Page 3 of Wired Ghost

Untouched, old growth giant koa and ohia trees forming a uniquely Hawaiian forest rose out of the barren lava like a fantasy scene set on a knoll, wreathed in drifting skeins of vog and mist. Formed by lava flowing around a raised hill or ridge,kipukaswere relics of a previous time. As they approached, the air sweetened with the twittering song of endangered, seldom seen endemic birds that lived in these isolated, high elevation remnant forests, drinking the nectar of flowers and feasting on bugs that lived only in the bark of rare trees.

Jake crouched to inspect the ground as the trail disappeared into bushy growth at the base of thekipuka’s slight elevation. He flashed the high intensity penlight around, and spotted another nearly invisible trip line, tied between two largehapu`utree ferns.

“Be careful, Jake.” Sophie touched his back, her voice husky.

They hadn’t made love since reconnecting a couple of weeks ago; they still had a lot of talks to have, a lot of ground to cover, a lot of mistakes to forgive; and most of those were Jake’s.

But even in this moment of danger, her touch affected him more than he wanted it to. Jake gritted his teeth and focused on the task at hand.

He traced the fishing line to another grenade, and this time he detected a wireless camera node on another tree, pointed in their direction. He cursed under his breath, and gestured Sophie out of the way.

He moved up on the surveillance device from the side, knocking it off the fern tree. He crunched it under a boot, and then pushed at the tree and dug at its roots with a heel, kicking it askew and disturbing the earth at the base. “Hopefully no one’s monitoring the camera closely and it’s just set to a motion sensor alarm. I’m trying to make it look like a pig knocked the camera off the tree and destroyed it—worth a shot that they didn’t see us.”

Sophie helped in scuffing up the ground as if one of the many wild boar in the area had gone after the tree’s roots.

“Let’s get off this trail and see if we’ve been made.” Jake gestured for Sophie to follow him, glad that they had chosen clothing that would meld with the forest floor, foliage, and the dark shades of the lava.

They moved away from the path into the brush and bushes as quietly as they could, and finally Jake tugged Sophie down beside him in the shadow of a large ohia tree. “We need to work our way closer to the camp. See if we can move in and grab our target, or at least verify her location and come back with a better strike team.”

Sophie nodded. “That’s the plan.” Jake led them forward slowly through virgin forest, paralleling the path the meth cookers had made.

Hearing the crunching of leaves underfoot and the sound of voices, Jake stopped Sophie with a hand on her arm, and they hunkered down behind a fallen tree. Jake peeked up long enough to spot two men coming along the trail.

“That damn camera,” one of them grumbled. “Stupid thing is always making the alarm go off.” He was wearing a red ball cap, a bright target in the dim jungle.

“Probably just another wild pig or a battery that needs changing,” the other man agreed. He wore a Primo Beer hoodie over drop-waisted jeans like an urban gangsta dropped into the Hawaii wilderness.

These guys weren’t pros, but the weapons they packed were plenty deadly: Red Cap carried an AK, loosely hanging by a chest strap, and Primo Beer carried a couple of Desert Eagle chrome magnums, one in his hand and the other tucked into his belt.

Jake and Sophie held absolutely still as the men passed them, loud and oblivious.

“Now’s a good time to get some distance toward the camp,” Jake whispered. He grabbed Sophie’s hand, guiding her up onto the well-maintained trail. They broke into a run, both holding their weapons at the ready, and soon reached a fence topped with razor wire, and a locked gate.

“We’re at ground zero,” Jake whispered. He led Sophie into the shelter of a large, fallen log off to the side of the path. “Let’s move in closer and see what we can see.”

Chapter Three

Connor

Connor walkedamong the rows of drilling trainee ninjas in the main courtyard of the Yam Khûmk?n’s temple stronghold. The recruits practiced all around him, their black robes anonymous, their shaved heads rendering them almost indistinguishable. And yet, Connor could sense each man’s energy, and registered them in his mind’s eye in all the shades of the rainbow.

He could already tell which men would struggle. He could see the ones that would fail. And he knew which ones would betray the code. A perception of the energy field around each person had been becoming clearer and clearer to him in the time since he’d been promoted to Number One leader in the Master’s absence.

But Connor had no one to discuss his perceptions with, now that the Master had gone.

Was this how the Master knew which number to ink onto the back of the recruits’ shaved scalps when they first arrived? Why then, did the Master allow things to play out, and the recruits to go through their training? Was there a chance for someone to change the ugly color of their aura to something cleaner, clearer?

Connor glanced towards the dais at the front of the orderly rows, where his second-in-command, Pi, lead them by example.

Pi’s movements were crisp. His form was impeccable, perfect. His stance was strong. The color of his aura was a fine bright blue, but there was a sickly quality wavering through it, a bruised edge that revealed corruption.

Connor knew, when he had defeated Pi in combat and allowed him to live, that he’d potentially only delayed a problem that would have to be resolved.

But still he didn’t want conflict. He wanted a partnership with Pi, an equal sharing of the responsibility of leadership. He didn’t feel ready to run everything at the compound indefinitely, alone.How long would it go on?

He already missed Sophie and her precious daughter Momi, the daughter of his heart. Not only that, but he also had many possible cases awaiting his brand of justice. Running the compound and the management of the recruits was time-consuming. With no idea of the time frame of the Master’s absence, he couldn’t make any forward movement in the ways that would make sense to him: namely, handing over more and more of the responsibility for the day-to-day running of the compound to Pi, and spending more time on the overall mission of the Yam Khûmk?n and his vigilante justice activities.

Jake was back with Sophie, and sometime in the future, there would be a reckoning between him and his onetime friend. Jake still carried anger toward Connor for a perceived deception involved with his ongoing friendship with Sophie, and Connor didn’t look forward to when Jake delivered the beatdown he’d promised—but he’d endure it, for Sophie’s sake.

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