She nodded toward the double doors.
Though Chang’s face remained angry, his eyes shone with a measure of fear as his gaze flicked in that direction.
Good.
She turned to Maria and the others.
Now to teach these newcomers the consequences of failure.
7:27 P.M.
Here comes trouble.
Kowalski watched the Chinese general stalk back over to their group. The woman looked much too pleased with herself for his liking.
“Come,” she said as she rejoined them. “Let me show you what we’ve accomplished—and how you might help.”
She waved for them to follow her while brusquely ordering their two armed escorts to fall in behind them.
“Guess this isn’t an optional tour,” Kowalski said to Maria as they set off after the general.
She didn’t respond, but he read the nervousness in her pale face. She fingered the tattoo of the double helix under her ear, marking her profession and likely the source of her worry. The Chinese wanted her genetic expertise for something—but what?
Jiaying crossed to the tall set of steel doors, which glided open before her. A puff of air washed out, bringing with it the musk of animals, along with the scent of antiseptic and bleach.
Beyond the threshold, a white room full of stainless steel equipment stretched half the length of a football field. One side held a towering wall of cages; along the other wall stretched a row of ten steel tables. The place reminded him of an oversize morgue. Except the closest pair of tables had been equipped with elevated stirrups, like something one might see in a gynecology office.
One of these tables appeared to have been recently used. A white-smocked worker was using a small hose to wash blood and tissue down the inclined table, jetting the gore into a stainless steel bucket at one end. Even more disturbing, stacks of glass jars were lined on a counter behind the table. Organs floated inside, including what appeared to be an oversize heart.
Kowalski swallowed back his disgust and looked away.
As they entered, technicians scurried about performing other chores, most of which seemed to involve getting clear of Major General Lau’s way.
Maria studied the stainless steel cages to the other side. Several held what Kowalski would expect to see in such a research lab: white rats twitching pink noses at them; a pen of rabbits; and a lone chimpanzee who huddled near the back of a larger cage. The latter’s arms had been shaved to his pits, along with the crown of his head.
Before Kowalski could even wonder about the reason for such a haircut, the answer appeared in the next cage. A young chimp stared at them, its large brown eyes tracking them as they passed. Eyes were all the poor creature could move. A perforated steel shelf had been clamped around its neck, clearly meant to immobilize it and to keep it from reaching higher than its shoulders. The need for such a restraint was obvious. The top of the chimp’s skull was missing, exposing the surface of its brain. A pincushion of colored electrodes protruded from that moist pink surface, wired to equipment hanging outside the cage. A small whimper continually flowed from its lips, which were stretched tautly over its teeth.
“Motherfu—” he started, then clamped his mouth shut as General Lau glanced back to them. Now was not the time to offend their host—at least not yet.
“It’s a vivisection lab,” Maria whispered, her eyes glassy with shock and maybe a few tears.
In the next cage, a small ape—maybe an infant gorilla—clung to a wooden pillar with a ratty rug tacked to it, as if the object were its mother.
The Frenchman slowed enough to look closer at the tiny figure, its frightened face tucked hard to its only solace in this place of horrors. Arnaud’s brow furrowed as he cast Maria a worried look, but before he could speak General Lau hurried them deeper into the lab.
“This way,” she insisted.
Her goal appeared to be a large window at the far end of the lab. It encompassed the entire back wall. A larger chamber, lit from above, opened beyond the thick glass.
They were marched forward.
“Thanks to the techniques you and your sister perfected, Dr. Crandall,” General Lau said, “see what we’ve been able to accomplish already.”
As they reached the window, Kowalski stepped closer, flanked by Maria and Dr. Arnaud. He stared down into the cavernous space and couldn’t hold back an outburst this time.
“You motherfuckers . . .”
7:48 P.M.
Monk sat with Kimberly Moy on a bench in the parklands that bordered the Nanchang River. The dark waterway, lit by occasional streetlamps, cut directly through the center of the Beijing Zoo. Nearby, a ferry stop, closed at this hour, offered tours through the park and out to the Summer Palace. Monk had a nice view along the river’s course, which was periodically forded by arched stone bridges.
“What do you think?” Monk asked softly.
Kimberly rubbed her calf. It had been a hard three hours of walking: first through the park, then afterward on a slow circuit around the outside. They had finally reached the northernmost edge of the park, having made almost a complete circle around the zoo grounds.
Without looking up, she said, “Definitely one of the Chinese army’s newer helicopters. A Z-18A utility chopper, if I’m not mistaken, for transporting troops and cargo.”
Definitely large enough to haul a crated gorilla.
Monk had noted the helicopter parked on a pad in this nondescript corner of the park, not far from the zoo’s large aquarium building. From outside the fence, he had only caught glimpses of the aircraft’s bulk. Trying not to arouse suspicion, they had continued to this riverside park and settled on the bench, where they still had a patchy view of the military chopper.
“Lots of activity going on over there,” Monk commented.
Over the past ten minutes, they had watched uniformed men come and go, mostly loading crates into the back of the helicopter. They seemed to be readying to take off. Fearing the Chinese might be moving the kidnapped party again, Monk kept close watch for any sign of an armed escort leading a group toward the aircraft.
