Ocean: The Sea Warriors (23 page)

The reef sharks managed to shake crabs loose from their bodies, and snatched some of them in their jaws as they fell. Other sharks began feeding on crabs and lobsters on the seabed, causing them to scatter in panic. Crustaceans fled in all directions, with the faster ones scampering over the slower ones to get away.

As the seabed cleared, Kimo saw no sign of the fugitives, so he swam back to rejoin the rest of his task force, leaving Jacqueline to mop up, and make certain the murderers were not hiding somewhere here after all.

In a deeper area of the water, Dirk Avondale motioned to him, then transmitted, “One of our new recruits—Tavis Small—reports that he is gaining control over some of the crabs and lobsters, and they are following his commands. Not all of them, but a sizable portion of them—and he’s instructed them to lead us to Chi’ang and Talbot.” He pointed to his left. “They’re heading in a northerly direction, not going that fast but gradually gaining speed.”

Kimo surfaced, and saw the hulking form of Gwyneth swimming in place, near a pod of humpback whales. He heard a thought from the teenager: “The crustaceans are heading toward that atoll.” She pointed with a short flipper, and Kimo could see it, a mass of coral rising out of the water several feet. It had a high point on it, and he thought he saw movement up there.

When Kimo swam in that direction, Alicia joined him. “Can I help?” she asked. “I’ve developed a mini-tidal wave to add to my repertoire—well, really, it’s too small to really be called a
tidal
wave—but it is a wall of water around three feet high.”

“We’ll see. I’m not sure what we’re up against yet.”

As Kimo swam, he received a message from Dirk Avondale, saying he was massing much of their force around the atoll. The fugitives were there for sure, he said, surrounded by thousands of crabs and lobsters that formed a barrier around the curvature of coral. Apparently they were preparing to make a last stand, and Dirk thought it would be a ferocious one.

When Kimo and Alicia reached the largest part of the Sea Warrior force, he saw that two enormous crustaceans were huddled on the highest point of coral, several feet above the sea level. The largest one—barely recognizable as Vinson Chi’ang—was blue and white, with a wide carapace and long paddle-legs, while Emily Talbot was smaller and bright green and orange, with similar legs. They were the height of humans, and had metamorphosed far beyond the last time Kimo saw them. They had bulbous, red-pupil eyes, and antennae—her pair longer than his. All around them, the smaller crustaceans not only covered the perimeter of the coral-reef formation; they were also on top of it, closely surrounding the pair.

“That’s them, isn’t it?” Alicia asked.

“You can bet on it.”

Quickly, Kimo considered how they might attack. So far, Dirk had made no suggestion, except to encircle the atoll to prevent escape. Turning to Alicia, he asked, “Can you target your waves carefully to hit the smaller crustaceans, knocking them away without hitting Chi’ang or Talbot—clearing the way for our warriors to go in and capture them? We don’t want them using the water to get away.”

“I’m not sure. I’m still practicing my aiming techniques, and I don’t think I can do anything that precise. Maybe we shouldn’t chance it. The downside is too big.”

“You’re right. We need to try something else.”

With Earhart dead, Kimo had taken charge of the sawfish, swordfish, sailfish, flying fish and other creatures that had previously been under the dominion of the fallen hero. Now he commanded the flying fish to attack from all sides, and sent at least a thousand small, agile fish leaping high in the air toward the fugitives, hurling their bodies against them and onto the coral. Some of them sailed right past, to the other side. Others collided in midair, or slammed into new walls of crustaceans that were rising around the pair. Behind the rising wall, Chi’ang and Talbot stood, swatting their attackers away.

While they were doing that, Kimo launched forty of the larger sailfish at them, and they flew through the air, pointing their sword-sharp noses. They tore through the crustacean wall from all sides, knocking it down and puncturing a claw arm of the big crab that must be Chi’ang. He and his companion were forced to hunker down on the coral surface, their red, bulbous eyes showing how desperate they were to escape.

