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PROLOGUE
WORLD WAR II
THE SECOND BATTLE OF CORREGIDOR
THE PHILIPPINES
FEBRUARY 20, 1945
The tunnel exploded.
Sergeant Daniel Kekoa dropped to the ground and covered his head as the M4 Sherman tank that had fired on the ragged entrance was thrown backward a dozen yards by the gigantic secondary blast from inside the tunnel. The thirty-ton tank flipped over and landed on its turret before a loose shell inside tore it apart in a fireball.
When debris stopped raining down around him, Kekoa staggered to his feet, his ears ringing from the deafening explosion. Dozens of American soldiers lay dead or writhing in pain. He turned over the nearest man down. The vacant eyes and chunk of shrapnel protruding from the soldier’s chest showed that he was beyond help.
Kekoa shook his head in disgust at the deadly foul-up. The briefing from Army Intelligence indicated that this particular tunnel sheltered enemy soldiers defending the island fortress strategically located at the mouth of Manila Bay. Kekoa had called in the tank to prevent a suicidal banzai attack, which had become commonplace with the fanatical Japanese. But there had been no indication that the tunnel might also contain large quantities of explosives close to the entrance.
Captain John Hayward crouched nearby in one of the many craters created by the American pre-invasion bombardment, his hands still over his ears. Kekoa reached down to haul him to his feet. The slight man, with brown hair and circular-framed glasses, was shaking.
“All clear now, Captain,” Kekoa said. “I told you I’d get you through this battle in one piece.” Of course, Kekoa could make no such promise, but what else was he going to tell this officer whose safety the Army had entrusted to him?
“Thanks, Sergeant. I appreciate that.” Hayward took in the carnage with wide eyes. “What happened?”
“Must have been an ammo dump inside the cave. Your boys in the OSS told us the ammunition would be stored farther down the tunnels.”
“They’re not my boys. That intel came from a different part of the Office of Strategic Services. I’m not a spy, Sergeant Kekoa. I’m a scientist in the Research and Analysis Branch.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, given the way you carry that carbine.”
The mission briefing had been just that: brief. The battalion commander had specifically asked for Kekoa to babysit Captain Hayward and follow his orders while keeping him alive. Everything else was on a need-to-know basis only, and as a grunt in the 24th Infantry “Hawaiian” Division, Kekoa apparently didn’t need to know anything. All Hayward had told his unit was that he needed to get inside the underground fortress before the Japanese could destroy it.
The tadpole-shaped island of Corregidor and its howitzers guarded the entrance to Manila Bay, one of the largest harbors in the Pacific. The strategic outpost, also known as The Rock, was four miles long and little more than a mile across at its widest. As a U.S. commonwealth, the Philippines had been the last bastion to fall during the initial Japanese onslaught at the outbreak of the war, holding on until the island’s forces surrendered in May of 1942, two months after Douglas MacArthur had been evacuated.
Kekoa was leading his unit as part of the operation to retake Malinta Hill on the island’s tail. Its vast grid of tunnels was bisected by a twenty-four-foot-wide main passageway that had served as a hospital and MacArthur’s headquarters. Dozens of smaller tunnels branched out from the main one, a bomb-proof network so large that it not only housed munitions, food, and water for a huge garrison that could withstand a siege for months but also had room for the thousand-bed hospital. In the three years since the Japanese conquered Corregidor, they had fortified their positions, digging out additional tunnels to augment the extensive system built by the Americans, some of which had been collapsed intentionally before the 1942 surrender.
Hayward’s target was inside one of those tunnels.
Kekoa took stock of the dozens of casualties and found out that two of the men who had died were in his platoon. Kekoa had served with both of them in the National Guard in Honolulu before joining the Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He then fought side by side with them during the invasions of New Guinea and the Filipino island of Leyte. They weren’t the first men he’d lost, and judging by the insanity of this mission, they wouldn’t be the last, either.
The explosion had closed off the entrance. They had to find another way in. Under Hayward’s direction, Kekoa gathered his platoon and headed toward the south side of Malinta Hill. The sound of rifle fire and artillery blasts continued nonstop from around the island, and Kekoa was bathed in the stench of gunpowder and burnt flesh.
When they reached their new position, Kekoa and Hayward crouched in a foxhole to plan the assault.
When he asked Hayward for orders, the captain hesitated and then asked, “What do you suggest?”
“Have you ever been in battle before
, sir?”
“I think you know the answer to that. My office is in the new Pentagon building. This is the first time I’ve been outside the United States, let alone under fire.”
“What do you do in Washington?”
“I’m a biochemist.”
“I don’t even know what that is. What I do know is that it’s suicide to go into those tunnels before we’ve cleared them out.”
Hayward gave him a halfhearted grin. “I thought you promised to get me through in one piece.”
“I’ll do my best, sir. But these defenders are fanatical. I’ve heard from soldiers in some of the other battalions that they’re strapping bomb vests to their chests and running at us kamikaze-style. The battle plan is for our troops to get close enough to the tunnels to dump gasoline down the openings, light it on fire, and then seal the entrances up to burn through all the oxygen.”
“That’s exactly why we need this mission to succeed,” said Hayward. “We need to get inside before that’s done.” He looked around, then lowered his voice so the other men couldn’t hear. “Do you think I want to be here, Sergeant? I have a wife and two children in a nice house in the Virginia suburbs. I was a college professor at Georgetown before this all started. I am not a warrior.”
“Then why are you here, sir?”
Hayward sighed with resignation. “I can’t tell you much, but you deserve to know the stakes if you might die for my sake. You can see where this war is going, right? The way we’re hopscotching islands northward?”
Kekoa nodded.
“The war is nearly over in Europe. It’s just a matter of time until Germany gives up, which means the U.S. will turn all its resources to this side of the world. Our government has said we’ll accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, so what do you think the ultimate goal in the Pacific is?”
“The invasion of Japan.”
“Right. Look around you. We’re fighting like mad for every yard on this tiny rock. Now imagine what it will take to conquer the home islands with every citizen willing to fight to the death for their beloved Emperor.”
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.
