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CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Disappeared

The field trials went well. There’s no point in dwelling on the details. The flying dragons had already met most of the DOD’s specs the first time around. A few tweaks here and there, and they met the new horizontal flying speed requirements. Soared past the high-altitude test. They even demolished the cargo requirements, which I’d had some doubts about.

As for the infantry model, Korrapati and Wong had worked wonders on the design. It was five kilograms lighter but longer overall, with a whiplike tail to balance out the heavier front end. They hadn’t seen the infantry dragons that O’Connell and the Frogman produced firsthand, but they’d inadvertently created something very similar. We kept the desert camouflage in place for the moment; the military wanted the chameleonlike skin patterns, but we hadn’t yet cracked the code. Luckily, that wasn’t in the required specs, but something they hoped we’d provide down the road.

We came away from the field trials feeling encouraged. Not only did our models seem to meet the stringent requirements, but the demonstration had proven that Tom Johnson and his team really could train dragons to perform basic actions. The dragon wranglers used a series of voice commands and gestures to tell the dragons what to do. The dragons complied, while I made careful notes and Wong took a video on his phone. We hadn’t asked Herpetology for the command instructions for the dragons—that might have made them suspicious—we’d simply laid out what we needed to make them do.

Now it was the morning after the field trials, and if they followed the standard practice, the dragon wranglers would be taking all of the prototypes to the Farm. I’d casually asked Evelyn if my team could have the day off, under the guise of rewarding them for the incredible effort Wong and Korrapati had put into the designs. She’d agreed, of course, imagining that both of our designers and I would be taking advantage of some well-earned R&R.

Instead, we were sweating together under a pop-up canopy shelter out in the Sonoran desert. Boulders ensconced us from either side; behind us it was a half-mile hike over raw desert terrain to our cars. In front was the shallow valley I’d stumbled on all those months ago that was home to Build-A-Dragon’s desert facility. Better known as the Farm, this was where the company sent dragons that were returned, defective, or no-longer-useful prototypes. And, somewhat infamously, it’s where we found the dogs from the Canizumab trial, the ones that proved that the medicine could effectively stop the canine pandemic.

“How long does this usually take?” Korrapati asked, with just a touch of impatience.

I didn’t blame her too much; it was a hot and windless afternoon. The three of us were crammed into a ground blind that allegedly had a capacity of six. Somehow, lying prone shoulder to shoulder between Korrapati and Wong, I doubted that figure very much. “Shouldn’t be too much longer.”

“You said that already. Two times,” Wong said.

“I know, I know. But I mean it this time.” I’d done the math on a dragon wrangler leaving more or less first thing in the morning and driving out here at normal speed. Of course, that assumed the wrangler left right away, that there were no unexpected delays in traffic . . .  Maybe I miscalculated.

I’d no sooner had that thought than a plume of dust rose over the far end of the valley where the road let in. A large plume. “Here we go.”

Three pickup trucks trundled into view along the unpaved road that led in through the cliffs. They’d have triggered the road alarms on their way, of course, but this was official Build-A-Dragon business so the security team probably wouldn’t need to respond. That was assuming there was a security team. They’d worked for Fulton, and it still wasn’t clear whether or not the big man’s role had been filled since his death. To me, at least. Evelyn probably replaced him, and just didn’t tell me. She knew the full story of what went down between me and the security chief. Beyond that, she was an ardent follower of avoiding topics that might upset Noah Parker when he was on a design deadline. So yeah, it was best to assume our security department was fully staffed again.

The trucks proceeded single file to the far corner of the complex—conveniently, the corner nearest to our vantage point—and jet-parked next to one another in the open space, their tailgates pointed at the building. We could already see the cages. Four to a truck, and the dragons inside looked lively. Having seen them in action, I could understand why the wranglers seemed to be exercising more than the usual level of care. They shoved wooden poles through the cages to lift them from the truck beds, and pressed each cage against the gate of the holding pen. Two men held it there while the third operated the controls to slide open the gate. On the bright side, the dragons didn’t thrash or knock their cages around. In fact, it looked like they followed a command to enter the holding pen as soon as the gates were open. As they closed, and the wranglers walked back to get another cage, Korrapati noted the location of the new resident on the grid. She and Wong hadn’t thought this step was necessary; like most good designers, they believed they’d know their own dragons on sight. But having been to this place before, I knew better.

