Island 731

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Epilogue

  Also by Jeremy Robinson

  About the Author

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  For Dad, again, because you’re still joking about red flakes and I appreciate it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I release something like five or six novels every year. It’s kind of a ridiculous amount, but made possible thanks to the hard work and dedication of the people who support me professionally and personally. So it is with great appreciation that I point out the contributions of the supremely helpful folks who took part in the creation of Island 731.

  Thanks to:

  • Scott Miller, my agent at Trident Media Group, for his tireless efforts and shrewd mind.

  • Peter Wolverton, my editor at Thomas Dunne Books, for forcing me to improve with every book and for supporting my solo-publishing efforts.

  • Anne Brewer, my associate editor at Thomas Dunne Books, for being speedy and delightful to work with.

  • Rafal Gibek and the production team at Thomas Dunne Books, for copy-edits that always make me look like a better writer than I am.

  • Ervin Serrano, art director at Thomas Dunne Books, for designing covers that stun and for including this author in the design process.

  • Kane Gilmour, my solo project editor, friend, and supporter, for advance reading and comments on Island 731.

  • Hilaree, Aquila, Solomon, and Norah Robinson, my four muses whom I adore, thank you for your excitement, creativity, and love.

  PROLOGUE

  PACIFIC OCEAN, 1942

  Master Chief Petty Officer James Coffman awoke to find his leg being eaten. The pain felt dull. Distant. The connection between his mind and limb had somehow been numbed. But he could clearly see the gull tugging at the sinews of his exposed calf muscle. The wound, fresh and bloody, should have sent shockwaves of pain through his body, but he felt nothing. It’s a mercy, he decided as he sat up. He’d seen men with similar wounds—inflicted by Japanese bullets—howl in agony.

  The seagull opened its wings wide and squawked indignantly as though Coffman were a competing predator. Even as he reached out for it, the bird took two more pecks at the meat of his leg. When the gull flew away, a string of muscle hung from its yellow beak.

  Coffman reached down, grabbed a handful of beach sand, and flung it after the bird. He tried to shout at it, but only managed a raw, rattling sound.

  Like many young men in the United States, Coffman had enlisted in the navy shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He began his naval career as a petty officer third class serving on the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier in the Pacific fleet. Through grit, determination, and several battles, Coffman had worked his way up to master chief petty officer. But he took no greater pride than when the Yorktown, with his assistance, drew Japanese blood.

  He’d grown accustomed to the sounds and smells of war over the years, so when he drew a long breath through his nose, he found the fresh scent of earth and lack of machine sounds disconcerting. He’d been deposited on a peaceful, white sand beach.

  Coffman craned his head around, growing dizzy as he moved. With a hand buried in the sand for balance, he took in his surroundings. That he was sitting on a beach was clear. The sand was smooth, almost soft, and stretched around a crescent-shaped cove. The water lapped at the sand just below his feet, and it appeared so calm that he nearly mistook it for a freshwater lagoon, but he could smell the salt in the air. Following the water out, he saw forty-foot, palm-covered ridges. He couldn’t see the ocean, but could see where it entered through an opening in the natural wall, sheltered from the force of the ocean.

  I’m inside a volcanic cone, he thought. Coffman knew most of the Pacific islands were created by volcanoes that sprung up along the “ring of fire.” He didn’t have any real interest in geology, or island life, but since millions of soldiers were fighting and dying over islands just like this one all across the Pacific, he’d picked up on a few facts.

  Coffman looked behind him and found a jungle, thick, lush, and tropical. He’d been to Hawaii on shore leave once. This looked similar. Could he be on Hawaii? It didn’t seem possible. It was too far—an entire time zone away from Midway.

  Midway …

  The last few days were a confusing blur. He thought back, trying to remember how he arrived on the shore of this island. The USS Yorktown had sustained significant damage at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but had come out victorious. The ship needed three months’ work to be fully functional, but aggressive Japanese tactics wouldn’t allow the respite. Undaunted, the Yorktown returned to Hawaii and yard workers completed the three months’ work in just three days. Days later, the Battle of Midway began and the Yorktown once again sustained heavy damage at the hands of Japanese dive bombers.

  Covered with heavy debris and ruined planes, the giant ship began to list. The crew feared the carrier would capsize, so the ship was abandoned, the men taking refuge on the USS Hammann, a Sims-class destroyer. But the stubborn Yorktown did not sink that night. Coffman returned with a salvage and repair crew the next morning. They worked through the day, breathing air laden with smoke from the burning boiler room. Despite the conditions, the skeleton crew pushed planes and heavy equipment overboard, reducing the vessel’s topside weight. The effort began to work. The list lessened and it seemed the carrier would once again limp back to Hawaii for repairs.

