Hell Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

ending up with you guys for this catastrophe.”
    “So you’re biased.”
    “So I’m cautious. And you should be, too, ’cause we might just be working under a boss who’s not firing on all cylinders.”
    “I’ll take that under advisement. Now shut up, we’re here.”
    Sanchez looked forward, and paused.
    They’d arrived at the main hangar deck.

S HANE SCHOFIELD stepped out onto a catwalk suspended from the ceiling of the main hangar deck of the USS
Nimitz.
It was an ultra-long catwalk that ran for the entire length of the hangar in a north-south direction, hanging a hundred feet above the floor.
    An indoor space the size of two football fields lay beneath him, stretching away to the left and right. Normally it would have been filled with assorted jets, planes, Humvees and trucks.
    But not today.
    Today it was very, very different.
    Schofield recalled Gator’s description of the hangar deck:
    “It’s like an indoor battlefield. I got artificial trenches, some low terrain, even a field tower set up inside the hangar.”
    It was true.
    The hangar deck had indeed been converted into a mock battlefield.
    However it had been done, it had been a gargantuan effort, involving the transplanting of several million tons of earth. The end result: something that looked like the Somme in World War I—a great muddy field, featuring four parallel trenches, low undulating hills and one high steel-legged tower that rose sixty feet off the ground right in the center of the enormous space.

    The regular residents of the hangar lay parked at the stern end of the hangar: two F-14 Tomcats, an Osprey, some of the other leftover planes of the
Nimitz,
and some trucks.
    The tower was connected to Schofield’s ceiling catwalk via a thin steeply-slanted gangway-bridge also suspended from the ceiling.
    Schofield said, “Astro and Bigfoot, cover the catwalk to the north of this bridge. Sanchez and Hulk, you got the south side. Call me on the UHF the second you see anything.”
    Accompanied by the rest of his team, Schofield then crossed the gangway-bridge, came to the observation platform at the top of the field tower.
    Broken computers and torn printouts littered the platform. Blood was everywhere.
    “What the hell was this place?” Hulk asked.
    “An observation post. From here, the big kahunas watched the exercises down on the hangar floor,” Mother said.
    “But the exercises, it seems, went seriously wrong . . .” Schofield said, examining a printout. Like most of the other material lying around, it was headed:
    PROJECT STORMTROOPER
    SECURITY CLASSIFICATION:
    TOP SECRET-2X
    DARPA/U.S. ARMY
    “Stormtrooper . . .” he read aloud.
    Movement out of the corner of his eye.
    Schofield spun—just as an attacker came bursting out of a cabinet at the back of the observation platform.
    Six guns swirled as one, locking onto the attacker. But not a single one fired—since the “attacker” had fallen to his knees, sobbing.
    He was a young man, about thirty, dressed in a lab-coat and wearing horn-rimmed glasses. A computer nerd, but dirty, disheveled and terrified.
    “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot! Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here! You have to help me! We lost control! They wouldn’t obey us anymore! And then they—”
    “Hold it, hold it,” Schofield said, stepping forward. “Calm down. Start again. What’s your name?”
    “My n-name is . . . Pennebaker. Zak Pennebaker.” He peered around fearfully.
    Schofield saw that the name matched the one on the man’s pocket-mounted ID badge. The ID badge also featured clearance levels and a silver disc at its base—an odd addition to a nametag. Schofield had never seen one before.
Radiation meter, perhaps?
    “I’m DARPA. High-end project.
Please,
you gotta get me outta here, off this boat, before they come back.”
    “Not until you tell us what this project was.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Let me put it another way: you tell us about the project or we leave you here.”
    Zak