Dragon and the Dove (23 page)

Jessica handed the phone over to Baolian,
then was chagrined to realize the conversation between mother and
daughter was not going to take place in English. She’d been curious
about what a throat-cutting, dragon-whore, pirate mother had to say
to a daughter who misbehaved.

Remarkably, the throat-cutting, dragon
whore, pirate mother sounded a lot like herself, with an
appropriate increase in the chastisement quality of her tone of
voice, given the seriousness of the daughter’s actions.

After a few minutes Baolian handed the phone
back to Jessica. “Please speak with John Liu so that he doesn’t get
himself killed trying to keep my child from me.”

It was a reasonable request, and Jessica
complied.

“John. Cooper and I are in trouble, and it
will go a lot easier on us if you let Cao Bo, or rather Sun Shulan,
go.”

She got an argument, not much of one, but an
argument she didn’t have time for.

“Just a minute, John.” She put her hand over
the receiver and asked Baolian a question. “How old is Shulan?”

“Seventeen next week.”

“John,” Jessica went back on the line.
“She’s younger than she looks, jail bait
.
Give her back to her mother.”

The phone was taken from her and returned to
its silken box. The tension in the room had dropped considerably,
but Jessica still didn’t have any idea of what would happen next,
so she kept her gun trained on Baolian.

Cooper groaned, drawing her attention, and
in that second she was disarmed by someone from behind.

Baolian smiled. “The only danger here today
was for you and your pet,” she said, acknowledging the man who had
stepped out from behind the rosewood screen and taken Jessica’s
ninth wedding anniversary present out of her hands. “When Shulan is
here, maybe you can take your Dragon
and go.”

With a clap of her hands, the guards fell
into action, picking Cooper up off the floor and grabbing
Jessica.

Maybe? she thought, her mouth dry with fear.
She struggled against the men holding her, but to no avail. She was
caught, without the skills to take on three well-trained men.

Still, she didn’t make it easy for them to
drag her out of the plush room and into the darkness of the maze.
Cooper came to consciousness once, when a blast of cold air whirled
up out of the tunnels and dropped the temperature by twenty degrees
in a matter of seconds.

The guards spoke seldom, leaving only the
labored breathing of five
people
and the sound of their footsteps to echo in the silent bowels of
the earth. The walls grew clammy about them, and the darkness
deepened, until the only light left was from a lantern carried by
one of the guards.

Timeless minutes later, most of it spent
walking at a downhill slant, she and Cooper were thrown into a
dank, fetid cell with no lantern of their own and only rats to keep
them company.

Jessica shuddered from the cold and fear and
snuggled closer to the man she was sure she was going to die
with.

“Cooper?” Her teeth chattered around his
name. She shook him. “Cooper?”

“Yes?” he said weakly.

She let out a squeal when something
skittered around the edge of her shoe. “Can you get to your feet?”
Her voice took on added urgency. “We need to get out of here. Now,
as in immediately
.”

Cooper opened his eyes to nothing but
darkness; he looked around and saw nothing but darkness. He felt
like hell, like somebody had tied a noose around his neck, bruising
him and rubbing him raw.

“Where are we, Jess?” he mumbled, not quite
back with the living yet.

“I don’t know, but if we can’t find a way
out, we’re going to die, or be eaten by something.”

Great, he thought.

“What . . . what kind of something?” he
asked.

“I don’t know—ahh!” She squealed again.
“What was that? Did you feel that?”

“I’m pretty numb, Jess.”

“I’m getting out of here.” Her voice shook,
and he wished like hell he was in better shape to help her.

He’d seen the way she’d fought for him,
stood up for him when she’d had the chance to walk away. He didn’t
know how she’d found him, or why she’d followed him, but he knew he
owed her his life.

“What?”

“What?” he asked back, confused.

“What was that noise you made?”

“I didn’t make any noi—”

An eerie, rumbling grunt punctuated
the darkness, stunning them both into absolute paralysis. The
grunting
came again, rising to a high-pitched whine and growing ever louder
before dropping off into a long, sibilant hiss.

