Runaway Heart (30 page)

     
"To answer the question of
what
it is exactly, I had
to try and isolate the asterisked base pairs . . . the genes that were
different from normal chimp DNA. Then I tried to determine how those genes
differed from a chimpanzee's normal DNA and what parts of its body were
affected by the change.

     
"As I said, a chimpanzee is our closest living relative . . .
98.4 percent of human DNA. We know now that chimps and
Homo sapiens
basically
split into two separate species only about four million years ago. Gorillas,
for example, split from us nine million years ago, orangutans split fifteen
million years ago. Since the chimpanzee's split with
Homo sapiens
is so
recent, you can see why chimps and humans are almost identical on the DNA
scale. In some sequences they are perfectly parallel, in others they differ
only slightly."

     
"Which ones differ?" Herman seemed energized by this new
idea.

     
"Well, chimps don't have the same communication abilities as
humans. They have less-developed fine-motor dexterity. They have an opposing
thumb like us, but their fingers are longer, designed to walk on their
knuckles, so they're less adept with tools. However, chimps are the only
animals besides humans who use tools. For instance, a chimp will use a pole to
knock down a banana."

     
"But he can't change the transmission on a Chevy," Jack
countered. Susan
turned and glared at him, so he decided he'd better keep quiet.

     
Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Chimps have a different
intelligence. They score about like a three-year-old human child on a standard
IQ test. But that doesn't mean they're less intelligent than us. It's just that
their intelligence is different. If you took the smartest human—Einstein, let's
say—and you dropped him in a chimpanzee's natural habitat deep in the Congo,
poor old Albert would last about two days." She paused. "So,
intelligence is a relative concept. Chimps are stronger than humans and can run
much faster over short distances. They have a better sense of smell, but,
beyond these, and a few other minor discrepancies, they are far more similar to
us than different, with a variation of only one-point-six percent on the entire
gene map."

     
Herman pointed at the computer screen. "This animal we have
mapped here is different from a chimp in what way?"

     
"One difference I found was for neurotransmitters. They
signal impulses between neutrons in the brain, which means this animal thinks
more like a human than a standard chimp would."

     
"Fascinating," Herman said, studying the screen.
"That neurotransmitter gene had to have been spliced into the chimp
zygote," Dr. Adjemenian went on. "It would improve rapidity of brain
processing, facilitate nerve growth, as well as dexterity. The genetic
engineering would also change various muscle proteins." She paused and
looked at them.

     
Susan picked up the fifty-page gene map. Zimmy went to a chair
across the room and sat. Like Jack, he didn't want to hear any of this. He and
Jack liked chimps just the way they were.

     
"Next, I looked at the second asterisked gene, called the
Troponin Myglobin gene, which deals with communication. This animal, while it
still may not be able to talk, will understand much more than a normal chimp
when it comes
to human
language. Next is the Conexin gene. It's involved with processing sounds, so
it's also part of what I see as a communications upgrade. Put it all together
and, in essence, the animal we have here has been upgraded from 98.4 percent
Homo
sapiens
to about 99.1."

     
"What does it look like?"

     
"Beats me," she said, then she looked at Jack and
smiled. "But it's probably not going to buy its clothes at the Gap."
Jack smiled back.

     
"It has fur, probably for warmth, but its face might be more
human than chimp-like—maybe a slightly larger head because it has more
developed areas in the brain. Its fingers are probably shorter, and it doesn't
walk on its knuckles. It might prefer walking upright, yet could still run on
all fours. But these are only guesses."

     
Now they all sat in silence trying to conjure up this beast.

     
"I have a question, Doctor," Susan said.

     
"Sure."

     
"Does this animal really exist, or could this just be some
gene map that somebody put together, a hypothetical or virtual animal?"

     
"Good question," Jack blurted.

 
    
"It
is
a good
question," Carolyn Adjemenian agreed. "There is no way anybody could
do this without taking a DNA sample from the animal and scanning it. It would
be virtually impossible to come up with this by reverse-engineering it. There
are things in the genome that would be impossible to make up—like the structure
of the coding regions and their connections to one another. Is that
clear?"

     
"No," all of them said at once.

     
"The answer to your question is: This is legit. Somebody has
actually upgraded a chimpanzee and fed the hybrid animal's DNA into the
computer to construct this map. But I haven't a clue as to why."

     
Zimmy didn't have a clue either, but Jack and the Strockmires had
been over it all before when this thing was an imaginary, hybrid space alien.
Now they were back to

     
Herman's theory of a genetically engineered monkey-human. A
chimera with the strength of ten. A disposable soldier.

     
Suddenly, Jack heard the same noise he'd heard outside Donna
Zimbaldi's apartment—four car doors slamming. Then he caught a glimpse of
someone running past the window in a low crouch.

H
erman was holding the printout of the
chimera gene map, thinking he had to find a way to get this into court. DARPA
was doing illegal science on chimpanzees, so he could file under the federal
rules of civil procedure, section 65. It was during this thought that Jack
interrupted him.

     
"I think the CDF is outside."

