Hell Island

12

SCHOFIELD’S TEAM sat in a grim silent circle beside the airlock that was Casper’s door, deep within the bowels of the carrier.

There were only five of them now.

Schofield, Mother, Sanchez, Bigfoot and Astro.

Schofield sat on his own a short distance from the other four, head bowed, deep in thought… and dripping wet. He’d taken his anti-flash glasses off and was rubbing his scar-cut eyes.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” Sanchez moaned. “We’re on an island in the middle of the biggest ocean in the world, with three hundred of those things hunting us down. We’re completely, utterly, abso-fuckin-lutely screwed.”

Astro shook his head. “There’s just too many of them. It’s only a matter of time.”

Mother looked over at Schofield—still sitting with his head bent, thinking.

The others followed her gaze, as if waiting for him to say something.

Sanchez misunderstood Schofield’s silence for fear. “Aw, great! He’s frozen up! Man, I wish I coulda stayed in the Buck’s unit.”

“Hey!” Mother barked. “I’ve had a gutful of your griping, Sanchez. You doubt the Scarecrow one more time and I’ll perform my own court martial on you right here. That man’s got the coolest head in the game. Cooler than the fucking Buck and way cooler than you, that’s for sure. I’ve seen him think his way out of worse situations than this.”

“Pancho,” Bigfoot said softly. “She’s right. You shoulda seen him up on the flight deck. He must have taken out forty of those apes from the Tomcat, and then another fifty in the chopper that he tossed off the bow. He’s taken care of ninety of them all by himself. Now, I know you liked serving with the Buck, but you gotta move on. This guy’s not better or worse than the Buck, he’s just different. Why don’t you cut him a break.”

This was a big moment. Bigfoot was Sanchez’s closest friend in the unit, his former teammate under “Buccaneer” Broyles.

Sanchez scowled. “I got a question then. In R7, in Florida, back in ’04, the Buck beat everybody except him.” He jerked a nod at Schofield. “Led by him, you guys evaded us for forty-one hours, till the exercise was over. How did you guys do that for so long?”

Mother indicated Schofield: “It was all him, all his doing. He saw a pattern in the Buck’s moves, and once he found that pattern, he could anticipate every move you guys made. You had a numerical advantage, but since he could predict your every next move, it didn’t matter.”

“What pattern did he see in our moves?”

“Scarecrow realized that the Buck employed the same tactic repeatedly: he’d always use one sub-team to push his opponent toward a larger, waiting, force. You see, that’s Scarecrow’s biggest talent. He spots patterns, the enemy’s patterns, their tactics and strategies… and then he uses those patterns against them.”

“But he didn’t use anything against us in R7,” Sanchez said. “He just avoided us. He didn’t hurt us in any way.”

“Oh, yes, he did,” Mother said. “By evading you guys till the end of the ex, he deprived you of the one thing you wanted most of all: a clear win.”

Sanchez growled. This was true.

Her point made, Mother turned to look back at Schofield—

—only to find him gazing directly back at her, his eyes alive.

She said, “Well, hey there, handsome. What’s up? Whatcha thinking?”

It was as if a lightbulb had lit up above his head.

“The Buck…” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’s here. Now. Commanding these ape troops.”

13

SCHOFIELD SPOKE quickly.

“Think back. In the observation tower above the indoor battlefield, the apes on the ceiling drove us forward, toward the other force of apes in the forward hangar. The larger force.

“Then in the aft hangar, they let us try for the portside elevator but then removed it, knowing we’d have to come back through their larger force. They were always driving us toward the larger numbers. It would also explain why the Corps disbanded the Buck’s unit a few months ago—he was being assigned to a special mission. This one.”

Astro said, “But that scientist, Pennebaker, said the exercise had gone pear-shaped. If the Buck was here, he’d be dead, too, killed by the gorillas.”

“And where’s Pennebaker now?” Schofield asked. “He was last seen ditching us in the aft hangar, during the gorillas’ main assault. Either he felt he was safer on his own—unlikely—or he was part of something bigger, a messenger sent to give us information. Mother, gentlemen, I’m not convinced the ‘exercise’ here at Hell Island went pear-shaped at all. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if it’s still going… and we’re a part of it.”

There was a silence.

Sanchez said, “Okay. So if the Buck’s here, where is he?”

“Somewhere on the boat?” Astro suggested.

“No, I don’t think so,” Schofield swapped a look with Mother. “The power drain.”

