The Great Zoo of China

63

Thirty seconds earlier, as Li performed the final reconnection, CJ flipped down her visor.

She saw the thin red grid of the dome separating the Chinese electrician from the pack of grey dragons on the other side.

And then the grid vanished.

Just blinked out.

Gone.

The dragons rose, their wings spreading, their jaws opening.

Li’s head was bent over his work. He was oblivious to what had just happened.

‘Last reconnection is… done!’ he shouted. ‘Hit the switches!’

CJ flicked the first switch, disconnecting their truck from the main power line. Then she slammed down on the big blue switch labelled OPEN LINE.

A grey king roared at Li from a distance of three feet and readied itself to pounce at him when—whack—the dazzling red grid sprang back into place between them, and the dragon lunged into it only to fall instantly, like a boxer punched square in the face.

‘Whoa,’ CJ gasped.

Over at the airfield, Colonel Bao’s finger was mere millimetres away from pressing the first detonation button when a technician shouted, ‘Look! The dome! It’s back up!’

Hu Tang snapped up to see, on a screen, a fleeing dragon hit the dome and drop out of the air. The dome was indeed back in place.

‘It’s been restarted from over in the worker city!’ another tech called.

‘How many dragons got out?’ Bao demanded.

‘I counted three,’ someone said.

‘I did, too,’ Hu Tang agreed. ‘One of the fire-breathers and two emperors. All red-bellied blacks.’

‘Only three,’ Bao said. ‘We can handle that.’

Then he was up and moving: ‘Initiate the tracking chips for the three escaped dragons and send some gunships from Guilin to kill them! Get the internal power reconnected! I want somebody to tell me how the hell that dome got back online! And I want some fucking training units found so we can stun all the remaining dragons into fucking submission and drag them back into the valley! It’s time to reclaim our zoo.’

CJ keyed her radio. ‘Bear, this is Chipmunk. We got the dome back up.’

‘We could tell. But some of the dragons got out in the few seconds that the dome was down. A fire-breather and a couple of emperors.’

‘One of the fire-breathers… shit,’ CJ said.

‘And who knows where they’ll go.’

‘I know where they’ll go,’ CJ said flatly. ‘They’ll go to the larger nest and open it.’

‘Where is that?’

‘I have an idea. And I have to get there fast to stop them, or else the whole world is going to have an unstoppable dragon problem.’

64

Twenty minutes later, CJ found herself flying alone with Lucky over the spectacular moss-covered landforms of southern China.

She still wore her heat suit with the hood thrown back plus her lightweight helmet. She also still had her flamethrower slung over her shoulder, its liquid propane canister on her back underneath the heat suit, and her MP-7 with the grenade launcher duct-taped to it.

Dawn was coming.

The eastern horizon glowed pink. The beautiful landscape—lush, green and wet—glistened in the early morning light. A low-lying mist ran between the sheer-sided buttes and the steep mountains like a river. The near impenetrable rainforests of these parts meant there were few villages here.

CJ had left Li back at the worker city with instructions to get to the airfield. She suggested he drive there the long way, in a wide circle staying outside the dome—and, if he could, repair the main emplacement there. She even said he should inform his Chinese superiors that it was he who had fixed the emplacements at the worker city; but he needn’t tell them he did it at CJ’s urging or with her help.

After a few minutes’ flying over this lush terrain, CJ beheld a singular landform: a wide meteor crater. It was perfectly round, like Meteor Crater in Arizona, only smaller. Over thousands of millennia, its vertical walls had crumbled in places and a lake had formed in its middle. A small forest had grown at its fringes, around the base of its inner wall.

The low-lying mist surrounded the crater, a soup of thick grey cloud.

CJ heard Na’s voice in her head, from when she’d been talking to Seymour Wolfe about this very land formation yesterday:

‘Crater Lake was created by a nickel meteorite that hit here about 300 million years ago.’

And Zhang’s voice from the tour:

‘Our dragons—our archosaurs—survived the Alvarez Meteor 65 million years ago by hibernating deep beneath the surface of the Earth underneath dense nickel and zinc deposits.’

And Hu Tang’s comment about the nickel deposit underneath the Nesting Centre:

‘Our zoo is built on top of the second-largest nickel deposit in these parts; the largest is over at Crater Lake about fifteen kilometres to the northwest.’

The largest nickel deposit…

CJ figured that the bigger the nickel deposit, the bigger the dragon nest—

A blaze of orange light flared up from the inner wall of the crater and CJ saw a round hole at the base of the crater there. It looked like a tunnel.

Two red-bellied emperor dragons peered down into the tunnel, their backs to CJ.

Then another blaze of light flared out from within the tunnel and the black superking emerged from it. The two emperors immediately slithered into the tunnel and large chunks of melted soil—soil that had accumulated in the dragons’ tunnel over the years—began to be flung out from within it.

‘Shit,’ CJ said aloud. ‘They’ve already started digging for the nest.’

She hoped she wasn’t too late.

Abruptly, the two emperors reappeared, barked something to their superking and the superking dashed inside the tunnel. The emperors then took up positions by the entrance, facing outward, standing guard.

‘What are they doing?’ she said aloud.

‘Master… warm eggs…’ Lucky’s voice said. ‘Wake nest…’

‘We have to get in there and stop it—’

A mighty roar cut CJ off.

The two emperor dragons were staring directly up at her and Lucky. They had spotted them.

One of the emperors took to the air with a great beating of its wings and charged right at them, roaring with rage.

CJ looked left and right for options, and saw something. She pulled Lucky into a steep dive and the chase began.

With its larger wings, the red-bellied black emperor was much faster than Lucky, but the yellowjacket prince was more manoeuvrable and as she and CJ shot down toward the fog layer, Lucky made a sharp turn that took the emperor by surprise and it overshot them by three hundred yards.

