T
wo hours later I boarded Chawlie's Gulfstream. Tutu Mae and James Kahanamoku were already at the gate. Daniel met me, eyed the other passengers, but said nothing. Felix stood behind him, silent and moody. He began to loosen up when Tutu Mae welcomed him home with a hug and a pat, but like a lot of young people, he took pains to share his displeasure.
Regardless of Felix's mood, the flight was uneventful and in less than an hour we were offloading equipment and supplies at the Kona airport.
David met us there, driving an ancient muddy flatbed. Even with both arms in casts, he seemed to have survived his confrontation with equanimity. If anything, I think it suited him to have gone to war for his Lady Love. His fiberglass casts were stained with grease. It appeared that he had forgotten them.
There was an uneasy moment when David saw James. He knew he was Kimo's son, but he remembered the day when Donna had been kidnapped and his arms had been broken, and he recognized James as one of the men who had tried to ruin his summer vacation. He stared at him for a moment, looked at me, then shrugged. He recognized James, but he knew Kimo, and he knew that James was Charles's brother, too. That apparently counted for something. And this young man was in love. Revenge, for David, was way down on the happiness scale.
Daniel took me aside before he left, walking me away from the group at the truck.
“Felix did not want to return. I want you to watch him.”
I watched Felix while Daniel spoke. He stood apart from the group staring at us, as if he knew he was the subject of our conversation.
“It is important that you keep Felix here for a few days. If you can.” A fresh breeze blew across the tarmac, blowing down from the north. It carried the faint scent of rotten eggs. “If you can,” he repeated. “I need some time in Honolulu without him.”
“Why did you bring him back?”
“I want him out of San Francisco, too. This was the best place for him. And you're the excuse.”
“I baby-sit.”
He nodded.
“Does this have anything to do with this morning?”
He stared at me and said nothing. Chawlie would have been proud.
“Okay,” I said. “I'll baby-sit.”
Daniel patted my arm, then climbed back into his airplane. He would eventually tell me what this was about. Or he wouldn't. Regardless, I would keep Felix on ice. For what reasons I could not imagine.
Sometimes it's better if you don't know.
I sat in the front seat of the flatbed with Tutu Mae and David. Felix and James rode in the back with the equipment.
“California's too tough for you,” David said, watching the careful tenderness with which I climbed into the truck, right behind Tutu Mae. Compared to her spry activity, I was a fragile old man.
“I'm staying away if they'll let me.”
“We're almost a matched pair,” he grinned, knocking one of his casts on mine.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Mom's getting married,” he said, looking over the top of Tutu Mae's iron gray head.
“She told me.”
“The guy's rich.”
“Good.”
“He's a nice fellow.”
“That's even better.”
“Runs investments, or something. Spends most of the year in New York.”
“Wonderful.”
“You don't want to talk about it, do you?”
“I'm happy for her.”
“I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you in San Francisco. Did they catch the ones responsible for it?”
“Most of them.”
He shook his head. “It's just not right.”
“Yep.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, stealing only a glance from the road ahead. “You're not very talkative this morning.”
“Nope.” I turned away, looking out the window. “We're here. You're going to do some diving. Tutu Mae, you're going to have to hurry.”
The wind carried the eye-watering stench of sulfur. Hualalai had buried the road and marched across the old flows to the sea. By land we could not proceed any farther north from this point. Yellow barricades and island police guarded the road to make certain no fool continued to drive on, oblivious to the peril. A giant parking lot had been cleared almost overnight from the desert landscape, and a tent city populated by news media and scientists had sprung up since my last visit. Generators, temporary power poles, media tents and portable toilets decorated the landscape.
And just outside the zone, bobbing like a toy boat in a bathtub, was my lovely sloop. Something stirred inside of me when I saw her. I was home.
“Aren't you guys done?”
Olympia
lay anchored directly in the path of the lava flow. Steam and smoke rose from the place where the lava poured into the Pacific. Up on the flank of Moana Loa the
lava had already burned the forests in its path, leaving a black smoking scar on the hillside. Along the rocky coast very few things existed that could burn. Hualalai, without eruption for nearly two hundred years, had still proved its active state. “It's getting a little close, isn't it?”
“We keep finding more stuff in niches. We're almost finished.”
It took longer to ferry the equipment out to
Olympia
than it took us to fly to Kona. By the time I arrived on the boat the girls were on their second dive of the day and Charles was working as divemaster, worrying like a big brother. When he saw James, however, he forgot his worries and raced to hug him.
“You're here!”
“Yeah.”
“How long have they been down?” David asked, taking the boy's position.
“Twenty-two minutes,” said Charles. “They have another twenty before things get critical. The lava keeps moving. I don't like it.”
I doubted that they liked it either, given that the lava had begun piling against the shallow side of their lava tube, as David had told me.
Knowing Donna, she would force her work into every waking moment in an attempt to document everything. There was no second chance. Once the lava reached the point of no return, the find would be gone forever.
Donna surfaced beside the boarding ladder, took off her mask and tossed it onto the deck. She did not look happy.
