Keeping close to the shadows, Karyn walked past the kitchen dumpsters, her heels reverberating on the concrete. She would jack a ride. A ride without pa.s.sengers would be better, but that might not be possible, she might have to kick a.s.s to haul a.s.s. Turning scenarios in her head as to how she was going to hookup with a set of wheels, Karyn heard a sudden squeal of rubber and she was caught in the headlights of a car moving in from behind her. She cursed. There was nothing this side of the clubhouse other than the staff only parking lot and it was too early for the help to be leaving.

Karyn didn"t look back, just kept on walking, like she owned the road. The car followed slow in her wake. Dribbling after her in first gear, like some playground pervert trailing the object of his obsession. Without warning, the car sped faster and pulled up in front of her, with a squeal of breaks. The car, a late model Cadillac Sedan in phantom gray looked like it had less than ten thousand miles on the clock.

Karyn pulled up short of the driver"s door, judging distances.

The pa.s.senger got out first, a thickset dude in a Government-issue windbreaker. He was holding a handgun across the top of the car in a shooting range stance that said he could pop off half a clip and make central ma.s.s with out so much as drawing a sweat.

"FBI. Hold it right there."

Karyn, partially raised her hands and said, "What you going to do, shoot me?"

The driver popped his door, and began to get out. He looked nasty like he had been chewing over some kind of deep held resentment. As he swung his feet onto the concrete, he grunted with the exertion and raised himself out of his seat with difficulty-five-eleven and pushing two fifty, the driver was in shameful shape for a Federal Agent.

"You need a hand there big guy?" asked Karyn.

"Hey, shut up, don"t you say nothing,"

snapped Mr. Target practice, pointing the gun at her head for emphasis.

It was a play Karyn had planned from the minute she heard the engine snap to life behind her. She dipped low and spun a fast scything kick below the level of the driver"s side door. The impact caused the driver to stumble back against the roof of the car. Catching his spine on the roof edge, he cursed and struggled to regain his balance, but too late-Karyn shoulder charged the door, sandwiching the driver between the heavy swinging door and the rim of the interior. The driver flapped and cursed, his chubby arms trying desperately to do three things at once.

The triggerman popped off two quick shots, then two more. But Karyn stayed low, beneath the edge of the roof. "What the h.e.l.l you doing Lou, get a hold of her already would you?" called the shooter. Karyn rose up fast, caught the driver hard under the chin with the heel of her hand, snapping his neck back so hard it impacted the roof of the car, with a heavy metallic thud.

It was the shooters turn to curse now.

Dipping down, Karyn heard his feet coming around the hood before she saw him. It was the only move he could make, and it was a bad one.

Before the shooter had chance to reach the offside headlamp Karyn rose up once again. This time, she swung the drivers door wide, allowing Lou the wheelman to slump outwards over the top of the door. She pressed in behind him, her Sig Sauer held shoulder high. As the shooter rounded the edge of the car he was presented with the sight of his partner hanging dazed across the door.

The shooter didn"t know what to do, but he had his gun raised, so Karyn took him out anyway, popped him once in the upper thigh at close range. The bullet swung him off balance. He fell hard against the hood of the car squawking louder than a rainforest parrot. Karyn stayed hidden behind the driver, her forearm locked around his neck to keep him upright against the door.

"Unless you want me to blow the top of your ugly looking head off you might want to let go of the gun slow and easy," said Karyn.

"You shot me in the G.o.dd.a.m.n leg, crippled me like as not," whined the shooter, his voice thin and reedy as he stared accusingly across the hood, with wide fearful eyes.

Karyn kept a steady aim at the shooter"s head. In a righteous world this guy would be dead already, clipped down to the pavement as a reward for thinking he could kill her. Karyn didn"t like that kind of arrogance. The only thing that was keeping this goon alive right now was Jack Senegar and his warning words, No collateral damage to local law enforcement.

Karyn waited, then waited some more. Every instinct she had telling her she should waste this guy and now. She kept the gun steady, said, "Throw it down and you walk away-or not. Your choice."

She could see the moves telegraphed loud and clear in those greedy little eyes of his. It was no big thing. So when the shooter slipped quickly away below the edge of the hood and let off a fusillade of shots from beneath the car it was no surprise to Karyn. The whining little punk couldn"t have broadcast his next move any louder if he had tried. No doubt the creep thought he would catch her in the ankles with a bullet, by way of payback.

