The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

She turned to face him. He recognized the play of mixed emotions in the soft concern of her eyes and the worried line of her lips. She knew how much he wanted to get back out into the field, but her fear for him was plain to read. He glanced down at his prosthetic hand. It wasn’t a baseless fear.

Still, he loved his job and knew how important it was.

For the past year, while recuperating from his injuries—both mental and physical—he had grown to recognize this more fully. While he loved his family and acknowledged his responsibilities here, he also knew how vital Sigma was to keeping the world safe. He hated being sidelined.

“I heard you have another assignment today,” Kat said.

“Just more paper-pushing,” he groused. “I’m off to New Jersey to interview an egghead about some research files at Princeton. I’ll be back by midnight.”

Kat glanced down at her watch. “Then shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

“I have time. Director Crowe is sending another agent to tag along. Someone with a background in genetics. A new recruit.”

“John Creed.”

Monk shifted and stared her in the face. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

She smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. “I know that Penelope’s bottle is getting cold.”

Monk’s prosthetic hand tightened on her shoulder, keeping her from getting up. “And I know her bottle can be warmed up again.” His voice grew huskier. “And I still have another half hour.”

“A whole half hour?” She arched an eyebrow. “You are growing ambitious.”

Monk’s face broke into a cockeyed grin. “Don’t mock me, woman.”

She kissed him again, lingering now, and whispered between his lips. “Never.”

4:44 P.M.

Princeton, New Jersey

Alone in the basement laboratory, Dr. Henry Malloy ran the computer simulation for the third time. As he waited, he shook his head. It made no sense. He sat back and stretched. He’d been compiling the data sent from Senator Gorman’s office for the past twenty-four hours. Due to the volume of raw data, he needed the lab’s Affymetrix array station to analyze all the DNA studies and assays in the files.

A knock on the door drew his attention. The lab was kept locked to help protect its ozone-free status. The facility was only accessible with a proximity keycard.

With a few minutes still to go on the assay, he crossed to the door and opened it with a whispered hush of pressurized air. It was one of his doctoral students, Andrea Solderitch. Henry had hired the woman as his aide. She was attractive, with a shapely figure and auburn hair, but she was no twenty-something coed. She was in her midfifties, changing careers, formerly a registered nurse specializing in dialysis. And with the long hours spent together, he appreciated someone who occupied his same generation. They even liked the same music, which he often caught her humming under her breath.

At the moment, though, her expression was worried.

“What is it, Andrea?” he asked.

She lifted a sheaf of Post-it notes. “Senator Gorman’s office has called three times, wanting to check on your progress.”

Henry took the notes. He hated to have someone breathing down his neck, but he also understood the senator’s agitation. While Jason Gorman had only been Henry’s student, he still felt a stabbing pang of grief at the boy’s untimely death, especially with the brutality behind it.

“I also came down here to remind you that you have that appointment with Dr. Kokkalis from Washington in another hour. Did you want me to fetch you something from the cafeteria before then?”

“I’m fine, but since you’re here, I can use a fresh set of eyes on this data. Especially before I talk to Washington. See what you think.”

Her expression widened, barely masking her delight.

“And I appreciate you coming in on your day off,” he added as he led her toward the computer station. “I couldn’t have gotten this all done without your help.”

“No problem, Dr. Malloy.”

The computer modeling had finally finished its third run. The screen displayed the chromosomal mapping for the corn sample planted in the test field out in Africa. All of the chromosomes were black, except for a single one highlighted in white.

Henry tapped it on the screen. “Here you can see the radio-marked foreign DNA engineered into the genetically modified corn.”

Andrea leaned closer. Curiosity crinkled her brow. “What’s the source of the DNA? Bacterial?”

“Most likely. But I can’t say for sure.”

Still, Andrea’s guess was on target. Most genetic modifications were engineered via bacterial recombination and gene splicing, taking beneficial traits of certain bacteria and incorporating them into the plant genome. One of the earliest successes was when genes from Bacillus thuringiensis were inserted into tobacco plants. They made the plants more insect resistant, requiring the use of less insecticide in the fields. The same method was now used in corn. Such biotechnology had grown so prevalent over the past ten years that currently one-third of all corn grown in the United States was genetically modified.

“If it’s not bacterial DNA,” Andrea asked, “then what?”

“I don’t know. It’s patented and classified by Viatus. It’s only listed in the file as Dt222. The Dt stands for ‘drought tolerant.’ But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Henry pointed at the screen. “This assay was sent to me by Jason Gorman two months ago.”

“Two months ago?”

“I know. The boy was so excited to be involved in that African field study. He wasn’t supposed to disseminate this information. It was a violation of his confidentiality agreement. I warned him to be more discreet and to keep quiet about it. I can only imagine his desperation on that last morning. Yet he still had the foresight to preserve whatever data he could.”

Andrea nodded. “What did he send out that last morning?”

Henry tapped at the keyboard, bringing forth the latest data. “Let me show you. They had just harvested the first generation of corn from the seeds planted. He sent the complete analysis of that harvest, including an entire DNA assay. Here are the results.”

On the screen appeared a second batch of chromosomes. Again a majority of them were color coded in black, denoting normal corn DNA. But instead of a single chromosome in white, a second chromosome above it was stippled in white and black.

“I don’t understand,” Andrea said.