Don Pendleton: Pele's Fire

His companions fired, as well, the heavy shotgun blasts, the automatic rifle stuttering and Makani’s pistol.

Five seconds, maybe six, and it was over. Six young sailors were as old as they would ever be.

“All right,” Tommy said. “Put them in the cab. We’ll follow Benny out to Makapu’u and torch it there.” And as an afterthought he added, “Good work, my brothers. We are on our way.”

Leia Aolani was nervous. All right, she’d admit it—and who wouldn’t be, in the same circumstances? Still, she prided herself on maintaining a measure of cool, unlike some people she could mention.

The man seated beside her in the Datsun Maxima, for instance.

Mano Polunu wasn’t just nervous. He was twitching like someone about to collapse into a seizure. His head swiveled constantly, eyes scoping.

They sat parked outside the Royal Mausoleum State Monument’s wrought-iron fence, with gold crowns surmounting each fencepost. Inside the fence lay buried all but two of Hawaii’s ancient kings and queens, missing only King Lunalilo—who was planted at the Kawaiaha’o Church, in downtown Honolulu—and Kamehameha the Great, who’d been buried secretly in 1819, to prevent haole invaders from defiling his corpse.

All that death, and more to come.

But Aolani still thought they were on a mission for life.

Twitchy Polunu didn’t seem so sure.

“He’s late,” Polunu said, glancing at his watch for something like the third time in a minute. “I believe he’s late, don’t you?”

“The timing was approximate,” she once again reminded him. “He’s flying in from the mainland, remember. Could be flight delays, who knows? Then, once he’s on the ground, he has to get his bags and grab a rental car. Cut him some slack. We’re cool.”

“You think so, eh? We don’t even know who this guy is.”

“Polunu, I see the same things you see. Normal traffic on the street, and empty spaces in the parking lot. I don’t see any snipers in the bushes, and I don’t hear any bullets whistling around our heads.”

“You never hear the shot that kills you,” Polunu answered.

“Thanks for that, okay? Is it possible for you to chill out just a little? Turn the heebie-jeebies down a notch or two? For my sake?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll try,” he said. “It’s just that I keep thinking—”

“That they’ll find you. Right, I get it. And I grant you, it’s a real concern. That’s why we’re here, Polunu, remember? We need help to end this thing and keep you safe. To keep Hawaii safe.”

“But we’re exposed out here. You see that, right?”

“See it? I planned it, Polunu. But what I don’t see is anybody sneaking up to kill you.”

“Us,” he said, correcting her. “It’s not just me, now. You’re marked, too.”

That made Aolani shudder a bit, despite the warm evening. “All the more reason to follow through and finish this,” she replied. “If we don’t get it right the first time, we won’t have a second chance.”

“Because they’re killers.”

“Damn it, I know that!” she snapped at him. “Will you stop harping on the obvious?”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it, not even a little bit.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to traffic sounds and watching cars glide past on Nu’uanu Avenue. None turned into the parking lot. Why should they, since the mausoleum was closed for the night?

Aolani began to wonder about the other two cars in the lot, parked side by side, some twenty yards away. She’d driven past them when they entered, and both had seemed unoccupied, but there could be gunmen lying on the seats for all she knew.

Get real, she told herself.

Nobody could have known where she and Polunu had been going when they left her flat that evening, not unless he leaked the word himself. Unthinkable. He was afraid to show his face outside, much less invite his would-be killers to a meeting with the man who—Aolani hoped, at least—would stop their so-called revolution in its tracks.

“You want some gum?” she asked Polunu.

“No, thanks. It’ll make me more nervous.”

Aolani opened her purse and reached inside, touching the can of pepper spray that was wedged between her wallet and hairbrush. She felt a little better, knowing it was there—but not by much. It would offer no defense against a gun.

What did she really know about gunfighting anyway? Hell, or any kind of fighting, for that matter?

Whole lot of nothing, Aolani thought, and shut her purse.

“No gum?”

“Forgot I need to buy some,” she replied distractedly.

He’s not late, Aolani told herself. Allow for flight delays, airport security, slow baggage claim, a lineup for the rental car, the Honolulu traffic.

So, chill.

If the men who wanted Polunu dead knew where they were, she and her jittery companion would be toast by now.

Also, the odds against a random hit team cruising Honolulu’s streets and spotting them outside the Royal Mausoleum by accident were astronomical. Next to impossible, she thought.

Next to, but no guarantees.

The tension made her crave a cigarette, even though she’d quit smoking eighteen months ago.

Damn you, Polunu, she thought. If we get out of this alive, I just might murder you myself.

THERE IS NO “Five-O” in Hawaii. No Jack Lord with perfect hair. In fact, no state police by any name. Still, Bolan watched his speed as he drove into Honolulu on Kamehameha Highway, not wanting attention from a traffic cop, then switched up to Nimitz Highway for a while. He also watched his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t followed.

He thought about the contacts he’d been sent to meet and wished that he could fill in some of the blank spots that he’d found in their respective dossiers, which Hal Brognola had given to him. One was a revolutionary who had bailed out on his former comrades in Pele’s Fire, an island terrorist group, when the going got too rough for his aesthetic taste. His name was Mano Polunu. The other, Leia Aolani, was supposed to be “a nationalist home-rule moderate.” Polunu reached out to Aolani for help after his desertion, telling her Pele’s Fire was planning something big in the next few days. Aolani in turn reached out to a fellow moderate who had contacts in the FBI.

Both Aolani and Polunu, apparently, held strong views on the subject of Hawaii’s link to the United States. As Bolan understood the wrangle, which had carried on from sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a portion of Hawaii’s native Polynesian population wanted more emphasis on native culture and religion, more influence in the state government, physical secession from the U.S.A. or some combination of the former, as yet to be agreed upon.

As usual, whenever issues of the sort aroused strong feelings, there were armed extremists who would hear no voices and no viewpoints other than their own. Bolan had seen the same phenomenon in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Asia, Africa, Latin America and even in parts of the United States.

Get half a dozen zealots in a room, then hand them guns and watch the bloodletting begin. It never failed.

Hard times had come to the Aloha State, but Bolan hoped that he could stop the action short of an all-out catastrophe.

It didn’t trouble Bolan, going in without liaison to the FBI, Homeland Security or local law enforcement. All of them had jobs to do, but none were quite in Bolan’s line—or else, wouldn’t admit it, if they were.

Bolan required no writs or warrants, analyzed no evidence in antiseptic labs, reviewed no testimony.

And, in general, he took no prisoners.

As for the allies he had yet to meet, Bolan devoutly hoped that they could do their part, pull their own weight. He’d have enough to think about, without adopting any nursemaid’s chores along the way.