Hell Island

  Matthew Reilly is the internationally best-selling author of Contest, Ice Station, Temple, Area 7, Scarecrow, Hover Car Racer and Seven Ancient Wonders. His novels have been translated into nineteen languages and are sold in over twenty countries. To date he has sold over three million books around the world. Matthew has also written several short stories, all of which are available for free at his website:

  www.matthewreilly.com

  He lives in Sydney.

  Also by Matthew Reilly

  CONTEST

  ICE STATION

  TEMPLE

  AREA 7

  SCARECROW

  HOVER CAR RACER

  SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS

  MATTHEW

  REILLY

  HELL

  ISLAND

  Published in association with Books Alive

  Books Alive is an Australian Government initiative developed through the Australia Council

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  A short novel written for and in association with ‘Books Alive’ 2005

  Books Alive is an Australian Government initiative developed through the Australia Council.

  First published 2005 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published in 2007 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd 2005

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Reilly, Matthew.

  Hell Island.

  ISBN 978 0 3304 2343 4.

  1. Experimental rangelands – Fiction. I. Title.

  A823.4

  Typeset in 11/12.5 Palatino by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Hell Island

  Matthew Reilly

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  PROLOGUE

  THE LAST MAN STANDING

  Terrified, wounded and now out of ammo, Lieutenant Rick ‘Razor’ Haynes staggered down the tight passageway, blood pouring from a gunshot wound to his left thigh, scratch-marks crisscrossing his face.

  He panted as he moved, gasping for breath. He was the last one left, the last member of his entire Marine force still alive.

  He could hear them behind him.

  Grunting, growling.

  Stalking him, hunting him down.

  They knew they had him—knew he was out of ammunition, out of contact with base, and out of comrades-in-arms.

  The passageway through which he was fleeing was long and straight, barely wide enough for his shoulders. It had grey steel walls studded with rivets—the kind you find on a military vessel, a warship.

  Wincing in agony, Haynes arrived at a bulk-head doorway and fell clumsily through it, landing in a stateroom. He reached up and pulled the heavy steel door shut behind him.

  The door closed and he spun the flywheel.

  A second later, the great steel door shuddered violently, pounded from the other side.

  His face covered in sweat, Haynes breathed deeply, glad for the brief reprieve.

  He’d seen what they had done to his teammates, and been horrified.

  No soldier deserved to die that way, or to have his body desecrated in such a manner. It was beyond ruthless what they’d done to his men.

  That said, the way they had systematically overcome his force of six hundred United States Marines had been tactically brilliant.

  At one point during his escape from the hangar deck, Haynes figured he’d end his own life before they caught him. Now, without any bullets, he couldn’t even do that.

  A grunt disturbed him.

  It had come from nearby. From the darkness on the other side of the stateroom.

  Haynes snapped to look up—

  —just as a shape came rushing out of the darkness, a dark hairy shape, man-sized, screaming a fierce high-pitched shriek, like the cry of a deranged chimpanzee.

  Only this was no chimpanzee.

  It slammed into Haynes, ramming him back against the door. His head hit the steel door hard, the blow stunning him but not knocking him out.

  And as he slumped to the floor and saw the creature draw a glistening long-bladed K-Bar knife from its sheath, Haynes wished it had knocked him unconscious, because then he wouldn’t have to witness what it did to him next . . .

  The death-scream of Razor Haynes echoed out from the aircraft carrier.

  It would not be heard by a single friendly soul.

  For this carrier was a long way from anywhere, docked at an old World War II refuelling station in the middle of the Pacific, a station attached to a small island that had curiously ceased to appear on maps after the Americans had taken it by force from the Japanese in 1943.

  Once known as Grant Island, it was a thousand kilometres south of the Bering Strait and five hundred from its nearest island neighbour. In the war it had seen fierce fighting as the Americans had wrested it—and its highly-prized airfield—from a suicidal Japanese garrison.

  Because of the ferocity of the fighting and the heavy losses incurred there, Grant Island was given another name by the US Marines who’d fought there.

  They called it Hell Island.

  FIRST ASSAULT

  HELL ISLAND

  1500 HOURS

  1 AUGUST, 2005

  AIRSPACE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

  1500 HOURS, 1 AUGUST, 2005

  The vicious-looking aircraft shot across the sky at near supersonic speed.

  It was a modified Hercules cargo plane, known as an MC-130 ‘Combat Talon’, the delivery vehicle of choice for US Special Forces units.

