Hell Island (9 page)

Then abruptly they came to a freight elevator.

“This is it. We’re beneath the first gun emplacement,” Schofield said. “This elevator was used to feed ammunition to the guns from the chambers down below.”

Like the concrete world around it, the elevator was old and clunky, rusted beyond repair. It didn’t work, but that didn’t matter.

“Quickly, down,” Schofield ordered.

One after the other, they swept down a rusty ladder that ran down the elevator shaft.

Moving last of all, Mother grabbed the ladder just as an ape came leaping out of the darkness, grabbing her gun-hand.

She pivoted on the ladder and hurled the gorilla free—allowing it to take her gun, but flinging it out into the elevator shaft. The gorilla sailed down the shaft, disappearing into blackness, its shriek ending with a dull thud somewhere down there.

“Hurry up, people!” Mother called downward.

They hustled down the ladder.

On the way, Schofield found a huge iron door set into an alcove. Its Japanese markings had been painted over with English:
ORDNANCE CHAMBER ONE
.

Unfortunately, access to the door itself was obstructed by a cluster of heavy crates and boxes. They’d never get to it.

Down another level and they came to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Here Schofield found a second huge iron door marked
ORDNANCE CHAMBER TWO
. Not only was it free of obstructing crates, it was unlocked. Also here was a large circular pressure door that looked like the entry to a giant safe. It was easily ten feet in diameter.

Schofield ignored this circular door, pushed open the heavy iron door to the ordnance chamber and pulled a glow stick from his belt.

Beside him, Sanchez extracted a flare gun and raised it.

“No,” Schofield said sharply. “Not here.”

He cracked the glow stick—illuminating the room around them with its haunting amber glow—and suddenly Sanchez saw the wisdom of Schofield’s words.

The room around them was enormous, high-ceilinged and concrete-walled, with floor space roughly the size of a basketball court. A network of overhead rails ran along its ceiling, dangling chains and hooks. An identical door lay on the far side, leading to a second elevator shaft that fed the other gun emplacement.

And piled up in its center, like an artificial mountain sixty feet tall, was a pyramid-shaped stack of
wooden crates. Each crate was marked in either Japanese or English with
DANGER: EXPLOSIVES
or
DANGER: FLAMMABLE. NO NAKED FLAMES.

In fact, Schofield couldn’t recall seeing the word “danger” so many times in the one place.

“This is what we wanted,” he said in a low voice. “Come on.”

His team hustled inside.

T
HE APES
arrived at the second ammunition chamber a minute later.

The first few must have been recon troops—for the first time that day they were cautious, checking things out, as if suspecting a trap.

They saw Schofield and Mother clambering up the mountain of wooden crates, heading for a catwalk near the ceiling—presumably to join the others up there, although they couldn’t be seen. The recon gorillas ducked back outside, to report back to the others.

Thirty seconds later, the onslaught came.

It was spectacular in its ferocity.

The ape army
thundered
into the ammo chamber in full assault mode.

Screaming and shrieking, moving fast and spreading out, they stormed the subterranean hall—not firing. The scouts had informed the others of the flammable contents of the hall. They’d have to do this
without
guns.

The ape army leapt onto the mountain of crates,
coming after Schofield and Mother with a vengeance, coming to finish them off.

Schofield and Mother stayed at the peak of the crate mountain, each holding two MP-7 submachine guns and firing them with precision, aiming carefully to avoid hitting the ordnance all around them, taking down apes left, right and center.

Gunfire clattering.

Apes screaming and falling.

Muzzle flashes.

Two against an army.

And the apes just kept coming, live ones just clambering over the dead ones, scaling the artificial mountain. For every rank of gorillas that Schofield and Mother mowed down, another
two ranks
stepped forward.

Soon the mountain of crates was crawling with hairy black shapes, all scrambling in a fury for the two defiant Marines at the summit.

“Scarecrow . . . !” Mother called.

“Not yet! We have to wait till they’re all inside . . . !”

Then the last apes entered the great underground room, and Schofield called, “Now!”

As he yelled, the first gorillas reached the summit and clutched at his boots—only to be completely surprised when Schofield and Mother suddenly discarded their guns and leapt
upward,
grabbing a pair of chains hanging from the ceiling-mounted rail network and using them to swing across the length of the chamber,
high above the army of apes swarming over the crate-mountain.

Schofield and Mother hit the western wall of the hall and unclipped clasps on their chains—causing the chains to unreel from the ceiling, lowering the two of them to the floor of the room right in front of the doorway leading back to the elevator shaft.

“Marines! Now!”

It was then that the other three members of Schofield’s unit revealed themselves—from
behind
some crates near the entrance to the ammunition chamber. They all stepped back out through the heavy entry door, and raised their guns to fire back in through the gap.

And suddenly the trap became clear.

