Edgar was the last down. He collapsed his chute and raised the sniper rifle, ready to fire on any machines waiting for them.
The team packed their chutes quickly. Edgar got to Lena first. She gripped her ankle, grunting in pain.
Michael trotted over. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Lena said.
“We need to move,” Les said, crouching. “Can you walk?”
Edgar helped her to her feet. She yelped when she weighted the sprain.
Les looked to Michael but didn’t say a word. They both knew she would slow them down.
“What happened to Hector?” she mumbled.
Then she saw Sofia, kneeling by the body. Only the armor and jumpsuit held it in a recognizably human shape.
“It was his visor,” Michael said. “Somehow, it opened during the dive.”
“At least he didn’t suffer,” Arlo said.
Michael didn’t want to tell him the truth: that for an agonizing minute or more, Hector had likely suffered far more than if he had just crashed into the ground. And screaming would have made it worse, sucking freezing air into his lungs.
“What do we do with him?” Ted asked.
“Grab his vital gear and ammunition,” Les said. “Then bury him.”
The divers worked quickly, digging a shallow grave and covering the dead Cazador with dirt while Edgar held security with the sniper rifle.
When they finished, they each put a hand on the mound of dirt and whispered a few words.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said when it was his turn.
Les motioned for the teams to move out.
“Michael, you’re on point with Edgar,” he said. “Ted, Arlo, you got rear guard. We don’t stop until we get out of this valley.”
The divers moved out in combat intervals, navigating the foreign landscape cautiously but fast along a creek that flowed through the valley. Leafy mutant flora grew along the banks.
Michael kept the laser rifle shouldered, using his infrared optics to scan for life. Nothing bigger than a rabbit showed.
He stopped at the edge of the creek. The fast-flowing water was clear, nothing like the swamp murk he was used to seeing on dives. He tapped his wrist computer. The temperature was sixty degrees, and the air was free of radiation. It was one of the cleanest green zones he had ever dived.
Michael set off toward a creek bank of rounded river rocks, his boots sloshing in the ankle-deep water. The path out of the valley was just a quarter-mile north.
The team crossed two at a time, with Edgar supporting Lena.
Michael took cover behind a boulder, aiming his rifle at the distant cliffs and scanning for machines. Lightning fired from the belly of a cloud.
Thunder clapped a few seconds later.
The team joined him at the rocks, where Michael guided them toward a stand of trees.
Another thunderclap echoed through the darkness. This one didn’t fade away.
Michael halted, straining his ears.
A rumbling noise sounded in the distance. Here in the valley, it was difficult to gauge the direction.
He flashed signals toward the trees, and the team took off for cover. Edgar slung his rifle, picked Lena up, and ran with her.
The thunderous sound grew louder. Michael looked up through the dense canopy but saw nothing.
It was Arlo who spotted the drone. He raised his assault rifle, but Les pushed down on the barrel and shook his head.
A drone not much bigger than Cricket flew over the trees, then out over the valley, trailing a purple exhaust plume. The circular body had an antenna on the crest of what looked like an insect head covered in spikes.
Michael motioned everyone down. They went to their bellies and hugged the trees for any concealment they could get.
The drone circled once, then hovered low over the water.
Shit, our tracks! Michael thought.
He aimed his laser rifle at the machine, but it continued south—away from their location, but back toward where they had buried Hector.
Les was quick to get the divers up. “On me,” he said.
They moved out of the trees at a run, toward the rocky incline leading out of the valley. Lena was limping still, enduring the pain.
Les slowed the pace up the narrow cleft out of the valley. Nearing the top, Michael moved his robotic finger to the laser rifle’s trigger guard, ready to let the bolts fly into the trees growing along the valley rim.
He saw no movement among the large trunks, which would provide excellent cover. He motioned the divers to hunker down behind him. Then he took off in a crouching run to the trees.
Picking his way around exposed roots, he took up position behind a huge trunk. An infrared scan of the jungle to his left revealed no sign of life, and his NVGs didn’t pick up any machines in that direction.
Then he looked eastward, to his right.
The terrain there was flat, as he had expected. What he didn’t expect to see was an airship on the ground.
He zoomed in on the faded ITC logo on the hull. “My God,” he whispered.
It was the ITC Victory, the airship that Captain Sean Rolo had flown here decades ago despite Captain Maria Ash’s warnings.
She had been right all along.
Michael finally understood why she had never flown beyond the shores of North America and had always chosen green-zone dives to keep them in the air. It was the reason the Hive became the last survivor of its kind.
Perhaps Captain Leon Jordan, despite his evil ways, was trying to keep the same truth a secret: that out here, there was nothing but death.
But it was finally time to face the future and end this war forever.
THIRTY-THREE
“We have to retreat!” Magnolia yelled.
Mac’s recon team fought their way around the silos, trying to escape. Several of his men laid down covering fire toward the machine guns on the tanker truck and a shipping container.
Magnolia had frozen during the ambush, but the adrenaline snapped her free of the shock.
She ran around a silo and fired off three bolts at the shipping container, peppering the side with glowing red-orange holes.
