In the end, Kat admitted, the map’s only our best guess.
To make matters worse, her sources had found no evidence that the Underground City actually reached the Beijing Zoo, which lay a mile or so off from the shuttered noodle shop overhead.
After ambushing Gao Sun, Monk had gathered Painter’s extraction team to this shop. It was the first location where the GPS signal had reappeared. They had broken into the abandoned restaurant through a rear window, and after a quick search, they discovered a set of stairs in the basement leading down to the Underground City. According to Kimberly, this access point was one of a hundred entrances into the sprawling maze.
But the steel door found at the bottom of the steps looked new, clearly a recent addition. It was electronically locked, but a swipe of the magnetic keycard taken from Gao Sun had successfully opened it.
The capture of Gao Sun also proved to be a source of additional information. Through her contacts, Kat was able to discover his brother’s name: Chang Sun. The man was a lieutenant colonel with the PLA, trained at the Academy of Military Science. His immediate superior, Major General Jiaying Lau, also came out of that same academy. Kat had forwarded a photo of the woman, standing stiffly in a starched pine-green uniform. The major general was likely the source of the griping and anger displayed by Gao during his earlier phone conversation with his brother, Chang.
So it seems we now know the major players, but how do we find the bastards?
A splashing drew Monk’s attention forward. One of the extraction team returned out of the darkness. Monk had sent four commandos forward to canvass the immediate area. The fifth was back at Gao’s apartment, babysitting and safeguarding that extra bit of insurance.
“All clear,” the man reported. “But you should see what we found.”
The five men handpicked for this mission by Painter were all Chinese American Army Rangers chosen for their ability to blend as seamlessly as possible into the populace. To further disguise their presence on foreign soil, they were all outfitted with PLA uniforms, including Monk and Kimberly.
When in Rome . . .
“Show me,” Monk said.
The ranger—a stocky sergeant named John Chin—led the way down the flooded tunnel, passing by cramped rooms full of rusted skeletons of bicycles and mold-encrusted pieces of furniture. The narrow tunnel slowly sloped upward, taking them out of the water and onto drier ground. The perpetual gloom dissipated as a glow grew brighter ahead.
Monk soon found himself standing with the other rangers: two steely-eyed brothers named Henry and Michael Shaw—and a smaller commando who went simply by Kong. Monk wasn’t sure if the latter was his actual surname or a nickname based on the man’s size.
Kimberly gasped slightly, surprised by what lay at the end of the narrow passageway. It had emptied into an enormous tunnel, large enough to allow a tank to roll down the center of it. The walls and arched roof were painted a spotless gray, lit by a rail of sodium lights overhead. The tunnel stretched in both directions, burrowing north and south, fading around curves in the distance.
“I’m guessing this is the right road,” Monk commented. “And lucky for us, Gao left us transportation.”
A Chinese army jeep—a BJ2022 half-ton off-roader—sat parked next to the smaller tunnel. It was painted green with a crimson PLA star emblazoned on the front doors. Gao Sun must have parked the vehicle here before heading up top and walking the rest of the way to his apartment.
Kimberly reached into a pocket and pulled out the set of keys taken from their captive. “So who’s up for a road trip?” she asked with a small smile, which spread across the assembled group.
They quickly loaded inside. Kimberly took the wheel. If they ran into trouble, her pretty face and quick tongue were their best assets to get through any checkpoints.
Monk climbed in the back, squeezing between the Shaw brothers in order to better hide his presence. As extra insurance, he tugged his cap lower and his mask higher. Still, he knew such efforts would survive only the most casual inspection.
So be it.
He leaned forward and pointed to the north, in the general direction of the zoo. “Head out. Let’s see where this road takes us.”
The engine roared to throaty life, trebling off the concrete walls.
He sank back into his seat.
And let’s hope we’re not too late.
11:14 A.M.
Baako feels the fire burst atop his head.
He thrashes in panic and pain, but his arms and legs are stuck. He can’t move his head. All he can do is roll his eyes, trying to see. He had watched the tall man lean over him with a needle in his fingers.
Baako knows needles. Mama sometimes poked him, giving him treats afterward: bananas covered in honey.
But this hurts more . . . so much more.
He looks to Mama now. She holds Baako’s hand. She says soft words, but her cheeks are wet. He smells her fear. The scent cuts through the sharper smells and finds him, pushing his own terror higher.
Mama, make it stop. I’ll be a good boy.
But it doesn’t stop. The needle sticks him again and again around his head, leaving behind a pool of fire each time.
Finally the man goes away.
Mama pushes closer. “You’re okay,” she tells him.
He must believe her, but he swallows and swallows and can’t make the pounding in his ears stop. Then slowly the fire fades across the top of his head, leaving a coldness that makes his skin feel dead and thick.
He doesn’t like this any better.
“You’re my boy,” Mama says. “You’re my brave boy.”
She says these good words, but her eyes weep. She brushes his brow, but by now that coldness has seeped even there. He can barely feel her fingertips.
