have a second chase car,” Bolan told his driver. “If you’re not thinking of someplace we can take them, now’s the perfect time to start.”
2
With Aolani driving, Bolan had no opportunity to mark the streets they followed on their winding course. A few landmarks stuck in his mind, but he was focused on the chase cars that kept pace with Aolani’s Datsun, regardless of the rapid zigzag course she set.
“Where are we going?” Bolan called to Aolani from his place in the backseat.
“I’m not sure, yet,” she answered, her voice cracking from the strain.
“Come up with something,” he responded. “If the cops get in on this, we’re done.”
“I’m thinking, damn it!” Then, as if by sudden inspiration, “How about the Punchbowl?”
Bolan knew something about the Punchbowl Crater from his visits to Oahu in the past. It was the cone of an extinct volcano, used at various times for human sacrifice and tribal executions, as a rifle range for the Hawaii National Guard, as an artillery emplacement protecting Pearl Harbor and finally as a national memorial cemetery for U.S. servicemen killed in the Pacific Theater during World War II. It had been years since Bolan had visited the site himself, but he knew there were public access roads and acreage for hiking.
He supposed it would do.
“How far?” he asked Aolani.
“We’re halfway there. I take Ward Avenue to Iolani westbound, loop around to San Antonio, and there we are.”
“Do it,” Bolan said.
Polunu gave a little groan and settled lower in his seat.
Bolan ignored the turncoat revolutionary, instead concentrating on the mechanics of the firefight that was now unavoidable. He had one pistol and 120 rounds of ammunition against six armed men in two vehicles. He’d faced worse odds and lived, but every firefight was unique, distinct and separate from all those that went before it.
He didn’t think the chase cars carried any armor, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tested them, and Bolan wasn’t ready for a running battle on a public street.
If they were armored, he was screwed.
And if they weren’t, he still faced odds of six to one, with no strategic information other than the fact that one of his assailants had an automatic weapon, probably a 9 mm.
In his worst-case scenario, the enemy would corner him and keep his head down with suppressing fire, while they encircled him and took him out. They wouldn’t find it easy, but it could be done.
He needed an edge.
Six men, 120 rounds. One magazine per man, if things got truly desperate. And if it came to that, if he was still alive and on his feet after the smoke cleared, he would be in need of resupply before the mission could proceed.
It was bad timing for an ambush, but the Executioner was used to that.
The only good time for an ambush came when he was ambushing his enemies.
And maybe, in the Punchbowl, he could do exactly that.
“Here’s Ward,” Aolani announced. “We’ve got about a half mile, maybe less, till we’re on Iolani Avenue.”
“Just get it done,” Bolan replied.
“Okay, okay!”
She wrung a bit more speed out of the Datsun, weaving in and out of evening traffic on Ward Avenue, northbound. Horns blared behind them after each maneuver, and continued bleating as the chase cars followed Aolani’s lead. The second group of hunters clipped a taxi but kept going, leaving several cars behind them in a tangled snarl.
That tears it, Bolan thought. If no one had seen fit to call the cops before, a hit-and-run was sure to get them on their cell phones.
“We’re running out of time,” he warned Aolani.
“Doing the best I can,” she said. “It’s just a Datsun, not a rocket sled.”
“Expect the cruisers any minute,” he replied.
“We won’t be here!”
Polunu moaned again and sank completely out of sight, which was the best thing he could do, if shooting started up again.
“Here’s San Antonio,” Aolani said, still intent on keeping Bolan posted on their progress. He said nothing, focused on the two chase cars that followed them around the loop, spiraling toward the cemetery that would have fresh corpses on its grounds before another hour was gone.
“THEY’RE HEADING for the Punchbowl,” Ehu Puanani said.
“I see that,” Tommy told his brother, his hands pale-knuckled where he clenched the steering wheel. His mini-Uzi rested on the seat beside him, wedged against his hip.
“I know I hit their car,” Billy Maka Nani said, from the backseat.
“Well, it didn’t slow them down,” Tommy replied. “Next time, try shooting at the goddamned people.”
“Yeah, okay.” He muttered something else, as well, but Tommy Puanani didn’t catch it.
The rearview mirror showed him John Kainoa keeping pace, despite his fender-bender with the taxi back on Iolani Avenue. Tommy knew it would’ve been the shits to lose three men in traffic, but he would have left them where they sat without a second thought.
Polunu was what mattered now, squeezing his nuts until he told them everything he’d spilled to the police or Feds, whoever he was talking to. And finding out what Aolani had to do with it, since she wasn’t exactly friendly with the cops.
Now, they’d picked up another player out of nowhere. Tommy didn’t recognize the haole, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. There were a million Feds to choose from in the new police state. No one could pretend to know them all.
And if he wasn’t a Fed? What, then?
The question out of left field angered Tommy, made him wish he’d never thought of it. For damned sure, there was no time to debate it with himself right now, when he had urgent, bloody work to do.
“See there? They’re turning in.” Ehu seemed almost giddy with excitement. “Man, I told you they were going to the Punchbowl.”
“Like this road would take them someplace else,” Tommy replied, determined to rain on his brother’s parade.
“I’m just saying—”
“Shut up, and be ready to rock when they stop.”
The Punchbowl’s public access roads were laid out roughly in concentric circles. Pele’s Fire had scouted the graveyard as a possible target for the main event, then rejected it on grounds that vandalizing headstones or messing with corpses seemed both petty and perverse.
Better
