Watch after them, X whispered to himself.
He forced his gaze away from the structure and back to the water. The light from oil rigs dazzled. The solar panels and gas-powered generators created a nearly endless supply of energy here. X found himself wondering what Samson would think of this place.
The old bastard will love it.
X ran his tongue over the gap where his tooth had been. Between his new injuries and the old ones, he felt exhausted, old, and beat-up.
But he still had fight left in him, and he still held on to hope that the airships would show up. In the meantime, he would complete this mission, whatever it was.
Maybe el Pulpo needed someone killed on one of the other oil rigs, or maybe X was being sent to another arena, to battle another gladiator. Whatever the task, he would do what he needed to do in order to survive.
The boat picked up speed as they sailed farther away from the capitol tower. A half hour into the ride, they had curved away from all the eastern oil rigs.
On the dark horizon, something else glowed. Long and low. This wasn’t a rig. It was a ship.
As they drew closer, he could see that it was a warship like the one he had discovered in Florida. Harpoon guns were mounted in the bow and stern. Flamethrowers and machine guns pointed skyward from armored turrets manned by Cazador soldiers.
This ship was equipped to fight a war. They had even added barbed wire to the deck rails, as X had done on the Sea Wolf.
But these warriors had taken their planning a step further. They had added turrets with flamethrowers and harpoon guns, and, hanging over the side of the ship, a spear the length of a rowboat. X had never seen the like.
The memory of the ship in Florida sent a tingle through his old bones. Then he saw the empty cages stacked in the bow, and another memory surfaced in his mind.
No… Oh, no, God damn it.
The boat wasn’t sailing for one of the other rigs. He wasn’t going to duel another gladiator or assassinate someone who had disobeyed el Pulpo.
Xavier Rodriguez was being sent back to the wastes to fight the demons.
EIGHT
Katrina couldn’t will her heart to slow down. It thumped like the small inflatable boat now banging over the wave tops, speeding away from the USS Zion. She kept her rifle pointed up at the sky, where the monster birds circled.
At first, she had thought they were Sirens, but they seemed to be the vultures that X, Magnolia, and Miles had encountered back at the Turks and Caicos Islands.
In the green field of her night-vision goggles, she counted only six of them now. The others had returned to the island, one of them with Trey in its talons.
Over an hour had passed since the beast snatched him off the deck, and it took that long to get this boat in the water.
A glance at her HUD confirmed he was still alive. Thank all the gods he had been wearing his armor on deck. Finding him without it would have been like looking for a specific apple in a grove of apple trees—to say nothing of what the bird’s talons would have done to him without the armor. Even with it, he could be mortally wounded.
She had to find him fast, without losing anyone else. Despite the warnings from most of her crew, this was exactly what she planned to do.
There was no way in hell she would leave him out here. Captain Jordan had done that to X—left him out there all those years. Never again would a Hell Diver be left to die alone in the wastes.
The beacon on her HUD blinked. He was still breathing, and his heart was still beating.
I’m coming, Trey. Just hold tight…
She looked around at her small team. Behind her at the steering console sat Alexander, and Vish and Jed were in the stern, their blue battery units illuminating their armor and weapons.
They all were packing heavy—each carrying an assault rifle, blaster, and pistol. Extra magazines protruded from vests on the outside of their armor, and bandoliers around their arms and thighs held extra shells. She had the same setup but had decided to clip on the captain’s sword, which was supposed to be just ceremonial.
They needed the weapons and ammunition against the Cazadores. That was why she hadn’t brought the laser gun. She could afford to expend some lead, but not the precious battery of laser bolts.
The Zodiac’s battery-powered motor was surprisingly quiet. Otherwise, she might not have heard the loud caw from above as one of the more intrepid birds decided to take a dive at the boat. She brought up the rifle scope and waited until the creature folded its wings to swoop down. Getting her target in the crosshairs, she fired a three-round burst into its breast.
An otherworldly screech followed as the thing cartwheeled down and down, splashing into the ocean left of the boat.
“Faster!” she yelled back at Alexander.
He gave it more throttle, and the boat thumped over another wave. The batteries showed 70 percent—already nearly a third down from the charge they received overnight. She prayed they would hold out long enough to get through the mission.
The silhouette of the USS Zion faded in the darkness behind them. Eevi, Sandy, Jaideep, and Edgar were on their own for now.
“Eevi, do you copy? Over,” Katrina said into the comm.
The response came a few seconds later. “Copy, Captain.”
“Make sure you keep those things off the ship,” Katrina said.
“Roger that, Captain. We’ve already got the fifty-cals tracking any hostiles in the area. Good news, too. The storm appears to be weakening. We should be able to send long-range transmissions and use the GPS shortly.”
Katrina sighed with relief at this small bit of good tidings. But there was no time to celebrate.
“Reef ahead!” Jed shouted.
Alexander curved around a cluster of sharp rocks jutting out of the water ahead and brought the boat toward the beach. The remains of the building she had spotted from the command center wasn’t far, and she could also make out the hull of the wrecked ship.
A burst of machine-gun fire came from the USS Zion as the .50-cals poured tracer rounds into the sky, taking out a vulture that had ventured too close. Having the weapons system back online was another bit of luck that Katrina welcomed.
She turned back to the stern of the Zodiac, energized and ready for the mission. They jolted over the last of the waves and rode the surf in to the beach, where they hit with a grinding slide.
Katrina hopped over the side and grabbed a handle, and the other three divers helped her pull the boat up above the high-tide mark. They dropped it near the edge of the jungle, and Katrina took a moment to get her bearings. Trey was somewhere to the north—not far, judging from the beacon on her map. Maybe not even a mile. Another stroke of luck.
“On me, and watch your step,” Katrina said.
Alexander marched right up, but Vish and Jed both hesitated.
“We’re really going in there?” Vish asked. He tilted his helmet at the fortress of treetops reaching toward the storm clouds. Thunder boomed in the distance as if warning them away.
“You’re welcome to stay and guard our ride out of here,” Alexander said.
Jed cradled his rifle and walked over to Katrina and Alexander. Vish looked over his shoulder at the water, cursed under his breath, and joined them.
Katrina wasted no time setting off into the jungle, stepping over vines that snaked across the dirt. A beetle the size of a rabbit perched on a rock ahead, its chitinous shell reminiscent of the Hive.
The raucous calls of the birds rang out in the distance, but she didn’t spot any in the canopy ahead or perched on the branches around them—perhaps due to the spikes covering the branches. The unwelcoming limbs swayed in the hot breeze.