Dangerous Minds (Knight and Moon #2)(65)

“I have a fix on the ATV trail,” Yakomura said. “There’s just enough moonlight to see the tire ruts.”

The helicopter landed and everyone piled out. Emerson spread a map of Ola’a Forest on the ground and circled the area in red pen where he had seen the heat signature. He overlaid a map of the Kazumura Cave on top. “Here’s where we need to head once we find the entrance to the Kazumura.”

Alani looked at the map of Ola’a and frowned. “Assuming the heat source is where they’re keeping Riley, the bad guys’ base of operations isn’t near any of the mapped portions of the Kazumura.”

Emerson nodded. “That’s true. It’s not near any of the mapped portions. However, the Kazumura is actually a vast network of independent lava tubes that became connected into a maze of tunnels over a hundred years of active lava flows and water erosion.”

“So you think Tin Man has Riley in some unmapped side channel?” Vernon asked.

“I’m hoping so. The main tunnel is too well-known and used regularly by tour companies and spelunkers.” Emerson pointed at the red circle. “There has to be a secret underground route to this area. If there was an aboveground road in, everyone would see them coming and going.”

“If it’s a huge maze of unmapped tunnels, how the Sam Hill will we know we’re heading in the right direction and not into a den of Bigfoots?” Vernon asked.

Emerson smiled. “There are hundreds of mapped entrances, mainly through naturally occurring holes called skylights in the ceiling of the tunnels. There are bound to be hundreds of other unmapped entrances. We won’t have cell reception when we’re underground, but when we reach a skylight we’ll pop out of the hole and get a GPS reading on our location.”

“Let me get this straight,” Vernon said. “We’re going to be popping in and out of hundreds of holes.”

Both Wayan Bagus and Mr. Yakomura slapped him on the back of the head.

Vernon jumped away from the two men. “You guys have dirty minds. How do you know that’s what I was thinking? And in fact I was only thinking it for a minute, and then I was thinking something entirely different. I don’t get how popping out of the holes is gonna help us. Won’t we still be under jungle canopy? Doesn’t the canopy screw up, excuse my French, the GPS?”

“Mr. Yakomura will be our eyes from the air,” Emerson said, handing him the infrared camera. “He’ll fix on our ground location, and he’ll give us direction on which way we need to go in order to reach where we saw the heat source.”

Alani nodded. “Kind of like a high-stakes game of Warmer and Colder.”

Emerson nodded. “The highest.”

Emerson stuffed the maps into his backpack and led the way down the trail toward the falls.

Five minutes later, Vernon, Alani, Wayan Bagus, and Emerson were staring into a dark hole at the outskirts of the Ola’a rain forest.

“Why do they call it Wild Pig Drop Falls?” Vernon asked.

Emerson shone his flashlight down into the hole, draped in jungle vines. The beam illuminated the skeleton of a massive wild boar submerged in a plunge pool at the bottom, forty-five feet below.

Alani looked down at the bones. “I guess that answers the question.”

Emerson took a rope from his pack, tied one end to a tree, and attached a harness to himself with a carabiner.

“We’re going to have to rappel down. Does everyone know how this works?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Alani said.

“You betcha,” Vernon said.

“No,” Wayan Bagus said.

“Tell you what, Little Buddy, you just wrap your arms around my neck and hold tight, and I’ll have us down lickety-split,” Vernon said.

Emerson went first, swinging out a little to avoid the pig, splashing down in a foot of water. Vernon pulled the harness back to the top and handed it to Alani, who got into the rig and descended next.

“Look out below,” Vernon yelled, as he slid down the rope with Wayan Bagus riding piggyback.

Vernon sloshed out of the shallow pool and set Wayan down on solid ground.

“This here’s gonna be creepy,” Vernon said, taking in the pitch-black tunnel that led away from the pig bones. “Good thing I’m big and brave and not afraid of the dark.”

Emerson handed out headlamps. “This should help. Pay attention to where you’re walking and don’t lag behind.”

They walked ten feet into the tunnel, and Wayan Bagus reached out to touch the smooth, ropey black walls.

“It is like being inside a sculpture,” Wayan Bagus said.

“There are two main types of lava flows in Hawaii,” Emerson said. “A’a is the jagged, rocky stuff you see all around Kona. This is called pahoehoe, and it tends to form when the eruption is slower and less violent. Most lava tubes in Hawaii are made from smooth pahoehoe lava.”

They spent the next half hour scrambling over a series of lava cascades and smaller falls. It was fairly easy going. The tour guide companies had left an assortment of ropes, ladders, and handholds to make the trip possible for tourists. Finally, they came to a skylight in the ceiling about fifty feet above them with a rope dangling down.

Emerson looked at the rope. “That’s convenient,” he said.

“I wouldn’t call it convenient,” Alani said. “You’ll have to hand climb four stories to reach the skylight. If you fall, you’ll kill yourself.”