But then it banked around like an aeroplane and kept on chasing.

‘Lucky! Down!’ CJ called and with the emperor closing in behind them, they dropped into the mist.

From CJ’s point of view, it was like being on a superfast rollercoaster without any tracks and with only ten metres of visibility.

The walls of buttes and cliffs emerged from the soupy haze with frightening suddenness and Lucky banked and bent superbly.

Crouched low over Lucky’s neck like a jockey, CJ risked a glance over her shoulder—

—and found herself looking right into the jaws of the pursuing emperor! It was only a foot behind the tip of Lucky’s tail!

CJ snapped to look forward and saw it.

‘Lucky! Up! Now!’ she yelled, pulling on the reins, and Lucky went vertical, avoiding a cliff-face shrouded in mist right in front of them.

The red-bellied black emperor, bigger and less agile, didn’t.

It slammed into the cliff-face at full speed, head-first. An almighty crash could be heard and a spray of rocks went flying out from the cliff-face and CJ heard a sickening crack.

The emperor didn’t emerge from the fog.

CJ swung Lucky around and they risked a peek down at the base of the cliff. There they saw the body of the emperor, curled in a ball, neck twisted at an impossible angle. Dead.

‘One down,’ CJ said. ‘Two to go.’

CJ and Lucky looped around and returned to Crater Lake.

Lucky landed halfway up the rim of the crater, a few hundred metres from the second emperor standing guard at the tunnel’s mouth.

CJ was trying to figure out what to do when Lucky’s voice spoke in her ear.

‘Lucky fight red dragon… White Head fight red master…’

CJ frowned. ‘What?’

‘Lucky fight red dragon… White Head fight red master…’ the dragon repeated. ‘Lucky… challenge… red dragon…’

CJ wasn’t sure she understood until Lucky bucked gently, suggesting she get off.

CJ dismounted.

And immediately Lucky flew off, zipping out into the open, positioning herself right in front of the red-bellied black emperor.

Lucky pulled into a hover, lowered her head and barked fiercely: an invitation to joust.

The emperor snorted with contempt before issuing a low growl of pure anger.

With a lazy beat of its wings, it rose into a hover of its own and lowered its head menacingly.

Challenge accepted.

CJ was torn. She didn’t like Lucky’s chances at all against the emperor, but she knew what Lucky was doing: Lucky was drawing the emperor away from the tunnel so that CJ could run to it and get inside… even if it meant an almost certainly suicidal joust with an emperor.

So CJ ran, dashing through the forest toward the tunnel’s yawning entrance.

As she ran, the two hovering dragons glared at each other, sizing each other up.

CJ was almost at the tunnel when, with a blood-curdling shriek, the emperor charged at Lucky.

Lucky launched herself forward in response.

Dragon rushed at dragon: the huge red-and-black emperor against the tiny yellowjacket prince.

The emperor flexed its massive keratin claws.

Lucky streamlined herself as she sped forward.

CJ came to the tunnel entrance and looked up just as the two hurtling dragons came together.

Lucky rolled. The emperor lashed out. There was a slash of claws and an explosion of blood and…

…to CJ’s horror…

…Lucky went peeling off to the left, her body lifeless, her wings and tail unmoving. Her body flew downward toward the edge of the lake before it slammed into the shallows in a spray of water.

‘No…’ CJ breathed.

65

A far louder smashing noise made CJ snap around to look in the other direction.

The emperor, also wounded, went crashing into the hillside not far from her. It crunched through trees, turning their trunks to splinters before it too came to a crashing halt.

It moaned painfully, deep and loud. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t doing very well either. It tried to get up but instead it dropped back to the ground with a heavy boom, unable to lift itself.

CJ risked a glance around a tree trunk and saw that the great beast had a ragged gash running right up the length of its belly. Its huge intestines were pouring from the wound.

Lucky had completely eviscerated the emperor.

But at great cost. CJ turned to see the gutsy yellowjacket lying in the shallows of the lake, also still. She couldn’t believe Lucky’s courage. She had done this to give CJ a chance to stop the superking and CJ wasn’t going to let Lucky’s sacrifice be in vain.

Suddenly the emperor moaned again and CJ jumped in fright, but then the great beast slumped and, with a final sighing exhalation, went completely still.

CJ turned and gazed at the tunnel’s yawning mouth.

It was just her and the superking now.

She hurried into the tunnel on foot.

The tunnel stretched downward at a steep angle, in a dead-straight line, cutting through the nickel.

CJ flicked on her helmet flashlight and hastened down it.

As she ran, she noticed the occasional flare of fiery orange light illuminating the lower end of the tunnel.

When she arrived at the base of the tunnel, she saw the reason for those flares.

CJ stood on a ledge high above an enormous—enormous—underground cavern. Like the nest back at the zoo, it was funnel-shaped—wide at the top, narrow at the bottom—with a single curving ledge running in a spiral all the way down its nickel-sided walls.

And lined up neatly on that spiral were dragon eggs: hundreds and hundreds of them.

CJ gasped. The nest at the zoo had held 88 eggs. There must be over 2,000 of them here.

In the middle of it all was the red-bellied superking, blowing gentle bursts of liquid fire around the cavern, warming it, creating the right conditions for the eggs to…

…an egg not far from CJ cracked. CJ saw a tiny snout pecking at the shell from within.

The egg was hatching.

Consumed with its task, the superking hadn’t seen CJ arrive.

‘Okay, genius,’ CJ said to herself. ‘What are you going to do now? How do you stop a ten-ton fire-breathing dragon?’

She checked her weapons: the MP-7 with its taped-on grenade launcher and the flamethrower with its liquid propane tank.

She looked out at the superking as it blew another tongue of fire.