Mother nodded. “Concur.”

“What are you two talking about?” Sanchez asked.

Schofield said, “Back on the bridge, we detected a power drain going off the ship and onto the island. The Buck—and whoever else is controlling this ape army—is somewhere on Hell Island.”

He stood, putting his silver anti-flash glasses back on, now looking more lethal than ever.

“Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Now that we’ve figured some of this out, it’s time to turn the tables.”

14

SCHOFIELD WAITED till dusk to leave the Nimitz.

If he was going to take on the island, the cover of darkness would be necessary. It also gave him a chance to do some research.

He dispatched Mother and Astro to find any maps of Hell Island. They found some in a stateroom, ever aware of the howls of the gorillas searching the ship for them.

When they returned, Schofield and his team pored over the maps. The most helpful one showed a network of underground tunnels running throughout the island:

“This used to be called Grant Island,” Schofield said. “Until we stormed it in 1943 and removed it from all maps, so it could be used as a secret staging post. The fighting here was some of the fiercest of the war, almost as bad as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Two thousand Japanese defenders fought to the very end on Grant, not giving a single inch—not wanting to give up its airfield. We lost eight hundred Marines taking it. Thing was, we almost lost a lot more.”

“What do you mean?” Mother asked.

“Like Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Hell Island was honeycombed with tunnels—concrete tunnels that the Japanese built over two years, connecting all its gun emplacements, pillboxes, and ammo dumps. The Japanese could move around the island unseen, popping up from hidden holes and firing at point-blank range before disappearing again.

“But the tunnels on Hell Island had one extra purpose. They had a feature not seen anywhere else in the Pacific war: a flooding valve system.”

“What was that?”

“It was the ultimate suicide ploy. If the island was taken, the last remaining Japanese officers were to retreat to the lowest underground ammunition chamber—presumably followed by the American forces. From that chamber, the Japanese could seal off the entire tunnel system and then open two huge ocean gates—floodgates built into the walls of the system that could let the ocean in. The system would flood, killing both the Japanese and all the Americans now trapped inside. Kind of like a final ‘Screw you’ to the victorious American force.”

“Did the Japs use those gates in ’43?” Sanchez asked.

“They did. But a small team of special-mission Marines braved the rising waters and using primitive breathing apparatus managed to close the ocean gates, saving five hundred Marines.”

“How do you know this?” Bigfoot asked.

Schofield smiled weakly. “My grandfather was a member of that special team. His name was Lieutenant Michael Schofield. He led the team that held back the ocean.”

Schofield leaned back, staring at the map.

“The ammunition chambers…” he said. “If they’re like other World War II-era chambers, they’re big, hall-sized caverns. If we could lure the apes into one of them, we could seal them all inside and—hmmm…”

“What about finding the Buck and whoever else is behind this?” Sanchez said.

“Too risky. They could be anywhere on the island. They are also currently trying to kill us. No. We’ve been on the back foot all day. It’s time we got proactive, it’s time we set the agenda. And the way I see it, if we can pull this off,” Schofield said, “maybe they’ll find us. So what do you say, folks. Want to become gorilla bait?”

15

AT EXACTLY six p.m., the five Marines exited the Nimitz via the submarine docking door, swam over to the nearby shore and for the first time that day, set foot on Hell Island. The Nimitz loomed above them in the darkness, a dark shadow against the evening sky.

Schofield and his team quickly found an entrance to the underground tunnel system—a sixty-year-old cracked concrete archway that stank of decay, dust and the fearful sweat of soldiers long gone.

Inky darkness loomed beyond the old concrete arch.

Before they entered the tunnel network, Schofield stopped them.

“Okay, hold here for a moment. There’s only one way this can work, and that’s if they’re right behind us.”

He reached for his throat-mike and pressed “Transmit,” opening up his regular radio channel.

“But they’ll know where we are…” Astro said, alarmed.

“That’s the whole point, kiddo,” Mother said.

Schofield keyed his radio, put on a worried voice: “Delta Leader, come in! Flash… Flash Gordon! You still alive out there? This is Scarecrow. Please respond!”

He received no reply from the Delta team.

But he did get another kind of response.

A terrifying howl echoed out from the flight deck of the Nimitz.

His transmission had been detected.

The gorillas were coming.

And they didn’t take long getting there.

They swarmed off the Nimitz, an army of fast-moving shadows.

