Still, she grabbed and pocketed another pair of capped darts from a tray on the cabinet’s bottom shelf, then secured the rifle and pointed it at the surgical staff. “Stay back,” she warned.
A small groan drew her attention to the operating table. Baako stirred and lifted his bandaged head from the crown of stainless steel that had once trapped his skull. His eyes fluttered as the short-acting sedative cleared his system. Dazed, he rolled and fell off the table, but he had enough wits to catch himself. He landed on all fours and twisted in her direction.
The nurses and surgeons cleared out of his way.
“Baako,” she called to him. “Come to Mama.”
He hooted and scrambled toward her, staying low, still woozy.
Not daring to wait any longer, she swung to the gated casement built into one section of the observation windows. She struggled with the latch, trying to free it while staring below.
By now the door to Kowalski’s cage stood fully open. The big man remained within the shelter, his back to the steel door. The silverback had also stayed put. It still squatted at the threshold, like a cat crouched at a mouse hole, waiting for its prey to run out.
But Maria knew this standoff could not last.
As she continued to fight the latch, Baako reached her side and leaned hard against her hip. Perhaps noting her attention, he lifted his face enough to peer below, too.
“C’mon,” she said, swearing at the damned latch.
The young nurse joined her. She shifted Maria’s panicked hands aside and freed the casement with an experienced series of turns and tugs on the latch. The two-foot-wide window slid open.
“Thank you,” Maria mumbled.
She lifted the rifle through the opening, but she had taken too long.
Down below, Kowalski burst out of his cage.
12:07 P.M.
Bring it, you fucking monkeys . . .
Kowalski dove low through the open door. He had waited as long as possible, knowing the patience of the beast outside would not last forever. When a low rumble of irritation had flowed out of that massive chest, Kowalski took this as a signal. As the silverback lifted an arm and reached toward the cage, Kowalski was already in motion.
He ducked that meaty paw and rolled under the raised arm. Once past the mountainous bulk, he shoved to his feet and leaped away.
Other beasts crowded their leader, but Kowalski’s sudden flight had them momentarily confounded. Momentarily being the operative word. Still, some were startled enough—likely still on edge from the blaring sirens—to stumble out of his way. Or maybe they feared the silverback enough not to claim the prize that the massive beast had set his sights upon for these past three hours.
No matter the reason, Kowalski took full advantage of it to break through the cordon of muscle, bone, and teeth and get into the clear.
Behind him, an ear-shattering bellow erupted.
He didn’t have to glance back to know its source. Instead, he sprinted for the section of the habitat that offered the best refuge, where boulders littered the floor amid concrete trees.
A new noise rose in counterpoint to the roar: a heavy thumping.
Kowalski reached the rock-strewn section of the habitat and skidded around, coming to a stop. The silverback stood before the open cage. Thwarted, it had reared up on its hind legs, pounding its wide, leathery chest with both fists in a dramatic display of gorilla rage. Ropes of spittle flew from its lips as it bared razor-sharp teeth evolved to rip flesh from bone.
Panting, Kowalski crouched. He struggled for his next move, expecting that half-ton bulk to come charging in his direction, as unstoppable as a freight train under a full head of steam. He searched for any place to hide, even for a breath or two.
I have to keep clear of that—
Then something barreled into him from behind, shattering his ribs with a cracking flare of agony. The impact tossed him headlong across the floor. He twisted in midair and crashed down onto his uninjured side. Beyond his toes, he spotted a familiar black-furred gorilla, the same one who had confronted Kowalski at the cage door earlier, before being shoved aside by the silverback.
Apparently the bastard still held a grudge.
12:08 P.M.
The howl of fury echoed up to Maria’s perch at the open casement window. It rose from the dark-furred gorilla hybrid who had bowled into Kowalski, knocking him out of his hiding spot. The beast vaulted over a boulder and dove at Kowalski, going for the kill.
Maria jerked her rifle’s aim from the silverback to the more immediate threat. She fired at the younger male gorilla, but feared she was already too late.
Kowalski rolled to the side at the last moment, just missing getting smashed under the plummeting bulk of the gorilla. Still, as the beast landed, it lashed out with a hand and grabbed Kowalski’s thigh. His body was whipped forward like a rag doll.
Maria centered her rifle and peered through the telescopic sight, unsure if the first dart had struck the beast. She squeezed the trigger again. The rifle blast stung her ears, but she resisted blinking, concentrating. This time she spotted red feathers sticking out of the neck of the gorilla.
The male let go of Kowalski and pawed at its throat, knocking the barb away.
Its face swung up toward her, guessing the source of the assault. It rose to its feet and roared at her—then stumbled back. Tripping a step, it dropped heavily on its haunches.
For the tranquilizing effect to be that fast, her first shot must have also hit it. She hurriedly cracked the rifle open and reached inside her pocket for another load of darts. In her fumbling haste, one of them slipped between her fingers and dropped to her toes. Swearing, she slapped the other one into the weapon’s chamber.
On the floor of the habitat, the young male collapsed to its side, its huge limbs going slack. But that beast wasn’t the only threat.
