The really difficult part was designing the animal for flight. It had the hollow bones of a large bird and the attending vascular support to keep those bones healthy. They’d also had to give it an assortment of genes to provide the muscle and cartilage to allow it to flap its wings. Unfortunately, they had not identified the specific gene-or gene combinations-that would give it an instinctive knowledge of aerodynamics. So they’d spent hours with it in an inflated air room of the kind used at carnivals and kids’ parties, tossing the creature up and hoping that it would discover that those great leathery things on its back were functional wings. The process was frustrating and time-consuming, and the animal had only recently begun flapping, and the short flight it had just taken was about the extent of its range. More like a chicken thrown from a henhouse roof than a soaring symbol of China’s ancient history. The heavy foliage in the enclosure helped to mask the awkwardness of its flight. The entire process had been a bitch. A forty-one-million-dollar bitch. And the damn thing was a mule, unable to reproduce.

But at least it was pretty, and it more or less flew. Paris hoped it would live long enough for them to sort out all of the genetic defects so they could actually sell one. This one was display only. A promise to get the Chinese to write a very, very large check.

Paris thought he could hear the scratching of the pen even now.

The three Chinese buyers stood in front of the glass for almost half an hour. They barely said a word. Paris was patient enough to wait them out. When the spell finally lifted-though they still looked quite dazed-Paris ushered them to a small table that had been set with tea and rice cakes. The table had a view of the dragon, but it wasn’t a great view. That was Hecate’s suggestion.

“If they can’t see the damn thing,” she’d said, “they’ll get impatient. They’ll want to close the deal so they can go back and gape at it.”

Paris liked the tactic.

Before the tea was drunk, before it had even begun to cool, the buyers had placed an order for three full teams of Berserkers. The total purchase price was the development price of the dragon with a whole extra zero at the end. The Chinese had been too dazzled and distracted to do more than token haggling.

The deal closer was Paris’s promise to provide them with a dragon of their very own. Just as soon as they managed to make another one. Which, as far as he was concerned, was a couple of days before Hell froze over.

Chapter Seventy-Six

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:26 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 34 minutes E.S.T.

Four guards rushed the corner and they did it the right way, laying down a barrage to stall us and then putting just enough of themselves around the corner to aim their guns high and low. It was nice.

I threw a grenade at them.

We ran through the smoke and screams and took the corner ourselves. The side corridor was choked with people who were fleeing back from the blast, tripping over one another, trampling the fallen, getting in the way of armed resistance. The opposite side corridor led to a ten-foot dead end and a closed door.

“Pick your targets!” I called as I aimed and fired at a guard who had taken a shooter’s stance and was bringing his weapon to bear. My shot spun him as he pulled the trigger and his first-and only-shot punched a red hole through the leg of a hatchet-faced woman who was screaming into a wall-mounted red security phone. The woman shrieked in pain, but as she fell she pulled a.32 from a hip holster. Bunny put her down for the count.

I heard a yell and a barrage from the other end and then I was too busy for chatter as more security began forcing their way through the flood of panicking workers. These boys had shotguns and H &K G36s and they opened up at us even though some of their own people were in the way. A whole wave of civilians went down in a hail of bullets, and we had to duck for cover because there were ten of the sonsabitches.

“Frag out!” yelled Top and he and Bunny threw a pair of M67s. Most soldiers can lob the fourteen-ounce grenades up to forty feet, and then they’d better take cover, because the M67s have a killing radius of five meters, though I’ve seen them throw fragments over two hundred meters. We hunkered down around the corner and the blast cleared the hallway completely.

When I did a fast-look around the corner I saw drifting smoke, tangles of broken limbs, and no movement at all.

We got up and ran, leaped over the dead, avoided the dying, blocked out the screams, and plowed through the clouds of red-tinged smoke. A man leaned against a wall, trying to hold his face on with broken fingers. The blast had torn his clothing and blood splashed the rest, so I couldn’t tell if he was a technician or guard. He threw us a single despairing look as we passed, but there was nothing we could do for him.

The corridor opened into a big central lobby set with exotic plants and cages of wild birds. Technicians were running everywhere creating a wild pandemonium, tripping over couches and jamming the exits so that no one got through. A knot of a dozen guards burst through a set of double doors. A big blond guy with a lantern jaw and killer’s eyes was clearly in charge, and he knew what he was about. He used the noncombatants as human shields to close with us and we had to either shoot the technicians or take unanswered fire.

I don’t remember seeing “martyr” in my job description, but even so I didn’t want to kill anyone who didn’t need to die. It was a terrible situation that got very bad very quickly.

“Boss…?” called Bunny.

The guards were taking shooting positions behind the screaming staff members.

If we fell back and got into a range war with these jokers we could be here all day, and we had no idea how many more shooters they could call on. It was balls out or beat it, so I did the one thing the guards did not expect: I attacked them, up close and personal. I knew my team would follow my lead.

The blond guy was behind a pair of women who crouched and plugged their ears and screamed, but he was too far away, so I zeroed the closest gun and I rammed my gun into his gut and fired twice. The impact jerked him a foot off the ground and I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and spun my body hard and took him with me. He hit the guy behind him hard enough to put them both on the cold terrazzo floor, and I stamped down on the second guy’s throat.

To my left Top had closed to zero distance with a pair of shooters, and he used the same stunt as them-keeping the staff between their guns and his skin. When he was close he chucked a technician hard under the chin with the stock of his M4, and as he collided with the shooters Top shot over the falling man and hit one guard dead center. The other guard lost his gun in the collision, but he tossed the technician aside and lunged out and grabbed Top by the throat. I could see Top actually smile. Here’s a tip: never grab a good fighter with both hands, because he can hit back and you can’t block. Top dropped his chin to save his throat and put the steel-reinforced toe of his combat boot way too far into the bad guy’s nuts. Bones had to break on that kick. Top slapped away the slackening grip on his throat and chopped the stock of the rifle down on the back of the guard’s neck. Knocking him out was probably a mercy.

I saw movement to my right and I pivoted and ducked as one of the guards came around a thick potted fern and tried to put his laser sight on me. His face exploded and I saw Bunny give me a wink.

More people were flooding into the lobby. It was like trying to stage a firefight in the middle of a soccer riot. There had to be a hundred screaming people around us.

I dropped two more guys and my slide locked back. I dropped it and was reaching for another mag when the big blond guard and two others came at me in a fast three-point close. If I retreated they’d have closed around me like a fist, so I drove right at the closest of them, a red-haired moose with missing front teeth. I slapped his gun hand aside with the back of my gun hand and then checked the swing to chop him across the bridge of the nose with the empty pistol. That knocked him back into me, and as his back hit my chest I pivoted like an axle, whipping us both in a tight circle that allowed me to throw him at the man in the middle. It would take the redhead a second to disentangle himself and I used that second to lunge forward and bashed him in the crotch with my pistol. I didn’t care if that hurt him, but I wanted to stall him in place; then I slammed the butt of the pistol down onto the top of his foot, feeling the metatarsals snap. Before he could even scream I shot back to my feet and put every ounce of weight and muscle I had into a rising palm strike that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back so far and so fast that he was out before he hit the ground. Maybe hurt, maybe dead, maybe I didn’t give a shit.