That was its greatest strength—the ability to breathe fire—but perhaps it was also its greatest…

‘Go hard or go home, Cameron,’ CJ said aloud. ‘Win or die trying.’

And so she laid her trap. It took her three minutes.

Then she sprayed fire from her flamethrower out into the cavern and called, ‘Hey! Fire-breather! Are you looking for me!’

The red-bellied superking turned at her shout.

CJ was standing in the mouth of the tunnel at the top of the enormous cavern, waving. She loosed another burst from her flamethrower.

The superking accepted the challenge and rocketed up at her.

CJ immediately turned and hurried back up the tunnel, making it about twenty metres by the time the superking appeared in the tunnel’s entrance, filling it.

It roared, a deafening sound in the confined space.

CJ froze, as any normal prey would do.

The superking responded by doing what any normal predator would do: it folded its wings, stomped up the tunnel, reared its head and blew a great extended blast of fire right at CJ.

At which point, two things occurred that most certainly did not happen in the usual predator–prey dynamic.

First, CJ flipped on the hood of her heat suit, so that now her whole body was protected, just as the wave of fire rushed over her.

Second, the dragon’s great tongue of fire ignited the pool of liquid propane that CJ had poured onto the tunnel’s floor from her flamethrower’s tank… a pool that extended out from where CJ stood down to the spot where the superking raged.

The propane pool immediately lit up in a curtain of blazing fire and suddenly the superking itself was engulfed in flames!

The dragon shrieked as its wings and skin caught alight. It bucked and thrashed against the walls of the tunnel.

Then its head was consumed by fire and the hideous flaming thing turned and locked eyes with CJ—to find her holding her MP-7 aimed directly at its face.

Braaaaaaaack!

CJ loosed a burst on full auto and the rounds slammed into the superking’s eyes and forehead, ripping its skull apart. Its eyes exploded, shredded by bullets.

And the superking dragon fell.

It hit the floor of the tunnel with a monumental thump, its body still on fire. Its muscles twitched and then it went completely still.

The superking was dead.

CJ exhaled, utterly spent.

But she wasn’t done.

Without hesitating, she strode past the burning body of the superking and headed into the cavern, still holding her MP-7.

Then, standing at the mouth of the tunnel above the massive cave, she fired off nearly every grenade she had in her grenade launcher.

Explosions rocked the cavern. Eggs blasted out in sprays of albumen before they caught fire and burned. The squeals of dying infant dragons cut through the air.

Then CJ aimed her grenade launcher at the ceiling of the cavern and fired off more grenades.

Under the weight of those explosions, the cavern’s ceiling crumbled, dropping great boulders of nickel down on the eggs, smashing them, crushing them, while the curved spiralling ledge containing the eggs just fell away from the cavern’s walls.

Eggs and nickel dropped down into the giant funnel-shaped cavern. Owing to the shape of the cavern, they all fell into the narrow base, where they were more easily crushed by the falling rocks.

In a final move, CJ stepped back up the tunnel, moving past the remains of the dead superking, and fired off her last few grenades there, causing the tunnel’s roof to collapse and cave in.

The roof came down, flattening the corpse of the superking and blocking the exit, and leaving CJ Cameron standing there, breathing hard, her face blackened with soot and dust but her victory achieved.

Her ammunition spent, CJ tossed her MP-7 to the ground and began the long trudge back up the tunnel.

66

CJ emerged from the tunnel to see the first rays of sunlight peeking over the crater wall to the east.

She had survived the night.

No sooner was she out of the tunnel, however, than she dashed for the lake. She splashed to her knees beside Lucky.

The yellowjacket lay on her side in the shallows, moaning painfully.

She jerked suddenly at CJ’s arrival—probably assuming CJ was the other dragon coming to finish her off—but then she relaxed when CJ began stroking her forehead.

‘Easy, girl. Easy.’

CJ saw a large gash running down Lucky’s right hind leg: a terrible wound. She embraced the dragon, resting her head against Lucky’s huge cheek.

Lucky sighed, a pained braying noise.

‘White Head… fight master…?’

‘Yes,’ CJ said. ‘White Head fight master. White Head kill master.’

Lucky grunted, still lying on her side. ‘Lucky like White Head…’

And for a short while the two of them just lay there together in the shallows of Crater Lake as the sun crept over the horizon.

After a time, CJ rose and took a look at Lucky’s laceration.

It was an awful wound—right across the top of her thigh—but CJ figured if she could stitch it up, it would only affect Lucky’s ability to walk. She should still be able to fly.

‘This is not going to be pretty and not very hygienic either,’ CJ said as she fashioned a needle out of a sharpened stick and used her own bootlaces as thread. ‘And it’s going to hurt like hell.’

It hurt all right.

Lucky howled in agony throughout the operation but eventually CJ stitched up the wound, drawing the skin firmly together.

Lucky panted quickly.

‘Lucky stand?’ CJ asked.

The dragon tentatively rose to her feet… and promptly fell down as the leg failed to bear her weight. But she tried again, favouring her other legs, and managed to hold herself upright.

CJ grinned. ‘You are one tough chick, you know that, Lucky?’

‘Lucky no understand White Head…’

‘White Head like Lucky.’

The dragon nuzzled CJ. ‘Lucky like White Head…’

CJ then got Lucky to test her wings and the dragon proved able to fly. Not exactly powerfully; it was more gliding than flying, but it was enough.

And so, soon after, they were soaring over the forests and rock formations of southern China, heading back toward the zoo.

67

The sun had risen fully by the time CJ and Lucky beheld the vast rectangular crater containing the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

In the harsh light of day, the amount of damage that the dragons had done to the zoo was simply astonishing. Columns of black smoke rose from numerous sites around the megavalley, from smashed helicopters and destroyed buildings. The revolving restaurant at the top of Dragon Mountain had literally been ripped apart. Its two levels yawned open to the elements.