“So many cages,” Wong said.

“Yes. I never imagined we had this many returns and defective models,” Korrapati said.

I closed my eyes, remembering the moment I’d first stood in the sand and stared at this building. Not only that, but the piles of sun-bleached skeletons piled all around. Dragons didn’t live forever—the song was wrong about that part—and I guess the dragon wranglers hadn’t known what to do with them when they died. They seemed to have figured something out, though, because the bones were no longer visible. It was probably Tom Johnson’s doing. The guy knew his way around animals. That was for damn sure.

“I know it’s a lot to take in, but stay focused,” I said. “We don’t want to have to do this twice.”

“God no,” Korrapati said. “But if we do, could you at least get a two-person tent?”

“Hey, come on, it said capacity six.”

Wong snorted.

“Just keep your eyes on the dragons.”

“That’s it. That’s twelve,” Korrapati said.

She was right—the dragon wranglers had finished their unloading work and now were climbing back into their trucks, eager to escape the heat. I envied them that. Seconds later, they’d fired up their engines and trundled out of sight down the dirt road that led out of the valley.

“Let’s move.” I wiggled back out of the ground blind and started breaking it down.


“How are we looking on transportation?” I called to Wong as we climbed down the boulder-strewn slope into the vale. He was ten yards behind and above me, with Korrapati trailing him. Both of them had proved better than average climbers, Wong especially. For a guy whose preferred mode of transportation was a personal scooter, he seemed oddly comfortable scrambling down the rocky slope.

He paused long enough to tap his bluetooth earbud. I heard one side of a muttered conversation. Then Wong called, “Five minutes.”

“They know where to meet us, right?”

“They know.”

We needed a truck to make this work. Wong, for reasons still not clear to me, said he could get us one, no problem. Sure enough, by the time we reached the base of the boulder pile and hiked over to the road, an unmarked white box truck waited. A youngish Asian dude leaned against the cab on the shady side. I didn’t recognize him on sight, but with his big dark sunglasses it was hard to say for sure. He handed Wong a key fob, and they had a brief conversation in Mandarin. I listened, of course, but only caught the occasional word. Yet another reminder that when Evelyn and Wong spoke the language with me, they were doing so slowly out of courtesy. Then the dude just turned and jogged off down the dirt road in the direction of the highway.

I edged closer to Wong. “Who is that?”

“Good friend. Very good.”

“He doesn’t work for—”

“No,” Wong said, almost as quickly as I’d begun to ask.

I sagged a bit in relief, because I really hadn’t wanted him bringing anyone close to this, much less someone who worked for Build-A-Dragon. “Where’s he going?”

“The highway, for friend to pick him up.”

“How many friends do you have, anyway?”

“Are we interrogating Wong, or are we doing this?” Korrapati’s tone carried a good dose of impatience.

Note to self, Korrapati does not do well in the heat.

First things first, disabling the road alarm. This was a wire sensor attached to a metal control box with a satellite transmitter on top. Old-school technology in many ways, but still effective. It had busted Summer and me the first time we came out here. And it made a certain kind of sense: the only real trouble Build-A-Dragon had to worry about for its farm tended to arrive in a vehicle. Still, any security system had weak points. I’d considered a few possibilities. Cutting the wire would probably just trigger an alert from the control box, and that would bring security out here even faster than a routine perimeter breach. I imagined that most triggers of the alarm were accidental, but an act of sabotage signaled some intent.

