“Please tell me again, my dear Ryan, why we are going to this godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere,” said Yuri as he reassembled his rifle. “I’m not used to being on the water. All this rocking motion is making me ill. I’m afraid that if we don’t land soon, I’m going to be sick all over the place.”
“For two reasons: First, we are still under contract to get Miss Satomi back for her father. Second, whatever she and Cypher are up to, it’s tied to something in the past. Hopefully, we’ll find our answer in one of the tunnels under the island. If we can determine what they are up to, then perhaps we can get ahead of them for once and put a stop to whatever they are planning and get Mister Satomi his daughter back.”
“And why couldn’t we use a helicopter?”
“The weather outside sucks, and I didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves when we land on the island. A helicopter might have alerted the authorities, whereas fishing boats regularly work the waters around the island. I’m hoping to get on and off the island before anyone is the wiser.”
“You said the island is uninhabited,” said Jackson.
“It is, but we have to assume that it is regularly patrolled by the Russians. After all, it is their territory now.”
“What do you think our chances are of finding something inside one of the tunnels?”
“I’d say slim to nil, but we still need to take a look around, just in case we do stumble across something useful.”
A young man knocked on the open door. “We’ll be dropping anchor in a minute. Your Zodiac is ready to go,” said the young man with a thick Japanese accent.
“Time to go,” said Mitchell as he picked up his assault rifle and slammed home a magazine. Making sure that his satphone was working, Mitchell placed it in a pouch on his tac-vest before heading upstairs and out into the blowing rain.
Ten minutes later, Jackson and Mitchell pulled their Zodiac up onto the black sandy beach, while Yuri radioed back to their boat that they had arrived. Within seconds, the crew of the boat began to drop nets into the water to make it look like they were fishing.
Overhead, the sky was gray and overcast. A bitterly cold wind whipped the rain into the faces of the men, as they made ready to head inland.
All three men were dressed alike. From the ball caps on their heads, to the green Gore-Tex jackets, police-style cargo pants, and Vibram soled combat boots. Jackson carried the ground-penetrating radar, while Mitchell had the mine detector in a pack on his back. Yuri carried the explosives and extra batteries in his pack. With Jackson in the lead, they headed up off the beach and onto the wet, grassy field that ran along the base of the massive volcano. Based upon the sketches that Jen had sent to them, they were heading toward a couple of dilapidated-looking brick pillboxes that had last been occupied by the Japanese in 1945.
Rusted-out metal drums and the occasional helmet littered the muddy field. Stopping to look inside the open firing port of the first pillbox they came by, Mitchell could see the mount for where the machine gun would have sat. Aside from that, the pillbox had been picked clean by the Soviets during their time on the island.
Yuri let out a snicker.
Turning his head, Mitchell saw that Yuri was looking at some graffiti carved in Cyrillic on the side of the pillbox. “What does it say?”
“Roughly, it translates to, ‘Hey officers, here’s a news flash for you, this place sucks.’”
“Glad to see soldiers are the same the world over,” said Jackson grinning.
Mitchell just shook his head and looked down at the map in his hand. If Mister Kataro’s memory was still as sharp as Jen said it was, the tunnel entrance they were looking for was located somewhere about fifty meters behind the second pillbox.
“Okay, let’s get to work,” Mitchell said, pointing to the open ground behind the bunkers.
Jackson slowly walked the ground, hunched over, reading the display on the ground-penetrating radar in his hand. It was rated to a depth of over twenty meters. They all prayed that the tunnel they were looking for wasn’t that deep. With only collapsible shovels in their packs, it would take weeks to dig that deep through the thick, muddy soil.
After an hour of leaning over, Jackson stood up and stretched out his aching back. “Anyone wanted to take over for a while?”
Mitchell cheerily volunteered. “Anything to keep warm in the rain.”
He looked down at the dial on the radar and began to slowly move forward, waving the machine from side to side, hoping to find something hidden under the muddy ground. After almost another hour searching, the radar sprang to life. At a depth of less than a meter, the machine was showing a cavity. It had to be the tunnel entrance they were looking for.
Whistling his friends over, Mitchell dug out the mine detector from his pack and moved it over the ground where he found the cavity. He was relieved when the scope read negative. The tunnel entrance wasn’t booby-trapped.
He placed his rifle and small pack down and dug a square trench with his foot around the buried tunnel entrance. He looked as his friends and said, “Time to start digging.”
Within minutes, a large, rusted door began to emerge through the muck. After another half hour’s work, they had cleared most of the dirt from the metal door.
“Ten to one, it’s still locked,” said Jackson, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Mitchell picked up his mine detector. He wanted to be sure that they weren’t about to blow themselves up when they tried to open the door. After doing another sweep with his detector, he saw that as before, it registered negative.
“Time to find out,” said Mitchell as he reached for the rusted-out handle on the door. Pulling on it, the door didn’t budge a millimeter. It was locked solid.
“Told you.”
“Well, I, for one, don’t want to spend another minute out here in the rain,” said Mitchell. “Yuri, dig out the plastic explosives from your pack and let Nate have some fun.”
With a devilish smile on his face, Jackson got to work making an improvised explosive charge to blow the door open. He carefully placed the charge around the outside of the rusted metal door. Jackson intended to blow it clear.
While Jackson placed the blasting cap in the charge and then prepared the det-cord, Mitchell stepped back and turned to say something to Yuri when he spotted a dark object in the distance, flying low over the waves.
A feeling of foreboding filled his body. He dug out his binoculars from his tac-vest, brought them up and focused them on the dark gray object. Swearing under his breath, Mitchell clenched his jaw when he recognized it as an MI-8 helicopter. Painted completely gray without any markings on it, Mitchell knew that it didn’t belong to the Russian authorities.
It was coming for them.
“Yuri, call the boat and tell them to get the hell out of here,” ordered Mitchell. “Nate, hurry up. We have company coming.”
Before Yuri could even dig out his satphone, the helicopter banked over in the sky and fired two fifty-seven millimeter rockets into the doomed ship. With a loud explosion that carried over the bay, the fishing vessel was torn apart from the impact of the deadly rockets. Flames and smoke quickly engulfed the dying vessel.
With a feeling of anger and helplessness, Mitchell watched in horror as the helicopter hovered over the wreck while a door gunner opened up on the men struggling to swim to safety in the debris-filled water. It was like shooting ducks in a barrel. In seconds, it was over. The crew was dead.