Matt Reilly Stories by Matthew Reilly
I
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. Likewise, 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, freefailing 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.
* * * *
II
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 face-masks, 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.
There were star-shaped blood splatters on all of them, and also on the deck itself. But no bodies. Not one.
‘Mother,’ Schofield said to his number two, ‘what do you think?’
‘What do I think?’ the bulky female Marine to his right replied. ‘I think this is seriously fucked up. I was planning on spending this weekend watching David Hasselhoff DVDs. No-one takes me away from the Hoff.’
Gena Newman was her real name, Gunnery Sergeant was her rank, but ‘Mother’ was her call-sign and it didn’t relate to any overtly maternal traits. It was short for a slightly longer word starting with ‘Mother’.
At six-feet-two, 200 pounds, and with a fully-shaven head, Mother cut a mean figure. Tough, no-nonsense and fiercely loyal, she had accompanied Schofield oh many missions, including the bad ones. She was also arguably the best Gunny in the Corps—once she had even been offered her pick of assignments outside Schofield’s command. She’d looked the Commandant of the Marine Corps in the eye and said, ‘I’m staying with the Scarecrow, sir.’
Mother gazed at the blood splatters on a nearby plane. ‘No, this was way suspect from the start. I mean, why are we here with D-boys, Airbornes and slithery SEALs? I’d rather just work with swordsmen.’
Swordsman was her word for a Marine: a reference to the swords they wore with their full-dress uniforms.
‘Marines,’ Schofield called, ‘the tower. Let’s move.’
Since they’d been assigned the mid-section of the supercarrier, Schofield’s Marines had the task of investigating the carrier’s six-storey-high command tower, known as ‘the Island’. But since this mission also involved a real island, it was being referred to today as ‘the tower’.
They moved quickly through the rain, crossed the wide flight deck, arrived at the base of the tower—to find the main door there covered in blood and about a million bullet holes. It hung askew, its hinges blasted.
Looking up, Schofield saw that every single antenna and radar array atop the command tower had been broken or destroyed. The main antenna mast was broken in the middle and now lay tilted over.
‘What in God’s name happened here?’ one of Schofield’s Marines asked softly. He was a big guy, broad shoulder
‘Not a tsunami, that’s for sure,’ Sergeant Paulo ‘Pancho’ Sanchez said. Older and more senior than Hulk, he was a sly sarcastic type. ‘Tsunamis don’t shoot you in the head.’
The voice of the SEAL leader came through their earpieces: ‘All units, this is Gator. Starboard Elevator Three has been disabled. We’re taking the stairs, heading for the main hangar bay below the flight deck.’
‘This is Condor,’ the Airborne leader called in. ‘I got evidence of a firefight in the SAM launcher bay up at the bow. Lot of blood, but not a single body ...’
‘Delta Six here. We’re on the island proper. No sign of anything yet…’
Schofield didn’t send out any report.
‘Sir,’ Sanchez said to him. ‘You gonna call in?’
‘No.’
Sanchez exchanged a quick look with the Marine next to him, a tall guy named Bigfoot. Sanchez was one of the men who’d been dubious about Schofield’s mental state and his ability to lead this mission.
‘Not even to tell the others where we are?’
‘No.’
‘But what about—’
‘Sergeant,’ Schofield said sharply ‘did you ask your previous commander to explain everything to you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So don’t start doing it now. Focus on the mission at hand.’
Sanchez bit his lip and nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now, if no-one else has anything to say, let’s take this tower. Move.’
Hurdling the twisted steel door, they charged into the darkness of the supercarrier’s command tower.
* * * *
III
Up a series of tight ladders that formed the spine of the command tower, moving quickly. Blood on the rungs.
Still no bodies.
Schofield’s team came to the bridge, the middle of three glass-enclosed lookout levels on the tower.
They were granted a superb view of the flight deck outside…albeit through cracked and smashed wraparound windows.
Nearly every window overlooking the flight deck had been destroyed. Blood dripped off what glass remained. Thousands of spent rounds littered the floor. Also, a few guns lay about: mainly M-16s, plus a few M-4 Colt Commandos, the short-barrelled version of the M-16 used by special forces teams worldwide.
Mother led a sub-team upstairs, to the uppermost bridge: the flight control bridge. She returned a few minutes later.
‘Same deal,’ she reported ‘Bucketloads of blood, no bodies. All windows smashed, and an armoury’s worth of spent ammo left on the floor. A hell of a firefight took place here, Scarecrow.’
‘A firefight that was cleaned up afterward,’ Schofield said.
Just then, something caught his eye: one of the abandoned rifles on the floor, one of the M-4s.
He picked it up, examined it.
From a distance it looked like a regular M-4, but it wasn’t. It had been modified slightly.
The gun’s trigger-guard was different: it had been elongated, as if to accommodate a longer index finger that wrapped itself around the gun’s trigger.
‘What the hell is that?’ Hulk said, seeing it. ‘Some kind of super gun?’
‘Scarecrow,’ Mother said, coming over. ‘Most of these blood splatters are the result of bullet impacts. But some aren’t. They’re…well…thicker. More like arterial flow. As if some of the dead had entire limbs cut off.’
Schofield’s earpiece squawked.
All units, this is Gator. My SEAL team has just arrived at the main hangar deck and holy shit,-people, have we got something to show you. We aren’t the first force to have got here. And the guys before us didn’t fare well at all. I have a visual on at least two hundred pairs of hands all stacked up in a neat pile down here.’