I dragged my eyes away from the still-tempting stubby antenna on top of the control box, and joined Wong at the back of the truck. We heaved a long two-by-four—real wood, not that cheap composite stuff—out of the back of the truck and laid it down on the road alongside the alarm cable. Then it was back to the truck for a second identical two-by-four to lay on the far side of the cable. The wood pieces were low enough to drive over, but gave the tires an inch of clearance over the cable. I hoped that would be enough; I hadn’t really accounted for how heavy a full-on box truck would be on the way out. Still, it was a convenient but low-tech method for circumventing the alarm.

It still surprised me that this cable—and the regular patrols who responded to it—represented the full extent of security Robert Greaves had thought to put in place. He’d learned this lesson, though, and wouldn’t make the same mistake with his shiny new dragon factory. Which is why this raid had to work.

Korrapati, who’d already climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, leaned out the open window. “Is it ready yet?”

Yeah, she absolutely didn’t care for the heat.

“Go ahead, try it!” I called up to her. “Nice and slow.” I crouched down at the end of the boards so I could watch the gap as the truck went over. If this didn’t work—if the alarm got triggered—we had to scrap the entire mission.

Korrapati eased the truck forward. It must have been an electric engine; the thing was absolutely noiseless beyond the crunch of its tires on the dry roadbed. To me, it looked like the boards worked and kept the tires off the road trigger. It was close, though, especially when they shifted as the rear wheels hit. I looked at Wong after it had passed. “What do you think?”

He’d moved from the far side of the road where I thought he’d be waiting, and stood by the transmission box instead. He also had out some kind of handheld electronic device a bit smaller than a phone. “No signal.”

I knew better than to ask him what the device was or where he got it. “So, we’re good?”

“We are good.”

We climbed into the cab of the truck from the passenger side. Korrapati already had it in gear by the time we were settled. I’d hopped in first, vainly hoping for air-conditioning. Not only did the electric truck let me down on that account, but it also meant I got to ride bitch between the two of them. Which got interesting when she yanked the massive gearshift into second. That was for damn sure.

I pressed myself far back into the threadbare seat as we trundled down the lane toward the complex. “Where did you learn to drive a stick shift, anyway?”

“When I was growing up, most cars in India were still manual transmission.”

She made a wide turn as we approached the complex and threw it in reverse—nearly sterilizing me in the process—and backed up to the side of the massive complex. At least, that’s what I assumed she was doing. I couldn’t see anything past her on one side, and Wong’s massive squarish head on the other side. Then she threw it in park and the three of us climbed out.

Wong threw up the truck’s hatch door and vaulted inside, again showing rather remarkable agility for a guy who liked to hail a rideshare rather than walk two blocks. A large blocky pile hidden by moving blankets occupied most of the cargo space. He tugged the blanket aside to reveal a dozen cages similar in size to the ones that had just brought the dragons here. Most of them weren’t even dragon cages, but used dog crates I’d been slowly buying at the flea market or through buy-sell-trade sites. I was glad to get them out of my condo. Did they meet spec to transport military-grade dragons? Hell no. But they were the best I could do on short notice without drawing attention. Wong shoved the first cage to the rear of the truck, then hopped out to help me lift it down.

“Where’s the first cage?” I panted.

Korrapati consulted her notes. “Fourth from the edge of the building. Infantry model.”

Wong and I carried the cage to the spot and set it down. The first cage held a Laptop model with vivid aquamarine colors; it looked like a cartoon. The second had a K-10, probably one returned when German shepherds came back. Both were mercifully asleep in the heat of the day. Not so with the third cage, which held a Rover-sized model. It ran to the front of its cage, panting and wagging its tail the way my childhood dog had done when Connor and I got home from school. It was so eager to be petted that it tried to squeeze its head through the bars. Rovers were friendly but not to this extreme. Unfortunately, I knew the reason why. This was the dragon I’d given a dopamine receptor feedback loop, an intentional defect that doomed it to life in quarantine. I’d done it because I’d been desperate to locate the Farm that held my canceled Condor models, the ones I’d secretly given my brother’s mutation. It seemed a small sacrifice at the time, but seeing it here all but crushed me with shame.

“Friendly Rover,” Wong grunted.

