Hell Island Read Free Page B

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.

U P 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-barreled 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 armory’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?”

W HILE THE rest of their team listened in horror to Gator’s gruesome report, Schofield and Mother strode into the command center, 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