The Dragon Factory (40 page)

I said, “That’s pretty nimble for big guys, even if they weren’t hurt.”

Grace nodded. “If they left a blood trail that long, then they must have been bleeding badly . . . so you have heavy men who, even if they are very muscular and fit, had to climb up air shafts, scale walls, and run into the hills while injured. And this
after
they’d killed a dozen men with their bare hands. I’m finding this all a bit hard to accept.”

“Maybe not,” said Church. “I’m leaning toward Captain Ledger’s exoskeleton idea. Some kind of enhanced combat rig that gives them strength and supports their weight.”

“We’re not living in a science-fiction novel,” said Hu. “We’re years away from that sort of thing.”

Bug stared at him. “Um, Doc . . . you’re defending scientists who can make unicorns and you call an exoskeleton sci-fi?”

Hu conceded the point with a shrug.

“I can’t believe Hack’s gone . . . ,” said Grace hollowly. “For what? For nothing!”

“That’s not true, Grace,” I said. “We may not know the full shape of this thing yet, but we will . . . and that means that their deaths will matter, because they are part of the process of stopping and punishing whoever did this.”

“Why? To clear the way for some other bloody maniac to do even more harm?”

“No,” I said, “because what we do matters. We take the hits so the public doesn’t. We save lives, Grace. You know that. It’s what soldiers do, and Hack Petersen knew that better than anyone. So did everyone on Jigsaw Team.”

Grace turned away and I knew that she was struggling to control her emotions. “All we ever see is the war,” she said bitterly. “All we ever do is bury our friends.”

I said nothing. The others in the room held their tongues.

There was a knock on the door and the deputy head of our communications division leaned into the room. “Mr. Church . . . we have another video!”

The Dragon Factory

Sunday, August 29, 5:38
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 22 minutes E.S.T.

Hecate was both amused and disgusted by her brother’s weakness. He should be stronger and wasn’t. They were both aware of it, though they never openly spoke of it. By ordinary human standards Paris was a monster of superior skill: smart, careful, vicious, inventive, and cruel.
By the standards of their family, he was the weak sister while Hecate was the true predator. Paris had directly murdered six people and had shared in the murders of several women during sex play. Hecate had personally murdered fifty-seven people, not counting the sex partners. Paris knew of nine of her kills. The others were not his concern, though she did nothing outrageous to hide them. Paris knew only as much as he had a stomach to know.

The playtime with the two operatives sent by Alpha and Otto had shown Hecate how weak her brother had become. He hadn’t participated at all. For a while she thought he was going to disgrace himself by throwing up. Even that muscle-brain Tonton had seen it. He asked Hecate about it later, in bed.

“What’s with Mr. Paris?”

Tonton lay under her, his massive frame covered with scratches and red pinpoint bruises. She had used teeth and nails on him. He liked the intensity, and when she could coax a yelp of real pain from him it made Hecate come. She’d come over and over again.

Sitting astride the big man, Hecate shrugged. “Paris has other tastes.”

Tonton ran his rough hands over her small breasts. Her white skin was still flushed to a scalding pink from her last orgasm. He was on the edge of exhaustion, but she still had that fire in her eyes.

“He’s not like you,” murmured Tonton. “No one’s like you.”

Hecate smiled, thinking about how right he was. There was no one on the earth quite like her. Not anymore.

Tonton was only semi-erect, but Hecate moved her hips in a way that had three times changed that. It was taking longer this time. She smiled to herself, thinking,
Men are weak.

She decided to throw Tonton a bone. “No one’s quite like you, either, my pet.”

“Nah,” he said. “I’m just another grunt.” It was feeble humility. Though it was true that there were hundreds of Berserkers now, it was equally true that he was physically far stronger than the others. The gene therapy Hecate had given him had brought him to a different level. His muscle mass was 46 percent denser than an ordinary man’s. He was six
feet, eight inches tall and carried his 362 pounds of mass as easily as an Olympic athlete. He could do one-arm chin-ups in sets of fifty and he could do those for hours. He could bench-press a thousand pounds without straining. He could climb a redwood tree and snap a baseball bat in half in his bare hands.

Tonton loved his strength. So did Hecate. He was the only one of the Berserkers she allowed into her bedroom, and over the last few weeks he’d gotten that call from her at least four times a week.

“How come Mr. Paris isn’t like you?” he asked as she moved slowly up and down on him. He was hoping to distract her long enough for her to switch off. She may not have limits, but he did.

Hecate had her eyes closed, concentrating on what she was doing, and Tonton thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she murmured, “We’re like lions, my pet.”

“I don’t get it. . . .”

“The males are dumb and lazy and they lay around while the females do all the wet work. We hunt; we kill. We’re the real pride leaders.”

Tonton said nothing.

Hecate opened her eyes and the blue irises were flecked with spots of hot gold. She smiled—at least Tonton thought it was a smile—and in the uncertain glow from the candles her teeth looked strangely sharp. More like a cat’s teeth than he remembered them being.

Hecate said, “All the males do is look pretty and fuck.”

She ran her sharp fingernails over Tonton’s throat and increased the rhythm of her hips.

Tonton understood the message, and tired or not, he did his best to serve the needs of the leader of his pride.

The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, August 29, 5:38
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 22 minutes

Church logged into his old e-mail account from his laptop and his fingers flew over the keys.

“Same sender as the hunt video,” he said. To the communications officer he said, “Track this back and find out where the user logged on. Do it now.” The officer sprinted out.

We were still reeling from the shock of the news about Jigsaw, but the fact that we might have another clue was like a shot of pure adrenaline. I wanted a scent I could chase down. I wanted someone in my crosshairs. I wanted someone’s throat in my hands. I wanted it so bad I could scream.

