The Bone Labyrinth (44 page)

Then moments ago, a lab tech had returned with the results of a spinal tap. The lead surgeon—Dr. Han—had reviewed them. With everything seemingly in order, he had given the go-ahead to proceed with the surgery.

As the nurses continued their preparation of Baako, Dr. Han waited with a syringe of lidocaine, ready to perform a local anesthetic scalp block once they were finished. Other members of the team began to open surgical packs.

Baako hooted hoarsely at her.

“I know you’re scared,” she whispered to him. She bent down and kissed his fingertips. She let go of his hand long enough to cross her fists and press them to her chest.

[
I love you
]

She took his hand again—just as one of the nurses tested a piece of equipment. The ripping buzz of the surgical bone saw made her flinch. Baako reacted more severely. He bucked in his restraints, both straining to see what was making that noise and to escape it. His frightened grip came close to breaking her fingers.

Still, she held firmly to him. “Baako, I’m here. Look at me.”

His panicked eyes swiveled wildly but finally settled on her.

“That’s right. I’m not leaving you.”

More tears wet his cheeks. He mewled softly, the sound shredding her heart.

She struggled for any way to offer him solace, her mind whirling with thoughts of breaking him free. But she knew the futility of such hopes. There were guards posted outside the lab. Also, during Baako’s MRI, Maria had returned briefly to check on Kowalski, whose life balanced on her cooperation. He was still trapped in that cage on the ground level of the habitat. Except he was no longer alone. A large male silverback squatted before the door to his confinement. Other hybrid beasts stalked behind the leader of the pack.

Knowing the fate that awaited Kowalski if she did not cooperate, Maria had no choice but to be compliant, to do what was expected of her.

What else can I do?

She stared into Baako’s eyes, willing him all her love, trying to maintain a brave face for him. But she knew his senses were far more acute, his well of empathy as deep as any human’s. In his pained gaze, she could see his effort to communicate with her. But with his arms locked down, he was all but mute. While he could spell a few words with his fingers, he could not express the true depth of his fear and confusion, which only seemed to heighten his distress.

Baako’s fingers squeezed incrementally tighter on hers. He pressed his lips together and halted his soft mewling for a single breath, then continued again—only this time the sound coalesced into two repeated syllables.

“Ma . . . ma . . .”

Maria swallowed, feeling her legs give way. Even the surgical staff heard this utterance. Faces turned to the patient on the table. Murmurs of amazement spread among them. While gorillas did not have the vocal apparatus for true speech, Baako clearly had the ability to mimic a sound he knew well, one imprinted on his heart.

“Mama,” he repeated, his gaze fixed to her.

Maria could restrain herself no longer. She collapsed to her knees, her cheek pressed against Baako’s fingers. Sobs racked through her, rising out of the depths of her soul.

Somebody help us.

11:08
A
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M
.

“
This search could take all day, if not all week,” Monk said.

He stood at the threshold of Dìxià Chéng—Beijing’s Underground City—and studied the arched passageway that headed off from the bottom of the stairs. The tunnel was painted hospital white, stained with streaks of green mold. The floor was swamped in ankle-deep black water. He was happy to be wearing the paper mask over his nose and mouth, imagining what pathogens must be wafting about this claustrophobic place. Even through his mask’s filter, the air reeked of algae, fungus, and rot.

Kimberly handed back his phone. “I doubt this will help us find our way through here.”

The phone’s screen glowed with a spotty diagram of this subterranean warren, a map supplied to them by Kat. His wife had compiled a rough composite of the eighty square miles that made up the Underground City, leaning on her sources in the intelligence community. But Dìxià Chéng had been dug out a half century ago, and over time it been sliced and diced apart by the ongoing extension of Beijing’s subway system.

In the end, Kat admitted,
the map’s only our best guess.

To make matters worse, her sources had found no evidence that the Underground City actually reached the Beijing Zoo, which lay a mile or so off from the shuttered noodle shop overhead.