At 6:20 a.m., CJ keyed her radio to channel 20. ‘Bear? You out there? Bear, come in?’

Static… then: ‘I hear you, Chipmunk.’

‘Are you good?’

‘Lying low after a shitstorm of a battle but not in enemy hands yet. Whatever you did, sis, it worked. The dragons are contained. The outer dome is working. I’m gonna guess that whatever you got up to was character building?’

‘You better fucking believe it,’ CJ said. ‘What about the Chinese? What are they doing now?’

‘They suffered heavy casualties, but those who are left are on the move. Saw a fleet of jeeps zoom in toward the zoo ten minutes ago. What do we do now, Chipmunk?’

CJ was thinking the same thing. ‘Now we have to find a way out of this place—’

‘CJ?’ Another voice came on the line. A male voice, speaking in English. ‘CJ, is that you? It’s Ben Patrick.’

Patrick, CJ thought. She’d last seen him in the revolving restaurant, when he’d said she was crazy to be going into the Nesting Centre.

‘Ben? Where are you?’ she said.

‘I’m at the main entrance building. On the roof. I came over on a maintenance cable car. I can’t believe you’re still alive.’

‘Only just.’

‘CJ, the zoo is under control again, which means the Chinese are about to go into serious damage control,’ Patrick said. ‘They’ll kill all of us now to keep this disaster a secret. It’s time to get the hell out of here and I know a way out. If you’re still riding your yellow friend, meet me on the roof of the main entrance building as soon as you can.’

CJ thought about that. ‘Okay. We’ll be there as soon as we can. Bear?’

‘Yeah?’ Hamish’s voice replied.

‘I’ll contact you shortly.’

CJ and Lucky made two stops on their way to the main entrance building: the first was at the Birthing Centre, where they picked up Minnie. CJ grabbed a portable surgical kit from the infirmary there: scalpels, stitches, anaesthetic, cleaning alcohol. She also took the opportunity to clean and restitch Lucky’s new wound with a sterilised needle and proper thread. She finished by giving the dragon a shot of epinephrine to make sure her heart rate and blood pressure stayed up.

Then, with Minnie riding pillion, they took off.

Their second pause was a quick stopover at the mountainside monastery on the eastern side of the zoo where Lucky’s pack of yellowjackets lived.

CJ, Minnie and Lucky arrived to find Lucky’s family very agitated by recent events, but after a short series of barked communications between Lucky and her pack, CJ performed a quick surgical operation on each of the four other yellowjacket dragons: on their left eyes.

Then CJ and Lucky, with Minnie, took to the air again and headed for the main entrance building.

The colossal main entrance building still stood at the southern end of the valley, but it was not looking its best.

The huge white building had been assaulted at some point by the rampaging dragons: many of its windows were shattered. The large eye-like circular window of the master control room had been smashed and the control room now lay empty, trashed and blood-smeared.

Suddenly, lights began to wink on all over the building… and all over the zoo. The Chinese must have driven the airfield’s cable repair truck to the waste management facility and reconnected the internal main there.

As she soared in toward the main entrance building from high above, CJ saw the broad sunken amphitheatre on its roof, the same amphitheatre in which she had first seen Lucky.

And there, standing on the amphitheatre’s wide central stage, was a figure.

Ben Patrick, and he was waving.

Lucky landed on the stage a short distance from Patrick. CJ and Minnie dismounted.

A light breeze blew. The vast valley stretched northward behind CJ. It would have been a postcard shot, gorgeous in the early morning light, had it not been for all the fires and wreckage.

CJ began to walk toward Patrick—when suddenly Lucky nudged her and grunted.

‘Lucky… no like… Big Eyes. Big Eyes mean human…’

CJ paused, glancing from the dragon to her old colleague, and for a brief instant she wondered if she had made a huge mist—

‘CJ,’ Patrick said. ‘Thanks for coming. I’m so sorry.’

CJ frowned. ‘You’re sorry? Why—?’

The answer stepped out from a door beside the stage: Colonel Bao, Hu Tang and three Chinese soldiers brandishing assault rifles.

68

Before CJ could react, Ben Patrick whipped out a Taser unit—like the ones she had seen in the observation booth in the Nesting Centre—and jammed it against Lucky’s flank. Sparks flew and Lucky dropped to her knees, squealing in agony.

CJ slid to the dragon’s side, staring daggers up at Patrick.

She suddenly recalled the code he had given her to open the safe in the Nesting Centre… and how it hadn’t worked.

‘You gave me the wrong code for the safe in Bao’s office, didn’t you?’ she said. Beside her, Lucky moaned. Minnie huddled behind her.

Patrick shrugged. ‘To be honest, I didn’t think you’d get that far. But I couldn’t have you getting your hands on a detonator unit. There’s too much riding on this place. For China and for me. This zoo will make me the most famous scientist in the world, CJ. I couldn’t have you succeed in killing the dragons. No matter what damage is sustained here, we cannot lose the dragons. Too much time and effort has gone into raising them. Buildings can be rebuilt, but those dragons are priceless. And they can always be retrained, no matter how harshly. The Chinese will rebuild this zoo, we will reintroduce the surviving dragons with new and better safety measures, and it will be like nothing ever happened.’

Colonel Bao and Hu Tang stepped up beside Patrick.

Hu Tang said, ‘And we will bring new journalists here to marvel at it.’

Bao nodded at CJ. ‘Dr Cameron. You are a survivor, I will grant you that. But now it is time for us to restore control. A battalion of troops is on its way here from Chongqing in helicopter gunships. That force will arrive in a few hours and it will bring the remaining dragons into line.’

With those words, Bao calmly drew his pistol. ‘You, however, will go no further.’

