Though only fifteen miles from the harbor, they seemed a world away. Pocketed between steep volcanic walls, the little sand beach could not be seen from the road. The trail itself had no markers or guardrails and did not appear on any hiking maps. Two hand-painted old wooden signs—washed-out white lettering over cracked and peeling green backgrounds—leaned on crooked posts a hundred feet below the trailhead. One warned WALK AT YOUR OWN RISK. The other said NO PUBLIC ACCESS, NO SWIMMING, DANGEROUS CURRENTS.

The men were already well past the signs and nearing the bottom of the trail. A careful turn with the rafts hoisted between them, another, and their feet settled down on soft, flat sand.

As they dropped the rafts and formed up around them, Jochi realized the beach was even smaller than his photo intel had indicated. It was twenty yards long and barely a third as wide, a half circle, its diameter defined by the shoreline, its inland curve enclosed by the ridge walls. When the ocean roared in at high tide it would have nowhere to go but up against them. It would slam them with waves and flood every inch of the beach. Anyone on it would be smashed to a pulp against the unyielding rocks and then sucked away by the undertow.

Jochi had coordinated the recon with the tidal ebb and flow. The water would be lowest in an hour and then gradually begin to rise. He wanted to ride the current out as it receded, then ride it back to shore with the incoming tide. But the timing had to be just right. They needed to return here before the ocean came crashing up hard against the sea cliff. At that point, attempting it would be a death wish.

He looked at the men. “Let’s go.”

The two with the plywood launch ramp in their raft lifted it out, carried it over to the waterline and set one end on a rocky projection so it sloped down to the lapping surf. Then they picked up the raft and put it on the board and shoved it in.

The other team went next. When both rafts were in the water, all four men waded out and climbed inside them, remaining in their original teams of two.

Jochi splashed over to the first raft, jumped on board and took the folding seat in front. On the rear bench, his men had already slid their lightweight aluminum oars through the rings and dipped the blades into the swells.

The cable landing station was at Kono Head, three miles southwest.

They rowed out to it in the filtered moonlight.

Half an hour later the rafts were bobbing in the Maunalua Bay currents a quarter mile east of the head.