Magnolia used the distraction to tell Rodger to get ready to run. He nodded back, but Alejo shook his head.
“You won’t make it,” he said.
“We have to try.”
The dying Siren somehow managed to push itself up on the sidewalk. Six arrows stuck out of the wrinkled flesh. Two skinwalkers ran over with swords drawn.
The beast slashed at the air, but one of the men cut the taloned hand off, and the two went to work, stabbing until it finally stopped moving.
The general slashed at Horn, who brought up his axes together, deflecting the blade and pushing Santiago backward several feet.
Horn then swung with his right axe, very nearly slicing Santiago across the gut. Old but still agile, the general back-stepped, following with a jab to the face. But his adversary twisted, and the horn cresting his helmet deflected the thrust.
The miss knocked Santiago off-kilter, and he staggered, allowing an opening. This time, the axe got through, crunching into his ribs. The general screamed in pain as Horn yanked the blade free.
Santiago bent over, gripping the gushing wound.
The other skinwalkers looked at the sky and streets for hostiles, knowing that the scent of fresh blood would draw them.
This was Magnolia’s chance. “Rodger, now!” she said.
Scooping up her rifle, she got off two quick bolts, through the chests of both distracted soldiers on their flanks. Then she grabbed Alejo and helped him to his feet. He pulled a pistol and fired, dropping a bowman.
One of the faster skinwalkers let an arrow fly. Alejo stumbled behind Magnolia from a bolt to his side. He took down the shooter with his pistol and then looked over at Magnolia as several arrows cut the air between them.
“run!” he shouted.
Two more arrows hit him in the chest, and another went through his thigh. He went down on one knee, screaming a war cry.
Magnolia dashed after Rodger while looking over her shoulder. Lieutenant Alejo killed two more of Horn’s men before they finally brought him down. It took seven arrows to finish him off.
A last glance over her shoulder showed Santiago on his knees, gripping his bleeding side. Horn brought up both axes to finish the last of the Cazadores who had sailed with the sky people.
Arrows hissed past her and Rodger as they zigzagged toward the vines. They were almost there, but any second now, she would feel the inevitable stab. Even if the bolt didn’t kill her right away, the tear in her suit would.
She gritted her teeth and prepared to jump. Rodger tripped on a vine, falling just as an arrow streaked over him.
Magnolia reached down to help him, firing the laser rifle for cover. A skinwalker went down from a blast to the face, but the others closed in with their bows.
In a stolen moment, she saw Santiago’s slumping headless body, with twin geysers of blood jetting out of the neck.
Horn raised a bloody axe in the air, then pointed it at Magnolia and Rodger. She grabbed his hand and pulled him up. As they stumbled for cover, a flash came out of the sky.
Then a second flash.
Behind the skinwalkers, a projectile detonated, blowing pieces of two men skyward.
Using the brief window, the two divers hopped over a thick braid of vines and into the hole. Rodger skidded down the side, screaming all the way down, while Magnolia ducked behind the wall of flora and fired her laser rifle at the two men pursuing them.
Both went down with smoking holes through their torsos.
“Mags!” Rodger called out from the bottom of the hole.
The skinwalkers took off in all directions as the divers’ savior swooped down, firing a blaster and a grenade launcher.
It wasn’t Discovery coming to their aid—it was Cricket.
The little Hell Diver was doing what Team Raptor and the Cazadores couldn’t do. It was killing the killers.
TWENTY-SIX
“Vargas is going to see his whore in an hour,” Rhino said. “Mac says his advance team of Praetorian Guards is already at the rig.”
X stared at the radio equipment in the command center, his hands shaking. The news of their good luck with Vargas did nothing to lighten the weight of the news he had just heard from Captain Mitchells.
“King Xavier, this is our chance,” Rhino said. “Mac and Felipe are in the port, waiting for us in a boat.”
“Better come inside,” Sloan said.
“What’s going on?” Rhino asked.
She shut the door behind him. “We just got a message from Discovery,” she said.
“Shit. It’s bad, isn’t it?”
X got up from the chair facing the bank of radio equipment. He looked down at Miles, who looked back at him with eyes clouded by cataracts. The dog’s tail thumped against the floor, anticipating a belly rub or perhaps a treat. He had no idea what had happened, but his tail went still.
“It’s okay, buddy,” X said. He gave the dog a piece of fish jerky and leaned down to look at the maps of Rio de Janeiro, the Iron Reef outpost in Belize, and Outrider, the colony the Cazadores had abandoned thirty years ago—the place where Horn had apparently spent the past few years preparing to retake his throne.
“King Xavier, what’s happened?” Rhino asked, his voice tense with worry.
“The mission has failed,” X said. “We’ve lost half the divers.”
“Sofia,” Rhino said, stepping closer.
X could see the dread in his general’s face. “She’s still alive,” he said.
“Thank the Octopus Gods.”
“Don’t thank them yet,” Sloan said.
“The Cazadores are dead,” X said. “All of them, as far as we know. Killed by Horn and his skinwalkers.”
“Horn?” Rhino took a shaky breath and let it out. “The skinwalkers are there?”
X nodded. “Captain Mitchells saw them on the drone footage.”
“General Santiago…”
“Dead.”
Something seemed to shift in Rhino. “Then there is no time to waste,” he said. “We must strike Vargas today.”
“Hold up, big guy,” Sloan said. “I want to know how Horn knew about our mission.”
X looked to the radio equipment. “He must have been listening to our transmissions. First to the fuel outpost, then to the bunker.”
“But they were encrypted,” Sloan said.
X slapped himself on the forehead. “Yes, but the response from the bunker wasn’t. And to have known about the fuel outpost, he must be tapped into the Cazador channels.”
“Horn and his demon men,” Rhino said. “Traitorous filth.”
“Could they be working with the Black Order?” X asked.
Rhino pulled on his nose ring. “Possibly, but—”
“I doubt Vargas or anyone else in the Black Order has cracked our encrypted channel with Discovery,” said Sloan, “but if they have, they’ll know soon what happened. You were both right. We must act now.”
X walked over to the locker and took off his white T-shirt, trading it for a brown robe that went over his shorts. Then he grabbed his duty belt of weapons and finally his sword.
Sloan said, “If Colonel Vargas and his pals don’t know yet what’s happened out there, they will when the airship returns without any Cazadores aboard.”
“There isn’t a single Cazador survivor?” Rhino asked.
“No, but that could actually help us after we kill Vargas,” X said. “I’ll have video footage to prove to the Black Order that the skinwalkers, not us, killed General Santiago.”
X finished securing his gear and weapons.
“Maybe you should let us handle this, King Xavier,” Rhino said.
“Big guy’s right,” Sloan said. “You shouldn’t be seen.”
X flipped the hood over his freshly buzzed head. “I won’t be seen,” he said. “Just look after Miles while I’m gone, Lieutenant. Okay?”