The Great Zoo of China Read online

  CJ sighed with relief and, leaning forward in her saddle, patted Lucky’s neck.

  ‘Thank you . . .’ she breathed. ‘Thank you . . .’

  Then she blacked out.

  Hamish, Syme and Wolfe were still holed up in the café at the base of the curving waterfall.

  They hadn’t seen any movement from the treeline for twenty minutes now. All was still and quiet, save for the pattering of the rain.

  Hamish peered out through one of the windows. As he did so, he said abruptly, ‘How do you become an ambassador for America?’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’ Kirk Syme answered.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to know. How does a guy become the US Ambassador to China? Are you, like, buddies with the President or something?’

  Wolfe said, ‘Close. He was a friend of the President’s father.’

  ‘I was, yes.’ Syme half smiled. ‘I was a naval aviator. Flew with the President’s father in Vietnam. After the war, I stayed in Asia. Learned Mandarin, started a business in Hong Kong which I later sold for a fortune. When my buddy’s son became President and it came time to appoint an ambassador to China, he wanted a real guy, not a party hack. He remembered me.’

  ‘And you said yes?’ Hamish said. ‘If you’ve got all that money, why would you take up a job like that?’

  ‘When the President asks you to do something, you’d be surprised how keen you are to oblige,’ Syme said. The ambassador nodded outside. ‘You think they’re still out there?’

  ‘How about we find out?’ Hamish grabbed a nearby dinner plate and brought it over to one of the windows facing the lake.

  Holding the plate ready to throw, he cracked open the window. It made the tiniest squeak. With shocking suddenness a dragon head appeared in front of him, hanging upside-down from the roof!

  Hamish tumbled back in surprise.

  The second red-bellied black prince appeared outside another window, also with its head upside-down.

  They must have flown up into the sky and then glided down in perfect silence, landing on the roof of the building so softly that Hamish, Syme and Wolfe hadn’t even heard them.

  But then suddenly the two dragons at the windows turned and took off, abandoning the café without a second thought.

  ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ Syme said.

  ‘I don’t think our Chinese friends have control of their zoo anymore,’ Hamish said, still staring out through the lake-side window.

  And then he saw them. ‘Holy moly . . .’

  Two red-bellied black emperors came swooping in over the broad lake, passing the ruined castle before banking around toward the café, and for a moment Hamish thought in horror that they were coming for him, but then they pulled to a halt beneath the rim of the waterfall. There the two gargantuan creatures crouched below the waterfall and waited, looking up expectantly at the cascading lip of the falls.

  ‘What is this?’ Wolfe said, leaning forward.

  Hamish gasped. ‘It’s a trap.’

  Right then, two red-bellied black princes came whipping over the lip of the waterfall from the north, flying low and very, very fast.

  Orange tracer rounds went sizzling past them, fired from—

  —two Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters that came blasting over the rim of the waterfall, pursuing the princes at full speed.

  The two emperors sprang up from their hiding place below the waterfall and clutched at the two skinny attack choppers.

  Hamish could only imagine what it must have looked like to the choppers’ pilots: one second you were sweeping over a waterfall, the next you were looking into the eyes of a brontosaurus-sized dragon!

  The emperor on the right caught the first chopper in one of its mighty claws, crumpled it instantly and then tossed it away. The other emperor only managed to hit the second Z-10 with a glancing blow, but it was enough to dislodge the chopper’s tail rotor, sending that chopper cartwheeling into the lake. It crashed into the water with a huge splash, toppling onto its side before going under.

  A third Z-10 that had been trailing behind the first two saw the trap the dragons had sprung, so it powered away, banking hard—only to find itself assailed by three red-bellied black princes, all swooping in from different sides. They latched onto it and within seconds the attack chopper was covered in the things. The extra weight was far too much for it and it began to descend at an alarming angle toward the side of Dragon Mountain. It plunged toward the mountainside and a moment before impact, the dragons took flight, leaving the chopper to slam into Dragon Mountain and explode in a billowing fireball.

