Chapter 7

The moon was down, but it was a cloudless night, and the stars provided plenty of light for eyes that knew how to see. Shadows flitted in and out between the darker shadows of the buildings in the scav compound. The occasional sharp 'thud' marked the neutralization of sentries or unlucky wanderers in the night. Sophie's team, trained since birth for stealth, slipped silently through the scav compound.

If there had ever been locks on the buildings, they were no longer in use. When she reached her objective, Sophie waited for Feliz to take out the guard on the back door, then slipped silently through into the darkened building. Using a small rock wedged into the hinge side of the door, she ensured that it would remain open, just in case she and her team had to use it in a hurry.

There were seven beds surrounded by curtains around the open area of the building, In the dim light of her red-filtered flash, she could make out only three interior doors. On two of them, old plastic signs in the symbolic outlines of a man and woman still hung, the symbol of a man dangling by its left foot. The third door, at the far end of the space, bore a peeling stick-on sign that had once said 'Office'. Sophie silently sent her team to ensure that those in the beds wouldn't sound the alarm and made her way toward the third door.

As she was about to pass the door bearing the symbol of a woman, it suddenly opened and the shadowy figure of a naked woman emerged, shuffling sleepily toward one of the sleeping alcoves. In two strides, Sophie was behind her. With her left hand over the naked woman's mouth, Sophie gave her a rap on the head that put her out. She carefully lowered the unconscious body to the floor and continued on her way.

To her surprise, the door to the office was locked. She briefly considered breaking it down, but her wandering eyes noticed that the partition walls went up only about eight feet - nowhere near the high ceiling of the warehouse-like building. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of snoring, coming, it seemed, from somewhere overhead. Quickly, lightly, she leaped onto a large wooden crate stacked next to the partition, then onto the top of the wall. Dust, dirt, and rat droppings were layered thickly upon the top of the wall, which was about four inches wide, but as she had suspected, there was no roof over the office area.

Her dimmed flash showed a large wooden desk with a single chair and a filing cabinet. Most of the rest of the space was occupied by a queen-sized bed, upon which snored a bearded man. A smaller, lighter colored head rested on the man's left shoulder, the attached body twitching slightly in its sleep.

Sophie lowered herself quietly to the surface of the desk, then onto what little floor space remained around the furniture crowded into the small office. A closer look showed the sleeping man to be the one who had test fired the weapon that afternoon while she sweated in her observation post.

This had to be the leader of the group, and chances were, if there was any documentation regarding his plans, it would be in that file cabinet. The problem would be getting to it without waking him or the girl next to him.

The decision was taken out of her hands when the girl turned and sleepily opened her eyes, blinking them a couple of times in the dim light of the flash. Sophie's hand clamped over her mouth just as the girl's eyes widened in alarm. The barrel of her assault weapon pressed against the girl's forehead effectively discouraged her from making a sound, but the stiffening of her body had already wakened the man beside her.

There was a knife in his hand as he came awake and sat upright, with no transition from sleep to wakefulness. Again the barrel of her weapon communicated her command and the knife fell to the bed. Sophie left it where it was. Reaching for the weapon would put her within the man's grasp and she didn't want to have to kill him - yet.

"Wright?" she asked quietly, watching the girl's eyes widen. The man's eyes narrowed slightly, even as he nodded.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice rumbling in his chest. His build and demeanor reminded her so much of the scav who had tortured Jose Garcia in Memphis, that she wanted to shoot him right there, just for looking like 'Bubba'.

Instead, ignoring his question, she turned the chair from the desk around with its back to the bed, and straddled it.

"You're the guy who wants to be King of these islands?"

The big man shook his head. "Nope. I just want to get us a little bit of headroom. We're a little late getting organized, and I figured to just try to carve out a niche somewhere where we can survive."

"You figure to do that on Oahu? That why you been raiding those folks?"

"No," he shook his head. Despite her initial impression Sophie had to wonder at the calm assurance with which he spoke. It didn't jive with either her memory of Bubba or the picture painted by Clyde Knowles and his son.

"Then tell me the story," she said.

"Why should I tell you?" Wright asked mildly. "Seems you've already got a story that you like."

"If I liked the story I've heard that much," Sophie answered, "you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me."

