Interrupt (8 page)

As he and Bugle bussed their trays, six men rose from other tables. Would he know if any of them were Central Intelligence or National Security operatives?

A pilot named Giles jostled Bugle’s arm, faking the tough guy. “Watch it, fuckface,” Giles said, and Bugle responded brightly with “No thanks!”

Everyone handled the anticipation differently. Giles and Bugle fed off each other’s noise. Other men turned inward, like Drew.

The eight of them crossed the ship into the PR shop, an oversized storage locker lined with naked pipe and conduit. Giles cranked the boom box as they suited up. Drew tried to let the rapid-fire guitars erase his mind. It was better to be loud—better to be amped.

Christensen will have new orders once we’re back,
he thought.
If we make it back. China has decent aircraft, and a lot of ’em. It won’t be like pounding the shit out of Iraq.

If a pulse weapon burns our planes…

Drew grabbed his flight helmet and filed into the ready room, where the squadron duty officer handed over a weight chit. Drew scrawled his name before selecting a 9mm Beretta and two spare clips from the table.

“Next time I want a bazooka,” Bugle said.

“You
are
a bazooka,” Drew said, a rare crack for him, and Bugle laughed and punched his shoulder.

Every day Bugle wanted something different, a machine gun, a flamethrower, a fast horse. Clowning let him shrug off the superstition that they might need their sidearms.

A pistol was ludicrous compared to the missiles carried by an EA-18G, more so given the 20mm Vulcan cannon and five thousand pounds of ordnance on a normal F/A-18 fighter. No man would need his Beretta unless he was shot down in enemy territory, which was why they were also handed blood chits—waterproof sheets printed with the American flag and, in the spidery symbols of Vietnamese, Simple Mandarin, Complex Mandarin, and Cantonese, a short phrase that translated as
If you help me, my government will repay you.

Four of their eight guys were spares. The
America
would launch two 18Gs piloted by Drew and Giles for their mission, launch a fighter escort in case either of the first two planes developed problems, then either recover the fighter or farm him out to another cycle. The fourth two-man team was an on-deck spare. Combat operations were predicated on the assumption of casualties, and yet as Drew led their group from the ready room, he found clarity at last.

They ascended behind the tower that held the flag bridge. In the dim shine of the sodium lights, Drew traded fist jabs with Giles and Wade as they walked to their jets.

“Rock ’em,” Giles said.

“Beautiful night,” Bugle added, and Drew nodded, breathing the sweet stink of jet fuel. He wasn’t aware that he was grinning.

The ROMEO shrinks said Drew’s self-assessment was too simple, but he thought he knew himself. He was the older brother of a girl raised by a single dad, an uneducated joe who’d worked fifty-hour weeks to make time-and-a-half in a paper plant in St. Paul, Minnesota. Their father was a good man. He’d destroyed his hands and his back to provide for them. Drew had tried to be the dad, too, cooking and folding laundry, watching over Brigit’s homework, her boyfriends, and her ambitions to play soccer and piano.

The Navy had become his surrogate family, although the ROMEO profilers were right. His loyalty was more than the desire for a home. Drew felt more than he wanted to, remembered more than he wanted to, and years ago he’d hoped the Navy might be a way to toughen up and prove himself.

Now he was lying to his friends for all the right reasons. It was crucial to prevent intercepts and to preserve the status of shadow forces like ROMEO. If not for his double role, he wouldn’t have learned about the threat of a pulse weapon—but because of ROMEO, he was forced to withhold his information.

That felt like betrayal.

He hated it.

LOS ANGELES

P
artway through her media event, Emily had a death grip on the podium and swallowed again to relax her throat. She hated public speaking. DNAllied’s media director had done a nice job, promising the major television, print, and web outlets the scoop of the week. The hall was packed with news teams.

Was her mom watching on TV?

“We share ninety-eight percent of our DNA with chimpanzees,” Emily said, “and ninety-nine point seven with Neanderthal man, which makes them an excellent sounding board for comparative genomics.”

Laura stood with P.J. in the back of the conference room. Uncharacteristically, Emily avoided her sister’s gaze.

“
Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis,
and chimpanzees are similar creatures, yet our cousins adapted to the same world in different ways,” she said. “Some of their adaptations are less effective. Some are more. Among chimpanzees, for example, the incidence of most forms of cancer is twenty percent less than in
Homo sapiens,
whereas we
believe
Homo neanderthalensis
was more susceptible than our own species.”

Emily paused one last time. She’d brought both sets of notes to the podium. This was where the two diverged.

Was her nephew worth more to her than unborn strangers? What about the thousands of other families with autistic children who needed help?

Emily decided she had to save them first. She would read the company version. Even this speech was loaded with hazards. She didn’t want to sound tactless or cold-blooded, but she expected controversy.

Lifting her chin like a boxer, Emily said, “Chimpanzees are also far less likely to develop cognitive disorders. Their resistance to these disorders includes Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, bipolar disorders… and autism.”

Some people stirred among the media, such as the business writer from
Newsweek
and the woman from the local ABC affiliate. Emily had been warned that a few in particular would resist her findings. This was more than a hot-button issue. She was playing with evolution and some of the most incendiary questions of their time.

