“You mean the Russian specialist on bikinium?” Henna interrupted.
“So, Dr. Mercer was right. The Russians are involved, just not their government.” The President was truly shocked. “Kerikov must be the mastermind and Ohnishi merely a pawn. The man’s got balls, I’ll say that much, but knowing this doesn’t help us any. We still have a coup taking place in Hawaii and a valuable resource about to fall to this Ivan Kerikov.” The President swiveled to face Henna. “What do you propose?”
“Give Mercer until dawn,” Henna said. “If he has a plan, at least give him that much time. You saw from that last transmission that it’s almost dark in Hawaii. Tonight should be relatively calm. The guardsmen don’t have the right equipment for night fighting. If we don’t hear anything by sunrise, continue with your plan, blow up the volcano and surrender the islands to Ohnishi.”
The President leaned back in his chair for a moment, staring at the soundproofed ceiling tiles, fingers laced behind his head. He made his decision quickly. “All right, I’ll give Mercer until seven A.M. local time, then I want that volcano obliterated.”
Henna stood to leave the room. Mercer had arrived on the Inchon ten hours earlier and Henna had promised to get in touch with any final news.
“Dick?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Why do you trust Mercer so much?”
Henna paused by the elevator door, his arms full of papers and files. “I’m basically a cop, sir, and cops learn to trust their instincts.”
Despite the sophistication of the equipment in the White House Communications Room, Henna spent twenty frustrating minutes waiting for a connection to the Inchon and another ten for Mercer to be tracked down aboard the 778-foot assault ship and brought to the radio.
“About time you called.”
“You’ve got until seven tomorrow morning your time,” Henna said without preamble. “So you better have one hell of a plan in that Machiavellian mind of yours.”
“What happens at seven?” Mercer asked airily.
“A cruise missile blows up Borodin’s volcano and the President surrenders the Hawaiian Islands without a fight.”
“Talk about your serious deadlines.” Mercer paused, absorbing this latest piece of information. “Well, I’d best be off, then. Any parting advice?”
“Yeah. Right now Pearl Harbor is a war zone and we can only assume the rest of the islands are equally inflamed.”
“I’m surprised it’s stayed calm as long as it has. What else?”
“We’ve found a definite link between the coup and a Russian KGB director named Ivan Kerikov. He’s the mastermind. He was last seen in Thailand but may be on Hawaii by now. Oh, yeah. I’ve had a team monitoring ham radio operators from Hawaii for the past couple of days. A guy there named Ken Peters, who works for one of the television stations, got hold of one of my people in California. He suspects that one of their reporters, Jill Tzu, may have been kidnapped by Ohnishi. She was doing a real in-depth expose on him when she vanished.”
“Dudley Doright to the rescue. What else?”
“Just that Ohnishi’s mansion is heavily guarded by some real fanatics, so be careful.”
“Don’t worry, Dick. I have no interest in Ohnishi’s house. He’s just a willing accomplice, not the linchpin.”
The signal from the Inchon faded. Henna knew that Mercer had cut him off.
He settled the phone back into its cradle. If Mercer wasn’t going to Ohnishi’s mansion, then where was he going? And if Ohnishi wasn’t the principal in this affair, who was?
Hawaii
Evad Lurbud’s senses were so highly tuned that the explosion which echoed across the lawns from the main house rocked him back against his heels as if he had been physically struck. Sergeant Demanov placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“What in the hell was that?” the burly sergeant asked in a whisper.
“Don’t know,” Lurbud replied curtly, straining his eyes through the night-vision binoculars at the front of Ohnishi’s glass mansion. “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
Demanov, Lurbud, and two commandos were crouched behind a small stand of flowering rhododendrons placed like an island on the wide front lawn of the estate. The rest of the squad was similarly hidden behind other natural cover.
They had reached Ohnishi’s as the shadows of twilight began smearing the beautiful grounds. Lurbud’s team had made use of the jungle which surrounded the estate to approach to within two hundred yards of the house, then had dashed across the lawn in a leapfrog technique, moving from small grove to small grove.
Lurbud and Demanov were no more than fifty yards from the marble porte cochere when the explosion occurred. The sound was accompanied by a flash of brilliant light at the side of the darkened house.
“I don’t see anyone within the building,” Lurbud said.
The night-vision glasses allowed Lurbud to see into the glass-walled house, but the main foyer entrance, curving staircase, and the rooms immediately to its left and right were all empty. He was about to signal the men behind him to move forward when a tiny movement within the mansion made him pause.
Someone was moving across the foyer toward the staircase. The figure was walking cautiously, twisting his body and neck as he peered around. When the man reached the base of the stairs, Lurbud clearly saw the assault rifle tucked under his arm.
“We’ve got company,” he said tensely.
Lurbud watched closely as another figure swept into the entrance foyer and scurried up the stairs. “Two so far,” he remarked. “But something’s not right. They look as if they aren’t familiar with the house. It seems strange for Ohnishi’s security to act like that.”
“Could be standard practice after that explosion,” Demanov suggested.
“I don’t think so. I think I know why we haven’t seen any of Ohnishi’s personal bodyguards anywhere on the estate.”
“American commandos beat us here?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Good,” Demanov grunted, and quietly cocked his machine pistol.
“Kenji, what’s going on?” Ohnishi wailed.
“There was one contingency you never anticipated.” The revolver in Kenji’s hand was steady. “Just as Kerikov sold you out and you sold out Kerikov, I have done the same to both of you.”
“I don’t understand, Kenji,” Ohnishi pleaded.
“It’s really quite simple. Ivan Kerikov hired me eight months ago to act as his watchdog, to report your activities to him.”
Ohnishi slouched deeper in his wheelchair, his frail neck vanishing into his shoulders as he bowed in defeat. He already knew the rest of what Kenji would say, and the weight of truth was heavy on his wasted body.
“Kerikov had to maintain absolute command of every aspect of his operation. You were the only player that he did not directly control. That is why he enlisted me, to make sure that he knew what you were plotting.”
“But I have known you all your life; you are like my son. How? How could you do such a thing?” Ohnishi might have accepted the betrayal, but he still had to know the reason.
“You know nothing about me except that which I’ve told you. It is true that at the beginning I saw you as my father, as my master, but like any son, I outgrew you. I searched for my own path. Which I found.”
“Through Kerikov?”
Kenji’s laugh was without feeling, so mocking that it sounded more like the bark of a rabid dog. “Kerikov is as much a fool as you were, old man. Soon after he approached me with his lucrative offer, I was approached by a group of men that gave me even more.” Kenji related the story of his mother’s enslavement as a “Comfort Girl” to the occupying Japanese army in Korea, his subsequent birth and his sale to his natural father. “I am half Korean, Ohnishi, a heritage that my father tried to bury, but a fact I could never ignore.