“Yeah,” I said. Don’t remind me.

The fourth cage held our infantry model as promised. It had curled up in the far corner but lifted its head as we approached. The moment we set down the cage against its cell, it came to its feet and stood facing the door.

“Hold the cage here, will you?” I jogged down the road toward the large control panel at the far corner of the building. Dragons dozed in almost every cage but I kept my eyes forward. I felt guilty enough as it was. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice the changes at the control panel until I was right on top of it. I turned to double-check the count. Fourth from the end. Then I looked at the control panel and it was completely dark except for a steady red light above a numeric keypad. “What the hell?”

I counted four switches in and tried the one for the cage at which Wong waited, with no result. I was completely locked out. With no way to open the cages, we’d never get any dragons out. This mission was blown. Hell, the whole plan was blown. Evelyn wouldn’t let me print more military-grade dragons under the guise of a field trial. I stood there, wondering how I was going to explain this all to Wong and Korrapati.

“Noah, what’s wrong?” Korrapati asked.

The panel emitted a soft chime, and the red light turned green. I swear I wasn’t touching it when this happened.

“I’m not sure. Maybe nothing.” I reached out tentatively for the switch I’d tried only a moment earlier, and was rewarded with a buzzer followed by distant mechanical whirring. Thank God.

Wong looked a bit panicked as the infantry dragon slinked into the cage he was holding all by himself. I jogged back to help him steady it as we slid the door into place and latched it tight.

“Was there problem?” Wong asked, as we carried the much-heavier cage to the truck.

“They added a security keypad to the controls.”

“How did you get around it?”

“I have no idea.”

Wong frowned at this, but said nothing more. I knew what he was thinking. This is too easy.

We threw the cage in and went for the next one, a flying model three cages down. The control panel didn’t offer any further challenges. One by one, we liberated military dragons from their cages and loaded them into the truck. It was hot, heavy work in the afternoon sun. Even with two of us, even with the box truck parked as close to the structure as we could get it. Finally, we got the last of them thrown into the truck.

“Go tell Korrapati we’re loaded up,” I told Wong. “I’ll make sure the cages are secure.”

He disappeared from view, and I found my satchel and dug out the long, cold cylinders that I’d brought for this moment. It had been a while since I used a field biopsy pen, but I had a little bit of experience. I made my way up to the front of the truck. The dragons watched me silently. The two front cages were an infantry model and a flier. I started with the ground dragon.

“Down,” I told it.

The dragon lay down on its belly facing me. Well trained, I couldn’t help but thinking. Well done, Tom.

“Stay.” I crouched low enough to reach through the cage with the biopsy pen. It was a single mechanism—a shot of anesthetic, extraction of a tissue sample, then an antibiotic spray followed by a wound sealer. All in less than a second. The soft click or the sensation of the needle made the dragon flinch slightly, but otherwise it held still. “Good boy,” I whispered. “At ease.”

The dragon shifted, curling up in one corner of the cage, while I turned to the flier. It let me do the biopsy thing, too, and it stared at me with those knowing eyes. I found myself talking to the dragons, little bits of praise here and there as I worked my way down the line. One biopsy per dragon. It did take a few minutes to work my way back through.

I finished the last of them and placed it carefully in my satchel. Then I looked up and saw Wong watching me.

“What was that?”

Crap. I hadn’t meant to read him in to this part of the plan, this most-unofficial use of our borrowed dragon resources. “A needle biopsy pen.”

“You took samples?”

“Yes. It’s for something else. I’ll explain later.”

He nodded, accepting this for the moment. I climbed down and we closed the back of the truck. I paused then, and held him by the shoulder. “Don’t tell Korrapati, all right?”

He didn’t answer, but led the way to the passenger side of the cab.

I was drenched in sweat and every part of my body ached. Wong, too, looked spent. His entire body language said This is why I don’t like strenuous activity. We could barely heave the door open and climb in.

“I have a bit of good news,” Korrapati said.

She’d figured out how to turn on the air-conditioning.

God bless her.


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