Sky Ghost (47 page)

Best of all, surprise had been preserved for a second phase of the overall operation because the attack had gone off completely undetected. No one had seen the ships surface, launch their aircraft, or recover them, the ship commanders reported. No one left alive anyway.

But this was not entirely true.

For two miles away from where the huge Japanese ships were now slowly sinking into the waves, there was a small island called Buku-Buku. On this island, hidden in the thick underbrush, were the sixteen survivors of the USS
Neponset, the
TPB cut in half by one of the Japanese cruisers.

The American crew had reached the small island by sheer determination alone. Many were injured, two severely. These men had been carried to safety by Lt. Noonan, who lashed them together with pieces of rope and wire and then swam slowly and surely to the island, towing the two wounded men behind him.

It would be seven days before the crew was rescued from Buku-Buku.

But when they were, they would tell their superiors just how the Japanese had been able to carry out their vicious attack and then disappear, as if into thin air.

Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, Chopper Ops, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as
UFOs in Wartime: What They Didn’t Want You to Know
. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show,
Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files
.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Mack Maloney

Cover design by Michael Vrana

978-1-4804-0679-7

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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