  But the Japanese returned, using darkness and the debris-filled ocean to cloak the submarine’s approach. Coffman, who stood on deck wearing coveralls coated with black soot and oil, saw the four approaching torpedoes first. He shouted a warning, but there was nothing the crew of the Yorktown could do. The ship was dead in the water.

  But they were not alone. The USS Hammann opened fire with her 20mm guns in an attempt to destroy the torpedoes. For her effort, the Hammann was struck amidships. The explosion tore the destroyer in half and the Yorktown’s would-be rescuer jackknifed and sank, taking the rescued crew with her.

  Two of the torpedoes struck the Yorktown, pun
ching holes in the hull and flinging Coffman from the deck. He remembered the cool air as he fell from the smoky deck to the open ocean. After that, there was a lull. He woke hours later. The sun dipping below the horizon cast silhouettes of the now distant fleet. He immediately thrashed and called out. But no one would hear him. No one, but the three men adrift alongside him. They’d managed to slip him into a life jacket and had saved his life, but over the next few days he’d wondered if he would have been better off dead.

  As days passed, his throat and tongue swelled from dehydration. The skin on his forehead burned with boils from sun exposure. His body ached. And as hard as he tried, he couldn’t move his legs. The last morning he remembered, he woke to find one of the men missing. They didn’t know if he’d simply died and slipped beneath the waves, if a shark took him, or if he’d swum away in delirium. But the end, for all of them, was near, so they didn’t worry about it too much. Resigning himself to death was the last memory he could recall.

  Then he woke up here, on this beach.

  The boils still stung his forehead.

  His throat felt scoured.

  And his legs.… He tried to move them again, but couldn’t. He’d assumed they were broken, but having felt no pain from the gull’s attack, he knew better. His back had been broken. Either when he’d been flung from the Yorktown, or when his body had struck the water.

  But if he had made it here, perhaps the others had, too? He looked around for some sign of life.

  Palm leaves shifted a scratchy tune powered by an ocean breeze. Cumulus clouds drifted past high above, their passage reflected by the calm lagoon water. But he couldn’t see any bodies nor could he hear any voices. But there was an aberration in the sand next to him.

  Four gouges, like the beach had been tilled by miniature oxen, traced a path back to the jungle. The lines were so straight and evenly spaced that Coffman had little doubt they were manmade. He leaned over to inspect the nearest tracks. The motion sent a stabbing pain up his back.

  He growled in agony as he realized that his time in the ocean had kept pressure off his back. Perhaps it had even healed him some. But now, on land, every motion could have dire consequences. As the pain subsided, he opened his clenched eyes and saw that the lines in the beach were framed by footprints.

  Booted footprints.

  The other men had been dragged away, their heels plowing twin paths through the sand. But who took them?

  As pain flared anew, Coffman straightened out and looked out over the lagoon. He imagined the shape of this inlet from above and recalled nothing resembling it on any of the maps he’d studied. Had they somehow landed on an uncharted island? Had the men been dragged away by local islanders? If so, there might still be hope of survival.

  A crunch of dry palms caught his attention. The sound came from directly behind him, so he couldn’t turn to see it.

  Crunch. Closer this time. The steps were slow. Furtive. Careful. As though Coffman might present some kind of a threat. That meant whoever was there saw him as a threat. Which meant …

  Coffman lay back down, craning his head backward. Through an upside-down view of the jungle, he saw black boots and tan pants step into the open. He turned his gaze skyward, but the figure charged and all Coffman saw was the butt of a rifle. Then nothing.

  * * *

  He woke to an all-consuming pain. His scream was dulled by a gag tied tightly ’round his mouth. He fought to move, but had been restrained.

  “Calm yourself,” came a voice. The accent was distinctly Japanese.

  No …

  He’d be tortured for information, kept alive for months until they were sure he’d told them everything he knew, and then he’d be shot.

  The gag went slack and was pulled away.

  “Just kill me now,” Coffman said. His voice sounded better. In fact, despite the pain enveloping his body, he felt hydrated. They’ll heal me first, he thought, and then torture me. It seemed likely, but the pain he felt told him they’d gotten a head start on the torture.

  “You are far too valuable alive,” said the voice.

  “Show yourself.”

  The man didn’t reply.

  Coffman stared at a bare cement wall in front of him. He couldn’t see the lamp mounted to the ceiling above him, but felt the heat from it on his skin. He tried to turn his head, but found it restrained.

  “I’m going to free your right arm,” came the voice. “When I do, try to move it. Slowly. You were injured.”

  Coffman had a list of questions, but when the restraint on his right arm loosened, he felt them melt away. His hand tingled as blood flowed more freely into the limb.

  “Go ahead,” the man said. “Move your arm.”

  The limb felt heavy. Stubborn. Like it didn’t want to move, but Coffman needed to see something more than this barren cement wall. To know he still existed and this wasn’t hell. Pain pulsed from his shoulder as he moved the limb. He didn’t remember injuring the arm, but he didn’t remember much. His memories of the Yorktown felt distant. Years old.

