The Gates of Hell

CHAPTER SIX

Hayden waited until Ben and Karin had retreated to one of the facilities IT rooms. The brother and sister team were researching Hawaii, Diamond Head, the Gates of Hell, and other legends involving the Blood King, hoping to string together some kind of theory.

When the coast was clear, Hayden slipped on some fresh clothes and walked to a small office where Mano Kinimaka had set up a small workstation. The big Hawaiian was tapping away at the keys, looking a bit frustrated.

“Still catching two keys at once with those sausage fingers?” Hayden asked lightly and Kinimaka turned with a smile.

“Aloha nani wahine,” he said and then almost blushed when she showed knowledge of the words’ meaning.

“You think I’m beautiful? Is that because I got stabbed by a madman?”

“Because I’m glad. So very glad, that you’re still with us.”

Hayden laid a hand on Kinimaka’s shoulder. “Thank you, Mano.” She allowed a few moments to pass, then said, “But now with Boudreau, we have both an opportunity and a dilemma. We have to know what he knows. But how do we break him?”

“You think that crazy bastard knows where the Blood King is hiding? Would a man as careful as Kovalenko really tell him?”

“Boudreau’s the worse kind of crazy. A clever one. My guess is he knows something.”

A sardonic voice came from behind Hayden. “Drakey thinks we should torture his family.” Hayden spun. Alicia gave her a cynical smile. “That okay with you, CIA?”

“You spoke to Matt again?” Hayden said. “How is he?”

“Like his old self,” Alicia said with an irony she clearly didn’t mean. “The way I used to like him.”

“Hopeless? Drunk? Alone?” Hayden couldn’t keep the contempt from her voice.

Alicia shrugged. “Edgy. Hard. Deadly.” She locked eyes with the CIA agent. “Believe me, sweetie, this is how he has to be. It’s the only way he’ll come out of this thing alive. And…” She paused as if considering whether to go on. “And… it might just be the only way you all come out of it alive and with your families intact.”

“I’ll see if Boudreau has any family.” Hayden turned back to Kinimaka. “But the CIA sure as hell won’t be torturing anyone.”

“Is your facility pass current?” Kinimaka was eyeing the ex-British army soldier.

“Give or take, big boy.” Alicia flashed a mischievous smile and squeezed deliberately past Hayden into the small room, taken up mostly by Kinimaka’s bulk. “Watcha doin’?”

“Work.” Kinimaka flicked the screen off and crushed himself into a corner, as far from Alicia as he could.

Hayden came to his rescue. “You used to be a soldier back when you were human, Alicia. Do you have any suggestions that might help us break Boudreau?”

Alicia turned to Hayden with a challenge in her eyes. “Why don’t we go talk to him?”

Hayden smiled. “I was just about to.”

Hayden led the way down to the holding area. The five minute walk and elevator journey didn’t cause her any pain, though she took it steady, and her spirits rose. She had come to realize being stabbed was relatively like any other illness that made you take time off work. Sooner or later, you just got friggin’ bored and wanted to get the hell back into the fray.

The holding area consisted of two rows of cells. They walked on a highly polished floor until they reached the only one with an occupant, the last cell on the left. The front of the cell was wide open, its occupant contained by rows of bars reaching from floor to ceiling.

The smell of chlorine stung the air. Hayden nodded at the armed guards stationed outside Boudreau’s cell as she came to meet the man who had tried several times to kill her three weeks earlier.

Ed Boudreau was lounging on his bunk. He smirked when he saw her. “How’s the thigh, blondie?”

“What?” Hayden knew she shouldn’t bait him, but couldn’t help it. “Your voice sounds a bit husky. Been strangled lately?” Three weeks with a limp and the trauma of a knife wound made her reckless.

Kinimaka came up behind her, grinning. Boudreau met his eyes with a furious hunger. “Sometimes,” he whispered. “Table’s get turned.”

Kinimaka flexed his big shoulders, making no reply. Alicia then came around the big man’s bulk and stepped right up to the bars. “This scrawny fuck’s got your tiny panties in a twist?” She aimed the jibe at Hayden but didn’t take her eyes off Boudreau. “Wouldn’t take more’n a minute.”

Boudreau unfolded himself from the bunk and approached the bars. “Pretty eyes,” he said. “Dirty mouth. Ain’t you the one who was banging that fat guy with the beard? The one my men killed?”