After ambushing Gao Sun, Monk had gathered Painter’s extraction team to this shop. It was the first location where the GPS signal had reappeared. They had broken into the abandoned restaurant through a rear window, and after a quick search, they discovered a set of stairs in the basement leading down to the Underground City. According to Kimberly, this access point was one of a hundred entrances into the sprawling maze.

But the steel door found at the bottom of the steps looked new, clearly a recent addition. It was electronically locked, but a swipe of the magnetic keycard taken from Gao Sun had successfully opened it.

The capture of Gao Sun also proved to be a source of additional information. Through her contacts, Kat was able to discover his brother’s name: Chang Sun. The man was a lieutenant colonel with the PLA, trained at the Academy of Military Science. His immediate superior, Major General Jiaying Lau, also came out of that same academy. Kat had forwarded a photo of the woman, standing stiffly in a starched pine-green uniform. The major general was likely the source of the griping and anger displayed by Gao during his earlier phone conversation with his brother, Chang.

So it seems we now know the major players, but how do we find the bastards?

A splashing drew Monk’s attention forward. One of the extraction team returned out of the darkness. Monk had sent four commandos forward to canvass the immediate area. The fifth was back at Gao’s apartment, babysitting and safeguarding that extra bit of insurance.

“All clear,” the man reported. “But you should see what we found.”

The five men handpicked for this mission by Painter were all Chinese American Army Rangers chosen for their ability to blend as seamlessly as possible into the populace. To further disguise their presence on foreign soil, they were all outfitted with PLA uniforms, including Monk and Kimberly.

When in Rome . . .

“Show me,” Monk said.

The ranger—a stocky sergeant named John Chin—led the way down the flooded tunnel, passing by cramped rooms full of rusted skeletons of bicycles and mold-encrusted pieces of furniture. The narrow tunnel slowly sloped upward, taking them out of the water and onto drier ground. The perpetual gloom dissipated as a glow grew brighter ahead.

Monk soon found himself standing with the other rangers: two steely-eyed brothers named Henry and Michael Shaw—and a smaller commando who went simply by Kong. Monk wasn’t sure if the latter was his actual surname or a nickname based on the man’s size.

Kimberly gasped slightly, surprised by what lay at the end of the narrow passageway. It had emptied into an enormous tunnel, large enough to allow a tank to roll down the center of it. The walls and arched roof were painted a spotless gray, lit by a rail of sodium lights overhead. The tunnel stretched in both directions, burrowing north and south, fading around curves in the distance.

“I’m guessing this is the right road,” Monk commented. “And lucky for us, Gao left us transportation.”

A Chinese army jeep—a BJ2022 half-ton off-roader—sat parked next to the smaller tunnel. It was painted green with a crimson PLA star emblazoned on the front doors. Gao Sun must have parked the vehicle here before heading up top and walking the rest of the way to his apartment.

Kimberly reached into a pocket and pulled out the set of keys taken from their captive. “So who’s up for a road trip?” she asked with a small smile, which spread across the assembled group.

They quickly loaded inside. Kimberly took the wheel. If they ran into trouble, her pretty face and quick tongue were their best assets to get through any checkpoints.

Monk climbed in the back, squeezing between the Shaw brothers in order to better hide his presence. As extra insurance, he tugged his cap lower and his mask higher. Still, he knew such efforts would survive only the most casual inspection.

So be it.

He leaned forward and pointed to the north, in the general direction of the zoo. “Head out. Let’s see where this road takes us.”

The engine roared to throaty life, trebling off the concrete walls.

He sank back into his seat.

And let’s hope we’re not too late
.

11:14
A
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Baako feels the fire burst atop his head.

He thrashes in panic and pain, but his arms and legs are stuck. He can’t move his head. All he can do is roll his eyes, trying to see. He had watched the tall man lean over him with a needle in his fingers.