Before she could finish fully reloading, the silverback bellowed its rage, rising to its full height. Even now Maria balked at its sheer size. While she understood the genetics that had birthed such a monster, her mind still struggled to accept it. She pictured the giant bones she had been shown yesterday, of Meganthropus, one of man’s earliest ancestors, and recognized it wasn’t only that hominin’s massive size that had been engineered into these hybrids—but also its savage and xenophobic nature.
The silverback lowered to a fist and charged toward Kowalski. The man was still down on all fours, rattled and bruised. There was no way for him to get out of the way in time.
She fought her rifle through the window and fired the one loaded dart at the thundering beast, but the gorilla was moving too fast. She caught sight of a red bolt of feathers ricocheting off the limb of one of those faux trees.
Damn it . . .
She lunged for the other dart abandoned on the floor, but she knew she could never reload in time.
Someone else realized the same.
Before she could stop him, Baako leaped from her side and flung himself headfirst through the window. At the last moment, he hooked a hand on the sill, swung around, then dropped in a series of halting falls toward the floor, catching brief fingerholds on the coarse-hewn rock wall.
Maria called down to him. “Baako! Come back!”
For the first time in his young life, Baako ignored her.
12:09 P.M.
Monk huddled with Kimberly in the empty office. Sergeant Chin guarded the door while the Shaw brothers and Kong kept watch out in the halls.
“How much longer?” Monk asked.
Kimberly tapped furiously at a keyboard. She had already wired and plugged her satellite phone into the computer terminal via a side port. “Okay, I’ve accessed the security cameras. While I can’t shut them down, I can add to their feed.”
“Do it.”
She brought up her phone’s video folder and broadcast a stored file into the security camera’s feed. “This should do it.”
Monk nodded, clutching the radio in his hand. He had secured it from a guard
whom they had ambushed shortly after entering the facility.
“I’m also going to scroll information at the bottom of the image I’m sending out,” Kimberly said. “It’ll list your radio’s secure channel.”
“You can do that?”
As answer, she simply frowned back at him.
Monk held up his other palm. By now he should’ve known better than to question his partner’s abilities. “Okay, then let’s hope this broadcast reaches the right audience.”
12:10 P.M.
It appears I must do everything myself.
Jiaying Lau leaned on a table, her nose not far from the monitor’s screen. She did her best to ignore the chaos inside the facility’s security hub. She had already fielded calls from the Ministry of State Security and the deputy director of the Academy of Military Science. Word of the security breach had plainly extended beyond the borders of the facility.
She could guess the source of that leak.
Behind her, Chang Sun shouted orders into a radio, lighting a fire under the teams who were searching for the intruders. When he found them—which he would with time—he would certainly use their capture to make himself look good, while undermining her role. She could all but smell the ambition wafting from the sweat on his brow.
Still, she kept her focus on another potential embarrassment, another black mark threatening her record. On the monitor, she had watched everything tipping toward ruin within the vivisection lab. Dr. Crandall had secured a tranquilizer rifle and was attempting to aid her companion in the Ark. The matter should have already played out to its bloody end, a necessary lesson for Maria.
Then, even worse, Baako had leaped through the window and dropped into the heart of the Ark. Jiaying had spent considerable resources to obtain that unique specimen, including losing a valuable covert asset in the process. To end up with her prize torn to pieces by her own hybrids could prove more than disastrous to her career—she could end up with a bullet through her skull for this failure.
She pounded a fist on the table, intending to deal with this situation personally. But before she could turn away, a smaller window popped up in the corner of the monitor. She leaned closer. The new grainy video showed a soldier strapped to a chair. A pistol was pressed to his temple by a captor who stood out of view.
“Enlarge that image,” she ordered the tech.
Murmurs rose behind her, coming from the other stations. A glance around revealed the same video playing in the corner of all of the camera monitors. Chang joined her, his eyes pinched with confusion.
“What is this?” he asked.
“You tell me.” She pointed to the screen. “This is your system.”
“Someone must have hacked into it.”
He shifted closer as the technician zoomed into the new feed. The image grew enough to reveal the face of the threatened soldier. Jiaying recognized the familiar features, even with a mouth gag in place.
“Is that your brother?”
Chang balled a fist at his side. “Gao . . .”
Jiaying pointed to the scrolling number at the bottom of the screen. It was a demand to call a secure radio channel. She could guess who would answer that call.
“Can you trace where this is coming from?” Jiaying asked.
Chang exhaled sharply. “Yes. It will take a minute or so.”
But would the Americans still be there by then?
Chang gripped the technician’s shoulder, both urging him and threatening him to obtain that information swiftly. The man typed vigorously, chasing through screens.
Jiaying glared at the monitor. “As I suspected all along, it appears your brother was the source of the leak. Whether inadvertently or not, he must have led the enemy to our doorstep.”
Chang seethed, clearly recognizing the same.
She turned and jabbed a finger into the lieutenant colonel’s chest. “So clean up your brother’s mistake. Lure those intruders out into the open by any means necessary and eliminate them.” She glanced toward the feed from the Ark. “I’m heading off to protect our assets before all of this comes to ruin.”
