends digging away on the backside of Rabbit Island with satellites, do you?”
Arch asked. “Virginia wants to know all about who everyone is. I’m surprised you’re not in Gitmo tied to the bars and listening to acid rock. She’s getting soft as she ages, but if she knows enough to tell me then she knows plenty about your operation on the island she didn’t reveal.”
Arch decided to mention nothing about his suspicions of Ahi. “Somebody’s behind all this, driving this and it’s not Virginia. Something big is going on or everyone wouldn’t be acting so screwy. Get your buddy out of the sand and take me to Turtle Bay Resort. Come back tomorrow morning at six. And stay the hell away from everyone in your sovereignty outfit. You’ve got a mole. Your people on the island are armed. They’re fair game. I said I’d watch your six. That’s the best I can do.”
It took fifteen minutes to get to the resort. Arch got out at the golf club parking lot a good distance from the front lobby doors. He didn’t want anyone to know he was staying there. He hadn’t even told Virginia when she’d slipped the room key to him that he was booked into the same hotel using a different identity. If she wanted to use all her power she might know anyway, but Arch was betting she didn’t really care. The woman was mission focused with little room for personal considerations.
Arch stopped at the expansive front desk to check out the hotel floor plan. When he checked it out he smiled at his good fortune. He was on the fourth floor in a cheap South facing room. Virginia’s room was directly across and two floors down facing east. Both rooms overlooked the tidal pool down below. Having stayed many times Arch had specifically asked for the cheaper view, as it was his favorite.
Arch took two hours to swim in the pool and lounge along the West shore of the resort. Waves, even though diminished in size for the summer, raged hypnotically close along the rocks on that side. Two Mai Tai drinks caused him no pain either. At six, he decided to call her room, using his cell.
She was in. Dinner would be at seven. Dinner would be at Ola, the beach restaurant where the chef was a wild man but a chef of the highest order. They would meet there supposedly for ease of parking, as Virginia remained under the impression he was coming in for the date. Arch dressed for the occasion. A lightweight Boss coat in dark blue, gray 120 trousers by Dunhill and an open Brioni white shirt. Sandals to soften and give a bit of island to the look. Coconut shampoo and conditioner by the resort. Hair brushed, not combed or gelled. He’d have preferred to simply toss on an Aloha shirt and keep the shorts but he knew Virginia would prefer more formal wear.
Arch stood on the edge of his small lanai waiting out the time and looking out as the sun began to set. Hawaii was close to the equator. The sun arose around six and went down around seven without much variation at all. He glanced over at where he knew Virginia’s room to be along the windows of the east wing, and was so surprised he instantly stepped back through his own open doors.
There were two men standing on her little lanai facing inward and obviously talking to someone inside. It was too far to identify them. By the time he unpacked his Leica binoculars the men were gone. It was disturbing, but no more. He was not totally sure he had the right room. And Virginia was in play. She was a busy woman and whatever the mission was she was working it. Arch was on a date. Virginia was making time for him. It was all he could expect. Or hope for, although deep inside his core still seethed with hurt and anger.
He left his room early, to avoid running into her in the main resort building. He took the long way around and arrived at the bar on the beach just outside Ola ten minutes early. Arch knew Virginia would be punctual to the second. It was one of her trademarks. Whatever the mission entailed it had already changed Arch’s beliefs, relationships and quite possibly his life.
III
Arch completely understood Virginia’s need to toss him from the room and get on her cell phone. The active career he’d only recently retired from demanded he understand and leave immediately after the short dinner and even shorter get together in her room. The mess of her room that they’d destroyed together seemed such a warm and inviting relief from the rest of Arch’s mostly cold universe.
“Might go over to Ola’s for a nightcap,” Arch said back to her, as she closed the door, cell phone already glued to one ear. He went up to his room to clean up and call it a night, although it was only nine o’clock. They hadn’t talked about he mission or what had happened to him during dinner or after. It was like either there was no real mission or they had been allowed a recess for personal time. He went back to his room to freshen up and change shirts, but couldn’t help checking out Virginia’s lanai one more time before he went.
