When it came, what she saw in those split seconds was unlike any ship she had seen in the Cazador fleet. It had a landing strip like the old-world aircraft carriers she had seen in photos.
But that made no sense. She had never seen this ship in their fleet when she arrived at the islands, nor did she know of an aircraft carrier at any of their outposts.
Ada scoped the horizon again, looking for aircraft, but in the next flash, she saw nothing on the runway. That didn’t mean there were none belowdecks.
She swallowed at the implications. If this was a craft X didn’t know of, it could very well be a serious threat to her people. There was only one way to find out: get closer.
With only a few hours before she reached the barrier, she must act fast.
Returning to the cabin, she moved quietly past the sleeping Jo-Jo and sat at the controls. After a few false starts, she managed to raise the secondary sails.
The wind caught in them, and as the sailboat picked up speed, she guided it northeastward, away from the storm.
For the next half hour, she waited belowdecks, eyes fixed to the porthole. The ship seemed to be growing in size.
But how?
The sailboat had already made up so much ground that…
“Shit!” she shouted.
The sailors must have spotted her boat.
She hurried back toward the hatch, scaring Jo-Jo off the bunk.
“Stay put!” Ada yelled.
Grabbing her rifle in one hand, she opened the hatch, then shut it behind her to seal the monkey inside. She climbed up to the deck above the cabin, with a round chambered.
The rain slanted down in sheets now.
She trained the rifle scope on the ship and groaned with relief—it wasn’t turning.
Ada steered away, then raised her scope again. She was so close, in the lightning’s glow she could see small figures moving on the deck. The scope went dark, and she waited for the next strikes to show her who these sailors were.
An overhead bolt lit up the deck, and she spotted several armored figures. But something about them was off.
The view darkened. Ada cursed as her boat dropped farther away.
Holding the scope as steady as she could on the heaving sea, she glimpsed a faint orange light glowing on the deck. A figure walked out to join the armored soldiers.
But this was no Cazador. It wasn’t even a man. The figure she was looking at had a glowing orange visor.
These weren’t Cazadores. They were machines, and they had found the Vanguard Islands.
THIRTY-FOUR
The mission clock read three hours. That was also how many miles the Hell Diver teams had traveled from their drop zone. It wasn’t just Lena slowing them down. Twice now, they had hidden from drones searching for them.
Les looked at a secondary clock. It was nine thirty at night. A third clock brought up the time in Aruba. It was four thirty in the afternoon there, and the Barracudas would be on their recon mission by now. That didn’t leave the Hell Divers much time to shut down the machines.
Another drone passed over the jungle canopy, thrusters flaring as it rocketed westward with the howling wind.
“They definitely know we’re here,” Michael said.
Edgar nodded. “They’re searching for us.”
The windstorm picked up, rustling the foliage and making the tree branches creak around the hidden divers. As soon as the drone vanished, Les gave the signal to advance. Taking point, he brought the team deeper into the jungle. He used his rifle barrel to push away barbed plants and a sharp purple weed he had never seen before.
A snake with spots that looked like eyeballs slithered in front of his boot. He halted, letting it pass, then pushed on. In the green hue of his optics, he noticed a clearing that provided a window to the arid landscape where the ITC Victory had crash-landed.
They were more than a quarter mile away from the ruined hulk, but he could still see it. A tree canopy grew out of the curved rooftop.
Decades of exposure to the elements had blown away much of the outer hull, spreading pieces across the landscape. Most of the debris was smalclass="underline" aluminum plates and interior bulkheads. But also, several stabilizing fins had sheared off.
From the looks of it, the airship hadn’t crash-landed as Les had expected. So why would Captain Rolo come here of all places, when it was the base for the machines.
There had to be something he didn’t know, something that Captain Maria Ash had kept from her crew—something not in her records. Perhaps the deranged Captain Jordan destroyed it. Or perhaps Captain Ash had.
His mind whirled with various scenarios as he trekked through the jungle. Had they known about the machines all along?
If Pedro was right and humanity had launched an offensive to destroy the machines here, then it was a hell of a coincidence that Captain Rolo should come here almost 230 years later.
Unless he was tricked.
Les put aside the questions and went back to listening for drones and searching for machines on the ground. A bug with a faceful of eyes landed on his shoulder. He swatted it away and brought the rifle scope up to his visor.
The next leg would take them out of the jungle and into the open for at least five minutes before they reached the airship. Then it would be another four to five miles to the foot of Kilimanjaro and the factories they had seen from the air. He had no idea how they would make it that far without being seen unless Timothy came through with his distraction.
The wind picked up again, blasting a wave of grit into the jungle.
Les crouched and turned to the divers. They all seemed to have come through the initial shock of losing Hector, but he could tell by the way some of them moved just how scared they were.
That was good and bad. Fear got rid of cockiness, but it also made people do dumb things. He had to stay sharp to keep these young divers alive.
“Listen up,” Les said. “We’re heading for the wreckage of that airship, moving out in teams, with Raptor going first.”
“Why Raptor?” Arlo asked.
Michael moved in front of Les and held up his laser rifle. “This is why,” he said.
“Ted, you help Lena,” Les said. “Edgar, I need you to keep an eye on things with that rifle of yours, okay?”
Getting a nod from Edgar, he looked to Lena.
“I think I can put my full weight on it now,” she said.
Les watched as she tried it, though he couldn’t see whether she was wincing inside her helmet.
“I’m good,” Lena said. “Really.”
Les stood for a better view of the terrain separating them from the airship. Seeing no contacts, he signaled to advance.
Michael took point with the laser rifle. Arlo and Sofia followed him out into the screaming wind. Their receding figures seemed to dissipate like phantasms in the green hue of his optics.
A hundred yards out, Michael stopped and crouched behind a boulder at the edge of the debris field. Sofia and Arlo huddled there with him for a few minutes, then ventured into the wreckage.
The wind whipped the branches overhead, and one cracked off, falling next to Les.
Team Raptor was almost impossible to make out now. He spotted Michael darting to the hull of the ship. A platform still hung from an open hatch in the hull, and he raised his rifle inside to have a look. Then he turned and waved at the jungle before vanishing again in the whirling sand.
“Let’s go,” Les said.
Ted kept close to Lena, and Edgar took rear guard. Les went first, taking the same route as Michael but not stopping at the boulder. He went all the way to the scattered metal scraps, keeping low. The wind let up slightly, and he watched Michael walk up the platform and into the airship.