Dangerous Minds

  Wayan Bagus looked around the room and out the window. The sun was up and the clouds had disappeared, revealing a breathtaking view of South Kohala all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

  “This is very nice,” Wayan Bagus said. “I’ve never been on a stakeout. I’m having such a good time saving the world that I almost don’t care if we find my stolen island.”

  “We’ll find it,” Emerson said, peering through the telescope and adjusting it to focus on the runway.

  “Now what?” Riley asked.

  “We wait,” Emerson said.

  Over the next several hours, a steady stream of airplanes landed on the airstrip, but none were carrying cargo or any passengers wearing park ranger uniforms.

  Vernon groaned and tilted his head back. “Here’s something they don’t tell you about stakeouts. They’re really, really boring.”

  “It’s about to get really, really exciting,” Emerson said, turning the telescope over to Riley.

  Riley focused on a medium-size jet taxiing down the runway. It had two crossed sabers and a number one above them painted on the side of the plane.

  “For a secret society, they’re not very good at keeping themselves under the radar,” Riley said.

  “Pure arrogance,” Emerson said. “They’ve been an untouchable secret quasi-military unit for the past hundred years and don’t think anybody can take them out.”

  “What chance do we have then?” Vernon asked.

  Emerson watched the plane pull up to the terminal and power down. “If we can expose the secret they’re protecting, they’ll no longer be useful and will become more of a liability than an asset.”

  “They’re crazy,” Riley said. “If we expose them, they’ll destroy Yellowstone and who knows what else. You heard Spiro. He said we’d find Armageddon waiting for us in Hawaii. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds really bad.”

  Emerson focused the telescope on the plane’s door. “Then we’ll just have to steal the super-weapon they’re creating here on Hawaii, find a way to neutralize Tin Man, and then expose the secret to the world.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a walk in the park. We can do that, no problemo,” Riley said. “And then we can end world hunger by growing tomatoes on the moon.”

  The plane’s door opened, and Emerson watched as the pilots walked down the stairs and waited for the passengers to disembark.

  “They’re coming out now,” Emerson said. “It’s Tin Man and Bart Young. An SUV is driving onto the tarmac to meet them. And now two Rough Riders wearing khaki uniforms and campaign hats are unloading something from the cargo storage into the SUV.”

  “Is it the Penning trap?” Riley asked.

  “It’s a crate, but it’s the right size to contain the Penning trap.”

  Emerson watched as Tin Man and Bart Young climbed into the SUV with the two soldiers. They drove through the airfield’s gate and onto Saddle Road. After a quarter mile, the SUV turned left onto a rough Jeep trail and headed into the barren wasteland.

  “Where are they going?” Riley asked. “The army base is in the other direction. There’s nothing where they’re heading but lava desert.”

  Emerson watched them drive for a couple more minutes in silence. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “You found their base?”

  Emerson looked up from the telescope and turned to face Riley. “Not exactly. It turns out there is someplace to hide. They’ve disappeared.”

  Riley looked through the telescope. There was still a cloud of dust where the SUV had passed, but no SUV. She scanned the surrounding area. Nothing but miles and miles of desert without a structure in sight.

  “That’s impossible,” she said.

  “It’s improbable,” Emerson said. “Clearly it’s possible, because it happened.”

  “Maybe that SUV is with Little Buddy’s island,” Vernon said. “Like they both got sucked into one of them black holes and got spit out someplace else.”

  Emerson returned to the telescope. “What do you think happened to the SUV?” he asked Riley.

  Riley allowed herself a grimace. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” Vernon asked. “Do we go out to look for the black hole?”

  Emerson lay down on one of the bunk beds. “Nothing. We do nothing. The universe will provide the answer.”

  “We can’t sit around in this hotel room forever wu wei waiting on the universe,” Riley said. “We’re sort of in a time crunch. Tin Man plans to destroy Sour Creek Dome in less than a week if we don’t either get ourselves killed or stop him first.”

  Emerson closed his eyes. “We don’t have to sit around forever. Just until three P.M.”

