The China Dogs (29 page)

“Good. Cummings is finally cutting us some slack.”

From the back of the vehicle that Annie drove over, Ghost hands out HK416s, the close combat rifle developed by the U.S. Delta Force and the German manufacturer Heckler & Koch. “Once we go in there,” he points across to the big canvas, “nothing with four legs comes past us and gets out. We start at the back, then we work down to the middle and front. Don't get distracted and drawn away. Keep shape and focus. Anything gets out, it
will
kill, and we can't allow that.”

His team take their guns and automatically check them. While they're readying themselves, Ghost heads toward Lydia Andrada, a tough-as-rocks uniform sergeant who is shouting orders to her crowd control teams.

“Lyd. Any chance some of your linebackers can open us a route into the tent and then keep us clean of civilians? The sooner we get in there, the better.”

The thirty-seven-year-old checks him out in his combat black. “Yeah we can do that, but rather you than me, Ghost.” She cups a hand and bawls across to one of her men. “Hey, Bellios, get a unit and come play Moses. You need to part the crowds and walk Lieutenant Walton and his team into the zone.”

A young black sergeant the size of a pro football player nods. “You got it, skip.” He turns to his men. “Kowolski and you guys, follow me.”

Ghost leans close to Lydia so she can hear him above the screaming crowds. “Any idea of casualties, how many dogs, and what to expect in there?”

She leans back. “Eyewitnesses say forty or so dogs. Most of them are fighting each other. Some of the bigger ones chewed on the crowd too. Bit the shit out of people sat out front in the center of the tent. We haven't got anyone out yet so don't know numbers.”

“Never sit at the front of anything,” says Ghost ruefully. “A lesson I learned early in life.”

“Agreed. I'm a backseat girl myself.”

He lets the innuendo slide. “Breed of dogs?”

“Everything. Boxers, bloodhounds, even those Labradoodledoers that are all the fashion.”

“You mean Labradoodles.”

“Maybe I do.” She shrugs. “They're all just wool rugs with teeth to me. I hate dogs.”

He laughs. “Your men ready?”

She locks eyes with her sergeant. “You up, Bellios?”

“I was
born
up
, skip.”

Ghost nods. “Then let's go.”

Bellios and his uniforms disperse the crowd using megaphones and sheer physical presence. Even in the face of panic, people obey a pack of 250-pound policemen shouting at them.

Ghost halts his men at the entrance, a covered tunnel that leads down into the Big Top, most likely the place where tickets were bought and checked. He divides them into two groups and sounds a final warning. “Do
not
put yourselves in danger. If necessary, we back out, regroup and go again. No heroics. You can't warn or negotiate with an animal, you can't buy time or gain an advantage, so shoot on sight. Okay. Go.”

Rick Diaz, the marksman who killed the dog at Flamingo Park, is briefed to peel left with Max Kweller. Ghost is going right with Zander Stolly, the unit's rookie.

Dog growls and human moans curdle the air as they walk the last few feet of the dark tunnel.

Red and green spotlights, abandoned mid-show by the tech crew, are crawling back and forth in the shadowy space ahead of them.

Ghost is first in.

He climbs the wreckage of information desks, concession stalls, and broken seats. All the noise is coming from a central show area where banked seating has been arranged to form a performance ring.

Ghost takes steps up to the back row and looks down.

Shit.

It's like a scene from ancient Rome. Lions versus Christians. Down in the sawdust of the small arena, people stand back-to-back beating away snarling dogs with folding chairs from the front stalls and bits of apparatus from the show.

Ghost counts six, maybe seven dead bodies in the ring, several of them still being savaged by large dogs. There are canine corpses too, small spaniels and terriers that have been torn to pieces.

To the left of him, Diaz's HK spits out a burst of bullets and takes down two boxers at the back of a pack. Kweller catches a wirehaired pointer with a single shot. A surgical hit that would have won him applause back on the range. Both men instantly move down a row of seats, their eyes never leaving the humans battling for their lives.