The truth of that, and its implications were not lost on the man.

He shrugged and began, "We had a little community going on the Big Island, but Murphy's group got bigger, faster, and became more aggressive. Our choice was to stay and fight it out, and most likely get killed, join up with the murdering bastard, or find another place to settle. We thought we might be okay on Maui, but those folks don't want anything to do with pre-sickness stuff, and again our choice would have been to fight or join, so we came here. Once we got here, we realized that we weren't going to be able to survive for long. We talked it over, and decided we'd figure out how to make better weapons, then go back to where we started, on the Big Island."

"So why the raids on Oahu? Why not Maui?"

"The folks on Maui are kind of our neighbors and they haven't bothered us, so we've pretty much left them alone. Don't need another enemy next door. Besides, more of what we need is available on Oahu, especially around the old military bases."

"And that's your only purpose? To reclaim your home?"

"Yeah."

Sophie thought for a moment then keyed her mic. "Anybody got any prisoners?"

"I've got a couple here," Linda replied. "Why?"

"You get a story out of them?" Sophie asked.

"In progress," Linda replied.

"What's it sound like, so far?"

"So far, they claim that they just want to go back to where they came from on the Big Island," Linda replied.

"Hmmm, I wonder ... Anyone else got anything?"

"I've got a map with what looks like a battle plan on it," Kyle answered. "If I'm reading this right, I'd say the story holds up. This shows a two pronged attack on a piece of the Kona coast. Could be a first phase or a jumping off point for something bigger, I suppose, but I haven't found any indication of that."

"All right, change of plans. Round up everyone you can find and gently move them to the beach. I don't want anyone killed, but I want to interrogate as many as I can, then we'll see."

Sophie turned back to the leader. "For now, I'm inclined to believe you. We were sent here from Phoenicia to put an end to the raids on Oahu, and I intend to do that, but if your story holds up, well, I'm not making any promises, but I might be able to help you too. You've got a boat, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I want to borrow it," she held up a hand to still his protests. "You'll get it back. If I just wanted to steal it I wouldn't have asked. Now get dressed."

She was not surprised, having observed the activities in the settlement, that they put on grass skirts, but her curiosity was aroused.

"Why the grass skirts? I didn't think you folks wanted to go native."

"You see a place to buy or make cloth around here?" Wright asked, a glint of humor in his eyes. "Believe me, this wouldn't be my first choice of wardrobe if I had another."

"Tell me about Clyde Knowles," Sophie changed the subject.

"Clyde? He and his family came with us from Hawai'i, but didn't adapt too well to life here. His wife got tired of listening to him complain and took up with another man. I keep him and his son on watch over on the east end of the island as much as I can so I don't have to listen to their bitching, why? Oh, I see, you came in from the east, didn't you? You must have caught the shiftless bastard napping."

"Believe it or not, he actually tried to put up a fight," Sophie shrugged, "and his son tried to sound the alarm."

Sophie's team rounded up the other occupants of the building, including the woman she had knocked out, and herded everyone down to the beach. Soon they had a confused crowd of about sixty people, some of whom gravitated toward Wright. Sophie separated those and anyone else who took on the demeanor of leadership, and dividing them up between herself and her team leaders, interrogated them, one by one.

"So, what did you find out?" she asked Linda and Kyle as they returned the last of their prisoners to the group.

"Their stories hold up," Linda answered, with a nod of agreement from Kyle. "There're enough inconsistencies to keep them from sounding memorized, but the important points are the same from all of them."

"What about the people that Wright supposedly had killed?"

"A couple of people decided they'd had enough of this island and took a rowboat, ostensibly to go back to the Big Island. The boat was found capsized a couple of days later. There's a small faction of disgruntled people who claimed it was the work of Wright's goons, but as near as I can tell, there's no evidence to support that."

"And these 'goons'?"

"There is a core group of staunch supporters," Kyle answered, "and, near as I can tell, they're willing to use their fists to defend Wright's policies, but I haven't found anyone who was willing to say that they ever attacked anyone without provocation."

"So what's your take on what you've heard?" Sophie asked them.

