Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

‘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 elevator that Hu wanted to use, it was the emergency exit door inside the elevator’s shaft. That led outside the valley.