Eric Mentzer

            The crimson  Falcon 50, a 10 passenger private jet purchased by congress for NORSA’s use, touched down on the Honolulu International airport runway. Amos, already out of his seat, stood at the door, ready to disembark even before the plane stopped moving. When the mobile stairway was maneuvered up to the plane, he threw open the wide red door and, before the stairway was even in position, jumped across racing down the steps to the waiting crimson NORSA H3 Hummer. Galen barely made it into the Hummer as Amos threw it into gear and sped off towards the Queen’s Medical Center.

           By the time they left the airport parking lot and turned onto the H-1 freeway headed towards Diamond Head, Amos had already pushed the Hummer to ninety-five miles per hour. He took the Punchbowl off ramp, rounding the curve with the Hummer up on two wheels.

            Galen looked at Amos with compassion and concern and said, “Mario Andretti you ain’t. Do you think we could get there in one piece?”

            Amos acted as if he hadn’t heard Galen and smashed his foot down on the gas pedal. They crossed over Vineyard Boulevard and turned into the front entrance to Queen’s Medical Center. Amos threw the Hummer into a sideways spin at fifty miles per hour. With tires smoking, they slid to a stop right in front of the main entrance. Amos jumped out of the Hummer and raced for the front entrance.

            Galen yelled after him, “Hey! This sign says no parking.”

            Amos looked back over his shoulder at Edwards and grunted, “Let them give me a ticket. It’s on the Admiral’s dime anyway.”

            In his rush to get to Isabella in the ICU, Amos almost ran over Admiral D’Amato, who was on his way out of the lobby. D’Amato grabbed Amos by the arm, almost pulling the admiral off his feet.

“Amos, Wait a minute. I’ll show you to her room.”

Amos stopped and looked at the admiral, surprised to see him in the lobby.

“How is she, Admiral?”

            “Well, they don’t know for sure. It looks like some kind of poisoning.”

            “So how did this happen? She was supposed to be on vacation.”

            “Walk with me.” The admiral directed Amos toward the elevator. “We don’t know what happened yet. She appeared out of nowhere piloting a big seventy-five foot Azmut luxury yacht into Pearl Harbor.”

 “What was she doing piloting a yacht?” Amos exclaimed with a look of bewilderment on his face.

             “Nobody knows. In her radio transmission to the harbor master she sounded slurred and incoherent. She was talking about dead bodies, a dead crew and a headless man.”

            As they exited the elevator and walked down the hall toward Isabella’s room, they passed an unusual looking male nurse who was pushing a gurney with a body on it that appeared to be deceased. The body was draped with a bed sheet covering the face. The man stood almost six foot four inches tall and his face was twisted and malformed. His nose sat cockeyed on his face and his left eye was sunken in. It was obvious that he had been born with some serious birth defects. Even his hands were twisted and malformed with several fingers missing on each hand. Amos thought the man looked out of place. Not so much by his grotesque and twisted features, but by his coal black eyes that seemed hollow. Amos thought they gave him the appearance of pure evil. He would have normally felt deep compassion for the man’s disabilities and pitied him for his disfigurement, but that evil stare made Amos’s heart grow cold with trepidation. He felt that something was wrong. Like the man didn’t really belong here. Amos had other things, more important things to concentrate on now.

            He turned his attention back to Admiral D’Amato. “So what was her explanation for bringing a private yacht into restricted Navy waters?”

            “I don’t know. She fell unconscious when the first MP arrived on the boat and she has been in a coma ever since. We’ll have to wait until she wakes up to get the full story.”

            As they approached the closed door to her room, Amos told the admiral, “I will be right here with her until she comes out of it. Then we will get the bastards that did this to her.”

            The Admiral noticed the empty chair outside of Isabella’s room where an M.P. had been stationed. D’Amato had insisted on a Marine guard being stationed outside Isabella’s room as soon as he had heard about the unusual circumstances surrounding her unknown illness and the boat full of bodies that she had brought into Pearl Harbor.  

“That’s odd. The Marine MP is not at his post, and I gave no orders to relieve him.”

            Amos stepped in front of the Admiral and burst through the door to Isabella’s room, nearly taking it off its hinges. As he ran into the room, he could see that Isabella was not there. Her bed was empty. On the floor next to her bed laid the missing MP Underneath him, a large pool of blood spread across the floor, and a large stainless steel scalpel protruded from his ear.

            The Admiral asked, “Who could have done this and why?”

            “I don’t know, but I am sure going to find out.” Amos replied, “Hey, what about that weird disfigured guy that we passed in the hallway? He was really out of place. It didn’t seem like he belonged here.”

Amos rushed out into the hall looking in both directions but the ugly man pushing the gurney was gone. He quickly stepped up to the nurse’s station.

He anxiously asked a nurse who was standing at the counter writing in a patient’s chart, “Where is Isabella Zander?”

The nurse peered over the top of her reading glasses and without lifting her head she snarled, “Isabella is in her room. That fanatical marine guarding her room won’t even let me get in there to take her temperature without fifty questions and a pat down for weapons. I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to hurt her with. Thermometers aren’t exactly lethal.”