Charles and James assisted her up the ladder. She did a double take when she saw James.
The last time they had met he had been one of those who had kidnapped her.
“Miss Wong,” said James.
“James,” she said, her voice subdued, unsure what was happening until she saw Tutu Mae. “Oh, wonderful!” She flashed a huge smile at Kimo's grandmother. “You're actually here!”
Tutu Mae grinned.
“We don't have much time,” she said to Charles. “I have to change regulators, and you need to clean this one. Something's fouled it. It's both of them, so it's the J-valve, not the regulator. And the lava is getting close.” She saw me. “Hi, Mr. Caine.”
“Good morning.”
“We're pushing the envelope.” She glanced toward the billowing tower of steam rising from the ocean. “I don't know how much longer we can do this.” Donna Wong had lost weight since I had last seen her. Blue smudges encircled her eyes to the point where she looked bruised. Her cheekbones, prominent before, now protruded like ridges from her gaunt face. She was exhausted, ill-fed, ill-used, and happy, the state people achieve when they're living their dream.
“Is it him, The Lonely One?” I asked. Below the boat, a cloud of bright yellow reef fish darted in and out of
Olympia
's shadow.
“We may never know. Personally, I think it's him, but I can't say for sure. Tutu Mae is going to bless the bones before we seal up the entrance.”
Tutu Mae smiled. “That's why I am here.”
“We discussed taking a small sample of the bones so we could DNA test it. Tutu Mae and other kupunas debated removing a single knucklebone from his left hand. In the end, the decision was to leave the bones alone.”
“Scattering the bones is the worst thing you can do,” said Tutu Mae.
“I thought DNA wouldn't work in an island population.”
“There is a man who claims direct descendence from Kamehameha. They would have used his blood.”
“You think you can finish today?” I watched the shoreline. The white-orange lava continued pouring into the sea. The land looked as if it had pushed out to sea since I had arrived this morning.
“One more day.”
“Do you have that much time?”
“We
have
to have that much time. One more day, then we'll relax.”
“Doesn't look like you'll have to use explosives.”
She grinned, her eyes sparkling, although rimmed with exhaustion. “Madam Pele takes care of her own. But we don't have much time left.”
“We have to allow Tutu Mae time to dive. It's still safe, but for how much longer I don't know. We've done almost everything we can do here on the site. The real work will be when we get back to the university.”
“No more interference.”
She nodded. “Tutu Mae went to the president of the university while you were ⦠while you were in California. She told him the whole story. He is personally watching this dig, and he says he has told no one about it.”
“You haven't said anything about the bones?”
“No. Not until the cave is closed forever.”
“They're not all like Hayes.”
“Sure,” was all she said.
A
ll day long the mountain growled and rumbled, a pale, hot orange stream pumping a continuous river of molten magma into the sea. The volume seemed to fall off occasionally, and then increased, the rhythm of the flow unpredictable.
Everyone but David and I suited up. No one wanted to miss the ceremony. Even Felix, who had been aloof since he had been drafted, was going. Nearly every piece of gear aboard was in use. David and I were the only ones remaining topside. We would watch the proceedings on the closed-circuit television. It was a poor second to being there, but under the circumstances I was happy just to be along.
Someone had to keep an eye on the volcano.
Tutu Mae had taken the short course back in Honolulu and was now certified for SCUBA. This would be her first ocean dive. Both James and Donna would be beside her every moment, assisted by Charles. Donna's sisters would wield the cameras and the lights. Felix was tagged to be the lookout at the entrance. The lava was not so close to the entrance that they thought they might be trapped, but anything might happen, and if something occurred high up on the mountain they wouldn't know about it until it was too late unless we relayed the message. They should have enough time to get out if it all worked as planned. David was topside lookout. My job was to man a radio linking Donna,
Felix and
Olympia.
I kept an eye on the clock as well as the volcano, making sure the party was safe. Felix would position himself outside the lava tube to relay my messages. The radio waves were line-of-sight and wouldn't penetrate the rock.
“Smile for the camera, Tutu Mae!” One of Donna's sisters snapped her photo when she was ready. The tank was a little heavy for Tutu Mae, and made her unsteady on her feet. Charles and James stood close, making sure she wouldn't fall over backwards. The photograph would show the three of them close together, the grandsons and the great grandmother on her first dive, to replace and bless the gravesite of the first Hawaiian king. This was an occasion to memorialize.
Tutu Mae had trouble with the ladder. She couldn't do it wearing the tank; it was just too heavy. It was decided that she would climb down without it and get into the water while James and Charles assisted her there. That proved impossible and finally she had to dive from the Avon dinghy, sliding backward into the sea.
The other divers jumped into the water from the side of
Olympia
and paddled around her stern.
“Testing. Are you awake?” The voice screeched out of the radio Donna that had given me. I picked it up.
“I read you five by five.”
“What?”
“Loud and clear. And yes, I'm awake.”
“Don't go to sleep up there in the sun. We can hear the volcano down here. It's roaring.” Donna's voice was nearly covered by background noise. Over the carrier came a low menacing rumble.
