The Great Zoo of China (54 page)

‘
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.

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.

FORMER NAVAL STATION MAGELLAN

MINDINAO PROVINCE, THE PHILIPPINES

20 MARCH (TWO DAYS LATER)

W
hen 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.

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.’