“What about Raven’s Claw?” X asked.
“Not sure, sir,” said Brett. “I didn’t see it, but General Forge is on the hunt. At least, that’s what we were told before the comms on Shadow went down.”
“What do we do?” Libby asked.
X looked at her, then scanned the other frightened faces behind the masks. The Cazadores’ helmets were pointed his way, and while he couldn’t see their features, he knew that they, too, were scared. Most of those here on the beach were young people, just as in old wars.
Now they were cut off, and X had no idea where Horn and his main forces were. The recon mission had not merely failed; it had ended in a slaughter.
But how had Horn known?
“Sir,” Brett said. “I mean, King… What do we…”
“We do what the Cazadores do,” Magnolia said. “We go hunting.”
Miles wagged his tail.
“You aren’t coming,” X said. “You’re staying with Rodger and…”
X wasn’t sure who to put with them, but he couldn’t leave them on the beach. He couldn’t risk sending them to Shadow, either. Not with another submarine and Raven’s Claw still out there.
“Victor, tell Ton I want him to stay here and guard them,” X said.
Victor interpreted, and Ton nodded. A medic had already finished plugging his armor.
“The militia stays here, too,” X said. “You got that, Brett? Keep an eye on the jungle and beach. If anyone approaches that looks like them, you shoot. Got it?”
“Where are you going?” Brett asked.
“Mags, Victor, and I are going to find Moreto and Horn,” he said.
“No,” Rodger moaned. “You can’t leave me.”
X bent down to the medic wrapping Rodger’s foot. “Give him some morphine,” he whispered.
The medic nodded and fished inside her pack.
Rodger reached out to X. “Don’t do this to me, King Xavier,” he slurred. “I can still fight.”
“Don’t worry, Rodge,” X said. “I’ll save some for you.”
Rodger grunted in pain as the medic stuck a shot between armored plates, into his suit.
X walked over to Imulah. “You okay?”
The scribe shook his head. “The radiation…”
“Is minimal. You’ll be fine without a suit for a little while.”
“What are you going to do, King Xavier?” Imulah asked.
“Finish what I came here for,” X said. “Hang in there, mi amigo.”
X went to the Barracuda who had spoken English.
X said, “Willis, I want you to take eight men down the beach and try and flank the outpost. Don’t attack unless you think you can win. I want the other four here with the militia, to protect the wounded and Miles.”
Willis nodded and pounded his chest.
By the time X returned, Rodger was passed out. Magnolia put her face shield up against his.
“He’s going to be okay, Mags,” X said. He went down on one knee beside Miles. “Look after Rodge, okay, boy?”
Miles’s tail swung back and forth, hampered by his suit.
Rising to his feet, X checked the ocean. Shadow sailed toward the harbor, in pursuit of the last sub and Raven’s Claw.
“Good luck, General,” X said softly. “We’re both going to need it.”
Victor waited at the jungle’s edge with his cutlass in hand. His left arm hung limp against his side. The medics would dress the bullet wound when they could.
Magnolia checked her laser rifle.
“You guys ready for this?” X asked.
Two nods.
X led the way. Together, they set off through the jungle, taking a new path—this time without a mine detector.
X selected a route thick with vegetation, knowing it would be less likely to have mines. He chopped a barbed frond with his spear. Purple sap spurted like blood from an artery.
Magnolia hacked at branches with her sickle, and Victor used his cutlass. By the time they reached the clearing, their blades were sticky with sap.
X took up position behind a thick palm trunk and glassed the field with the binos. Over decades of use, the night-vision goggles had become like a set of glasses, helping him see things other divers would miss.
On this sweep, he saw nothing between his position and the oil refinery.
“X,” Magnolia said quietly.
He joined her at the base of another tree.
“Look at the turbines,” she said.
X used his binoculars again, centering them on the turbines in the other direction. A rope hung from one of the blades. He followed the rope to the ground, where several people wearing black suits stood pulling the rope.
“What in the…” he whispered.
Victor joined him and Magnolia to watch. The people were unarmed and looked just like the ones X had seen in the video from Cricket’s recon and in the meat locker.
Both Magnolia and Victor aimed their rifles, but X waved them down. He zoomed in on skinwalkers standing around a perimeter with their rifles. They seemed to be guarding the workers in black suits. He hadn’t wanted to believe it earlier, but now he knew.
The skinwalkers had done the unthinkable—something no Hell Diver or even Cazador had ever done. They had awoken genetically modified humans at the ITC chambers and were now using them, for both slave labor and food.
X zoomed in farther, trying to see their features behind the plastic visors. Only then did he see what they were doing.
The four groups of slaves stood in single files, hoisting fresh bodies up to the turbine blade. All were Barracudas.
X watched in impotent rage as Felipe was hauled up. When the workers got him up to one of the blades, the skinwalker soldiers shot crossbows, pinning the young warrior’s corpse to the blade.
Closing his eyes, X tried to block out the evil. When he opened them again, another corpse was going up on the third turbine. This one had a prosthetic leg, and a stump where a prosthetic hand had been broken off.
X centered his binos on the dead colonel, who no longer had a helmet, or even a face. The bastards had mutilated him and the other Barracudas.
“What’s around his neck?” Magnolia asked.
X zoomed in on a sign pinned to Mac’s chest armor. He tried to read it as the workers pulled the limp body up.
The words were in Spanish and written in smeared blood, but X knew enough Spanish to read them. “Vienen las máquinas.”
Horn wasn’t bluffing. The machines were on their way to the Vanguard Islands.
The Hell Divers were running out of time.
If X and his war party encountered defectors at the Outrider, they would be in major trouble. The divers had to get into the base and upload the virus before it was too late.
Three new laser rifles scavenged from the machines would help, but the team had already lost Ted and Hector, and they still had several miles to travel before they even got within view of the base.
And now they didn’t have Cricket’s cameras. The drone’s feed had switched off an hour ago.
Michael trekked through the wastes with a heavy heart. At this rate, they wouldn’t make it far if they encountered more machines. It wasn’t a matter of if, but of when.
He didn’t know what was stopping the machines from finding them now. They knew that the divers were here, but they hadn’t sent out any of the beetle-looking tanks. Only a few drones and a single foot patrol of DEF-Nine units.
Maybe we’re not a threat to them.
Michael could use this to his advantage. The machines were going to be sorry they hadn’t taken the Hell Divers more seriously.
He led the other five divers into the darkness and the howling wind, moving from cover to cover, stopping every few minutes to scan the skies.