Number 217 was brightly lit, Arch noted, but that wasn’t what drew him to peer out from inside his own darkened room with the Leica fifty millimeters. The two men had returned to her small outside lanai, standing as before, facing inward. The Leica’s brought both into sharp relief. Arch had never seen either man before. They wore casual trousers and aloha shirts. One man wore loafers while the other gave himself away by wearing hand-worked spit-shined shoes common only to elite elements of the military. He also wore white socks. Arch kept a pair of shoes just like them, always ready in little cloth bags at the front of his closet in Santa Fe, but would have rather been caught dead than wearing them with shorts and white socks. Virginia was back practicing her craft.
He focused the Leica binoculars on Ola Bar and Grill located just above the sand beyond the tidal pool area. There were few people around, although the place would remain open until midnight. Flambeau, the crazy chef, could be seen moving quickly about, wearing his bright white and spotless cotton coat. Arch smiled. He liked the expressive man. He decided to spend the rest of his waking hours at the bar, regardless of what Virginia decided. Being entertained by the chef’s outrageous cooking stories would be fun, no matter what, and his cooking was some of the best on the island.
Arch tossed the glasses on his bed and headed out.
There were only two ways to get to Ola from the main building. Both ways came together at the apex of a “Y” just before the restaurant entrance; the nexus of the “Y” was in the middle of a dark overhanging cluster of tree branches and dense tropical bushes. It was there they took him.
Some sort of heavy padded object struck Arch on the side of his head, stunning him to the point of collapse, although he never impacted onto the crushed coral lining the path. Strong arms grabbed and carried him away. The only thought that rose to the top of his semi-conscious mind was relief. He hadn’t been struck on the side of his head with the healing contusion he’d received from the earlier tree branch. His wrists and eyes were taped in seconds, as the men held him pinned against the side of big black rental car.
Instantly, he was hoisted into the air and plopped uncomfortably atop the spare tire in the car’s trunk. Arch tried to think through the pain and mark the vehicle’s passage as it pulled away.
He could feel the rental pass over the speed bumps built into the private road leading out of the resort. The car turned right onto Kam Highway. Arch began to count. He knew the team members who had him were pros. They were too fast and too well coordinated to be anything else. And no crew of robbers was dumb enough to penetrate deep into the body of a huge resort and simply cart away one man in the dark. The car would not speed to avoid police interference. The limit was forty-five on Kam Highway, which took about seventy seconds per mile. The Lincoln, or whatever full size car it was, turned after three hundred seconds, or about four miles by Arch’s count. He knew the area. They’d had to pass through one signal in front of the only grocery store on the North shore but it must have been green, as they hadn’t stopped. They were moving a short distance toward the
ocean just before Sunset Beach. There was only a short distance they could move before they’d be in the water. He tried to remember what was located along that part of the shore, other than super-expensive luxury homes. The car came to an abrupt stop.
The trunk popped and Arch was painfully pulled from the floor. He gave no resistance, simply trying to prevent more bruising by being banged about in his blind condition. He walked, guided by two men holding his elbows. Nobody talked. The men opened a door, took him through, flipped him around and sat him in some sort of wooden chair. He could hear the duct tape being stripped from a roll before it was used to tape his wrists to long flat handles protruding out from under them. Arch concluded that the chair was an outdoor Adirondack sort of thing.
“Sit there and shut up. Somebody wants to have a word with you,” a deep raspy voice stated flatly. The door slammed and the men were gone.
Arch wondered if the room was lit. They’d taped his right wrist bare, with the tape covering his skin, but his left wrist was taped over the cuff of the long sleeve shirt he’d chosen to ward off the cool trade winds from the ocean that swept through Ola’s open windows during evening hours. He could twist, turn and lever the wrist. He concluded, with his eyes still covered, that the room had to be dark or the men would never have made that mistake.
After only a few moments Arch was able to gently pull his left hand through the sleeve of his shirt, but he didn’t try to fully break free. He calculated that there were at least four men outside the closed door. Arch knew he was no match for them. He didn’t even know if they were armed, but had to assume so. He had to have more information about the shack he was in. He knew it was one of the few surfer shacks left on the expensive pristine shore. Why there were any left at all Arch never understood. Inexplicably some had survived the ravages of constant salt spray and onset of rapid development around them. Instead of trying to pull free from the chair Arch leaned forward so his face was close to his left hand, which he could move fairly easily. He worked the blinding tape over his eyes loose until he felt a small space break free between the tape and his left cheek. He needed some vision, although he could see nothing in the total darkness.
Down In The Valley Page 2