Zander was outraged with her answer. He wanted to crawl over the counter and throttle her, but he decided that course of action would be the least helpful in this situation.

He snapped back at nurse Witchypoo. “Did someone fart on your breakfast this morning, or have you had a lack of oxygen today?”

The nurse turned back toward him with a look of total disgust, and opened her mouth to snivel some witty remark, but Amos beat her to it.

“That fanatical marine who has been guarding that door is now lying on the floor in Isabella’s room with a scalpel sticking out of his ear, and Isabella is not in her room.”

The nurse’s icy personality finally broke a little and her face began to show some compassion.

“I will call a doctor right away!”

Amos replied with hard sarcasm, “Don’t bother, call a mortician; he’s dead!”

Amos decided to go with his gut instincts. They were rarely wrong.

“Who is that male nurse working here with a disfigured face?”

            “We don’t have any male nurses working on this shift.”

“Are you sure? We just passed one in the hallway a few minutes ago. He was pushing a gurney with a dead body on it.”

            The nurse responded with disdain again, “I ought to know. I’m the charge nurse here and I make up the shift schedule, and I also know that we haven’t had anybody die on this floor in the last week.”

            Amos grunted under his breath, “Well you have now.” Then he turned and looked at the Admiral who had just caught up with him. “Why is the charge nurse always the one with a Napoleonic Complex?”

            “Don’t worry about frosty the snow woman right now Amos. We need to find that weird guy. I’ll bet you my entire pension that Isabella was the one under that sheet. God! Let’s hope she’s not dead too!”

            “I’m not gonna take that bet. The hair on the back of my neck is telling me that you’d win, however I’m certain she is still alive. Whoever has taken her would not have risked taking her out of the hospital just to kill her. No, they want her alive for some reason, or she would be lying back there dead next to that marine.”

Zander and D’Amato took off at a dead run towards the elevator. On the way they passed Edwards, who had just gotten off the elevator.

            “Amos, I moved the Hummer into a parking space so you don’t have us walking when they tow it. Hey, what’s the rush? We just got here. Where are you going?”

            Zander replied, “Isabella’s been kidnapped and I think I know who took her. Come on. When we get downstairs we will split up and try to find him before he gets away with her.

            For Amos, the six-floor elevator ride seemed like it took eons. When the doors finally opened on the first floor and the three men rushed out, Zander was about to suggest three different directions for them to search in, but just then he saw Ugly. His six foot four inch frame jutted far above the rest of the people. They could see that he was wheeling the gurney with Isabella on it, out the emergency room exit door. The three men started to chase after him, but before they could reach the exit door, he threw Isabella into the back of an ambulance. Moving up to the front door, he pulled the driver from his seat, throwing him sprawling to the ground. Ugly jumped into the ambulance and sped off, leaving Zander and his comrades in the proverbial dust. The ambulance turned left onto Punchbowl Street heading for South Nimitz Highway.

            Admiral D’Amato turned and ran back inside, yelling over his shoulder, “You two get the Hummer and go after them. I’ll get some military backup for you.”

             Zander and Edwards headed for the distinctive crimson NORSA Hummer.

            As he climbed into the driver’s seat Amos looked at Edwards, “Can I play race car driver now?”

            Edwards shook his head, “I’ll make sure my seat belt is latched on tight.”

            Zander threw the Hummer into gear and headed off towards Nimitz Highway. This time he managed to stay on all four wheels, but just barely. Quickly accelerating the Hummer to ninety-five miles per hour, they caught up to the ambulance as it approached the Nimitz Highway on-ramps. The ambulance with Isabella in it took the north bound on ramp and accelerated to almost one hundred and ten miles per hour. Zander followed them up onto the highway and mashed his foot down on the gas pedal. He quickly closed the gap between the Hummer and the ambulance. He could see Ugly’s face reflecting through the driver’s side mirror. It had an expression of evil determination. His coal black eyes peered back at Zander, and it was at that moment that he realized Ugly was not going to give up easily.

            Scratching his head Edwards looked at Zander. “Now that we caught up to them what do you plan to do?”

            “Well we can’t try to knock them off the road. Isabella might get hurt. So I guess we’ll have to follow them and try to snatch her back when he stops.”

            The ambulance with the Hummer close on it’s tail wound around Nimitz highway at speeds exceeding one-hundred miles per hour. Edwards remarked that the rest of the cars on the highway looked like a bunch of little insects that were flying past them.

            As they approached Waiakamilo Road, Ugly threw the ambulance into the northbound off ramp. He made a quick turn onto Auiki Street and sent the ambulance down the narrow road. With Zander and Edwards in pursuit, they sped past warehouse after warehouse that backed up against Honolulu harbor.

            Zander said, “Where the heck is he headed?”

            “I don’t know. There isn’t anything down here except warehouses, shipping docks and fishing vessels. Maybe he’s trying to get onto one of these foreign national ships over there at the international freight docks. He might be thinking that we won’t be able to board it because of its foreign registry.”

            “That won’t stop us. As long as Isabella is on that ambulance, we go where it goes!” Zander Snapped Back.

