Hell divers x fallout, p.33
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 33
He rubbed at his eyes and let out a babble, something about apples and Da-da.
“I’m going to save Da-da,” she said.
“Da-da,” Bray mumbled.
Layla turned as the door opened.
“Pedro is here,” Victor said.
Layla hugged Bray, kissed him on the forehead, and put him back in his bed. She gently shut the door and went to the kitchen. Inside, Pedro stood there dressed in all black, with booster packs and parachutes slung over both shoulders. He hauled more gear up on a rope and pulled it through the window.
“You weren’t spotted?” Layla whispered. It was hard to imagine he could get all this gear up here without being noticed, but he shook his head.
If he had been seen, the guards would already have burst inside. Two were out in the hallway, both sleeping the last time Layla checked.
Pedro began unloading his gear. “I got three parachutes and three boosters, just like you asked,” he said.
“Three?” Layla asked him.
“I’m coming with you,” he replied. “Michael saved me and my people; now my turn to save him.”
Layla smiled again. “Thank you.”
“Thank me when we free him.”
Pedro pulled out a holstered pistol with a silencer attached. Then he took a second pistol from his bag. There were two magazines for each. Layla took the suppressed weapon, and Victor took the other.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to use these,” she said.
Layla put on her tactical vest and then secured the booster over her back. Finally, she put on her backpack. She looked out the window. Luck was on their side tonight. Clouds blocked off the moon and stars.
“Remember, steer clear of the turbofans, and come up the hull on the opposite side of the ship. Those turbofans will . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence. The mere thought of what those whirring blades would do to them made her wince.
“I should climb up to the rooftop first,” Pedro said. “I’ll take over one of the searchlights so you aren’t, how do you say . . . a sitting duck.”
His idea wasn’t bad, but it did put him at risk.
“Be very careful, and good luck,” she said.
“You too.”
Pedro uncoiled his rope.
Victor clasped his arm in a sign of respect. Slinging his crossbow across his chest, Pedro grabbed the windowsill and climbed back out. He looked down at the water, then up at the rooftop.
“I’ll signal when I’m ready,” he said. “Look for a quick up-and-down movement of the light. Same goes for you, Victor. Once Layla is up and ready, I will signal for you to launch with Bray.”
Then Pedro was gone, scaling the building as Layla had done. She climbed out after him and looked down. There was no sign of patrol boats, but the searchlights overhead would be a problem. One lanced downward, then back up into the sky.
Scarcely daring to breathe, Layla watched Pedro climb. All the planning and preparation had kept her occupied up to this point. Now that the moment of action was on her, she felt her heart kick into a faster gear.
Pedro made good time up the side of the building. But all it would take was one casual glance, one person to see him and sound an alarm.
Layla took a quick inventory of her gear, as she always did before a diving mission. Her pistol was holstered on her duty belt, along with a KA-BAR knife in a sheath. All her pockets were zipped, and the booster and parachute were secure over her back. She checked Victor’s rigging.
“You’re all set,” she said. “You got this, Victor; I know you do.”
She pulled the black mask down over her face and checked on Pedro by looking up and out of the window. He was approaching the top of the roof. When he reached it, he coiled his rope around one leg, then clambered up over the side.
Layla pictured him belly-crawling through the crops up top. He would likely stash some of his gear there, then sneak over to the guard tower that had the searchlight.
The wait wasn’t long, and she would have missed the light if she had blinked for more than a second.
The spear of light flickered up and down, just as Pedro had said.
“He made it,” Layla said to Victor. “I’ll see you and Bray soon.”
Reaching over her back, she hit the booster. The canister fired and the balloon filled with helium, lifting her off the window and into the sky. She kicked away from the window to get some distance, seeing the beetle shape of the airship directly above.
“Hold on, Michael,” she whispered. “I’m coming.”
The balloon pulled her higher. In a minute, she would be at the top of the tower and in view of the guards. But at least she didn’t have to worry about the searchlight hitting her. If one of the others somehow did, she hoped her black outfit would keep her from being spotted. She hated leaving so much to chance.
She searched the balconies along the tower as she rose. It sure beat climbing them one by one. Almost all the rooms were dark, but a candle burned in a gap between the curtains in Imulah’s apartment.
The balloon pulled her higher, giving her a view of the old scribe, on his knees, his head bowed in what appeared to be prayer.
“Goodbye, Imulah,” she whispered.
As if in answer, he looked up, stood, and went to the window.
If he saw her, he made no indication.
Layla looked up at the rooftop as it approached. Cannons protruded off a platform almost directly above. Not far to the east was a .50-caliber machine-gun turret.
She trembled at the sight. Not because she had to get past the barrel unseen but because Victor had to with Bray. She suppressed any images of what would happen if one of those half-inch-thick bullets hit them. This wasn’t dangerous; it was bloody insane.
And that’s why it’s going to work. No one would expect them to try something so batshit crazy.
The searchlight Pedro had commandeered raked across the sky to the west. Everything was going to plan.
She was fifty feet off the eastern edge, directly under the stern of the airship.
