Reilly Matthew - Hell Island

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*

The vicious-looking aircraft shot across the sky at near supersonic speed.

It was a modified Hercules cargo plane, known as an MC-130 'Combat Talon', the delivery vehicle of choice for US Special Forces units.

This Combat Talon stayed high, very high, it was as if it was trying to avoid being seen by radar systems down at sea level. This was unusual, because there was nothing down there--according to the maps, the nearest land in this part of the Pacific was an atoll 500 klicks to the east.

Then the rear loading ramp of the Combat Talon rumbled open and several dozen tiny figures issued out from it in rapid sequence, spreading out into the sky behind the soaring plane.

The forty-strong flock of paratroopers plummeted to earth, men in high-altitude jumpsuits --full-face breathing masks; streamlined black bodysuits. They angled their bodies downward as they fell, so that they flew head-first, their masks pointed into the onrushing wind, becoming human spears, freefalling with serious intent.

It was a classic HALO drop--high-altitude, low-opening. You jumped from 37,000 feet, fell fast and hard, and then stopped dangerously close to the ground, right at your drop zone.

Curiously, however, the forty elite troops falling to earth today fell in identifiable subgroups, ten men to a group, as if they were trying to remain somehow separate.

Indeed, they were separate teams.

Crack teams. The best of the best from every corner of the US armed forces.

One unit from the 82nd Airborne Division.

One SEAL team.

One Delta team, ever aloof and secretive.

And last of all, one team of Force Reconnaissance Marines.

*

They shot into the cloud layer--a dense band of dark thunderclouds--freefell through the haze.

Then after nearly a full minute of flying, they burst out of the clouds and emerged in the midst of a full-scale five-alarm ocean storm: rain lashed their facemasks; dark clouds hung low over the heaving ocean; giant waves rolled and crashed.

And through the rain, their target came into view, a tiny island far below them, an island that did not appear on maps anymore, an island with an aircraft carrier parked alongside it.

Hell.

*

Leading the Marine team was Captain Shane M. Schofield, call-sign 'Scarecrow'.

Behind his HALO mask, Schofield had a rugged creased face, black hair and blue eyes. Slicing down across those eyes, however, were a pair of hideous vertical scars, one for each eye, wounds from a mission-gone-wrong and the source of his operational nickname. Once on the ground, he'd hide those eyes behind a pair of reflective wraparound anti-flash glasses.

Quiet, intense and when necessary deadly, Schofield had a unique reputation in the Marine Corps. He'd been involved in several missions that remained classified--but the Marine Corps (like any group of human beings) is filled with gossip and rumour. Someone always knew someone who was there, or who saw the medical report, or who cleaned up the aftermath.

The rumours about Schofield were many and varied, and sometimes simply too outrageous to be true.

One: he had been involved in a gigantic multi-force battle in Antarctica, a battle which, it was said, involved a bloody and brutal confrontation with two of America's allies, France and Britain.

Two: he'd saved the President during an attempted military coup at a remote USAF base. It was said that during that misadventure, the Scarecrow--a former pilot--had flown an experimental space shuttle into low earth orbit, engaged an enemy shuttle, destroyed it, and then come back to earth to rescue the President.

Of course none of this could possibly be verified, and so it remained the stuff of legend; legends, however, that Schofield's new unit were acutely aware of.

That said, there was one thing about Shane Schofield that they knew to be true: this was his first mission back after a long layover, four months of stress leave, in fact. On this occasion someone really had seen the medical report, and now all of his men on this mission knew about it.

They also knew the cause of his stress leave.

During his last mission out, Schofield had been taken to the very edge of his psychological endurance. Loved ones close to him had been captured ... and executed. It was even said in hushed whispers that at one point on that mission he had tried to take his own life.