Karyn wasn"t worried. She released the dazed driver, let him sag to the floor, then vaulted effortlessly across the hood of the car, catching the horrified gunman hard in the face with the heel of her shoe. He sprawled sideways, making a sick dead noise as his gun trickled helplessly though his fingers. He tried to right himself to fight back, but it was too late, Karyn was on top of him, pounding him repeatedly in the face with the b.u.t.t of her automatic.

She kept hitting him again and again, until, b.l.o.o.d.y and lifeless he impacted the cold hard concrete and stayed there, with a lasting sense of finality. She took only a fraction of a second to admire her handiwork, before rising quickly and getting behind the wheel of the Cadillac. There were no emotions, no sense of compa.s.sion or regret. She was just doing her job, plain and simple. Nothing and no one could stop her now. Not laws, not men of violence and certainly not the dystopian dreams of some boy-like billionaire.

26.

Mauna Loa volcano, Big Island, Hawaii Keo stood on the north side of the Mauna Loa volcano and looked down. Over nine miles below, the barren volcanic slopes disappeared into the morning mist shrouding the Northeastern rift valley. Up this high, the air was thin, so thin it hardly counted as air at all. Keo was a man of science, professor of environmental research at Mauna Loa Observatory. He knew that the physiological effects of working at such alt.i.tudes included diminished inspiratory oxygen pressure, a syndrome known as hypoxemia which caused headache, fatigue, nausea and dizziness- sometimes even death. But Keo was also a spiritual man, as he surveyed the endless rolling volcanic landscape, he had no doubt that the elemental energies of the spirit ancestors were watching over his affairs. He believed also, that the ancient omniscient G.o.ds governed the natural world in its entirety: Papahnaumoku the earth mother and Wakea the sky father. Living in such a place as this, there could be no doubt that the spirits governed the land. There were those who believed that the sickness brought on by the great alt.i.tude at the summit of Mauna Loa was a form of demonic possession-perhaps the spirit of Pele, G.o.ddess of fire, known to many as she who shapes the land. Keo rarely spoke of such spiritual matters to his fellow staffers; whilst they were most often respectful of Native Hawaiian beliefs, they regarded such stories as nothing more than primitive legends. But Keo knew different. A professor of Volcanology and world renowned authority on plate tectonics, he had spent enough time in the presence of awe inspiring geomorphic phenomena to know that there was much more than scientific princ.i.p.als involved in their genesis.

As Keo looked west, the bitter chill of morning was accentuated by a relentless wind, howling in over the top of the mountain. He snuggled into his goose down parka and looked towards the horizon. There, swimming through the cloud base like an emergent whale, he could see the steaming peak of Klauea, the most active volcano in the whole of Hawaii, if not the world. How beautiful it was in the morning light and yet there was something more to this smoldering giant, something lonely and threatening, an unspoken curse that hung over the mountain, as secretive and impenetrable as the broiling volcanic clouds that crowded the land.

Life in these mountains was hard and dangerous. To many, such a solitary existence would be unendurable. The adversity of such an environment, combined with the isolation, had the power to drive men mad. Some might say it was the alt.i.tude, combined with lack of human contact. But Keo knew otherwise. The power of the elementals was strong here-evil spirits released from the bowels of the earth stalked the land with impunity, biding their time, so they might s.n.a.t.c.h an unwary soul and move into the world of man.

Looking out through his binoculars, towards highway eleven and the Kau desert now, Keo observed the complex. Situated just shy of the Klauea larva field, on the very edge of the Hilina fault, the complex looked innocuous enough, almost like an out of town industrial facility, or some kind of sprawling storage depot for an opencast mining operation. But Keo wasn"t concerned by what he could see. He was worried by what he couldn"t see-stretching down, deep inside the earth like the poisonous tendrils of some monstrous ocean dwelling creature, sucking the life from the living rock, like a giant industrial parasite.

To Keo the five great volcanoes of Hawaii were as sacred as any ancestor. But the great Halemaumau crater of Klauea was the most sacred of all, because the flaming caldera of this, the most dangerous mountain in the world, was considered by the people of Hawaii to be the home of Pele G.o.ddess of fire. Surely such an unwarranted intrusion into the kingdom of the G.o.ddess would raise her ire? What right did these Haole outsiders have to drain the life-blood of the island, so they might harness it for their own selfish needs?