The mass of crustaceans on the atoll receded, leaving corpses behind, and Dirk reported that more of them were falling under the molecular command of Tavis Small. Kimo finally stopped the aerial onslaught, when there were only a few crustaceans clinging to the coral atoll, and the hapless former Sea Warriors were left totally exposed.

He wished he could build a coral-walled prison around them quickly, but even with all he knew about the ocean, and even with Gwyneth’s remarkable mind as an asset, he could not imagine it possible. There wasn’t enough time, and reefs in this region usually grew in shallow, warm water, requiring many years to build coral colonies. Even so, for a moment he imagined microscopic larvae emerging from the sea and secreting limestone cells around themselves, growing into polyps, and gradually branching out, reproducing and building walls of coral and a coral roof around Chi’ang and Talbot. It was impossible, of course….

When Kimo was finished imagining this, which gave him a brief break from the recent tensions, he summoned Foley Johnson, and ordered him to station aggressive hawksbill turtles all around the atoll to prevent the prisoners from escaping. He told Foley to remain here, along with Jacqueline Rado and another Sea Warrior who were setting up concentric circles of protection around the reef—small reef sharks and sawsharks on the inside, and beyond that in deeper water, great white sharks on patrol, along with whales and long-necked plesiosaurs. Then, noticing a basin of saltwater on one side of their perch, he told them to move the prisoners into it later to keep them moist, if that proved necessary.

When the safeguards were in place, Kimo approached the captives and shouted at them: “This is your prison, where you will remain until we are able to bring you to justice.”

The two killers screeched and howled in protest, and snapped their claws angrily, but to no avail.

Dirk Avondale took the rest of the Sea Warriors back to their volcanic-island hiding place, while Kimo rode atop a wave with Alicia, returning to Oahu after dark. When they were within sight of the heavily-populated island, dotted with lights, they dove underwater and swam beneath the cordon. The Navy was stationed on both sides of the barrier, with their ships illuminated, but they were not attacking. This gave Kimo some hope, but he continued on with his followers, and waded ashore near the base of Diamond Head.

They could have arrived sooner, but their Sea Warrior swimsuits were a problem, tying them to the allegedly criminal organization. And they couldn’t walk around the island nude, or they’d be arrested for that. In the shadowy darkness, they made their way to a small wooden structure in Kapi’olani Park, where Kimo knew there was a lost-and-found for items left by the public. He’d been there once the year before, looking for a pair of flippers lost by a girl he’d been dating. He remembered the building was not well secured, and now he managed to force the door open easily, breaking it loose of the hasp and padlock. In a matter of minutes, they found clothing to put on over their swimsuits—jeans and a Hawaiian shirt for him, and shorts and a blouse for her—and they hurried out onto Diamond Head Road, and from there they made their way onto city streets, reaching a small, metal-roofed bungalow owned by Jimmy Waimea.

“I think we’re in luck,” Kimo said. “Lights are on inside.”

He climbed the short staircase onto a cluttered wood porch, and rapped on the door. Jimmy greeted them with a worried expression. “I didn’t expect this,” the small Hawaiian man said.

“I know we’re wanted,” Kimo said, “but I need you to do me another favor. One more exclusive for you, Cousin.”

Jimmy looked past them to the street, motioned them inside. After closing the window blinds, he led them into the small, cluttered living room. A collection of marine floats hung on the walls. Copies of the Honolulu Mercury News were piled on the floor and on tables. One of the banner headlines read, “HAWAIIAN BLOCKADE IN 8TH DAY,” and below that, in smaller bold letters, “Air and Sea Search for Sea Warriors Continues.” Another headline read, “SEA SERPENTS: ARE THEY MAGICAL?” And below that: “Is the Ocean a Fantasy Realm?”

A number of chambered nautilus and trumpet shells were arranged on tables—shells that Kimo now believed should never have been removed from the ocean, because they provided habitats for hermit crabs and other creatures after their original inhabitants abandoned them. But he would say nothing to Jimmy about this, not wanting to harm their relationship, or seem ungrateful for all the help he had provided.