Church sent the video to the conference room server and punched keys to display it on the flatscreen. The screen popped with white noise, faded to black, and then we saw the face of a young teenage boy, maybe fourteen. Dark hair, rounded face, a slight gap between mildly buck teeth, and brown eyes that held a look of such comprehensive despair that it chilled me.

“If he finds out that I sent this, he’ll kill me,” said the boy. It was recorded with some kind of stationary camera, maybe a webcam. Grainy and dark, with a weak streaming image. “But I had to try. If you got the other file I sent, then you know what’s going on from what the two Americans said.”

“But the sound kept cutting out,” Bug said. “We could hardly—”

“Shhhh,” said Hu.

“You have to stop them. What they’re doing . . . it’s . . .” The kid shook his head, unable to put his horror into words. “I don’t have much time. I stole one of the guards’ laptops, but I have to get it back before they notice I took it. I read Otto’s file, so if you’re who I think you are, then you have to do something before everyone in Africa dies. And maybe more than that. You got to stop them! If you can’t find this place,
then see if you can find the Deck. That’s the main lab; that’s what you have to find. I know it’s in Arizona someplace, but I don’t know where. Maybe you can find that out when you get here. And then you have to do something about the Dragon Factory. I don’t know where that is, but Alpha thinks it’s in the Carolinas. I don’t think so because I heard Paris tell his sister that they had to get back to the ‘island.’ I just don’t know which island.”

He paused, looking desperate.

“I don’t even know if I’m making sense. Oh. . . .
wait
!” He obviously spotted something and darted out of shot. We heard the rustling of paper and then he was back, with a big piece of white paper in his hands. He turned it in a few different directions, trying to orient it, and then turned it around toward the camera. “Can you see this? I think this is us; I think this is the Hive.”

He suddenly stiffened, lowered the paper, and sat with his head cocked in an attitude of listening.

“Someone’s coming. I have to be quick. If you get this, if you come . . . then broadcast on this frequency.” He read off the numbers. “It’s only short range, but I made it myself. If you’re here, I can help you get past the guards . . . but you have to be careful of the dogs. The dogs
aren’t
dogs.”

He turned his head again.

“Oh no! I have to go.”

And with that he punched a button and the screen went blank.

Without waiting for comments Church ran it again and then froze the image on the map.

“Bug,” he shouted, “download that image and find me that island. Now!”

“On it.”

“Grace,” Church said, “prep the TOC. By the time Bug locates that island I want birds in the air.”

The Tactical Operations Center was the mission control room. It had MindReader stations, satellite downlinks that fed real-time images,
and was networked into every branch of the military and intelligence network. And I don’t mean just ours. . . . MindReader didn’t give a crap about nationality.

Grace hesitated. “I want to—”

“I know what you want, Grace,” he said, “but it looks like we’re going to have multiple targets. This site . . . Arizona, and maybe the Carolinas or an island. I need you to prepare Alpha Team for a trip out west.”

As she hurried out, she threw me an evil look. “Teacher’s pet.”

Church looked at me. “You’re up, Captain.”

I leaned across the table. “Church . . . the kid said that the answers were on the hunt video, but that file sucked and we got maybe one word in twenty. Can you get someone who reads lips? Maybe they can pick up something. . . .”

“Good call. Now—
go
!”

But I was already running for the door.

The Deck

Sunday, August 29, 5:38
A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 22 minutes E.S.T.

Otto Wirths stood at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped behind him so that he could feel the comforting outline of the pistol holstered at the small of his back. He was patient but cautious, and he didn’t say a word. Not while Cyrus Jakoby was throwing a fit. The floor around the bed was heaped with torn bedding; down stuffing was scattered like snow, and tiny feathers floated past Otto’s impassive face. Cyrus had already smashed the twenty-seven vases and ground the exotic flowers under his bare feet. He even had destroyed the portrait of his beloved rhesus monkey. Now he knelt on the floor and used a salad fork to stab one of his doubles to death. And it wasn’t even Tuesday.

The double had long since stopped screaming, though he wasn’t dead yet. Otto thought a salad fork to be an inefficient weapon but
conceded that outright murder was not as important to Cyrus as inflicting hurt. Otto waited it out, one finger hooked under the hem of his smock in case he needed to pull the gun.

Cyrus stabbed down again and again.

Then, as if his internal passion triggered some pressure valve, the rage abruptly stopped. Cyrus sagged and slumped, the fork tumbling from his trembling fingers. The double coughed one more time and then he, too, settled into stillness.

Otto took this as his cue to step around the edge of the bed. He caught Cyrus under the arms and gently lifted him to his feet. Cyrus was as passive as a sedated old man and allowed himself to be led over to an armchair. Otto fetched him a glass of water and produced two pills from a cloisonné case he carried at all times in his pocket. One for heart and one for head.

“Take these, Mr. Cyrus,” he murmured, and held the glass as Cyrus washed them down.

Cyrus gasped and shook his head. “I can’t believe it! All of them? Dead?”

“All of them,” Cyrus confirmed. The news had come back to the Deck from one of their pursuit craft. Both infiltration teams had been lost at the Dragon Factory, and the Zodiac with the extraction team had been taken out with a rocket-propelled grenade. The hit was a complete wash.

“Were any of the team taken alive?” All of Cyrus’s people had tiny transponders implanted under their skin. The devices were the size of rice grains and they sent two signals: one for the GPS and another to a biotelemeter. As long as the wearer’s heart continued to beat, the second signal was sent.