By the time Captain Kauhane and Sergeant Kelso made it out to the gate area, Sergeant Kalahiki, covered in blood, had the would-be killer face down on the floor and cuffed. The handcuffs seemed unnecessary. The man was out cold. But Kelso was taking no chances. The big man had had a hell of a time wrestling the other man to the ground.
In the struggle, the man’s gun had gone off, and the bullet had hit him in the chest. Blood was pooling beside him. Some people stopped to watch the scene. Most had fled.
“Are you all right?” asked Kauhane.
“Yeah yeah,” said Kalahiki. “But I don’t know about David and Daniel. They were back there, maybe twenty feet behind me when this guy came out of nowhere.”
“They must have got away somehow,” said Kauhane, looking further back down the terminal.”
“Over here, boss,” called Kelso. He swung the door open.
“An ambulance is on the way,” Kauhane told Kalahiki.
He followed Kelso down the stairway to the ramp.
“They must have come this way,” said Kelso.
“But where’d they go?”
The two stood there scratching their heads, scanning the scene in the hope of seeing anything that might point to the two successfully escaping the scene.
“I hope to hell,” said Kelso, “there weren’t more of them waiting. If they snatched them, they could be anywhere by now.”
“Or dead,” said Kauhane.
“I don’t know,” said Kelso. “Whoever these guys are, don’t you think that if they were going to kill them, we’d find the bodies right here? Why take them somewhere else to do it?”
Kauhane nodded. One, because this made sense, and two because it gave him some hope that Chan and Daniel were still alive.
“We don’t even know who these people are,” said Kauhane. “How many there might be. This whole thing stinks like last week’s garbage. I don’t like being this far back in the race. I don’t like it one bit. But I tell you, whoever they are, I don’t care how powerful they are, if they’ve killed David, they’re going to pay.”
The two went back up to the terminal and watched the EMTs load the man onto a stretcher.
“Will he make it?” Kauhane asked.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said one of the EMTs.
“We need him alive, guys,” said Kauhane. “Please do whatever you can,”
He turned to Kelso and Kalahiki. “You two stay here and see if we can tell whether this guy acted alone. See if any of the people still standing around here saw any kind of suspicious behavior by anyone.”
Kauhane skirted the pool of blood. “I’m going with them.”
With that, Kauhane ran down the corridor to catch up with the rushing EMTs. His car at curbside, he jumped in to follow the ambulance. Once on the way to Queen’s, the sirens blaring, they made the distance in good time.
They pulled up to the emergency room entrance and the man was unloaded quickly. Kauhane followed straight to a surgery room. He watched through the small glass window to check the progress of the attempt to save the man’s life.
After maybe thirty minutes, one of the doctors came out.
“Well?” asked the Captain.
“It looks like he’ll make it. The bullet didn’t hit any major organs, but he’s lost a lot of blood. It’ll be touch and go until we can fully stabilize him, but I’m optimistic.”
“And he’ll be in the ICU?”
“Yes, for a good while looks like.”
The Captain phoned police headquarters and requested four uniformed officers.
“I want two outside the ICU, and two walking the hospital lobby area. This guy may have accomplices, the kind who’d rather see him dead than tell us anything when he’s able to do it.”
With that, the Captain jumped in his car to head back to the airport. As he drove up Punchbowl Street toward the freeway entrance, he heard David Chan’s voice come over the radio. In an explosion of relief, Kauhane answered back.
Lanning Lee 