Ton and Victor ran over to help shield X. Bullets kicked up puffs of black ash, and one hit Ton’s shield, knocking him to the ground.
Rodger fired a burst at a silo and hit a skinwalker sniping at the fleeing Barracudas.
“Go, King Xavier!” Victor yelled. He helped pick up Ton, and the two men held their shields up as a protective wall.
“Move!” Magnolia shouted.
X ran with Ton and Victor while Magnolia took aim at another silo, where a new sniper had popped up. The rounds hit a Barracuda soldier standing next to Mac. Magnolia took the sniper down with a bolt, removing his leg at the knee.
They had set a perfect ambush, but how had they known?
She suppressed the burning question and took off after X. The only way to escape was back the way they had come in. Mac was already guiding the team that way.
X stopped at Felipe’s corpse and bent down despite Victor’s shouts to hurry. Magnolia felt X’s sorrow. The young Barracuda had fought with him and helped him kill Colonel Vargas, only to die here at the hands of even worse men.
She and Rodger caught up with X and his guards behind a wall. A helmet covered in what looked like bloody patches of skin emerged on an adjacent silo. She fired a bolt, and even through the blurry NVGs, she could see the top of the soldier’s head come off.
“Let’s go!” she shouted.
Ton and Victor held up their shields and darted with X between two silos as Rodger and Magnolia laid down another field of fire.
One of the enemy machine guns went silent, either to change ammo or because the gunner was out of action.
Four silos
remained between X’s group and the relative safety of the shipping containers. Six Barracudas were already there, firing bursts downrange. Bullets whizzed past Magnolia, one actually grazing her leg armor.
She rounded a corner, taking cover with the others behind a silo. Bullets pounded the side she had just cleared. Mac ran toward them, waving his prosthetic hand.
Four skinwalkers darted into the corridor between Magnolia and X’s group and Mac. But instead of gunning the warrior down, the four men drew swords.
The old Barracuda did the same and charged.
Magnolia got up and ran after Ton and Victor, who were trying to keep up with X.
Bullets chased them, pinging off the silos and lancing into the dirt. She came up alongside X as he fired a flare at the four skinwalkers. It hit a man in the back, igniting the skin draped over his armor. Flailing and screaming, he burned.
Something hit Magnolia hard in the back, slamming her to the dirt.
“Mags!” Rodger yelled.
She looked up as X raised his spear arm and the captain’s sword. The three skinwalkers continued to slash and jab at Mac, who deflected their blows.
“Yo, fuck-face!” X yelled.
A skinwalker turned, brandishing his sword.
X slid, jabbing upward with his prosthetic spear. The blade crunched through the groin and deep into the abdominal cavity. He crumpled, and X got to his feet just as a skinwalker’s blade struck Mac’s prosthetic hand, breaking it in half like a twig.
Magnolia pushed herself up off the ground with Rodger’s help. He turned to fire at hostiles approaching on their six while Ton and Victor ran to help X.
But X didn’t need help. He jammed his spear through the helmet of the skinwalker who was about to finish Mac off with an axe. He tried to pull the spear out, but it was stuck in metal and bone.
The remaining skinwalker swung a cutlass, but X used the skewered man as a shield, turning him toward the blade. Mac grabbed the cutlass wielder by the shoulder and spun him around, then jammed a knife up under the man’s chin, through the hard palate and into the brain, with a crunch that Magnolia could hear.
“X!” she shouted.
He braced a foot against the skewered man’s head and finally yanked his bloody spear free.
“You hurt?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure what had hit her, but she didn’t feel any blood or pain.
The group fled with Mac, finding cover in a scrapyard of containers. After a half-minute’s rest, they ran back to the field with the wind turbines. Several Barracudas waited there, reloading their weapons.
Less than half the recon team remained—only five including Mac. He spoke in Spanish to his men. Magnolia picked up the name “Felipe.”
“I’m sorry,” X said. “He’s gone.”
Mac hesitated, then looked toward the turbines. “We can’t hold here,” he said. “We have to go back through the field. You go first, King Xavier. We’ll cover you.”
“No,” X said. “We’re all going.”
Bullets dinged against the containers, and voices called out in the distance.
Another parachute flare streaked into the sky.
“Once that fades, you go,” Mac said. He gripped a bloody sword. “Rhino told me to guard you with my life before he died, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Rodger fired off a burst, the crack echoing off the containers.
“Fuck you!” he yelled.
Ton and Victor brought up their shields, ready to move. The remaining Barracudas moved to the sides of the containers and down on their bellies.
“Go, Immortal!” Mac yelled.
X clearly didn’t want to move, but Ton and Victor urged him on. Magnolia and Rodger followed them out into the field, keeping low. They kept to the path Felipe had swept for mines on the way in.
It was hard to follow the tracks in the ash, especially while under fire.
Ton went down with a muffled cry. X helped him back up and Magnolia noticed Ton was bleeding from his shoulder.
“Come on!” Rodger yelled, running ahead to take point.
