Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

But they didn’t attack. The sonic shields on the watches were still effective.

The swamp dragons, Hamish thought, were easily the ugliest of all the dragons he had seen so far. Perhaps it was simply a colour thing. The yellowjackets, purple royals and red-bellied blacks, with their vibrant colourations, had a kind of style. These olive-green dragons, with their flatter snouts and spotted skin, looked like hideous monsters. The way they lurked in the water didn’t help either, all hunched and craven.

Hamish recalled the ugly olive-coloured dragon that had appeared out of nowhere in the Birthing Centre and attacked the red-bellied black prince.

‘These dragons look different to the others,’ he said to Go-Go as they pushed through the water.

‘That’s because they are,’ Go-Go said. ‘The swamp dragons were the first dragons at the zoo to come out of the bioengineering program.’

‘The what?’ Wolfe asked. He hadn’t gone through the Birthing Centre earlier.

‘The crocodile breeding program,’ CJ said.

Go-Go said, ‘The bosses wanted more dragons, so they utilised female saltwater crocodiles as hosts for dragon insemination. The program eventually managed to produce a lot of “pure” dragons—mainly red-bellies, yellowjackets and eastern greys—but at the start, as the engineers tried to figure out the right gene matrix, it produced an unexpected type of dragon, this species that we call the brown swamp dragon.’

Hamish said, ‘So the swamp dragons didn’t come from any eggs inside the original nest?’

‘That’s right,’ Go-Go said. ‘They are a totally new, entirely man-made, bioengineered dragon—essentially nine parts dragon, one part crocodile—bred right here at the Great Dragon Zoo.’

‘Which is why they look so different to the others,’ Hamish said.

‘Precisely,’ Go-Go said.

‘We saw your Birthing Centre,’ CJ said flatly. ‘Not exactly the nicest place I’ve ever seen.’

‘It isn’t nice. As you would imagine, dragon eggs are a lot bigger than crocodile eggs. Giving birth to a dragon kills the host croc.’

‘What!’ Hamish said. ‘You kill the mother crocodile to get a new dragon egg?’

‘A female crocodile’s birth canal isn’t wide enough to expel a dragon egg, so a Caesarean section is made. This, unfortunately, is fatal for the host mother. I know, I know, it’s callous and cruel,’ Go-Go said, ‘but for my bosses this is an acceptable sacrifice in the pursuit of building an amazing zoo.’

‘Just like we are an acceptable sacrifice,’ Ambassador Syme said.

‘Yes,’ Go-Go said quietly. ‘Just like we are.’

After about fifteen minutes of wading, they reached the end of the waterfall, where they were confronted by a small rocky cliff.

‘I’ll go first,’ Hamish volunteered.

He began climbing. The gushing of the waterfall filled his ears. If there was another Chinese helicopter waiting for them outside, he wouldn’t know it until he poked his head above the top of the rock wall.

After a short climb, he tentatively raised his head above the little cliff… and was immediately assaulted by the harsh glare of a spotlight that came blazing to life.

There waiting for him and the others, its rotors stopped, its spotlight flaring, was a second Chinese Mi-17 helicopter gunship, with a dozen soldiers arrayed in a semicircle in front of it, their rifles pointed right at Hamish.

CJ’s ragtag group—Hamish, Wolfe, Johnson, Syme, Go-Go and CJ herself—stepped out from the waterfall with their hands raised.

It was raining more heavily now.

The chopper stood about twenty feet above them, on a stone viewing platform overlooking the waterfall.

Dragon Mountain rose behind it, a steep slope of uneven black rock. A set of stone stairs led up from the waterfall to the viewing platform and then from the platform up the mountain: a hiking path of some sort.

CJ frowned.

The first time the Chinese had found them in the swamp could have been predicted. But this was different. It was as if the Chinese knew where her group had been going. She wondered how—

And then, with her hands raised, she saw the Great Dragon Zoo watch on her wrist, with its little pilot light glowing.

It didn’t just create a sonic shield, she realised unhappily. It probably also had a GPS transmitter in it, so the Chinese could keep track of all their guests.

They’ve known where we were all along .

Looking at her raised hands, she also wondered why she bothered putting them up. These Chinese troops were probably going to execute her and the others right now—

The Chinese captain in charge of this unit—he held a battlefield display unit in one hand and a pistol in the other—barked an order and his men cocked their rifles.

They were going to shoot them, then and there.

‘Aw, heck…’ CJ scowled.

Then something very large flashed between her and the chopper and suddenly the twelve soldiers were only six. The large object was followed by a second one and the next moment, the six soldiers were only one: the captain was left standing there, alone and confused.

CJ snapped to look sideways and saw two earless red-bellied black kings flying away, gripping the Chinese soldiers in their claws, biting down on a couple of them.

The chopper’s pilots reacted instantly. They fired up the Mi-17’s engines and its rotors began to spin.

The captain on the ground ran for the chopper just as, with a hideous shriek, two red-bellied black princes—also earless—came roaring out of the rain-filled sky and knocked him to the ground.

One held him down while the other gripped the captain’s head in its claws and ripped it clean off.

Then the two princes sprang toward the helicopter. Its rotors were beginning to blur with speed and through its canopy, CJ could see its pilots looking out frantically at this new threat.

The two princes hurled themselves right through the Mi-17’s windshield and soon all CJ could see of them was their tails, lashing back and forth as they mauled the pilots, spraying blood all over the side windows of the cockpit.

CJ stared at the attack. The sheer ruthlessness of it was astonishing.

But then she cocked her head to the side. There was something odd about it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on—

‘Run!’ Johnson yelled. ‘We’re not gonna get many chances like this!’

‘The stairs!’ Go-Go called, pointing at the hiking stairs carved into the mountainside above and behind the chopper. ‘They go past a fire exit in the side of the mountain!’

‘Roger that!’ CJ was already moving, bolting across the viewing platform and passing the chopper, when the two kings returned.

As she dashed past the decapitated body of the Chinese captain, she spied his battlefield display unit on the ground beside his outstretched hand.

She scooped it up and jammed it in the thigh pocket of her cargo pants just as one of the kings swooped over her, low and fast, the wind-gust almost bowling her over—before the big beast slammed hard into its real target, the chopper.

The Mi-17 rocked wildly and the king hit it again and this time, the chopper rolled onto its side, right behind CJ and her group.

CJ and the others dived forward as the huge Mi-17 slammed down onto the ground behind them. Its rotors, now tilted dramatically, fizzed like buzz saws, dangerously close. Weapons and crates went tumbling out of the helicopter’s open side doors, scattering to the ground.