The Dragon Factory (43 page)

Isla D’Oro

Sunday, August 29, 2:57
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 69 hours, 3 minutes E.S.T.

The terrain directly around the compound was less treacherous, so it only took twenty-two minutes to get into position. There was nothing from the Kid, so we waited. The next eight minutes crawled by. We listened for shouts or screams from inside the compound; we listened for gunfire; we listened for anything that would indicate that SAM had been discovered. The jungle, though far from silent, simply sounded like a jungle. And then suddenly there was a wail of a siren.

Then SAM’s voice whispered to me, “Cowboy . . . ? Are you there?”

“We’re here, Kid. Where are you?”

“In the communications room. I started a fire in the laundry room at the other end of the compound. Everyone went running. I don’t have a lot of time before they come back.”

“Then let’s move this along.”

“All the cameras are on, but I can’t see you. Can you stand up or something?”

“Not a chance.” But I signaled to Bunny to shake a tree. He grabbed a slender palm, gave it a couple of quick jerks, and then moved off away in case it drew fire.

“Was that you?” the Kid asked.

“Yes. Now what do we do?”

“I’m the only one watching the monitors. You can rush the fence. Don’t worry; I just turned off the electricity.”

“We’re taking you on a lot of faith. You’d better not be screwing with us, kiddo,” I said. I didn’t mention that U.S. and British warplanes would reduce this island to floating debris if this was a trap. The boy seemed to have enough to worry about.

“I’m not. I swear.”

“Hold tight. Here we come.”

We came at the fence at a dead run, running in a well-spaced single file. Top reached the fence first and ran a scanner over it.

“Power’s definitely off. No signs of mines.”

Bunny produced a pair of long-necked nippers and began cutting the chain links. We repeated this at the second fence, then ran fast and low toward the cluster of utility sheds.

“There’s a stone path by the sheds,” SAM said, “but the guards always make sure not to step on it. I think it’s booby-trapped.”

Bunny flattened out by the flagstones and nodded up at me. “Pressure mines. Kid’s sharp.”

“We get through this,” Top said, “we can chip in and buy him a puppy.”

“Guards are coming,” SAM said in an urgent whisper. “To your right.”

We flattened out against the sheds. I had my rifle slung and held my Beretta 92F in both hands. It was fitted with a sound suppressor that you won’t find in a gun catalog. Unlike the models on the market, this had a special polymer baffling that made it absolutely silent. Not even the nifty little
pfft
sound. A toy from one of Church’s friends in the industry.

Two guards came around the corner. They were dressed in lightweight tropical shirts over cargo pants. They each carried a Heckler & Koch 416 and they were moving quickly, eyes cutting left and right with professional precision. An exterior grounds check was probably standard procedure with any emergency, and the fire SAM started must have been big enough to inspire caution.

I shot them both in the head.

Top and Bunny rushed out and dragged their bodies behind the sheds.

“Holy Jeez!” the Kid said.

“What’s our next move . . . ?”

“There’s a door right at the corner of the first building. All of the buildings are connected to that one by hallways. I cut the alarms on all the doors and blanked out the cameras inside the buildings.”

“You’re making me like you, Kid. What do we do once we’re inside?”

“Um . . . okay, there are colored lines painted on all the floors. The blue line will bring you to the communications room, but you’re going to have to go through the maintenance pod and then the common room. It’s like a big lobby, with chairs and soda machines and a coffee bar. If you go straight across that, you’ll see the colored lines start again. Keep following that.”

“Roger that, Kid.”

“Wait!” There was some rustling noise and then he came back, breathless. “I think they’re coming back!”

“Can you lock yourself in until we get there?”

“The door’s just wood. They’ll kick it in.”

“Is your radio portable?”

“Yes. I rigged a headset.”

“Then get your ass out of there. Find someplace to hide. We’re going to have to make some noise.”

“God. . . .”

“Are there any civilians we need to worry about? Any good guys?”

“Yes!” he said immediately. “The New Men. You’ll be able to spot them . . . they’re all dressed the same. Cotton pants and shirts with numbers on them. Please,” he begged, “don’t hurt any of them.”

“We’ll do our best, but if they offer resistance . . .”

“Believe me . . . they can’t.”

He said “can’t” rather than “won’t.” Interesting.

“Anyone else?”

“No . . . everyone else here is involved.”

“Then get out of there.”

“Okay, but . . . Cowboy? Watch out for the dogs.”

“What breed and how many?” I asked.

But all I got from the radio was a hiss of static.

“Okay,” I said to Bunny and Top, “pick your targets and check your fire. If anyone surrenders, let them. Otherwise, it’s Bad Day at Black Rock.”

“Hooah,” they replied.

“Now let’s kick some doors.”

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:08
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 52 minutes E.S.T.

The exterior door was steel, so I stepped back as Bunny put a C4 popper on the lock with one of Hu’s newer gizmos—a poloymer shroud that was flexible enough to fold into a pocket but strong enough to catch shrapnel. It was also dense enough to muffle the sound, so when Bunny triggered it the lock blew out with a sound no louder than a cough. The door blew open in a swirl of smoke.

No alarms. Kid’s still batting a thousand so far.

I led the way inside.

