The Scam (7 page)

There was movement in the trees. Kate dropped flat in the mud amid a thick patch of philodendrons. Three Hawaiians emerged from another trail. Two of the men were large enough to be sumo wrestlers and carried machetes casually at their sides. One was wearing flip-flops, the other neon-bright yellow Nikes. The third man had the lean build and stoned demeanor of a surfer. He held an M16 rifle tightly in both of his hands.

The guy in flip-flops squinted at the sign and read it aloud, sounding the words out phonetically, then turned to the two other men. “You ever see this movie, brah?”

“Three times.” The surfer pointed his M16 into the fuselage and peered inside for any signs of life. “It could only have been better if Steven Seagal was in it. Steven Seagal is a badass. He's like Alika only he's not fat.”

The guy in the Nikes gave a bark of laughter. “I'm telling Alika you said he was fat.”

They moved on with Flip-Flops at point, flanked by his two buddies. He'd gone only a couple steps when his right foot plunged into a hole that had been hidden under a blanket of leaves. He pitched over with a shriek of pain, his trapped ankle breaking with a snap.

Small punji-stake pit, Kate thought. One of Dad's favorite booby traps.

Neon Nikes quickly moved away from the trail, breaking a trip wire at his ankles. He instinctively looked down at his feet to see what he'd walked into, heard something move in the jungle, and then straightened up to see whatever was coming at him. It was a coconut tied to a vine like a tetherball. The coconut slammed into his shoulder with bone-breaking force and knocked Neon Nikes to the ground.

The surfer raised his M16, let out a furious banshee roar, and sprayed the dense foliage ahead of him with bullets until he'd emptied his clip. He was reaching into his pocket for a fresh clip when a long branch whipped out of nowhere and swatted him out of his sandals.

Jake sprang out of the mud beside the trail and snatched the fallen M16 and ammo clip, jammed the clip into the rifle, and aimed it at the three men on the ground.

“You have thirty seconds to get out of here,” Jake said. “Or I start shooting.”

The surfer and Neon Nikes each took Flip-Flops by an arm, and the three Hawaiians staggered away. Once they were out of sight, Jake lowered the M16 and grinned at Kate, who was still lying flat amid the philodendrons.

“What did you think of that?” he asked.

Kate stood up and smiled at her father. “You're having way too much fun, Dad.”

“That's what vacations are for.”

“Why did you send me such a cryptic message?”

“I didn't mean to. My battery was near death, and there was barely a signal here. I figured I had just enough juice for two or three words. I was right. As soon as I hit send, the phone died. To tell you the truth, I was sure the message didn't go out, so it was a nice surprise when you showed up.”

“Why did you go off into the jungle?”

“Alika didn't see the ironic justice of
an eye for an eye,
or in this case
a truck for a truck.
The F-150 was still smoking when he sent his goons out to get me.”

“How did he know it was you?”

“We'd had a chitchat prior to the explosion.”

“Nice.”

“Turns out he has anger issues,” Jake said. “Hidden inside all that tattooed fat is an insecure, angry man.”

Kate did a grimace. “You could have gone to the police.”

“I didn't know if I could trust the police. I knew I could trust the jungle. Problem was I had no exit strategy. Alika has too much of the island covered. So what's
your
exit strategy?”

“We wait until sunrise, hike to a clearing about five miles southeast of here, and then I'll call in a chopper for an extraction.”

“It's weak on shock and awe, but it sounds like a fine plan to me.” He put his arm around her and sighed with contentment. “I don't know how people can come here and surf when they could be doing this.”

Kate grinned. “Neither do I.”

N
ick Fox blew into the office of the Hawaii Film Commission just as Allan Mingus, the only employee still on duty, was about to lock up and call it a day. Nick was in mid-conversation on his cellphone and held up a finger to Mingus, instructing him to wait.