As he stood brooding on the lonely mountainside, wondering how the vengeance of the G.o.ddess would inevitably manifest itself, Keo noticed a lone SUV bouncing up the unsurfaced approach road. As it came, the merciless wind caught hold of the vehicles dusty slipstream and carried it away over the blackened lavascape towards the smoldering home of the G.o.ddess.

Pele G.o.ddess of wind and fire; sorceress of the heavens; thrower of lightning bolts; shaper of the sacred land-she was watching-waiting to pa.s.s her terrible judgment, of that there was no doubt.

Keo turned, watching as the dusty truck made its approach. It wasn"t often that visitors came this far up the mountain; both determination and fort.i.tude were needed to make it this high, and even then, such attributes weren"t always enough. A special permit was required to gain access to the summit, and knowledge of the combination to the lower gate. This was no place for sightseers, only the most committed hikers made it this far and when they arrived, they had to be prepared for anything-extreme weather, punishing terrain and mountain spirits, waiting in readiness to s.n.a.t.c.h the unwary.

As the truck pulled alongside him, Keo recognized with displeasure the man sitting behind the wheel. Ted Congo was a government man, but only in the smallest sense of the word. There was something unpleasant about Congo-an air of superiority, an disrespectful inflection in his speech, but worst of all there was his att.i.tude. Congo was an unpleasant man, devoid of spirituality and with no understanding or interest in the world of science. All he seemed to care about was advancing the interests of the political cla.s.s and their objectionable corporate paymasters. No doubt this visit was connected in some way with Governor Geryon. It hardly seemed possible that the governor was dead now, murdered they said, in a sordid s.e.x scandal-how horrible. Keo let the binoculars dangle around his neck; watching silently as the truck door opened and Congo leapt out with a broad grin spread wide across his face.

"Keo. Up bright and early as usual I see." Congo held out his hand.

Keo raised his knuckles reluctantly, for a fist b.u.mp greeting.

Congo look disappointed, but touched knuckles anyway, "You going gangster on me professor?"

Keo frowned. "What do you want Congo?" "I brought an invitation to you brother, that"s all. A thank you for all the hard work you do for us here on the Island."

"Nice of you, I am sure, but the work I do here is for the Federal Government."

"The Federal Government?" said Congo with a smile. "Of course, you work for the Federal Government professor. What I am talking about is your cooperation in the much needed energy project we have been working on-in conjunction with our friends the Tao Corporation."

"They aren"t my friends Congo, neither are they friends of the Island. You mark my words, this geothermal daydream will have environmental implications we can only guess of."

Ted Congo gave professor Keo a crafty look that might easily have been interpreted as empathy. He took a breath, then looked out over the valley towards the distant slopes of Klauea. "You are right professor, no doubt about it. I am a believer and my enthusiasm shines out because of that. But you are too modest when you deny the nature of your friendship with the Tao Corporation, because as we both know, you"re as deeply involved with our friends as anyone on the Island."

Keo gave Congo a wary look, but said nothing.

Ted Congo turned away from the majestic wind swept view and said, "You thought I didn"t know, about the generous donations Mr. Tao made to that little foundation of yours?"

"A charitable educational foundation,"

added professor Keo.

Congo paused, let the smile fade slowly, then said in a hard voice, "What ever the h.e.l.l you want to call it, you are on the payroll professor.

Which means you take orders like everybody else." "I don"t know where you get your information Congo, but I can tell you right now that I will not compromise my role here in order to cater to the whims of government house. Nor will I suffer the intolerable interference of some corporate sponsor in my role as the head of this vital public inst.i.tution."

"Nice speech professor. But you are forgetting one vital piece of information: You are bought and paid for already. Now, you might want to kick and scream about that, but you should have thought long and hard before you got onboard with this little enterprise of ours, shouldn"t you?" "I made no promises of any kind to anyone, and I will be d.a.m.ned if I will suffer your impertinence Congo. If you do not like my position you and your friends can go to h.e.l.l."

Congo sucked breath. "Harsh words professor, but you are already half way to h.e.l.l yourself, aren"t you?"

"I know what you are driving at Congo, and I don"t like it-it is as though you are insinuating there has been some kind of wrong doing on my

part."

"Listen to me, you smart mouthed p.r.i.c.k.

You got your payola, now it"s time to do as you are told. You don"t like it-that is your tough s.h.i.t.

Think hard about all that private cash you can siphon off from that bulls.h.i.t foundation of yours."