  “Good,” the man said. “Very good.”

  When his hand came into view, it glowed in the bright light cast from above. His hand looked different. Thicker. Swollen, perhaps. But that wasn’t all. The shape was wrong. The thickness, too. And the pattern of his arm hair, once thin and faint, now appeared thick, and dark. He turned his arm over and found a tattoo of a naked woman sitting upon the guns of a battleship.

  “That’s not my arm,” he said. “That’s not my arm!”

  The man behind him tsked a few times and then reached out and pulled the arm down, restraining it once more. “You’ve suffered a great deal,” the man said. “You’re confused.”

  Coffman tried to understand. Tried to remember. Images came in flashes. He saw the ocean. A seagull. A beach. Then darkness. And lights. Always lights, blinding him to the shapes around him. Men. Their voices, speaking Japanese, returned like a song heard too many times. But he didn’t know what had been said.

  “Now then,” the man said, the tone of his voice as pleasant and soothing as Coffman’s own grandmother’s. “Try to move your other arm.”

  There was no tingling this time. In fact, he barely felt the limb, but it was there. He sensed the movement. He needed to see it, to know if he was going mad. Gritting his teeth, he willed the limb up. His eyes clenched with pain and he didn’t see his arm rise, but he felt it.

  When the man said, “Wonderful,” Coffman opened his eyes.

  And screamed.

  This arm wasn’t his, either.

  It wasn’t even human.

  1.

  PACIFIC OCEAN, NOW

  “Man overboard!”

  Mark Hawkins reacted to the words without thought. He hadn’t even seen who’d fallen and couldn’t identify who had shouted the words. But he heard the confirming splash and saw several crewmembers on the main deck look over the port rail.

  At a run, Hawkins leapt up onto the port rail and launched himself over the side. But he wasn’t on the main deck, which was just eight feet above the waterline. He was on the second deck, twenty-five feet up and six feet in from the main deck’s rail. As he dove out and looked down he saw an undulating, solid mass of plastic, rope, and wood. He had no idea how thick the layer of garbage was, or how dense, but when he didn’t see a body languishing atop it, he knew the crew member who’d fallen overboard was trapped beneath it. He also knew that his landing would hurt.

  He heard a gasp as he fell past the main deck, just missing the rail. His feet struck the layer of trash a moment later, punching through like a blunt spear. The rest of his body followed, slipping through the chunky film, but not before becoming tangled in rope. Stunned by the impact and chilled by the Pacific waters, Hawkins nearly panicked, but the memory of someone in need of help kept him focused.

  His eyes stung when he opened them. Visibility was poor thanks to a swirling cloud of small plastic chips churned up by his explosive arrival, and worsened by the n
oonday sun being filtered through layers of colored plastic, casting the depths in dull, kaleidoscopic shades.

  He tried to swim, but something tugged at his ankle, rooting him in place. He leaned forward and pulled his leg in close. His ankle was wrapped in a loop of rope bound to a lump of congealed refuse that floated like a giant buoy. Had he landed on the mass, his rescue effort would have been cut abruptly short. Not that it was going well at the moment.

  But Hawkins was not completely unprepared. He unclipped the sheath on his belt and freed his seven-and-a-half-inch San Mai Recon Scout hunting knife. The razor-sharp blade cut through the rope like it wasn’t there. After sheathing the blade, Hawkins pushed off the heavy chunk of garbage and swam deeper. Six feet from the surface, he came free from the lowest traces of floating debris and immediately saw the kicking feet of the fallen crewmember just twenty feet away.

  As he swam closer, he saw that the small feet were attached to a pair of smooth, lithe legs. The man overboard was a woman.

  Dr. Avril Joliet.

  Despite being a genius, or damn near close to one, Joliet didn’t always make the best choices. How she’d earned two Ph.D.s in biology and oceanography without getting lost at sea, eaten by a predator, or hit by a bus was beyond Hawkins. It wasn’t that she was absentminded, just impulsive. Quick. But it was those same qualities that allowed her to learn fast, blow the doors off conventional theories, and make discoveries while her peers spent time wondering if they should bother. But this time, Joliet’s speed might have finally caught up with her.

  Her quick, jerky movements confirmed his fears. She was stuck. Hawkins swam up behind her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Her white blouse billowed as she spun around, eyes wide with fear. There were a number of predators—large sharks, mostly—that prowled beneath the Garbage Patch, waiting for prey animals to become stuck.

  When she saw him, she relaxed, but as she turned, a large, beaked face came into view, startling Hawkins. A burst of bubbles shot from his mouth as he shouted in surprise. When the bubbles cleared, Joliet stared at him with a single eyebrow raised. A second glance over her shoulder revealed the face of a sea turtle, its black eyes staring lifelessly into the abyss.