  “Why three P.M.?”

  Emerson smiled. “The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us but wisdom must be sought.”

  Riley rolled her eyes. “Wu wei whatever.”

  —

  Riley woke from a sound sleep at two-thirty P.M. to the sound of her cellphone alarm. She hadn’t intended to take a nap, but she’d been up since four in the morning and was exhausted. Vernon was kneeling next to a snoring Wayan Bagus with a can of shaving cream he’d appropriated from the dormitory bathroom in one hand and a feather in the other. Emerson was looking out the window and down the mountain.

  Vernon held his index finger up to his lips, grinned at Riley, and pointed at Wayan Bagus’s hand. It was filled with a giant glob of shaving cream.

  “Little Buddy, wakey-wakey,” he whispered, tickling the monk’s cheek with the feather.

  Wayan Bagus snorted and turned his face from side to side. “Spiders, spiders,” he mumbled.

  “Get those spiders,” Vernon whispered.

  Without ever opening his eyes, Wayan Bagus lifted his shaving-cream-filled hand and smacked Vernon in the back of the head.

  “Son of a bitch,” Vernon said. He wiped the shaving cream off his head and went to the bathroom to clean up.

  Riley crossed the small room and stood behind Emerson. “What are you looking at?”

  Emerson pointed down the mountain toward Pohakuloa. The clouds had returned, and white tendrils of fog were creeping around the airfield and buildings at the army base.

  “I’m looking at the fog,” Emerson said. “I’m waiting for the universe to solve our problems. Another half hour and the entire area will be completely socked in. We could be right on top of Tin Man and he wouldn’t see us.”

  Riley watched the clouds as they continued to roll in. “We also won’t be able to see him. How did you know the universe would send you fog at precisely three P.M.?”

  Emerson held up his iPad. “The universe works in mysterious ways. In this case, the universe sent me a Weather Channel app. Besides, the clouds always come back in the afternoon.”

  Thirty minutes later, Emerson, Riley, Vernon, and Wayan Bagus were standing outside the Onizuka Center. Thick clouds covered the lower elevations of the mountain, and the temperature was noticeably cooler.

  Vernon shifted from foot to foot. “What the heck are we doing out here?”

  “Waiting for our transportation,” Emerson said.

  “Is it being provided by the universe?” Riley asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Emerson said.

  Alani pulled up to the front of the center in a six-person Polaris ATV. “Ready to go?” she asked.

  “I’m ready to go nowhere with you behind the wheel of this thing,” Vernon said. “I’d rather walk.”

  “Good idea,” Alani said. “You go wandering around in the zero-visibility fog. I’ll follow you in the ATV. I’m sure you’ll be perfectly safe. I’m an excellent driver. Only had one accident.”

  “Emerson, did you hear that? Devil Woman threatened me,” Vernon said. “She’s probably planning on driving us all over a cliff.”

  “There aren’t any cliffs here,” Alani said. “You’re safe…for now.”

  “Okay then,” Vernon said, getting into the back sea
t next to Wayan Bagus, “but I’m keeping my eye on you.”

  Alani drove into the cloud cover down the access road to Saddle Road and toward Pohakuloa.

  “I wouldn’t think it was possible, but it’s even more dense than it was this morning,” Riley said.

  Emerson pointed to an unimproved Jeep trail, barely visible through the fog, off to the right side of the road. “Turn there.”

  Alani turned onto the gravelly path and followed the tire tracks as best she could.

  “We need to stay on the trail,” she said. “We’re officially trespassing on the army training area, and there’s unexploded ordnance left over from past military exercises all over the place. As long as we stay on the trail we’re safe.”

  “Well, I don’t feel safe,” Vernon said. “I feel like I’m a character in some horror movie. You know, the kind of dumbass who’s being chased by a serial killer and decides to hide in a graveyard or an abandoned warehouse or some seriously scary fog.”