  ‘They’re taking out the choppers,’ Hamish said.

  He recalled Go-Go saying that the Chinese had four of the Z-10 choppers at the zoo, and he had just seen three of them get destroyed.

  Go-Go had also said the Chinese had two Mi-17s—both of those had been taken out near the other waterfall—and a Chinook, which Hamish hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know how many of the other helicopters at the zoo had been damaged or destroyed, but he had seen five of them taken out in the last hour.

  ‘The dragons are knocking out all their aerial competitors,’ Syme said, realising.

  ‘That’s right,’ Hamish said. ‘This place now has no electrical power and, by the look of it, no air power either. The dragons just took control of this zoo.’

  Down on the ring road on the eastern side of the megavalley, inside the turning bay that gave access to the mountaintop monastery, lay the wreckage of two silver Range Rovers and one troop truck.

  The second troop truck that had been part of the convoy speeding south—Ben Patrick’s truck—was simply gone. The awning-like roof of the turning bay had been wrenched clean off.

  The attack had been as ruthless as it had been swift.

  As soon as the zoo’s power had been cut and the roadway had gone dark, a gang of five red-bellied black dragons—two princes, two emperors and a king—had descended on the convoy.

  The emperors had bowled over the two troop trucks, while the king had skittled the Range Rovers, flinging them into the walls of the turning bay.

  The Range Rover containing Hu Tang, Colonel Bao and Director Chow slid wildly before it slammed hard into the wall beside the elevator that took visitors up to the monastery, while the second four-wheel drive containing the two Politburo members, one of their wives and the girl named Minnie, flipped entirely, landing heavily on its roof.

  Hu and Bao crawled out of their car, bloodied and dazed. But Director Chow was trapped. The impact with the wall had caused his door to crumple against his leg and that leg—probably broken—was now firmly and hopelessly pinned. Chow tugged at it desperately but it wouldn’t come clear.

  As Hu Tang staggered to his feet, he looked at the turning bay around him.

  It had become a slaughterhouse. The two prince dragons and the king were attacking the soldiers in the back of one of the troop trucks, tearing them to pieces, while one of the emperors just flew off with the other eight-ton troop truck gripped in its claws. The second emperor was stomping toward the upside-down Range Rover.

  Inside the silver four-wheel drive, Hu saw one Politburo man and the little girl with the Minnie Mouse hat. They were both hanging upside-down in their seats, held in place by their seatbelts. Both were still, either dead or unconscious.

  A shout from the other side of the Range Rover made Hu Tang turn.

  It had come from the other Politburo member, who was trying to drag the bloodied and limp body of his wife out of the car. The woman was obviously dead, killed by the impact, but he was pulling her clear anyway, trying to get away from the incoming emperor.

  The Politburo man’s name was Sun Dianlong and he was the head of the Central Secretariat, the vast bureaucracy that controlled the Communist Party. It was a position that made him a very powerful man in Chinese internal politics.

  Sun called to Hu Tang: ‘Comrade Hu! Help me!’

  Hu Tang looked from Sun to the elevator near him. It wasn’t the el
evator that Hu wanted to use, it was the emergency exit door inside the elevator’s shaft. That led outside the valley.

  Colonel Bao was clearly doing the same thing: assessing whether he should help this very senior Party official, or cut and run.

  Hu and Bao swapped a glance . . . and then raced for the elevator.

  Sun swore at them. ‘You dirty cowards!’

  Bao flicked an emergency release switch up near the top of the elevator’s doors and the doors came open easily. He and Hu slipped through them, both men stealing a final glance back at the turning bay behind them.

  The three dragons that had been attacking the troop truck stepped away from it, their snouts smeared with blood. They had literally torn it to shreds.

  Their hungry gazes turned to the two silver Range Rovers.

  The dragons looked from Director Chow, still struggling in his car, to the other upside-down Range Rover, with the girl and the Politburo man still inside it, and Sun outside it.

  As the dragons moved in on the two Range Rovers, Bao shut the elevator doors and coldly locked them.

