Typhoon Fury Read online

Kekoa frowned. “I don’t want to land on the beaches of Japan any more than the next guy, but if that’s what it takes to end the war, I’m willing to do it.”

  “My research group believes there is something in these tunnels that could make the cost of taking the home islands too terrible to conceive.”

  Kekoa stared in disbelief at Hayward and waved his arms at the destruction around him. “Worse than this?”

  Hayward nodded solemnly. “You’ve heard the rumors that the Army is manufacturing half a million Purple Hearts in anticipation of the invasion of Japan?”

  “That’s the scuttlebutt.”

  “It’s true.” The captain scientist pointed toward the tunnel complex. “But if we’re right about what’s in there, it won’t be nearly enough.”

  Kekoa grimly nodded at Hayward. “We’ll get you in there. Where do you need to go once we’re inside?”

  “Thanks, Sergeant,” Hayward said. “I’m looking for a lab in one of the Navy Tunnels. It may have collapsed in the original Japanese invasion, but the enemy could have dug it out since then. There should be a small entrance on the south side of the hill.” He pulled out a map and showed Kekoa the spot he was talking about. Kekoa frowned and checked his own map.

  “Mine doesn’t have an entrance there.”

  “Trust me,” Hayward said. “It’s there. That is, if the Japs didn’t seal it.”

  Kekoa assumed the captain had read his file and knew his mother was Japanese, like the parents of many of the men in his division. But Hayward didn’t seem at all concerned that Kekoa was a potential traitor, which boosted the captain a few notches in his eyes.

  Kekoa cautiously guided his men to the place Hayward had pointed to on the map, and, sure enough, there was a tunnel opening concealed by the remaining shrubbery that hadn’t been destroyed by the bombardment. If the captain hadn’t led them here, they never would have seen it.

  Kekoa called for more tank support and was surprised when he got an instant response in the affirmative. Obviously, Hayward must have had more pull than he realized.

  Another Sherman trundled its way to the tunnel entrance. This time, Kekoa ordered everyone to cover before it fired. The tank blasted the tunnel with a high-explosive round. There was no secondary explosion. Anyone inside had to be dead, but Kekoa ordered the tank to fire three more shells as insurance.

  He called his flamethrower team forward and ordered the platoon to follow them in. Every twenty feet, a jet of fire would shoot forward to clear the path of hiding Japanese Marines, illuminating the otherwise darkened tunnel.

  Kekoa didn’t like having daylight framing him in silhouette as he moved into the tunnel. He glanced behind him to see Hayward clinging to his carbine as if it were a talisman.

  “Should be two intersections down,” Hayward whispered. “On the right.”

  Kekoa motioned for his team to keep going until they reached the intersection and turned. They got another twenty feet when banshee-like screams wailed from down the pitch-black tunnel, followed by pounding footsteps.

  “Light ’em up!” Kekoa yelled and dropped to the ground, pulling Hayward with him.

  The flamethrower gushed to life, shooting thick sheets of blazing liquid down the tunnel. That should have stopped the Japanese in their tracks, but they kept coming despite the inferno. Four men rushed through the wall of fire as if it were nothing more than a light breeze and launched themselves at the soldier handling the flamethrower and his partner. Before his partner could get a shot off, they viciously stabbed both Americans with bayonets even as they burned.

  Seeing that there was no way to save his flamethrower team, Kekoa shouted, “Open fire!”

  Bullets poured down the tunnel from every available man. Even Hayward was firing.

  Yet the Japanese still kept coming. Kekoa could see the rounds hitting them, but incredibly they wouldn’t go down, like they were straight out of a Superman comic.

  Kekoa got onto his knees and fired at the head of the closest one coming at them. His body went down in a heap, still on fire. At least they weren’t indestructible.

  He turned to the next one, who pounced on Kekoa before he could bring his weapon to bear. Kekoa blocked the bayonet with his rifle and kneed him with a savage hit to the midsection. It didn’t seem to do a thing.

