Hell Island (8 page)

HELL ISLAND

1745 HOURS

1 AUGUST

S
CHOFIELD’S TEAM
sat in a grim silent circle beside the airlock that was Casper’s door, deep within the bowels of the carrier.

There were only five of them now.

Schofield, Mother, Sanchez, Bigfoot and Astro.

Schofield sat on his own a short distance from the other four, head bowed, deep in thought . . . and dripping wet. He’d taken his anti-flash glasses off and was rubbing his scar-cut eyes.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” Sanchez moaned. “We’re on an island in the middle of the biggest ocean in the world, with three hundred of those
things
hunting us down. We’re completely, utterly, abso-fuckin-lutely screwed.”

Astro shook his head. “There’s just too many of them. It’s only a matter of time.”

Mother looked over at Schofield—still sitting with his head bent, thinking.

The others followed her gaze, as if waiting for him to say something.

Sanchez misunderstood Schofield’s silence for fear.
“Aw, great! He’s
frozen up!
Man, I wish I coulda stayed in the Buck’s unit.”

“Hey!”
Mother barked. “I’ve had a gutful of your griping, Sanchez. You doubt the Scarecrow one more time and I’ll perform my own court martial on you right here. That man’s got the coolest head in the game. Cooler than the fucking Buck and way cooler than you, that’s for sure. I’ve seen him think his way out of worse situations than this.”

“Pancho,” Bigfoot said softly. “She’s right. You shoulda seen him up on the flight deck. He must have taken out forty of those apes from the Tomcat, and then another fifty in the chopper that he tossed off the bow. He’s taken care of ninety of them all by himself. Now, I know you liked serving with the Buck, but you gotta move on. This guy’s not better or worse than the Buck, he’s just different. Why don’t you cut him a break.”

This was a big moment. Bigfoot was Sanchez’s closest friend in the unit, his former teammate under “Buccaneer” Broyles.

Sanchez scowled. “I got a question then. In R7, in Florida, back in ’04, the Buck beat everybody except him.” He jerked a nod at Schofield. “Led by him, you guys evaded us for forty-one hours, till the exercise was over. How did you guys do that for so long?”

Mother indicated Schofield: “It was all him, all his doing. He saw a pattern in the Buck’s moves, and once he found that pattern, he could anticipate every move you guys made. You had a numerical advantage, but
since he could predict your every next move, it didn’t matter.”

“What pattern did he see in our moves?”

“Scarecrow realized that the Buck employed the same tactic repeatedly: he’d always use one sub-team to push his opponent toward a larger, waiting, force. You see, that’s Scarecrow’s biggest talent. He spots patterns, the enemy’s patterns, their tactics and strategies . . . and then he uses those patterns against them.”

“But he didn’t use anything against us in R7,” Sanchez said. “He just avoided us. He didn’t
hurt
us in any way.”

“Oh, yes, he did,” Mother said. “By evading you guys till the end of the ex, he deprived you of the one thing you wanted most of all: a clear win.”

Sanchez growled. This was true.

Her point made, Mother turned to look back at Schofield—

—only to find him gazing directly back at her, his eyes alive.

She said, “Well, hey there, handsome. What’s up? Whatcha thinking?”

It was as if a lightbulb had lit up above his head.

“The Buck . . .” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’s here. Now. Commanding these ape troops.”

S
CHOFIELD SPOKE
quickly.

“Think back. In the observation tower above the indoor battlefield, the apes on the ceiling drove us
forward,
toward the other force of apes in the forward hangar. The
larger
force.

“Then in the aft hangar, they let us try for the portside elevator but then removed it, knowing we’d have to come
back
through their larger force. They were always driving us toward the larger numbers. It would also explain why the Corps disbanded the Buck’s unit a few months ago—he was being assigned to a special mission. This one.”

Astro said, “But that scientist, Pennebaker, said the exercise had gone pear-shaped. If the Buck was here, he’d be dead, too, killed by the gorillas.”

“And where’s Pennebaker now?” Schofield asked. “He was last seen ditching us in the aft hangar, during the gorillas’ main assault. Either he felt he was safer on his own—unlikely—or he was part of something bigger, a messenger sent to give us information. Mother, gentlemen, I’m not convinced the ‘exercise’ here at Hell Island went pear-shaped at all. In fact,
I’m starting to wonder if it’s still going . . . and we’re a part of it.”

There was a silence.

Sanchez said, “Okay. So if the Buck’s here, where is he?”

“Somewhere on the boat?” Astro suggested.

“No, I don’t think so,” Schofield swapped a look with Mother. “The power drain.”

Mother nodded. “Concur.”

“What are you two talking about?” Sanchez asked.

Schofield said, “Back on the bridge, we detected a power drain going off the ship and onto the island. The Buck—and whoever else is controlling this ape army—is somewhere on Hell Island.”

He stood, putting his silver anti-flash glasses back on, now looking more lethal than ever.

“Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Now that we’ve figured some of this out, it’s time to turn the tables.”

S
CHOFIELD WAITED
till dusk to leave the
Nimitz
.

If he was going to take on the island, the cover of darkness would be necessary. It also gave him a chance to do some research.

He dispatched Mother and Astro to find any maps of Hell Island. They found some in a stateroom, ever aware of the howls of the gorillas searching the ship for them.

When they returned, Schofield and his team pored over the maps. The most helpful one showed a network of underground tunnels running throughout the island:

“This used to be called Grant Island,” Schofield said. “Until we stormed it in 1943 and removed it from all maps, so it could be used as a secret staging post. The fighting here was some of the fiercest of the war, almost as bad as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Two thousand Japanese defenders fought to the very end on Grant, not giving a single inch—not wanting to give up its airfield. We lost eight hundred Marines taking it. Thing was, we almost lost a lot more.”

“What do you mean?” Mother asked.

“Like Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Hell Island was honeycombed with tunnels—concrete tunnels that the Japanese built over two years, connecting all its gun emplacements, pillboxes, and ammo dumps. The Japanese
could move around the island unseen, popping up from hidden holes and firing at point-blank range before disappearing again.

“But the tunnels on Hell Island had one extra purpose. They had a feature not seen anywhere else in the Pacific war: a flooding valve system.”

“What was that?”

“It was the ultimate suicide ploy. If the island was taken, the last remaining Japanese officers were to retreat to the lowest underground ammunition chamber—presumably followed by the American forces. From that chamber, the Japanese could seal off the entire tunnel system and then open two huge ocean gates—floodgates built into the walls of the system that could let the ocean in. The system would flood, killing both the Japanese and all the Americans now trapped inside. Kind of like a final ‘Screw you’ to the victorious American force.”

“Did the Japs use those gates in ’43?” Sanchez asked.

“They did. But a small team of special-mission Marines braved the rising waters and using primitive breathing apparatus managed to close the ocean gates, saving five hundred Marines.”

“How do you know this?” Bigfoot asked.

Schofield smiled weakly. “My grandfather was a member of that special team. His name was Lieutenant Michael Schofield. He led the team that held back the ocean.”

Schofield leaned back, staring at the map.

“The ammunition chambers . . .” he said. “If they’re like other World War II-era chambers, they’re big, hall-sized caverns. If we could lure the apes into one of them, we could seal them
all
inside and—hmmm . . .”

“What about finding the Buck and whoever else is behind this?” Sanchez said.

“Too risky. They could be anywhere on the island. They
are
also currently trying to kill us. No. We’ve been on the back foot all day. It’s time we got proactive, it’s time
we
set the agenda. And the way I see it, if we can pull this off,” Schofield said, “maybe they’ll find us. So what do you say, folks. Want to become gorilla bait?”

A
T EXACTLY
six p.m., the five Marines exited the
Nimitz
via the submarine docking door, swam over to the nearby shore and for the first time that day, set foot on Hell Island. The
Nimitz
loomed above them in the darkness, a dark shadow against the evening sky.

Schofield and his team quickly found an entrance to the underground tunnel system—a sixty-year-old cracked concrete archway that stank of decay, dust and the fearful sweat of soldiers long gone.

Inky darkness loomed beyond the old concrete arch.

Before they entered the tunnel network, Schofield stopped them.

“Okay, hold here for a moment. There’s only one way this can work, and that’s if they’re right behind us.”

He reached for his throat-mike and pressed “Transmit,” opening up his regular radio channel.

“But they’ll know where we are . . .” Astro said, alarmed.

“That’s the whole point, kiddo,” Mother said.

Schofield keyed his radio, put on a worried voice: “Delta Leader, come in! Flash . . . Flash Gordon! You still alive out there? This is Scarecrow. Please respond!”

He received no reply from the Delta team.

But he did get another kind of response.

A terrifying howl echoed out from the flight deck of the
Nimitz.

His transmission had been detected.

The gorillas were coming.

And they didn’t take long getting there.

They swarmed off the
Nimitz,
an army of fast-moving shadows.

Zeroing in on Schofield’s radio signal, the three hundred apes converged on the tunnel entrance, howling and roaring.

Schofield’s team charged into the tunnel system, pursued by the monsters. It was scary enough moving through the dank concrete passageways—but doing it with an army of deadly creatures on your tail was even worse.

“This way,” Schofield said, referring to his map.

He was heading for the two massive gun emplacements of Hell Island. The two big guns—twelve-inch behemoths—were positioned on a pair of cliffs pointing east and south, designed to ward off any approaching fleet.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely correct: he was heading
for the ammunition chambers buried
underneath and in between
the gun emplacements.

Through the tunnels they ran.

The gorillas caught up, firing and roaring. Schofield’s team fired behind themselves as they ran, picking off the apes, never slowing down. To slow down was to die.