  ‘We can’t help those people anymore,’ he said. ‘We must leave them to their fates.’

  Hu followed the colonel as Bao went over to a heavy steel door sunk into the rear wall of the elevator shaft. He inserted a high-tech laser-cut key into the lock and the door clanked opened.

  Bao pulled out a radio. ‘This is Colonel Bao. I need a helicopter at the east-side emergency exit in ten minutes.’

  A voice replied, ‘I’m sorry, sir. But the beasts have knocked out all of our choppers.’

  ‘Then send a fucking car!’ Bao barked. ‘A jeep, a truck, anything! I have to get to the secondary command post at the airfield! Bao, out.’

  He clicked off. ‘Damn it. I can regain control of the zoo from the airfield, but it’ll take us at least an hour to get there by car. Fuck.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Hu said, and the two of them took off down the long, dark concrete tunnel, one of the few tunnels that led out of the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

  CJ dreamed.

  Bizarre images flashed across her mind. She saw herself flying high above the world. Then she saw the face of a yellowjacket emperor dragon, impossibly huge, staring at her from very close range, opening its jaws—

  CJ’s eyes darted open.

  To find a yellowjacket emperor dragon staring at her from very close range.

  She started, but the dragon didn’t attack. It was lying very casually in front of her, its chin resting on the ground, just watching her.

  For a moment, CJ wondered if she was still dreaming.

  Looking about herself, she was in what could only be described as another world: she lay on a wooden stage inside an ancient-looking monastery high up in some kind of chasm.

  A wide wooden doorway opened before her, revealing a broad balcony that looked out at a second sky-temple mounted on the opposite side of the chasm.

  It was still night and it was still raining. CJ didn’t know how much time had passed since she had blacked out.

  Completing the fantastical nature of the image were the dragons.

  She was surrounded by a small group of yellowjackets, five of them, forming a tight ring around her—the emperor, two kings and two princes.

  Like the emperor, all the others were staring very intently and curiously at CJ.

  One of the princes stepped forward, easily distinguishable from the other dragons by virtue of the saddle on her back: Lucky.

  As CJ looked at them all more closely, however, she began to see that each yellow-and-black dragon bore unique patterns on its face and neck. No two dragons had the same markings.

  Lucky came up to CJ and, to CJ’s great surprise, bowed her head.

  CJ leaned back, confused.

  Lucky brayed a series of low burring sounds from deep within her throat.

  CJ looked from Lucky to the other yellowjacket dragons, unsure what was going on.

  Lucky turned to the other dragons, apparently equally confused. She threw a meaningful look at one of the watching kings. The king growled deeply, a noise that sounded profoundly unimpressed.

  Lucky turned back to CJ and repeated the sequence of low brays.

  Lucky stepped up close to CJ so that her toothy snout was right in front of CJ’s face.

  CJ remained stock still, not daring to move. The yellowjacket’s fangs looked deadly.

  And then Lucky nudged the earpiece in CJ’s ear.

  CJ frowned. The earpiece. The one she had taken from the body of Lucky’s handler back in the waste management facility when she had rescued Lucky from Red Face’s gang.

  CJ touched the earpiece. ‘What are you trying to tell me . . . ?’

  Then she saw the metal implant on the side of Lucky’s head, the box-shaped one that had been painted yellow and black to camouflage it against the dragon’s skin, the one trailing a small but distinct wire that disappeared into Lucky’s skull.

  ‘No way . . .’ CJ breathed. ‘The Chinese figured out a way to communicate with you . . .’

  A flurry of thoughts and images came together in her mind:

  Yim, the dragon handler, giving commands to Lucky and Red Face during the trick show.

  Ben Patrick saying: ‘—I have a database of over three hundred separate and identifiable vocalisations—Every squawk and screech you hear has meaning—’

  And the garbled electronic female voice CJ had heard through that earpiece after she had rescued Lucky from Red Face and his gang:

  ‘—Run . . . White head . . . Run—’

  And the male voice she’d heard before that: ‘—black dragons attack—’ And the same voice she’d heard when Melted Face had shrieked at her: ‘—Fear . . . me—’

  Even the way Lucky had growled and grunted at Red Face and his gang in the cable car tunnel. It had been communication, deliberate and articulate communication.

