They shot through the cold mattress of dense cloud cover like bullets through smoke. Michael shifted his gaze back to his HUD to check the DZ Timothy had selected.
The teams were already down to twelve thousand feet. At this speed, they would be on the ground in five minutes or less.
Michael rocketed through the billowy clouds. The beacons of the other divers blinked on his HUD.
As they neared the surface, the cloud cover lightened. At eight thousand feet, it was thin enough that he saw light in the east.
He bumped off his night-vision goggles and focused on a patch of pulsating red and purple much like what he had seen on the dive into Rio de Janeiro. It had to be the jungles they had seen via Cricket’s feed.
Les emerged on his left, still in a nosedive like Michael. A side glance confirmed that Sofia had also caught up to them. The other divers were still five hundred to a thousand feet higher.
The floor of black turned white as they neared a new cloud layer.
The easy dive was suddenly shaken up by a pocket of turbulence. Michael almost hit Sofia but managed to move away before he clipped her.
A scream sounded somewhere above—a male voice, probably Arlo.
The teams were all over the place in the clouds. For five seconds, Michael spun out of control. Then he suddenly burst through the bottom of the clouds.
Making a hard arch, he then pulled back into stable position and saw that Sofia had done the same thing. She was a natural. It took Les a bit longer to get his long frame into a stable fall.
Glancing up, Michael searched for the other divers using his NVGs.
Hector burst through the clouds next, cartwheeling. Ted and Arlo weren’t in much better shape, but both Lena and Edgar had managed to regain control of their fall.
At five thousand feet, Ted and Arlo didn’t have much time to get back into stable position.
Come on, Michael thought. You can do this.
The young men battled their way out of their spins and got back into nosedives. That left Hector. He seemed almost limp.
Had someone hit him and knocked him out?
Michael didn’t want to break radio silence to find out. He tried to slow his speed and make his way over to Hector. It was terribly dangerous to approach the spinning Cazador, but Michael wasn’t about to lose a member of Team Raptor.
At two thousand feet, Michael made his move. He grabbed Hector, trying to push him into a stable position. It didn’t work and almost knocked Michael out of his dive.
“Hector!” Michael yelled.
The diver didn’t respond.
Michael went back in again for one last attempt. That was when he saw Hector’s open face shield. Frozen eyelashes hung over his closed eyes, and his lips were dark.
What the hell…
Michael had no idea how the visor had opened, but he had heard about this happening on a long-ago dive. The poor bastard had probably died of asphyxia during the first minute, when his face froze from the thirty-below air at a hundred miles per hour.
A glance down revealed the first look at the desertlike terrain of the surface. The other divers had already pulled their chutes above the DZ.
At a thousand feet, Michael had to make one of the hardest decisions of his career. He pulled away from Hector, knowing there was nothing he could to do for him now.
Then he pulled his own chute, and the suspension lines came taut. He grabbed the toggles and looked down, his breath catching when he saw a diver right in Hector’s path.
“Lena!” Michael shouted.
He couldn’t tell whether she heard him, because her canopy blocked his view. He flinched as Hector’s body slammed into her chute, collapsing the two leftmost cells and sending her careening out of control.
The ground rose up to meet the divers—only seconds from touchdown for those with canopies, but it was the end for Hector. He frapped into the earth.
Michael tried to focus past the devastating loss. Lena was still in trouble, and they were almost on the ground in hostile territory.
The DZ was in a mile-long valley with jungle growing around the rim. Steep cliffs blocked much of the access, but he spotted the path out that Timothy had plotted on their minimaps.
Lena swung around using her toggles and finally managed to get control. One by one, the other divers performed two-stage flares and stepped out of the sky.
Arlo and Ted both crumpled after running a few strides, but Sofia and Les landed gracefully. Lena hit hardest, crashing and tumbling.
Michael managed to stay on his feet and ran out the momentum. He crouched down, released his chute and packed it down, and scanned for hostiles.
Edgar was the last down. He collapsed his chute and raised the sniper rifle, ready to fire on any machines waiting for them.
The team packed their chutes quickly. Edgar got to Lena first. She gripped her ankle, grunting in pain.
Michael trotted over. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Lena said.
“We need to move,” Les said, crouching. “Can you walk?”
Edgar helped her to her feet. She yelped when she weighted the sprain.
Les looked to Michael but didn’t say a word. They both knew she would slow them down.
“What happened to Hector?” she mumbled.
Then she saw Sofia, kneeling by the body. Only the armor and jumpsuit held it in a recognizably human shape.
“It was his visor,” Michael said. “Somehow, it opened during the dive.”
“At least he didn’t suffer,” Arlo said.
Michael didn’t want to tell him the truth: that for an agonizing minute or more, Hector had likely suffered far more than if he had just crashed into the ground. And screaming would have made it worse, sucking freezing air into his lungs.
“What do we do with him?” Ted asked.
“Grab his vital gear and ammunition,” Les said. “Then bury him.”
The divers worked quickly, digging a shallow grave and covering the dead Cazador with dirt while Edgar held security with the sniper rifle.
When they finished, they each put a hand on the mound of dirt and whispered a few words.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said when it was his turn.
Les motioned for the teams to move out.
“Michael, you’re on point with Edgar,” he said. “Ted, Arlo, you got rear guard. We don’t stop until we get out of this valley.”
The divers moved out in combat intervals, navigating the foreign landscape cautiously but fast along a creek that flowed through the valley. Leafy mutant flora grew along the banks.
Michael kept the laser rifle shouldered, using his infrared optics to scan for life. Nothing bigger than a rabbit showed.
He stopped at the edge of the creek. The fast-flowing water was clear, nothing like the swamp murk he was used to seeing on dives. He tapped his wrist computer. The temperature was sixty degrees, and the air was free of radiation. It was one of the cleanest green zones he had ever dived.
Michael set off toward a creek bank of rounded river rocks, his boots sloshing in the ankle-deep water. The path out of the valley was just a quarter-mile north.
The team crossed two at a time, with Edgar supporting Lena.
Michael took cover behind a boulder, aiming his rifle at the distant cliffs and scanning for machines. Lightning fired from the belly of a cloud.
Thunder clapped a few seconds later.
The team joined him at the rocks, where Michael guided them toward a stand of trees.
Another thunderclap echoed through the darkness. This one didn’t fade away.
Michael halted, straining his ears.
A rumbling noise sounded in the distance. Here in the valley, it was difficult to gauge the direction.
He flashed signals toward the trees, and the team took off for cover. Edgar slung his rifle, picked Lena up, and ran with her.