It must have worked, because all five Raptor beacons were still active.
Rodger bent down beside her. “How are they doing?” he asked.
“Good, I think,” she replied. “They’re moving along like nobody’s hurt bad.”
Lightning illuminated the two Cazador climbers. They practically scampered up the crumbly surface. Halfway up the slope, the men reached the first vertical slab of concrete. They threw a rope with a grappling hook over the top.
The crashing waves grew louder, bringing Magnolia to her feet. Ten-footers slapped down on the rocky shore, sending frothy ripples ever closer to the cliffs.
Magnolia gripped her laser rifle and scanned the ocean with her optics, leery of sea monsters that might use the opportunity to ride a wave in and snatch an unwary Cazador. She wiped her visor clean again and slowly scanned the water, finding nothing bigger than a shoal of fingerlings darting en masse this way and that.
Something larger was out there prowling, though. She had seen it on sonar on the way in. And she couldn’t shed the feeling they were being watched from the bluffs.
A voice called out from above. She backed away from the cliff and aimed her rifle at two Cazador helmets looking down. Three ropes snaked over the side and down to the ground.
“I told you,” Alejo said, grabbing one and offering it to Magnolia. “Would you like to go first?”
“I will,” Rodger said. “Let me check it out first, Mags.”
A Cazador started climbing each of the other two ropes, and Rodger took the third. He tried pulling himself up hand over hand, walking his feet up the slab, but his boots skidded down the rock right away.
“Careful,” she said.
He tried again, this time grasping the rope between his ankles, and shinnied upward.
Behind them, the tide kept coming, each new wave sliding farther and farther inland. Magnolia turned back to the water, holding rear guard with the laser rifle.
This time, she saw something under the surface about three hundred meters out. A dorsal fin cut through the water.
She backed away, nearly tripping over a partly exposed iron block that had once been a car engine. Screaming rang out above her as she staggered to regain her balance.
A heavy thump followed, and when she looked over, a Cazador lay at the foot of the cliff. The last few yards of the rope he had been climbing slithered down on top of him.
Normally, such a fall would have killed a man, but the armor had protected him to a degree. Magnolia rushed over.
Rodger had paused two-thirds of the way up, and so had the Cazador on the other remaining rope.
“Keep climbing!” Magnolia shouted.
“¡Sigan!” Alejo yelled.
The man who had fallen lay moaning on the ground. One leg pointed in the wrong direction, and his helmet had cracked open on a rock. Blood leaked onto the wet soil.
Alejo crouched, talking in a hushed voice and holding the soldier’s hand. Then he looked up at General Santiago, who unsheathed his sword and plunged it into the fallen man’s heart.
They dragged his body over to the cliff, out of sight from above.
Magnolia glanced up to the top of the wall, but the Cazador scouts were out of sight. They were going to get a good reaming for not anchoring the rope securely.
Rodger and the Cazador on the other rope made it over the edge, and Magnolia checked the ocean again before slinging her rifle. The large life-form had gone back under, and she didn’t see a reading on her visor.
The encroaching surf lapped nearly to her boots. Turning to the wall, she grabbed the rope.
You got this, Mags.
As she inchwormed her way up the cliff, she tried to make out voices over the waves assaulting the shore. All she could determine was that their speech seemed frantic and faster than normal.
Electricity arced across the skyline, lighting up the swollen, dark clouds. They were moving in fast, dumping more acid rain on the toxic land.
Halfway up the wall, Magnolia looked down at General Santiago. Still banged up from the fight with the oil serpents back at the fuel station, he climbed slowly. He would get to the top, though, she had no doubt.
Below her, the surf lapped around the body of the fallen Cazador. When she looked again, the waves had lifted the body and slapped it against the wall. The crunch of armor against the rock spurred her on, as if she needed an incentive to avoid the Cazador’s fate.
As she neared the top, Rodger reached down to grab her by the armor. She scrambled over the ledge and followed him to a brick wall.
Several Cazadores huddled around a helmet on the ground, but she didn’t see a body. The rest of the soldiers had fanned out, pointing weapons out at the black terrain and the fog masking much of the city.
Rodger motioned for her to follow him over to the stacked slabs of a collapsed parking structure. Lieutenant Alejo crouched there, talking to several of his men. One of them held up a frayed end of rope.
The pieces of the puzzle started coming together.
Their rope hadn’t snapped or come untied. It was slashed, and whoever did it had taken the two scouts into the fog.
She unslung her rifle and brought it up, scanning the wastes. Behind the ruined structures and sunken streets, the purple and red flora pulsated, adding its glow to the wrecked cityscape. But there was no sign of any living creatures out there, nothing moving or howling in the silences between thunderclaps.
But for the bloody helmet a few feet away, she might have thought the two scouts had vanished into thin air. Whatever monster had taken them was long gone now, leaving behind no spoor of blood or tracks other than the helmet.
Rodger was lucky he hadn’t fallen to his death too. She patted him on the shoulder as they looked out over the city. Storm clouds rolled in over the fog-shrouded devastation, and with the clouds came a dazzling display of lightning.
Alejo crouch-walked over to Magnolia and handed her the frayed rope.
“It’s happening again,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Cazadores are being hunted.”
TWENTY-TWO
The wind howled outside the abandoned factory. The toxic monsoon pounded the roof, and lightning cracked in all directions. Water dripped from a hole in the ceiling to form a growing puddle behind a metal desk.
Traveling now was too dangerous, and Michael had ordered his team to find shelter until it let up. Outside the dark room, Edgar and Alexander stood sentry on the mezzanine. The other divers used the time to check their gear and study their digital maps. According to Michael’s wrist monitor, Cricket was off the grid, which meant it had either perished at the hands of the Sirens or was simply too far out to get a signal.
He prayed it was the latter.
The robot had become like a friend, if such a thing was possible, and it had saved their lives at the sinkhole. Some quick thinking by Captain Mitchells and Timothy had also helped, but Michael feared it had meant the end for poor Cricket.
“We’re pretty close to the target,” Sofia said. She took a seat on an I-beam next to Michael. Arlo joined them. His hands were shaking. He shoved them in his pockets, but Michael already knew how scared the young diver was.
“Magnolia and her team are hunkering down, too,” Michael said. He punched his cracked wrist computer screen, bringing up their location. “Still three miles to our south.”
Sofia looked at the ceiling.
Michael couldn’t help feeling that they were wasting time, but going outside in the driving rain was an even greater risk than the lightning. Moving over to a shuttered window, he squatted down to look through a crack in the iron hatch that someone had installed after the war. The brass casings and the bullet holes in the walls led him to believe that people had used this place as a hiding spot centuries ago.