On the far right side of the ring the body of a grandmother is being torn apart by two more wirehaireds. Ghost takes out the dog chewing on her face and Stolly picks off the other.

A massive Alsatian jumps from beneath a set of seats in front of Kweller. It bounds over the young male body it's been biting and heads their way. Diaz tracks it and catches it with his second burst.

Another leaps up the terraces, eyes huge and yellow teeth bared. Kweller drops his HK to waist level and sends a chain saw of bullets across its midriff.

Now there are more of them. Coming from every direction. The gunfire has attracted their attention, like cracking a stick on a hornets' nest.

Ghost and Stolly sprint along their rows. They've got to be careful not to catch their colleagues in a cross fire.

A pointer jumps Kweller.

Just before it hits his chest he gets off a burst from the HK, but the dog still flattens him, cracks him into the seating and jars his back.

A mastiff the size of a horse gallops toward Diaz. He sees it out of the corner of his eye as he tries to help his partner but knows he won't get his gun up in time.

Ghost shoots it from ten yards away.

Dogs are pouring out of the ring now. Sprinting up the aisles and heading toward his men.

The people who were trapped see their chance and run for the exits.

Run for their lives.

“Stay tight!” shouts Ghost. He turns and pulls hard on the rifle trigger. His 416 can cough out more than eight hundred rounds a minute, and he's thinking he might need all of them to get out of here alive.

The first wave comes pouring in.

Stolly screams at the top of his voice and rakes automatic fire into the onrushing dogs. A wild release of tension that betrays his inexperience.

Ghost picks off dogs on the right perimeter, ones lumbering in late but every bit as vicious and deadly as the frontrunners.

Kweller and Diaz stand side by side and systematically mow down everything with fur that moves on the left perimeter.

The sound of the guns is deafening. The spotlit air fills with smoke, flying fur, and sprays of blood.

Finally, the shooting stalls to a stutter and Ghost shouts, “Cease fire!”

Stolly can't stop.

He's holding the rifle but has no control over it.

It's jumping in his arms as he relentlessly shoots into the body of a long-dead dog.

“Stolly!” Ghost puts his hands on the youngster's rifle. “Stop!”

The kid is wild-eyed and traumatized, but loosens his finger from the trigger and lowers his weapon.

Ghost puts an arm around him and pulls him close to his chest. “You did well, Stolly. You did really well.”

104

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

T
he second tox tests confirm the findings of the first. Hao was right. The wild dogs fitted with the new microchips had secreted tetrodotoxin, a deadly and virtually undetectable neurotoxin that blocks the conduction of nerve impulses along nerve fibers and axons.

TTX is essentially a “cork” pushed into the vital channels down which nerves send messages. Once blocked, the body starts to shut down, leading to paralysis, respiratory failure, and death.

The scientist remembers, as a student, learning that creatures such as the Japanese puffer fish can host the toxin without risk to itself, because the protein of the sodium ion channel underwent mutations that changed the amino acid sequence and made the channel insensitive to tetrodotoxin. That single point mutation in the amino acid sequence rendered it immune to the poison.

The same was being done with the dogs.

On his desk are the newly completed DNA profiles that prove as much. There are changes in the base sequencing and clear signs of mutation.

Hao realizes the implications of what he's uncovered.

Once beta testing has finished, the Nian project would supply General Zhang with the world's deadliest covert weapon.

One that would be welcomed with open arms into the homes' of unsuspecting families.

It would be petted. Loved. Trusted.

Then when activated, it will kill with just a single lick.

The thought sickens him.

The toxin is so hard to trace that millions could be killed before scientists discovered it, let alone developed a mass antidote. To the best of Hao's knowledge, no one in the world has yet developed one. Though he doesn't for a moment doubt that Zhang has teams secretly working on that as well.

Teams no doubt led by Jong Hyun-Su. The Korean scientist who invented the Nian program but didn't develop it.

Hyun-Su was linked to Korea's World Stem Cell Hub
and is an expert in theriogenology—the science and practice of animal reproduction. The hub was initially hailed for its brilliance and was thought to have been the first lab in the world to clone a human embryo.

