“Shit!” Arlo cried.
Magnolia pulled him away as the monstrous thing writhed, somehow still alive. Goo peeled away from the flesh as it wriggled toward them.
Drawing one of her sickles, Magnolia cut the monster in half, then wiped the goo off before sheathing the blade.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Arlo stumbled away from the beast, which gave one last hiss before going limp.
The team kept going until they reached the top of the ridge overlooking a flat, rocky area that stretched away from the beach. A few trees poked out of the dirt, and clumps of bushes with hook-shaped thorns marked the path forward.
The rain came down harder, peppering their suits as they marched onward.
“Hold up,” Michael said. He held up his wrist computer behind the group. “This is acid rain, so make sure you’re buttoned up really good.”
“I’m secure,” Arlo said.
Edgar gave thumbs-up.
Ada checked her life-support systems and confirmed that her suit was functioning properly.
“Damn it,” Magnolia said.
Michael jogged over to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Damn filter,” she said. “I just checked it before we left. If it was bad, my sensors would be going off.”
“Maybe they aren’t working, either,” Michael said. He checked her wrist computer with Pedro.
Ada had watched the two men become good friends since Michael helped rescue Pedro and his people from a bunker in Rio de Janeiro. In that time, Pedro had also learned to speak English, although it wasn’t perfect.
“Your sensors are offline,” Michael said.
“No good,” Pedro added. “If you get a tear in suit, you won’t know.”
Michael looked back toward the shore. “Head back to the boat, Mags.”
“No way, I’ll be fine,” Magnolia said.
“I’m giving you my professional opinion. Take it or leave it.”
“It’s probably more dangerous to head back alone,” Edgar said. “If you do, I’ll head with you, Mags.”
Magnolia seemed to think on it, then shook her head. “We proceed with the mission. It shouldn’t take long.”
Ada motioned to Jo-Jo, and the monkey barreled ahead, through the downpour. Visibility was getting worse by the second.
“Stay close,” Ada said.
The animal didn’t understand, but she also knew better than to run too far ahead.
Ada kept her rifle at the ready as she searched the green field of her night-vision goggles. Not long after, she finally spotted something in a brilliant flash of lightning.
The glow illuminated a fortress of stone in the distance. Most of the walls had tumbled, but this was clearly man-made.
This was their target.
“Eyes on the mine,” Ada said over the team comm.
“Copy that, we see it,” replied Slayer.
The two squads came together at the ruins of an ancient gold mine. Above the surrounding terrain rose four distinct structures, all of them built of local stone. Red and blue mold caked the cracks and recesses of the walls with a toxic patina.
Michael pulled out a handheld device. It was all that remained of Cricket 2.0, his old droid, salvaged from the mission to Tanzania.
“Life scan is negative,” he said. “Look for entrances to the mines.”
The squads fanned out through the ruins to search.
“What’s that?” Arlo asked. He pointed to a mound of dirt with a box-shaped metal hull sticking out at right angles.
“An old-world bus,” Edgar said. “Probably some tourists, stranded here during the war.”
Ada tried to picture people sitting behind the broken windows, but as usual, she found it too hard to fathom what the world was once like.
Two more vehicles sat partially covered by dirt in the center of the mining site. Barrels and crates were stacked outside one of them—evidence of relatively recent activity.
“The skinwalkers were definitely here,” she said.
It didn’t take long to find the two entry points to the tunnels, both covered with tarps, at the western and eastern edges of the ruins.
Slayer motioned for the group to split up. Gran Jefe led the Barracudas to the left while the Hell Divers went right.
Holding Cricket in his hand, Michael did another scan outside the cave entrance. It came back negative.
“We’ll go first and see if it’s safe,” Ada said.
“That’s why I’m here,” Michael said. “Pedro, we’ll let you know if we find any tech.”
Pedro nodded.
“Edgar, go with them,” Magnolia said.
Ada pulled back the plastic tarp from the mouth of a stone tunnel to let Jo-Jo and Michael inside. The monkey went down on all fours, staying just in front of him and sniffing the air, as Ada and Michael turned on their flashlights.
The beams flitted over rock walls, pieces of which had fallen away, scattering chunks of rubble on the path. Edgar joined them in the narrow passage, using the tactical light attached to the barrel of his rifle.
“Looks sturdy,” he said.
“Yeah, but be careful not to touch anything,” Michael said.
Bottles and sundry other debris littered the ground: the head of a hammer, a rusted oil canister, a decaying rubber sandal. The path sloped downward, and Michael went deeper into the mine with Cricket, scanning for contacts or potential weak spots in the ancient timbers.
Drawings marked the ceilings and walls. Ada couldn’t make most of them out, but she did stop to look at one of a man with the head of a bull.
“What the hell is that?” she whispered.
“A Minotaur,” Edgar said.
“A what?”
“Ancient monster from Greek mythology. I read about it when I was a kid. Horn must have worshipped it, considering his helmet and name and shit.”
Jo-Jo looked back at them, snorting.
“Let’s keep moving,” Ada said.