  This Combat Talon stayed high, very high, it was as if it was trying to avoid being seen by radar systems down at sea level. This was unusual, because there was nothing down there—according to the map
s, the nearest land in this part of the Pacific was an atoll 500 klicks to the east.

  Then the rear loading ramp of the Combat Talon rumbled open and several dozen tiny figures issued out from it in rapid sequence, spreading out into the sky behind the soaring plane.

  The forty-strong flock of paratroopers plummeted to earth, men in high-altitude jumpsuits—full-face breathing masks; streamlined black bodysuits. They angled their bodies downward as they fell, so that they flew head-first, their masks pointed into the onrushing wind, becoming human spears, freefalling with serious intent.

  It was a classic HALO drop—high-altitude, low-opening. You jumped from 37,000 feet, fell fast and hard, and then stopped dangerously close to the ground, right at your drop zone.

  Curiously, however, the forty elite troops falling to earth today fell in identifiable sub-groups, ten men to a group, as if they were trying to remain somehow separate.

  Indeed, they were separate teams.

  Crack teams. The best of the best from every corner of the US armed forces.

  One unit from the 82nd Airborne Division.

  One SEAL team.

  One Delta team, ever aloof and secretive.

  And last of all, one team of Force Reconnaissance Marines.

  They shot into the cloud layer—a dense band of dark thunderclouds—freefell through the haze.

  Then after nearly a full minute of flying, they burst out of the clouds and emerged in the midst of a full-scale five-alarm ocean storm: rain lashed their facemasks; dark clouds hung low over the heaving ocean; giant waves rolled and crashed.

  And through the rain, their target came into view, a tiny island far below them, an island that did not appear on maps anymore, an island with an aircraft carrier parked alongside it.

  Hell.

  Leading the Marine team was Captain Shane M. Schofield, call-sign ‘Scarecrow’.

  Behind his HALO mask, Schofield had a rugged creased face, black hair and blue eyes. Slicing down across those eyes, however, were a pair of hideous vertical scars, one for each eye, wounds from a mission-gone-wrong and the source of his operational nickname. Once on the ground, he’d hide those eyes behind a pair of reflective wraparound anti-flash glasses.

  Quiet, intense and when necessary deadly, Schofield had a unique reputation in the Marine Corps. He’d been involved in several missions that remained classified—but the Marine Corps (like any group of human beings) is filled with gossip and rumour. Someone always knew someone who was there, or who saw the medical report, or who cleaned up the aftermath.

  The rumours about Schofield were many and varied, and sometimes simply too outrageous to be true.

  One: he had been involved in a gigantic multiforce battle in Antarctica, a battle which, it was said, involved a bloody and brutal confrontation with two of America’s allies, France and Britain.

  Two: he’d saved the President during an attempted military coup at a remote USAF base. It was said that during that misadventure, the Scarecrow—a former pilot—had flown an experimental space shuttle into low earth orbit, engaged an enemy shuttle, destroyed it, and then come back to earth to rescue the President.

  Of course none of this could possibly be verified, and so it remained the stuff of legend; legends, however, that Schofield’s new unit were acutely aware of.

  That said, there was one thing about Shane Schofield that they knew to be true: this was his first mission back after a long layover, four months of stress leave, in fact. On this occasion someone really had seen the medical report, and now all of his men on this mission knew about it.

  They also knew the cause of his stress leave.

  During his last mission out, Schofield had been taken to the very edge of his psychological endurance. Loved ones close to him had been captured . . . and executed. It was even said in hushed whispers that at one point on that mission he had tried to take his own life.

  Which was why the other members of his team today were slightly less-than-confident in their leader.

  Was he up to this mission? Was he a time-bomb waiting to explode? Was he a basketcase who would lose it at the first sign of trouble?

  They were about to find out.

  As he shot downward through the sky, Schofield recalled their mission briefing earlier that day.

  Their target was Hell Island.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite true.

  Their target was the ageing supercarrier parked at Hell Island, the USS Nimitz, CVN-68.

  The problem: soon after it had arrived at the isolated island to pick up some special cargo, a devastating tsunami had struck from the north and all contact with the Nimitz had been lost.

  The oldest of America’s twelve Nimitz-class carriers, the Nimitz had been heading home for decommissioning, with only a skeleton crew of 500 aboard—down from its regular 6,000. Like-wise, its Carrier Battle Group, the cluster of destroyers, subs, supply ships and frigates that normally accompanied it around the globe, had been trimmed to just two cruisers.