  “I am certain that this is perfectly normal fog,” Emerson said. “Except for the unexploded artillery and top-secret government research facility guarded by a sociopathic axe murderer. But other than that, it’s a perfectly normal fog.”

  “It would be easier to stay on the trail if someone walked in front of me,” Alani said.

  Emerson got out of the ATV and picked his way over the disturbed gravel with the ATV bumping along behind him, making slow progress. After ten minutes of walking he held his hand up as a signal that they should stop.

  “We should park the Polaris and go on foot from here on,” Emerson said. “We’re getting close to where the SUV disappeared, and I don’t want to risk them hearing the sound of a motor approaching.”

  Riley looked around. She couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of her face.

  “This cloud cover is completely disorienting,” she said. “If someone accidentally wanders off the trail they’ll never find their way back.”

  “I have that all worked out,” Emerson said. He reached into his daypack and fished around. “When I was packing our gear at the ranch, I had the foresight to pack whistles for each of us. Wayan will stay with the ATV while the rest of us snoop around. If we get separated or can’t find the Polaris in the fog, all we have to do is blow our whistle.”

  Emerson pulled from his pack five long metal tubes with pistons on one end and mouthpieces on the other.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing everyone a whistle.

  Riley’s eyebrows went halfway up her forehead. “For real? It’s a slide whistle. What are we supposed to do with these?”

  “They’re multifunctional,” Emerson said. “Blow once if you’re lost. Twice if you’re in danger. You can also use it to add some drama to the otherwise ordinarily mundane actions of sitting down, getting up, or turning the page of a book. The possibilities are endless.”

  Alani cut the engine on the ATV and tried her whistle. Weeeoop!

  Everyone smiled.

  “It’s a slipping on a banana peel whistle,” Vernon said. “I always wanted one of these.” Weeeoop! Weeeoop!

  “No more whistling,” Emerson said. “We don’t want the bad guys to hear us.” He handed his iPad over to Wayan Bagus. “I downloaded Rocky III for you. Vernon said you needed to know about manly hugging. We should be back in no more than three hours. I don’t want to be stuck here overnight.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Riley took point following the trail in the fog. Emerson, Vernon, and Alani walked close behind her.

  “We’ve been walking forever,” Vernon said. “This is like the road to nowhere.”

  “Unfortunately that’s a totally accurate description,” Riley said. “We’ve come to the end of the tracks. There’s no more road. And there’s also no more anything, including the missing Jeep.”

  Everyone looked around. Riley was right. No more road. No more tracks. No Jeep.

  “If it wasn’t for my cool new whistle I’d say this trip was a big waste,” Vernon said. “It’s cold, it’s spooky, and I can’t see where I’m going. I near broke my foot a minute ago on that stupid pipe sticking out of the ground.”

  “I didn’t see a pipe,” Riley said. “Where was it?”

  Vernon retraced his steps and pointed down at the ground. “It’s just some old waypoint left over by a surveyor.”

  Emerson got down on his hands and knees to examine the pipe. “It’s not a surveying monument.”

  “How do you know?” Alani asked.

  “Because heat doesn’t come out of a survey pipe. This is an exhaust.”

  Riley put her ear to the pipe. “It sounds like there’s a generator down there.”

  “That would explain the need for an exhaust pipe,” Emerson said. He turned to Alani. “Are there any caves in the area?”

  “In this area? None that I know about. There’s a big one on the eastern side of the mountain. It’s called the Paauhau Civil Defense Cave, but it’s really more of a lava tube.”

  “What’s a lava tube?” Riley asked.

  “It’s a conduit formed by lava flowing beneath the surface of already cooled and hardened magma,” Alani said. “Once the volcano is no longer active and the lava’s no longer flowing, what’s left is a cavelike channel with solid rock walls.”

  “Do you think there could be a lava tube under us?” Riley asked. “One that was big enough to hide an R&D lab?”