Baako knows needles. Mama sometimes poked him, giving him treats afterward: bananas covered in honey.

But this hurts more . . . so much more.

He looks to Mama now. She holds Baako’s hand. She says soft words, but her cheeks are wet. He smells her fear. The scent cuts through the sharper smells and finds him, pushing his own terror higher.

Mama, make it stop. I’ll be a good boy.

But it doesn’t stop. The needle sticks him again and again around his head, leaving behind a pool of fire each time.

Finally the man goes away.

Mama pushes closer. “You’re okay,” she tells him.

He must believe her, but he swallows and swallows and can’t make the pounding in his ears stop. Then slowly the fire fades across the top of his head, leaving a coldness that makes his skin feel dead and thick.

He doesn’t like this any better.

“You’re my boy,” Mama says. “You’re my brave boy.”

She says these good words, but her eyes weep. She brushes his brow, but by now that coldness has seeped even there. He can barely feel her fingertips.

“Sleep now, my little boy,” she whispers to him, like she did so many nights back home. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

She looks at the tall man who plays with a milky bag that connects to Baako’s arm by a plastic rope. Baako feels everything grow lighter, like he’s floating. He remembers a blue balloon that Mama let him play with. Outside, the string had slipped from his fingers, and the balloon went up and up into the sky.

He is that balloon now.

Mama’s face blurs and fades away.

He hoots, trying to tell her to stay.

Mama, don’t go.

Then blackness.

11:28
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M
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As Baako’s body slumped to the tabletop, Maria finally let go of his hand. She stepped from the table and hugged her arms around her chest, shivering with cold certainty. She had watched the terror and agony as Baako endured the anesthetic scalp block. But at least he was now asleep, sedated under the short-acting effect of the propofol drip. His chest rose and fell evenly, looking peaceful for the moment.

But such rest would not last.

The operating team—which consisted of two surgeons and three nurses—was already draping his form. They would keep Baako sedated only long enough to slice a flap of his skin off his scalp and perform the craniotomy. Once his skull was cracked open and the brain exposed, the drip would be turned off, and Baako would waken in a matter of minutes.

Then his true nightmare would begin.

Unable to watch these final preparations, she strode back to the curve of windows overlooking the hybrid habitat. She placed her forehead against the glass, staring below. Kowalski remained trapped in the cage by the habitat’s exit, while the hulking occupants of the pit waited at the threshold, led by the massive silverback. Behind the bars, the big man looked like a rag doll compared to the half-ton beast.

Maria wondered how the researchers controlled such aggressive specimens. She placed her palms against the glass. Was this barrier even thick enough to prevent them from battering out of there? Surely they could climb the rocky walls to reach the height of these windows.

A scuff of shoes drew her attention around. One of the nurses—a young woman with bright eyes—joined her, sipping from a glass of ice water, taking a break before the final stage of the operation. It was the same nurse who had showed a bit of sympathy when Maria had first arrived. The woman nodded to the window, perhaps noting her attention.

“They cannot reach here,” she said. Her words were whispered, but not as if she were afraid of sharing secrets. She seemed naturally soft-spoken. She pointed to a row of large boxes positioned below the level of the windows. “They broadcast on a frequency coded to the animals’ collars.”

Maria had noted the steel bands around the hybrids’ necks. “They’re shock collars?”

“That is correct. The signal generates a shield over the habitat, just under the level of the windows.”

Maria nodded her understanding. If the beasts climbed too high and reached that invisible barrier, they would be jolted with electricity and driven back to the floor.

“And for emergency . . .” The nurse pointed to the left, to a locked cabinet holding a tranquilizer rifle. There was a latched gate in the neighboring pane of the observation window. “But do not fear. The guns have never been used. You are very safe.”

Maria did not bother to point out the irony of this last statement. She stared down at Kowalski. He spotted her and lifted an arm. She placed her hand on the glass again, trying to reassure him that she was doing her best to keep him safe, too.