The Great Zoo of China (32 page)

CJ panted as she bounded up the fire stairs inside Dragon Mountain. Johnson and Go-Go ascended the seemingly endless concrete stairwell behind her.

A hundred thoughts flashed through her mind: images of dragons and crocodiles, Chinese troops with guns and giant helicopters being pulled underwater.

But behind it all, there was something else.

Something about the earless dragons’ attack that nagged at her. It was so coordinated, so deliberate, and yet . . .

These dragons were intelligent. But as Ben Patrick had said, theirs was an ancient reptilian intelligence and in her experience, a reptilian intelligence always had a
purpose
. Crocodiles and alligators were utterly single-minded in their thinking. They didn’t do things by halves and the dragons’ attack seemed to CJ to be somehow unfinished.

Unless it isn’t over yet
, she thought.

She replayed the various dragon attacks in her mind: first, assaulting the cable car, then using the cable car to storm the administration building and penetrate the waste management facility. Then, just recently, attacking the two helicopters, first in the swamp and then at the base of the mountain.

There
had
to be a purpose, but right now, she couldn’t see what that purpose was.

After about eight minutes of hurried climbing, the three of them came to a landing at the top of the stairwell.

CJ doubled over, catching her breath.

A fire door branched off the landing. There was also an electrical junction box mounted on the concrete wall. It was open and stuck to the inside of its small steel access panel was a map of the zoo:

As she gazed at it, CJ realised that she’d seen this map before.

It was the map of the zoo’s underground electrical cable network that she had seen inside the master control room earlier.

‘CJ?’ Johnson said, panting. ‘What’s the matter? We gotta keep moving.’

‘Just wait a second—’ CJ said, staring at the map.

Seeing it had made her think of two other maps of the zoo she’d seen since arriving here.

The first was the map she’d seen on the smartboard inside the Birthing Centre, the one with the Xs written on it.

The second was the black digital map she had seen both in the master control room
and
on Colonel Bao’s battlefield display unit in the hunting area, the one showing all the dragons as moving coloured dots.

In her mind’s eye, CJ recalled the first map, the one from the whiteboard in the Birthing Centre:

She remembered the series of Xs that had been splashed across the map, accompanied by the question:
Why are they digging?

The Xs
, she thought.
They were the spots where the dragons had been caught digging, but the person who marked the Xs on the map—probably Ben Patrick—hadn’t been able to figure out
why
the dragons had been digging in those places. They seemed so random.

CJ now looked more closely at the map stuck to the inside of the electrical junction box in front of her.

Her eyes zeroed in on the power lines inside the crater:

And suddenly she saw a connection.

‘The power lines . . .’ she said aloud.

‘What?’ Johnson said, perplexed. ‘What about them?’

CJ said, ‘The Xs on that smartboard map in the Birthing Centre match the electrical power arteries of the zoo on this map. The dragons weren’t digging randomly. They had a plan, a purpose.’

Go-Go said, ‘What are you talking about?’

CJ said, ‘Your dragons have been planning for today for a while, Go-Go. Using their ampullae of Lorenzini, they can sense electrical energy. They’ve been sniffing out your power cables and digging along the power lines, tracing them back to the strongest power surge in the zoo, searching for the
source
of the zoo’s electrical power. That search led them to’—she jabbed her finger on the map—‘the administration building, the target of their first attack.’

Johnson and Go-Go just stared at the map, astonished.

‘But there has to be something more . . .’ CJ said. ‘I need to see . . .’

She tried to recall the black digital map from Bao’s display unit on which the admin building had also featured, but then she realised she didn’t need to remember it.

She had it with her.

Standing there on the landing, she pulled out the iPad-like battlefield display unit she had taken from the headless Chinese captain earlier. She looked at it now:

The cluster of red crosses—representing red-bellied black dragons—massing inside the administration building now screamed out at her.

CJ zoomed in on them.

Most of the red crosses in there were unmoving: she guessed they represented dead dragons.

Except for two crosses.

That
were
still moving.

And those two crosses appeared to be fractionally
outside
the crater, inside a passageway of some sort. CJ recalled that the inner electromagnetic dome actually extended a little outside the valley, so the two dragons were contained. That said, they must have been at the absolute extremity of the inner dome.

Johnson said, ‘So let me get this straight. You’re saying that the power cables led the dragons to the administration building. And then the dragons used the cable car and fuel trucks to smash open the admin building and get inside it.’

‘Yes,’ CJ said. ‘And judging from this image, two of them are still in there. Go-Go.’ She held up the BDU. ‘What’s the passageway that those two crosses are in?’

Go-Go scanned the screen and shrugged. ‘It’s a subducting tunnel for underground cabling.’

‘Could a dragon get out of the zoo through it? A prince, maybe?’

‘No. Not even a person could get out through there. After about a hundred metres or so that tunnel ends at a small hole in the wall through which the cables go. It’s a conduit pipe only about a foot wide, so no dragon could fit inside it. That conduit pipe encases the . . . Oh, no . . .’

Go-Go paused, his face going ashen white.

‘What?’ Johnson asked. ‘What does it encase?’

CJ already knew the answer. ‘Some kind of main power cable, I’d guess.’

Go-Go nodded. ‘
The
main power cable, the primary power cable that supplies the whole zoo with power. If you cut that cable, everything goes off, all the lights, all the antennas powering the sonic shields,’ he swallowed, ‘and the inner electromagnetic dome covering this valley.’

‘Surely this place has back-up generators,’ Johnson said.

‘It does,’ CJ said, ‘but they’re offline. The dragons tore them up in the attack. I overheard Ben Patrick and the colonel talking about it.’

Johnson and Go-Go exchanged worried glances.

CJ looked hard at them. ‘Gentlemen, the dragons at this zoo didn’t just launch their attack today on a whim. It was a coordinated plan executed on a day when the staff at this zoo were nervous and off balance. These dragons don’t want to kill us or just cause mayhem. They are executing a carefully prepared plan and the goal of that plan is
to get out of this zoo
. That’s what they’re doing. The inmates of the Great Dragon Zoo are busting out.’

‘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.’

T
he 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.