A Simple Murder by Phillip Thompson

Author:Phillip Thompson [Thompson, Phillip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-14T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Keone Luuloa could not believe his good fortune.

His first day on the job had started out well. He had shown up precisely fifteen minutes early for his job as a truck driver at Lualualei Naval Weapons Station, gotten all his paperwork out of the way, and within an hour was steering a Navy five-ton truck through a test drive on Oahu’s west side.

Grading his performance from the passenger seat was a retired Navy master chief petty officer who chain-smoked generic-brand cigarettes and said little.

The road was closed to the public and led to and from the magazine, an ammunition storage point that dated back to at least 1934, by American records, and possibly hundreds of years by Hawaiian historical records. Tucked into the Waianae Forest Reserve, the naval weapons station provided a huge storage area for all sorts of ammunition, from artillery rounds to bombs dropped from attack aircraft.

Luuloa drove north across the base toward the Kolekole Pass, which pierced the sheer, emerald-green Waianae Mountains. He left behind the low scrub of the desert-like lowlands of the west side and climbed into the cool breezes that coursed over Windward Oahu at an altitude of just over seventeen hundred feet. He slowed at the massive white cross emplaced years ago in the mountains and wheeled the truck around.

The skinny haole chief petty officer in the passenger seat nodded in a gesture Luuloa took as approval. “Take ‘er back to the base,” he growled through a cloud of blue smoke that stung Luuloa’s eyes.

“Right.” He steered the big truck back toward the base. He was confident he would check out in the five-ton. He had driven nearly every military vehicle at Pearl Harbor before getting this job.

Luuloa smiled to himself. Getting this job had not been that difficult, even though he had left a great job at Pearl to come to this out-of-the-way place. A resident of Waimanalo on the Windward Side, he thought the hot, scruffy coast was as alien as the moon. Plus, driving to Lualualei added a good twenty minutes to his commute every morning, even with the opening of the new H-3 highway over the back of Oahu.

But it’s worth it.

The job gave him an opportunity, one he dared not pass up. Working here gave him the chance to make a difference, for his people and for his group’s goals. He could not thank Pops Kekona enough for helping him out as a reference for this job.

Which was why he wanted to pass his driving test—to convince his supervisor, seated next to him now, that he was a competent enough driver to handle any job that might come along.

Keone parked the truck on a sandy spot near the base administrative building. The chief grunted, lit a cigarette, and scowled as he scribbled notes on a clipboard. Keone watched the ash of his cigarette glow orange every few seconds, then lengthen as it grayed. When the ash was about an inch long, the master chief looked up.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

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