  In the dim light, Kekoa could make out a few details. These Marines weren’t like the nearly starving soldiers who were charging at his fellow troops on the rest of the island. This man was muscled like a bodybuilder, and the single glimpse of his eyes that Kekoa saw flashed a feral lust for blood.

  Kekoa could feel the bayonet getting closer to his throat. He was unable to push the enemy back, despite the terrible wounds the man had already suffered.

  Then the Japanese soldier’s head flew sideways as a shot rang out from Kekoa’s right. Hayward still had his carbine at the ready as the enemy fell.

  Before Kekoa could say his thanks, the last Japanese soldier rushed at Hayward, slashing at him with a machete. Hayward screamed and dropped to the ground. Kekoa unloaded the rest of his Thompson submachine gun’s magazine at the attacker, who finally lay silent. They prepared for more attackers but none came.

  The remnants of the flamethrower’s output provided enough light to see. Kekoa knelt down beside Hayward, who was holding his side. Blood oozed from between his fingers.

  Kekoa lifted him up. “We need to get you to a medic.” He started walking to the exit, but Hayward stopped him.

  He grimaced in pain as he spoke. “Not before . . . I see what’s in this tunnel.” When Kekoa hesitated, he added, “That’s an order, Sergeant.”

  Grudgingly, Kekoa supported Hayward as they walked farther down the tunnel. Two of his soldiers led the way, one of them now holding his dead squadmate’s flamethrower.

  A hundred feet in, they reached a laboratory, with equipment that must have made sense to Hayward. There were also several file cabinets and a desk littered with papers. A faint hiss came from the tunnel.

  “My camera,” Hayward said. “It’s in my pack.”

  Kekoa reached in and found the camera, with a flashbulb attached. He handed Hayward off to another soldier while he snapped a photo of the equipment. When the flash went off, Kekoa noticed something on the ceiling down the tunnel.

  “What is that?” he said to one of the men, who took a flashlight to investigate. When he lit up the spot, Kekoa realized in horror what he’d been hearing. On a set of dull gray bars strapped to the ceiling he could make out the Kanji characters for Explosive. The hiss was burning detonation cord.

  “It’s rigged to blow!” he yelled. “Everyone out of here!”

  “No!” Hayward protested. “We need the intel!” He lunged for a file on top of the desk and grabbed it before Kekoa could yank him away.

  With the help of another soldier, Kekoa carried Hayward by the shoulders as they sprinted for daylight. Kekoa’s lungs burned from the exertion, but the thought of being trapped under thousands of tons of rubble kept him going. They were the last ones through the tunnel entrance when the underground fortress erupted like a volcano. The concussive force flung them to the ground.

  The explosives must have been linked to bundles in other tunnels because the entire hill shook from multiple aftershocks. Trees were uprooted and rocks tumbled down the slopes, raising a cloak of dust so thick that Kekoa couldn’t see more than fifty feet in any direction.

  He found Hayward lying prone next to him, not moving. Kekoa flipped him over and saw that he was still breathing. His hand continued to clutch the file from the tunnel.

  “Medic!” cried Kekoa. “I need a medic!” He looked down at Hayward, who opened his eyes. “Stay with me, Captain.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That file almost got us killed.”

  “Had to take it,” Hayward said. His finger tapped a picture on
the front next to Japanese characters. It looked like the leaf of some kind of plant. “Tell me what the cover says.”

  “That can wait until . . .”

  “No, it can’t,” he said between ragged breaths. “That’s why I asked for you. You know Japanese. Tell me. Please.”

  Kekoa saw a medic running toward them, so he indulged the captain.

  “It says Project Typhoon. Morale Division, Unit 731.” At the mention of Unit 731, Hayward’s face went even whiter than it already was. Kekoa didn’t know what that meant, but it obviously terrified the military scientist.

  The medic began tending to his wound and injected Hayward with morphine. As the drug began to take effect, Hayward mumbled, “Where . . . is it located?”

  “You mean this Morale Division?”

  Hayward nodded, his eyes barely open.

  “It doesn’t list the name of a base, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” Kekoa said, “but it does mention a city.”

