Matt Reilly Stories (18 page)

He
grabbed the wall-phone, wound it up.

Dial
tone.

‘Come
on…’ he urged.

Clickety-click:

‘
Hello? Guardhouse.
’

‘Yes,
this is Mitch Raleigh. I’m down in the cave system being fired upon with live
ammunition by some of your Delta boys!’

‘
Who is this?
’ the voice at the other end demanded.

‘I’m
a writer. One of your Delta guys, Captain Dwight Daniels, invited me to visit
Bragg for research—’

‘
Listen to me, whoever you are. There is no Captain Daniels in the Delta
Detachment here at Bragg. Now, you are calling from a restricted area. I’m
sending the MPs down there.
’

Click.

Tone.

But
Raleigh was already frozen.

‘
There is no Captain Daniels in the Delta Detachment here at Bragg
…’

Daniels
wasn’t Delta.

But
if Daniels wasn’t Delta, what was he then?

And
then it hit Raleigh.

Echelon
Left…

Real
D-boys would never use Echelon Left. They were too good to use procedures as
basic as Echelon formations. No, Echelon formations were more suited to…

…Army
Ranger groups.

Junior
Army Ranger groups.

Infantry
soldiers learning the basics of ground warfare.

This
wasn’t a group of Delta men at all.

This
was a group of regular Army Rangers—young Army Rangers—
hardcore
Rangers
who mustn’t have been pleased at Raleigh’s negative depiction of their branch
of the military in his book.

And
so they had decided to teach him a lesson.

Bring
him to Bragg…on a bus under a false name…ensuring that he didn’t tell anybody
he was coming. Hell, so far as Raleigh’s publisher knew, right now he was
relaxing in D.C. So if he vanished at Bragg, as far as the rest of the world
was concerned, he had just disappeared in Washington, D.C.

Right
,
Raleigh thought.
Time to blow this joint
.

RACE
FOR THE SURFACE

The
young Ranger team was rattled.

Two
of their men were shot plus the one he had used as a human shield.

Shouts
rang out from the tunnels: ‘Where’d he go!’—‘Damn it!’—‘Find that cocksucker!’

When
he saw them go back into the cave system, looking for him, Raleigh made a break
for the surface.

Two
men were guarding the exit.

Raleigh
faked a scream and dropped to the dusty ground, just within sight of the two
guards.

The
two guards came to investigate. Two shots to their chests. Both men went down.

Raleigh
bolted for the entryway...

RALEIGH
DRIVING

…and
burst out into the cool night-time air.

He
saw the Light Strike Vehicle parked nearby.

Vrroooom!

The
LSV kicked up a spray of sand behind it as it roared its way through the sand
dunes, heading back towards the Main Post with Raleigh at the wheel.

With
a gigantic roar, the Black Hawk that had dropped the Rangers at the tunnel
system came blasting over a sand dune, all guns blazing, raining hell down on
Raleigh’s LSV.

The
Light Strike Vehicle skidded. Bullets raked the sand. The LSV turned—as more
gunfire pelted the road in front of it.

Two
more Light Strike Vehicles came bursting forth from the vicinity of the tunnel
system—the Rangers in hot pursuit.

And
then, with a
whoosh
, Raleigh skipped out of the sandy terrain and rushed
onto bitumen.

He
was at the riverside road, not far to go now.

He
saw the barracks across the river, saw the men in straw cowboy hats now
standing up on their porches, watching this unexpected pursuit curiously.

The
Black Hawk swooped in low, loosed another burst.

The
two Ranger LSVs behind Raleigh’s car pulled in close to his tailbar.

It
was then that Raleigh realised.

He
wasn’t going to make it back to Bragg.

Then
you’d better do something else, stupid!
A voice yelled inside
his head.

Right
…

And
so, as he whipped alongside the wide flat river, his pursuers now almost beside
him, Raleigh did what no-one expected him to do.

He
swung his speeding LSV left—
towards
the river.

The
move took all the Rangers by surprise. The Black Hawk overshot his
sharply-turning car. The pair of pursuing LSVs also reacted too late, shooting
past Raleigh’s skidding mobile.

The
Light Strike Vehicle straightened and hit the banks of the river at speed and
took off…soaring into the air, flying high.

And
then it smashed with a glorious explosion of water smack-bang in the middle of
the river.

Although
Raleigh had been bracing himself for the inertial fling, when it happened, the
force of it still took him by surprise.

The
car hit the water nose-first, kicking up its rear-end, turning the LSV into a
virtual catapult that flung Mitchell Raleigh a further fifteen yards into the
river.

Raleigh
landed with his own ugly splash—but at least now he was already halfway across
the river.

He
started swimming, saw the cowboy-hatted men at the barracks start running
towards him.

Looked
back: saw the Rangers on the opposite bank, drawing their guns, but not firing,
realizing that it was too late.

Two
cowboy-hatted men lifted a sogging and sagging Mitch Raleigh from the river.

‘Christ,
a civilian,’ one of them said.

‘Who
the hell
are you?’ the other asked.

‘My
name’—
breath
—‘is Mitchell Raleigh’—
breath
—‘I’m a’—
breath
—‘writer…’

The
second cowboy looked out at the Ranger group on the other side of the river as
he herded Raleigh towards the barracks.

He
turned to his buddy. ‘Better give the MPs a call. Looks like some of the Ranger
bunnies have been up to some naughty shit tonight.’

The
cowboy draped Raleigh’s arm over his shoulder and helped him toward the
barracks.

‘My
name’s Rick Coltin,’ he said, ‘I’m a captain with Delta. Mitchell Raleigh, huh?
The author, right? God, man, I’ve read your books—that
Detachment-5
was
a real kick-ass read. Although if you don’t mind my saying so, I reckon you
have to brush up a little on your real-life warfare research.

You
can read whatever books you like, but until you’ve been there, it just ain’t
the same.’

________________

_____________

PROLOGUE

THE
LAST MAN STANDING

Terrified,
wounded and now out of ammo, Lieutenant Rick ‘Razor’ Haynes staggered down the
tight passageway, blood pouring from a gunshot wound to his left thigh,
scratch-marks crisscrossing his face.

He
panted as he moved, gasping for breath. He was the last one left, the last
member of his entire Marine force still alive.

He
could hear them behind him.

Grunting,
growling.

Stalking
him, hunting him
down.                               

They
knew
they had him—knew he was out of ammunition, out of contact with
base, and out of comrades-in-arms.

The
passageway through which he was fleeing was long and straight, barely wide
enough for his shoulders. It had grey steel walls studded with rivets—the kind
you find on a military vessel, a warship.

Wincing
in agony, Haynes arrived at a bulkhead 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
AUSUST, 2005

* * * *