  Holy shit . . .

  During the crazy chase in the pick-up truck, CJ had thought the strange voices coming through her earpiece had been crossed signals from other radios in the zoo; the voices of workers panicking in the face of the attacks.

  But now as CJ’s gaze fell on the metallic box grafted onto the side of Lucky’s head, she had a different idea.

  The female voice had been Lucky.

  The male voice: Melted Face.

  Those metallic boxes on their heads were indeed implants of some sort—implants connected to the dragons’ brains and larynxes, implants fitted with state-of-the-art data chips that somehow translated their grunts, squawks and coos into language. The Chinese had even had the sense to use separate male and female voices for the different dragons, a small but clever touch.

  By the look of it, however, not all the dragons at the zoo had such implants. Only the performing ones: Lucky and Red Face and his gang. None of the other four yellowjackets surrounding CJ right now had implants on the sides of their heads.

  CJ pulled out her earpiece and looked at it.

  It was set to channel 4. CJ recalled switching it to that channel so she could speak with Hamish and Zhang in the garbage truck.

  She tried to remember what channel it had been set to before then.

  ‘22 . . .’ she said aloud. She flicked the dial on the earpiece to 22.

  She looked up at Lucky and—despite herself, despite thinking that this was absolutely crazy—she nodded.

  Lucky cooed and mewled . . .

  . . . and the electronic female voice once again came through CJ’s earpiece, speaking in Mandarin.

  It said, ‘Hello . . . White Head . . . Me . . . Lucky.’

  CJ almost fainted. Her mouth fell open in shock.

  This was incredible.

  She wasn’t sure how the translation system worked, but it must have been extraordinarily complex.

  She guessed a sensor was probably connected directly to Lucky’s voicebox; it detected the dragon’s utterances, correlated them with Ben Patrick’s database of known dragon soun
ds and then sent the translation via a computerised voice to CJ’s earpiece. The implant in the dragon’s brain must also reverse the process, so the dragon could understand people.

  Such a device would have taken years to develop and refine; thousands of man-hours just to tabulate and interpret all the different dragon calls. But Ben Patrick, with the full resources of China behind him, had done just that.

  It took CJ a moment to regather herself and reply.

  ‘Er . . . hello, Lucky,’ she said in Mandarin.

  Lucky reared back, eyes widening. Her pointy-eared head was surprisingly expressive. Her eyes were sharp and focused intently on CJ. Her ears folded backwards like a dog’s: a very pleased expression.

  The dragon, by all appearances, was delighted that progress had just been made.

  Lucky squawked at the other dragons, turning specifically to the two kings—even though there was an emperor-sized dragon in the pack, they, it seemed, were its leaders. They grunted back with low growls.

  Lucky faced CJ again and cooed.

  The earpiece translated: ‘Lucky say . . . White Head . . . good human.’

  ‘White Head?’ CJ frowned.

  And then she realised: it was her hair, her blonde hair. In a world of black-haired Chinese, Lucky had given her a perfectly obvious name: White Head.

  ‘Oh. Right.’ She ventured a complimentary reply, using the simplest Mandarin syntax she could think of: ‘White Head say . . . Lucky . . . good dragon.’

  Lucky’s ears flew back again, her eyes positively beaming.

  This is trippy, CJ thought. She was communicating with a dragon.

  Lucky barked and mewled quickly. ‘Red dragons want kill Lucky . . . White Head help Lucky . . . White Head good human . . .’

  ‘Ah-ha . . .’ CJ said, understanding.

  Lucky may well have saved CJ just now, but CJ had saved Lucky first: from Red Face’s gang inside the waste management facility. Lucky had been repaying a debt.

  ‘Well, thanks anyway,’ she said.

  Lucky cooed. ‘Lucky no understand White Head.’