Zeroing in on Schofield’s radio signal, the three hundred apes converged on the tunnel entrance, howling and roaring.

Schofield’s team charged into the tunnel system, pursued by the monsters. It was scary enough moving through the dank concrete passageways—but doing it with an army of deadly creatures on your tail was even worse.

“This way,” Schofield said, referring to his map.

He was heading for the two massive gun emplacements of Hell Island. The two big guns—twelve-inch behemoths—were positioned on a pair of cliffs pointing east and south, designed to ward off any approaching fleet.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely correct: he was heading for the ammunition chambers buried underneath and in between the gun emplacements.

Through the tunnels they ran.

The gorillas caught up, firing and roaring. Schofield’s team fired behind themselves as they ran, picking off the apes, never slowing down. To slow down was to die.

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.

16

THE 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!”

17

SCHOFIELD 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.”

Knox stopped.

Schofield nodded at Flash Gordon and the Delta team arrayed around him. “Why were they brought here at all, if they just stayed with you?”

Knox grinned. “They were brought in for my DARPA team’s protection. Just in case you did happen to survive and got angry with us.”

Knox resumed his casual appraisal of his apes.

Schofield said, “I should have offed your army when I had the chance.”

“No, you shouldn’t have, Captain. What you should do is walk away and be proud of yourself. You have done future generations of American farm boys a great service. They will not need to die on the front lines ever again. Also, be proud that my apes defeated every other force they faced, but you beat them. Go home.”

“This is not right. It shouldn’t be done this way,” Schofield said.

“What you think, Captain, is unimportant and irrelevant. You are not paid to think about such weighty issues. Better brains than yours have pondered these issues. You are paid to fight and to die, and you have successfully done half of that today. Farewell, Captain,” Knox waved Schofield away. “Specialist Gordon and Captain Broyles will escort you and your men out.”

As he said this, Knox threw Flash Gordon and the Buck a look—unseen by Schofield—that said: they are not to leave this place alive.

Gordon nodded. So did the Buck.

The Delta team swooped in on Schofield’s five men, surrounding them perhaps a little more tightly than they needed to. Gordon indicated the door. “Captain… if you will.”

Schofield entered the elevator shaft, followed by his team.

18

THROUGHOUT ALL this, the apes sat silently, swaying slightly from side to side, as if their lust for blood was being suppressed only by the chips in their heads.

Schofield stepped out into the elevator shaft, stood at its base, where he saw the huge circular safe-like door set into the wall. He headed for the ladder—

—when suddenly his Delta escorts released the safeties on their guns and aimed them at him and his Marines.

“Hold it right there, Scarecrow,” Gordon said.

“Oh, you cocksuckers…” Mother said.

“Buck?” Bigfoot asked in surprise.

“Buck, how can you do this?” Sanchez said, too, turning to his former commander.

Buck Broyles just shrugged. “Sorry, boys. But you aren’t my responsibility anymore.”

“You son of a bitch…” Sanchez breathed.

During this exchange between the men, Schofield assessed his options and quickly found that there was nothing available. This time they were well and truly screwed.

But then as he gazed at his ring of captors, he noticed that every single one of them wore a silver disc clipped to his lapel.

The silver discs, Schofield thought. That was it…

And suddenly things began to make sense.

That was how you stayed safe from the apes. If you wore a silver disc, the apes couldn’t attack you. The discs were somehow connected to the microchips in the apes’ heads, probably by some kind of digital radio signal—

A digital radio signal. Schofield sighed inwardly. Like the binary beep signal Mother had picked up earlier. That was how the Buck had been remotely commanding the apes: with digital signals sent directly to the chips in their brains.

The silver discs probably worked the same way—which was how Pennebaker had been able to enter the fray before to give Schofield information without having to fear the apes.

“Mother,” Schofield whispered as he raised his hands above his head. “Still got your AXS-9 there?”

“Yeah?”

“Jam radios, all channels, now.”

Mother was also in the process of raising her hands—when suddenly she snapped her right hand down and hit a switch on the AXS-9 spectrum analyzer on her webbing, the switch marked: SIGNAL JAM: ALL CH.

The Delta man beside her swung his gun around, but he never fired.

Because right then another very loud sound seized his attention.

The sound of the apes awakening.

The effect of what Mother had done was invisible, but if one could have seen the radio spectrum it would have looked like this: a radiating wave of energy had fanned out from Mother’s jamming pack, moving outward from her in a circular motion, like expanding ripples in a pond, hitting every wave-emitting device in the area, and turning each device’s signal into garbled static.