Jimmy sat on a wooden chair, offered the couch to his visitors. He grabbed a reporter’s spiral notebook, removed a pen from his shirt pocket, and clicked it.

“You know about the Pearl Harbor massacre of seamen, of course,” Kimo began. “A horrible thing, really awful. We had nothing to do with it.”

“I know you didn’t, but you’re taking a huge risk coming here. The cops make regular patrols by here, keeping an eye out for you.”

“I’ll make it quick, then. We tracked down the murderers, Vinson Chi’ang and Emily Talbot, and captured them. Now we want to turn them over to the police, or military authorities.”

Jimmy’s eyebrows arched. “You don’t have them with you here, do you?”

“No. They’re on a coral atoll in the National Wildlife Refuge. We stationed guards. I’ll give you the location, and I want you to have them picked up and taken in for trial. It won’t be much of a trial, based on the videotape evidence that exists.”

Jimmy nodded. He took down details of the fugitives’ location.

“The marine animals we posted are aggressive,” Alicia said, “to prevent the killers from escaping, but they will allow them to be taken away by the authorities. In addition to the animals watching them, we posted three Sea Warriors—and as part of the deal I don’t want them arrested. Can you arrange that?”

“No promises, but I’ll try.”

“That’s all we can ask.”

“There’s something more,” Alicia said. “Actually, a lot more. We’d like you to inform the Navy that if they don’t stop attacking the marine animals blockading the island, we are prepared to do something more—and we guarantee the U.S. government won’t like it.”

“And that is?”

“If all violence isn’t stopped within seventy-two hours of noon tomorrow, we’re going to expand the blockade to the continental United States.”

“In what way?”

“That’s for them to figure out.” Kimo leaned forward on the couch. “But believe me, Jimmy, we’re not bluffing, and we’re prepared to keep escalating this as much as necessary. In support of us, environmental protests are sure to increase against the killing of sea life. There’s no way the United States government can win this fight.”

Jimmy nodded. “I’ll pass on your messages. Both of them. And good luck. By the way, that was impressive the way you beached a front-line U.S. Navy submarine without injuring any of the crew. That, at least, was one of your good decisions, and I’ll play it up on your behalf.”

“It was Gwyneth’s idea,” Kimo admitted. “I had something more drastic in mind, and the government might want to know what it was. We could have forced the sub to the sea floor and kept it there. Everyone inside would have died, but we decided not to do that.”

“Even so, the Navy did lose one helicopter and two crewmen in the battle, along with three frogmen who were killed by a needlefish, a squid, and a stingray. That has not gone over well with the admirals. Oh, and there’s the matter of the Navy spy that Moanna found in your midst a few days ago, and somehow he drowned.”

“The battle deaths were unavoidable,” Alicia said. “I wasn’t doing anything aggressive at all, and the ‘copter crew fired on me, almost killing me, and then tried to capture me. If Kimo hadn’t taken action to rescue me, I might be dead, or rotting in a Navy prison cell. And Kimo was attacked by the frogmen. It was only after the frogmen fired at him that the needlefish, the squid, and the stingray went into action.”

Jimmy scribbled more notes.

Finally Kimo and Alicia rose to their feet, and he said, “Maybe we’d better go out through the back.”

“I think so. Can I give you some food to take with you, or are you living off the sea now?”

“More and more.” Kimo smiled ruefully. “I do miss my mother’s home cooking, though. At the first opportunity I want to pay her a visit, but I can’t seem to get a moment of spare time.”

Jimmy led them to the rear of the house. Then Kimo and Alicia—fugitives themselves now—slipped out the back door into the darkness.

***

Chapter 24

The military helicopter flew so low over the sea that the wind from its twin-engine rotors caused ripples in the water. Though Fuji Namoto normally didn’t like ‘copters, with all their noise and vibration (and the danger of falling from the sky like a rock), she thought this craft was different—smoother, faster, and probably safer.