The machine-gun emplacement was farther away, just near enough that she could see the soldier looking over the sandbags to the water below.
She felt a stab of fear. What if this was a trap? What if they were waiting for her?
Stop being so paranoid. They had Michael in the airship for a reason. Charmer didn’t think anyone could get to him there. Soon, he would understand his mistake.
Layla floated higher, holding her breath as she passed over the rooftop. She pulled out her suppressed pistol and pointed it at the soldier, who was still looking down over the sandbags. It would be a tough shot to make with a pistol while moving.
The soldier turned from the view and grabbed the machine gun.
No, no, no . . .
The shot would be easy for a machine gun with a full belt of ammo. It would turn her to pulp.
Layla moved her finger from the guard to the trigger.
She was about to squeeze when she heard a distant voice. It wasn’t coming from the man with the machine gun. The balloon pulled her higher, above the orange grove that grew just beyond the machine-gun nest.
“¡Hola, Yuca!” shouted a voice.
Layla followed the voice to a silhouette of a person emerging from the orchard with a spear in one hand. He tossed an orange to the machine gunner.
“Gracias,” he called back.
Layla let out a sigh. Neither of these guys had seen her. The guard in the grove went back inside to watch for fruit thieves, and the machine gunner sat down to eat his orange.
She rose higher into the sky. One hundred feet above the roof. Three hundred. At five hundred, she was comfortably out of sight. She holstered her pistol as she came up on the airship’s port side.
Almost there . . .
The balloon pulled her above the hull, just feet away from the windows that were installed during the airship’s restoration after the war with the Cazadores. Next, she passed the reinforced panels that protected against the storms.
Finally, she rose above the curved back, higher and higher, until she was about seven hundred feet above the airship Vanguard. She cut away the balloon, kicked her left heel against her right shin, and threw out her pilot chute. The low-porosity canopy shot out and pulled her up short. Pulling one toggle, she spiraled down and stepped onto the domed roof without making so much as a thump.
She went down on all fours and clambered over to a hatch. She decided to try it before pulling out her KA-BAR. To her surprise, it was unlocked. More good luck. Take it when you can get it.
Layla stood and waved down to Pedro, hoping he could see her. She could make out the twenty-foot watchtower he was on and the searchlight beaming away from it.
That light suddenly flitted. The signal.
Victor and Bray would be heading up now.
She waited a minute, then two.
In the darkness, it was almost impossible to see anything on the capitol rig below its rooftop. She pulled out her binoculars and focused on something she could see: the machine-gun nest sitting dark and motionless midway along the roof’s edge.
Her heart jumped when she saw movement. Multiple guards were fanning out from the gardens to the three machine-gun nests and the two low searchlight towers.
“No, no! Shit!” Layla gasped.
She zoomed in on the soldiers, who seemed to be moving casually. No one was even running.
It was the shift change, she realized.
Jumping to her feet, she waved to Pedro, hoping he would see her and get out of there before the replacement soldier found the other gunner missing.
Shouting rose over the whir of the turbofans. Distant and faint, but several voices.
Torches suddenly lit up every hundred feet along the rooftop. In the glow, she saw frantic movement. One of the torches began to move toward the watchtower where Pedro was now manning the searchlight.
As she watched through the binos, Pedro climbed up onto the flat roof of the watchtower. He crouched there as a guard climbed up and looked inside the unmanned cabin.
More shouting followed.
The soldier left in a hurry.
Layla pointed the binos down to where Victor and Bray would be rising with the balloon. Along that eastern edge of the rooftop, the searchlight caught something in the air.
“No, oh God, no,” Layla said.
Through the binos, she could see Bray secured against Victor’s chest. The machine-gun nest was just above them. The soldier was gripping the weapon, ready to light them up.
Her mind raced to find a way to help. A distraction wouldn’t work; it would just draw more eyes up here. Firing her pistol from this distance would be a waste of bullets, maybe . . . But it was all she could do.
She pulled out the pistol, aimed, and fired at the nest. She fired again, shot after shot, emptying the magazine. Victor’s booster was almost up to the machine gun’s field of fire. As the big fifty’s barrel swung toward him, she lined up her final shot. She felt the trigger against her finger pad, but as she started to squeeze, the gunner slumped face first over the sandbags.
Layla dialed the binos in to find an arrow sticking out of the gunner’s back—no doubt from Pedro’s crossbow. When she searched the middle distance for Victor and Bray, they had risen halfway up to the airship.
She put the binos back on Pedro. Sure enough, he was still crouched atop the searchlight tower, loading another bolt into his crossbow.
Layla watched him a moment before again turning the binos back to her son and Victor. They were nearing the bottom of the airship now.
“Come on, please, please,” she whispered.
All hell seemed to be unleashed on the rooftop below. Gunfire rang out, with shouting in the pauses.
She dialed in on the roof again and saw pinprick muzzle flashes in the darkness. Pedro had fired off another bolt and was hunched down again, reloading.
“Get out of there,” she said. “Come on, Pedro, move!”
He put another bolt into the bow as the soldiers searched for his location.