            “Okay!” Edwards said with a grin. “Who am I to tell you not to invade another country’s sovereign territory?”

            Ugly made a sharp left turn onto Mokauea Street and headed towards the water.

            Zander followed close behind. “This street is going to dead end soon. I still can’t figure out what he’s up to. There’s nothing but a bunch of private yachts out here.”

            “Yeah, I remember this area. The Keehi Marina is at the end of this street.  Maybe he wants to play Gilligan or the Skipper.”

            “What are you babbling about, Galen?”

            “Well, you know, Keehi Marina is where they filmed the beginning sequence for the Gilligan’s Island TV show.”

            “If that’s the case, let’s hope his ship sinks before the end of his three hour tour.”

            The ambulance and the Hummer bounded across Sand Island Access Road. The ambulance crashed through the gate at the Keehi Marina, sending pieces of the ornate wooden gate in every direction. It headed straight for the dock, where a sixty-foot Southern Cross catamaran, the Stonewalls Revenge, was moored. She was sleek and fast with an eighteen-foot beam. She had twin seven hundred horse power, diesel, CAT C-12 engines with a top speed of thirty-eight knots.

            Edwards was the first to notice that the Stonewalls Revenge was not tied to the dock anymore.

            “She’s only got her port thrusters holding her starboard side against the dock.”

             Then Galen’s eyes flew wide open with shock. “She’s ready to set sail!”

             “This is going to be close,” Zander bellowed over the roar of the Hummer’s engine. “We have got to get them before they board that boat, or we may never get Isabella back.”

             “Yeah, I don’t think even the great Amos Zander can swim fast enough to catch up with that thoroughbred.”

            The ambulance pulled right up to the edge of the dock, nearly rolling off the side of the pier. Ugly jumped out and roughly grabbed Isabella. He quickly began pulling her towards the boat where the boarding ramp of the Stonewalls Revenge met the dock. Zander brought the Hummer to a skidding stop, mere inches from the ambulance’s back bumper. At that moment Zander caught the glimpse of a man leaning over the top gunwale of the Stonewalls Revenge.  He was quite familiar with the object that appeared in the man’s hand. He was pointing a LAW antitank rocket launcher directly at the hummer.

            “Bail out fast!” Zander yelled.

            Zander jumped from the Hummer just as the man launched the rocket at them. The antitank rocket burst into the hummer’s engine compartment. It was a direct hit. The Hummer exploded like the finale at a Fourth of July fireworks event. Pieces of the once beautiful crimson Hummer went flying over Zander’s head and scattered across the marina. The concussion from the blast lifted the Hummer up into the air and dropped it in the water, where it plunged into the silt at the bottom of the harbor, forty-five feet below. As the Hummer flew through the air, it barely missed the Stonewall’s Revenge as she pulled away from the dock.

            Her captain threw her into full throttle and she jumped out into the channel heading towards the sea. He set a course out through the channel between Sand Island and Mokauea Island.

             Zander looked up, searching for his friend, who was nowhere in sight. His first thought was that not only did he lose his wife, Isabella, but he had also just lost his best friend.

            He and Edwards had been friends since high school where they met at the bottom of a pileup of guys on the football field. Galen Edwards with his short stocky frame had picked up Zander, who was the quarterback from the bottom of the pile, by the shoulder pads. Galen pulled him up and out of the middle of the pile as though he were lifting a feather. Zander was immediately drawn to the guy who seemed to have no fear and more muscle and guts than were in his best interest. They had graduated high school as best friends and entered the Naval Academy as midshipmen together. After graduating the academy, they drew their first assignment together at the deep sea diving school on Oahu.  Galen was Amos’s best man at his wedding to Isabella just a few months ago. After they were assigned to NORSA they had become inseparable. Galen was not only Zander’s best friend; he was his right hand man at NORSA. He was the guy that made Zander look like a miracle worker.

Zander turned towards the area where he thought Edwards would have landed, but his short, stocky, wise cracking friend was nowhere to be found. As he got to his feet and started to stumble in that general direction, he caught a glimpse of a big green dumpster that was sitting alongside the marina’s storage building. The thick metal top was sliding up ever so slightly. He could see a pair of eyes peering out. It was Edwards.

            “I can’t stop this ringing in my ears.”

            Zander grinned. “I’m sure you can’t. That must have been like climbing into a tin can with a hand grenade.”

            Edwards stared dumbly at Zander. “What?” Without skipping a beat he yelled, “Hey! Where’s that military backup that the Admiral promised us?”

            “I don’t know, but I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to explain his brand new Hummer ending up at the bottom of the drink!”

            “Well, we can always blame it on him being tardy with his military backup.”

            “What backup? There was no military backup!”

            “Oh, yeah? Look behind you!”

            Zander turned around and looked towards the obliterated gate at the marina entrance. There were six Marine Corps Bushmaster IMV personnel carriers screeching to a stop just inside the fence. Thirty heavily armed marines were bailing out and deploying all across the marina.
            Zander looked at Edwards, “Now they show up.”

            “Some say, better late than never.”

            Zander sighed, “They can’t help us get Isabella back now. It might as well have been never.”