Victor picked up Ton’s shield and took rear guard, using both shields to cover their retreat. The thick metal deflected the lower-velocity bullets, but some of the bigger-jacketed rounds punched through. One hit Victor in the arm.
He cried out, dropping one shield but keeping the other up.
Magnolia was focused on the ground, looking for mines, when Rodger vanished in an explosion. The blast knocked the entire team down, and something stung like a hot needle in her side.
Ears ringing, she lay in the ash for a moment. Lightning tendrils forked across the skyline. Smoke drifted away from a crater ahead of her.
She tried to yell for Rodger, but all that came out was a gasp.
Someone grabbed her and helped her up.
She could hear distant wails of pain. They sounded familiar.
“Mags,” said a gruff voice.
X stood over her, searching. Rodger was curled up on the ground not far from the crater.
Victor helped Ton to his feet. Both men raised their shields and moved to protect X and Magnolia.
“Rodger,” she managed to say.
X helped her up, and they stumbled over to him. His right foot was mangled. The armor was dented in places but appeared to have saved his limbs.
“Grab him!” X shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
Victor grabbed Rodger under the arms, and Magnolia lifted his knees. X wrapped Ton’s arm over his shoulder, and the group continued toward the turbines, following the tracks from earlier.
Moments later, they reached the huge turbine blade that stabbed the earth like a giant’s arrow. The ringing in Magnolia’s ears faded, replaced by the sound of gunfire. Mac and his men held back the skinwalkers, but it wouldn’t be long before they were overrun.
Magnolia bent down next to Rodger and grabbed his hand.
“I can still fight,” he growled, trying to sit up.
“Rodger, hold still.” She pushed down on his chest, but too late—he saw his foot.
“My toes!” he said. “My toes are gone!”
Victor had a medical kit out, and X was unwrapping a dressing. Ton gripped his shoulder, blood dripping between his fingers.
“Mags,” Rodger said.
She looked back down at him. “It’s okay, Rodge. You’re going to be okay.”
“You have to kill her for me if I can’t do it,” he said. “Promise me.”
“I promise. Now, try and relax. You need to be still.”
He tried to look down at his feet again, but she blocked his view.
“I love you, Rodge,” she said to distract him.
It worked. His helmet turned upward, and she bumped her visor against his.
A massive explosion bloomed out on the horizon. She saw it mirrored in Rodger’s visor. She turned toward it, her heart skipping a beat.
A message broke radio silence over the comms in her helmet.
“Renegade has been hit!” someone yelled.
X got to his feet and shouted in a crazed voice that didn’t sound like his.
“miles!” he screamed.
* * * * *
The sailboat rocked in sloppy seas. Ada sat at the control panel in the cabin, keeping an eye on the radar. She had shadowed the ship for a day now, keeping her distance. She still didn’t know who was on it, but one thing was certain: it was heading for the Vanguard Islands.
The chances of this being another ghost ship were slim, and while she couldn’t see it yet, she had a feeling there were Cazadores aboard. Who else could it be?
Luckily, her boat hadn’t attracted their attention. Yet.
Ada yawned and took a sip of water. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she slept for more than an hour st
raight. She slapped her face twice and blinked her heavy eyelids.
Her new little friend slept peacefully on her lap, and she stroked its bristly hair. Jo-Jo had clung to her since she came back inside from the storm.
But she must go back out there soon. They were only four to five hours away from the boundary of the Vanguard Islands. If this was an enemy warship, it was her duty to warn King Xavier.
But it was more likely just another Cazador vessel like the Lion, and if that was the case, she would just keep her distance and follow them in.
But something told her she was sailing back to a war. She just hoped she wasn’t too late to help her people.
Waves slapped the starboard hull of her craft. She checked the skyline through the portholes. Lightning blasted the clouds, though she couldn’t hear the thunder over the breaking waves. The storm was closing in.
“We’re going to have to sail through that, Jo-Jo,” Ada said.
The monkey opened one big black eye.
Ada leaned forward to check the dashboard monitor. The sailboat was gaining some distance on the ship she tracked—too much distance, she realized.
She studied the radar to see whether the ship had changed its heading at all, but if it had detected her, it didn’t appear to be acting on it. It was still on the same course for the Vanguard Islands.
As the sailboat drew closer to both the ship and the home of her people, Ada felt her heart thump a little faster. After so long at sea, she couldn’t wait.
“You ready to see sunshine?” Ada said.
The monkey sighed and went back to sleep.
It amazed Ada that a creature that could survive in the wastes was so dependent. Anything born into this harsh new world would need natural survival skills.
Then again, she herself didn’t have many survival skills, and she was still breathing despite many things that had almost killed her.
Ada just watched for a few minutes, taking comfort in the innocence of the miracle she had found in the wastes.
Growing up, she had always wondered what the Hell Divers encountered on the surface, but they never spoke about it. She couldn’t help but think they had come across many creatures that weren’t hostile. Her journey had taught her that many forms of life had found a way after the apocalypse, and they weren’t all dangerous.
Hell Divers (Book 7): Warriors Page 39