“Tom Cruise is too short and too old. This is a movie about a young, virile action hero.” Nick spoke rapidly in a foreign accent of his own creation that he hoped could pass for Swedish, not that many people would know a Swedish accent if they heard one. He'd colored his hair blond and wore sunglasses, a soul patch under his lip, and a pair of phony diamond studs in his ears. “Get me a Hemsworth. Chris, Liam, Luke, Mario, or Zippy. I don't care which one. Nobody can tell them apart anyway.”

Nick ended his call and faced Mingus, a stout man in his fifties in the obligatory aloha shirt. They stood in the center of the office, which looked like a small travel agency. The walls were decorated with posters of tropical Hawaiian beaches and movies like
From Here to Eternity
and
Raiders of the Lost Ark
that were shot on the islands.

“Show me what you've got,” Nick said.

“I'm sorry, but I was just closing for the day,” Mingus said.

“Not anymore. I'm looking for Vietnam, South America, and Florida in one place and I need it quick.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Krister Blomkvistbjurman-Malm, of course. Don't you recognize me? Writer, director, and cinematographer of
Sherm de Sherm den Hurf.
”

“I am not familiar with that movie.”

“It won the Oscar for best foreign picture,” Nick said. “How can you call yourself a film office when you know
nothing
about film?”

“Oh, yes, now I remember it,” Mingus said, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “Great movie. I just forgot the original Russian title.”

“It's Swedish.”

“Right,” Mingus said, his flush deepening. “I'm afraid you'll have to come back tomorrow.”

“That's too late. Tomorrow night I go to Australia to see what they have to offer. So tonight you'll show me photos and tomorrow you'll take me on a helicopter and ground tour of the locations I've selected or you're out of the running.”

“That's not the way it goes,” Mingus said. “We need more advance notice and a lot more details before we go scouting. For one thing, we have to see a script—”

Nick interrupted him. “Nobody sees a script. It's the latest installment in a major billion-dollar movie franchise. Anyone who wants to read the screenplay must come to the studio, surrender their cellphones, and lock themselves in my office.”

“Okay, but before we can get started, we need some basic information,” Mingus said. “We need to know the production company and studio, where the financing is coming from, whether the project is union or nonunion, whether—”

Nick interrupted him. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“What you said before, only this time with coiled rage and greater authority.” Nick pointed at him and said, “Go!”

Mingus stared at him for a moment, not sure what to make of the request, so he just soldiered on. “What I'm saying is that I need to make sure that you and your movie are legit. Anybody can just walk in here and claim—”

“Wonderful,” Nick said, cutting him off again. “I believed it. Where did you get your training as an actor?”

“I don't have any, but before I got this job, I did some small parts. I was one of the airline passengers in the
Lost
pilot. I didn't have any lines, but I was in the background of every scene.”

“Those roles are crucial. They are even harder than speaking parts.”

“They are?”

“Of course. They give a film its inherent reality. You have that and natural gravitas, too.”

“I do?”

“Inherent reality and natural gravitas are just what I am looking for in the actor who plays Indy's boss.”

“Did you say ‘Indy'?” Mingus's gaze flicked to the
Raiders of the Lost Ark
poster on the wall. “As in ‘Indiana Jones'?”

Nick winced, as if realizing he'd let something slip. “No, I most emphatically did not. Forget I said that. All you need to know is that it's a key speaking part, and I need to cast a local rather than fly someone in. You'd be doing me a big favor if you'd take the role. It's a two-day job, tops. Would you do it for me?”

“I'd be glad to,” Mingus said, breaking out in a huge grin.

“Then it's done, assuming we shoot here, of course,” Nick said. “What can you show me tomorrow?”

“We have some spectacular locations, among the best on earth,” Mingus said. “Let me go grab the binders.”

Kate and Jake awoke at dawn and worked their way slowly to the southeast, keeping low and staying off the trails. It took them three hours to slog through the heavy vegetation and reach their destination, which was marked by a pair of iron gates under a massive stone arch with the words “Cretaceous Zoo” carved across the top.