The result: the silver discs on the ID badges of Knox, the DARPA scientists, the Buck and the Delta team all instantly became useless.

From his position in the elevator shaft, Schofield saw what happened next in a kind of hyper-real slow motion.

He saw Knox in the ammo chamber with the army of deadly apes looming above him; saw the three apes nearest to Knox suddenly leap down at him, jaws bared, arms extended, slamming into him, throwing him to the ground, where they fired into him with their M-4s at point-blank range.

In the face of their gunfire, Dr. Malcolm Knox was turned into a bloody mess, his body exploding in a million bullet holes. Grotesquely, the apes kept firing into him long after he was dead.

Complete pandemonium followed…

…as the rest of the ape army leapt down from the mountain of crates looking for blood.

Different people reacted in different ways.

The DARPA scientists in the chamber spun, eyes wide with horror.

In the elevator shaft, the Delta team also turned, shocked, Gordon and the Buck among them.

Schofield, however, was already moving, calling, “Marines, two hands! Now!”

As for the apes, well, they went apeshit.

Freed from the grip of the silver discs, they launched themselves at the DARPA scientists in the ammo chamber, crashtackling them to the floor, clubbing them with the butts of their guns, tearing them apart—as if all their lives they had been waiting to attack their makers.

Screams and cries rang out.

Zak Pennebaker ran for the door to the elevator shaft, crying, “Buck! Do something!” before he himself was crashtackled from behind and assailed by six, then eight, then twelve apes.

He disappeared under their bodies, arms flailing, screaming in terror, before he was completely overwhelmed by the hairy black monsters.

In the elevator shaft, Flash Gordon and his team of Delta scumbags were caught totally by surprise.

Gordon whirled back to face Schofield, bringing his pistol back around—

—only to see both of Schofield’s Desert Eagle pistols aimed directly at his own nose.

“Surprise,” Schofield said.

Blam!

Schofield fired.

The apes were now rushing for the door, all three hundred of them, angry and deadly, heading for the elevator shaft.

While they did so, Schofield’s Marines did battle with the Delta force surrounding them.

It was a short battle.

For Schofield’s men had obeyed Schofield’s shouted order—“Marines, two hands!”—so that by now they all held guns in both their hands: an MP-7 in one and a pistol in the other.

The five Marines whipped up two guns each—and suddenly they’d evened the odds against the ten-man Delta squad encircling them.

The Marines fired as one, spraying bullets outward, dropping the distracted Delta squad around them.

Six of the Delta men were killed instantly by head shots. The other four went down, wounded but not killed.

The only bad guy left standing was the Buck, mouth open, gun held limply at his side, frozen in shock at the unfolding mayhem around him: the apes were completely out of control; Knox and his scientists were dead; and Schofield’s men had just nailed their Delta captors.

A call from Schofield roused him.

“Marines! Up the ladder! Now!”

As his Marines climbed skyward, Schofield grabbed the ladder last of all, shoving past the immobile Buck.

After he was ten feet up, Schofield aimed his pistol at a lever on the big round safe-like door set into the wall of the elevator shaft.

“History lesson for you, Buck,” Schofield said. “Happy swimming.”

Blam.

Schofield fired, hitting the lever with a spray of sparks.

And at which point all hell really broke loose.

The lever snapped downward, into the RELEASE position.

And the big ten-foot-wide circular door was instantly flung open, swinging inward with incredible force, force that came from the weight of ocean water that had been pressing against it from the other side.

This door was one of the floodgates that the Japanese had used in 1943 to flood the tunnels of Hell Island. A door that backed onto the Pacific Ocean itself.

A shocking blast of seawater came rushing in through the circular doorway, slamming into the Buck, lifting him off his feet and hurling him like a rag doll against the opposite wall of the elevator shaft, the force so strong that his skull cracked when it hit the concrete.

The roar of the ocean flooding into the elevator shaft was absolutely deafening. It looked like the spray from a giant fireman’s hose, a ten-foot-wide spray of super-powerful inrushing water.

And one more thing.

The layout of the subterranean ammunition chamber meant that the incoming water flooded into Chamber No. 2, where the three hundred apes now stood, trapped.

The apes scrambled across the chamber, wading waist-deep against the powerful waves of whitewater pouring into it.