  “Tokyo?”

  Kekoa shook his head. “Hiroshima.”

  1

  VIETNAM

  PRESENT DAY

  Eddie Seng stood at the curb of Da Nang International Airport’s arrivals area, just as he’d been instructed. The awning of the modern facility shaded him from the midafternoon sun, but it made the muggy July day only marginally more comfortable in his light wool suit. An elegant black limousine showed up as expected and glided to a stop next to him. Eddie was familiar with executive vehicles and immediately recognized it as a Mercedes Maybach V12, the crème de la crème of exotic automobiles.

  The uniformed chauffeur walked around the front of the car and opened a wide door. Eddie entered a resplendent interior and settled into a soft cream leather seat, wondering if he would get out alive.

  A man in a black suit, sitting in the middle rear-facing row of seats, waved a metal detector over Eddie to check him for weapons, but he had followed instructions and was unarmed. In the rear seat next to Eddie, Zhong Lin, field agent for China’s Ministry of State Security, stared at him as the car pulled away. Instead of a suit, he wore a black T-shirt and pants, and his thin lips were creased with lines, the sign of a longtime smoker. For a moment, Zhong said nothing, merely appraising the person he thought was a Taiwanese traitor known as David Yao.

  Eddie had, in fact, grown up in New York City’s Chinatown, learning Mandarin and English simultaneously from his parents. Because his normal accent was bland in both languages, he’d spent the past two weeks in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, getting accustomed to the local dialect.

  Most of his career with the CIA had been as a deep-cover operative on the Chinese mainland, so playing a part was nothing new to him. However, he hadn’t been this close to an agent from the MSS, China’s intelligence organization, since his CIA cover had been blown and he was forced to escape back to the United States. As a wanted fugitive, he’d been sentenced to death in absentia, with his face well known to China’s authorities. If Zhong Lin even suspected who he was, he would be whisked out of Vietnam in shackles to Beijing for a swift execution.

  His current disguise was meant to prevent that from happening. The real David Yao was a member of the Ghost Dragon triad, one of Taiwan’s most notorious gangs. Yao was suspected of being responsible for numerous extortion, racketeering, and murder plots, but his mutilated body had been found floating on the ocean by a U.S. Navy ship two weeks ago. When the CIA realized that his corpse provided the opportunity for Eddie’s current operation, they asked the Navy to delay notifying the Taiwanese authorities of the discovery.

  Like Eddie, Yao had been in his mid-thirties, lithe and athletic, but they never would have been confused for brothers. Completing the disguise required a radical transformation of his face—widened nose, bulked-up chin, reshaped eyes, and an added mustache and beard, as well as fake tattoos on his arms and neck.

  After a few moments, Zhong said, in Mandarin, “You have the information we need?”

  Eddie didn’t betray his relief at not being recognized. “It’s confirmed. They’re making the exchange on a train. All of the seats have been reserved, so there won’t be any other passengers, and the crew are all Vietnamese recruited and paid off by the triad.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere between Da Nang and Hue. They’ll text me which train it is so I can meet it at the station to pick them up when they arrive.”

  “And the Ghost Dragons have the memory stick with them?”

  Eddie nodded. He’d originally opened the dialogue with the Chinese Secret Service by telling them what kind of data was stored on the USB flash drive, a piece of information very few people on the outside knew. The Taiwanese Ghost Dragons, who were enemies of the communist regime on the mainland, had carried out a daring heist to steal the memory stick from an MSS courier. Eddie was playing Yao as if he were a traitor not only to his home country of Taiwan but to his brethren in the triad as well.

  “Why are you doing this?” Zhong asked him.

  “You know why,” Eddie replied. “Five million U.S. dollars.”

  “You won’t be able to return to Taiwan. Not after this. The triad will know who betrayed them.”

  “I don’t want to. It’s been clear for some time that I will never rise to my proper rank in the Ghost Dragons. I plan to find a woman in Melbourne, Australia, and settle there.”

