Runaway Heart

TWENTY-NINE

Herman 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.