CJ threw a horrified look at Minnie. ‘You’re gonna kill this little girl, too?’

Hu Tang strolled toward the edge of the stage, gazed out at the magnificent sight. A few dragons could be seen flying across the valley, specks against the sky. CJ got the distinct impression he was looking away so he would not have to see the executions that were about to take place.

‘She will tell someone eventually,’ Hu said, ‘and we cannot have that. This zoo is bigger than a few individuals, even a child. It will rise again and it will be the glory of the world.’

He nodded at Bao. ‘Kill them both and take the dragon away for re-education.’

‘You callous motherfuc—’ CJ breathed.

She cut herself off when she heard it.

Beep-beep… beep-beep.

She didn’t even have time to react.

The next moment something red and black leapt up from below the roofline and took a slashing bite at Hu Tang’s face, and the front of the Communist Party man’s head spewed blood and suddenly Hu Tang turned and CJ saw that he no longer had a face.

The dragon had bitten off his fucking face!

From forehead to jaw, Hu Tang’s face was now a mess of pulp and exposed bone. It was perhaps the most hideous thing CJ had ever seen.

Hu’s body collapsed to the stage, convulsing, not dead but not quite alive either, and standing there in his place was the one dragon who had pursued CJ since all this had begun: the prince-sized red-bellied black dragon she had christened Red Face.

Bao and his troops didn’t know or care for CJ’s history with Red Face and they immediately opened fire on the dragon. In the face of their fire, Red Face took flight, disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.

Colonel Bao looked impassively down at the still-shuddering body of his old boss, Hu Tang. ‘How unfortunate.’ He fired a bullet into the faceless head and the body went still.

Then he turned his pistol on CJ and Minnie.

‘You know something, Dr Cameron? Just before your mentor, Dr Lynch, died, he said something to me about you.’

‘You were there when Bill Lynch died?’ CJ said.

‘I was the one who let a dragon tear him apart,’ Bao said. ‘He said you were tougher than he ever was. This may indeed be so, but in the end, you will die just as he did. It is time for you to make peace with your god, Dr Cameron, because you have nothing else to call on.’

‘She might have this, Colonel,’ a voice said abruptly over their radio earpieces.

A man’s voice.

Greg Johnson’s voice.

69

Bao spun, searching for the source of the voice. CJ did, too, but she couldn’t see Johnson anywhere. She’d been kneeling beside Lucky. Now she stood, searching for the CIA agent.

‘Down here,’ Johnson’s voice said. ‘In the Halfway Hut.’

CJ and Bao both looked out at the watchtower positioned midway between the main entrance building and Dragon Mountain.

A tiny figure could be seen inside its struts, standing on a platform just below the Hut’s cable car station, beside a large device the size of a small car.

‘Dr Cameron may not have anything to call on, Bao, but I do. I have your thermobaric bomb.’

Bao’s eyes went as wide as saucers.

‘I’ve reset the detonation sequence,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s mine now. I have to destroy this place and everything in it.’

‘You would kill yourself to destroy this zoo?’ Bao said.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

‘I’m wounded, I’m pissed off, and I have absolutely nothing to lose,’ Johnson said. ‘You can’t control these animals, Bao. I’ll blow us all to kingdom come to protect the world from these monsters. And if you think I’m bluffing…’

Down at the Halfway Hut, Johnson held his radio close to the thermobaric bomb and flicked a switch on its detonation panel. A timer came alive, beeping with each tick:

10:00… 9:59… 9:58.

‘…think again. You have ten minutes to make peace with your god, asshole.’

As this exchange took place, CJ edged over to the lectern on the stage. Unseen by her captors, she flicked on its control panel.

Bao raged. ‘This is insanity!’

CJ saw the button on the lectern that she was looking for, one she had seen hit during the trick show. With the power back on in the zoo, she hoped it still worked. She slammed her finger down on it.

Immediately, the pyrotechnic flame-dischargers arrayed around the stage launched tongues of fire into the air. White smoke enveloped the stage.

And then everything happened at once.

CJ took two bounding steps and hurled herself into Ben Patrick, knocking him off the stage into the front row of seats and sending the Taser unit flying from his hands.

The two closest Chinese soldiers raised their guns at her only to be swept off their feet by a whip-cracking yellow dragon’s tail. Lucky, groaning and weakened, had risen to her elbows and lashed out with her powerful tail, sending the pair of Chinese soldiers flying off their feet.

The third and last Chinese soldier opened fire at Lucky, but Lucky sprang at him and, with a fearsome swipe of her foreclaw, slashed his throat. Blood spurted and the man hit the ground, killed instantly.

Minnie screamed.

In the haze of smoke, CJ now dived at Bao, crash-tackling the colonel, punching his gun hand, sending his pistol skittering away.

They went sprawling toward the vertiginous northern edge of the stage.

Bao’s legs dangled off the rim, four hundred feet above the world, while his chest still lay on the stage, his hands desperately gripping onto the lapels of CJ’s heat suit, the only thing he could cling to.

But Bao was much heavier than CJ. His weight was slowly pulling her closer to the edge as well.

‘At least we die together!’ the Chinese colonel spat as their combined death-slide continued.

CJ struggled desperately but she could do nothing to release Bao’s grip on her.

The edge came closer.

Then with a lurch, Bao’s body dropped completely off the rim, and CJ—still held by him—found herself perched precariously on the edge, her head and shoulders overhanging it, staring down at the four-hundred-foot drop!

She searched for a weapon of some sort, something she could use to undo Bao’s grip, but she found nothing. Not even Lucky could help; she was on the other side of the stage.

‘Let’s fly to our doom…’ Bao said.

‘Not… today…’ CJ said grimly as she grabbed the one thing she could think to use: the saltwater crocodile’s tooth attached to the leather cord around her neck. She reached inside her protective suit, yanked on the tooth, snapping its cord, and held the big sharp tooth tightly in one fist.