Keeping low, the two divers pushed deeper into the passage. The skinwalkers had added steel posts and shoring in parts where the tunnels had crumbled.
Michael scanned them all, then moved on into the darkness.
“Layla isn’t going to be happy to hear you came down here,” Ada said as she and Edgar caught up.
“No, I don’t suppose she would, but she understands what this job entails, and it’s safer than diving.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Some days, that is.”
After descending for a few minutes, they finally reached another tarp, which was pulled back already, revealing a wide chamber ahead.
“Careful,” Michael said. “Watch for booby traps.”
He did another scan with Cricket, then cautiously walked inside the room.
Tarps and plastic sheets seemed to be strategically placed to keep the space sealed off from toxins and perhaps radioactive dust, although Ada wasn’t picking up much on her Geiger counter.
Jo-Jo went next. Her hair still lay flat—not sensing any creatures.
Edgar and Ada raked their lights across the open space strewn with open supply crates and upended barrels.
“Looks clear,” Michael said, lowering Cricket and his rifle. All three divers switched to their more powerful helmet lights. Combined, they had enough candlepower to see the entire chamber.
Ada crossed over to the western wall, where more plastic sheets hung. Jo-Jo was there, sniffing.
“What you got?” Ada said.
Taking a step closer, she realized that the sheets weren’t plastic, but sections of tanned human skin.
“Oh God,” Ada whispered.
Edgar hurried over to their position. “Damn, these bastards were brutal.”
Stepping back from the macabre display, Ada saw some
thing tucked in the corner. She walked over to a big metal chair positioned in front of a square hole where a large stone had been pulled from the wall. Bones and candles had been arranged as a shrine inside the opening.
But it was the chair that held Ada’s gaze.
“Must have been Horn’s throne,” she said.
Edgar lifted a hardcover book out of a small chest under the chair. “What’s this—some sort of torture guide?”
To Ada’s surprise, the pages were filled with sketches and logs, all the words in Spanish.
Edgar tossed it aside. “Let’s keep searching for something we can use.”
“Hold on,” Ada said. She picked the book up. “This could be useful.”
“Oh damn, this is what I’m talking about,” Edgar said. He propped up the lid of a large chest and pulled out a sword with a gold trident carved onto the hilt.
Ada took a look inside, finding thin, dull black armor that looked different from what the Cazadores wore. There was also a helmet with a beaklike snout.
“Wow,” Edgar said, holding the blade up under the light. “I’ve never seen one like this before. Definitely not Cazador.”
“Maybe they found it on a raid,” Ada said.
They continued the search, uncovering a few crates of tools and some long-expired medicines, but that was it besides the logs and the sword.
“You find anything?” Ada asked Michael.
He held up the metal case of an electronic tablet. “It’s not working, but I might be able to fix it with Pedro.”
“Good,” Ada said. “It could have some intel on it.”
They packed the goods and headed topside.
By the time they got to the surface, the rain was still pouring and the wind was picking up. The Barracudas team was still not back.
Edgar, Arlo, and Pedro huddled under a rock shelf with Magnolia.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Not really, just a broken tablet,” Michael replied.
“Storm’s getting worse,” Edgar said. “Let’s check on Slayer.”
The Hell Divers went to the other entrance, where Gran Jefe stood cradling his .50-caliber chain gun. He pointed the muzzle at Jo-Jo as she approached.
“Hey!” Ada shouted. “That’s my—”
“Bestia,” Gran Jefe said. He took a glove off the barrel and gestured for the animal to get back.
Ada whistled for Jo-Jo, who retreated behind her.
“Don’t you ever point a weapon at her again,” Ada snarled.
“Shut up,” Gran Jefe said. He mumbled something else that was obscured by the noise of his breathing apparatus, but it sounded a lot like “puta.”
Magnolia moved in front of her. “Calm down,” she said.
Then she walked up to Gran Jefe. “Where’s Slayer?”
Gran Jefe pointed to the tunnel.
“Yeah, I know,” Magnolia started to say. “But . . .” She shook her head and walked back to the Hell Divers.
“Slayer, this is Commander Katib,” she said over the team comms. “Do you copy?”
“Copy, Commander,” Slayer’s voice crackled. “We’ve located a second tunnel and are about to open it.”
“Copy that. You need any help?”
“Negative, we’ve got this.”
Magnolia motioned for the divers to get away from Gran Jefe. Ada stared at the big Cazador for a while. He stared back at her through the almond-shaped visor slots in his helmet.
Behind him, flashlight beams streaked out of the tunnel, and Slayer and his crew emerged a few minutes later with a few crates. Nothing that looked to be of much value.
“You guys find anything?” Slayer asked.
“Not really,” Edgar said.
“We’re still searching the other chamber. I’m heading back down. With any luck—”
A black-winged creature shot out of the passageway behind Gran Jefe. Slayer ducked as it flapped overhead.
“What the hell is that?” Arlo shouted.
No one replied, and for a moment, the only sound was the rain pattering on their armor. Gran Jefe turned to the open tarp, pulling it back. Ada heard something else then—a whooshing sound.
“Everyone, get down!” she yelled.