Cooper cursed and broke into a cold sweat.
Jessica clung to him like he was the last log in the ocean, digging
her nails into his forearm.

“It’s an
animal
,” she whispered, her voice strained and
strident with
fear.

“I hope,” he said curtly and without an
ounce of confidence.

“It’s an animal,” she repeated. “I saw it on
my way down.”

“You
saw
it?”

“Sort of saw it,” she amended. “It’s in a
cage in one of the tunnels. There wasn’t much light.”

“You saw that thing, and you kept coming?”
His voice rose in disbelief and kept rising. “I thought I hired you
for your
brains
, not to get yourself
killed
.”

The grunting sound
came again, not quite
so plaintive and more searching, as if the creature that made it
had lifted its snout into the air to detect a trace of prey.

“Cooper?”

“Yes?” They were both whispering.

“I think it can hear us, and…and is
following our voices
.”

“I thought you said it was caged.”

“It was . . . at least on one side.”

A long stretch of silence fell between them.
“A cage with one side is not a cage, Jessie.”

“I know.”

He took her hand in his and slowly got them
both to their feet. “But if it can get out, maybe we can too. From
what little I remember from the first trip down, this place is
riddled with tunnels. I doubt if there’s a secure hole down
here.”

“You’re right about the tunnels,” she said.
“They’re everywhere and they always seem to run into each
other.”

He tightened his hold on her, giving her
hand a squeeze. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight on you
?”

“Just
the little security light I keep on my key ring, which is in my
pocket,” she said after a short pause
. “Cripes, how could I have
forgotten that?” The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a
tiny light burst into being in her hand.

Even in its dim glow, Cooper could see she
was a wreck, a beautiful, disheveled, damned handy wreck.

The two of them used the light to check out
their cell, flashing it along the walls and floor and finding
nothing but solid rock – and a pile of bones in the far corner.

Beside him, Jessica immediately started
hyperventilating. “Coop, Cooper, my God, Cooper.”

“Dammit,” he swore under his breath. He was
going to lose her in this damn place. If they couldn’t get out,
they’d either die of hunger and thirst, be tortured to death by
Fang Baolian’s guards, or so help him God, eaten alive by whatever
was on the prowl in the tunnels.

He took the light from her trembling hand
and flashed it in the other direction, toward the cell door, and
noticed a very curious thing. It was made out of bamboo poles, not
steel bars, and the bottom half of the poles were all gnawed on and
broken…as if something had bitten and thrashed its way through the
flimsy barrier to get at whatever, or whoever, had been in the
cell.

Slowly, with growing dread, he swung the
light back to the pile of bones in the corner, and a clear picture
formed in his mind, a very ugly picture.

“Baby, I hope you’ve got your track shoes
on.” There were going to be running for their lives.

Using all the strength he could muster,
Cooper ripped a bamboo pole out of the frame and immediately felt
more in control. Now they had a weapon.

The two of them scrambled through the gaping
hole with Cooper in the lead. He headed to the left, but got no
further than ten feet down the tunnel before they both stopped
cold.

“My, God,” Jessica whispered, taking a step
back. “I’ve never…ever…ever…”

Her words stumbled along, going nowhere, but
he understood. She had never, ever, ever smelled anything as putrid
and rank as the smell coming out of the left hand tunnel.

Neither had he.
My, God,
was
right.

With a quick about-face, he turned them in
the other direction and took off at a halting run, the best he
could manage, which he feared was not going to be good enough.

They were rats in a maze, dead-ending,
circling back on their trail, sometimes climbing higher and feeling
like they had a chance, only to have their hopes dashed when the
tunnel they were in angled back down – and always, there was the
smell, gaining in strength, seeming to follow them.

Suddenly, Jessica pulled him to a stop.

“What –“ he started, but she hushed him with
a short
shhh.

After a moment of stillness, she turned to
him. “I hear water.”

So did he. It was dripping off the walls and
forming puddles at their feet.

“Jessie –“ he started again.

