Hell Island

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 gray 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 refueling 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 kilometers south of the Bering Strait and five hundred from its nearest island neighbor. 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 U.S. Marines who’d fought there.

They called it Hell Island.