Saunders in the face after he called me a faggot once, but at least I knew him, his strengths and weaknesses. He was a big, strong guy, too, which might help us if we ran into somebody up on the ridge who needed to be restrained.
Haoa took Tony Lee, Frank Sit, Steve Hart and another uniform, and Lui got Alvy Greenberg and three uniforms.
I was just ready to pull out when Mike Riccardi arrived, loping up the hill from where he’d parked his truck. I was so damn glad to see him-but at the same time, I knew that his presence meant he was about to go into that fire.
THE HARDINGS
Lui’s team and Haoa’s team went up the mountain in separate directions, so it wasn’t long before I lost sight and sound of my brothers. I worried about them, but I knew they both were smart and strong and knew the park well. I turned my attention back to Mike, who was explaining the fire department’s plans to Lieutenant Sampson
“Air-1’s in for repairs, so we’ve got Air-2 on the way,” he said. I knew that those were the names of the Honolulu Fire Department’s two helicopters. “Air-2 has the Bambi Bucket.”
“You’re trying to rescue deer?” Sampson asked.
Mike laughed and shook his head. “The Bambi Bucket is a lightweight collapsible container, for water drops on brush fires,” he said. “We’ll scoop up water from the ocean and ferry it over here. The bucket can pull out of places as shallow as a foot deep. Though this wind might be trouble.”
For the first time, I paid attention to the wind around us as something more than a carrier of smoke. “I’d say we’ve got gusts of up to 30 miles an hour,” Mike said. “Might make it tough to get the bucket in. But we’ll see.”
We looked up to the mountain, and saw rust-red and white clouds of smoke as well as lines of orange flames moving over the hills and into the park’s gulches.
Mike’s radio crackled and he listened for a minute. “Roger that.” To us, he said, “The state’s sending the DNR chopper too.” That was good; the park, as protected land, came under the auspices of the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
“The chief’s worried about the houses in St. Louis Heights,” Mike continued. “We’ve got front end loaders coming up to build fire breaks where we can, but it’s tough to get access to a lot of the park. And even if we build them, the wind may just jump the breaks.”
I thought of my parents’ house, which backed on the park, as well as Uncle Chin’s house, where his body still rested, watched over by my parents, the gamblers in the front courtyard, Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang. “Will there be evacuations?” I asked.
“Not sure yet. We’ll see how the fire breaks go. We’re also going to be hosing down the back yards, trying to create a water curtain.”
Meanwhile, engines from the Five, Twenty-Two and Thirty-Three companies were pulling up, disgorging fire fighters in yellow suits, their company number on their yellow helmets. Many were already wearing masks, with oxygen tanks on their backs.
The Battalion Chief got out of his car, and Mike leaned over to whisper to me, “You know what CHAOS stands for?”
I shook my head.
“The Chief Has Arrived On Scene,” he said, and laughing, left to confer with him. It was time to take my team up the mountain, leaving Lieutenant Sampson at the command post.
Lui’s team was the first to find anything. After about half an hour of climbing, they came upon the abandoned Volvo that the helicopter had spotted. They radioed the license plate and VIN number in to Sampson, and he called in for an identification. I heard him radio back, “It belongs to an Eli Harding of Palolo,” he said. “I’m trying to track down the Hardings. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Before the report could come back, though, Lui’s team ran into Harding himself, along with his wife. My team wasn’t far from them, and I met up with Lui to take charge of the Hardings and see what they had to say.
When my team connected with Lui’s, I could see that Alvy Greenberg wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t have the time-or the interest. Harding was a short, stocky guy in his early thirties, with wiry, sandy blonde hair. His wife was about his age and height, a bit slimmer, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. They looked like an ordinary suburban couple, and I could see why Kitty had trusted them enough to go off on a picnic with them and their kids.
They were frantic about their two children. Lui was good with them, talking with quiet power about his own kids, and how he understood completely what the Hardings were going through. “My brother knows what he’s doing,” Lui said, handing the Hardings off to me. “He’ll get your kids back.”
I wished I felt as sure, but I smiled and said that Lui was absolutely right. He took Greenberg and his two uniforms and went back into the brush, and my team and I started down the hill with the Hardings.
Finally, Eli calmed down enough to tell me what had happened. “My grandfather built this cabin, just one big room, about twenty feet on each side, with ten-foot ceilings, in the 1930s, when you could claim a piece of the mountain land by building on it,” he said, as we made our way down the narrow, overgrown path. The smoke was heavy around us, and the heat was almost blistering.
“I grew up going there for holidays and summers, and when my father died I inherited it. I was talking about the place with Jeff White last week and he said he’d like to see it, so we made plans for this picnic.” He was wearing shorts and a fake military shirt in a khaki color, the kind with epaulets and lots of pockets, and the sweat was dripping down his forehead.
He started to cough, and Fran grabbed his hand. She continued the story. “The kids were playing outside, and Eli and I were standing by the kitchen counter putting sandwiches out on a platter when Jeff and Sheila walked in.” Her arms and legs were scratched, and her white shirt and plaid shorts were smoke-stained.
“The bastards were holding a gun on us,” Eli said indignantly. “I’m the one took Jeff out shooting at the range, and he had this 9 millimeter aimed at Fran, while Sheila came over to me carrying this rope. I said, ‘What’s going on, buddy? What are you and your wife doing?’”
He started to cough again, but stopped after a moment. “He said, ‘She’s not my wife, she’s my sister.’ I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.”
“He made us lie down on the floor,” Fran said. “They said that they were going to tie us up so that we couldn’t follow them.” She reached over and used her shirt sleeve to wipe Eli’s brow of sweat.
“We asked them about Cole and Caitlin,” Eli said. “At least we wanted them to bring the kids in with us. But Sheila said they were taking the kids for a ride with them. Jeff took the keys to the Volvo from my pocket.”
“We started fighting them,” Fran said. “I couldn’t believe they were taking my babies away from me. Sheila hit me in the head with her gun.”
We came to a narrow place on the trail, where there was a steep drop-off to one side, and we all had to stop talking and go single file until the danger had passed. The brush crackled under me, dry as tinder, and tiny pebbles skittered away whenever anyone stepped down. When I took deep breaths I felt a stinging in my throat.
The strap of Fran’s left sandal was torn, and it caught beneath her as she walked. She lost her balance and nearly fell down the side of the ravine, but Lidia was right behind her, and she caught Fran and helped her stand up again.
Sweat was pooling under my arms and dripping across my forehead. I couldn’t see how Mike could work in this kind of environment. Not just the infernal heat and the sweat, but not knowing where the fire was, and where it might strike next.
After Hurricane Iniki destroyed Kauai in 1992, a lot of people talked about leaving the islands. Cousins of mine moved to Southern California. I figured that at least with a hurricane, you knew what was coming and you had time to prepare. An earthquake could strike any time, without warning. That’s the way I felt about this fire-that at any moment a tongue of flame could spring up, trapping us or turning us into crispy critters. Give me a good old fashioned tropical storm, wind and rain lashing the palm trees, any time.