Her husband sat beside her in the passenger compartment, wearing one of the dark business suits he preferred when on official business as the Governor of the State of Hawaii. Today, he had joined this mission in a quasi-military capacity. As the former Admiral of the Third Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, he had asked to accompany the Navy Seals, and had brought Fuji to administer the sedation of the captives. There had been questions from the naval high command about her allegiance to the Sea Warriors, but Heinz had pointed out quickly, and quite correctly, that when it came to the two crustacean fugitives, the Sea Warriors and the Navy were on the same side, wanting to put the criminals out of commission. The Sea Warriors, he also insisted, were not all criminals—and certainly not his wife or other associate members, many of whom had only worked in the Honolulu office as volunteers, collecting donations and promoting the organization’s pro-ocean messages.

The rear of the passenger compartment was filled with a crack Seal team that had taken custody of Vinson Chi’ang and Emily Talbot in the last half hour—while leaving behind the three Sea Warriors who’d been guarding them. Still amped up from the unusual capture, the men chattered excitedly as they changed out of their wet clothing.

Riding outside in special moisturized slings below the helicopter, the sedated, comatose prisoners bore hardly any resemblance to human beings any more. They had not moved since Fuji prepared sedative needles and fired them into their carapaces from a safe distance

Now she watched them on a projection screen mounted on the forward bulkhead. Their dangerous, oversized claws were constricted by heavy bindings. She thought the hybrid crustaceans’ red, bulbous eyes were the strangest feature of all—the way they reflected the souls of creatures so alien that they did not seem to belong on this planet. Down on the atoll she had been looking into their eyes when the drug took effect, had watched the red rage in them fade from embers into coals, and then go out entirely.

She shifted in her seat, stared through the porthole beside her at the turquoise blue water. “I hope they don’t wake up and cut their way loose from those slings with their claws,” she said.

“An unpleasant thought,” the Governor said. “I’m sure the Seals would not like to jump in after them.” He mused for a moment. “I wonder who would win in a fight between the Navy’s best commandos and those two monsters.”

“Hard to say, not knowing the capabilities of unknown creatures—but those big claws are razor-sharp and dangerous, and who knows how fast the prisoners can summon help.”

The helicopter skirted wide of the entrance to Pearl Harbor, and the ongoing standoff there. Fuji watched through high-powered binoculars, saw a large submarine that had been beached like a whale, and she wondered how that had happened. Around the cordon of large sea creatures, the water was thick with schools of fish, and a helicopter hovered over several trapped Navy warships, which were prevented from moving by large-bodied marine animals.

Her own aircraft descended and hovered over the base’s recreational center and its swimming pool, so that she could no longer see the ships or the cordon of marine animals. Below, she saw at least a hundred armed U.S. Marines circling the pool. She watched while the slings were lowered into the shallow end of the water, immersing the prisoners. Swimmers removed the slings from the sedated monsters, while others attached equipment to check the vital signs, and white-smocked medical personnel supervised.

It was only a temporary holding tank, Fuji knew, to be used until a more permanent facility could be constructed to house them under the highest security.

Carrying walking sticks, Jeff and Preston Ellsworth walked through a grove of royal palm trees that arched gracefully toward the sea. A large purse crab scuttled up the trunk of one tree, going after a coconut.

It was shortly after a lunch that Jeff had shared with his grandfather, during which the old man lectured him about how disappointed he was in the younger man’s behavior and decision-making. Jeff hated diatribes like that, but he’d gritted his teeth and not said much—while wishing he had the nerve to talk back. Now his grandfather was repeating himself, apparently not remembering what he’d already said at lunch. There seemed to be no end to it.

Jeff felt a tightness in one of his jeans pockets, under the loose tails of his Hawaiian shirt, where he concealed the snub-nose .38 caliber pistol he’d taken in the fight on the boat. In his other pocket he had a small clip of extra bullets he’d stolen from the security office at the hotel. With everything that had been occurring recently, he needed to feel the assurance of being armed.