“Running water,” she interrupted. “Coming
from that direction, and somehow above us.” She pointed to a tunnel
veering off to the right. “And…and it doesn’t smell so bad.”

She was right on both counts. He could hear
the water, too, now, oddly above them, and if he held himself very
still, he thought he felt a slight draft.

“Let’s go. Stay close.” The last command was
unnecessary. She was all but on top of him as they headed deeper
into the darkness. After a few steps, the tunnel took a noticeable
slant upward, and so did their spirits. They were climbing.

The sound of the water grew faint at times,
and sometimes disappeared all together, but they stayed the course,
and when they’d round a turn, the sound of rippling water would
return. The higher they climbed, the louder and more consistent the
sound of the water became, with the air growing fresher with every
yard they covered and the darkness easing off.

Thank,God,
Cooper thought. They were
going to make it out of there.

They came to another sharp turn in the
tunnel, and when they rounded it, he got his first solid feeling of
hope. The tunnel they’d been following emptied out into a
crumbling, ancient pipeline constructed out of brick and mortar and
concrete. It was tall enough for a man to stand, with a small
stream coursing down it.

Cooper shone the tiny light up and down its
length.

“What is this place?” she asked, holding
onto him.

“I’m guessing an old sewer tunnel.”

“It doesn’t smell like a sewer.”

And for that, he was very grateful.

“I doubt if it’s been used in over a hundred
years,” he said. “With storm water and flood run-off coming through
here all the time.”

“It’ll lead us out of here, right?”

He sure as hell hoped so, but he knew it
could just as easily dead end with the tunnel collapsed into a pile
of impenetrable rubble.

“Right,” he said. “Give me your hand, and
I’ll –“ His words were drowned out by an air-cracking grunt that
quickly escalated into a rumbling hiss of endless fury.

Every hair on his neck stood straight up at
the sound.

They’d been found.

The sewer tunnel was three or four feet
below the opening where they stood, and both of them scrambled like
mad over the edge, their feet splashing into the stream. A slimy
bottom sent Jessica almost instantly to her knees.

“Up, up, up, babe.” Cooper pulled her up and
pulled her along, running, slipping, sliding, and doing his
darnedest to get her in front of him. Heavy, padding footsteps
sounded in the tunnel they’d left, an echoing rhythm of massive
weight accompanied by the deep bass of the creature’s rumbling
hisses.

Cooper had never more surely heard the sound
of death.

“Oh, geez, oh, geez, my God, oh – oh…”
Jessica was gasping beside him, slipping, and running, and
splashing.

Then came the big splash, one of a huge
weight heaving itself into the stream with a scraping thud and a
terrible grunt.

This was it, the crystal clear and precise
line between life and death. If they did not prevail with speed and
one damn bamboo pole, they would die, and be eaten, and never be
found. Unless he could hold the beast off, and by some miracle,
Jessica found a way out.

“Take the light.” He pressed it into her
hand and turned to take a stand, the piece of bamboo his only
weapon to protect himself against…

For the barest split second, all he could do
was stand and stare and categorize what was coming down the
tunnel.

Giant.

Reptile.

Lizard.

Venom.

Claws.

Scales.

And a deeply forked, long, snaking, yellow
tongue.

Komodo Dragon. Huge. Coming at him like a
heaving, grunting freight train.

“Ladder, ladder, Coop, Cooper, ladder.” The
words sounded somewhere in the distance.

He’d have given anything for a 12-gauge
loaded with slugs.

Or a ladder out of this place.

Finally, it dawned on him what Jessica was
saying, what she was screaming at him.

“Ladder! Cooper! There’s a ladder!”

And he had about five seconds to reach
it.

The drugs, the pain, the fear all left him
on a surge of pure muscle-pumping, mind-focusing adrenaline.

He moved like a rocket, sprinting up the
tunnel and lofting himself onto the ladder. His hands and feet
found rungs at the same time, and with half a second to spare, he
and Jessica heaved aside a manhole cover at the top of the ladder
and burst into a circle of bright light.