The China Dogs (40 page)

“You get the manufacturer's data from the scan?”

“Yes.”

He pulls over a notepad. “Anything you can tell me about who made them? Anything that links our victims?”

She has to pause and think. “Well, the microchips in the Kathy Morgan, Matt Wood, and Alfie Steiner cases were all from the same supplier. All Chinese. But I've checked with other vets that have done postmortems on recent dogs shot in human fatality incidents, and they've given me different batch numbers and manufacturers for those.”

“Do you know if they were Chinese as well?”

“Yes, I believe they were. But that's not uncommon. Chinese and Japanese manufacturers have gained strong footholds in these areas. Some years ago American and Swiss companies led the field, but they lost a lot of ground—mainly due to costs and the fact that we ended up with different chips and different scanners in the market that weren't compatible.”

“Why did you check that?”

“What?”

“You said you have already checked with other vets on the type of microchips used in the dogs—why did you do that?”

“Well, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, just to see if they were chipped—and amazingly, all the dogs were. Then, to see if the owners had gotten their animals from the same breeders—they hadn't. And I did wonder whether they'd suffered some infection; if there was a chance that the chips had come from a contaminated area such as Fukushima in Japan. But as they were all from China, that was also a nonstarter.”

“Could you go back to the animals and inspect the actual chips?”

She looks a little nonplussed. “Yes, of course. But why? I also scanned the animals for radiation, and their levels were normal.”

“I'll tell you why—maybe it's nothing, but as of now, that chip is all we've got, so I want you to examine every microscopic nanoparticle of it.”

“You've got it.” She gets up to go. “When you get the chips, can you have them sent through to my office? I'll run microscopy on those straight away and then comparison tests on the ones in the animals.”

“They'll be with you within an hour.”

They exchange smiles and she leaves.

Ghost barely has time to reflect on their meeting when a direct line on his desk rings. It's Vasquez in Jacksonville.

“Hi, Antonio, what've you got?”

“Are your monitors on?”

Ghost picks the remote off his desk. “No. Hang on. No one has actually shown me how to operate these things yet.” He thumbs through the buttons, powers up, and tries several sources.

A bank of five screens fills with different feeds. All of them show savage dogs on the rampage. “Where is this?”

“The last place on earth we'd want it to be,” answers Vasquez.

148

Bonnet Creek Parkway, Lake Buena Vista, Florida

I
t's normally one of the cleanest kennels in the world. Now it's covered in blood, skin, and human organs. Staff and customers are either dead or panicking.

A Doberman snaps its jaws around the neck of a kennel worker. An Alsatian tears at the remains of the young couple that were dropping it off. Two pointers chew on the corpse of a female vet.

There are bodies spread across the concrete deck where guests arrive. More lie along the crushed granite pathways and by drinking fountains where the seniors tend to sit in the sun before they go on their way.

And there are more in the play park.

Frisbees, balls, and rubber bones lie neglected on artificial green turf that is now a sodden crimson.

A row of intermittently spurting fountains, installed to amuse the animals and keep them cool, sprays a thin red mist into the faultless blue Orlando sky. Across a water jet lies the body of a young center cleaner. Just nineteen, this was the first day of his first job.

The air fills with the sound of sirens, and cops and National Guardsmen pour into the grounds of the 27,000 feet of luxury pet center.

They're too late to save the lives of fifteen people. But maybe—just maybe—they can keep the dogs from breaching the fences and entering the land next door.

Because if they don't, then the dogs are going to run amok in the most famous and densely populated family venue in the world.

Disney World.

149

Police HQ, Miami

G
host watches the horror unfold on his monitors. He's already sent Tarney, Diaz, and other key Special Ops leaders in helicopters to the resort. They'll hook up with locals and give strategic instructions should the situation worsen. Which it well might.

Occasionally he glances at feeds that local force techies have pulled up from the pet center's own 24/7 camera coverage.