“Thanks,” I said to the radio, picked up the field glasses, and lensed the shoreline. Lava continued to pour into the sea, lending its incandescent Halloween colors to the brown and blue and green of its surroundings. The flow seemed to have increased since we arrived.
I was back on my boat for the first time in months. I had not liked my life in recent times, but I had lived through it. It had not
been easy, and for the first time in recent memory I had been faced with an opponent I could not fight, whose rules I found inconsistent with strategy or logic, and who required that I had champions of my own. Tala Sufai and Albert Chen were my legal warriors, the doctors and nurses my medical saviors. Without them I wouldn't be sitting on the deck of my own yacht again. Without them I honestly did not know where I would have been.
The sun beat down on my face and I thought of Angel. She had loved the sensation of the sunshine on her warm brown skin. She loved most the simple sensations of being alive. She had brought me back into my body after my wounds, and she had, in her own way, saved me. Her injuries were far more serious than they had first thought. Her skull fracture had caused some brain damage; when I last heard, she had undergone more surgery and remained in California, trapped in a hospital bed in a city far away from her home in paradise. It would be months before she could be moved, before she could return. Chawlie had promised to bring her home when she was ready.
I hoped he had dispatched some young men, skilled in all the arts, to keep her company while she recuperated.
Whoever hurt her would be punished. Two had died that night. One still lived. It had been a long, long time since I had felt such a towering rage; it had been so long that it surprised me with its vehemence. An Angel had been grounded, her wings clipped. And some devil would pay. That the Angel had been grounded only because of her proximity to one John Caine didn't make it any easier. Another innocent bystander had been destroyed. Add her to the list. It was dangerous just being in my vicinity.
Like David, she could not countenance revenge. A caregiver, that was not her way. But some things have to be done. There was no reason to allow those responsible to continue to walk the earth when she no longer could walk again.
“Radio check,” crackled the radio next to me.
“I read you, Felix?” His voice was muffled, barely recognizable.
The background noise was louder.
“Yeah. I'm lookout. Anything on the surface?”
“It hasn't changed. What's down there?”
“Dante Alighieri would have felt right at home. The lava is pillowing off to the side. It's not the runny kind. This stuff just turns into big rock pillows, and then they explode. You should see it.”
“Sounds charming.”
“I'll be here.”
“Give me a check in five minutes, unless you need me.”
“What could you do?”
That angered me until I understood that he was right. I could do nothing. Not in the face of the volcano. I couldn't even enter the water with my cast and open wounds.
“Ten four,” I said.
“Out.”
It appeared that there were many things that I could no longer fight alone. This had been a humbling experience. All my life I had been the lone wolf. Now it seemed that the predators ran in packs and a single wolf was incapable of doing anything alone.
Somewhere there had been a reason for it all.
If only I could see it.
The mountain gave a great belch and a column of thick black smoke rose above the caldera high up on the flank of Moana Loa. I remembered what Donna had said, that white smoke was good, that gray smoke was bad. What the hell did black smoke mean?
“David?”
“Shit, I don't know.”
I picked up the radio.
“Felix.”
The mountain rumbled and shook. I could feel the vibration of the island through the deck of my boat.
“Felix.”
He did not answer.
“Felix! Anybody!”
A huge orange wall of lava spilled over the top of the caldera, slowly tumbling down the mountainside. Finding a different
path, the flow set new fires in the jungle as it made its way toward the sea.
Another stream spilled over the lip of Hualalai and started down the other side of the lava flow.
“Anybody!”
The radio sat silent in my hand.
“John,” said David. “We've got to get them out of there.”
I looked around for spare diving gear and found nothing. They had taken everything I had. There wasn't even a spare regulator.
“Well, crap,” I said. Then I remembered and ran down to my stateroom. In my personal diving gear I had a five-minute emergency bottle. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had it charged, but I turned the nozzle and air hissed, so I was satisfied. It would be better than trying to hold my breath, and I could snorkel along the surface until I came to the cave and only dive then, when I saw the entrance.
I tried the radio one more time and got no response.
“You stay on the radio,” I told David. “I'm going down.”
“It's better if I go.”
“It's better if you stay here. Get the engine going, raise the anchors and motor us as close as you can to the entrance. I'll go down and bring them up.”
He nodded, glanced up at the mountain, and went to work.
The mountain rumbled and bellowed, sounding like one of those Japanese movie monsters in pain.
I was not supposed to get my wounds wet, the doctors told me. Severe infection would result, they said, along with other dire consequences. And that was if I just took a shower in soapy clean water. But those big pharmaceutical companies still made Keflex and other wonder antibiotics, didn't they? We'd just have to see how well they worked, now wouldn't we?
David brought
Olympia
as close as he dared to the coral reef. He shifted into reverse and kept her stable in the currents.
People on the shore were shouting at us and waving their arms.
I took one more look toward the mountain. A curtain of orange flame was descending, rolling down the hillside, forging an inexorable path directly toward us.
Madam Pele was on the move.
Grabbing my fins and mask, I carefully shed my shirt, kicked off my sandals, and jumped into the ocean.