The Scam (6 page)

H
arlan Appleton lived at the end of a dirt road in a one-story eight-hundred-square-foot home that backed up against the dense forest. His home was a typical Hawaiian camp house, built in the early 1900s for the sugar mill workers. It had a tin roof, a long porch, double-hung windows, and thin walls made only of tongue-and-groove redwood planks. The bullets had destroyed all of the windows and punched holes through the wooden walls. Harlan's bullet-riddled Jeep was slumped in the mud like a dead animal, the tires shredded by gunfire.

Kate drove up to find Harlan standing outside in a tank top, baggy shorts, and a single flip-flop. His other foot was encased in a hard cast that ended just above his knee. His broken arm was in a sling and his other arm was resting around a woman's shoulders. She was in her early forties, wore nursing scrubs, and had an arm around Harlan's waist, more to provide comfort than physical support.

Harlan turned as Kate got out of her Jeep. It took him a second to recognize her, but when he did, he broke into a smile.

“My God, Kate, is that you?” With his good arm, he pulled Kate into a hug. “You've grown so much.”

“So have you,” Kate said, giving his gut a playful pat.

“That's old age, good living, and plenty of BBQ,” Harlan said. “This is my friend Cassie Walner, a nurse at the hospital. This is Kate, Jake's kid. I haven't seen her since I taught her how to throw grenades.”

“How old were you then?” Cassie asked Kate.

“Twelve,” Kate said.

“Twelve?”
Cassie said.

“Yeah, she was a good four years past the age when every girl should know her way around a live grenade,” Harlan said. “But I remedied that. I didn't let Jake forget it, either.” Harlan's smile and good cheer faded. “She's an FBI agent now. I'm guessing you've come to find your dad. Am I right?”

Kate nodded grimly and gestured to the house. “I heard about the friends you've made on the island.”

“Yeah, I knew Lono Alika was the Hawaiian Godfather, but I didn't think he was stupid enough to mess with me.”

“Would you have paid Alika the protection money if you'd known?” Kate asked.

“No, but I wouldn't have let Jake get caught up in my troubles. I'm real sorry about that, Kate.”

“Don't be,” she said. “He's the one who blew up that truck, isn't he? He probably had a lot of fun.”

Harlan nodded. “I know he's out there in the brush somewhere, and I've been trying to figure out how I can help him, but I'm not real mobile, what with the broken foot and fractured leg bone.”

“You can help by keeping a low profile right now, and let me work at finding him. Does ‘Bludd's Money' mean anything to either one of you?”

They both shook their heads.

“Are you missing anything from the house?” Kate asked.

“No,” Harlan said. “But I did notice that the first-aid kit, shovel, and tire iron are missing from the back of my Jeep.”

Kate looked at the lush tropical forest and the mountains of the Koolau Range beyond. This might be Alika's island, but her father would have the advantage in the wild. He was trained in jungle warfare and loved a good booby trap.

Even with all that, Kate knew that eventually Jake would get caught if she didn't rescue him first. She was sure that he knew it, too. That was why he'd sent her the SOS text.

“Harlan,” Kate said. “I could use a little firepower.”

“Good news. My gun safe is still picture-perfect.”

Ten minutes later, Kate got back into her Jeep with a Remington 870 twelve-gauge short-barreled shotgun, sixty rounds of 00 buckshot for killing, twenty rounds of number 6 for close-up defense, and twenty rounds of rifled slugs. Jungle fighting was close-quarters combat, and at that range, a shotgun blast beat a rifle or handgun any day. She hoped she wouldn't have to use any of it.

Kate's phone rang, with the caller ID “Nick McGarrett.”

“I'm guessing you're here on Oahu,” Kate said, answering her phone.

“I am and I've got good news,” Nick said. “I know where Jake is hiding out. Meet me in the ruins of the Waialee reform school. It's between Haleiwa and Kahuku on the south side of the Kamehameha Highway.”

Vines wrapped around the concrete ruins of the former Waialee Industrial School for Boys, dragging the building into the moist, green darkness of the forest as if the trees wanted to eat it. The roof had caved in long ago, and now the rotted, splintered remains lay across a smashed grand piano, mattress springs, and dozens of empty beer bottles.

Nick stood by the piano and was wearing sunglasses, a floral Hilo Hattie aloha shirt, Faded Glory cargo shorts, white tennis shoes, and a large straw hat. There was an Oahu guidebook sticking out of one of his cargo pockets and an Oahu map in another. He was just another mainland tourist, identical to thousands of others crawling all over the island. No one would ever notice him.

Kate made her way toward him. “You picked a lovely place to meet.”

“It was close to you and no one is likely to spot us here,” he said. “Besides, I'm a sucker for creepy, abandoned buildings. Any news on your dad?”

“The local mob, run by a guy named Lono Alika, blew up a food truck owned by Dad's friend Harlan to convince him to pay for protection. So Dad blew up Alika's truck for not being very nice to his friend. Then Alika came gunning for Dad, who escaped into the forest.”

“Sounds like Jake.” Nick pulled the map out of his pocket and spread it open on the piano. It was labeled
Oahu Movie & TV Locations.
“I found out about
Bludd's Money.
It was a cheesy, direct-to-video action movie. The big finale was shot in the forest here, doubling for Vietnam. Turns out hundreds of movies and TV shows have been shot here and have left bits of their sets behind. They're like ancient ruins for film buffs, who've erected signs identifying them.
Bludd
left the fake fuselage of a downed aircraft up there. I think that's where Jake was when he sent you that text.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“I Googled
Bludd's Money,
saw that it was a movie, and watched it on Netflix on my flight out here. When I landed, I bought this locations map.”