‘Bill Lynch gave this to me,’ she said. ‘This is from him to you!’

Gripping the tooth like a knife, CJ brought it down on Bao’s fists, stabbing them repeatedly.

Bao roared in pain and he released his grip on CJ’s heat suit and the Chinese colonel dropped—

—only to snatch hold of CJ’s sleeve on the way down and she went flailing over the edge with him!

As she went over the rim, CJ threw her hands out and caught the very edge of the stage with her fingertips.

Bao lost his grip on her sleeve as they fell, but he caught her heat suit’s right leg and so now he hung from CJ while CJ hung from the edge.

CJ’s fingers strained at the extra weight, her arms fully extended. She wouldn’t be able to hold on for more than a few seconds.

‘Like I said, we die together!’ Bao called.

CJ’s left hand lost its grip.

She hung one-handed above the deadly drop, with Bao dangling from her right leg.

And then she started wriggling, squirming strangely, releasing her free left arm from the suit and then using that hand to unzip the front of the suit. Then she reached up with that hand and regripped the edge with it.

Now she wriggled her right arm out of the suit and it suddenly came free—

—and the suit slipped off CJ entirely—

—leaving her hanging there while Bao fell away from her with the heat suit still gripped in his hand, the look on his face one of thunderstruck surprise.

And so while CJ dangled from the edge of the stage, now without her heat suit, Bao fell four hundred feet down the face of the main entrance building. About eight seconds later, he hit the ground with a sickening thud. He screamed all the way down.

Gasping for breath, drawing on her very last reserves of strength, CJ hauled her elbows over the edge, her feet still swaying above the dizzying drop.

The body of one of the Chinese soldiers lay right in front of her.

Beep-beep… beep-beep.

A dragon’s head rose up from behind the dead body, staring right into CJ’s eyes: the red earless face of her old nemesis, Red Face.

Lucky was still too far away to help: she was over by the front of the stage.

Half-hanging off the edge of the stage, CJ was defenceless.

And then she saw the weapons belt on the dead Chinese soldier between her and Red Face.

Hanging from it were a couple of—

‘You want to eat something?’ she said. ‘Eat this.’

With those words, CJ reached out with her right hand, grabbed one of the hand grenades on the soldier’s weapons belt, popped the pin and threw it directly into Red Face’s open jaws.

The dragon gulped once, confused and shocked, as CJ called, ‘Lucky!’ and released her grip on the edge of the stage, dropping away from Red Face an instant before the cruel dragon’s head exploded.

CJ fell down the face of the main entrance building as, above her, the grenade blast blew apart the edge of the stage, sending a cloud of smoke and rubble billowing outwards.

She didn’t see Red Face’s head burst apart, didn’t see his decapitated body convulse for a few seconds, blood pouring from its headless neck.

She hoped Lucky had heard her.

She fell fast, frighteningly fast. The windows of the building flashed by in front of her.

Then suddenly Lucky was there, flying vertically beside her, with her body elongated and her wings pinned back!

Lucky caught up with CJ and when they were flying/falling at the same speed, CJ reached out and grabbed Lucky’s saddle and hauled herself into it just as Lucky swooped away from the ground with maybe thirty feet to spare.

CJ swallowed. ‘Now that was character building.’

CJ and Lucky returned to the amphitheatre to get Minnie.

They landed on the stage. Covered in smoke, bodies and blood, it looked ghastly.

CJ dismounted and ran to collect Minnie, cowering in the front row of seats. She scooped her up and was turning to hurry back to Lucky when someone stepped into their path.

It was Ben Patrick, standing on the stage. He was holding a pistol in his hand, aimed directly at her.

‘Ben—’ CJ said a split second before Patrick was bent almost in half, struck violently from behind. An awful crack echoed out: the sound of Patrick’s back breaking, so powerful was the blow.

It had been a kick from Lucky, with one of her hind legs.

Ben Patrick dropped to his knees before he fell to the ground in front of CJ, landing with a perfect faceplant. He moaned, but did not move. The kick had snapped several vertebrae. However long he had to live, Ben Patrick would never walk again.

CJ shook her head. ‘You chose your side, Ben. Sorry, but we’ve got to go.’

She threw Minnie up onto Lucky’s saddle and climbed up after her.

‘Hang on, kid,’ she said. ‘We gotta fly fast. Lucky, go!’

70

Lucky zoomed away from the main entrance building, her wings spread wide, diving toward the Halfway Hut.

She came to a halt at the platform just below the Hut’s cable car station, her claws clinging to the lattice of metal struts.

Greg Johnson sat there, bloody, wounded and pale. He sat with his back pressed up against the thermobaric bomb and he smiled grimly when CJ arrived.

‘Well, look at you,’ he said. ‘Riding a goddamn dragon.’

‘I thought you were dead,’ CJ said. ‘I went back to the restaurant but the dumb waiter was empty.’

Johnson said, ‘I couldn’t stay there. I had to keep moving. I went down to the cable car station and found a diesel-powered maintenance cable car. It brought me here.’ He nodded at the thermobaric bomb. ‘Then, about an hour ago I saw this baby rise up out of the ground. I finally found one of the bombs I’ve been tracking.’

CJ looked at the bomb.

Its digital timer read: 5:02… 5:01… 5:00…

‘Were you bluffing? Can you stop it?’

‘No,’ Johnson said. ‘I disabled the disarm sequence, in case they sent someone to kill me. This thing is going off whether we like it or not. It can’t be stopped.’

‘Then we have five minutes to get away.’ CJ looped Johnson’s good arm over her shoulder and brought him over to Lucky.

‘Hamish?’ she said into her radio.

‘Yeah,’ came the reply.

