“What kind of weapons?”
Rhino glanced up at the overhead as a vibration rumbled through the vessel.
It sounded to X as if some gigantic monster had woken up angry. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
Stirling turned around, his submachine gun cradled over his armored chest plates. He said something in Spanish, but as Rhino replied, the tremor increased, making the spent bullet casings on the deck jitter audibly.
A whirring like the rush of wind came from above, and X knew exactly what was making the sound: a trap, set by his friends.
“Get out!” he yelled.
Before he could move, a violent quake shook the container ship, and the bulkhead behind him exploded in a wave of fire and shrapnel.
X hit the deck hard and crawled away, watching in horror as another explosion tore through the overhead behind him, crushing Stirling.
As the smoke cleared, X could see the pinned man’s fingers swiping at the air.
“Leave him!” Rhino shouted. “He’s done!”
The hand went limp under the flaming debris, and X stumbled after Rhino. Another blast rocked the ship, and he braced himself against a bulkhead. The vessel heeled steeply to port, and a loud gurgling followed. They were taking on water.
Keeping low, X moved through the smoke. His helmet gave him filtered air, but it did nothing to help him see through the dense cloud.
Rhino staggered through an open hatch and started up a ladder. X pounded up the rungs after him as the ship shuddered again. The impact knocked him down on the next landing and slammed Rhino into the handrail.
A soldier from the other team stood on the ladder overhead, his flashlight angled down at X and Rhino.
“Go!” X said, pushing on Rhino’s wide shoulders.
Reaching the top, the soldier spun the wheel handle and opened the hatch just as an explosion rocked the weather deck. The blast sent him flying backward along with Rhino.
X flattened his body against the bulkhead and shielded his visor from the wave of flames. Heat washed over him in a scalding bath. When it passed, he opened his eyes and looked to the landing below. Rhino used the handrail to pull himself up.
The other man hadn’t been so lucky. He had smashed into the bulkhead, where a steel strut impaled him through the chest.
Rhino gave his dead comrade a passing glance and started back up the ladder. “Keep going, Immortal,” he said.
X led the way this time, bumping off his light as he stepped out onto a deck ablaze with burning debris. Turbofans whirred overhead, and he looked up at a beautiful and terrifying sight.
Deliverance hovered over the water just off the starboard hull.
He ducked as a missile streaked away and slammed into the side of the trawler. Sergeant Lurch and his crew were trying to escape in their boat, but the blast overtook them, lifting the bow into the air.
Tracer rounds ripped across the water, and X turned to see a warship heave into view around the island’s peninsula, machine guns blazing. The rounds cut the men in Lurch’s boat to pieces. One of them made it into the water but went under as more bullets pounded the surface.
Another missile streaked away from the airship and hit the other Cazador ship in the bow hull, opening a gaping rent in the heavy steel plate. On the deck, motion flickered in the barred cages.
X almost felt bad for the beasts trapped inside as they vanished in a fireball that cooked them alive.
Two of the ship’s turrets were still active, and the Cazador soldiers inside cranked their machine guns up toward the airship. The bow turret exploded a second later as the attacking warship turned its guns on the Cazador vessel.
Fires burned all around X, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the battle. His people had finally come, and they were slaughtering the Cazadores.
“Immortal, let’s go!” Rhino yelled.
It was a reminder to X not to appear jubilant over the slaughter. Checking his enthusiasm, he finally forced his gaze away from the battle and ran after the lieutenant. Containers lay on their sides, the burning contents spilled onto the deck.
X jumped over a pile of boxes as the ship heeled farther over. They were taking on water fast.
Out of the corner of his eye, X watched Deliverance slowly rotating. Katrina, or whoever was in command, was preparing to finish the container ship. This wasn’t the first time an airship captain had tried to kill him. This time, at least, they didn’t know he was down here.
Rhino peeled his boots and armor off at the rail, and X followed his lead. He hated to lose the protection, but he didn’t want to meet the Sirens’ fate, as burnt meat on the deck.
“¡Rápido!” yelled the lieutenant.
A missile thumped away from Deliverance as X took off his helmet and breathed in smoky air. His eyes followed the streak to the ship’s stern. The blast lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the rail, knocking the air from his lungs.
Another explosion rocked the vessel, this time knocking him over the side. He flailed for something to grab as he fell, but all he saw was the hull of the rusted ship, and Deliverance hovering overhead.
He smacked into the water, and darkness surrounded him. Swimming hard, he heard containers slide off the tilting deck and splash into the water behind him.
The ocean swallowed the Cazador ship. Rhino swam in a powerful front crawl, putting distance between his body and the suction, but X was too close.
Pulled down by the vortex, he panicked, clawing at the surface.
No! Not like this… Please, not like this!
As he was pulled down farther and farther, he forced himself to relax, as he would in a dive. Fighting would only waste the limited air in his lungs.
The cold, swirling water finally let him go, and he began kicking and pulling toward the sliver of light that seemed impossibly far away. Lungs burning, he fought the growing impulse to breathe while underwater.
At last, unable to fight it any longer, he let out the spent air in his lungs and breathed…
And breathed again. A wave slapped him in the face, and he coughed. The realization hit him: a drowned man didn’t cough. He was alive and afloat—barely.
Above him, the blue flames of Deliverance’s thrusters faded up into the swirling dark clouds as his friends left the scene of devastation they had wrought.
Seeing the airship leave him brought back the painful memory of Hades over a decade earlier, when the Hive, instead of catching his helium balloon and pulling him in, had turned away and left him to the cold emptiness of the sky.
The memory filled him with anger. And it was happening again.
He kicked and pulled and kicked some more, using what strength he had left. If he must die, he would fight every inch of the way.
Gradually, he became aware of Rhino’s voice over the ringing in his ears. The Cazador lieutenant was treading water and pointing at the trawler. The burning mass was still afloat.
Gasping for air, he swam after Rhino, who had almost reached the fishing boat.
But as X swam toward it, he saw that the trawler, too, was sinking. He looked around them for something they could hold on to, but there wasn’t much of anything still afloat.
The Cazador ship they had taken from the Metal Islands had joined the container ship on the ocean floor. Several largish pieces of debris floated in the water, but without the NVGs, he couldn’t make them out.
All he could see was the silhouette of the warship his people had used to ambush the Cazador vessels. Like the airship, it was sailing away from the destruction it had caused. Of the hundred-plus Cazador soldiers who had set out from the Metal Islands, only one remained.
But soon enough, he, too, would be gone, and so would X.