  Alani went still for a couple beats. “I suppose it’s possible. Some are up to fifty feet wide and can be very long. The Kazumura Cave in Kilauea, the active volcano in the southern part of the island, is almost forty-one miles long and the longest known lava tube in the world. There’s also one on Mauna Loa, the mountain just to the south of this one, that runs all the way from the summit to the Pacific Ocean thirty-one miles away, but there’s no record of anything like that on Mauna Kea.”

  Emerson looked at the pipe sticking out of the ground. “It all makes sense.”

  “Oh boy,” Riley said. “Here we go.”

  “I’m listening,” Alani said.

  “A hollowed-out volcano is every super-villain’s dream lair. It’s all about location, location, location.”

  Riley looked around. “If you’re right, the entrance has to be close.”

  “Agreed,” Emerson said. “We just need a bit of luck to find it.”

  Everyone froze at the sound of a large, heavy door rolling open.

  “It sounds like it’s at the bottom of this hill,” Riley whispered.

  Footsteps scuffed somewhere out in the fog, and a male voice carried up to Riley, Emerson, Alani, and Vernon.

  “Every time the motion detectors go off they send us out here,” the man said. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to find in this fog.”

  “It’s probably just the stupid feral goats,” a second voice said. “It’s always the goats.”

  “Okay, you found the entrance,” Riley whispered. “You got your lucky break. Now let’s get out of here before they change their minds and come looking for us.”

  “That would be ignoring our unique opportunity,” Emerson said. “An opportunity like this doesn’t come up every day.”

  “Do you mean an opportunity to get killed? You get those opportunities all the time.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Emerson said to Riley. “When presented with an interesting opportunity, you have a responsibility to the universe to acknowledge it.”

  Riley stared at Emerson. “I didn’t say anything remotely like that.”

  “Perhaps I paraphrased.”

  “Perhaps you live in fantasyland.”

  Emerson looked at Vernon. “How’s your unagi today?”

  Vernon grinned. “I’m just chock-full of it. Then again, who needs unagi when you’ve got a big-ass gun.” He pulled his lucky Glock from his jacket. “Even put bullets back in it when Little Buddy wasn’t looking.”

  “You see,” Emerson said. “It’s a sign. We have luck, an interesting situation, u
nagi, and a big gun. It would actually be grossly negligent of us not to overpower the guards and infiltrate the top-secret hollowed-out volcano.”

  Riley nodded. “I’m sure I’ll regret it, but I’m in.”

  “Let’s do it,” Alani said. “Mauna Kea is sacred ground to Hawaiians, and I don’t like what’s going on here on my mountain.”

  “I’m all about the lair,” Vernon said.

  Emerson, Riley, Vernon, and Alani carefully walked in the direction of the voices. As they got closer, the faint outlines of the men took shape. Two sentries were standing just outside a gaping hole in the hillside. They were smoking, and they’d laid their rifles against a rock wall.

  “Howdy,” Vernon said, pointing his gun at the guards.

  Both men jumped.

  “What the—” the first guard said.

  “Oh crap,” the second one said.

  “We’re from Human Resources,” Vernon said, positioning himself between the guards and their guns. “A couple of feral goats called and complained about the secondhand smoke. This is a nonsmoking mountain.”

  Alani collected the rifles and walked into the dimly lit tunnel that appeared to be about fifty feet in diameter.

  “This is definitely a lava tube,” she said.

  The rolling metal door was large enough for a truck to pass through. It was half closed and covered with jagged pieces of cinder. When the door was completely closed it would be perfectly camouflaged in the lava desert.

  “This explains the disappearing SUV,” Emerson said. “I wouldn’t have noticed the entrance if I’d walked right past it.”

  “What are we going to do with these two?” Alani said, motioning toward the guards.

  “I’m prepared for all events,” Emerson said. “I have zip ties in my pack. We’ll truss them up, and you and Vernon can stay behind to watch them. Riley and I will do a little snooping. We’ll be back in no more than an hour.”

  Riley took one of the guards’ rifles from Alani. She checked the clip for ammo and shouldered the gun.

  “What about you?” Alani asked Emerson. “Do you want the other rifle? Do you know how to use it?”