‘You got anything over at that airfield with wings and a working engine?’

‘Not a thing, sister,’ Hamish said. ‘This place is cactus.’

She thought a little more. ‘Wait, what about a car or a jeep?’

‘Yeah… ’

‘Get into it and get it out onto the runway. We’re on our way and we’ll be coming in fast.’

Lucky soared over the megavalley, weighed down by the three humans on her back. As she did so, she squawked a shrill call and a minute later, she was joined by her pack of four yellowjackets: the emperor, the two kings and the prince.

They descended on the airfield’s runway, where Hamish and Kirk Syme were waving from a captured open-top jeep.

The timer on the bomb hit: 1:00… 0:59… 0:58…

Lucky landed first, depositing Johnson and Minnie into the jeep a bare second before—whoosh!—the yellowjacket emperor picked up the entire jeep in its mighty talons and swept it up into the air.

Led by Lucky, with CJ on her back, the pack of yellow dragons then sped south as fast as they could, trying to put as much distance between them and the Great Dragon Zoo as possible.

0:30… 0:29… 0:28…

The dragons flapped their wings powerfully, flying hard.

Buffeted by the wind, Hamish and Syme looked down from their jeep at the landscape far below. The huge body of the emperor carrying their jeep blotted out the sky above.

0:20… 0:19… 0:18…

As she flew, CJ peered back at the rectangular crater that housed the zoo, the huge landform now a distant speck on the horizon.

0:10… 0:09… 0:08…

CJ patted Lucky on the neck.

‘Fly, Lucky. Fly,’ she whispered.

The timer ticked downward.

0:02… 0:01… 0:00…

Detonation.

71

A flare of blinding white light flashed out from the Halfway Hut.

The lateral outrush of white-hot fire that followed immediately after it incinerated everything in the vicinity of the hut.

Then came the shock wave.

Terrible destruction radiated outward: trees toppled, cable car towers were thrown to the ground, the beautiful white castle blew apart, the roller coaster in the amusement park splintered into a thousand flying struts. The main entrance building’s entire facade just fell away, ripped clean off it.

All the trees on the lower reaches of Dragon Mountain were flattened by the shock wave but the great mountain withstood it, the ravenous surge of energy racing around it like a river around a rock.

The blast wave fanned out in every direction. It shot northward, blowing out the windows of the casino hotel. Eastward and westward, it simply ran up and over the slanted crater walls, felling trees and flinging boulders.

And as the blast wave expanded, it sucked all the oxygen from the air. Any dragons in the air just dropped from the sky, instantly asphyxiated. Any on the ground just collapsed where they stood, the life in them extinguished in a single moment. The blast wave extended all the way to the worker city in the northeast and the airfield to the southwest, where it suffocated all the dragons gathered in those places as well. Any Chinese troops still in or near the valley were also killed.

It was the same for Ben Patrick.

His back broken, his body immobile, Patrick got to see the main entrance building’s facade fall away from him. It would have been better to fall with it and die that way.

For it was then that the vacuum blast hit him… and sucked his lungs clean out through his mouth. Patrick’s last sensation was vomiting up the two fleshy sacs that were his own lungs and seeing them right in front of his eyes. Only then did he black out and see no more.

The thermobaric device had done exactly what it had been designed to do: kill every dragon in and around the valley but retain most of the landforms and the basic infrastructure of the zoo.

As she flew away from the megavalley, having seen the distant flash of the blast, CJ sighed.

It was over.

The Great Dragon Zoo of China was no more.

72

FORMER NAVAL STATION MAGELLAN

MINDINAO PROVINCE, THE PHILIPPINES

20 MARCH (TWO DAYS LATER)

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 it generated a massive ash plume that covered much of the Philippines. The local monsoonal rains had since mixed with that ash, overlaying many of the Philippines’ more remote islands with a foul black sludge that made them all but uninhabitable.

Among those islands were several old US military bases, most of which had lain abandoned since World War II.

One of the smallest and most remote of these was Naval Station Magellan. It lay ninety miles west of Basilan Island in the far south of the Philippines.

Assaulted for six months of the year by torrential rain and by stifling humidity for the other six months, it had little to recommend it. Its old airfield was potholed and overgrown with weeds. The mush from the Pinatubo eruption had caked the hills, making them useless for any kind of farming.

Which was why not a single human being noticed when five strange yellow beasts landed on the island’s weed-strewn runway.

It had taken them two whole days of island-hopping to get here from southern China. The dragons had needed a lot of reassuring from CJ—speaking through Lucky—that there would be land on the other side of each stretch of dreaded salt water, but they had trusted her and braved each leg of the journey.

It had required multiple stops to cross the South China Sea, with the dragons needing to rest after each long glide. At times, the yellowjacket emperor had had to carry Lucky and the other prince on its enormous back, while it carried the jeep, since its colossal wingspan allowed it to glide for far greater distances than the smaller dragons. The emperor and the two kings could also, it appeared, fly quite a bit further than the few kilometres the Chinese had given them credit for. It was a tough, gruelling journey but in the end they made it.

Six hours before they’d arrived at Magellan, the yellowjacket emperor had deposited the open-top jeep—containing Hamish, Johnson, Syme and Minnie—at the tip of another island containing an active US supply base. They would walk from there, make contact with the personnel at the base and arrange to get home.

Only one member of the group continued on with the five yellowjackets and remained with them at Naval Station Magellan: CJ.

73

FORMER NAVAL STATION MAGELLAN

MINDANAO PROVINCE, THE PHILIPPINES

1 MAY (SIX WEEKS LATER)

A month and a half later, a small Cessna ‘Caravan’ seaplane with no transponder landed at the remote island. Its pilot was Kirk Syme, US Ambassador to China and former naval aviator.

