Hell Island - Matthew Reilly [1]
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 maps, 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.