Keo opened his mouth to respond, but Ted Congo held up his hand. "Here"s what is going to happen Professor-when Mr. Tao invited you and your staff to the little soiree he is having, he meant for everyone to attend, including yourself." "But I couldn"t possibly attend. The observatory needs constant supervision. I couldn"t leave, even for a few hours-not when I am the only person here."

"I knew you would say that."

"You did?"

"Yeah, Mr. Tao asked me to come up here and invite you personally. He gave me a whole bunch of yap about your work and how excited he would be to see you tonight. But I told him you wouldn"t come. I told him you were a man of integrity who would stay at your post no matter what, but he just wouldn"t believe me would he?" "I am sorry you have had a wasted journey Congo. Please tell Mr. Tao that we could meet on some other, more convenient occasion."

Ted Congo nodded. Then looked out towards the black slopes of Klauea and said, "It is quite some view from up here, so high you can see the earth bend, almost."

Keo nodded. "This is a deeply spiritual place. It needs to be protected."

"I hear that if you look out over the top of this big old hill you can see a black ocean in the heart of the mountain."

"The caldera, Moku`aweoweo, or Moku, as it is known, is a hardened lake of lava over a mile wide and four miles long. That is why they call this place Mauna Loa, it means Long Mountain." "No s.h.i.t, a black lake?"

"It certainly looks like a lake-You haven"t seen it?"

"Never. Not in all the time I have lived here.

I was born and raised in Texas."

"Then I must show you-since you have come this far."

"Oh, I dunno professor. I know how busy you are and all. I wouldn"t like to keep you from your work, in case you get all uppity and decide to set me straight again."

Professor Keo said, "I am sorry about that.

But I appreciate your understanding." He turned, looked towards the top of the black lavascape and said, "I know a short cut, it is a strenuous climb, but much quicker than anything you will read about in the tourist guides."

"I can"t say I have read any tourist guides professor. But I know that this mountain can be dangerous, if you stray from the trails-all kinds of brittle roofed lava caverns just waiting for a man"s footfall so they can swallow him up."

"You have nothing to fear if you stay close to me. I am well acquainted with the topography of this mountain, and many others besides." Ted Congo looked upwards to the blackened ridge line, "You say it won"t take long to get up there? It looks mighty high to me."

"Hardly any time. If we start now we can be there and back in time for breakfast."

"Breakfast? Why that"s real nice of you to even suggest it Professor." Congo turned up the collar on his jacket, and followed the professor. As they headed upwards together, across the lava field, their boots crunched into the razor shards of a violent, flame-blackened past, reaching back a thousand years.

27.

The Pacific Gunshots coming rapid fire now. Science Officer Kellerman eased down the metal walled corridor into the bowels of the Nautilus, her heart beating out of her chest, as pure unadulterated terror filled every part of her being. She couldn"t remember which room exactly the L/E chest was in. Why in the h.e.l.l did everything on this d.a.m.n ship have a stupid acronym name anyway? Law enforcement chest-why did they call it that? It just didn"t make any sense. It was a d.a.m.n gun cabinet wasn"t it?

Edging along the wall, she saw the bloodstains on her hands. So much blood everywhere-all over her clothes her face and her hair too. She could taste the blood, hard and metallic on her tongue. Panicked, her mind raced away, back to Long Beach, California and her tiny little walk up flat on Atlantic and Broadway, real close to the East Village Arts Park. If she were home now what would she do? Take a long shower, scrub away the filth and the gore. Then settle down on her over-stuffed couch and watch black and white movies on TCM channel. Then order in Chinese food and drink Chardonnay until she nodded off to the rea.s.suring voices of Bogart and Bacall.

The dream seemed so distant, so divorced from this new nightmare reality. Would it ever be possible to return to such a time? She should have listened to her parents and taken the safe research job at MIT and married into the college faculty. What would those academics think of her now?

Then, there were the civilized suburban friends of her mother and father"s acquaintance- how, if she ever saw them again, would she explain this episode away on her social resume? The most exciting thing that had ever happened to her before now was the time she fell overboard, on her maiden voyage, drifted in the wake of the boat until she couldn"t see the ship for the ocean swell rising all around her. It was easy to imagine at that time that she would never see land again. Then as now, every careless thought she had ever had about her easy going life ash.o.r.e flashed before her, like a time slip TiVO machine, spewing random images so fast her mind could hardly grasp their meaning.