Sanchez whispered, ‘Did he just say—?’
Gator anticipated this. ‘Yes, you heard me right. Hands. Human hands. Cut off and stacked in a great big heap. What in God’s name have we walked into here?’
* * * *
IV
While the rest of their team listened in horror to Gator’s gruesome report, Schofield and Mother strode into the command centre, the inner section of the bridge. It too was largely wrecked, but not totally.
‘Mother, do a power-grid check, all grids, all levels, even externals. I’m gonna look for ATOs.’
Mother sat down at an undamaged console while Schofield went to the Captain’s desk and attached some C-2 low-expansion plastic explosive to the commanding officer’s safe.
A muffled boom later and he had the Nimitz’s last fourteen ATOs—Air Tasking Orders, the ship’s daily orders received from Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor.
It was mainly routine stuff as the Nimitz hop-scotched her way back from the Indian Ocean to Hawaii, dropping in at Singapore and the Philippines on the way ...
Until ten days ago ...
…when the Nimitz was ordered to divert to the Japanese island of Okinawa and pick up three companies of US Marines there, a force of about 600 men.
She was to ferry the Marines—not crack Recon troops, but rather just regular men— across the northern Pacific and drop them off at a set of co-ordinates that Schofield knew to be Hell Island.
After unloading the Marines, the ship was then instructed to:
PICK UP DARPA SCIENCE TEAM FROM LOCATION:
KNOX, MALCOLM C.
RYAN, HARPER R.
PENNEBAKER, ZACHARY B.
HOGAN, SHANE M.
JOHNSON, SIMON W.
LIEBMANN, BEN C.
HENDRICKS, JAMES F.
PERSONNEL ARE ALL SECURITY-CLEARED TO ‘TOP SECRET’.
THEY WILL HAVE CARGO WHICH IS NOT TO BE SEEN BY CREW OF NIMITZ.
So. The Nimitz had been sent here to drop off a sizeable force of Marines and also pick up some scientists who had been at work here.
Again, it bore all the hallmarks of an exercise— Marines being unloaded on a secret island where DARPA scientists had been at work.
DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the genius-level scientists who made high-tech weaponry for the US military. After inventing the Internet and stealth technology, rumour had it that DARPA had recently been at work on ultra-high-tensile, low-weight body armour and, notoriously, a fourth-generation thermonuclear weapon called a Supernova, the most powerful nuke ever devised.
‘Scarecrow,’ Mother said from her console. ‘I got a power drain in grid 14.2, the starboard-side router, going to an external destination, location unknown. Something on the island is draining power from the Nimitz’s reactor. Beyond that, all other electrical systems on the boat have been shut down: lights, air-conditioning, everything.’
Schofield thought about that.
‘And another thing,’ Mother said. ‘I fired up the ship’s internal spectrum analyser. I’m picking up a weird radio signal being transmitted inside the Nimitz.’
‘Why’s it weird?’
‘Because it’s not a voice signal. It sounds, well, like a digital signal, a binary beep sequence. Fact, sounds like my old dial-up modem.’
Schofield frowned. A power drain going off the ship. Digital radio signals inside the ship. A secret DARPA presence. And a gruesome stack of severed hands down in the hangar deck.
This didn’t make sense at all.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you got a portable AXS on you?’ An AXS was an AXS-9 radio spectrum analyser, a portable unit that picked up radio transmissions, a bug detector.
‘Sure have.’
‘Jamming capabilities?’
‘Multi-channel or single channel,’ she said.
‘Good,’ Schofield said. ‘Tune it in to those beeps. Stay on them. And just be ready to jam them.’
Gator’s voice continued to come over his earpiece. The SEAL leader was describing the scene in the hangar bay:
‘... looks like the entire hangar has been configured for an exercise of some sor
Gunfire rang out. Sustained automatic gunfire.
Both from the SEALs and from an unknown enemy force. The SEALs’ silenced MP-5SNs made a chilling slit-slit-slit-slit-slit-slit when they fired. Their enemies’ guns made a different noise altogether, the distinct puncture-like clatter of M-4 Colt Commando assault rifles.
The SEALs starting shouting to each other:
‘—they’re coming out of the nearest trench—’
‘—what the fuck is that...’
‘—it looks like a Goddamn go—’
Sprack! The speaker never finished his sentence. The sound of a bullet slamming into his skull echoed through his radio-mike.
Then Gator’s voice: ‘Fire! Open fire! Mow ‘em down!’
In response to the order, the level of SEAL gunfire intensified. But the SEALs’ voices became more desperate.
‘—Jesus, they just keep coming! There are too many of them!’
‘—Get back to the stairs! Get back to the—’
‘—Shit! There are more back there! They’re cutting us off! They’ve got us surrounded!’
A pained scream.
‘—Gator’s down! Oh, fuck, ah—’
The speaker’s voice was abruptly cut off by a guttural grunting sound that all but ate his radio-mike. The man screamed, a terrified shriek that was muffled by rough scuffling noises over his mike. He panted desperately as if struggling with some great beast. Indeed it sounded as if some kind of frenzied creature had barrelled into him full-tilt and started eating his face.
Then blam! a gunshot boomed and there were no more screams. Schofield couldn’t tell if it was the man who had fired or the thing that had attacked him.
And suddenly it was over.
Silence on the airwaves.
In the bridge of the supercarrier, the members of Schofield’s team swapped glances.