The Dragon Factory (57 page)

Hecate promised him everything. Cyrus was extremely pleased.

They passed through the main lab complex and Cyrus suddenly stopped, mouth open in awe at the statue that dominated the center of the room. A caduceus made from an alabaster pillar, hammered gold and jewels. Twin albino dragons coiled around the staff.

“Beautiful . . . ,” he murmured.

Hecate and Paris exchanged covert smiles.

“Quite impressive,” said Otto with a total absence of reverence. He could have been appraising a broken clamshell on the beach. His eyes were locked on Cyrus and doubt ate at him. Cyrus was unstable at the best of times, and now he seemed entranced by the wonders of the Dragon Factory.
Did the betrayal of the Twins knock something loose in Cyrus’s mind?
Otto wondered. It was always a real possibility. Otto carried a pocketful of pills to handle different emotional extremes, but quite frankly, he didn’t know which one would be needed here—or if a pill was needed at all.

“And now, Daddy,” said Hecate as they stopped before a massive security door guarded by two more Berserkers, “we come to the real heart of the Dragon Factory. The Chamber of Myth. This is where we work our real magic!”

Cyrus clapped his hands.

Hecate placed her hand on a geometry scanner and waited as the laser light read every line, curve, and plane of her palm and fingers. A green light came on and a small card reader slid out of the wall. Hecate reached into the vee of her pale peach blouse and pulled out a swipe card on a lanyard. She swiped the card and heavy locks disengaged with a hydraulic hiss. One of the Berserkers gripped the handle and swung the door open. It was as thick as a bank vault door, but it opened without a sound.

Hecate stepped through and beckoned her father to follow. The whole party moved inside and there they stopped. Even Otto’s cynical disdain was momentarily forgotten as they stared around them at the things the Twins had made. At the impossible brought to life.

The room was designed to look like a forest from a fantasy story. The walls were painted with photo-real mountain ranges. Holographic projections of clouds drifted across a sky that could have been painted by Maxfield Parrish. Thousands of exotic plants and trees were arranged on hills sculpted from real rock and soil. On the branch of a nearby tree a winged and feathered serpent crouched, watching them with amber
eyes. It was a perfect interpretation of the Quetzalcoatl of Aztec myth. In the distance a pair of snow-white unicorns nibbled at sweetgrass.

Several tiny people walked by, none of them taller than two feet. They wore green clothing and had pointed ears. As they passed they tipped their hats to Hecate, who curtsied. There was a gruff sound and the party turned to see a horse trot by, tossing its head haughtily. A pair of golden wings were folded against the horse’s muscular flanks.

“Can . . . can that thing fly?”

“Not yet,” admitted Paris, “but it’s the first specimen in which the wings are fully formed. We have to significantly reduce the muscle density of the horses so we can give them hollow bones. Otherwise it’s purely decorative.”

Conrad Veder’s insect coldness had fled and he stood smiling as a fat European dragon waddled by. It looked like a brontosaur with bat wings and was the size of a dachshund.

Paris smiled at him. “That’s a prototype. Arthurian dragon. So far we’ve been able to make them in miniature. George here is the oldest of six that we have. He’s four.”

George the dragon trundled over to Paris and bumped his head against Paris’s leg until he fished a treat out of his pocket and let the dragon eat it from his palm. “It’s a granola snack. High protein and vitamins but with sugar, sesame, and nuts. He loves them, which is why he’s so fat. C’mon, shoo, off with you. . . .”

The dragon ambled off, munching his treat.

A larger shape clopped past them on heavy hooves. The lower half was a powerful Clydesdale, but the upper half was a bull-chested man. He shot a frightened glance at the strangers and moved quickly away.

“You have human-animal hybrids?” Otto asked.

“A few,” Paris said. “The centaur was one of our first, but he hasn’t made the psychological adjustment. He’s not a true specimen. There was a lot of surgery involved and extensive pre and postoperative gene therapy. We’ve sunk a lot of money into that line, but I think it might be a dead end. There are too many problems with genes that code in unexpected ways.”

“Have you had any successes with animal-human transgenics? Besides the Berserkers, I mean.”

“A few,” Hecate said but didn’t elaborate. “And quite frankly, they kind of freak out the buyers. People seem to want the animal exotics. Unicorns, miniature griffins, dragons, that sort of thing. The elves and kobolds are popular, though. Now that we’re getting word of mouth we’ve been getting requests for a lot of exotics that we never thought of.”

“Such as?” asked Cyrus.

“Oh . . . we’ve had a dozen requests for Cerberus. We haven’t successfully made one, though. We did make a
samjoko
, a three-legged bird, for a Korean buyer. We made a Jersey Devil last year, and we have an order for a
chupacabra
. Gargoyles, too. We get a lot of requests for those.”

“This is . . . ,” began Veder; then he suddenly remembered where he was and why and left whatever he was going to say unsaid.

Paris smiled at him. “A lot of people are speechless. You should have seen the looks on the faces of a group of buyers from China when we trotted out an actual flying Chinese dragon. It was small, of course, but the buyers were entranced.”

Cyrus walked a few steps away from the group and bent down to pat the head of a swan-sized sea serpent that had raised its head from a koi pond. The animal shied back at first, but Cyrus cooed at it until the animal came closer.

“That’s our Nessie prototype. Pretty easy design. We want to get them to the size of a horse before we sell them.”

“Wonderful,” murmured Cyrus. “Absolutely wonderful. . . .”

Hecate beamed. Paris smiled.

Otto and Veder exchanged meaningful looks.

“Your clients are worldwide?” asked Cyrus as he tickled the sea serpent under the chin.

“Yes.”

“How unfortunate.”

“Sorry . . . ?” asked Hecate.

Cyrus smiled and without turning said, “It’s unfortunate because in less than two days you’re going to help me kill most of them.”

“What?” said Paris.

“Our clients?” asked Hecate.

Cyrus turned his head and the smile he wore was no longer the vapid grin of a father pleased with the antics of his clever children. It was a death’s-head grin of such naked malice that the Twins actually took a step backward from him.

“No, my young gods,” Cyrus said softly, “at noon tomorrow—you and I—will launch the Extinction Wave. By this time next year I’m afraid most of your clients will be dead.”

His hand darted out and caught the sea serpent by its slender throat, and with a vicious twist of his wrist he broke its neck.

“And the dead don’t need fucking
toys
.”

The Atlantic Ocean—two miles east of Dogfish Cay

One hour ago

They moved silently through the night black waters of the North Atlantic. Nine figures in wet suits and tanks, each crouched over the cowling of a K-101 Hydrospeeder that plowed through the water at almost 10 miles an hour. The speeders were not the catalog versions—these new prototypes were being tested by Marine and Navy units in oceans and lakes around the world. Mr. Church had made a call and had a dozen of them flown in and lowered down to the deck of the USS
New Mexico
. Grace was sure that nobody else but Church could have made that happen this fast. The remaining three speeders were left behind on the submarine in case Joe and his team needed them.

Alpha Team set out from the sub thirty minutes after sunset. Divers from the
New Mexico
wanted to go with them and the boat’s captain wanted to send them, but Grace made it clear that this was a less-is-more situation.

“But Captain,” she added confidentially, “have your lads keep their
suits on, because this will probably go from quiet to quite loud sometime this evening. At which point I’d like as much backup as you can send.”

“You’ll have it,” the captain promised. He was an ex-SEAL himself who had gone back to subs when he got too old for special ops. The gleam was there in his eye, and Grace left the sub feeling confident that he wouldn’t let her down.

Before she slipped into the water she made two last calls. The first was to Church for an update on the main wave of close support.

“Major, be advised that there is a lot of boat activity in your vicinity. Watercraft of all kind. We’re checking now to see if there’s an unusual run of sport fish.”

“No problem,” she said. “We’ll go in under them, but we’ll be careful of nets and hooks. How’s my backup coming along?”

“Every DMS agent in the continental United States is closing on your twenty, Major,” said Church. “In one hour we’ll have forty-six field operatives on the island. SEAL teams Five and Six are also inbound and we have twenty operators from Delta if we need them, but they’re an hour and ten out. Joe and Echo Team will get there first, but he’s still forty minutes behind you. He told me to ask you to save him something to do.”

“Bloody Yank,” she said, then added, “can I get a secure channel to him before we dive?”

Church hesitated. “How secure a channel?”

From the question, Grace knew for sure that Church was aware of the affair between his two most senior field commanders. She was glad Church wasn’t there to read her face.
Sod it
, she thought. “Very,” she said.

“I’ll arrange it.”

“Mr. Church . . . I don’t want another pair of boots on this island until I have that trigger device. We can’t risk showing our hand too soon, not when doomsday’s a button push away.”

“Roger that. But understand this, Major; if we don’t get that signal from you within thirty minutes of you making landfall we’re going to
drop an E-bomb over the island. Your electronics will be fried along with everyone else’s.”

“So I’ll send up a flare. Blue if I have the device, red if I don’t.”

“I’d rather see that blue flare,” Church said, then added, “Grace . . . we can’t let Cyrus send that code. If he’s on that island and I don’t see a blue flare at the agreed time, then the EMP may not be the only bomb I’ll be forced to drop.”

“I understand. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ ”

He laughed. “Good hunting, Major.”

He disconnected, and Bug contacted her a minute later to say that she had a secure line to Joe Ledger.

“Go for Cowboy,” Ledger said.

“Joe . . . this is a secure line,” Grace said. “Just us. No ears of any kind.”

“Wow,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Joe, I’m sorry about this morning. I didn’t mean to snub you—”

“Don’t sweat it. Been a funky few days.”

“About this morning . . . about what I said.”

“Yeah.”

“I . . . can we pretend I didn’t say it? Can we roll back the clock and reset the system?”

“I don’t know. Can we?”

“We have to.”

“Do we?”

“You know we do.”

Ledger said nothing.

“Joe . . . there’s too much at stake. When you reach the island, you have to be smart about this. I’m just another soldier. So are you. We’re professionals, not a couple of kids. If this gets hot tonight, then we have to follow procedure, stick to training, and not let any emotions interfere with our actions. End of story.”

There was a five count of heavy silence; then Ledger said, “I hear you.”

Grace said, “This . . . isn’t what I want. You understand?”

“I do,” he said sadly. “The mission comes first.”

“The mission comes first. Joe . . . I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll be there,” he said. “And Grace . . . ?”

“Yes?”

“Good hunting, Major.”

“Good hunting, Captain.”

She disconnected.

That was an hour ago.

Now she lay on the Hydrospeeder as it cut through the water toward the Dragon Factory. Behind the clear glass of her goggles, Grace Courtland’s eyes were the hard, heartless eyes of a predator. They were the eyes of a soldier going to war.

They were a killer’s eyes.

In flight above the North Atlantic

Thirty-five minutes ago

I stood behind the pilot, and if my fingers were dug a little too tightly into the soft leather of his seat, then screw it. I stared out of the cockpit window at the blackness of the ocean below.

The pilot said, “Captain . . . wishing won’t make this bird fly any faster.”

“It might,” I said, and he laughed.

The co-pilot tapped my arm. “You have a call coming in on secure channel two.”

I went back into the cabin and screwed my earbud into place.

“Go for Cowboy,” I said.