“Sleep now, my little boy,” she whispers to him, like she did so many nights back home. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She looks at the tall man who plays with a milky bag that connects to Baako’s arm by a plastic rope. Baako feels everything grow lighter, like he’s floating. He remembers a blue balloon that Mama let him play with. Outside, the string had slipped from his fingers, and the balloon went up and up into the sky.
He is that balloon now.
Mama’s face blurs and fades away.
He hoots, trying to tell her to stay.
Mama, don’t go.
Then blackness.
11:28 A.M.
As Baako’s body slumped to the tabletop, Maria finally let go of his hand. She stepped from the table and hugged her arms around her chest, shivering with cold certainty. She had watched the terror and agony as Baako endured the anesthetic scalp block. But at least he was now asleep, sedated under the short-acting effect of the propofol drip. His chest rose and fell evenly, looking peaceful for the moment.
But such rest would not last.
The operating team—which consisted of two surgeons and three nurses—was already draping his form. They would keep Baako sedated only long enough to slice a flap of his skin off his scalp and perform the craniotomy. Once his skull was cracked open and the brain exposed, the drip would be turned off, and Baako would waken in a matter of minutes.
Then his true nightmare would begin.
Unable to watch these final preparations, she strode back to the curve of windows overlooking the hybrid habitat. She placed her forehead against the glass, staring below. Kowalski remained trapped in the cage by the habitat’s exit, while the hulking occupants of the pit waited at the threshold, led by the massive silverback. Behind the bars, the big man looked like a rag doll compared to the half-ton beast.
Maria wondered how the researchers controlled such aggressive specimens. She placed her palms against the glass. Was this barrier even thick enough to prevent them from battering out of there? Surely they could climb the rocky walls to reach the height of these windows.
A scuff of shoes drew her attention around. One of the nurses—a young woman with bright eyes—joined her,
sipping from a glass of ice water, taking a break before the final stage of the operation. It was the same nurse who had showed a bit of sympathy when Maria had first arrived. The woman nodded to the window, perhaps noting her attention.
“They cannot reach here,” she said. Her words were whispered, but not as if she were afraid of sharing secrets. She seemed naturally soft-spoken. She pointed to a row of large boxes positioned below the level of the windows. “They broadcast on a frequency coded to the animals’ collars.”
Maria had noted the steel bands around the hybrids’ necks. “They’re shock collars?”
“That is correct. The signal generates a shield over the habitat, just under the level of the windows.”
Maria nodded her understanding. If the beasts climbed too high and reached that invisible barrier, they would be jolted with electricity and driven back to the floor.
“And for emergency . . .” The nurse pointed to the left, to a locked cabinet holding a tranquilizer rifle. There was a latched gate in the neighboring pane of the observation window. “But do not fear. The guns have never been used. You are very safe.”
Maria did not bother to point out the irony of this last statement. She stared down at Kowalski. He spotted her and lifted an arm. She placed her hand on the glass again, trying to reassure him that she was doing her best to keep him safe, too.
Behind her, Dr. Han barked out an order, making the nurse jump. The woman gave a hurried bow toward Maria—then dashed to obey her superior. Maria turned and saw that Baako was now fully draped. The surgical team stood off to the side, scrubbing up for the procedure.
A cold dread settled over her.
So it begins.
11:35 A.M.
“Well, that doesn’t look good,” Monk said from the backseat.
As Kimberly rounded the jeep past a long curve, a wooden barricade cut across the wide tunnel ahead. It was topped by rolls of razor wire and had a sentry shack guarding the gateway through it. Beyond the barrier, a small parking lot held a handful of jeeps and motorcycles.
“What do you think?” Kimberly asked as she slowed their approach.
“That barricade pretty much matches the southern border of the zoo overhead,” he said. “So I’m guessing that’s where we need to go.”
During the drive here, Monk had been monitoring their progress via an accelerometer built into his satellite phone, but after the first quarter mile, their path had shot beyond the boundaries of Kat’s map, passing into no-man’s-land. Along the way, countless smaller passageways branched off, including a tunnel or two even larger than this one. It was a veritable maze. With no road signs to guide them, they had simply continued along a path that best aimed for the park.
At least it seemed to have worked.
But now a new challenge presented itself.
Up ahead, the road through the barrier was blocked by a row of waist-high steel pylons. A sentry stepped out of the guard shack to meet them.
Showing no hesitation, Kimberly glided their vehicle toward the gateway. As she braked to stop before the line of pylons, the sentry came forward to meet her, looking bored and unconcerned. He likely recognized the vehicle, so didn’t bother to unhook the assault rifle from his shoulder.
Clearly this buried station did not get much action.
The sentry reached the vehicle and leaned over to the driver-side window.
Monk kept his head low, pretending to be half asleep, just another soldier reporting for duty. Kimberly spoke firmly to the sentry, twisting away from him as she reached for her knapsack, feigning an attempt to find papers or orders.
While she did so, the man poked his head through the window and took stock of the others in the jeep. Monk felt one of the Shaw brothers shift a hand to his sidearm.
Hold steady, he silently urged the ranger.
Before anyone else could make a move, Kimberly lashed out and hooked her arm around the sentry’s neck. Catching him off guard, she easily jabbed his throat with a syringe, and an explosive puff of CO₂ pneumatically injected a powerful sedative into his bloodstream. She held him for the several breaths it took to knock him out.
