Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

CJ snapped around—in time to see Captain Wong wading through the water right beside her, his face twisted in fury, his 9mm pistol coming level with her face. At the exact same time, she felt a surge of water and in an instant CJ knew that the captain’s sudden movement had captured a croc’s attention.

She grabbed Wong’s gun hand in her own and hip-tossed him, jujitsu-style, right into the path of an inrushing crocodile.

The big croc—and it was indeed a big one—clamped its mighty jaws around Wong’s head. Then, with incredible ferocity, it yanked the captain away from CJ and she fell back into the water, to find his 9mm pistol now held dumbly in her own hand.

CJ spun to see the croc rolling over and over in the water, still gripping Wong by the head, flinging his body like a rag doll: this was the death roll. A crocodile didn’t suffocate you with a bite to the jugular like a lion did. No, it rolled you until you drowned. Then it ate you at its leisure.

CJ stepped slowly away from the death roll taking place right in front of her. She saw the others over by the semi-destroyed boardwalk.

‘Everybody, move slowly and together back to the boardwalk. We must stay together. No running and no breaking away from the group.’

And so that was how they moved—slowly and tightly together—back toward the boardwalk.

By now at least five crocs were feasting on the four Chinese soldiers with perhaps six more watching from the reeds.

Gliding through the chest-deep water, CJ whispered, ‘Head for that side.’ She indicated the end of the exploded boardwalk farthest from the van that had brought them here. ‘There could be more Chinese troops on the way to make sure we’re dead.’

The group reached the end of the damaged boardwalk.

‘One at a time,’ CJ said. ‘Keep it slow. No sudden movements. No splashing.’

Syme went first, followed by Wolfe, Johnson, Go-Go and Hamish. Hamish and Johnson then scooped CJ out of the water together with a single powerful lift.

They all now stood on the boardwalk, gasping and soaked. The spot fires were beginning to peter out.

‘What now?’ Hamish asked.

CJ said, ‘I can’t say I’ve been in a situation like this before but I don’t think it’ll be long before someone comes to see why these assholes haven’t come back. We gotta move and we gotta move now.’

She glanced at Greg Johnson, seeking the opinion of the only person there who she thought might actually have been in such a situation before.

Johnson nodded. ‘They’ll come checking soon.’

‘But where do we go ?’ Wolfe asked.

CJ bit her lip, looked out into the darkness.

Across the lake Dragon Mountain loomed large, a black shadow against the cloud-filled sky. Around it was the megavalley, dotted with hills, forests and waterfalls, and infested with dragons.

She tossed the dead captain’s 9mm pistol to Johnson. ‘Here, you can use this better than I can.’ Then, to the others: ‘We go into the zoo. And if we can stay alive long enough, we figure out a way to get out of it.’

CJ ran quickly but quietly down the wooden boardwalk. The floorboards creaked. The waters of the swamp sloshed with the movements of crocodiles.

Hamish and the others ran behind her, also trying to move with minimal noise.

By now, night had fallen over the zoo, but it was relatively easy to see thanks to the many floodlights mounted on the rim of the crater. The full moon was hidden behind a dense layer of storm clouds.

Then the first drops of rain began to fall, spattering the boardwalk.

As she ran, CJ kept an ear out for another sound: the sound of realisation. When the Chinese discovered that the American witnesses to the bloodshed had not been eliminated, there would be uproar. So far, she had heard no such sounds.

‘CJ Cameron,’ Go-Go whispered as he jogged, ‘can I just say that you are Xena the fucking Warrior Princess! Nice moves back there, honeypie.’

‘Thanks, Go-Go,’ CJ said.

‘It was pretty impressive,’ Greg Johnson said as he came up alongside her. ‘Where’d you learn to build a flamethrower?’

‘High school science class,’ CJ said. ‘Honestly, I was just trying to set them alight, create a distraction of some sort. The grenades were… well…’ She let the sentence trail off. She didn’t mention that her hands had been shaking ever since. She’d never killed anyone before.

‘They got what they deserved,’ Johnson said, looking her in the eye. ‘They were going to kill you and all of us. Right now, the question is: now what?’

CJ regathered herself. ‘Now, we get as far away from this swamp as possible. When the Chinese find out we’re not dead, they’ll send more troops, maybe choppers, too.’

‘Concur.’ Johnson turned to Go-Go. ‘Hey, you. How many helicopters have your army guys got here?’

‘Yo. Salt-and-Pepper. The name is Go-Go or Mr Go-Go, okay? To answer your question, they have seven choppers in total: four of the little Z-10 attack birds, two big Mi-17 gunships, and one of those really big double-rotored transport choppers—’

‘A Chinook,’ Johnson said.

‘Yeah, that’s it. It’s also loaded with fucking guns. The dragons hate the choppers. Hate ’em. I’ve seen a few civilian helicopters here as well, but they come and go and they don’t have any weapons on them that I know of.’

Johnson turned back to CJ as they jogged. ‘So we evade and avoid capture. What then?’

‘The first thing we need to do is find something that can put us in touch with the outside world: a working phone or a computer. We need to call for help and then find a place to hide till someone can come and get us,’ CJ said. ‘I figure the best place to hide is outside this crater, so after we find a telephone, we find a way out. Go-Go, where’s the nearest phone?’

‘The casino hotel.’ Go-Go pointed out over the reeds. ‘Lots of offices and rooms there with heaps of phones and computers.’

‘Where else?’ CJ asked. ‘Give me options.’

Go-Go nodded across the valley to the south, to where Dragon Mountain towered in the rain. ‘The mountain. There’s a maintenance office inside the cable car station. There’s also a manager’s office up in the restaurant.’

CJ looked up at the disc-shaped revolving restaurant at the summit of the peak.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Closer is better, so the casino it is. We stay out of sight, find a phone, call for help, then we get the hell out of Dodge. Everybody okay with that?’

There were no objections.

‘Getting out is going to be next to impossible in daylight,’ Johnson said. ‘We need to do it tonight, under cover of darkness.’

CJ turned as she jogged, appraised Johnson. With his salt-and-pepper hair and clean-cut features, he was kind of handsome, but there was something more to him, something in his sharp grey eyes.

‘Okay, you,’ she said. ‘Since we’re on the run from the Chinese Army in a valley filled with dragons, it’s time to come clean. You’re not just an aide to the US Ambassador, are you?’