The China Dogs (26 page)

92

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

J
ihai sees his own worried reflection in the cell glass as he studies the last two dogs. The display of raw violence has shaken him, Péng, and the young researcher Tāo.

It's one thing to work on cell structures and DNA profiles, it's entirely another to see a mutated beast rip the throat out of a sibling.

He turns to his father. “End this now.” He points to the middle dog. Its gums and jagged rows of murderous teeth are smeared with blood and flesh. There are deep wounds to its snout and left eye. “Put the creature out of its misery.”

Hao Weiwei glares at his only son. “
I
will decide if or when this experiment will be terminated, now go back to your position.”

Jihai fixes his father with one final stare of defiance before walking away.

Hao reruns the events of the last hour in his mind.

The third dog, the most aggressive one, actually received more of the atomized modifier than the others. The middle dog, the next highest dose, and the first dog the least. It's possible that his modification formula is inverted, that the chemicals he believed would induce the animals' genomes into emitting messages of passivity actually did the opposite.

By returning to the labs and reversing the formula, he might finally create that elusive serum to pacify the dogs.

He looks again at the two remaining animals and decides to try to prove his point. If he now exposes the first dog to multiple doses of the serum, it should become as equally aggressive as the third animal.

Hao looks to his son. “Dispense a double dose of serum into the first cubicle.”

Jihai's eyes grow wide and he hesitates.

“Now!” His father's face reddens. “Do as I say!”

93

Flamingo Park, Miami

T
he scene at Flamingo is almost as bad as Lummus.

Three already dead. Six more badly bitten. Another five are being treated for shock.

On top of that, there are multiple crush and fall injuries sustained as the whole world seemed to panic and run into each other like headless chickens.

Ghost posts SWAT teams in a moving box formation, gradually shifting inward from Twelfth and Fifteenth, and Meridian and Michigan. Uniformed officers filter civilians out of harm's way and direct paramedics into safe zones.

The lieutenant calls Tarney on his radio. He's sent the young sergeant west to chase down a big dog that's already killing over there. “How's it going, John?”

“Bad. We've got one dead—a guy in his early twenties—and there's a middle-aged woman with severe bites to the face and neck that could be fatal by the time she reaches the ER.”

“What kind of dog?”

“Retriever, I think.” He talks as he walks and there's a lot of background noise. “I haven't seen it yet. Eyewitness said it went into the tennis center, that's where we're going.”

“Okay. Update me when you can.” Ghost clicks off and focuses on the scene in front of him. His unit have spotted another dog and are spreading out.

He can see it now. To the side of the aquatic center. A Labrador shaking something the size of a doll in its mouth.

A sniper drops into a kneel-and-shoot pose in front of him and looks down the sight of his Remington 700. “Holy shit, ­Lieutenant—it's got a baby.”

Ghost taps his shoulder. “Take it out.”

The sniper doesn't need telling twice. The Remington twitches and the animal shudders from the shock of the bullet.

The sniper clicks back the rifle's bolt and fires another round.

Now it goes down.

The marksman lifts a hand, one eye still on the telescopic sight. “Clear.”

Ghost and team slowly advance on the dog. Several weapons stay trained on its lifeless body. No one is taking chances.

A couple of the married men flinch as they come up close to the bloody bundle of rags. Someone guesses the tot was a year old, certainly no more than that.

Ghost turns around and looks to the crowds in the distance. Somewhere back there is a mother with her life about to change forever. No mortician he knows has the kind of skill that can make that child presentable enough to be seen by the woman who brought it into the world.

Above him comes the clacking of helicopter blades. He doesn't need to tilt his head to know it's a news crew.

He hopes the President gets to see their pictures.

Hopes it turns his political stomach enough to ensure this proposed task force has enough money and men to be more than just a vote-winning gesture.

94

Cutler Bay, Florida

Z
oe travels east along 211th Street until she hits 112th Avenue, then turns south toward the junction with the 216th. Just beyond Goulds Park she see signs for WPK, the kennels where Schotzie was born and sold.

The Nissan passes through a rusty mesh fence and pulls up outside a filthy whitewashed single-story building that looks like it might once have been a series of small industrial units.

As she gets out of the car she hears the sounds of dogs barking behind walls. From the darkness of an open door a small man in his sixties with a dyed black beard and long greasy black hair trudges out. He's vigorously chewing gum, like he's recently given up smoking, and wiping his hands on a cloth. “No dogs. Sorry, honey. I'm afraid we're sold out.”

Zoe can feel her heart banging. “What about those I can hear?”

“Yeah, they're all sold. Waiting for owners to take them away.”

She takes the camera from around her neck. “Can I show you something?”

“Sure.” He moves up close so he can look at the screen she's turning his way.

“This is a bill of sale saying you sold a puppy to a woman named Heidi Gerber. Do you remember it? She was an attractive woman in her late forties, early fifties. Might have had a very pretty daughter with her, around my age.”

“I kinda remember them. More than a year back.” He steps away from the camera and looks up at Zoe. “What of it?”

“You been following these dog attacks in the news?”

“Much as anyone.”

“The dog you sold bit that woman and her daughter to death last night.”

Zoe watches the breeder's Adam's apple rise and fall as he swallows a chunk of fear. He tries to shrug off the implication. “Ain't nothing to do with me. Them dogs were good when I sold them.”

“Them? You sold more than one to the Gerbers?”

“No. Not to the women, to—”

A man in his thirties interrupts. “What's goin' on here, Pa?” He's tall and broad, has his father's long crooked nose and buzzed ginger hair.

“Young miss is asking about them dogs you bought last year, the wirehaireds.”

Zoe is puzzled. “I thought you bred the dogs here?”

“We do,” says the younger man. “These were offered to us as pups. A reputable source.”