Jake knocked on the arch. It was a molded fiberglass veneer nailed to plywood. “What is this place?”

“The old set for a movie about a zoo filled with genetically re-created dinosaurs and cavemen. The dinosaurs escape and eat all of the guests,” Kate said. “The cavemen team up with a retired New York cop, a busty medical student, and a novelist to battle the monsters.”

“You saw it?”

“I think it's probably the best work Gunter Jorgenson has ever done. In the finale the survivors fight their way through hordes of raptors to get to the brontosaurus paddock. That's the field where the helicopters landed to get the heroes off the island before the nukes were dropped. If it worked for them, it could work for us.”

Kate took the lead, her shotgun at the ready, and sprinted under the arch, then hugged the tree line along the trail that led inside. Jake followed, wielding the M16 he'd acquired the day before. They moved from tree to tree, one person at a time, covering each other as they went.

The
Cretaceous Zoo
Welcome Center loomed at the end of the trail in front of them. It was a two-story Polynesian-style building with a domed glass atrium. The plants in the atrium had grown and broken through the glass. There were several Jeeps that had been crushed by rampaging dinosaurs scattered around the Welcome Center.

Kate and Jake used the Jeeps as cover, going from one to another, as they approached the Welcome Center and then worked their way behind the building, sticking close to the walls. They peeked around the edge of the building to see what lay beyond it.

They faced the zoo itself. To their left was the caveman habitat, a neighborhood of stone-and-log cabins covered in layers of graffiti and arranged in a half circle facing a statue of two raging T. rexes tearing apart a struggling pterodactyl. To their right was a fake hillside, riddled with caves and overgrown with plants. At the far end, directly across from the Welcome Center, was another arch that lead to the next section of the zoo.

“The brontosaurus corral and the clearing are on the other side of that arch,” Kate said.

“We'll be out in the open between here and those T. rex statues,” Jake said. “Then in the open again to the clearing.”

“You go first and I'll cover you.” Kate drew her Glock and held it out to Jake. “But I'll need your M16 to do the job right.”

They swapped weapons. She gave him her extra clips for the Glock and he stuck them in his pocket. She removed the shotgun from over her shoulder, and moved into position with the M16. She pressed her cheek against the stock, looked down the weld line through the sight, and targeted the statues. She put her finger on the trigger.

“Ready,” Kate said.

“That's my girl,” he said.

Jake held the Glock at his side and dashed out into the open, zigzagging as he went. He was halfway to the fighting dinosaurs when gunfire rang out and bullets cut divots into the dirt around him. Two shooters with M16s were firing down at him from the hillside caves.

Kate opened fire on the hill, driving the startled shooters back into their caves. She pivoted and sprayed the caveman cabins, too, pinning down two other shooters who were about to let loose a barrage of their own. Her suppression fire gave Jake the crucial seconds he needed to dive for cover amid the legs of the fighting T. rexes. Kate had caught them by surprise, but it wore off quickly.

The instant Jake landed, bullets chipped away at the dinosaurs' legs from both the cabins and the caves, showering him with bits of wood and plaster. Alika's men also let loose on Kate. She ducked back as bullets slammed into the wall beside her.

There were at least two men in the cabins and two in the hillside caves, all armed with M16s. Jake was pinned down. He had a Glock and very little cover. Kate's clip was empty, which left her with the twelve-gauge short-barreled shotgun, a perfect weapon for close-quarters fighting but lousy for situations like this. She'd have to get much closer to her enemy for the shotgun to be effective. The question was whether Jake could hold out long enough for Kate to sneak up on the cabins and start taking the shooters out, one by one.

Her other option was to call Virgil on the radio. Tell him to come in the chopper right away, and bring all the firepower he could muster.

Kate was about to make a decision when she heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter approaching. She looked up apprehensively, and a white helicopter flew in low over the Welcome Center. As it passed, she could clearly see the Hawaii state seal on the side of the aircraft.