Don Pendleton - Pacific Creed

Koa’s brow bunched as though he was getting a headache. “Don’t call me that.”

“It’s our cover. Get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

“You want the grease gun or the kidney-buster?”

Koa nodded at the old Ithaca 12-gauge riot gun. “I’ll take the shotgun. I qualified expert on those. Not that model, but how much different can it be?” Koa warily eyed the ancient piece of ordnance on the coffee table next to the 12 gauge. “Those? Man, back when I was in this man’s army, the only people who were issued those were tankers or truckers, because they never expected to use them.”

Bolan put down his pistol and took up the antique

M-3 submachine gun, which did bear a striking resemblance to a mechanic’s grease gun. It was also inaccurate, unwieldy and notoriously unreliable under field conditions. It wouldn’t have been in Bolan’s top five hundred choices for armament, but if you had to defend a Hawaiian bungalow on the wrong side of town, the men who kicked down the door were in for a very nasty surprise.

“Pakuz,” as the locals called it, was a suburb of Wailuku Town. It had a straight shot to Main Street but the foreclosed bungalow the CIA had acquired abutted the foothills. It was just slightly off the beaten track and left several escape routes open. Pakuz was right next to and half the size of Happy Valley and, like the aforementioned and ironically named area, was a hotbed of crime and violence. If Hawaii really was spawning terrorist cells then any economically depressed areas could be hothouses where the revolution’s foot soldiers would be nurtured and grown.

“What did you do with the revolvers?” Bolan asked.

Bolan had requested some backup weapons in case they got arrested or had to hand over their weapons. The CIA had come up with four 4-inch Smith & Wesson Military and Police .38s of dubious vintage.

Koa slid shells into the Ithaca. “Put one in a waterproof bag in the toilet tank. Buried two in the backyard next to the banana tree.” He nodded at Hu. “The fourth one I gave to her.”

“Pegarella Hu, CIA agent, groomer…” Hu grinned. “Gun moll.”

Someone banged on the door as if he was about to knock it off its hinges. “Koa!” Tino roared. “Makaha!”

Bolan rose and tucked his pistol into the back of his waistband. Koa took up his shotgun and stepped to one side to give himself a lane of fire down the tiny hallway. Bolan opened the door and found himself staring down the two men he had delivered beat-downs to in the past twenty-four hours. Both Tino and the man-mountain whose name Bolan didn’t know stood in front of him on the landing. A third man—a thin-as-a-whip Polynesian—stood scowling by the driver’s door of a red VW van. Tino grinned past the bandaged bridge of his nose. “Aloha!”

“Aloha, Tino,” Bolan said. “You wanna come in? We got beer and chicken.”

“No, brah.” Tino shook his head. “Bring your grind. You and Koa are coming with us. You got people you need to meet. People who want to meet you.”

The Lua master nodded. It had been dark on the streets of Chinatown, and Bolan had been blond, with a totally different voice, demeanor and complexion and wearing a uniform. If this was the big fat kill, the Hawaiian and the Samoan were hiding it with the skill of trained intelligence agents. “Hey, Koa!” Bolan called. “Tino says we gotta go!”

“I wanna come with!” Hu called out.

The thin man by the van spoke for the first time. “The bitch stays.”

Hu stopped short of hissing like a cat. Bolan muttered a low “Hey, Tino?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Prince Charming?”

Tino made an amused noise and answered softly. “Best you don’t ask a lot of questions, Makaha. Not yet, anyway.”

“Got it.”

Koa came to the door sans shotgun and holding a six-pack and a bucket of chicken. He called back over his shoulder to Hu, “Don’t know when we’ll be back!”

The temperature in the bungalow dropped precipitously. “Whatever…”

* * *

The van bucked and bumped through the darkened back roads. Bolan hadn’t known there was such a thing as angry Hawaiian rap music, but Tino blared it loud enough to wake the dead. They had driven out of Happy Valley and entered state forestland. Bolan knew they were no longer traveling on state-maintained roads. Leaves and branches scraped the sides of the van. The forest formed a thick, sheltering canopy above when it wasn’t so low it scratched the roof. This was a smugglers road, most likely barely maintained by the local marijuana growers. Tino appeared to know the route like the back of his hand.

He killed the lights and spent the next ten minutes driving through the pitch black seemingly led by sense of smell. The white-knuckle ride ended as the van broke into a clearing and Tino brought the VW van to a halt beneath the stars. “We’re here.”

The Lua master turned around in the shotgun seat and held out his good hand. “The guns, bruddahs.”

Bolan smiled in the moonlight coming through the windows. “You can tell?”

“I don’t see everything, Makaha—” the Lua master smiled back “—but you’d be surprised what I do notice.”

Bolan withdrew his .45. He gave it 50/50 they’d been compromised the minute the Lua master had seen him in Melika’s bar. The soldier rolled the dice and gave himself to fate as he handed over the pistol. “Man, I thought I was all slick and shit.”

“You’re not bad.” The Lua man shrugged his mighty shoulders. “But I’m better. The knife, too.”

Bolan shook his head ruefully and handed over his knife. Koa gave up his gun. “You’re not going to put sacks over our heads and walk us into the volcano, are you?”

The thin man spoke. He sat in the backseat by himself, and Bolan had felt his eyes and his gun pointing at his back the entire ride. “We wouldn’t drop you in the volcano. But would you jump in if you were told?”

Koa met the thin man’s stare. “You know? I had just about enough of being told when I was in the army.”

The Lua man spoke quietly. “Would you jump in if you were asked, Koa?”

Bolan matched the man’s tone. “I would, if the right man asked me. For the right reason.”

Tino and the Lua master both nodded at the sagacity of Bolan’s words.

“What he said,” Koa agreed.

The Lua man got out and slid open the VW’s cabin door. “Then come out.”

Bolan stepped into the Hawaiian night. He still had his phone and his bare hands, which was far more armament than most would suspect. But they wouldn’t save him from a bullet in the back.

The Lua master nodded. “Follow me.”

Bolan and Koa followed as Tino and the thin man took their six. They walked out of the clearing into the darkness. The Lua man was barely discernible but he moved unerringly down a clearly cut and maintained path. Soon Bolan both smelled and heard the Pacific. They came to a clearing about the size of a large recreational vehicle. Overhead military camouflage netting stretched to form a canopy thickly interwoven with the boughs of overhanging trees. A pair of red military emergency lights lit the forest encampment. Solar panels stacked to one side told Bolan the camp was powered by batteries. It would give off little or no recognizable heat signatures to imaging satellites and there wouldn’t be any light leakage visible to passing aircraft. Nor would the red lights ruin the night vision of anyone in camp if they suddenly went lights off.

It was a very professional setup.

Three sawhorse and plank tables were piled with very suspicious-looking, four-foot-long military crates. The Lua master, Tino and the thin man waited. Bolan and Koa stepped forward. Bolan unboxed a rifle. It appeared to be a 1980s or ’90s vintage M-16 A2. He held up the weapon as if he were admiring it. Bolan had fought with this type of rifle many times. If it hadn’t been parkerized black, the rifle would have glittered with newness. The M-203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel was new, as well. There were no serial markings, which told the soldier it was most likely a Chinese or Philippine knock-off.