Pele's Fire

“Right. If you need anything…”

“Not yet. They threw a welcome party for me, and we got to schmooze a bit. I’d like to pay them back with a surprise.”

Brognola reckoned that meant there’d be news on CNN, within the next few hours. How many dead so far? He’d have to wait and see.

“I’ll be here if you need me, anytime,” Brognola said.

“I’m counting on it,” Bolan said, and broke the link on his end.

Brognola checked the nearest clock and found he didn’t have to be awake and on the move for three more hours yet. Whether he could go back to sleep again, after the call, was anybody’s guess.

He shuffled to the kitchen, turned a small light on above the sink and took the makings for a cup of cocoa from the cupboard. It was too early for coffee, and he needed something that would calm him, not rev his overactive mind.

While he waited for the kettle to heat, Brognola thought about the intel Bolan had supplied in their brief conversation. First, the hostiles had been ready for him when he hit Oahu—or, perhaps more likely, they’d been trailing one or both of his contacts. In either case, there had been bloodshed that would have the cops and media on full alert. The weapon Brognola had managed to provide for Bolan on arrival came in handy, but it wouldn’t be sufficient for his needs as Bolan forged ahead with more elaborate plans.

The worst news, he supposed, was that the missing seamen had apparently been killed, not simply snatched for ransom by the terrorists of Pele’s Fire. Brognola had been half expecting it, but hoping for the best against his better judgment. Bolan couldn’t say with perfect certainty that they were dead, of course, but Brognola trusted his gut instinct and was prepared to write them off.

The question now was, why had they been killed?

If they were simply targets, handy stand-ins for the federal government Pele’s Fire despised, wouldn’t the killers crow about their triumph, claiming credit for the kills? Why would they make the sailors disappear, and then say nothing whatsoever that would link the snatch to Pele’s Fire?

It didn’t track, and Brognola had learned that when things didn’t track, most times it was because they didn’t fit.

His water boiled, and Brognola poured it into a mug with two liberal spoonfuls of powdered cocoa. While he stirred the creamy brew, he focused on the minds behind six murders, tried to crawl inside those twisted brains.

Or, viewed another way, if secrecy was critical, why grab six men at once, when it was sure to make a headline splash. Why not pick off one at a time, over a period of weeks and months, if you were simply looking for a body count?

“Because they had something in common,” Brognola said, talking to his cocoa and himself.

Now, all he had to do was find out what that common factor was.

Kuilei Cliffs Beach Park

WHILE COOPER WENT to make his phone call, Aolani turned to face Polunu, huddled in the farthest corner of the rental car’s backseat.

“Polunu, did you know we were being followed to the monument tonight?”

He gaped at her in horrified surprise. “You think I set that up? Man, they were after me. If I want to die sometime, I’ll go with pills, you know? Drift off to sleep and have an open casket at the funeral.”

“So, how’d they find us?” Aolani challenged him.

“I don’t know, damn it! Maybe they were tailing you. You ever stop and think of that? I never see you check the rearview when we’re driving. You could have a convoy on your ass and never know it.”

Aolani wondered whether that was true. But even if Polunu was correct, it still left one glaring question unanswered.

He got there first. “And anyway,” he said, “if they were trailing us, why wait to make the hit? We sat there at least fifteen minutes before your haole friend showed up. Then they came down on us. How do we know they didn’t follow him?”

Aolani didn’t believe that, for several reasons. First, although she’d had a meeting set up by her government contact with Cooper at the Royal Mausoleum, Aolani knew nothing else about the stranger who had saved her life tonight. She had no idea where he was coming from, the flight he had booked, or its arrival time. In short, she knew nothing about the man except his general description and his name—which, she suspected, had been snatched out of a grab bag for her benefit.

More to the point, Aolani had spoken of the meet to no one but Polunu, and she’d told him nothing but the time and place where they would meet an unnamed man to ask for help.

Aolani was not the one who’d blown the meet. Polunu, conversely, might have passed on what he knew to someone else.

But why?

He had deserted Pele’s Fire. His former comrades wanted him dead, likely after interrogating him with methods Aolani didn’t even want to think about.

Unless it was a setup all along.

Or, what if Polunu cut a deal to save himself? He could’ve called someone from Pele’s Fire and offered two fresh victims for the price of one. Aolani didn’t suppose that she was someone Joey Lanakila or the others gave a damn about; if so, they could’ve killed her anytime they wanted to in Honolulu. But an agent of the hated federal government, dispatched specifically to bring them down, might be a prize that could revoke a traitor’s death sentence.

“Polunu,” she said, with cold steel in her voice, “if I find out you set us up—”

“You’ll what?” he interrupted her. “Kill me? Lady, you’ll have to get in line, and there are a lot of cats in front of you who’ve done wet work before.”

“But they don’t have you, Polunu. I do.”

“Hey, you’re sounding like we’re married now. What happened to my free will, eh? I can walk out of this thing anytime I want to.”

And to prove his point, Polunu settled one hand on the inner handle of the door beside him.

“Go ahead,” she said, calling his bluff. “But think about it before you split. Where will you hide from your old friends in Pele’s Fire? Maybe in jail?”

“Jail! What the—”

“Face it, Polunu. You’ve already said enough to mark yourself as an accomplice on six counts of kidnapping and murder. Since the victims were active-duty military men, that makes it federal. And you could be judged an enemy combatant, now that I think about it. So, you have to ask yourself if you’ll be locked up in the Honolulu federal building, or if they’ll just ship you one-way to Guantanamo.”

“You’re tripping now,” Polunu said.

“Am I? You know what Pele’s Fire has done, and even if you don’t have all the details of their next big score, you’ve said enough to stand trial on your own, as an accessory before the fact. You could get twenty years for that alone. Of course, you’ll never serve the twenty.”

“No?”

“Smart money says Lanakila finds someone to take you out before you ever get to court. Sound possible?”

“Hey, man.” Polunu whipped his hand back from the door handle as it was red-hot. “I never said for sure that I was leaving. We’re just being hypocritical, you know?”

“The word you’re groping for is hypothetical,” Aolani corrected him.

“Whatever. Look, I’m doing all I can, okay?”

“So far, Polunu, it isn’t good enough.”

“I can’t tell what I don’t know, right? Your boy don’t want me making shit up for the hell of it, does he?”

“You got that right,” Bolan said, emerging from the darkness behind Aolani. She was startled, almost jumped out of her seat.

Cooper was as quiet as a cat, she thought. He also had a cat’s reflexes and the killer instinct of a jungle predator. She was embarrassed to admire him for those traits and turned her face away as he slid into the driver’s seat.