‘We could have taken them on,’ Oskar grumbled. ‘We had the guns. What the hell were you doing, kowtowing to them like some damn—’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Rozalia snapped. ‘You nearly got us all killed.’

‘I said we could have taken them,’ said Oskar, visibly bristling. ‘There’s four of us, we’re carrying enough guns and ammunition to—’

Yuichi stepped up to Oskar and punched him hard in the gut. Oskar doubled over immediately, staggering back before he slumped to the ground, struggling to draw breath.

‘Don’t ever do something that fucking stupid again, man,’ Yuichi shouted. ‘Or you can go the fuck home and sweat it out there while the rest of us get on with this. Your choice.’

Oskar glared balefully at him. I sighed and pushed myself upright, then went over to help him back up. However right Yuichi was, the fact remained that we needed all the help we could get.

‘We’re all under a lot of strain,’ I told him, after he let me help him up. ‘I understand you’re spoiling for a fight. But that’s just what we’ve got to avoid until we find Casey. Okay?’

Oskar scowled at me, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake, and he was in fact an even bigger asshole than I thought.

‘Fine,’ he said at length, to my considerable relief. He stabbed a finger towards Yuichi. ‘But if you ever – ever – pull a stunt like that again, I won’t need a gun to rip your fucking head from your shoulders.’

Yuichi gave him a look as if to say he was welcome to try. All the laid-back hippie attitude seemed to have faded in an instant, replaced by something much harder.

Rozalia started hauling the sack of rifles back out of the weeds. ‘How about you all stop showing each other your dicks and give me a hand,’ she suggested, ‘before they change their mind and come back to use us for target practice.’

Ten minutes later we were back at the Hotel du Mauna Loa. Randall was keeping watch from the main entrance, and he pulled the door all the way open as we came towards him.

Rozalia dropped the sack on the floor and started passing out the rifles and ammunition. I saw that Randall had been busy, cutting away part of Howes’ uniform and wrapping his wounded shoulder in gauze sourced from the bar’s first-aid kit.

‘We all ready to go?’ I asked, looking around.

People nodded, and I turned to Howes. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this? You lost some blood on the way here, and nobody’d blame you for sitting this out.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he replied.

‘What exactly are you planning to do when you get there?’ Yuichi asked the Major.

Howes’ mouth curled up on one side. ‘I’m going to surrender.’

I wondered if I had misheard him. ‘Excuse me?’