The water level rose fast—the apes continued howling, struggling against it—but it only took a few seconds for it to hit the upper frame of the doorway to the chamber, sealing off the chamber completely, cutting off the sounds of the three hundred madly-scrambling apes.

And while they could swim short distances, the apes could not swim underwater.

They couldn’t get out.

Ammunition Chamber No. 2 of Hell Island would be their tomb—three hundred apes, innocent creatures turned into killing machines, would drown in it.

19

FOUR GORILLAS, however, did make it out of the hall before the water completely covered the doorway.

They got to the elevator shaft and started climbing the ladder, heading up and away from the swirling body of ocean water pouring into the concrete shaft beneath them.

Higher up the same ladder, Schofield and his team scaled the shaft as quickly as they could.

The roar of inrushing water drowned out all sound for almost thirty seconds until—ominously—the whole shaft suddenly fell silent.

It wasn’t that the water had stopped rushing in: it was just that the water level had risen above the floodgate. The ocean was still invading the shaft, just from below its own waterline.

“Keep climbing!” Schofield called up to the others, moving last of all. “We have to get above sea level!”

He looked behind him, saw the four pursuing apes.

Fact: gorillas are much better climbers than human beings.

Schofield yelled, “Guys! We’ve got company!”

Three-quarters of the way up the shaft was a large horizontal metal grate that folded down across the width of the shaft—notches in its edges allowed it to close around the elevator cables. When closed horizontally, it would completely span the shaft, sealing it off. It was one of the gates the Japanese had created to trap intruders down below.

Schofield saw it. “Mother! When you get to that grate, close it behind you!”

The Marines came to the grate, climbed up past it one at a time—Astro, then Bigfoot, then Sanchez and Mother.

With a loud clang, Sanchez quickly closed one half of the grate. Mother grabbed the other half, just as Schofield reached it…

…at the same time as a big hairy hand grabbed his ankle and yanked hard!

Schofield slipped down six rungs, clutching with his hands, dropping six feet below the grate, an ape hanging from his left foot.

“Scarecrow!” Mother shouted.

“Close the grate!” Schofield called.

Immediately below him, the ocean water was now charging up the vertical elevator shaft. It must have completely filled the ammo chamber—so that now it was racing up the only space left for it to go: the much narrower elevator shaft.

“No!” Mother yelled. To shut the grate was to drown Schofield himself.

“You have to!” Schofield shouted back. “You have to shut them in!”

Schofield glanced downward at the enraged gorilla clutching his left foot. The other three apes were clambering up the ladder close behind it.

He leveled his pistol at the gorilla holding him—

Click.

Dry.

“Shit.”

Then suddenly he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to find someone hovering next to his face, level with his head, someone hanging upside-down!

Mother.

Hanging fully stretched, inverted, her legs held by Sanchez and Bigfoot up at the grate, herself holding pistols in both hands.

“No heroic sacrifices today, buddy,” she said to Schofield.

She then opened fire with both her guns, blasting the ape holding him to pieces. The ape released him, Mother chucked her guns, grabbed Schofield by his webbing and suddenly, whoosh, both Mother and Schofield were lifted up the shaft by Sanchez and Bigfoot, up past the half-closed grate, where once they were up, Astro slammed down the other half and snapped shut its lock.

The three remaining apes and the rising water hit the grate moments later, the water pinning the screaming apes to the underside of the grate until it rose past them, swallowing them, climbing a further ten feet up the shaft, before it abruptly stopped, having come level with the sea outside, now forbidden by physics from rising any further.

Schofield’s Marines gazed down at the sloshing body of water from their ladder above, breathless and exhausted, but safe, and now the only creatures—man or ape—still breathing on Hell Island.

20

FOUR HOURS later, a lone plane arrived on the landing strip of Hell Island. It was a gigantic Air Force C-17A Globemaster, one of the biggest cargo-lifters in the world, capable of holding over two hundred armed personnel, or perhaps three hundred sedated apes.

Its six-man crew were a little surprised to find only five United States Marines—dirty, bloody and battle-weary—waiting on the tarmac to greet them.

Its co-pilot came out and met Schofield, shouted above the whine of the plane’s enormous jet engines: “Who the hell are you? We’re here to pick up a bunch of DARPA guys, Delta specialists, and some mysterious cargo that we’re not allowed to look at. Nobody said anything about Marines.”

Schofield just shook his head.

“There’s no cargo,” he said. “Not anymore. Now, if you don’t mind, would you please take us home.”