     
"What?" Carolyn Adjemenian asked as Zimmy jumped to his
feet and began looking frantically for some place to hide.

     
Herman glanced around, his eyes wild like a drunk caught in a
hotel fire. Susan grabbed his arm.

     
Carolyn demanded: "What the hell is CDF?"

     
"The guys who designed this damn animal want the plans
back," Herman said, clutching the encryption.

     
"Leave it," Jack ordered. "It's what they're after.
Let 'em take it. Zimmy e-mailed a copy to your computer anyway."

     
"Good idea. If they think they've got it, maybe they'll stop
chasing us," Susan agreed.

     
"They're outside now?" Carolyn blurted as she shut down
the computer and retrieved the disk.

     
"Somebody just ran past the window," Jack replied. He
dug the receiver chip he'd taken from the phony magazine salesman out of his
coat pocket and jammed it into his ear.

     
"Angel Two, we're covered. Set up your entry," he heard
someone announce. "Get ready to kick the door."

     
"Hold positions until we're all in place," came the
reply.

     
"They're getting ready to kick the door," Jack said.

     
"Let's go out the back," Zimmy urged, then bolted. Jack
grabbed him and yanked him back. "It's covered. These guys are noisy
getting out of vehicles, but their special entry tactics aren't bad."

     
"How'd they find us? We ditched them at your office."
Gino was looking to Jack for an answer.

     
"They still have a bug planted on us."

     
"Where could they hide it?" Susan said.

     
"Inside Herm," Jack said. "Planted during the
operation at Groom Lake. They couldn't believe we weren't in my office. The GPS
said we were, but we were two feet away, hiding next door."

     
"Okay, we're good to go," the chip in Jack's ear
announced.

     
"They're coming in," Jack stressed.

     
"We could go next door," Carol suggested.

     
"We can't go outside," Jack repeated.

     
"We don't need to, it's a duplex. My boyfriend's a doctor. We
sleep on that side. There's a door between the units."

     
As they ran down the hall, Herman saw Jack duck into the master
bedroom, remove one of the weights from Carolyn's lat machine, and take it with
him. They went through a door in the back that led to a laundry porch shared by
both units, and slipped into the apartment next door.

     
Carolyn's boyfriend turned out to be huge. A bodybuilder. He got
up from his office computer and wide-armed his way into the hall.

     
"What's going on, Carolyn?" he said, his voice an octave
too high for a guy that big.

     
"Tim, somebody's trying to take the gene map I've been
working on."

     
"We gotta split before they decide to look over here."

     
While Tim was talking, Jack heard the order to go in. Both doors
were kicked, followed by the sound of running footsteps in the hall next door.
They could hear them shouting through the shared wall.

     
"Living room clear!"

     
"Bedroom clear!"

     
Carolyn opened the side door to the carport, and sitting there
under a light was a red Chevy Suburban. Jack immediately reached up and knocked
the light out with his gun barrel.

     
"You're coming with us," Jack told them. Carolyn and Tim
nodded and headed for the front seat of the Suburban. But Jack held Tim's
muscle-bound arm, pulling him back. "I'm driving."

Jack grabbed the keys out of his hand
and piled everyone into the SUV. He dug the chip out of his ear, started the
engine, and handed Herman the ten-pound lead weight. "Put this over your
heart."

     
"Why?"

     
"It's lead. It'll mask the transmission."

     
"But, we don't know for sure I. . ."

     
"Lawyers—always an argument!" Jack snapped.

     
Herman clutched the weight to his chest as Jack started the
engine. "Everybody down."

     
They ducked below the windows while he backed out, making a slow,
three-point turn, doing it like he had all the time in the world. He switched
on the headlights and began cruising up the street at about ten miles an hour.
Herman popped up and peeked out the rear window. The brown Econoline van was
still at the curb in front of the duplex. Then Jack rounded the corner and they
were out of sight.

"The bug quit," Valdez said.
He was inside the van looking at the GPS monitor. "They musta found
it."

     
"How could they find it? It's
inside
the fucking
guy," Pettis answered.

     
"I'm just telling you, there's no signal." Valdez was
uncharacteristically pissed. His dry-biscuit calm had evaporated in a surge of
genuine panic. He waited as the four plainclothes CDF troops rushed out the
front door of the duplex and motioned that everything inside was clear.

     
"This can't be happening." Valdez glared at Pettis, who
was still buckled into the command chair next to him.

     
"What about the SUV that pulled out a minute ago?"

     
"Maybe you're right and the bug did quit," Valdez said.
"Let's go." He waved his men back to the van. The CDF troopers piled
in. One handed the fifty-page encryption to Valdez. "They left this."

     
The driver punched it, speeding after the SUV. When they reached
the end of the block they turned left, then right, then left, trying to get to
the freeway on-ramp, but in their hurry they had misread the GPS map and taken
a wrong turn. They wound up at the end of a cul-de-sac, half a block from the
405.

     
"Fuck!" Valdez raged, the recovered gene map forgotten
in his hand.

     
It was the first time Captain Pettis ever saw the assistant
director lose it.