Jonathan Maberry - The Dragon Factory

Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Maberry

A bunch of good-hearted and very bright people helped with the research and creation of this book and they all deserve thanks: my agent, Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.; my editor and fellow pop-culture geek, Michael Homler; everyone at St. Martin’s Press; Julia Kats for Russian translation and Alois Lohn for German; the members of International Thriller Writers, the Horror Writers Association, and Mystery Writers of America for ongoing support and encouragement; Mike Witzgall, for devious info on weapons and tactics; my cronies in the Liars Club: Gregory Frost, Jon McGoran, Dennis Tafoya, Keith Strunk, Don Lafferty, Kelly Simmons, William Lashner, Merry Jones, Marie Lambra, Ed Pettit, Laura Schrock, and L. A. Banks; Michael Sicilia of Homeland Security; Tiff any Schmidt, Nancy Keim-Comley, and Rachael Lavin for editorial assistance; the Starbucks in Upper Southampton, PA, where I wrote most of this book; and Axel Alonso at Marvel Comics.

A number of world-class genetics experts provided crucial technical information for this book (any errors are entirely the fault of the author): Yanru Chen-Tsai, Ph.D., Director, Transgenic Research Facility, and Associate Director, Stanford Cancer Center; Ioannis Dragatsis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology, University of Tennessee; Dr. Laurence Bugeon, CMMI, Division of Cell & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London; G. Thomas Caltagirone, Ph.D., President and CEO, Aptagen, LLC; Aurora Burds Connor, Ph.D., Director, Rippel Mouse ES Cells and Transgenic Facility, and Director, Preclinical Mouse Models Facility for the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

(1)

One week ago

Otto Wirths was the second-worst mass murderer in the history of the world. Compared to him Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, and even Alexander the Great were amateurs, poseurs who could not hold a candle to Otto and his body count.

Only one person was worse.

Cyrus Jakoby.

That wasn’t his real name, and in a way he had no real name. Like Otto, Cyrus was a freak. Like Otto, Cyrus was a monster.

A week ago I’d never even heard of them. Almost no one had. A week ago they were on no watch lists, they were not sought by any world governments, their names were not muttered in hateful curses or angry prayers by a single person on planet Earth.

Yet together they had done more harm than anyone. Together they had very quietly slaughtered tens of millions.

Tens of millions.

At night, when they sat down to their dinner they did not dwell on past accomplishments. A champion athlete doesn’t dwell on the preliminaries. To them it was always what was coming next. What was coming soon.

One week ago, seven days before I even heard of them, Otto Wirths placed a large digital clock on the wall above the elaborate workstation where he and Cyrus spent much of their waking hours. The clock was set to tick off seconds and minutes. Otto adjusted it to read: 10,080. Ten thousand and eighty minutes.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

Seven days.

One week.

After he pressed the start button, Otto and Cyrus clinked glasses of Perrier-Jouët, which-at over six thousand dollars a bottle-was the world’s most expensive champagne.

They sipped the bubbles and smiled and watched the first sixty seconds tick away, and then the next sixty.

The Extinction Clock had begun.

(2)

Now

I crouched in the dark. I was bleeding and something inside was broken. Maybe something inside my head, too.

The door was barred. I had three bullets left. Three bullets and a knife.

The pounding on the door was like thunder. I knew the door wouldn’t hold.

They would get in.

Somewhere the Extinction Clock was ticking down. If I was still in this room when it hit zero, more people would die than perished during the Black Death and all of the pandemics put together.

I thought I could stop them.

I had to stop them. It was down to me or no one.

It wasn’t my fault I came into this so late. They chased us and messed with our heads and ran us around, and by the time we knew what we were up against the clock had already nearly run its course.

We tried. Over the last week I’d left a trail of bodies behind me from Denver, to Costa Rica, to the Bahamas. Some of those bodies were human. Some… well, I don’t know what the hell you’d call them.

The pounding was louder. The door was buckling, the crossbar bending. It was only seconds before the lock or the hinges gave out, and then they’d come howling in here. Then it would be them against me.

I was hurt. I was bleeding.

I had three bullets and a knife.

I got to my feet and faced the door, my gun in my left hand, the knife in my right.

I smiled.

Let them come.

Holy Redeemer Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland

Saturday, August 28, 8:04 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 99 hours, 56 minutes

“Detective Ledger?” he said, and held out an ID case. “NSA.”

“How do you spell that?”

Not a flicker of a smile touched the concrete slab of his face. He was as big as me, and the three goons with him were even bigger. All of them in sunglasses with American flags pinned on their chests. Why does this stuff always seem to happen to me?

“We’d like you to come with us,” said the guy with the flat face.

“Why?” We were in the parking lot of Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Baltimore. I had a bunch of bright yellow daffodils in one hand and a bottle of spring water in the other. I had a pistol tucked into the back of my jeans under an Orioles away-game shirt. I never used to bring a piece to Helen’s grave, but over the last few months things have changed. Life’s become more complicated, and the gun was a habit 24/7. Even here.

The Goon Squad was definitely packing. Three right-handers and one lefty. I could see the faint bulges even under the tailored suits. The lefty was the biggest of the bunch, a moose with steroid shoulders and a nose that looked like it had been punched at least once from every possible angle. If things got weird, he’d be the grabby type. The guys on either side of him were pretty boys; they’d keep their distance and draw on me. Right now they were about fourteen feet out and their sports coats were unbuttoned. Smooth.

“We’d like you to come with us,” Slab-face said again.

“I heard you. I asked, ‘Why?’ ”

“Please, Detective-”

“It’s Captain Ledger, actually.” I put a bit of frost in it even though I kept a smile on my face.

He said nothing.

“Have a nice day,” I said, and started to turn. The guy next to Slab-face-the one with the crooked nose-put his hand on my shoulder.

I stopped and looked down at his big hand and then up at his face. I didn’t say a word and he didn’t move his hand. There were four of them and one of me. The Nose probably thought that gave them a clean edge, and since NSA guys are pretty tough he was probably right. On the other hand, these guys tend to believe their own hype, and that can come back to bite you. I don’t know how much they knew about me, but if this clown had his hand on me then they didn’t know enough.