“What is it with you people?” he asked.
“What people would that be, Doc?”
“Hell Divers. You’re all the same. You think you’re invincible. Well, I can tell you, you’re not.”
“One of us is.”
“No. X almost died because he didn’t listen to my orders about staying in bed.”
“But he didn’t die, did he?”
Huff let out a sigh of frustration. “I give up.” He walked over to a table and returned with a mirror.
“If you won’t take my word for how badly you’re injured, take a look for yourself,” he said. “Now, sit.”
Magnolia sat on a doctor’s stool and held the mirror up while he carefully unwrapped her head. The first few winds didn’t hurt, but he stopped when she was almost unbandaged.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
“Then get it over with.”
He unraveled the bandage one last time, then peeled the dressing away from her scalp. She gritted her teeth and took the pain. Then she held the mirror up and turned her head.
The entire right side of her scalp and her right ear were burned away, leaving gooey flesh that was covered in the gray gel. Horrified, she just stared.
“You’re not howling in agony now only because of the pain med in your saline solution, and the nanotech gel that’s speeding up the healing process,” Huff said. “But you’re still at high risk for infection.”
She held the mirror there, studying the wound.
“The ruptured eardrum is essentially a tear in the thin tissue that separates your ear canal from your middle ear,” he said. “I’ve tried to get some of the nanotech gel inside, but I’m not sure it’s going to work.”
Magnolia turned her head more, looking out the corner of her eye.
“X insisted that I keep you in bed and watch you, so you can heal,” Huff said. “Those bandages need to be changed multiple times a day…”
She lowered the mirror when she saw a flash of black armor outside the medical ward. The militia soldier standing guard suddenly ran away with another guard who had just arrived.
“X didn’t have time to heal, and I don’t, either,” she said.
Magnolia handed the mirror back to the doctor, and wrapped the bandage around her head as she hurried out of the ward.
“You Hell Divers are all insane!” Huff called out after her. “Do you hear me?”
Magnolia heard him, and of course he was right. The best Hell Divers were the crazy ones. And she was proud to be one of the craziest in the ranks.
A group of divers and support staff had gathered inside the marina under the capitol tower. X stood with them, anxious to join them in the air and search for the skinwalkers. Having a mission to focus on helped keep his mind off all the people he had lost.
But the losses were not far from his mind. And his heart.
Torches cast a glow over the freshly painted hang gliders pulled from storage on another rig hours earlier. With all the mechanics, engineers, and technicians busy working on Discovery, the divers had to do most of the work.
But most of them had come from other fields such as engineering, and some, like Michael, knew their way around equipment and machines. The young commander of Team Raptor finished applying a synthetic wrap around the aluminum-alloy poles of a glider’s control frame. Apparently, it would help lessen the risk of lightning strikes. A few feet away, Sofia was securing her booster pack to the control frame of her glider.
Two militia soldiers laid out submachine guns, extra magazines, pistols, and flares.
Ton and Victor finished tying the camouflage tarps on a fiberglass boat that would be almost invisible to any skinwalker subs still prowling. Mac and Felipe helped with the tarps on another boat. After working all day with Colonel Forge and Sergeant Wynn to scour the rigs for hostiles, they were now joining the mission to launch the divers. It was a coordinated effort between sky people and the many Cazadores who had rallied after the skinwalkers’ attack.
Even Pedro, leader of the survivors from Rio de Janeiro, had come to help. While he couldn’t pilot a boat, he was armed and could fight.
X chugged the rest of a disgusting beverage more potent than the shine Marv used to pour at the Wingman. The liquid running down his throat wasn’t alcohol, though. It was a Cazador cocktail of thick fruit juice infused with electrolytes and a special ingredient that they claimed would give him energy.
He still wasn’t even close to normal, but he wasn’t hungover, and the phantom pains where his arm had been were manageable tonight. It was his heart that hurt the most.
After finishing off the bottle of nutrients, X walked with Miles over to the divers. Michael, Rodger, Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar were the veterans of the group. They worked on their rigs quickly and efficiently, showing no sign of pain.
It wasn’t physical injuries that had X worried. Rodger had just lost his parents, but he insisted on going. And the truth was, they needed every single diver in the air.
Ted and Lena had finished rigging their hang gliders and were checking their armor and suits. Hector and Alberto were also flying tonight.
X didn’t trust any of the other rookies for a mission as tricky as this, but these four had enough experience under canopy that they should be able to figure out the gliders. He was more worried about himself. If anyone was going to have a problem up there, it was X, who had only one arm to steer with.
“Boats are ready,” boomed Mac.
“We’re good to go,” Michael said.
“All right, gather around,” X said. “We don’t have much time. The plan is simple. We take boats out under cover of darkness, use our boosters to get into the sky, and start the search in the storms.”
He gestured to Pedro and the Barracudas. “Our friends here will wait on the boats during our search. They will keep an eye on our beacons, and if you spot Raven’s Claw, you simply tap your wrist monitor to indicate hostiles.”
Michael held up his wrist monitor and tapped the screen to demonstrate. Then he said, “I’ve analyzed the area Cricket has searched so far. I’ll upload that to our HUDs and then program the computer to assign us all grids that haven’t been searched already.”
“Good,” X replied. “Sergeant Wynn and Colonel Forge will be patrolling to guard our home while we work. Once we find Raven’s Claw, we will relay the coordinates to our fleet.”
“And the cavalry will charge,” Mac said.
“Okay, then, let’s get to it,” X said.
The divers picked up their hang gliders and took them to their assigned boats.
X put his left hand on the wing of Rodger’s glider. “You sure you’re up for this, Rodge?” he asked.
All trace of Rodger’s usual jocularity was gone. “Sir,” he said, “my parents are dead, and I’m damned if I’ll sit here and wait for you all to find their killers.”
“You’re not going alone.”
Both men turned toward the hatch that led into a stairwell. Magnolia stood there in armor still covered with ash. A bullet had dented the upper chest piece.
“Mags, you—” X began to say.
“Save it, sir,” she said, working the helmet carefully over her bandaged head. “You have no room to talk on this subject.”
X grumbled under his breath. He hated when Magnolia made him look like an idiot just by being right.
She walked over and gave Rodger a hug as X decided to let it go. She was needed in the sky, and he wasn’t going to tell her no when she wouldn’t listen anyway.
The divers and support team loaded up the boats with gear. X holstered a pistol while the other divers grabbed assault rifles. Michael took one of the two remaining laser rifles.
“Let’s move out!” X shouted.