Matt Reilly Stories (19 page)

* * * *

AIRSPACE
OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

1500
HOURS

1
AUGUST, 2005

The
vicious-looking aircraft shot across the sky at near supersonic speed.

It
was a modified Hercules cargo plane, known as an MC-130 ‘Combat Talon’, the
delivery vehicle of choice for US Special Forces units.

This
Combat Talon stayed high, very high, it was as if it was trying to avoid being
seen by radar systems down at sea level. This was unusual, because there was
nothing down there—according to the maps, the nearest land in this part of the
Pacific was an atoll 500 klicks to the east.

Then
the rear loading ramp of the Combat Talon rumbled open and several dozen tiny
figures issued out from it in rapid sequence, spreading out into the sky
behind the soaring plane.

The
forty-strong flock of paratroopers plummeted to earth, men in high-altitude
jumpsuits —full-face breathing masks; streamlined black bodysuits. They angled
their bodies downward as they fell, so that they flew head-first, their masks
pointed into the onrushing wind, becoming human spears, freefalling with
serious intent.

It
was a classic HALO drop—high-altitude, low-opening. You jumped from 37,000
feet, fell fast and hard, and then stopped dangerously close to the ground,
right at your drop zone.

Curiously,
however, the forty elite troops falling to earth today fell in identifiable subgroups,
ten men to a group, as if they were trying to remain somehow separate.

Indeed,
they were separate teams.

Crack
teams. The best of the best from every corner of the US armed forces.

One
unit from the 82nd Airborne Division.

One
SEAL team.

One
Delta team, ever aloof and secretive.

And
last of all, one team of Force Reconnaissance Marines.

* * * *

They
shot into the cloud layer—a dense band of dark thunderclouds—freefell through
the haze.

Then
after nearly a full minute of flying, they burst out of the clouds and emerged
in the midst of a full-scale five-alarm ocean storm: rain lashed their
facemasks; dark clouds hung low over the heaving ocean; giant waves rolled and
crashed.

And
through the rain, their target came into view, a tiny island far below them, an
island that did not appear on maps anymore, an island with an aircraft carrier
parked alongside it.

Hell.

* * * *

Leading
the Marine team was Captain Shane M. Schofield, call-sign ‘Scarecrow’.

Behind
his HALO mask, Schofield had a rugged creased face, black hair and blue eyes.
Slicing down across those eyes, however, were a pair of hideous vertical scars,
one for each eye, wounds from a mission-gone-wrong and the source of his
operational nickname. Once on the ground, he’d hide those eyes behind a pair of
reflective wraparound anti-flash glasses.

Quiet,
intense and when necessary deadly, Schofield had a unique reputation in the
Marine Corps. He’d been involved in several missions that remained classified—but
the Marine Corps (like any group of human beings) is filled with gossip and
rumour. Someone always knew someone who was there, or who saw the medical
report, or who cleaned up the aftermath.

The
rumours about Schofield were many and varied, and sometimes simply too
outrageous to be true.

One:
he had been involved in a gigantic multi-force battle in Antarctica, a battle
which, it was said, involved a bloody and brutal confrontation with two of
America’s allies, France and Britain.

Two:
he’d saved the President during an attempted military coup at a remote USAF
base. It was said that during that misadventure, the Scarecrow—a former
pilot—had flown an experimental space shuttle into low earth orbit, engaged an
enemy shuttle, destroyed it, and then come
back
to earth to rescue the
President.

Of
course none of this could possibly be verified, and so it remained the stuff
of legend; legends, however, that Schofield’s new unit were acutely aware of.

That
said, there was one thing about Shane Schofield that they knew to be true: this
was his first mission back after a long layover, four months of stress leave,
in fact. On this occasion someone really
had
seen the medical report,
and now all of his men on this mission knew about it.

They
also knew the cause of his stress leave.

During
his last mission out, Schofield had been taken to the very edge of his
psychological endurance. Loved ones close to him had been captured ... and
executed. It was even said in hushed whispers that at one point on that mission
he had tried to take his own life.

Which
was why the other members of his team today were slightly less-than-confident
in their leader.

Was
he up to this mission? Was he a time-bomb waiting to explode? Was he a
basketcase who would lose it at the first sign of trouble?

They
were about to find out.

* * * *

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?’