Honorable Enemies (1994) (9 page)

After a moment's hesitation, Susan glanced at the movie screen, then turned back to Steve. "At any rate, after enduring years of blazing heat and numbing cold, with hot dust storms in the summer and freezing blizzards in the winter, and suffering the embarrassment of sharing one bathroom with scores of other people, my family was finally released from Amache after the war ended."

Wickham frowned and shifted in his seat. He felt uncomfortable, as if he were prying. "That's when they moved to Oakland?"

"Yes. There was an American-owned company advertising jobs for the Japanese who had been detained in the wartime camps, so that's where my folks headed."

Susan paused. She liked talking about the close-knit famil
y s
he loved, but it still hurt. "My father got a job with the company and my grandmother moved in with them. My parents, who were afraid to even take a day off for seven years, finally decided it was safe to have children by the early fifties. I was the last of four daughters."

Steve cast a quick look at Susan's attractive face, noting the soft eyes. "That must have been about--"

"Nineteen-sixty," she answered frankly, "and I'll fast-forward from there."

He started to protest and Susan gently shook her head. "I grew up in a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in Oakland, attended the University of California-Berkeley, and you know the rest of my story."

Steve was intrigued, but decided against asking her any more personal questions. "Marcus said that the Bureau is going to provide a car for us."

"That's right," she replied, casting a glance at Callaway, "but you'll need to take a taxi to your hotel. Our people will pick you and Marcus up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning."

"Aren't you going with us?"

"No. A friend is meeting me at the airport, and I'll be staying at my home."

Steve grinned and let his gaze linger on her eyes. "I look forward to working with you."

Susan laughed in her polite way. "The pleasure is all mine. After what I've heard about your exploits, this should be an interesting experience."

He laughed and then excused himself and walked to the rest room in the first-class section, noting that the elderly Japanese man was not on this segment of the flight.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared for the stadium visual runway two-four right approach."

The seasoned Japanese copilot keyed his mike and spok
e w
ith a slight accent. "Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared visual two-four right approach."

On its fourth trip from Tokyo, the shining new 747 descended and passed over the Santa Monica navigational fix at 7,000 feet. Continuing eastbound, the captain banked to the right when they reached the Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena.

The crew methodically went through their landing checklist while the airplane descended to 3,500 feet slightly east of the Harbor Freeway. Delayed three hours by a mechanical failure in the number-four engine, both pilots were fatigued and silently cursed the smog while they strained their tired eyes to locate the other airplanes in the busy skies over Los Angeles.

Sitting near the tail of the airplane, Mrs. Mayumi Fujitake surveyed the city and the sprawling coastal plain between the San Gabriel Mountains and the blue Pacific Ocean. On her first visit to America's motion-picture capital, the elderly great-grandmother was also enjoying her first ride in an airplane.

Her husband, Shozo, a more experienced air traveler, was still dozing as the 747 entered a shallow bank to intercept the final approach course to the runway.

Sweating profusely while he listened to the portable aircraft radio, Granville Penner sat in the back of the Chevrolet high-top conversion van and opened another lukewarm beer. When Japan Air Lines Flight 62 had not arrived on time, he waited approximately twenty minutes and then walked to a convenience store to call the airline.

After learning the new arrival time, the drug dealer with a felony record and two trips to the slammer bought a six-pack of Old Milwaukee and returned to the van.

The scintillating high from the crack cocaine was wearing thin, and the beer was giving him a throbbing headache, but Penner didn't care about the pain. Not today. He had $20,000 stuffed in his pockets and the promise of another $30,000 if he successfully completed his assignment. The money would be more than enough "talking cash" for a sizable down paymen
t o
n a new burgundy Cadillac El Dorado and an extended vacation in New Orleans, the city where he was born and first went to jail.

Penner's newfound friend, a self-described affluent Japanese businessman, simply wanted the convicted rapist and burglar to use a .50-caliber machine gun to shoot a few holes in a Japanese airliner. Penner wondered why the small man with the gold and diamond Rolex wanted him to shoot at a Japanese airliner, but, then again, Penner never questioned motives when money was in front of him.

Granville "Big G" Penner figured that shooting a few rounds at a plane wasn't any crazier than some of the other things the Japanese did, like the guy who converted a lime-green eighteen-wheeler into a plush motor home, complete with sunken spa in the roof of the trailer.

Besides, Penner reasoned, he hadn't fired a machine gun since his days in the Army. He had always liked the feeling of power that a weapon gave him, and this would be a piece of cake since it was only two blocks to the warehouse where they would dismantle the van and bury the weapon. Easy money.

Parked next to a vacant storage facility, east of the San Diego Freeway, Penner was in an excellent position between the two sets of runways at Los Angeles International. He had recounted his money and was daydreaming about the new Caddy when he heard JAL Flight 62 check in with the control tower. Startled into action, Penner turned up the volume control on the transceiver and prepared to swing the doors open and slide the tripod-mounted machine gun outside.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two," the clear voice replied in a routine, businesslike manner, "two-four right, cleared to land, wind two-two-zero at eleven."

"Japan Air Sixty-Two cleared for the right."

Penner crushed his cigarette on the floor and started scanning the sky for the big Boeing with the JAL logo. He rechecked the machine gun and the short belt of ammunition. He didn't have many rounds, so he had to make each one count.

The 747 was descending and slowing to the final approach speed as it passed near the Hollywood Park Race Track.

Mrs. Fujitake nudged her sleeping husband, then nudged him again when he didn't respond.

"Shozo, wake up. We're about to land."

"What?"

"We're landing," she said excitedly.

