Apocalyptic Pirates 5, page 26
I nodded, and he gave a few terse commands to the soldiers and then went to speak to the drivers of the Jeeps.
“Ready?” I asked the women in a whisper.
“Welcome to the jungle.” Dia grinned, but her eyes were anxious.
I nodded and gave her a fist bump.
“Let’s go,” the Sergeant whispered.
I patted my pocket to double-check that my phone was still safely where I’d left it. This was crunch time, the moment that everything had been leading up to.
My phone pressed against my thigh reassuringly.
This was it.
I hoisted my gun in my arms, took a deep breath, and strode down the track.
The others followed, and I was glad of their presence beside me as we left the road behind us and walked back toward the clearing that we’d not long left behind.
I didn’t want to look for the ocelot’s body, and I kept my eyes resolutely staring straight ahead, but I knew that Letty was looking, and I heard her take in a sharp little breath as she must have spotted it.
I wanted to put my arms around her and hug her close, but this just wasn’t the right time for it. When this was all over, I was going to smother her and all the other women in as much affection as they could handle.
The Coast Guard patrol was well ahead of us by the time we reached the clearing, and for a moment I was concerned that we wouldn’t be able to track them back to their camp, but I needn’t have worried. They made no attempt at all to disguise their path through the forest, and the broken bushes and crushed plants that they’d left behind them were as good as a neon signpost blazing the way to their destination.
We followed the trail through the forest.
My ears must have been getting attuned to the rhythm of the jungle around us, because I very quickly noticed that there was no more birdsong in the trees, and when I briefly scanned our surroundings, there wasn’t a bird to be seen. No colorful toucans or parrots here– not even a vulture hoping to scrounge a meal.
I could very easily imagine how the Coast Guard personnel would treat any visitors to their camp, human or animal, and I swallowed hard as my feet led me closer and closer to the enemy.
In place of birdsong, I started to hear different noises: the clatter of metal against metal, shouted commands, an engine roaring.
And the screech of dragons.
I glanced around at the others. The Sergeant’s mouth was set into a grim line, but he gave me a quick nod to indicate that we should go ahead.
The women’s faces were pale, but Ally gave me a brave thumbs up, and the others echoed the Sergeant’s gesture and nodded to confirm that they were okay.
Ahead of us, I could see where another clearing had been made in the trees. But this one had been created by humans rather than dragons, and from the sound of it, it was packed with Coast Guard personnel.
The tree line fringing the camp was on a slight incline, and when we crept close to the trees and peered through the foliage, we had a good view of the camp spread out below us.
The ground sloped down a little from the trees here, and the Coast Guard sailors had pitched their tents as soon as the ground leveled out. There were dozens of tents made of plain khaki canvas, and they were spread out across the campsite, which must have stretched over at least five hundred feet. I saw several fire pits that had been carved out of the earth, and there were three medical tents, and a long row of wire fence panels that separated the tents from the rest of the camp.
And it was the sight beyond the fence that made my jaw drop.
There was a line of Coast Guard personnel all waiting their turn to approach a row of tables that were being manned by a trio of officers. The men were all carrying bags and satchels, and when it was their turn to reach the table, they opened their bags and took out armfuls of dragon eggs that they then laid on the table for inspection. The officers examined the eggs, turned them over and checked for any damage, returned them to the bags, then entered a row of figures into a device on the table that looked like a laptop, but I assumed must have a satellite interface since we were out here in the middle of the jungle. After the eggs had been examined and recorded, the officers waved the others along to the next table where they could leave their bags. Here, another group of men took the eggs out of the bags and packed them securely into crates, which then went into high-security safe boxes. Those boxes were then loaded into the back of one of the many trucks that were idling nearby.
“It’s a whole damn assembly line,” I breathed as I pulled out my phone to capture the unbelievable scene before me.
“Not just for eggs, though.” Shannon pointed to the left of the camp.
I’d been so focused on the egg operation that I’d missed the large rectangular shapes that were half-covered by tarpaulins, but as I watched, a few men approached them and pulled the tarps back to reveal huge iron cages.
And in each cage was a dragon.
“Fucking hell,” I whispered.
The men were clearly nervous about approaching the cages, which was understandable given how furious the dragons inside them looked. They were pacing up and down as much as they could within the confined space, and letting out angry hisses and the occasional guttural roar.
The men were dragging a large box with them, and I guessed that it must be time to feed the monsters that they had caged. The amount of meat needed to keep the dragons alive had to be a monumental amount, and the dragons were probably starving, but that seemed to be making them even less willing to cooperate.
As soon as the sailors approached the cages, the dragons flung themselves against the bars, and their low growling rose into outraged and defiant shrieks that echoed through the trees all around.
The men clearly didn’t care about anyone discovering what they were up to– I guessed that the Coast Guard was so confident in their own powers that they didn’t think they needed to worry about that– but the noise of dragons roaring was still a viscerally disturbing sound, and the sailors instantly recoiled away from the cages.