Sergeant Chin used that time to hop out of the front passenger seat and rush to the guard shack. He searched the panel inside, then hit a button with his fist. The pylons blocking the way lowered into the road. He hurried back, then took the limp form of the sentry and hid it inside the shack.
“He’ll be out for at least an hour,” Kimberly said as she eased the jeep through the barrier. “But we’ll need to move fast. It won’t be long before someone finds this gate unguarded.”
Outside their vehicle, Chin continued on foot, flanking their route toward the parking lot, watching for any other soldiers. Beyond the parking lot, the tunnel ended at a towering set of roll-up doors, tall enough to accommodate a double-decker bus. A dump truck stood backed up to that door, suggesting it was a loading dock for this facility. Chin popped up to check the truck’s cab, then dropped and signaled the all clear.
Kimberly parked their jeep, and they all off-loaded. She pointed to a smaller door to the left of the larger one. A blue key reader glowed next to the knob.
She pulled out Gao’s keycard again. “Let’s hope this works here, too.”
“And pray there’s no additional biometric sensors,” Monk whispered. “Palm readers, retinal scans.”
Kimberly shrugged. “If necessary, we can always drag that sentry over here. Use his hand or eye.”
True . . .
Monk appreciated the woman’s ability to think on the fly. Kat chose well in picking her. Kimberly crossed to the key reader and waved Gao Sun’s stolen card over the glowing surface.
The lock disengaged with a sharp click.
“Simple enough,” he muttered.
She tugged the door open—only to find herself facing a startled man in a blue workman’s uniform. His cap bore the same insignia as on the dump truck’s door. The worker fell back in surprise, mumbling apologetically. His gaze swept across the assembled group of uniformed figures and moved out of their way.
Kimberly gave a small bow of her head in thanks and stepped through. Monk hung back, adjusting his sunglasses higher on his nose, praying his use of shades in this underground world didn’t set off any alarm bells in the man—but it wasn’t that man Monk should have worried about.
Chin followed Kimberly. As the sergeant crossed the threshold, Monk noted the change in the key reader next to the door. Its glow flared from blue to an angry crimson.
His heart sunk.
Oh, crap.
A loud klaxon erupted from sirens above the doorway and spread off into the distance.
Kimberly swung around, her face registering shock, but also understanding. The doorway must have sensors built into it, requiring anyone passing through to have a keycard on their person.
The truck driver tried to flee, but Chin pistol-whipped the man from behind, dropping him with a single blow.
Kimberly waved to Monk, staring upward. “Get inside! Now!”
A heavy security gate had begun dropping across the doorway. The Shaw brothers dashed across the threshold. Monk followed, rolling on a shoulder to get under the lowering barrier. The last of them, Kong, lunged with surprising speed, diving on his belly and sliding under the edge. Then his belt snagged on the door’s metal sill, stopping him midway.
Panic etched the man’s face.
No, you don’t.
Monk snatched the gate’s bottom edge with his prosthetic hand and braced himself against the grind of gears, knowing he could hold out for no more than a breath. Chin grabbed Kong’s arms and yanked the man through the narrowing gap, falling backward and using his body weight to haul his smaller teammate to safety. The metal barrier dropped with a resounding clang at Kong’s heels, sealing them in.
As the alarm bells continued to ring, Monk tossed aside his sunglasses and faced Kimberly with a heavy sigh.
So much for simple.
11:42 A.M.
<
br /> Maria stared at the tableau before her.
With the first wail of the sirens, the surgical team had frozen in place around the operating table. Dr. Han stood poised with a blade in hand. He had just made his first incision across Baako’s shaved scalp.
Maria could not take her eyes off the trickle of blood that trailed from the three-inch-long cut. She felt numb all over, barely registering the alarm. Still, her mind whirled, wondering what had happened.
Faces turned to the tall doors at the other end of the vivisection lab. Concerned murmurs rose from among the team, plainly unsure if they should proceed with the surgery or not.
Before anything could be settled, Maria made the decision for them. Reacting more than thinking, she rushed the table, determined to protect Baako, even if it only meant delaying the inevitable. She kneed Dr. Han behind the legs, dropping him to the floor, while snatching the scalpel from his fingers. She grabbed the back collar of his scrubs and pulled him close.
She poised the tip of the blade at his carotid.
“Wake Baako up!” she yelled at the remaining staff.
Dr. Han struggled as his initial stun wore off. She stabbed the point of the blade through his skin, drawing blood. He stiffened again.
“Now!” she hollered.
Finally one of the team moved. It was the nurse who had shown her kindness earlier. The young woman shifted around and clamped shut the sedative drip.
“Pull his catheter, too,” she directed the nurse. She then glared at the others. “Free him!”
No one moved, so she twisted her fist in Dr. Han’s scrubs and pushed the blade tip deeper. He gasped in pain, then shouted at his staff, clearly ordering them to obey. Like Maria, he probably realized there was nowhere she could go with the patient. So why not cooperate?
As she continued to threaten with the blade, the surgical drapes were yanked off Baako’s form, and the leather straps unbuckled from his limbs.