"Seems to me like they just want to get back to a place where they can live in peace." Linda replied. "They've got three rifles made and maybe three more in process, but that's not going to start a global war. They've had trouble finding steel that they can temper into serviceable barrels and breeches, and machining them by hand has got to be slow. They have no electricity, but they've contrived a bicycle thing to turn their lathe and drill press. I guess they take turns pedaling. I checked, and they can't even rifle the barrels, so accuracy is going to be a problem. They've collected a lot of old brass and they're just reloading the old casings."

"Yeah, and their powder is pretty much the crude black powder that was made in the nineteenth century," Kyle added, nodding. "I agree with Linda. The story I get on this Knowles character is that he and his boy are among those that aren't happy with Wright for having brought them here, so he's more than a little biased."

"What about the raids on Oahu?"

"They say they were careful not to take anything the people on Oahu were already using, but it seems that those folks consider everything on the island to be theirs, even if they haven't physically claimed it yet." Linda answered.

"Yeah, and according to the people I've talked to, they haven't hurt or killed anyone. If the folks on Oahu see them, they just take what they can carry and high-tail it out of there," Kyle rejoined.

"Okay, make sure you've got all the firearms secured and let them go on about their business. I'm going to talk to Wright."

Sophie turned back to the group of prisoners and found Wright in conversation with several others. None of them seemed surprised to see her.

"I've got a proposal for you," she told Wright.

"Why should I care what you have to propose?" the big man answered, a glint in his eye.

Sophie noticed the others closing in about her and heaved an inward sigh, bringing her assault weapon to her shoulder and pressing all four barrels against Wright's chest, "First, tell these yahoos to back off. I'm trying to get through this day without getting all of you killed, but if they keep coming, there won't be a live body on this beach when we leave."

Wright looked at his men and jerked his head. He didn't have to be told whose would be the first body.

"So what's your proposal?" he asked mildly.

"I may have to re-think my plan, after that little stunt," Sophie told him, not moving her weapon.

"Look, you people come in here in the middle of the night, roust us out, and interrogate us like criminals," Wright said. "Can you blame me for trying to get the upper hand?"

"Maybe not," Sophie said, dropping her weapon to waist level but keeping it trained on Wright, "but if you notice, the worst you folks have suffered so far are a few concussions and maybe a bruise here or there. You keep that shit up, and it will get one whole hell of a lot worse."

"You have my word," Wright told her.

"I have no idea how good your word is, so you will be my hostage until our business is concluded," she told him. "Now, are you folks dead set on going back to the Big Island, or are you just looking for a place to settle down?"

Wright looked around at his men and received shrugs in return.

"Well, I'm told that there's no one living on Moloka'i," Sophie continued. "If you'll agree to stop raiding Oahu, we'll see what we can do to get King Kamehameha and the folks on Oahu to agree to a non-agression pact if you move there."

"What about the rifles we've made? Are you going to confiscate those?"

"We're keeping them until we have an agreement, but when we leave here, it'll be up to you to decide what to do with them," Sophie answered.

Wright gave her a strange look. "I thought you Phoenicians didn't want anyone else having weapons."

Sophie smiled as she shook her head. "We won't sell or give away the weapons we've got, but if you develop your own, more power to you. I will warn you, though, that both Oahu and now Maui are under Phoenicia's protection. If you don't want to start a war with us, I wouldn't be using those weapons against them."

"I hear you loud and clear," Wright answered.

"Good. Now you and I are off to Oahu by way of Maui."

The sun was not yet up by the time the logistics were sorted out, including releasing Clyde Knowles and his son from their confinement back at their original camp.

Once again, Sophie found herself and her team aboard someone else's boat.

The boat had once had a motor, but that was now little more than ballast. The propeller shaft had been uncoupled and the hole that once passed through the hull near the stern had been patched over. The canvas of the sails had been patched with different fabrics in a variety of faded colors and patterns, but they were serviceable, and Wright's people knew how to handle it. They had no trouble rounding the island and coming to anchor in Kanapou Bay in the dark, while Feliz and Rojas retrieved the gear they had buried on the beach. Nor did they have any difficulty sailing around the southern end of Maui to come ashore at Wailuku as the sun was coming up. Sophie left most of her platoon with the boat and Wright's crew as she and Kyle hiked up toward the Iao valley.