  Zhong shrugged. “If you’re willing to sell out your country, I’m happy to pay.” He tapped on his phone. When he was done, he said, “Two-point-five million has been transferred to your account.”

  Eddie checked and confirmed that the transfer had been made. “And the rest?”

  “When we recover the memory stick.”

  Instead of turning onto the freeway, the Mercedes headed toward a private section of the airport.

  “Where are we going?” Eddie asked. “You’re supposed to drop me off at the train station.”

  Zhong smiled. “You didn’t think we’d leave you to warn your brothers that we’d be ambushing their exchange?”

  “I told you, I’m through with them.”

  “That’s what you told me. But why should I believe someone who has already lied to his comrades?”

  The car stopped next to a Eurostar AS350 helicopter, its rotors spinning to life. Next to it was a second chopper full of black-clad men armed with assault rifles and carrying coils of rope.

  “I know you have experience with the Taiwan Army,” Zhong said, “so you’re coming with us to make sure we get that memory stick.” The agent plucked Eddie’s phone from his hand and waved a detection wand over his body, checking for communication devices. The absence of telltale chirps satisfied him that Eddie wasn’t bugged.

  The helicopter took off as soon as they were on board, with Eddie stuck between two Chinese agents in the back and Zhong next to the pilot in front.

  “What are we doing?” Eddie asked over his headset.

  “You’ll understand when we get there,” Zhong said. “How much are the Americans paying for the flash drive?”

  “The Ghost Dragons wanted a hundred million, but the Americans negotiated down to half that.”

  “Fifty million? Not bad, since there are only two potential buyers, us and the Americans. And, of course, the triad didn’t make us a similar offer. You better hope the data on that drive doesn’t fall into the hands of the Americans.”

  Eddie feigned fear at the threat. “But what if the Ghost Dragons have copied the flash drive and are able to sell the data to the Americans later?”

  Zhong shook his head. “Not possible. That drive has special encryption. It can only be read by mainframe computers kept at secure locations in China. If they try to read the files on the memory stick, it will automatically erase itself, rewriting the memory so the data can never be recovered. In fact, I hope the Ghost Dragons have tried to read it. My problem would be solved.”<
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  “Then why do the Americans want it?”

  “Because they have the only other computer system in the world that might be able to read it. But it’s currently located at the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade. As long as we obtain the memory stick before it gets back to the United States, we can be assured that it hasn’t been compromised.” Zhong turned and looked at him. “That’s why you’re coming along on this raid. If the memory stick isn’t where you say it will be, there is no limit to the pain you will experience until I find out where it is.”

  Eddie gulped, his eyes wide with feigned fear.

  “Do you wish to change your story?” Zhong asked. “I’ll be forgiving if you do so now instead of after a failed mission.”

  Eddie shook his head vigorously. “I swear that the exchange is taking place where I said it would.”

  Zhong held up Eddie’s phone. “You’d better hope the text comes through.”

  The helicopters sped low across the mountainous jungle, paralleling the train tracks winding along the coast. A few minutes later, they both set down in a valley clearing.

  As soon as the eight men exited, including Zhong and Eddie, the helicopters took off again.

  Eddie looked around in confusion. It seemed like they were in the middle of nowhere.

  “This way,” Zhong said.

  They hiked through the tropical forest for ten minutes until they reached a slope, where Eddie could see the ocean. The train tracks far below disappeared into a tunnel.

  “That’s our destination.” Zhong pointed at the mouth of the tunnel.

  Now the coils of rope made sense. Trying to get on board the train by helicopter would have telegraphed their approach from miles away. Dropping down quietly onto the roof of the train when it exited the tunnel would be much stealthier.

  “Do I at least get a gun?” Eddie asked as they marched toward the tunnel opening.

  Zhong gave him a grim laugh. So did the other men. They kept walking.

  If Zhong returned to Beijing empty-handed, Eddie was sure Zhong and the rest of his men would face a firing squad for their failure. The memory stick they were trying to recover and keep out of American hands held the names of every Chinese spy currently operating in the United States.