Free The China Dogs by Sam Masters Page B

over the North’s repeated nuclear missile testing.
    The DMZ is a bizarre strip of land that contains a village or two, land mines, guards, and regular tourist trips to the Military Arbitration Commission building where the cease-fire was hammered out and where both sides still meet on an almost daily basis to settle operational problems relating to the neutral turf.
    Beneath their feet, and beyond the DMZ, are more than a thousand secret bunkers. Some contain KN-08 missiles and the first of the country’s truly functional ICBMs. Others are merely dummy silos, serving no purpose except to distract America and NATO. Many are filled to the brim with military equipment, arms, and uniforms ready to be picked up in a war against the West or South Korea.
    But a small number—hundreds of feet underground—house the laboratories and test center of Project Nian, a top secret operation started by the North Koreans, sponsored by the Chinese, and for the past six months personally overseen by China’s top scientist, Hao Weiwei.
    A gifted geneticist and loyal Communist Party activist, Hao has dedicated his life and learning to his homeland. Three years ago he and other leading geneticists were drafted into the project to help create the “enemy within.” Six months ago, as the final stage approached, he and his team moved to North Korea and spend all their working lives in these bunkers. Only the Chinese scientist and his son have swipe-card access to all rooms and clearance to the world aboveground.
    Hao Weiwei and his son Jihai trundle the sedated dogs through the muted light of the reinforced tunnels in to the ultrasecure testing room with its sterile cells. Each of them is pushing an identical, electrically assisted rolling cage. It’s a cell on wheels, made of iron bars stretching nine feet long by six wide and six high. The cages are the same but the dogs about as different as can be.
    In Jihai’s cage is a shih tzu, a delicate breed much loved by the Ming Dynasty. It’s a tiny, silky dog that weighs just eleven pounds and at a cute stretch is barely eleven inches from paw to shoulder.
    In Hao’s cage is an American pit bull terrier, a seventy-eight-pound slab of fighting muscle that is twice as big as the Chinese breed.
    The two men are met by Péng and research assistant Tāo. They help them maneuver the containers through an air-lock antechamber into the testing room’s central containment area—a giant glass-walled cube that can be used as one large, open area, or divided into separate observation and experimentation cells.
    The scientists slide the sleeping animals out of the cages and leave them side by side in a single cell, before they withdraw to the other side of the testing cube and lock them in.
    Hao turns to his son. “Are all checks complete?”
    Jihai has been diligent. As always. “Blood count. DNA profile. Calcium levels. Protein readings. All have been entered into the computer, sir.” He never calls him Father, not unless they are alone and off work.
    â€œGood.” Hao is pleased. One day the boy will make a very fine scientist. Perhaps even his successor.
    Audio speakers on the outside of the containment cell crackle and hiss into life. Supersensitive microphones gather the dogs’ sounds. Whispery breaths from the shih tzu. Heavy snorts from the pit bull.
    The tiny dog is the first to start to wake.
    â€œTake your positions.” Hao walks to a master control panel and triggers the live video links.
    He’s giving General Zhang what he commanded. Footage of a live experiment. Proof that he and his team are incredibly close to achieving their task of perfecting a modifying spray that will almost instantly pacify even the most aggressive of the weaponized dogs.
    The three scientists slide onto high stools and flip-down computer panels attached to the unbreakable glass cube. Thirty-six 3D video cameras jerk into autofocus on the