One of them said something to the others, and they threw up their hands in an attitude of despair.
It didn’t seem to be going well for them, and I was somewhat glad that the dragons were being their full, ornery, and unwieldy selves.
Sergeant Rodriguez touched my arm lightly.
“Are you comfortable with going down into the camp to get some better shots?” he asked in a whisper. “Some close-ups of the eggs and the caged dragons?”
“Yeah, okay,” I replied.
“I know it’s not what you wanted,” he said with a touch of remorse in his expression. “But the details are what is going to make this video irrefutable.”
“Yeah, I get you.” Going into the camp was exactly what I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to do, but the Sergeant was right. There was no way around it, and this was the whole purpose of the mission, after all.
“I’ll get some more wide shots of the camp,” I said to Rodriguez. “And then we can go down there.”
“Do you have to?” Letty whispered with her eyes wide and anxious.
“Yeah,” Dia chimed in. “We can see everything just fine from up here. Why do you have to go down there?”
“We still have to film the actual details of what’s happening,” the Sergeant explained. “We can’t risk the Coast Guard claiming that we’ve doctored the footage or misrepresented the situation.”
“Isn’t this enough, though?” Ally protested, and she gestured around us. “This is a perfect vantage point.”
“The Sergeant’s right,” I said. “We need to get enough details in the video so that there’s no way the Coast Guard can argue that it’s not them, or that we’re not showing the full picture of the operation. Besides, there’s bound to be some juicy details down there that we can’t make out from here.”
None of the women looked any happier about it.
“Come on, guys,” I urged. “It’s for the video, and this is why we’re out here.”
“I know,” Shannon sighed. “I guess we just hoped that you wouldn’t have to literally walk into the lions’ den for it.”
“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “This is too important not to document for the world to see.”
“Okay.” Ally grimaced. “We’ll keep watch and cover you, then, yes?”
“Should I go down with you?” Shannon asked. “Or provide cover from up here?”
“Stay up here,” I directed. “It doesn’t look like there are many women down there, so you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. I can blend in a bit more easily than you can. Besides, this way we have one of our best shots on lookout duty.”
“Okay.” Shannon nodded.
“I’ll go down with you,” Sergeant Rodriguez said to me. “Two men is better than going it alone, but we’ll still be inconspicuous enough that we shouldn’t attract attention.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Be safe,” Letty whispered.
“I will,” I told her with a quick smile.
I surveyed the scene before us one final time, and I saw that one of the tents on the edge of the camp had a makeshift laundry line strung up to a nearby tree, and it was hung with socks, some vests, and a couple of uniform jackets.
I pointed to the line, and the Sergeant nodded in understanding.
We stripped off our camouflage jackets and handed them to the women.
I took a deep breath.
“Ready?” Sergeant Rodriguez asked in a whisper.
“Ready,” I whispered back.
We carefully crept out from between the trees, and ducked from bush to bush to keep ourselves hidden until we reached the edge of the camp. The tent with its laundry line was right in front of us, and I carefully unpegged two of the jackets, handed one to the Sergeant, and pulled on the other myself.
It was still damp, and the heavy, wet material chafed uncomfortably against my skin, but with the jackets on, we both blended in with the rest of the camp.
I tucked my phone into the breast pocket of the jacket and double-checked that the camera was still on and that the lens was showing over the edge of the pocket. That way, I could keep filming even when my hands were busy with my gun.
I might take my phone out for some close-ups when we were down there, but there was no way I was going to stroll into the enemy’s camp without my gun locked and loaded and ready for action.
With our jackets on and our heads held high, we walked as casually as we could through the Coast Guard camp.
Someone shouted, and I took a quick step back as two sailors ran out in front of me.
“Sanders, you pig!” one of them yelled. “That was my coffee!”
The other guy just laughed and backed away. He caught my eye and shot me a cheeky wink, while the other rolled his eyes in frustration.
I sent them a cheery grin back and shook my head as though I too was well aware of what a pig Sanders was.
The Coast Guard’s arrogance was working in our favor in one way: they clearly didn’t expect anyone to try and infiltrate the camp. My bluff paid off, and no one tried to stop us as we walked quickly and purposefully through the camp. I glanced down occasionally at my phone, and it was holding up well. I could just about see a glimpse of the screen, and it was capturing the busy hum of the camp as well as giving an idea of the number of people that were involved here.
I walked through the rows of tents toward the wire fence that separated the living area of the camp from the business end.
There were plenty of men lounging around outside their tents. Some were reading books, some were flipping through ancient magazines, some were playing cards, some were whittling, some were listening to a crackly radio playing a tune that might have been “Hotel California” once all the static had been filtered out.
Then I saw something that I had to fight hard not to do a double take over.
One of the tents in the middle of the camp had a metal stake driven deep into the ground. And chained to the stake was a tiny baby dragon.
I fought the urge not to fill it full of bullets right there and then.