Layla moved the binos back to Victor. He would soon pop up over the top of the airship with Bray.
Seeing them, she let out a cry of relief. The uneasiness returned as the booster took them higher, hundreds of feet above the airship. Then, abruptly, the booster lifted off them and they fell a hundred feet. And then, as if by some miracle, a parachute popped out above them, and they were gliding her way. Victor pulled his left toggle and corkscrewed down to the airship’s dome roof. Six feet up, he flared as Layla had, and landed on his feet, though not as gracefully.
To Layla’s surprise, Bray smiled. “Ma-ma,” he said.
She kissed him on the head.
“Pedro’s in trouble,” Victor said.
“I know.” Layla aimed her binos at the watchtower where she had last seen Pedro.
He was in the air now, the balloon pulling him up.
“He’s on his way,” she said.
Layla held the binos on Pedro. In a blink, the balloon vanished. Muzzle flashes from the forest told her what had happened to it.
Flailing, Pedro fell fifteen feet back to the rooftop. Flames from torches surrounded him as soldiers closed in.
“Pedro . . .” she whispered.
She zoomed in. He was still alive and trying to get up. A half-dozen soldiers moved in, beating him with fists and rifle butts. She flinched, feeling each blow.
“We have to keep moving before they figure out what he was doing,” Victor said.
Layla forced her gaze away and led them back to the hatch she had opened earlier. Victor followed her down the ladder, Bray babbling on his chest.
The hatch closed overhead, sealing them inside the dark shaft of her old home. Soon, if she was lucky, this would be their sanctuary once more.
But first they had to take out the soldiers on the ship, and they had to do it without Pedro. He had given his life to get them this far.
Layla would make damned sure it was worth his sacrifice.
TWENTY-SIX
It was hard to believe that the lighthouse had ever been white. Kade had climbed to the blackened top of the California Lighthouse on the northwest tip of Aruba, looking for hostiles. He had a sprawling view of the Arashi Beach and Sasariwichi Dunes. The Sea King sat on the road below. Bulldozer was asleep inside, and Lucky was watching the chopper. They had landed here three hours ago after spending another twelve hours in the air doing a grid search for the Frog.
Each time they put down, danger lurked. It wasn’t ideal, but they couldn’t stay in the sky forever. The chopper needed maintenance, and Bulldozer needed sleep.
Kade, however, had rested plenty on the journey so far. He was wide awake and searching the dunes for any sign of hostiles. For now, he didn’t see any, but there were monsters out there. There were always monsters.
That wasn’t the only thing on his mind, of course. What Bulldozer had let slip back in Panama haunted Kade. They saw King Xavier as the enemy, and they would follow him back to the Vanguard Islands. The knights had a larger plan that they were hiding from him.
What if activating the Trident meant actually launching a weapon at the Frog? Or at the Vanguard Islands?
What if the chopper had a nuke that they planned to drop on his home?
Kade swallowed hard at that possibility.
No way, not possible. If this bird had a nuke, you’d know.
It was just another reason Kade had to stay vigilant and ready for anything.
He was more useful here, trying to stop a war, than sitting in a cell back at the Coral Castle. He would do whatever it took to keep his people safe.
Wind gusted against the lighthouse. He opened the door to the gallery that encircled the faded blue cupola, checking with a boot to see if it would hold his weight. The metal creaked, and a screw popped off and fell to the ground below.
Kade swore, tested his footing again, then cautiously started out on the wraparound platform, the wind whipping against his armor. He walked around the gallery, scanning the beaches, dunes, and ruins of resorts in the distance with his night-vision optics. Unlike in Panama, he didn’t see any Sirens flapping across the sky.
It was oddly peaceful up here, but judging by the corroded batteries and stripped and blasted wires back inside the lighthouse, this hadn’t always been the case. This lighthouse had been part of the Cazador empire under el Pulpo. It was one of many places the old cannibal’s raiders had used to lure survivors and monsters alike.
People like Lucky’s father.
Kade looked down at the chopper and noticed that Lucky was no longer in view. He walked all the way around the platform but didn’t see the knight anywhere below.
As Kade went back inside the lighthouse, he heard the clomp of boots. Lucky emerged at the top of the stairs with a small wooden crate in his hand.
“You see anything up here?” he asked.
“Negative.”
Lucky set the crate down, then bent down to the batteries and wires.
“Cazadores?” he asked.
“A long time ago,” Kade said. “How much longer are we staying here?”
“Not long—just need to let Bulldozer catch a few more z’s. Hunting for this ship of your king’s is turning into a bloody nightmare.”
“You mean hunting for my home?” Kade said.
“We’re looking for your king,” Lucky snapped back. “That’s our mission—you heard the Forerunner. Bulldozer has got a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock—you’ve obviously seen that.”
Kade wished he could see the knight’s eyes through his helmet visor and gauge whether he was telling the truth. But his gut told him Bulldozer wasn’t lying and that it was Lucky holding back the truth.
Lucky set the crate down with a thud. “I’m gonna try to get the radio signal booster up before we leave, to see if I can pick up anything from your king’s ship.” He turned away without another word.