After it pulled to a halt, three men stepped out of it: Hamish Cameron, Greg Johnson and Syme. All were dressed in casual clothes. Johnson’s left arm was in a sling.

Standing beside one of the old base’s rusty buildings, waiting for them, were CJ and Lucky.

Hamish said, ‘So, how’s the new home?’

CJ smiled. ‘It’s got everything the modern dragon needs: fresh water flowing down from the hills and lots of big fat fish in the lagoons. Lucky and her family are doing just fine.’

Three of the other four dragons peered out from the surrounding trees, watching cautiously. The emperor lay in the nearby freshwater lagoon, only its massive snout protruding above the waterline.

‘They don’t want to be found,’ CJ said.

‘And we’re happy to keep it that way,’ Syme said.

Johnson said, ‘I checked the intelligence logs: this base isn’t even considered US property anymore. And local Filipinos steer clear of the area. It’s off the radar. Might as well be off the map.’

‘What happened with the zoo?’ CJ asked.

Syme said, ‘We listened in on the clean-up. All the animals were killed in the blast, either incinerated or asphyxiated. The Chinese government issued a bullshit story about Wolfe and Perry dying in a car crash on a mountain road, their bodies sadly burned beyond recognition. They planted some DNA on the scene and the media bought it.’

‘What did you do about that?’ CJ asked.

‘What could I do?’ Syme said. ‘What could I say? That they died after the Chinese government found, nurtured and put on display two hundred dragons and then lost control of them? I made a special report to the President—a verbal report—alone with him in the Oval Office. Your efforts, and those of your brother, were specifically mentioned. It’d be the end of my career if I put anything about this in writing. Either way, the Great Dragon Zoo of China is history.’

‘What about Minnie?’

‘We returned her to her parents in Nanjing,’ Johnson said. ‘Since all the key players at the zoo are now dead, she should be safe.’

Johnson changed the subject. ‘This island may have everything a dragon needs, but how is it for the modern woman?’

CJ smiled. ‘An old infantry tent isn’t exactly the Ritz but it’s okay. And I’m learning to love fish cooked on an open fire. There’s some wild fowl on the island; they’re scared shitless of the dragons. They taste like chicken.’

She nodded at Lucky. ‘But then I’m not here for the lifestyle. I’m here for the company.’

Hamish hefted a couple of containers from the back of the plane. ‘We brought you a few home comforts and some tools. Figured we might help you fix up one of these old buildings.’

Hamish opened the containers to reveal a little diesel generator, jerry cans of fuel, some light bulbs, a toolbox, power drill, screws and nails, a portable stove, some gas canisters and packet after packet of vegetable seeds. He also presented her with a satellite phone, a medical kit and batteries for her earpiece, which had run out of power a couple of weeks earlier.

‘Thanks, Hamish,’ CJ said, ‘that’s very thoughtful of you, but much as I’d like to, I can’t stay here permanently. I don’t think dragons and people were designed to live together. I’ve spoken to Lucky and she understands. I told her that she and her family must avoid humans. They’ve dug a deep den under the hill and they’ll go there if any people arrive, however unlikely that may be. They just want to live in peace.’

She stroked Lucky affectionately on the snout. The dragon purred.

‘That said, I’d like to come by here every now and then to visit my friend, and having a solid roof over my head would be nice.’

‘How would you get here?’ Syme asked.

CJ said, ‘Thought I might take a job in Darwin, down in Australia. Lot of crocodile jobs there and it’s only a few hours’ flight-time to here. Figured I could take up flying lessons and, well, if I could somehow get my hands on a plane…’

‘You know,’ Syme said, ‘the President told me very specifically that a reward of some kind was in order for your efforts, Dr Cameron. I think I might be able to find some spare funds in my budget to help you purchase a decent plane. After all, there’s got to be some reward for saving the life of the US Ambassador to China and preventing a global outbreak of dragons. In fact, if you ever need any money for anything, you just give me a call, okay?’

CJ smiled. ‘Thanks. I will.’

The four of them spent the rest of the day rebuilding one of the base’s shacks, flanked and followed by the family of yellowjacket dragons.

At one point in the course of the day, Greg Johnson said to CJ, ‘I was wondering if, you know, we ever found ourselves on the same side of the world, you’d like to grab a coffee sometime?’

CJ looped a stray strand of hair over her ear. ‘Are you asking me out on a date, Agent Johnson? I don’t get asked out on many dates.’

‘I might be.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said, smiling.

When the day was over, they all returned to the seaplane. It was time to go.

CJ stepped to one side with Lucky and gave the dragon a huge hug. Tears welled in her eyes.

‘White Head like Lucky,’ she said.

Lucky mewed. ‘Lucky… like like… White Head… Lucky sad…’

‘White Head sad, too.’ CJ gave the yellow dragon a kiss on the snout. ‘But White Head will return.’

And with those words, she walked off to the seaplane.

74

A month later, CJ Cameron resigned from her position at the San Francisco Zoo and took up a senior role at Kakadu National Park in northern Australia, outside Darwin, observing and studying the large saltwater crocodile population there.

Many of her students commented on how fearlessly she treated the big crocs. CJ would just shrug and say, ‘I’ve seen bigger.’

And her colleagues gently ribbed her about the handsome American gentleman with the salt-and-pepper hair who would swing by every few months to meet with her.

She also took up flying lessons.

Soon she was flying solo in a compact Pilatus PC-12 that she’d bought second-hand from the Australian Flying Doctor Service. A small plane, the PC-12 was known for its considerable range. It became common for her to fly off alone in her plane, ‘Just to spend some time on my own for a few days,’ she would say.

None of her colleagues noticed that the plane always flew north from Darwin, out over East Timor and Indonesia, toward the remote southern islands of the Philippines.

They did notice, however, that she always returned from these trips with a faraway but very contented smile on her face.