The
entire
gorilla army was now inside the one enclosed space, swarming all over the most combustible mountain in history.

And with Schofield and Mother now down and safe, Bigfoot, Astro and Sanchez aimed their guns at the base of the mountain of crates.

“Fire!” Schofield commanded.

They squeezed their triggers.

But then, from completely out of nowhere, a voice called:
“Captain Schofield! Don’t!”

S
CHOFIELD SNAPPED
up. “Marines! Hold that order! Do not fire!”

The voice—it was a man’s voice—was desperate and pleading. It echoed out from ancient loudspeakers positioned around the great concrete room and inside the elevator shaft.

By this time the apes had started descending the mountain of crates, coming back down after Schofield and Mother, but then the voice addressed them:

“Troops! Desist and stand down!”

Immediately, the apes stopped where they stood, sitting down on their haunches in total and absolute obedience.

What had moments before been a frenzied blood-hungry army of apes was now a perfectly-behaved crowd of three hundred silent mountain gorillas.

And then suddenly
people
appeared behind Schofield’s team, moving slowly and calmly, stepping down from the ladder in the elevator shaft: seven men in lab-coats, one officer in uniform, and covering them, a team of Delta commandos: the same ten-man team led by Hugh “Flash” Gordon that had parachuted in with Schofield’s unit earlier that day.

Among the scientists in the lab-coats, Schofield recognized Zak Pennebaker, the “desperate” scientist he’d met earlier.

He also recognized the officer in uniform, which happened to be the khaki day uniform of the United States Marine Corps. He was Captain William “Buccaneer” Broyles, a.k.a. the Buck.

The leader of the lab-coated crowd stepped forward. He was an older man, with a mane of flowing white hair, an aged crinkled face, and dazzling blue eyes. He oozed authority.

“Captain Schofield,” he said in a deep voice. “Thank you for your quick response to my plea. My name is Dr. Malcolm Knox, scientific consultant to the President, head of the Special Warfare Division at DARPA and overall commander of
Project Stormtrooper.
”

Knox walked out among the apes—they continued to sit obediently, although they did rock from side to side, fidgeting impatiently. But they did not attack him. Schofield noticed a silver disc on Knox’s ID badge—it was exactly the same as the one Pennebaker had been wearing earlier and, Schofield saw, was still wearing now.

Standing with the apes at his back, Knox turned to Schofield and his dirty, blood-covered team.

“
Congratulations. You have won this mission, Captain Schofield,” he said.

Schofield said nothing.

“I said, you
won,
” Knox said. “I commend you on an incredible effort. Indeed, yours was the only team to survive.”

Still Schofield remained silent.

Knox stammered. “You really, er, should all be proud—”

“This was a goddamned test,” Schofield said in a low voice, his tone deadly.

“Yes . . . yes, it was,” Knox said, slightly unnerved. “The final test of a new technology—”

Schofield said, “You pitted your new army against three companies of Marines, and you beat them. But then the higher-ups said you had to beat Special Forces, didn’t they?”

Knox nodded. “This is correct.”

“So you had us parachuted in here, with the SEALs and the Airborne. You used us as
live bait.
You used us as human guinea pigs for a
test
—”

“This gorilla force could save thousands of American lives in future conflicts,” Knox said. “You, Captain Schofield, are sworn to defend the American people and your fellow soldiers. You were doing exactly that, only in an indirect way.”

“In an indirect way . . .” Schofield growled. “I’ve lost five good men here today, Dr. Knox. Not to mention the other Marines, SEALs and Airbornes who also died here in your little experiment. These men had families. They were prepared to die for their country fighting its
enemies,
not its latest fucking weapon.”

“
Sometimes a few must be lost for the greater good, Captain,” Knox said. “This is bigger than you. This is the future of warfare for our country.”

“But your apes
lost
in the end. We had them in the crosshairs and were about to fire the kill-shot.”

“Yes, you did. You most certainly did,” Knox said. “Your participation in this exercise was requested for precisely that reason: your adaptability and unpredictability. The apes needed such an adversary.

“As it stands, however, the gorillas beat everybody but you, and your victory, it must be said, was based in large part on a few longshots, in particular a level of knowledge that 99 percent of our enemies simply will not have: submarine docking doors in carriers and an unusually high level of knowledge of World War II Japanese tunnel systems. No, based on the results of this test,
Project Stormtrooper
will most certainly go live, and it will save many lives over the years to come.”

Knox started walking around the hall, checking the apes. “Now, if you don’t mind, we have a lot of follow-up to do and a whole lot of paperwork. An extraction plane has been called from Okinawa to come and take you home. It should be here in a few hours.”

“Paperwork . . .” Schofield said. “Men have died
and you have paperwork. You guys are something else. Hey, hold it. I have another question.”