Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

‘Wait, wait,’ Go-Go said, ‘even if they do bring down the inner dome, there’s still the second dome outside that one. They can’t get out.’

‘Jesus, don’t you get it yet? That’s the whole problem with this place,’ CJ said. ‘You guys have underestimated these creatures from minute one. These dragons are unlike any other animal on this planet. They are smart and they are motivated and I’d be willing to bet they have a plan for bringing down the second dome, too.’

The silver Range Rover sped around the northeastern corner of the Great Dragon Zoo of China, its wipers working furiously, its wheels kicking up spray.

Inside it were the two remaining visiting Politburo members, one of their wives and the little girl named Minnie.

After a time, their Range Rover was caught by a second silver Range Rover plus a pair of troop trucks filled with Chinese soldiers.

The second Range Rover contained the three most senior men at the Great Dragon Zoo: Hu Tang, Colonel Bao and Director Chow.

The four-car convoy now sped around the ring road, heading back to the main entrance building via the eastern wall of the valley.

Inside the second Range Rover, Hu Tang’s mind was racing.

This was the worst mishap yet. First, there had been the incident in the river village, when a single adolescent dragon with a faulty pain chip had killed eight people before it had been taken down. Then the breakout last month, when the American expert, Bill Lynch, had needed to be liquidated: nineteen people had died in that one, plus Lynch. But this was bigger again. The clean-up alone, including rebuilding the administration building, would take at least a year.

This was an unmitigated disaster, for the zoo and for Hu Tang’s career. Hu Tang began drafting in his mind the presentation he would have to give to the Politburo, explaining the delay and allocating the blame. He decided he would blame the foreign security consultants.

Just then, beside him, Colonel Bao touched his ear as a report came in.

‘Well, they must be somewhere on Dragon Mountain then!’ Bao barked. ‘Send in Recon One. Tell them to find those Americans and kill them or I’ll put them in front of a firing squad.’

Bao turned to the others. ‘The Americans got away from our men in the swamp. We used the GPS chips in their watches to track them to the other side of the waterfall but then some dragons attacked; they destroyed another of our choppers and killed our men. The Americans got away and now we’ve lost their GPS signals. They must have taken off their watches.’

Hu Tang said, ‘They cannot be allowed to get out of this valley. Too much is riding on this.’

‘I understand,’ Bao said.

He touched his earpiece again as another report came through. ‘In the administration building? Underneath it?’ The colonel frowned. ‘If it’s a dead end, then send Recon Two into the tunnel to kill them.’

‘What was that?’ Hu Tang asked.

‘It seems there are still two red-bellied black dragons inside the administration building. They’re in an underground cable tunnel that branches off the waste management facility. The stupid animals must think it’s a way out. They’ll be dead soon. As will our American guests.’

A few minutes later, a squad of twelve Chinese ‘reconnaissance’ commandos arrived at the tunnel entrance to the waste management facility.

These men weren’t regular infantry troops. They were special forces, which meant they didn’t carry Chinese knock-offs of Russian-made assault rifles. They carried German-made Heckler & Koch MP-7 submachine guns with special compact M40 grenade launchers under the barrels.

The vast concrete hall looked like a war had been fought in it, which wasn’t far from the truth. Dead bodies and debris lay everywhere; garbage trucks were overturned; there were even a few dead dragons in places around the hall.

The huge external gates on the western wall still stood resolutely closed. Slanting rain blew in through their massive bars. The gates had withstood the dragons’ onslaught.

The commando team’s leader spotted a nondescript door over in the far corner of the hall, to the left of the external gates.

It was an access door to a subducting tunnel. The tunnel, he’d been informed, was basically a passageway that contained bundles of electrical and communications cables; it allowed engineers to access the cables in the event of an overload or shutdown. About a hundred metres in, the tunnel ended abruptly. It just stopped at a pipe into which the cable bundles disappeared. A dead end. The two dragons inside it would be sitting ducks.

‘Base, this is Recon Two, we have arrived at the waste management facility,’ he said into his throat mike. ‘Have spotted the subducting tunnel. Preparing to make entry.’

‘ Copy that, Recon Two ,’ came the reply in his earpiece.

‘Men. Ready your weapons.’

One after the other, the team of crack Chinese commandos raised their MP-7s and fanned out across the waste management facility, heading for the subducting tunnel.

CJ turned to face the fire door leading off the landing.

‘Okay, Go-Go,’ she said, ‘on the other side of this door is…?’

‘The cable car station. We’re halfway up the mountain.’

‘And there’s an office in there somewhere with a phone or a computer?’

‘Yes. The maintenance office. It’s in the corner of the station.’

‘Okay, let’s do this.’ CJ gripped the handle and cracked the door open an inch. The space beyond it was bathed in flickering darkness. She peered out through the gap—to look right into the jaws of a lunging king dragon!

CJ fell back with a shout, landing clumsily on her butt, only to hear Go-Go chuckling softly.

CJ looked up and saw that the dragon looming above her was in fact a life-sized stone carving of a king dragon cut from the rocky wall of the station.

She kicked herself. She’d forgotten about the giant carvings of dragons in dynamic poses that ringed the station. She saw the rest of them now, lunging from the walls in the strobing light.

She opened the door fully and beheld the wide, high space that was the cable car station. As she did so, Go-Go stopped chuckling.

There was carnage and wreckage everywhere.

What had until recently been a slick and modern area—with new concrete and shiny steel—was now the site of a grim bloodbath.

What little light there was flickered on and off. Only a few of the station’s fluorescent light bulbs were still working: the rest had all been smashed. Exposed wires sparked intermittently, giving off the strobing blue light that made the statues seem alive.

CJ recalled the team of electricians she’d seen here earlier, including the young one who had clumsily dropped his tools and clips.