“Wish I could get closer,” Monk mumbled. “To make sure they’re not already aboard.”
“And do what?” Kimberly asked. “That area is crawling with personnel. Until we get verification that the kidnapped party is still here, you’d only risk exposing yourself for no good reason.”
She was right, but he hated sitting idly, waiting for some sign.
A loud trundling sound drew his attention to the neighboring road. A large armored personnel carrier, emblazoned with a prominent red star, sped past them and skidded to a stop before the northern gate into the park. Soldiers offloaded out the back, while another popped up through a roof hatch to man a heavy artillery gun. The troops spread out before the gate. Shortly thereafter, two pairs of soldiers began to march off in either direction, clearly beginning to canvass the zoo’s perimeters.
Monk imagined the other gates of the park were being similarly bolstered and guarded.
He nudged Kimberly. “How’s that for a sign that our friends are still holed up somewhere on those grounds?”
She nodded. “But it may also be a sign that Chinese intelligence knows that we’re here. Or at least suspects something.”
She took his hand. He knew what she was silently telling him.
Time to go.
Monk stood up with her and began retreating through the riverside parkway as a pair of the soldiers strode toward their position. He kept close to Kimberly, playing the casual tourist. Hand in hand, they ambled along the river, heading away from the zoo grounds. Monk kept the collar of his jacket up and his face turned away from the soldiers. At any moment, he expected to hear a shout, an order to stop, but instead a roaring grew behind him, accompanied by the familiar bell-beat of heavy rotors.
“Don’t look,” Kimberly said, squeezing his hand.
Monk felt no need to glance over his shoulder. He could readily picture the helicopter ris
ing from its concrete pad and climbing into the night sky. He didn’t know if Kowalski and Maria were aboard that aircraft, but he still felt a sinking sense of defeat in his gut.
With no other path open to them, Monk and Kimberly continued away from the zoo, driven off by the soldiers. Even if Kowalski and Maria were still on the premises, with the park being locked down now by the full force of the Chinese military, the prospect of rescuing them grew slimmer.
“What now?” Kimberly asked.
“We wait,” he said, not liking his answer. “We have to hope Kat and Director Crowe can get some new blip from that GPS tracker. Otherwise, we’re screwed.”
Earlier, he had fielded a call from Painter, who had informed him that the extraction team for this operation had landed in Beijing, arriving on different flights from various routes. The five commandos were slowly gathering at a rendezvous point, in anticipation of the go-ahead from Monk about a rescue mission.
He scowled.
Looks like we’ll all be waiting a bit longer.
Once far enough away, Monk looked back toward the zoo.
What the hell is going on over there?
7:50 P.M.
Maria struggled to understand what she was seeing.
It can’t be . . .
She stood with Kowalski and Arnaud before a curved set of windows that overlooked a habitat the size of a basketball arena. The space appeared to be dug out of the native rock, with the walls pocked by dark caves. But her focus remained fixed to the bottom of the pit.
Three stories below her, massive hairy beasts shambled or squatted amid faux leafless trees made of concrete, several of which looked to have been broken into pieces by the habitat’s occupants. Each figure appeared to tower eight to nine feet in height, likely massing out at half a ton each, easily twice the size of the typical mountain gorilla. Their legs looked as thick around as tree trunks, their arms only a little thinner. A few lumbered about by leaning on their knuckles, but the largest stood upright, exposing its full height and the silver hue to its coat. It stared up at them and bared its teeth in a silent roar, exposing yellowed fangs as long as an outstretched hand.
The silverback stood guard over a recent kill, clearly feeling threatened by the onlookers. The torn body at its feet still had bits of a shredded uniform, not unlike the coveralls of the workers she’d seen here.
Before she could look away, the upraised beast reached back, grabbed something, and flung it toward them. She fell back a step as it struck the window, both astounded at the display of strength and horrified at the sight of the severed arm slapping against the window and sliding down in a bloody smear across the glass.
The violent act broke through her shock.
“What . . . what is this?” she asked.
Major General Lau answered, “We call it the Ark, a crucible to observe our creations. It’s not unlike your classroom back at the primate center.”
Maria refused to accept such a comparison. She gave a small shake of her head, trying to clear her dismay. “They’re gorillas . . .”
“Hybrids,” Jiaying corrected needlessly.
Maria had already recognized that these were not ordinary apes. She remembered studying that massive skull of the prehistoric gorilla, Gigantopithecus blacki. These creatures were comparable in size and shape, but she knew what lurked below was not that monstrous species brought back to life.
Arnaud spoke up, allowing Maria a moment to get her bearings. “I can only imagine that to create these specimens, you must have spliced in DNA from that Meganthropus specimen you showed us earlier.”
Jiaying bowed her head in agreement. “To accomplish that, we used various techniques, refining them over the years through trial and error. We eventually employed protocols developed by the Crandalls, which accelerated our program. But whereas Maria and her sister extracted Neanderthal DNA to create their hybrid, we sequenced the genes from the bones of Meganthropus.” She waved to the window. “Still, like the Crandalls, we chose to use gorillas for our initial model. The results are as remarkable as we had hoped. Even the musculature of these specimens has proven to be extraordinarily powerful: easily twice that of a typical gorilla, and ten times that of an ordinary man.”