Then the truth came out.

Results had been faked. The hub's leader had embezzled millions of dollars in funds and grants. As a result the whole enterprise was shut down.

While the WSCH's claims on cloning people were discredited, their work on animals and the creation of the first cloned dog escaped relatively untarnished, as did the reputation of Jong Hyun-Su, widely regarded as one of the brightest and most maverick talents around.

Hao carries these thoughts with him as he heads to the medical bunkhouse to check on Péng.

He finds the young scientist lying in a shivering, cold sweat, babbling and swiping out at nonexistent people and objects.

“How long has he been like this?” Hao asks Jihai, who sits alongside Péng.

“I'm not sure. I came to check on him and found him like this.”

“Send for Dr. Chi. Did Péng go to him as I instructed?”

“Yes. Chi said there was nothing to worry about.”

Hao doesn't have a lot of time for the doctor. He's in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, and should have retired years ago.

“He just put antiseptic on the cut and gave him an antirabies jab,” added Jihai. “The usual immunoglobulin.”

Hao looks at the feverish youngster and rules out such an infection. “Rabies wouldn't manifest itself so quickly. The earliest known cases of symptoms appear in days, but it's usually weeks before there are prodromal signs like this.” He thinks of what else it might be. “I suppose he could have had a severe reaction to the jab, but that should have been spotted after earlier immunizations.” He turns to Jihai. “When Chi has seen Péng, check that Tāo has prepared the new dog and meet me in the testing bunker. I need one more serum run and I need to do it quickly.”

105

Bicentennial Park, Miami

S
hafts of sunlight stream through bullet holes in the Big Top and pierce a thick gray cloud of gun smoke.

The place has been shot to bits.

The tactical team's 416s reduced row after row of chairs to junk wood. Lights, drapes, props, and signs have all been destroyed.

There are no more growls and snarls, just the moans of the brutally injured. Nevertheless, Ghost's men stay on alert and shadow paramedics from casualty to casualty. From uniform units outside the tent he's heard that about four dogs have broken free, so he's radioed Tarney and directed him and the other unit to help track them.

At the back of the tent, Ghost finds three families who crawled into separate dog cages and locked themselves in. They're shaking with fear and the kids have soiled themselves.

He also finds six dead men and women. From their badges, he can see they are a mix of breeders and event organizers.

As he looks around he realizes that Lydia Andrada was right. The front row got it worst. Ghost counts eighteen dead, including two people in wheelchairs and what he guesses is two of their helpers. He walks the periphery of the Big Top and hears a thumping noise. It's coming from inside a metal crew box about eight feet by four, the type used for stage lighting.

He stops and listens.

There's another bang. Like an animal moving around.

He cocks his rifle, puts his boot heel against the edge of the lid and kicks it open. He's just in the mood to kill another of the fuckers.

There's no dog.

Just an elderly couple wrapped in each other's arms.

The man's bald and liver-spotted head cranes up and around like a turtle. “Is it over?”

“Yeah, it's over.” Ghost slides his rifle out of the way and sticks a hand inside. “Let me help you out.”

The old guy takes it and struggles and groans his way up. Together they help his wife, a slip of a woman in her seventies, with a girlish smile that no doubt broke hearts half a century ago.

“Are you okay, ma'am?”

She steps out of the box. “Yes. I'm fine.” She straightens out her dress, conscious of showing too much leg.

Her husband takes her hand and holds tight as he takes in the carnage around them. “There was a girl,” he says. “A young woman who helped us in there. Black hair. Is she all right?”

Ghost doesn't have a clue. “Most people got out safely. I'm sure she's fine. Now let's get the doctors to check you over.”

The wife points off to her right. “There. That's her. I recognize her shoes, they're like my daughter's.”

Ghost spots a blue sneaker and bare ankle. They're sticking out from beneath a pile of broken wooden chairs and a jumble of torn backstage drapes that cover a woman's face and upper body. He figures she tried to climb to safety, no doubt with dogs snapping at her heels.