The floor suddenly lit up like a strobe light. Dozens of lightning flashes created the illusion of an electric ocean.
My God, it’s beautiful, he thought. And deadly, he reminded himself.
Les was close to terminal velocity, somewhere around 170 miles per hour. Even though his last HUD reading showed an ambient temperature of forty-one degrees Fahrenheit, he was sweating. The synthetic layers under his suit were warm, and he had an extra layer of clothes on under those.
His muscles tensed as he hit a pocket of turbulence. For a fleeting moment, he thought he might be able to hold the suicide dive, but the wind took him, cartwheeling his body as if it were the giraffe doll his daughter had given him.
The mouth guard popped out and lay against the inside of his face shield. He flexed his arms back into a hard arch, doing what he was trained to do—fighting his way into a stable free-fall position first, then working his way back into a nosedive.
A voice broke over the speakers, the system flaring back to life suddenly.
“Raptor Two, Three, Four, report…”
It was Michael, but Les couldn’t make out the rest of the transmission.
The battery units of the other divers were about to enter the heart of the storm below. One by one, they vanished into the cloud.
Les was next. His altimeter put him between six thousand and seven thousand feet, which meant the cloud cover would break soon and they would have to pull their chutes.
As he entered the nucleus of the storm, lightning flashed in all directions. The hair on his neck prickled, and he felt hot and cold at the same time.
Five thousand feet. Or was he past that already?
The next few seconds felt as if he were falling through some interdimensional wormhole surrounded by blue. The clouds around him seemed to swirl like a tornadic vortex.
And in a blink, it was all over.
He blasted through the final cloud of the storm, untouched by the lightning. The hair on his neck and arms relaxed, and he blinked as his HUD flickered back on.
Now he knew why Deliverance hadn’t picked up the electromagnetic disturbance. It was just a small rogue pocket, nearly undetectable by their weather sensors.
Voices boomed over the channel.
“We’re off course.”
It was Michael, and then Layla shouted, “Pull west! Pull west!”
Les spotted their battery units, but he still couldn’t see the ground—only a flat black surface.
Wait… Is that…?
The subtly shifting clouds below weren’t clouds at all—they were waves. And to the west—his left—rose a domed building set in the middle of a disk-shaped platform the color of rust. Docks extended from the circular edge, giving it the appearance of a spiked virus shell.
Could this be the Metal Islands?
The ITC military base was unlike anything he had ever seen. Now that he was clear of the storm, he gradually brought his arms out at right angles and spread his legs until he was in stable falling position. Then, turning and extending his legs a bit, he began to work his way toward the other three divers.
Erin was to the far right of Michael and Layla, about two thousand feet away from Les. She must have caught some serious turbulence.
“Raptor Three,” Les said.
She didn’t respond.
“Raptor Three,” he repeated.
After another pause, he yelled, “Erin!”
She continued falling headfirst in a suicide dive.
Les saw then that it wasn’t precisely a suicide dive. Her arms were not tucked against her sides as they should have been.
“Oh, no,” Les mumbled. It wasn’t turbulence that had hit her. She must have been zapped by lightning in the rogue storm pocket.
“Raptor Three, do you copy?” Michael said.
“She’s been hit!” Les said. “I think she’s been hit!”
Michael wasted no time dropping into a nosedive.
“Tin, what are you doing!” Layla yelled.
Les knew exactly what the commander was doing, and it was a long shot. He had little to no chance of catching her and getting his canopy over them before hitting the water.
And chances were that Erin was already dead, although her beacon was still beating.
“Pull your chutes!” Michael yelled at Layla and Les.
Layla ignored the order. Les checked his HUD before grabbing the ripcord.
Michael continued in his suicide dive.
He was really going to try to save her.
“You got fifteen seconds, Raptor One!” Les shouted. He checked the numbers again: four thousand feet and falling at 120 miles an hour. Fifteen seconds was pushing it.
Les reached up and wiped his visor clean of precipitation. Whitecaps extended across his field of vision. But there seemed to be a border to the east. Yes, a big landmass curving across the wide horizon.
Cuba…
Three seconds after Michael had given the order, Les pulled his chute. Layla followed his lead. Their canopies bloomed outward, yanking them back up toward the storm, or so it seemed.
Steering with his toggles, he flew his canopy toward Layla as they neared the DZ. The domed structure rose up at them, and as it came into view, he could see why Katrina had risked the dive despite the storm hazard above.
Several boats were docked at the concrete piers jutting from the sphere.
Cazadores…
Or was this just an old fleet that had never left the island? Perhaps, the defectors mentioned in the video had landed here and killed Dr. Julio Diaz and his team.
They would find out soon enough.
“Michael!” Layla yelled.
Les found the red and blue battery units nearing the surface of the water. Seven seconds into his nosedive, Michael had caught up with her. Extending his arms, he grabbed her, wrapped his legs and arms around her, and then pulled his chute.
The canopy jerked the divers upward.
Les held his breath.
It was a ballsy move, and Michael managed to keep his grip on Erin in the process, but they had only five seconds left for the canopy to slow their speed before they hit the water.
Les and Layla continued to slow their descent, creating more of a gap between themselves and Michael and Erin. Even with the NVG, it was hard to see them.
“Tin!” Layla yelled even louder.
A small splash went up where the two divers hit the water. Les continued steering himself toward a pier extending from the dock but twisted slightly for a better look at the spot where they splashed down.
He spotted flailing arms a moment later, but he had to focus on his landing. Pulling on his toggles to slow his descent, he did the two-stage flare.
It would have worked just fine if the concrete platform weren’t slick with rain. He ran out the momentum for several steps before slipping and falling on his back. He hit hard enough that he felt a little woozy.
Get up, numb-nuts. Get up!
Fighting his way out of his parachute, he unclipped one riser and anchored the chute so it wouldn’t blow away. He glimpsed the ancient ship on his right, and the hull speckled with rust and barnacles.
It could be a Cazador ship for all he knew, or it could just be another artifact from the Old World. He did a quick scan for contacts and, seeing none, hurried over to Layla.
She had landed behind him, closer to the edge of the pier. She was already nearing the water’s edge and screaming for Michael and Erin.
When Les got there, he looked out over the waves but saw only whitecaps.
“Where are they?” Layla asked, frantic.
A hundred meters out, movement caught his eye.