Don Pendleton - Pacific Creed

“Sweet,” Bolan proclaimed.

Koa racked the action on a rifle and peered through the sights. “Same model I learned on in basic.”

The Lua man nodded. “We need a lot more of them.”

Koa set the rifle on his shoulder. “I know a little something about smuggling. AKs would be a lot cheaper. Shit, they’re disappearing from Iraqi and Afghani inventory by the day, and for that matter the Russians and Chinese sell to anybody.”

Bolan knew the answer but kept his mouth shut. The weapons mimicked U.S. National Guard issue. A real insurgent force wanted the same weapons as their oppressor, so they could steal compatible parts, ammo and magazines. On a secondary note, until one of the weapons was taken from a captured or killed Hawaiian secessionist, the sight of them would send U.S. law enforcement scrambling to find out what military depot in the Islands was hemorrhaging storage guns. That would give the smugglers a few more moments of cover.

A few more moments might be all they needed. All evidence and Bolan’s hard-won instincts reaffirmed that something very bad was going to happen soon.

Bolan kept the frown off his face. If they added a few stolen military uniforms to the mix, the secessionists would be able to drive up to a Hawaiian military base as if they belonged and engage in some serious slaughter. “A lot more are going to cost a lot of money.” Bolan gazed meaningfully at the inland pot grower’s paradise. “Mary Jane going to pay for that?”

The Lua master went Island-style stone face. “How bad you want to know?”

Koa put down the weapon. “I trust you, and Uncle Aikane. Whatever it is, I’m down with it. All the way. Makaha?”

Bolan nodded slowly. “You got me out of Pennsylvania, back to my island and back to my ohana.” Everyone nodded at the all-encompassing Hawaiian word for family. Ohana meant family by blood or otherwise, friendship, as well as race. “If I don’t have your six by now, then you should have left me. You decide to jump in the volcano? I’ll jump in right next to you.”

“Good.” The Lua man nodded. “Good. Then follow me a little farther.” Bolan and Koa walked into the nearly pitch black once more. The ocean breeze began to blow stiffly in their faces. They broke out into starlight and found themselves on a cliff. The Lua man spoke over his shoulder as he vanished through a cleft in the rock. “Careful.”

Bolan climbed down ancient steps cut into the lava rock. The Pacific thundered and crashed against the cliffs below. Happy Valley and Wailuku were close to the beach, but their shores were not tourist destinations. The locals were not particularly friendly, and the rip tides and undertows made surfing and swimming a suicidal proposition. The rest of the coastline was a series of jagged lava cliffs carved by eons of tidal surges.

Bolan knew from experience that lava eruptions and the action of the ocean often meant caves.

The steps were so steep they almost became a ladder, and then the ladder turned into a lava chimney. The Lua master’s voice spoke from below. “Six more feet, brah.” Bolan clambered down into the blackness. His bottom foot found empty air and a huge hand caught his ankle. “Just drop.”

Bolan dropped and bent his knees as he hit soft sand. He found himself in a cave lit by a red emergency light, with the roar of the surf outside. The soldier grinned at the Lua man guilelessly. “You did that climb one-handed?”

The man made a pleased grunt. “Been doing it since I was six, bruddah.”

Bolan knew he was on Hawaiian Holy Ground. The muted sound of feminine fear and misery coming from the gloom told him Hawaiian Holy Ground had been violated.

Koa dropped down, followed by Tino and the thin man. Bolan kept an exhilarated look on his face as Ferret-face came hobbling out of the dark on crutches with his hatchet jaw set in an orthodontic brace. If the big kill was going to come, it was going to come now, and his bundled body would be consigned to the surf outside.

Tino spoke happily to Ferret-face. “They’re in! All the way!”

The thin man spoke. “We’re gonna see.”

Ferret-face turned and crutched awkwardly through the sand back the way he’d come. The thin man took up an electric lantern and turned it on. Bolan saw a pair of small boats parked in the sand and more sawhorse tables laden with boxes and crates. Beside solar panels stacked for the night the cave was equipped with a pair of small gas-powered generators and fuel drums. A threesome of small shipping containers that had been dragged in with obvious effort dominated the back of the cave. Two of them had been converted into living quarters.

The group stopped beside a little side cave formed by a pocket of superheated gas eons ago.

Bolan kept his thoughts off his face as he gazed upon the battered, terrified women weeping and squinting blindly into the LED glare of the lantern. Bolan counted seven women. Most of them were blonde and in their teens and they cringed and clutched each other with their bound hands. One woman might have been in her forties, with somewhat obvious surgical enhancements to her face and body. She glared at Bolan and company in open defiance despite a black eye. Tino’s huge meat hook slammed onto Bolan’s shoulder and gave it a meaningful squeeze. “This is a pass-fail situation, brah.”

The soldier knew what was expected of him. He pointed at the older one. “Her.”

“Nice choice!” Tino laughed. “No one misses a slice from a cut loaf!”

The men in the cave laughed as though this was the height of humor.

Bolan let some ugliness come into his voice. “I just want to wipe that look off her face.”

More laughs followed. The woman continued to glare but tears spilled down her face. She yipped as Bolan seized her by the neck and propelled her across the sand toward one of the containers to the cheers of the other men.

Chapter 4

Mack Bolan slung his chosen woman into the container and slammed the door shut behind them. Tino whooped. A part of Bolan had been trying to build some kind of empathy for the Samoan street criminal. Tino’s cavalier attitude toward sexual slavery had just soured the relationship. The woman cringed as Bolan took out his phone and hit the Farm-built electronic surveillance app. She was still defiant. “Screw you, asshole!”

Bolan grinned and hit the camera app. His phone flashed as he walked around the woman and took pictures of her. At the same time, the camera application was firing off infrared lasers looking for camera lenses and the electronic countermeasures probed for bugs. Bolan’s phone flashed an extra time. That told him the phone had detected nothing. He suspected that if he was being watched, the cavalry would have hit the container hard and told him no flash photography of the fun was allowed. Bolan sent the woman’s picture to the Farm and left the audio on for Kurtzman. “What’s your name?”

“Screw you.”

“And what do your friends call you?”

She sobbed. “Becca.”

“Rebecca?”

“Why do you care?”

Bolan laughed loud and spoke low. “Because I’m going to get you out of here.”

Becca stared at Bolan with something as dangerous as hope. “You mean that?”

“You have two ways out of here. Neither of them is good.”

Becca’s collagen-enhanced lips twisted. Bolan suspected Becca might be or had been a pro. She had seen bad times and bad things. A slave-cave below the water line in Hawaii with a one-way ticket to hell was pushing her limits. A terrible, fragile smile of defiance crossed Becca’s face. “Lay it on me, Island boy.”

“I’m not from the Islands.” Bolan forked his fingers at his arctic-blue orbs. “Look in these eyes.”

Becca stared back in surprise. “You’re no choir boy.” A short, broken laugh forced itself out of Becca. “But you’re a Boy Scout, aren’t you?”