But things were different now. She had just killed a man. Smashed his skull in with a fire extinguisher for G.o.d"s sake. She couldn"t remember the moment she picked it up. She was so obsessively focused as on Captain alvares" plight. She had just reached out instinctively and grabbed the first weapon she could find. Now, she had crossed the line, entered in to new and unknown territory. How could she face any of those people from the old times, knowing she had just killed a man in the most brutal way imaginable?

Nausea welled up within her, rising and falling like the soft rolling motion of the ship. She was going to puke, she just knew it-throw her guts all over the floor like some kind of pathetic little crybaby. What would her macho cla.s.smates at the Academy say if they could see her weakness now? Kellerman felt herself stiffen, a growl of anguish rising within her. To h.e.l.l with what those misogynists thought. Dime to a dollar none of those creeps had bashed a man"s head in with the blunt end of a fire extinguisher. This was the very reason she had come to sea wasn"t it? To push forward the parameters of science and push back the old s.e.xist ideas about just what exactly a woman could achieve. Kellerman swallowed down the nausea and pressed on. She would show them-all of them-the doubters who had thrown limits on her career at every turn. She hadn"t gotten this far by quitting, and the whole world could go to h.e.l.l if they though she was going to throw down and walk away now. This wasn"t a throw down moment- trapped deep in the bowels of a ship a thousand miles from the nearest land and surrounded by gun wielding maniacs, there would be no walking away, she had to stand fast and make her play, show the entire world what she was made of.

Hurrying faster now, down the thin, metal corridor, Kellerman took hold of her spinning thoughts and closed her eyes. As the turbulent images of the past careened away, she suddenly remembered that the L/E chest was located on the wall next to the captain"s cabin. It was almost inconceivable that such a fact could have escaped her, but she had never had the need, or the relevant orders to break out a weapon before. What the h.e.l.l would she do with all those guns anyway? She couldn"t fight off those skeletal maniacs from the Korean ship by herself, could she? They were hardened criminals most likely-or soldiers, with years of military training behind them-they certainly looked like they knew what they were doing with their weapons when they stormed aboard the ship.

Kellerman looked up at the grey metal ceiling, covered in a network of pipes and cables.

From the deck above there came, the sound of gunfire and scampering feet. They were coming. Rounding up the crew now, shooting anyone who put up a fight. How long would it be, before they came below decks, their machine guns, blazing- hosing down every narrow corridor in a hail of bullets? Her mouth went dry, those belts the men were wearing-they probably had explosives- hand grenades too. What would they do when they found she had killed their inside man? Torture her, rape her, or murder her-carve her up with a hail of gunfire, as soon as they got sight of her? Kellerman listened, c.o.c.king her head to one side to hear any further sound of movement. Nothing. An aching silence accentuated by the slow rise and fall of the becalmed ship. Suddenly, directly above her, the sound of hard, guttural commands, given in a foreign tongue-then, more gunshots, followed by the harrowing, pitiful screams of a dying human-a h.e.l.lish cacophony that chilled her flesh to the bone.

Kellerman crept forwards, hardly daring to breathe. Any minute they would come. She had to get the guns, like Captain alvares had told her. But what would she do when she got them? She couldn"t carry all of them, nor could she fire more than one at a time. Perhaps she could hide them, or disable them somehow, so the hijackers couldn"t use them-strip out the bolts and firing pins, that way the guns would be no use to anyone. That would stop those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from using American weapons to kill more Americans.

As she reached the crew"s quarters, the gunshots above were sounding out rapid fire. Perhaps they wanted to kill everyone-butcher the whole crew and cast the ship adrift on the ocean currents, to send some kind of sick message to the Government? Terrorists were capable of anything. There was no humanity left anymore; no kind of deviant behavior they wouldn"t consider to promote their sick ideas. She had to get a weapon and fast. When they came down the gangway, she would have a gun in her hands, no doubt they would kill her-but she would hurt them first, blast a hole in every ugly little face that came running towards her.

As she reached the L/E cabinet Kellerman saw it was locked, held fast with a thick metal hasp and a giant industrial padlock that looked like it would need a C-4 charge to pop it off. Perhaps she could use bolt cutters, but where in the h.e.l.l would she find those, downstairs in Buchanan"s little kingdom perhaps? But there was no time. The hijackers would be upon her any moment-and she was totally defenseless. What in the h.e.l.l was she going to do?