Prologue

Moho Road, Hawaii, The Big Island

The old submariner had spent the last fifteen years of his life in paradise, where flora and fauna thrived and living was easy.  Tonight, like every night in paradise, the seventy-five year old jogger glided along Moho Road in the moonlight.  His slender runners’ body moved with ease, a half mile from the entrance to Hawaiian Acres where he lived with his wife of fifty-five years.

 She had asked if he would run in the rain.  “Yes,” he said.  “It will probably stop in a few minutes.  Besides, after all the winters I slogged through the snow covered, salt laden streets in Saratoga, a little rain is nothing.”

He inhaled the earth’s fragrance after the light rainfall, saw his path illuminated by the full moon and glanced at the abundance of stars in the heavens which reminded him of a Van Gogh painting.

He approached the series of roadway undulations that challenged him every night, his worries drained away by the uniform pat, pat, pat of his running shoes on the macadam.  

He attacked the first incline of what he called Wash Board Road. He raised his fists to chest height and pumped his arms locomotive style to aid his legs in the assault of the fourth hill. The tallest of the macadam waves, nicknamed ‘Big Sir’ rose beyond.

Sweat rose on his buzzed gray head, snuck underneath his white head band and trickled down his broad-nosed, high cheeked Italian face. The perspiration initiated a small fire in the corners of his brown eyes. He sacrificed the aid of his arms in the combat with ‘Big Sir’ to wipe his eyes and face with a dry shirt sleeve.

The roar of an engine toward the top of ‘Big Sir’ acted as a powerful electromagnet to draw his eyes toward the sound. He focused on the bright white lights that rocketed in his direction. One hundred seventy pounds of human were no match for the two and half tons of airborne truck.  He was hit chest high by the truck, his neck snapped like a piece of peanut brittle and he died instantly. The truck chassis transformed his finely tuned body into road kill on touchdown.

The truck eased to a stop near the flat of the road. The large driver with thick powerful arms and a pencil mustache, the only hair on face and head, staggered out of the truck and barked at his two passengers to stay put.

He staggered to the front of the vehicle to survey the damage, placed his hand on the hood to steady himself and felt the ooze of warm blood.  The front seat passenger, Duke, buzzed from far too many shots with beer chasers, moved his arms off his beer belly and placed his left arm, with its yellow gold Rolex watch and unique tattoo on the dash board. He was able to steady himself when he moved his tattooed right arm with a white gold Rolex next to his left arm.  He questioned the driver about the damage.  A rat-a-tat-tat of four letter words strafed him into silence.

Goose, the bean pole in the back seat, unfurled his daddy long leg appendages, asked, “What the hell’s goin’ on?” shifted his cramped body in the small back seat and fell into another stupor.

The driver stumbled back toward ‘Big Sir’ and the collision scene. Ten minutes later he returned, dropped into his seat and informed the two semi-sober passengers, “Listen up. Everything will be handled.  You breathe a word of this you’re dead.”