“Signs with terms like coacervation or fluid-bed coating or hot melt systems. The microencapsulation units themselves consist of several large-batch tanks or chambers -usually acrylic, stainless steel, or some combination of the two-joined by pumping systems: ducts, blowers, et cetera. There would have to be a compressed air source. Computer panel controls. The materials used would be-”
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Oh suddenly broke off his sentence. From his monitor thousands of miles away, he could see what Ricci had just spotted ahead of him at an intersection in the hall. It had pushed his heart up into his throat.
Ricci knew at a glance that the guards who’d appeared in the passage had better stuff than the perimeter security crew.
They had turned the corner in his direction just as he’d approached it and paused to motion Rosander over with the telescopic probe. Three men in light gray uniforms with submachine guns over their shoulders and the unmistakable look of quality troops.
Before either group could react, they found themselves facing each other across a straight length of hall, separated by four or five yards with no available cover… and no choice except to engage.
Swiftly rasing his weapon, its MEMS touch control on its lethal setting, Ricci had the briefest instant to once again recall the Cape Green maneuvers with that strange sensation of events doubling back on themselves.
The thought had not quite fled his mind as he opened fire, ordering his men to spread out and do the same.
The guard he’d targeted was only a little slower to trigger his own gun. He collapsed to the floor, his uniform blouse chewed and bloody, his rifle dropping from his hand.
Ricci saw a second guard train his subgun on one of the men behind him, instantly swung his around, and triggered another burst, a five-shot salvo. But this time, the guard managed to squeeze out a volley before falling onto his back, and he kept shooting even afterward, scattering a gale of ammunition across the hall. Ricci heard
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a grunt of pain from over his shoulder, didn’t turn. Couldn’t. He wanted that son of a bitch on the floor finished.
He angled the VVRS down and fired again, and so did another member of the insertion team. Red exploded from the guard’s belly, he rolled over and there was red splashed on his back from the exit wounds, and then he flopped a little and lay still.
More gunfire from Ricci’s left, more from his rear, and he turned to see the third guard shiver in place a moment and then spill loosely off his feet.
Okay, he thought. Okay, that’s all of them.
He spun around to see who’d been hit. Grillo. On his back, blood streaming from his throat. Simmons and Beatty were kneeling over him, getting off the helmet, opening the collar of his jacket, but he wasn’t moving, and his open eyes had the look Ricci knew came with the touch of death.
Ricci rushed over to his body, crouched, touched the pulse point on his neck, Grille’s blood oozing over his gloves.
He tilted his face up to his men, tried not to let the clenching he felt inside show.
“Nothing we can do for him,” he said. “And we have to get out of this damned hallway while we can.”
The lightest of sleepers, Kuhl answered the telephone in time to clip its first ring. “What is it?” he said.
He listened to the report from his security officer, then flung off his blanket.
“Where in the building?” he said.
He listened again.
“Send reinforcements to the area,” he said. He decided
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that he had best notify DeVane. “I’m coming immediately.”
“Doc, I’ve got to hear from you!” Ricci snapped over the comlink. His team was speeding along the corridor, away from the section where the firefight had broken out.
Silence.
“Come on, Doc, I mean now- ”
“Tom, listen, it’s me.”
“Pete, where the hell is he? We’re running blind here.”
“I know. Eric saw the whole thing. The shooting. What happened to Grillo. He’s pretty shaken up.”
“Then pull him together-”
“Tom, for God’s sake, we know your situation.” It was Megan, her voice tense. “Give him half a second-”
“I’m all right,” Eric’s voice broke in. “Sorry. I… I just…”
“Later,” Ricci said. “We’re coming up to another cross hall. A bunch of signs. Can you read them?”
“No, you’re moving too fast, the picture’s blurry … jolting …”
“I’m going to stop and let you take a look. But we don’t have long. I don’t know who might’ve heard those guns.”
“Understood.”
Ricci signaled a halt, then craned his head toward the signs, turning it to allow the helmet’s digicam to pan across his visual path.
“You see them okay?” he said.
“Yes … Wait. The sign on your left. No, the next one over … okay, right there.”
Ricci’s eyes held on the sign. It said:
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“Doc?” Ricci urged.
“That’s it. A synonym for the gelatin microencapsulation process,” Eric said. “The academic term.”
Ricci swung his gaze to the left. A steel door barred the way about three feet down the corridor junction. This had a biometric hand scanner rather than the swipe card reader. The level of security was escalating, itself a strong indication he was getting hot. And while he’d expected to encounter biometrics and come prepared with ways to fool them, the deceptions took time, and speed now took precedence over delicacy.
He turned to his men. “They know we’re here, no point tiptoeing,” he said. “We blow our way in.”
Johan Stuzinski was a specialist in the field of bioinformatics-the use of statistical and computational analytic techniques to predict the function of encoded proteins within genetic material, based solely on DNA sequence data. The applications of this discipline in terms of human genome research included the identification of proteins within chromosomes that caused inherited diseases and inherited predispositions toward diseases that might be triggered by environmental, dietary, and other external factors.
The fruits of this research promise to revolutionize modern medicine by helping scientists design drugs and therapies that target these culprit proteins, attacking or even eliminating the causes of health disorders at the cellular-in truth, the molecular-roots. If cures or vastly superior treatments for cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, the muscular dystrophies, Alzheimer’s,
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AIDS, and countless other maladies that have plagued mankind throughout history are found in the coming decades, it will be through application of genomic discoveries.
The very best in his field, Johan Stuzinski could have lent his expertise to any of hundreds of medical research establishments and pharmaceutical firms performing meaningful work toward improving the human condition in the twenty-first century and beyond. In January 2000, Stuzinski was offered a management position with a generous salary and benefit package by Sobel Genetics, a leader in the search for genome-based therapies. Though he came close to taking the job, Stuzinski had simultaneously received another proposal from Earth- glow, a Canadian firm whose goals were considerably more obscure, even a bit irregular, as he chose to think of them. But its hiring executive had promised him various under-the-table, and thus nontaxable, financial perquisites that were communicated with subtle inferences. A nod and a wink, so to speak.
After some consideration, he had called Sobel to decline their proposition, packed his bags for Ontario, and gladly put on his moral blinders. He kept his eyes on his narrow portion of the work being conducted at the facility, rarely allowed himself to consider its eventual application, and very definitely never questioned the presence of the rather menacing armed guards who patrolled certain parts of the facility.
In that way, Stuzinski was exactly like hundreds of other top-caliber professionals who had come to lend their exceptional skills to Earthglow’s operations. He was like them in another way, as well: When the sounds of racing footsteps, dull claps that may have been gun419
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fire, and something that could perhaps have been a small explosion distantly reached his apartment in the complex’s living quarters in the predawn hours of Thursday morning, rousing him from sleep, he got out of bed only to make sure his door was locked and then somewhat nervously stayed put.
Until and unless it became a direct threat to him, Jo- han Stuzinski’s attitude was that whatever might be happening outside was none of his personal business.
“You six stay here and cover the entry.” Ricci motioned to Bames, Seybold, Beatty, Carlysle, Perry, and Newell. “Watch yourselves. That boom must’ve set off alarms everywhere. We don’t know what kind of manpower’s headed this way.”
The men nodded in unison. They were standing near the blown, broken remains of the security door in the smoke and haze left by the detonation of their breaching charges.
Ricci looked at their faces a moment, then turned to the other four members of his team. “Okay, here we go,” he said and led them through the ruptured entrance.