Through a comm headset he listens to a mix of audio links to the various teams dispatched by both himself and the local police and sheriff's offices. Across from him, Bella Lansing waves to grab his attention and holds a note that says:
THE MICROCHIPS A
RE HERE. SAMPLES SENT TO TEALE.

He mouths the word
Thanks.

Ghost looks down and sees his direct line to Vasquez is flashing. He removes one side of his headphones and picks it up. “What do you know, Antonio?”

“FYI—I'm getting real heat from Disney. The kind you could roast all of America's Thanksgiving dinners on.”

“Sorry to hear it. You want me to get someone from the White House have them back off ?”

“Would help. I gave Disney's chief of security a heads-up that we're considering a complete evac and he went ballistic. Within minutes I had the president of Disney World Attractions on one line and the group's public affairs manager on another. Expect some heat yourself, they're going to fight any attempt to close.”

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Once my people get in there, they're going to clear everyone from the southwestern part of the Port Orleans Resort. I've already got Guard units in the center, partway down the parkway, across Sassagoula Circle and Riverside as far as the Jambo House.”

“Okay. Just wanted to let you know that you had incoming political fire that I couldn't head off. Sorry.”

“Appreciated. Thanks.” Ghost hangs up and his eyes follow the satellite feed. There are marksmen out there now, and they're doing a good job by the look of things.

Two dogs lie dead on the freshly mown grass that forms the median dividing the parkway. On one side is the kennels and on the other Disney World.

A Guard gets off several shots and a medium-sized pointer falls to the turf on the Disney side.

From what Ghost has managed to find out, the resort is about as secure as a maximum-security prison. They've kept out ticket dodgers for decades, by using patrols and chain link that any corrections board in the world would be proud of. Today it might just save them lives as well as money.

Ghost, Bella, and Teale forget about the chips. The satellite feed has picked up a hole in the Disney fence. A deliberately cut hole. And dogs are pouring through it.

150

Disney World, Florida

S
even dogs go through the fence.

Three Labradors. Two golden retrievers. A Doberman and a boxer.

The animals' supersensitive hearing tunes in to the shrieks of joy that spill from the happy, choppy waters of Ol' Man Island, the elaborate three-acre outdoor pool complex built around a bend of the Sassagoula River.

The dogs gallop as a pack, feet drumming loudly as they hit the boards of a bridge.

The decking is full of moms and dads with kids. They're lost in their own private worlds, lazily pushing strollers, proudly carrying tots on their shoulders, dripping water onto the hot, bleached boards and wondering what drinks and snacks to order before they jump into another hour or so of fun.

Someone shouts, “Look out!”

A hairy-chested dad in red swimmers scoops up his three-year-old son.

Too late.

The Doberman jumps.

Giant paws knock the man over. He clutches at his kid as he tumbles. A blond woman at his side screams in panic but doesn't know what to do.

A retriever crashes into a Disney stroller. Knocks it clean out of a young mother's hands. Giant teeth sink into the soft face of the unprotected baby. Men nearby kick out. Some barefooted. Some in only sandals. The dog snarls and snaps. Draws fresh blood. The mother straightens the stroller and runs.

Three steps later the dog has her.

Its needle sharp teeth sink into her thigh and bring her facedown.

Two thirteen-year-old buddies run from a Labrador. Glances are thrown over bony, sunburned shoulders, skinny arms pump like pistons.

The dog reaches the ankle of the slowest boy and pulls him down.

The child puts his arms defensively over his face. The animal's teeth settle for the soft flesh of the boy's stomach.

A crack of gunfire is lost in the screams.

The Lab is thrown clear of the kid. A cop runs forward and pumps more bullets into his head and body.

A rifle sounds and a retriever tumbles. It is injured but not dead.

It gets to its feet and growls at a terrified child less than a yard away.

A second round hits it in the head. There's a spray of blood and now it's down and not getting up.

There's uncontrollable panic now. People jump off the bridge into what they hope is the safety of the water, others climb trees or leap into the river and swim for their lives.