  Contact with the two escort boats and the island’s communications centre had also been lost.

  Unfortunately, the unexpected tidal wave wasn’t the only hostile entity in play here: a North Korean nuclear submarine had been spotted a day earlier coming out of the Bering Sea. Its whereabouts were currently unknown, its presence in this area suspicious.

  And so a mystery.

  Equally suspicious to Schofield, however, was the presence of the other special operations units on this mission: the 82nd, the SEALs and Delta.

  This was exceedingly odd. You never mixed and matched special ops units. They all had different specialties, different approaches to mission situations, and could easily trip over each other. In short, it just wasn’t done.

  You added all that up, Schofield thought, and this smelled suspiciously like an exercise.

  Except for one thing.

  They were all carrying live ammunition.

  Hurtling toward the world, freefalling at terminal velocity, bursting out of the cloudband . . .

  . . . to behold the Pacific Ocean stretching away in every direction, the only imperfection in its surface: the small dot of land that was Hell Island.

  A gigantic rectangular grey object lay at its western end, the Nimitz. Not far from the carrier, the island featured some big gun emplacements facing south and east, while at the north-eastern tip there was a hill that looked like a mini-volcano.

  A voice came through Schofield’s earpiece. ‘All team leaders, this is Delta Six. We’re going for the eastern end of the island and we’ll work our way back to the boat. Your DZ is the flight deck: Airborne, the bow; SEALs, aft; Marines, mid-section.’

  Just like we were told in the briefing, Schofield thought.

  This was typical of Delta. They were born show-ponies. Great soldiers, sure, but glory-seekers all. No matter who they were working with—even today, alongside three of the best special forces units in the world—they always assumed they were in charge.

  ‘Roger that, Delta leader,’ came the SEAL leader’s voice.

  ‘Copy, Delta Six,’ came the Airborne response.

  Schofield didn’t reply.

  The Delta leader said, ‘Marine Six? Scarecrow? You copy?’

  Schofield sighed. ‘I was at the mission briefing, too, Delta Six. And last I noticed, I don’t have any short-term memory problems. I know the mission plan.’

  ‘Cut the attitude, Scarecrow,’ the Delta leader said. His name was Hugh Gordon, so naturally his call-sign was ‘Flash’. ‘We’re all on the same team here.’

  ‘What? Your team?’ Schofield said. ‘How about this: how about you don’t break radio silence until you’ve got something important to say. Scarecrow, out.’

  It was more important than that. Even a frequency-hopping encrypted radio signal could be caught these days, so if you transmitted, you had to assume someone was listening.

  Worse, the new French-made Signet-5 radio-wave decoder—sold by the French to Russia, Iran, North Korea
, Syria and other fine upstanding global citizens—was specifically designed to seek out and locate the American AN/PRC-119 tactical radio when it was broadcasting, the very radio their four teams were using today. No-one had yet thought to ask the French why they had built a locater whose only use was to pinpoint American tactical radios.

  Schofield switched to his team’s private channel. ‘Marines. Switch off your tac radios. Listening mode only. Go to short-wave UHF if you want to talk to me.’

  A few of his Marines hesitated before obeying, but obey they did. They flicked off their radios.

  The four clusters of parachutists plummeted through the storm toward the world, zeroing in on the Nimitz, until a thousand feet above it, they yanked on their ripcords and their chutes opened.

  Their superfast falls were abruptly arrested and they now floated in toward the carrier. The Delta team landed on the island itself, while the other three teams touched down lightly and gracefully on the flight deck of the supercarrier right in their assigned positions—fore, mid and aft—guns up.

  They had just arrived in Hell.

  Rain hammered down on the flight deck.

  Schofield’s team landed one after the other, unclipping their chutes before the great mushroom-shaped canopies had even hit the ground. The chutes were whipped away by the wind, leaving the ten Marines standing in the slashing rain on the flight deck, holding their MP-7s pointed outwards.

  One after the other, they ripped off their facemasks, scanned the deck warily.

  Schofield shucked his facemask and donned his signature silver wraparound glasses, masking his eyes. He beheld the deck around them.

  The entire flight deck was deserted.

  Except for the other teams that had just landed on it, not a soul could be seen. A few planes sat parked on the runways, some Tomcats and Hornets, and one chunky CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter.