The Dragon Factory (60 page)

“Do you know who Josef Mengele was?”

“He’s me,” said the boy.

“No,” said Rudy. “You’re fourteen. Josef Mengele was born a hundred years ago.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re the same person.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Was Josef Mengele a good person?”

“No!” the boy said as if Rudy was an idiot.

Rudy smiled. “Well, we agree on that. Was Josef Mengele the kind of person who would have risked his own life to help other people?”

A shake of the head.

“Would that man have done what you did to contact Mr. Church—the Deacon—and ask for help?”

No answer.

“Would he?”

“No. I guess not.”

Rudy changed tack. “So there are eighty-two clones of Josef Mengele?”

“No,” said the boy.

“I don’t—”

“There are a lot more than that.”

“And you’re one of them?”

A nod.

“Are the others all like you?”

“We’re all clones, I told you.”

“No . . . I asked if they’re like you. Do they have the same personality?”

“Some do.”

“Exactly the same?”

No answer.

“Please,” said Rudy. “Answer my question. Do they all have the same personality?”

“No.”

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many of them would have done what you did? How many of them would have risked their lives to try and warn us?”

No answer.

“Are any of them cruel?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Are you cruel?”

“No.”

“Don’t you enjoy hurting people? Don’t you enjoy inflicting harm and—”

The boy gave him a sharp, hurt look. “No!”

“You mind that I asked that?”

“Of course I do. What kind of stupid question is that?”

“Why is it stupid? You said that you were the same as Josef Mengele. You said that you were evil. And you said that you were going to Hell.”

“I’m
him;
don’t you get that?”

“I understand that you’re a clone. I admit I’ve never spoken with a clone before, and until today I would have thought that a clone might carry some of the same traits and characteristics as the person from whose cells they were cloned. And yet here you are, a teenage boy who risked his life on several occasions to help stop bad people from doing very bad things. A boy who attacked a big security guard in order to try and stop the slaughter of unarmed people. A boy who could easily have done nothing.”

The boy said nothing.

“You may be cloned from cells taken from an evil man. Our scientists will determine that through DNA testing. If it’s true, then it changes nothing,” said Rudy. “Josef Mengele was a monster.
Is
a monster, I suppose, if Cyrus Jakoby is really him.”

“I’m pretty sure he is.”

“He’s such a terrible person . . . and yet you risked everything to save the very people he wanted to destroy.”

The boy looked at him.

Rudy smiled.

“You’re
not
him.”

“I am.”

“No,” Rudy said, “you’re not. You’ve just proven something that people have been arguing over for centuries. In fact, you may be living proof of the answer to a fundamental question of our human existence.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, there’s the question of nature versus nurture. Is a person born with certain mental and emotional characteristics that are simply hardwired into him by genetics? Or do environment, exposure to other thoughts and opinions, and life experience determine who we are? I’d say that you are living proof that there has to be a third element permanently added to that equation.”

“What?”

“Choice.”

The boy looked at him for a long time and said nothing.

“There has never been a situation like this before. We’ve never had the chance to observe a clone and determine if that person is, or wants to be, exactly the same as the source entity.”

“They wanted me to be. Every day I had to learn about Mengele’s life and work. I had to learn surgery and about torture and war.” Tears streamed down his face. “Every day. Day after day after day.”

“And yet you chose a different path than the one they intended for you.”

The boy was sobbing now.

“You’re not him,” said Rudy gently. “
He
would never do what you did. And you could never do what he did.”

Rudy fished a plastic package of tissues from his jacket pocket and handed them to the boy, who pulled several out, blew his nose, wiped his eyes. Rudy did not try to physically touch the boy, not even a pat on the shoulder. It was an instinctive choice. The boy was solitary; comfort had to come from within.

They sat together in the interview room as the silent minutes burned away.

“There’s one more thing for you to think about,” said Rudy.

The boy looked at him with red eyes.

“Josef Mengele is one of the worst criminals of the last hundred years. A monster who has done untold harm to countless people and now wants to destroy a large percentage of the world’s population. The records we
recovered indicate that he started the AIDS epidemic, and the new tuberculosis plague in Africa. Even if we stop him today, he’ll be reviled as the greatest mass murderer in history.”

“I know.”

“While you on the other hand . . . ,” Rudy said, and smiled.

“What . . . ?”

“You are very probably going to go down in history as the greatest hero of all time.”

The boy stared at him.

“We had no idea of the Extinction Wave,” said Rudy. “No idea at all. If it had not been for your act of bravery, for the
choice
you made, millions—perhaps billions—would die. We didn’t even know we were in a war until a little more than a day ago. You changed that. You made a choice. You took a chance. And if we succeed, if Joe Ledger and Major Courtland and the other brave men and women who are fighting right now to stop this madness are successful, it will all be because of you.”

“All I did was send two e-mails!”

“The value of choice is not in the size of the action but in its effect. You may have saved the entire world.” Rudy smiled and shook his head. “I can barely fit my mind around the concept. You’re a hero, my young friend.”

“A ‘hero’?” The boy shook his head, unable to process the word.

“A hero,” Rudy agreed.

The boy wrapped his head in his arms and laid them on the table and began sobbing uncontrollably.

Mr. Church watched all of this on his laptop, which was positioned so that only he could see it. The noise and motion of the TOC flowed around him. He removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a handkerchief and put them back on.

“Well, well,” he murmured to himself.

The Dragon Factory

Ten minutes ago

Grace Courtland and Alpha Team moved quickly and quietly through the corridors of the Dragon Factory. They avoided people when they could, and when they couldn’t they killed. Redman and the others dragged bodies into closets or hid them under office desks. The team moved on, searching for Cyrus Jakoby, driven by the certain knowledge that time was running out.

They saw two more of the massive guards standing on either side of a huge hatch that was the size of a bank safe. The hatch stood ajar and the guards were alert. Grace crouched down behind a bushy potted plant at the far end of the corridor and studied them through the magnification of her rifle scope. The guards were unnaturally large, more muscular and massive even than steroid-enhanced bodybuilders. They had similar features: sloping foreheads with overhanging brows, blunt noses, and nearly lipless mouths. These had to be the bruisers Joe had encountered at Deep Iron, and she could well understand why Echo Team had thought they were up against soldiers wearing exoskeletons. The guard on the left had to have a chest that was seventy-five inches around and thirty-inch biceps.

Redman leaned close and whispered, “What the hell are they?”

“Transgenic soldiers,” said Grace.

“They look like gorillas.”

“No kidding,” said Grace dryly, and then Redman got it.

“Holy shit.”

“Fun with science,” Grace murmured. The hatch the soldiers guarded looked inviting, and she was willing to bet her next month’s pay that whatever was inside was important. She was also willing to bet that Cyrus Jakoby was in there. The guards were hyperalert, their posture absolutely correct.

“I need to get in there,” she said.

“We don’t have enough cover for two snipers. Have to take them one at a time.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s not going to work.”

She quickly outlined a plan that had Redman shaking his head before she was finished.

“It’s not a suggestion,” Grace hissed. “Do what you’re bloody well told.”

Redman nodded, but his face showed his displeasure.

Grace faded back around the bend in the corridor and quickly shrugged off her combat gear and jacket so that she wore boots, pants, and a black tank top. She removed the rubber band from her dark hair and shook it out. She slid a knife into her pocket and tucked her .22 into the back waistband of her fatigue pants.

“Be ready,” she whispered to Redman, and then she walked out into the center of the hall and strolled up to the guards.

The guard on the left spotted her first and tapped his companion. They both turned to see the tall, slender, beautiful woman walking toward them. Grace put just enough hip sway into her walk to catch their attention, and as she drew close she smiled up at them.

“This is a restricted area, miss,” said the right-hand guard.

“I know,” she said. “But I wanted to tell you guys something.”

“What?” asked the left-hand guard, but he leaned slightly forward, making no pretense of hiding the fact that he was looking down her top.

“Look what I have,” Grace said in a conspiratorial whisper.

The guards bent closer still.

She drew her pistol and shot the left-hand guard through the eye. A split second later Redman put a bullet through the right-hand guard’s forehead.

Grace smiled and waved her team forward, thinking to herself that men—even mutant transgenic ape soldiers—were all the same. Show them a little cleavage and they lose all sense.

She stepped to the edge of the hatch and peered carefully inside. She could see a group of people standing thirty yards down a foliage-lined path. She recognized the Jakoby Twins at once.

Suddenly warning buzzers began blaring overhead and a recorded voice blared from wall-mounted speakers, “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!”

Down the hall there was a rattle of automatic gunfire and immediately automatic fail-safes activated and the hatch began to swing shut. There was no time to think; Grace leaped through the hatch and ducked behind a thick shrub just as the huge portal slammed shut.

OUTSIDE, REDMAN YELLED
as the hatch clanged into place. Gunfire and screams filled the air and people erupted from rooms and side corridors. Some were unarmed staff; others had guns. Everyone was yelling, and then the guards spotted them and began firing.

More gunfire came from behind.

There was no more time to think. Redman and Alpha Team dove for what cover there was and returned fire.

Above Dogfish Cay

Five minutes ago

We glided through the night, silent as bats, our night vision painting the world below us in shades of green and black. The three of us had tumbled out of the plane miles above the island, and for a long time we fell in total darkness. Skydiving at night is deceptive; after you become accustomed to the rush of air, all sense of movement ceases and you feel as if you’re floating. Without an altimeter to tell you the truth about how fast the ground is rushing up to meet you there is a very real chance you’ll find out in a last microsecond of surprise.

There was almost no wind, so we deployed our glider chutes at ten thousand feet. There is a moment where the resistance of the chute jolts every bone in your body, and then the glider takes over and once more you feel like you’re floating rather than falling. The glider has its own dangers built in because it doesn’t feel like you’re dropping down at all. It’s so smooth and steady.

I went through Airborne training in the Army, so you’d think I enjoyed throwing myself out of airplanes. You’d be wrong. I’m good at it, but I do not like it. Both Top and Bunny were more experienced at this sort of thing. Top used to teach it, Bunny did it on his days off. Doing it at night with no lights to steer by, having started seven miles up, isn’t my idea of a rollicking good time.