Zoe reaches for her notebook. “Can you tell me who?”

“What's it to do with you?” He looks at her camera. “Are you from the press?”

She doesn't answer him. “One of those dogs ripped apart two women last night. Pretty much chewed every ounce of flesh off their bones.”

The old man looks worried. “Josh, I told you it weren't no good idea.”

“Quiet, Pa.” He steps toward Zoe. “You need to be leaving now, 'fore I throw your ass off our land.”

Zoe looks down at her camera monitor and thumbs through the shots. She turns the screen around and holds it up for him to see.

He slaps the camera away. “Get out now!”

The camera tumbles to the ground. Something inside Zoe snaps. A combination of outrage that her precious camera's been treated like that and building anger over the death of the Gerbers.

She steps forward so she's only inches from his face. His breath smells of strong coffee and cigarettes. She half turns and drives an elbow deep into his stomach. She completes the spin by delivering a dropkick just under his neck.

He falls flat on his back like a felled tree.

She dips low and picks up the camera.

The big guy starts to sit up.

“Just look,” she demands, thrusting it into his face. “Look at what that damned dog did and tell me what you know.”

His father breaks his silence. “Like I said, the pointers weren't ours. We didn't breed them. They came from a shelter.”

“A shelter?” Zoe is confused. “What's a shelter doing with thoroughbreds like that? They usually just get mongrels, don't they?”

The son gets to his feet, his eyes on the mutilated bodies staring out at him from the camera display. “The guy said they'd taken in more than four hundred dogs of different breeds that week. Out of that batch, there were a hundred puppies born, and we took twelve of the wirehaired pointers. They looked good dogs.”

Zoe takes her camera back and loops the strap over her neck. “Who's the guy and where can I find the shelter?”

He brushes dust off his pants and tenderly touches his neck where she's kicked him. “The guy we dealt with is named Chen. I don't know his last name. He works at the county shelter over on North West Seventy-fourth.”

Zoe writes it all in her book.

“I got a feeling his bosses didn't know what he was doing. He said he was sticking his neck out by just touring around looking for homes for the pups, but it was either that or they got euthanized that night.”

“You got records of the people you sold the dogs to?”

“Of course,” says the old breeder.

Zoe digs in her jeans and pulls out Ghost's card. “You send them all to this cop.” She looks toward the son. “Believe me, you don't want him coming down here. Send the details right away and I'm tell him how helpful you've been. Hold something back and I'll see the world gets pulled down on your miserable heads.”

95

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

O
nly two dogs remain in the experimental cell.

Within sixty seconds of the canisters being triggered, the first animal shows signs of responding to the atomized serum. Its lip curls and it lets out a ferocious snarl.

Wild-eyed, it runs and hurls itself at the one remaining partition in the cell.

The screen comes down. The big dog falls then staggers to its feet.

It's face-to-face with Dog Three.

They rush at each other.

Teeth break as they collide.

The back legs of the two animals slip and skid on the blood-soaked cell floor. They pull and push at each other, creating a slow circle of death.

Hao looks across at his son and Péng and Tāo. They are all at their stations, hypotrajectors positioned above the two dogs and trained down on them.

Dog One twists its powerful jaws, and Dog Three's neck bends and cracks painfully. One flips it onto its side and instantly goes for the front of its throat.

Jihai winces as the dog opens up the other's windpipe. The fight goes from its eyes. It falls limply.

Dog One bites again at the open throat, teeth crunching into the top of the rib cage.

Hao mentally notes that the kill was not only faster but also more gruesome than the last. It could be that the third dog had been weakened by the first fight, or that the extra dosage may have acted as an even more powerful aggressor.

Dog One finally leaves the remains of the beaten pit bull and paces the bloody floor. The place looks like an abattoir.

Hao wonders what it will do now. Now it has won. Now it has killed everything within its domain.

He doesn't have to wait long for his answer.

It charges straight at the watching scientist.

The pit bull crashes against the reinforced glass and falls. The outer panels are much stronger than the inner partitions. There's no way it can break through.

It jumps again at the front wall and the whole panel of glass bows.

Hao looks towards Jihai. “Finish the creature.”

His son checks the position of the hypotrajectors and presses the command keys. Two darts of lethal poison hit the soft flesh of the animal.

It flinches as its skin is penetrated, then cranes its neck toward the nearest dart but can't reach it.

Astonishingly, the dog gets to its feet.

“Again!” shouts Hao. “Fire again!”

Two more fatal doses hit the animal. For a second it only flinches, and then it gazes vacantly at the humans beyond the glass.

Just as it looks as though it's about to fall, it bounds, springs like it's been shot from a cannon.

Hao backs away in fright.

He needn't have bothered.

The dog hits the glass with a sickening thud and slides to the floor. It's used up the last of its preternatural strength. The last of its life.

A long, bloody smear leads from the point of impact to the still twitching corpse.

96

South Beach, Miami

S
ergeant John Tarney leads the three-man SWAT team into the Jason Schaffer complex, a picturesque tennis center off West Avenue squeezed between apartment blocks and clusters of long established palms.

There's blood on the baseline.

Over in the far corner, nearest the backdrop of blue water and distant islands, he sees the crouched shape of the dog.

It has something trapped against the fence boards just a yard or two from the gate.

The big sergeant puts a whistle to his lips and blows.

The retriever jerks its head and turns.

Now the marksmen can see what's on the other side of it.

A middle-aged man in tennis whites.

Only they're not white anymore. They're soaked red and he'll never chase another backhand return.

The dog's face is dripping in blood and eviscerated flesh.

It stares at the new humans, then dips its head and bounds toward them.

It's covering the court with astonishing speed.

The marksmen fan out and raise their weapons. Tarney stands over the shoulder of the crouching middle sniper, his own Sig 226 drawn and settling for a shot.