The dragon was very small, about the size of a large housecat. Its scales were a weird, milky-white color, its eyes were pink, and there was a pink tinge to the end of its snout and its joints that made me wonder if it was an albino version.
It was wearing a dog harness made of red leather, and it was currently standing on its hind legs and attempting to take a scrap of meat from the hand of a sailor that was dangling the treat in the air above the dragon’s head.
I was so fucking stunned that for a moment all I could do was stand and watch.
The man was smiling as though he was playing with a treasured pet. The pale creature opened its jaws to take the meat, and that was when I saw that its mouth was completely toothless. Its fangs had been removed. And then I saw that its claws had been filed down to useless nubs on the ends of its toes.
The dragon flapped its wings to steady itself, and the sunlight shone through the pale pink, red-veined membranes. It was like the inside of a rabbit’s ear, or some expensive vellum paper. The inside of its mouth was a bright red that looked startlingly vivid against the colorless milk of the rest of its scales.
The sailor laughed. And as the dragon dropped back down onto all fours and chewed the morsel of meat, he actually started stroking his hand down the creature’s knobby spine.
This was too fucking surreal.
Dragons as medicine, I could believe. But dragons as pets?
No fucking way.
The Sergeant had caught up with me, and I heard him catch his breath in a startled inhale.
“Dios mío,” he whispered. “This is an abomination.”
“Let’s carry on,” I whispered back. “We don’t want to be caught staring.”
“I can’t believe it,” he muttered as we moved away from the tents. “They’re making them into pets now? After all the damage they’ve caused?”
“I know.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe it, either.”
We eased our way through the wire fence panels and stepped into the business end of the camp.
I walked across to the cages and stood there for a moment as I looked up at the enormous monsters that were prowling restlessly along the bars.
These were much smaller specimens than the giants we’d encountered in the forest. I guessed they were trying to capture the smaller creatures as they were more easily contained. I couldn’t fathom how big a cage they’d need to try and hold one of the giant dragons– or how the hell they’d manage to feed it enough to keep it alive.
One of the caged dragons was not much bigger than a Great Dane, and I wondered if it was a juvenile. It certainly had the grumpy look of a teenager, and it hissed at me with its bright orange eyes glowing furiously and its navy-blue tail lashing back and forth like an angry cat.
I turned slowly to the side so the phone camera could see all three cages.
“Hey!” someone yelled. “Hey you, by the cages!”
My heart was thumping wildly in my chest, but I turned around slowly with my eyebrows raised politely.
It was a sailor with pale eyebrows and a downturned mouth. He waved at me in irritation.
“Come on, help me,” he ordered.
He was standing by the open back of one of the trucks. There was a pile of strongboxes by his feet.
With a flood of relief, I realized that he was roping me into helping him load the truck.
“Sure,” I replied and walked over to the back of the truck.
“Can’t believe they’re saying loading the trucks is a one-person job,” the sailor grumbled as he bent to grab hold of the handles on one side of the box. “I mean, just feel the weight of these things.”
“Got to be at least a hundred and fifty pounds in each of these things,” I agreed.
“More like two hundred and fifty,” the sailor grunted as together we hoisted the first of the boxes into the back of the truck. “Did you get any health and safety training on this?”
“Nope.” I shook my head and clicked my tongue in a show of aggravation. “But you know what it’s like…”
“Always cutting corners.” The sailor scowled and huffed as we lifted another box. “I know they say health and safety’s gone mad these days– well, they were saying it before the meteor storm anyhow– but it’s still important, you know? We’re risking life and limb out here. We don’t want to make things worse with lumbar strain.”
“Yeah, imagine taking on one of those guys while your back’s acting up.” I nodded toward the cages.
“God, yeah.” The sailor exhaled in frustration.
“Still, you try bringing that up with anyone in charge around here.” I had a hunch that this was a guy who liked to complain, and if I could just grease the moaning wheels, he’d be too wrapped up in the sound of his own voice to realize that he’d never seen me before.
My hunch was right, but the result was that the guy talked my ear off for the entire fifteen minutes that it took to load the truck.
I was reduced to nods and “hmm, yeah, well” answers, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.
“… And that’s another thing,” he said with a dramatic gesture as we finally loaded the last of the safeboxes into the truck, hauled the doors closed, and fastened the latches. “I heard Reynolds was getting a commendation because he caught that little dragon and now he’s making it into a pet. But really, is that the kind of thing we should be rewarding while we’re out here? They’re still the enemy, after all.”
“It is weird,” I agreed. “The thing gives me the creeps.”
“It’s so damn ugly.” The sailor shuddered. “Those pink eyes. Reminds me of my uncle. He used to keep rabbits and ferrets, and they always had those white albino eyes. So fucking creepy.”
“Yeah.” I paused and wiped my hands on my pants while I tried to think of a good excuse to get out of there. “Uh, I think Sal is calling me. Sal?”
“Sal?” The sailor looked around with a frown.
With an inner sigh of relief, I spotted Sergeant Rodriguez lingering nearby.