Maria’s breathing grew heavier with dismay and horror. The general’s cold words echoed in her head: We even employed protocols developed by the Crandalls.
She stared down as the massive silverback bent over its kill and lifted what appeared to be a chunk of liver to its muzzle, gnashing into it.
What have Lena and I done?
“Of course before we move into human studies,” Jiaying continued, “we must iron out several key issues.”
Maria glanced to her. “What issues?”
“The beasts here have proven to be more savage than a typical gorilla, often killing each other unless we provide them with an ample food supply.”
Maria recalled the story of the Meganthropus tribes, how they had preyed upon neighboring clans, along with their own people. It seemed the geneticists here hadn’t just passed on that tribe’s genetic brawn to these hybrids, but also its cannibalistic ferocity.
Maybe the two even run hand in hand.
Jiaying fixed those cold eyes upon Maria. “That is why we need your help. To find a way to balance what we’ve accomplished here with the heightened intelligence you’ve instilled into your research subject.”
Maria pictured the gentle soul of Baako. She could not ever imagine finding a way to balance his sweetness with what crouched inside this bloody Ark.
She said as much aloud. “To accomplish what you’re asking, it would take filtering through hundreds of different variables, not to mention an untold number of epigenetic factors that could further complicate matters. It could take decades of trial and error to achieve such a goal, if it could even be done at all.”
“So we believed, too,” Jiaying admitted. “It was why we continued to fund you and your sister’s research through back channels.”
Facilitated by Amy Wu, Maria thought bitterly.
Jiaying straightened her back. “Then we got word of Dr. Arnaud’s discovery in the mountains of Croatia.”
Arnaud looked equally offended that his research could be connected in any way to the horror show here. “What does my discovery have to do with all of this?”
“Because of the genetic possibility locked in those bones, the bones of a first-generation hybrid between early man and Neanderthals. If we could successfully harvest DNA from those remains, we would have a chance to search and isolate the specific genetic factors that heightened such a hybrid’s intelligence.”
Maria crossed her arms, realizing the woman was likely right. With access to such unique DNA, defining and extracting the specific code that lay at the core of mankind’s evolutionary Great Leap Forward could be possible.
Or at least vastly accelerated.
Maria began to understand the scope of all of this. Whoever controlled this rare genetic repository would have a great advantage in the bioengineering arms race that was sweeping the globe. Those bones could prove to be the Holy Grail of the next stage of human evolution. And it wasn’t just the Chinese. Even DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office had set a goal to unlock the genetic code of human intelligence.
No wonder the Chinese had acted so quickly and so harshly. The endgame here was not about a single country’s dominance; it was about controlling the very reins of mankind’s future.
“And then there’s Baako,” Jiaying added, drawing back Maria’s full attention.
Kowalski also reacted, his face hardening. “What about him?”
Jiaying returned her attention to the window. “Besides the aggression issue, we ran into another difficulty, a reproductive problem. While the female hybrids are fertile, all the males are sterile.”
Maria knew this was not unusual. Hybrids between closely related species were often infertile, like the mating of a donkey and a horse, which produces a mule. Male mules are uniformly s
terile, while the females are sometimes still fertile.
Arnaud brought up a detail even more relevant to the situation. “Most paleontologists believe the same might be true for Neanderthal hybrids. The males were probably sterile, whereas the females could still perhaps produce viable offspring.”
“If this is correct,” Maria added, “it would mean the Neanderthal genes we humans carry today had to come from those hybrid females, not the males.”
“And that’s why Baako is so important,” Jiaying said. “I understand that your research subject has been tested and found to be capable of reproducing.”
Maria held up her hand. “Not necessarily. So far, genetically it appears that is the case, but we can’t know with absolute certainty, since Baako is only three years old. He’s still sexually immature. It will take another three or four years before we can definitively judge his fertility.”
“Perhaps,” Jiaying countered, “but we’re not looking for Baako to mate physically. We only need to sequence that reproductive viability locked in his Y chromosome. Of course, even more important are those unique Neanderthal genes that have been shown to enhance his intelligence.”
Maria felt a sinking feeling in her gut.
Poor Baako . . .
“Then again,” Jiaying continued, “we could have gained all of that from a few cheek swabs and blood samples. And that’s exactly what we’ll do, along with bone marrow biopsies. But his true value lies in our being able to access the unique architecture of his brain. It could prove invaluable to have a living subject to study and analyze in regard to the expression of those unique genes.”
“You intend to study his brain?” She pictured the series of MRIs that had been performed on Baako since he was an infant. “To see how it develops further?”
“Correct. But you and your sister have been too conservative in your approach. We believe a more invasive study will bring us more comprehensive results.” Jiaying glanced back to the chimpanzee whose exposed brain was wired with electrodes. “We’ve found we can keep such specimens alive for up to two years. And in a larger subject, we believe we can extend that time frame by at least twofold.”