X looked at his dog one last time and pointed his spear at Brett. “Not a scratch!” X shouted.
Brett raised a hand in acknowledgment.
A line had formed at the two ladders leading to the boats below. X got behind Magnolia and Rodger while Ton and Victor slung rifles and traded their spears for cutlasses.
X had a blaster, a .357 Magnum revolver, his captain’s sword, and the half spear attached to his arm. The other half of Rhino’s spear was sheathed over his shoulder.
“Let’s go!” Rodger yelled.
Several Barracudas waiting to climb down turned toward him.
X pulled Rodger aside.
“Hey!” Rodger protested.
“Cool it, man,” X said. “I know what you’ve lost, but no one should be eager to kill for revenge. It results in bad decisions, trust me.”
“Every man is different,” Rodger replied coldly. “You should know that better than anyone.”
He returned to the line behind Magnolia. She looked at X before carefully slipping her helmet over her bandaged head.
It wasn’t just Brett who had an attitude.
Rodger was losing his cool and putting them all at risk. X was starting to regret bringing him along, but the sneaky diver was known to stow away on ships, and he would have found a way out here regardless.
X climbed down with Ton and Victor to one of the boats. Rodger and Magnolia got into another.
For a fleeting moment, X considered yanking Rodger and locking him in the brig until he got his head on straight. But he didn’t get the chance.
Mac swirled his finger through the air, telling the pilots to start their engines. The two sleek boats sped away from the warship.
General Forge remained on the deck. He held up a cutlass and yelled at the departing boats.
“What’s he saying?” X asked Mac.
“We have the Octopus Lords on our side,” he replied. “Victory is ours for the taking.”
X raised his spear arm to the general before turning back to the bow. They thumped over the waves for the next twenty minutes, beating around to the other side of the island, where they would beach and trek in.
Lightning streaks provided an almost constant blue glow over the water, and not long into the ride, a soldier spotted the landmass. Felipe handed X a pair of binoculars. Through them, he could see a shoreline of sandy beaches.
The recon boats rode the waves staggered in a combat interval. The black vessels would be almost invisible to the naked eye, and the lightweight fiberglass hulls would help keep them off radar.
They slowed on the approach to shore.
Nature had retaken this area, with thick jungles growing to the high-tide boundary. X scanned with his NVGs for several moments but saw nothing moving in the underbrush or around the trunks of trees.
The canopy towered over the shoreline, some of the mutant palms leaning over the sand. Victor pointed his rifle at the beach, and X brought up the binos again.
A pole stuck out of the ground, a skull mounted on top.
The sight didn’t seem to bother Mac. He motioned for the teams to beach. As soon as the boats hit solid land, the warriors jumped out and pulled them up.
X noticed several more shriveled heads and skulls on spikes farther down the beach. While the other soldiers worked to cover their landing, he went to the nearest spike.
Magnolia joined him to examine the egg-shaped head without eye sockets.
“It’s a Siren,” she said.
“Lovely,” X said.
Behind them, several soldiers used palm fronds to sweep the tracks away, leaving no trace of their landing. Once the boats were securely stashed under camouflaged tarps, the two strike teams set off into the jungle.
Felipe and another soldier, both with mine sensors, took point. They moved quickly but cautiously, trying not to disturb any of the underbrush. Several Barracudas used their machetes to hack away the poisonous plants and open a doorway for the teams.
X used his captain’s sword and his spear to push away limbs covered in pine cone–like growths. Several burst, covering his blade in goo that stretched into a web.
The Cazadores worked their way through the foliage, hardly making a sound despite their bulky armor. It was all too reminiscent of his first mission with the Barracudas, almost a year ago, when he was not their leader but a prisoner.
Only Rhino, Wendig, and X had survived the journey. The two warriors would live on in his mind as long as he drew breath.
Mac stopped ahead and held up his prosthetic hand. A cawing sound echoed through the canopies as a bird with a beak the size of its head took flight.
The teams pushed onward, fanning out and navigating the dangerous passage with the two mine detectors on point. X ducked a branch covered in spikes.
Magnolia kept to the right, using her curved blades to plow the way for Rodger. The jungle gave way to a clearing where the Barracudas had taken up positions behind boulders covered in bird guano.
X joined her and Rodger at the low rocky escarpment bordering an open field that separated them from the oil refinery and ruined old-world resorts. Patches of weeds grew out of dirt blanketed in gray ash.
Wind turbines two hundred feet tall, stained mostly black with time, stood like giant sentinels. Several of the blades had broken off over the years, and one stuck out of the ground like a massive spearhead.
X noticed several skeletal objects that looked almost like huge insects clinging to some of the poles. More hung from the turbine blades, as if they had been caught in a spider’s web.
Mac ignored these, also. He gave Felipe and the other point man the signal to advance. They set off first, swinging their elongated mine detectors with a ten-foot range.
Once they reached the turbines, Mac sent the next group.
The divers’ and the Barracudas’ matte-gray armor matched the color of the ash, but X worried about their tracks.
Glancing behind them, he saw no way to avoid leaving evidence without taking extraordinary measures. The Barracudas didn’t bother trying to erase the tracks as they had on the beach.
Next, Mac gestured to X. Ton and Victor went ahead of him, their round shields slung over their backs, rifles up.
X sheathed his sword and held his blaster in his left hand. He couldn’t fire a rifle accurately anymore, but with a blaster, he just needed to aim in the enemy’s general direction and pull the trigger.
He took another look at insect remains or whatever was clinging to the poles. Coming closer, he realized they weren’t mutant bugs, but human skeletons. And maybe some Siren. The brooding turbines were like massive scarecrows to scare off man and monster, using corpses of the skinwalkers’ victims.
But the Barracudas weren’t deterred, and neither was Magnolia. She was the first of the three divers to reach one of the turbines. Mac got there next and raised his fist. The Barracudas crouched in the field, keeping low. X did the same thing, and Rodger followed suit.
After a brief conversation with Mac, Felipe took off toward the next landmark between the teams and the target—a row of silos and shipping containers.
Using his mine sensor, he cleared a path there, stopping several times to flag mines. General Forge had mentioned the possibility, but their presence still made X uneasy.
Felipe finished his sweep and vanished into the maze of structures. He returned a few minutes later, running in a low crouch.
Mac spoke to the young warrior, then came back to X.
“Felipe says the area is clear,” he said, “but we have to move through those silos to get to the buildings. From there, we should be able to see the harbor and the outpost. You might want to hang back a bit, King—”
“Forget it. I’m coming.”