“I’m not happy about paying that large insurance deductible for a new helicopter,” the old man said. “By rights I should deduct it from your pay, because you should have visually confirmed the fuel level before taking off. That’s part of any basic pre-flight inspection, and you failed to do it. You must have had something else on your mind, and forgot that the air is unforgiving of any mistakes. You’re lucky you weren’t killed, and lucky you didn’t have passengers aboard when you went down—or they could have been killed, too.”

Jeff took a deep breath. Then: “Yes, Grandfather. I’m sorry, as I’ve tried to tell you. I promise I’ll be more careful in the future.”

“You’re my only grandchild now, Jeff. I’m going to disown Alicia, so this ranch and all of my holdings will be yours. But I need you to be much more responsible in your actions. You can’t run my businesses if you don’t consider consequences, if you don’t think everything through carefully before doing it.”

“I’m being more careful about my pre-flight inspections.”

Abruptly, a uniformed police officer emerged from behind a tree and stood in their way. Jeff and his grandfather knew the man, Eddie Puiki, because he worked security at the ranch on a part-time basis, to earn extra money.

Staring at Jeff, the smaller man unclipped his sidearm, but didn’t draw it. Then Puiki said to him, “Mr. Ellsworth, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Marshall Hunter on his boat. We have you on a surveillance camera bashing him over the head with a drawer, killing him.”

“The man was drunk, and firing at me wildly. I was just protecting myself.” He met his grandfather’s shocked, angry gaze.

“That’s not what the surveillance tape shows, but you’ll have your day in court to explain why you were plundering the boat, and why you killed that guy.” He removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt, stepped toward Jeff with them, and commanded, “Turn around.”

Jeff didn’t comply, said angrily, “Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights before discussing the details of a case? You sound like judge, jury, and police officer, all wrapped in one. You’ve already made up your mind about me, haven’t you?”

“Turn around, Mr. Ellsworth.
Now
.”

Having decided not to draw his own concealed weapon, Jeff made a motion as if he were complying, then lunged into the smaller man and struggled to overpower him and take his weapon away. The pair tumbled to the ground, punching each other and grappling for the officer’s hand gun, a .45 caliber automatic.

In the background, Jeff heard his grandfather yelling. “Jeff, what are you doing? Stop this immediately!”

The officer’s gun went off in an ear-splitting explosion. Jeff heard his grandfather groan, knew he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself.

With a burst of angry strength, Jeff finally wrenched the weapon away and used it to hit the officer on the head with the butt, but not too hard. The man fell back: appeared to be unconscious.

Leaning over his grandfather, Jeff called his name. The old man had a bleeding head wound, and looked dead. In shock and terror, Jeff turned and ran along the seashore, hurling the .45 in the water, but keeping the .38.

A mile away, he ran inside a seashore cave that local fishermen sometimes used. The dirt floor of the lava-rock interior was littered with beer cans and torn food wrappers, and there was evidence of a cook fire just outside the entrance. He cleared a spot at the back of the cave, where he curled up and cried, filled with so much sadness and remorse that he could hardly face going on with his life. His emotions were raw, and he had brought no medications with him.

Jeff spent the night there, sleeping fitfully and listening to the sounds of the sea. In the morning, he saw two scuba divers walking on the pebble beach and wading into the water, a man and a woman. Slipping outside, Jeff concealed himself behind shrubs, and noticed that they had left a Jeep parked on the road. When the pair submerged, he checked their vehicle. The keys were still in the ignition, so he started the motor and sped up a road that led to the top of the volcano. He wasn’t sure what he would do next, only knew that he needed some time to think.

Suddenly his prior worries seemed like nothing, and he felt great shame for what he’d done, and forever wishing his grandfather would die. He missed the old man, wished that things might have been different, and that he’d never made such terrible decisions.

***