She stormed out of the security hub, intending to regain control, but her mind already ran through various contingencies if matters grew out of hand.
During the construction of this facility she’d had countermeasures covertly built into the infrastructure. She would not be brought down. She would not suffer the dishonor of this facility being wrested from her hands.
If I fall, we all do.
12:12 P.M.
The radio buzzed in Monk’s hand.
Looks like it’s showtime.
He climbed into the electric vehicle they had commandeered: a military green truck with an open bed in the back. Sergeant Chin took the wheel, while Kong and the Shaw brothers hauled the unconscious Chinese driver into a neighboring lab.
Monk lifted the buzzing radio as he joined Kimberly in the front seat. “Call’s coming on the secure channel. Seems your message was received.”
He leaned closer to her as he pressed a speaker button so his partner could listen in and translate if necessary.
A voice answered sharply in Mandarin.
Kimberly whispered. “He’s demanding to know who we are.”
Monk lifted the radio, trusting the caller spoke English. “You know who we are. And I’m guessing this is Zhōngxiào Sun.” He hoped he had pronounced the rank of lieutenant colonel correctly. “Brother to Gao Sun.”
There was no response. As radio silence stretched, Monk tapped Chin’s shoulder, setting the truck in motion once the Shaws and Kong were aboard, jumping into the back bed.
Monk cast a worried glance toward Kimberly.
If this didn’t work—
Then an answer came, the speaker’s words stiff with fury. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Sun. If you wish to live, you will turn yourselves in immediately . . . and free my brother.”
Monk heard the catch in the other’s voice at the end.
Good.
Kimberly had obtained additional information about the two brothers from her intelligence sources. Chang was the older of the two, married, with a young daughter. Gao was single. The pair had lost both their parents when they were teenagers and joined the army shortly thereafter, rising within the same unit. Kimberly estimated that such a tragedy and circumstance likely bonded the two very closely.
Now to turn that to our advantage.
Monk raised the radio. “If you ever want to see your brother alive again, you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
As he waited for a response, the truck swept down a long hallway, passing a series of sophisticated labs, chock-full of stainless steel equipment and cages. So far they had encountered only a handful of personnel. It seemed the alarms had triggered some sort of facility lockdown.
“What are your demands?” Chang asked tersely.
“Simple. You help us. We help you.”
Another long pause, then Chang’s voice returned, softer now. “How?”
“If you assist us, we will leave your brother safe, and with ironclad intelligence that will implicate Major General Lau as a co-conspirator in all of this. She will be the scapegoat. For every win you help us achieve over the next hour, she loses.”
Monk held his breath. The success of this plan hinged on the animosity between Chang and his superior, but would professional ambition outweigh loyalty in this regard?
“How do I know you can do what you claim?” Chang asked.
“Have we not penetrated your facility?” Monk asked. “That should be proof enough of our skill and expertise.”
“But why should I trust you?”
“You don’t have much choice. If we fail to give an all clear to our operatives in Beijing, your brother’s body will be discovered near the U.S. embassy, with clear evidence that he was trying to escape to that safe zone.” Monk ratcheted up the threat. “And on his remains will be found evidence implicating you and your wife as American spies.”
Monk
let that sink in for several breaths, then finished. “Listen. If we get what we want, you turn out to be a hero, while Major General Lau is taken down. We fail, and you suffer along with your family, while Lau basks in the glory of stopping us. The choice is yours, Zhōngxiào Sun.”
This time, there was not even a pause. “What do you want me to do?”
Monk grinned at Kimberly, then spoke. “Tell us where the others are and clear a path for us to them.”
Kimberly had her satellite phone out. She pulled up a schematic of the facility that she had hacked from a computer terminal earlier.
As Chang passed on the necessary information, she nodded. “Got it,” she whispered. “I know where they are.”
“What else?” Chang asked bitterly.
“Just one more thing.”
“What?”
Monk told him, then signed off.
Kimberly faced Monk, letting out a long sigh. “Can we trust him?”
He pointed ahead. “We’re about to find out.”
As they set off on the path given them, another worry set in.
What if we’re already too late?
12:13 P.M.
The ground trembled as the massive silverback pounded toward Kowalski. Still, on his hands and his knees, he couldn’t do much more than brace himself against what was to come. Still, he rolled toward the snoring bulk of the younger black-furred hybrid sprawled to his left, doing his best to seek any shelter.
Fat lot of good it’ll do me.
Then a screeching howl echoed throughout the habitat, seeming to come from every direction at once as it reverberated off the rock walls. The cry was full of anger and threat.
Now what?
He lifted his head to see the silverback skidding to a stop a yard away. It leaned on one arm while craning around for the source of the sound.
Kowalski did the same while taking the chance to retreat farther back, crawling toward the boulder pile in the center of the habitat.
Then he spotted a dark shadow bound away from the wall below the observation windows. The shape moved swiftly, leaping and racing toward Kowalski. It took him half a breath to recognize Baako.