The big soldier dived to the side as a wave of bats exploded from the entrance. Sleek and muscular, with fangs like fillet knives, they flew out in droves. These were not your average bat.
Ada hit the ground, wishing she could burrow. Pedro crouched next to her, an arrow notched in his tactical bow. He loosed the arrow and got a shriek in answer.
Another quarrel streaked into the air from Bromista’s crossbow. Its explosive head detonated on impact, raining down hunks of meat and burning hair.
A flamethrower erupted behind Ada, eliciting high-pitched wails of agony as the flaming stream found more of the flying monsters.
Flapping in vain, winged balls of fire dropped screeching to the ground.
Slayer and one of his warriors used their spears to finish them off while the other soldier kept on spraying the air with liquid fire. Gran Jefe stomped on the flaming monsters and kicked one up into the air. “¡Anda, pendejo! ¡Vuela! Go on! Fly, asshole!”
“Abaixa . . . Stay down,” Pedro said to Ada.
He scrambled over to a bat the size of a chicken and plucked his arrow from its head. The jaw released what looked like a human hand.
“Get back, all of you!” Slayer shouted.
Ada pushed herself up, joining the Hell Divers and Jo-Jo, but they didn’t retreat. They raised their laser rifles and fired at the cloud of bats circling the area.
The beasts rained from the sky, landing in heaps on the ground.
In a few minutes, it was over, and the last bats fled into the darkness.
“Everyone okay?” Slayer asked.
Ada checked for injuries, but her team and the Barracudas seemed okay.
“Go check on the others inside the passageway,” Slayer said to Gran Jefe.
The hulking warrior nodded and ducked inside.
Slayer turned toward the ocean. “Command, this is Barracuda One, do you copy?”
The Hell Divers gathered together with the remaining Barracudas, their weapons still angled at the sky. Michael held up Cricket, but the scans came back negative. The only animal life registering was human.
A few minutes later, Gran Jefe returned alone, carrying two extra rifles.
“Where’s Lan and Hugo?” Slayer asked.
Gran Jefe shook his head and replied in Spanish. Ada didn’t need a translator to know that the hand she had seen earlier belonged to one of the warriors.
The Barracuda sergeant looked down and muttered a few words that she couldn’t hear. Then he walked away with Bromista and Gran Jefe.
“What about your men?” Magnolia asked. “You don’t want to recover them?”
“There’s nothing to recover,” Slayer said. “Come on. We need to get back to the boats. The captain said a storm is coming.”
Hauling the crates of supplies, the teams hurried back to the inflatable launches on the beach. They took them back to the Octopus.
As soon as Ada was on board, she pulled the book out from her vest and waved Slayer down. He was changing out of his armor, clearly distraught. She felt bad about pestering him after he lost two men, but she wanted to know what the book said.
“Hey, can you translate this for me?” she asked.
“What is it?”
Slayer opened it, then answered his own question. “Shit! Where’d you get this? It’s Horn’s log!”
He flipped through the pages slowly, then stopped.
“Holy . . .”
He looked up from the book and met her gaze.
“I need to show this to General Forge,” he said. “Thanks, Winslow.”
>
She watched the sergeant trot off with the book.
“I guess we did good today, Jo-Jo,” Ada said.
The monkey followed her back to their quarters with an ocean view. Ada sat on her bunk and looked out at the tanker Blood Trawler, sailing away from the Outrider Colony port. The ship contained the last of the oil, meaning this would be their last visit to this evil place.
She ruffled the thick hair on Jo-Jo’s head.
“Time to go home, my friend.”
Two
The radio tower on top of the Wind Talker oil rig had the best view in the Vanguard Islands. Michael Everhart was in the crow’s nest, two hundred feet above the highest point on the capitol tower.
His long hair fluttered below the baseball cap that threatened to skip out to sea on the next strong gust of wind. The thought drew his gaze to the new wind turbines, mounted on six raised platforms across the rig. One of his personal projects, the turbine array continued to provide additional energy to the islands.
The turbines, all scavenged from the wastes, spun quietly, charging batteries. Once full, the batteries would be assigned to the rigs, to restore power that was formerly fueled by gasoline or propane.
Michael brought the binoculars up. Ahead of them, the research ship ITC Octopus pushed out to sea, leaving a long wake.
A month had passed since they escorted the oil tanker Blood Trawler from the Outrider Colony. Now the new fleet would soon be heading off on another raiding mission.
He centered the binos on the bow of Ocean Bull, mounted with a massive spiked grill. As chief engineer of the islands, Michael had fulfilled King Xavier’s order himself. He still didn’t know exactly what the king was going to use the spikes for, but if Michael knew X, he had a plan. And it probably didn’t involve ramming any other vessels.
Today, Michael wasn’t up here to monitor the fleet. He was here to check on the wind turbines and then finish installing a new satellite dish that connected to weather drones.
It was storm season, and according to Cazador records, this year was already one of the worst since humans began living on the oil rigs. In the past, they had believed that the barrier would protect them, and though it did blunt the storms’ fury, people suffered.
Hell Divers Series | Book 8 | King of the Wastes Page 3