“You should have been a detective instead of a crook.”

“It's not as much fun or as lucrative.”

Kate folded up the map and stuck it in her own pocket. “I've got to go. I need to reach him before nightfall.”

“If you don't come out of that forest within twenty-four hours, I'm coming to get you.”

Kate squelched a grimace. It was nice to know he cared enough to risk his own safety, but it was frightening to think of Nick bumbling through the forest. Especially since her dad probably had it booby-trapped.

Virgil Cleet ran a helicopter tour business out of Honolulu, about an hour's drive from Waialee. And Virgil owed Kate a favor from back in the day when they were both Special Forces. So Virgil was happy to give Kate a lift to the
Bludd's Money
location, which was deep in the forest along the slopes of the Koolau Range.

Before hooking up with Virgil, Kate had stopped at an Army surplus store in downtown Honolulu and bought insect repellant, a dozen protein bars, a slim-profile backpack, cowhide-leather rappelling gloves, night vision goggles, a compass, two canteens, a combat knife, a rifle lanyard, four tubes of camouflage face paint, and 120 feet of 44 mm–thick braided polyester fast rope with an aircraft connection ring on one end.

“What are you planning on doing with all of this?” the clerk asked, packing everything in a box for her.

“Survive the zombie apocalypse.”

The clerk smiled and nodded as if they shared a secret understanding.

Kate took the box to her Jeep, and stuffed everything but the rope, the knife, and the gloves into the daypack, and then drove around until she found a gas station.

She locked herself inside the gas station restroom with the duffel bag that she'd brought from L.A., sprayed her entire body with the insect repellant, and then put on a long-sleeved brown T-shirt, camouflage cargo pants, and low-quarter hiking shoes. She holstered her Glock on her hip, put the gloves and the knife in her pockets, and got back in her Jeep.

The heliport was on the west bank of the Ke'ehi Lagoon, just south of the Honolulu International Airport. Kate walked in wearing the backpack with the shotgun over her shoulder and carrying seventy-five pounds of coiled fast rope in her hands.

She was met at the door by Virgil, an African American in his forties who was tall enough to play professional basketball and muscular enough to be a linebacker. His hair was cut so short it looked like a shadow on his head.

Virgil gave her a quick once-over. “Looks like you're ready to party. Do you need help?”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I can handle this on my own.”

“I'll give you a radio. If you change your mind, all you have to do is call and I'll be there, guns blazing.” He took the coil of rope from her. “When do you want to go?”

“Now. I'm racing the sun.”

Virgil nodded and led her out to the helipad, where a retired MH-6 Little Bird light utility military gunship was waiting, minus the guns. “This isn't what I use for the tourists. It's my personal ride.”

Kate loved it. It was the helicopter equivalent of a Crown Vic.

Kate climbed in, and Virgil powered up the chopper. A few minutes later, they were in the air over Honolulu and heading toward the North Shore. Kate applied green, brown, and black camouflage paint to her face and neck in diagonal streaks. This was the only kind of makeup she really knew how to use and was truly comfortable wearing.

The Koolau mountains were steep, craggy, and lush, with dense jungle along the slopes. There was no place to land close to the remains of the
Bludd's Money
set. She'd have to drop in by rope.

Kate couldn't see Alika's men in the jungle, but she did see their off-road vehicles strategically parked in clearings and trailheads to the north, east, and south of the area where the fake
Bludd's Money
airplane fuselage was located. It was clear to her they were trying to corner Jake against the steep ridge to the west.

“We're in position,” Virgil said. “If there's anybody down there they're gonna be watching you drop.”

“I'll be in the treetops before they have a chance to pick me off.”

The chopper was hovering a hundred feet over the canopy of trees. Kate put on her gloves, tightened the straps of her backpack and the lanyard of her shotgun, attached one end of the fast rope to the fixed connection ring, and dropped the other end out the open cabin door of the chopper. The heavy rope ran straight down into the forest of tall bamboo, huge palms, wild guava, banyan trees, and Norfolk pines.

She strung the rope behind her back and around one leg, putting her right hand on the rope above her head and her left hand on the rope below her waist.

“Ready,” Kate said.

“Good luck,” Virgil said.

Kate jumped out of the helicopter and slid rapidly down the rope, through the thick layer of leaves and branches to the muddy ground below. It took her less than thirty seconds, and gave her an adrenaline rush.

She let go of the rope and immediately crouched down low, listening and waiting. The chopper rose, the rope dangling beneath it, and veered away toward the mountains.

Kate checked her compass and her GPS app to confirm her position. She was roughly fifty yards southwest of the abandoned
Bludd's Money
set. There was a trail, but rather than take it, Kate moved slowly on a parallel course through the brush, keeping her eyes open for trip wires and anything that didn't seem to fit the natural pattern of forest floor. She didn't want to get nailed by one of her father's booby traps.

She moved slowly until she reached a school-bus-sized section of a passenger jet cabin. It was completely wrapped with vines, and a plastic sign was nailed to the fuselage and engraved with the words “
Bludd's Money
2009.”