“That’s me.”

Boudreau gripped the bars. “How you feel ‘bout that?”

Hayden sensed the guards starting to get antsy. This kind of confrontational weighing up was getting them nowhere.

Kinimaka had already tried to make the mercenary talk a dozen different ways, so Hayden asked something simple. “What do you want, Boudreau? What will persuade you to tell us what you know about Kovalenko?”

“Who?” Boudreau didn’t take his eyes away from Alicia. They were separated by the width of the bars between them.

“You know who I mean. The Blood King.”

“Oh, him. He’s just a myth. Thought the CIA would know that.”

“Name your price.”

Boudreau finally broke eye contact with Alicia. “‘Desperation is the English way.’ In the words of Pink Floyd.”

“We’re getting nowhere—” Hayden was disturbingly reminded of Drake’s and Ben’s Dinorock ribbing contests and hoped Boudreau was just firing off aimless remarks. “We’re—”

“I’ll take her,” Boudreau suddenly hissed. Hayden turned to see him facing Alicia again. “One on one. If she beats me, I talk.”

“Done.” Alicia was practically squeezing through the bars. The guards rushed forward. Hayden felt her blood rise.

“Stop!” She reached out and pulled Alicia back. “Are you crazy? This asshole’s never going to talk. It’s not worth the risk.”

“No risk,” Alicia whispered. “No risk at all.”

“We’re going,” Hayden said. “But—” She thought about what Drake had asked. “We’ll be back soon.”

Ben Blake leaned back and watched his sister work the modified CIA computer with ease. It hadn’t taken her long to get used to the special operating system required by the government agency, but then she was the brains of the family.

Karin was a sassy, black-belt-owning, strip-bar-working layabout, who’d been knocked for six by life in her late teens and had taken her brains and degrees and set about to do absolutely nothing. It was her aim to hurt and hate life for what it had done to her. Squandering her gifts was one way of showing she no longer cared.

She turned to look at him now. “Behold and worship the power of the female Blake. Everything you ever wanted to know about Diamond Head in one quick read.”

Ben flipped through the information. They had been doing this for a few days now — researching Hawaii and Diamond Head — Oahu’s famous volcano — and reading up on the journeys of Captain Cook — the legendary discoverer of the Hawaiian Islands back in 1778. It was important they both scanned and retained as much information as they could because when the breakthrough came the authorities expected events to move very fast indeed.

The Blood King’s reference to the Gates of Hell remained an enigma though, especially when applied to Hawaii. It seemed that most Hawaiians don’t even believe in the traditional version of hell.

Diamond Head itself was part of a complex series of cones and vents known as the Honolulu Volcanic Series, a chain of events that formed most of the infamous Oahu landmarks. Diamond Head itself, probably the most famous landmark, erupted only once about 150,000 years ago, but with such a one-time explosive force that it managed to retain its incredibly symmetrical cone.

Ben smirked a little at the next comment. It is thought Diamond Head will never erupt again. Hmm…

“Did you clock the bit about Diamond Head being a series of cones and vents?” Karin’s accent was broad Yorkshire to the point of obscurity. She’d already had a lot of fun with the CIA Miami locals with it, and had no doubt upset more than a few.

Not that Karin cared. “You deaf, mate?”

“Don’t call me mate,” he whined. “It’s what men call other men. Girls shouldn’t say it. Especially my sister.”

“OK, broth. Truce, for now. But you know what vents means? In your world, at least?”

Ben felt as though he was at school again. “Lava tubes?”

“Got it. Hey, you’re not dumb as a doorknob, like Dad used to say.”

“Dad never said—”

“Chill, bitch. To put it simply, lava tubes mean tunnels. All over Oahu.”

Ben shook his head at her. “I know that. Are you saying the Blood King’s hiding down one of them?”

“Who knows? But we’re here to do research, right?” She tapped the keys of Ben’s own CIA computer. “Get to it.”

Ben took a breath and turned away from her. Like the rest of his family, he missed them whilst they were apart, but after an hour of catching up, the old niggles came rushing back. Still, she had come a long way to help.

He opened a search for ‘Captain Cook legends’ and sat back to see what came up, his thoughts very much with Matt Drake and his best friend’s state of mind.