Hell Island Read Free

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 center 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 gray 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 northeastern 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 easternend 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