The subject was also intensely personal for her, not only because of Laura and P.J. Because of her mother. Maintaining family tradition, Jana Flint had raised her girls in accordance with the Catholic Church, and she didn’t always accept Emily’s career choice. No one could say or do anything that would hurt Emily more than Laura’s disapproval, but she’d been on thin ice with her mother for years.

Six reporters had their hands up. One man asked, “Miz Flint, are you implying—”

Emily tried to stay on track. “We want to use those differences to our advantage,” she said. “At DNAllied, we’ve developed and certified an extensive database of specific gene sequences that will lead to individualized cures in millions of people.”

“Are you implying there’s a connection between cancer and intelligence?” the reporter asked.

“It’s not that simple.”

“But you just—”

“Okay, please,” the media director said. “Doctor Flint is happy to answer questions. Let’s take them one at a time.” He pointed away from the aggressive reporter to someone who looked like a safer bet, a man with sleepy eyes and a mustache.

The new man said, “Has there really been any research done into chimpanzees with Alzheimer’s? Or depression? How would you know if a monkey has memory loss or was bipolar?”

“The same as with people,” Emily said. “Several well-designed behavioral studies have tracked both domesticated chimpanzees and those in the wild.”

Another reporter said, “Will your database be made public?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “DNAllied believes this information is too valuable to families all over the world to sell or license it.”

“How much will these gene therapies cost?”

“That I don’t know,” Emily said.

The first reporter stood up. “Miz Flint, Miz Flint, this therapy, you’re going to use chimpanzee and Neanderthal DNA in people?”

“I’m not involved in the medical aspects of—”

“Isn’t that what we’re talking about? Splicing animal genes into human beings?”

“Yes,” Emily said as the lights flickered.

Everyone looked up. Several of the camera and sound crews frowned at their equipment. Emily already had a stomach full of butterflies. Now her thoughts turned paranoid.

What’s happening?
she thought, and yet she soldiered on.

“Microscopic amounts of clean, tailored genetic material can be used to provide people with healthier lives,” she said. “It’s sterile and
painless, like a flu shot. There’s no reason to be afraid. In any case, our gene therapies are somewhere in the future. It might be years. What we’ve accomplished so far is to establish a broad knowledge base of disease-prone and corrective sequences.”

“But your database could be used to screen for those disease-prone sequences right now, couldn’t it?” the reporter asked. “And, uh, selecting children based on how they score?”

Selecting
was code for
aborting,
Emily realized. Numbly, she hoped her dad hadn’t been able to find the right channel in her parents’ house in Santa Barbara. Otherwise her mom had probably fallen out of her chair.

“I’m sorry, who are you with?” she asked. She wanted the reporter to say FOX News or
Christian Family Digest,
anything to taint his accusations with the mark of the religious right. He ignored her, scribbling in his notebook as the media director signaled Emily and leaned toward the podium.

“Let’s focus on some of the incredible technology Doctor Flint has been using,” the media director said.

Emily stepped back with relief.

“Projects of this scope often begin with Illumina sequencing equipment and Fibonacci structural mass spectrometers,” the media director said. “Our first goal is to…”

Emily barely heard, looking at the back of the room.

Staring at the belligerent reporter, Laura’s spectacular blue eyes were drawn into angry slits. Emily thought she also saw disgust in the face of a female reporter. Did this woman know someone who was sick or handicapped? If she was a science writer, she probably dealt with goons all the time.

It must be aggravating to watch these events taken over by people with repressive agendas,
Emily thought.

Her mother was among those who called themselves pro-life. Despite having married Emily’s father, who was less devout, almost
indifferent to organized religion, Jana Flint opposed abortion rights and also spoke out against contraception. Maybe her ardency on these topics had been fueled by her shame at falling in love with someone outside the Church.

Emily’s faith was a quieter thing. She didn’t believe what she was doing was wrong or evil. If every speck in the universe was God’s creation, studying His workmanship must be part of the mystery. Free will and intelligence weren’t traps to avoid. They were gifts. And yet…

What if other people used her data in ugly ways?

Finally, the press conference was over. Ray and the media director wanted to compare notes in a private office, but Emily asked for a minute in the kitchenette with her sister.

“You did the right thing, Em. You really did.” Laura hugged both Emily and P.J.

Inside, Emily felt as stiff as the boy.
I hope you’re right,
she thought, wondering how many women would give birth to autistic children while DNAllied suppressed her vaccine.

Breathing in Laura’s perfume, she remembered the prenatal visits to which she’d accompanied her sister. Neither of them doubted Laura’s baby would be perfect. The worst health concerns in their family were three aunts with high blood pressure. That hadn’t stopped the OB/GYN from encouraging Laura to undergo standard screening for conditions such as Down syndrome or spina bifida. Unprompted, the OB/GYN had also given them the hard sell with a story about her cousin whose son had Down’s.

“He was always happy,” the doctor said, “but even as an adult, he couldn’t tie his own shoes. He needed constant supervision and medical care until he died at thirty-eight.”

The OB/GYN’s opinion was firm. Nonviable children should be aborted. The screens weren’t able to test for ASD, however—not
yet—much less determine which children might be high-functioning versus those who would be low. If those predictions became reliable, where did anyone draw the line?