Guardsmen and cops are on the bridge searching for dogs and for clean shots without harming anyone.

Another Lab savages a deaf and slightly drunk grandmother who'd fallen asleep on a sun lounger in the shade. It's pulling organs from her stomach when a Guardsman stoops low and shoots it in the head.

More Guardsmen flood the island.

They kill the third of the Labs and the boxer over by the shade of the terminus for the horse drawn carriages. The bodies of a young woman and her daughter lie in the bushes. A horse is on its side, injured and in pain after bolting and overturning its carriage.

The place is clear of people now. The only sound that breaks an eerie silence is comm chatter from police and National Guard radios. Word comes through—the last of the dogs has been shot at the entrance to the Muddy Rivers Pool bar.

The crisis is over.

Or so everyone hopes.

151

CIA HQ, Langley, Virginia

T
en miles and twenty minutes in a car is all that separate the White House from the George Bush Center for Intelligence, the official name of CIA HQ, where Don Jackson has his team.

The NIA director makes the journey at the urgent request of one of America's most decorated officers, Chris Parry, chief of operations of SAD, the CIA's Special Activities Division, a branch of the Agency's National Clandestine Squad.

Jackson sticks out a hand and they shake as they walk. “I need this to be good, Chris. We're jammed up bad with the Chinese, Koreans, and Taliban at the moment.”

“I know.” The fifty-year-old former Delta Force commander pats Jackson on the back. “I'm going to give you hope, my friend.”

“If hope doesn't have nuclear capabilities, it may not be good enough.”

They manage to laugh as they turn a corridor and head toward an operations room. “The cyber task force we set up on day one has been working its balls off. They've been phreaking
the ­buildings—essentially hacking the comm and computer systems of everything Chinese, and have pulled an encrypted stream called Nian.”

“Nian? What is that, an acronym?”

“No.” Parry's face lights up. “The Nian is a mythical Chinese dog. Stuff of legend and horror stories, like our bogeyman or Wicked Witch of the West. Kids get told about this monster dog that comes out of hiding, attacks villages, kills people, and disappears. Sound familiar?”

“Uncomfortably so.”

They enter a large briefing room filled with tired but familiar faces. Managers from the Counter Intelligence Center, the Office of Asia Pacific Analysis, the Anti-Cyber Crime Division, and the Office of Terrorism Analysis have all given up their sleep to help analysts polish the gems of information that have been dug up.

Task force leader Bill Everett steps forward when he sees his boss enter with the NIA director. He shakes Jackson's hand. “Good to see you again, sir. I'd like to introduce you to two of our people. This is Brad Stevens, one of our senior cyber crime supervisors.”

Stevens looks even more baggy-eyed and gray than normal. “Pleased to meet you, Director Jackson.”

They shake hands and then Everett's face lights up with pride. “And this is one of our most promising and ambitious young field operatives, the man who found the Nian stream.”

Danny Speed sticks out his young hacker hand. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Director.”

Chris Parry hurries things along. “Tell the director what you've got.”

All eyes are on Danny. “I've captured highly secured military data flowing from North Korea to Beijing, sir, and I have broken some of the basic codes. That means the computer language makes sense and I have managed to recognize and assemble all the scrambled data so we can see folders, photographs, and video.”

“But?” Jackson feels liked a coiled spring. “I know there is a ‘but' otherwise I'd have heard more positive stuff earlier than this.”

“There is,” interjects Parry. “A butt bigger than Kim Kardashian's. Beyond the computer code is a language code, and it's not in English. It's Chinese, and not even Mandarin or Cantonese.”

Everett explains further. “As you probably know, sir, about one and a quarter billion people in China speak Mandarin, and another seventy million Cantonese. We now have to work through the lesser languages—Wu, Yu, Min, Jin, Xiang, Hakka, Gan, and Pinghua.”

Jackson rolls his eyes. “Isn't there standard software to translate that?”

“Not that makes sense. We can't afford errors, and those flip-up programs are full of mistakes. We've got our best linguists all over this.”