The hallway was bright with flourescent lights and stretched sixty feet before hitting a T-juncture. There were doors on both sides. Everything was conveniently marked, and it was clear that this corridor was used by groundskeepers and technicians. Most of the rooms were storage. The left-hand rooms had bags of chemical fertilizer, shovels and garden tools, racks of work clothes. The right-hand rooms included a small machine shop, a boiler room, and a changing room for support staff. There were plenty of clothes and I debated having my guys change into them, but I didn’t. My gut was telling me that we were fighting the clock here, so we tagged each doorway with a paper sensor pad set below the level where the eye would naturally fall. The sensors had an ultrathin wire and a tiny blip transmitter. We peeled off the adhesive backing and pressed them over the crack in the door opposite the hinge side. If anyone opened the door, the paper would tear and a signal would be sent to our scanners. Simple and useful.

We found one room in which a large piece of some unidentifiable equipment hung from a chain hoist. From the scattering of tools and the droplight that still burned it looked like a work in active progress. There was no one around. Everyone must have gone to investigate the fire the Kid had set and, like most employees would, was probably stalling before heading back to work.

I still had the Beretta in my hands and we moved through a building that was empty and silent.

That all changed in a heartbeat.

Two men rounded the right-hand side of the T-juncture while we were still twenty feet away. Both wore coveralls stained with grease, and I knew they had to be the mechanics working on the equipment. They were deep in conversation, speaking German with an Austrian accent, when they saw us. They froze, eyes bugging in their heads, mouths opened in identical “ohs” of surprise as they stared down the barrels of three guns. I put the laser sight of my Beretta on the forehead of the bigger of the two men and put my finger to my lips.

All he had to do was nothing. All he had to do was stay silent and not try to be a hero.

Some people just don’t get it.

He half-turned and drew a fast breath to scream and I put one through his temple. Top took the other with two side-by-side shots in the center of his chest. They hit the floor in a sprawl.

If Lady Luck would have cut us a single frigging break we’d have been past them and into the complex within a few seconds. But she was in a mood today. There were other people behind them, out of our line of sight, farther down the side corridors.

People started screaming.

Then people started firing guns.

A moment later the alarms sounded.

So much for stealth.

The Dragon Factory

Sunday, August 29, 3:17
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 43 minutes E.S.T.

The three businessmen from China stood wide-eyed and slack jawed, all pretenses at emotional aloofness lost in the moment. Behind the glass, perched on the twisted limb of a tallow tree, its wings folded along the sleek lines of its sinuous body, was a dragon.

The creature turned its head toward them and stared through the glass for a long minute, occasionally flicking its flowing whiskers. It blinked slowly as if in disdain at their surprise.

One of the men, the senior buyer, broke into a huge grin. He bowed to the dragon, bending very low. His two younger associates also bowed. And just for the hell of it Hecate and Paris bowed, too. It might help close the deal, though both of them knew that this deal was already closed.

“Does . . . does . . . ,” began the senior buyer—a fat-faced man named Chen—“can it . . . ?”

Paris smiled. “Can it fly?” He reached out and knocked sharply on the window. The sudden sound startled the dragon, and it leaped from its perch, its snow-white wings spreading wider than the arm span of a tall man, and the creature flapped away to sit in a neighboring tree. The enclosure was designed for maximum exposure, so even though the dragon could move away, it couldn’t hide.

Chen murmured something in Mandarin that Paris did not catch. Neither of the Twins could speak the language. All of the business with these buyers had been conducted in English.

“How?” said Chen in English, turning toward the Twins.

“Bit of a trade secret,” said Paris. He was actually tempted to brag, because the creation of a functional flying lizard was the most complicated and expensive project he and Hecate had undertaken. The animal in the enclosure was a patchwork. The wings came from an albatross, the mustache from the barbels of a Mekong giant catfish, the horny crest from the Texas horned lizard, and the slender body was mostly a
monitor lizard. There were a few other bits and pieces of genes in the mix, and so far the design had been so complicated that most of the individual animals had died soon after birth or been born with unexpected deformities from miscoding genes. This was the only one that appeared healthy and could fly.

The really difficult part was designing the animal for flight. It had the hollow bones of a large bird and the attending vascular support to keep those bones healthy. They’d also had to give it an assortment of genes to provide the muscle and cartilage to allow it to flap its wings. Unfortunately, they had not identified the specific gene—or gene combinations—that would give it an instinctive knowledge of aerodynamics. So they’d spent hours with it in an inflated air room of the kind used at carnivals and kids’ parties, tossing the creature up and hoping that it would discover that those great leathery things on its back were functional wings. The process was frustrating and time-consuming, and the animal had only recently begun flapping, and the short flight it had just taken was about the extent of its range. More like a chicken thrown from a henhouse roof than a soaring symbol of China’s ancient history. The heavy foliage in the enclosure helped to mask the awkwardness of its flight. The entire process had been a bitch. A forty-one-million-dollar bitch. And the damn thing was a mule, unable to reproduce.

But at least it was pretty, and it more or less flew. Paris hoped it would live long enough for them to sort out all of the genetic defects so they could actually sell one. This one was display only. A promise to get the Chinese to write a very, very large check.

Paris thought he could hear the scratching of the pen even now.

The three Chinese buyers stood in front of the glass for almost half an hour. They barely said a word. Paris was patient enough to wait them out. When the spell finally lifted—though they still looked quite dazed—Paris ushered them to a small table that had been set with tea and rice cakes. The table had a view of the dragon, but it wasn’t a great view. That was Hecate’s suggestion.

“If they can’t see the damn thing,” she’d said, “they’ll get impatient. They’ll want to close the deal so they can go back and gape at it.”