“How have we never discovered these ships before?” she whispered.
The answer was simple. The Hive had never come this far before, and radio transmissions from the surface would likely have been blocked by the electrical storms anyway. It staggered her that people had been living down here all this time. She just wished they were a nicer sort of people.
Using the binoculars, she continued scanning the decks and counted ten soldiers. Another two stood in an operations tower with glass windows.
Her team was definitely outnumbered, but she had weapons to even the playing field if she decided to attack.
“We can take them, Captain,” Trey said.
She turned to look at the youth. Did he know the sort of violence he was suggesting?
“You’ve never killed a man, Trey,” she said. “It’s not as easy as you think, even when you have hate burning in your soul.”
“All due respect, Captain, but it’s us or them, and I’m ready to make sure it’s them.”
Alexander massaged the stubble on his chin. “I was an enforcer in the militia for the past two decades, and the most dangerous times were when I didn’t know what I was up against.” He pointed to the ships. “We have no idea what’s below those decks.”
“He’s right,” Katrina said. “There could be a hundred soldiers down there. We can’t just board and try to take them out.”
Trey backed off the idea, then brightened. “Why not just sink the damn thing, then, and salvage whatever doesn’t sink? The fewer Cazadores, the better.”
Before Katrina had a chance to respond, Eevi called out from the bridge.
“Captain, there are two smaller vessels moving around the south side of the island, coming this way. Just picked them up on radar.”
“Get on those weapons,” Katrina said to Alexander. “Trey, follow me. Everyone else, stay off the comms.”
They scurried down the ladder to the bridge, where Sandy and Edgar stood at separate stations, monitoring screens of data.
“Are those really Cazadores?” Sandy asked.
There was no fear in her voice, but something else that Katrina knew welclass="underline" anger.
“Yes, get battle ready just in case they spot us,” Katrina said. “I want everyone in armor and carrying a rifle.”
She grabbed her helmet from the captain’s chair and strapped it on, then took the laser rifle from her pack and followed Eevi out onto the weather deck.
The rain had stopped, but lightning flashed across the horizon. As her optics came online, she detected movement to the south. Two smaller vessels, carrying mounted riders, sped over the water. She had seen these little open boats in an old-world magazine. Called WaveRunners, they were fast and agile.
Katrina ran along the rail toward the ship’s bow. The enclosed MK-65 turret and two of the .50-caliber machine guns were already trained on the oncoming boats.
She brought the binos back up to her visor and centered them on the enemy. The riders hugged the WaveRunners as they curved around the peninsula. In a few moments, they would be able to see the dark bulk of the USS Zion in the bay, if they hadn’t already.
Her binoculars showed the small craft and the riders in detail now. Both men were fully armored and wore large backpacks. They had weapons and other gear strapped to their boats.
Katrina caught herself holding her breath as the scouts navigated a shallow area where jagged rocks stuck up like teeth through the waves. The riders appeared to be experts, weaving in and around the minefield.
Instead of taking a right into the bay, they kept their heading, speeding away from the peninsula and out into open water. Neither man took a backward glance. If they weren’t wearing night-vision goggles, it was quite possible they hadn’t seen the stealth warship sitting in the bay.
She lowered the binos and relaxed a degree.
The comms crackled, and she flinched at the break in radio silence.
“Captain, we have two more contacts to the north,” Eevi said.
Katrina ran to the starboard side of the ship and looked out over the bay. Two more WaveRunners had flanked the USS Zion, and these riders had definitely spotted it. They sat on their vessels, bobbing in the water, binoculars pushed up to their goggles.
The .50-caliber machine gun mounted to her right swung toward the two WaveRunners.
“Alexander, hold your fire,” she said over the comms.
The riders began to turn their vessels. She shouldered her laser rifle, lining up the iron sights. Before the WaveRunners could pick up speed, she pulled the trigger. A bolt flashed over the water and hit the back of the first vessel.
The explosion blasted the rider straight up, his body flaming. The second WaveRunner skimmed away over the waves at full throttle.
The blast had likely given away their location, so Katrina decided not to waste another precious bolt from the laser rifle.
“Take him out, Alexander,” she ordered over the comm.
She stepped back as the .50-caliber rattled to life, raining brass on the deck. The WaveRunner jolted over the surface, picking up speed as the rider tried to escape. He swerved left, then jerked to the right before the little craft exploded in flames.
“Nice shooting,” she said.
Smoke trailed away from the destroyed boats. Katrina brought the binos back up to check the first two WaveRunners. They had changed course and were already two-thirds of the way back to the container ship, which continued to sail away, leaving a long wake. The fishing boat didn’t seem to be slowing down, either.
Maybe they hadn’t heard the gunshots.
Katrina moved back to the bridge, where most of her crew remained at their stations. She checked the radar for any sign of other boats leaving the container ship. It appeared they had lucked out for now. But the cannibal warriors would likely turn around when they realized they were missing two WaveRunners. And when that happened, the Hell Divers would be ready for them.
THIRTEEN
Les stared at the dark water. This wasn’t his first dip in the ocean at Red Sphere. But the other time was to save Michael, and he really, really didn’t want to dive into that murk again.
Most of the Hell Divers had learned to swim in a small decommissioned pool in the Hive’s water treatment facility. It was part of the training since some missions required a diver to swim. But he didn’t have the hours under his belt and was one of the weakest swimmers of the group.
Layla, on the other hand, was a strong swimmer, and he was glad she had the lead on this mission. The rope clipped to her belt had allowed them to pull her back to the pier when she discovered that the tunnel Dr. Julio Diaz used to escape Red Sphere was flooded.
She emerged from her fourth dive ten minutes after vanishing into the ocean. This time, she was wearing her armor and helmet so she could breathe inside the tunnel.
Working together, Les and Michael pulled her back toward the surface. It was tough work, especially for Michael, who had only one hand to lend, but after several minutes of hauling on what felt like a massive anchor, her helmet finally broke the choppy surface.
She climbed onto the pier and sat there while all three of them caught their breath.
“You okay?” Michael asked.
A nod.
“It’s a twenty-minute journey through that tunnel, to a hatch that leads into the facility,” she said. “I fixed the second rope to guide us.”
Les cringed at the thought of swimming down the long, narrow passage, even with a rope to guide him, but he didn’t protest.
“Tin’s going to take longer,” she said, “but the hour of reserve oxygen in our helmets should give us plenty of time. The hard part will be right after you jump in, which is the other reason I rigged that rope.”