The retired chemical engineer grunted and slowly opened his puffy eyes. The sour taste in his mouth was a disgusting reminder of the raw sashimi and hot sake he had consumed during the long flight from Tokyo.

"Look at the ocean," she said with a rush of enthusiasm and pressed her face to the window. "We have to go to the beach!"

Shozo yawned and stretched his arms over his head. "After we get some sleep."

"Is that all you can think about when--"

Her response was cut short when she saw the streaks of reddish-orange tracer rounds curve upward and strike the left wing. The pyrotechnic bullets, combined with the incendiary rounds interspersed in Penner's ammunition belt, ripped into the fuel cells and ignited the raw fuel.

Penner was initially shocked when he saw the bright tracer rounds move steadily upward and strike the wing. A second later he was paralyzed when he saw a flash of yellow flames, followed by a steady stream of fire along the side of the aircraft. He had planned to put a few holes in the plane, not set it on fire.

"Shit!" Penner muttered when he realized that he'd been set up. Instead of scaring someone, the Japanese businessman wanted the airliner to crash.

Panic overcame him and he shoved the machine gun into the van and hurriedly slammed the door. He could hear the aircraft radio as he scrambled into the driver's seat and quickly started the engine.

"Japan Air Sixty-Two, you're on fire! Repeat! Japan Air Sixty-Two is on fire! Do you copy?"

Penner recognized the tower controller's voice.

"Sixty-Two copies!"

"We have the equipment rolling!" the controller exclaimed as he saw the first truck leave the fire station.

Penner yanked the transmission into drive, floored the accelerator, and screeched around the side of the building, then stomped on the brakes and came to a grinding halt.

Mesmerized, he watched the nose of the 747 dip lower as flames engulfed the fuselage and tail of the stricken airliner. Penner took one last look and jammed the accelerator down, hoping that the plane wouldn't crash.

Ashen-faced, Mayumi and Shozo Fujitake held each other close and tried to be brave. Chaos had erupted throughout the cabin, and the flight attendants were yelling for everyone to brace themselves for a crash landing.

Dutifully, the Fujitakes quietly followed the instructions and listened to the shrieks and cries from the other passengers. They momentarily grasped hands and then resumed the emergency position.

Seconds later, while traveling much faster than the usual landing speed, the Boeing jumbo jet slammed onto the runway and collapsed the left main landing gear. The engines on the left wing dug in, slewing the aircraft toward the edge of the runway before they were ripped from their mounts.

Trailing a long streak of fire, the JAL 747 skidded and bounced across a taxiway and runway 24 Left before bursting into a huge fireball. With the tail consumed by the billowing conflagration, the airplane shuddered to a halt as the forward evacuation slides began to pop out and inflate.

Of the 281 people on board, 67 died from burns and smoke inhalation, including the Fujitakes.

When he returned to the warehouse, Granville Penner was shot to death by his gap-toothed Japanese employer. After th
e s
mall man recovered the $20,000 from the drug addict, an accomplice tossed Penner and the machine gun into a three-foot grave inside the building, then filled the hole with cement. When the man with the disfigured ear was finished, the final resting place of "Big G" Penner looked like the rest of the floor.

Chapter
8.

A refreshing breeze drifted through the rear windows as the well-worn taxi approached Aloha Tower, the famous landmark near Honolulu Harbor. Marcus Callaway cast a look at the sun-drenched blue skies and turned to the friendly man behind the wheel. "You said you're from Samoa ?"

"That's right," the beefy cabdriver replied with a cheerful smile. "I'm third generation in Hawaii. Got three kids--two of 'em got their degrees from the University of Hawaii, 'an my third kid is gonna be a freshman this year."

Wickham looked at the jovial face that kept darting glances at him in the rearview mirror. "Does your wife work?"

"Yeah, she works," he laughed good-naturedly while he deftly eased his way through the afternoon traffic. "She has her degree, too." His pride in his family was evident. "She works as an accountant during the day and takes care of the house at night. Everybody helps out, so it ain't too bad."

Without missing a beat, he swerved to avoid colliding with a lost tourist in a rental car, then continued his story. "Me, I drive a cab from seven to five, then load air freight from six to midnight." He laughed aloud and honked at another taxi.

"I figure this way, man." He looked at Wickham's reflection in the rearview mirror. "We ain't got time to have no more kids." He belly-laughed.

Steve was still curious. "Where are your kids now--the ones who graduated?"

"They're all living at home." His voice was suddenly serious. "They can't afford to buy a house, not even a little one. The Japs have taken over the real-estate market again, like they did back in the mid-to-late eighties. They come in, buy millions of dollars of property in a few weeks, real estate people jack up the prices, they buy more, and so on. The locals, we ain't got a chance, man."

His eyes focused on the rearview mirror. "They're turning the islands into suburbs of Tokyo."

Marcus turned and looked at the lush scenery and then shared a glance with Steve. Everything was not so wonderful in paradise.

"People like us--the ones who work and live here," the driver said glumly and poked his chest, "we can't afford to buy even a good, small house. The one we got--man, it's falling apart, I tell you--but we're damn lucky to have it."

Steve remained quiet. There had been major changes in Honolulu since he first vacationed in the islands as a newly minted lieutenant of Marines. The peaceful serenity and natural civility of years past had been replaced by jammed sidewalks, crowded streets, honking horns, rude people, cramped accommodations, and soaring housing costs.

He thought for a brief moment about his ex-wife, Becky. They had spent their honeymoon island-hopping from Oahu to Maui to Kauai. It seemed like only yesterday when he and Becky went snorkeling at Kaanapali Beach.

Steve's recollections came to an abrupt halt when the taxi slowed and stopped in front of the Hilton Hawaiian Village.