Chapter 45

“Bon Dieu. You don’t look so good, little brother.”

Jack couldn’t argue with Randy’s assessment. He felt like someone had poured molten lead into his joints while leaving his skin to alternately burn or go damp with a cold sweat. He had drugged himself with some nondrowsy TheraFlu and hoped it would be enough to sustain him for another twenty-four hours.

“I’ll be fine,” he said to Randy, as much as to himself.

His brother stood a few yards from a small A-Star helicopter as it warmed up its engine, rotors whirling up to full speed. The roaring whine cut like a rusty hacksaw into his skull. The chopper would be airlifting Randy and Kyle over to the Thibodeauxs’ boat, currently steaming toward Lost Eden Cay.

Off to the side, Kyle stood with his arms crossed, anxious to get moving, one fingernail digging into his plaster cast, like a dog worrying a bone. He had wanted to join Jack’s assault team, to go directly after his sister, but his broken wrist precluded him from accompanying them. Not that Jack would have let Kyle anyway. He needed men he could trust, men with military training in covert operations.

Still, Kyle looked ready to claw his cast off and join Jack’s men. Mack Higgins and Bruce Kim waited a couple decks below, down by the wellhead with the drill crew. Even farther down, a seaplane floated at the foot of the offshore platform, ready to fly the assault team over to the island and dump them and their gear a mile offshore.

“You have the timetable?” Jack asked Randy.

His brother tapped a finger against his skull. “Mais oui. It’s all in here.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. He’d just spent the past half hour going over the assault plan in the office of the rig’s geologist. For this to work, each group would have to act in perfect synchronization.

Kyle stepped forward and cast a scowl in Randy’s direction. “Don’t worry. I have it all written down. We’ll wait for your signal before approaching the island.”

Jack nodded, glad at least that someone good with numbers was going to be aboard the Thibodeauxs’ boat. He had full confidence in Randy and his friends when it came to a down-and-dirty bar fight, but as to sticking to timetables, Cajuns seldom wore wristwatches.

Randy merely shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll be where we need to be.”

“And I’ll make sure they are,” Kyle added.

Now it was Randy’s turn to glower. “Je vais passer une calotte,” he threatened under his breath.

There was definitely no love lost between these two men. Jack hoped that old anger-buried deep between their two families-didn’t boil up into a problem for this mission.

“Just get on board the chopper,” Jack said. “I’ll touch base by radio when we’re in the air.”

The two men turned to the helicopter. They kept a wary distance from each other as they walked away.

Jack dismissed them from his mind and headed for the stairs that led down from the elevated helipad. He wanted to be out of direct earshot when the helicopter took off. His head pounded with each rising beat of the rotors as he climbed down the steep stairs. Finally sheltered from the rotorwash, he was assaulted again by the smell of oil and axle grease from the rig. The farther down he went, the worse it got, until he swore he could taste grease on the back of his tongue.

Fighting down a gag, he stopped on a landing that fronted the open Gulf. A fresh breeze blew in his face. He sucked down a few cold gulps to clear his head. As he did so the A-Star helicopter lifted off overhead and flew over the waters.

He watched the chopper swing south-then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Now what? He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number, except it was a New Orleans area code. Unsure who it was, he answered it brusquely.

A familiar voice responded, as calm and gentle as if this were an invitation to high tea. “Agent Menard… I’m glad I could still reach you.”

“Dr. Metoyer?” Jack let both his surprise and impatience ring out.

“I know you must be in a hurry,” Carlton Metoyer said, “but I believe I have information that may have a bearing on your mission.”

Jack stepped back into the freshening breeze off the Gulf to listen. “What is it?”

“It’s about what was done to the animals. With all that happened back at the lab, we never had time to review our DNA analysis on that extra chromosome found in those animals.”

Jack recalled that Lorna had mentioned something about an extra chromosome. She believed it was the cause of the strange mutation in the animals.

“Once we got settled at the Audubon Zoo here, Zoë and I had a chance to run through those results. The chromosome proved to bear some shocking characteristics. Something you should know about.”

“Go ahead. But I’m pressed for time.”

“Of course, Agent Menard. Let me get to the point. I don’t know how familiar you are with genetic code, specifically with junk DNA?”

Jack sighed, earning a flare of his stabbing headache. “Biology was not my strong suit, Doctor.”

“No worries. This is Biology 101. As I’m sure you already know, DNA is a vast storehouse of genetic information. The human code is three billion letters long. But what you must understand is that only a very small percentage of DNA-three percent-is actually functional. The other ninety-seven percent is genetic garbage, basically baggage we’ve accumulated and been carrying around for millennia.”

“So why are we dragging it along?”

“Good question. Recent studies now suggest that not all junk DNA is pure garbage. Researchers have noted that specific regions of junk DNA match base pair for base pair with old viral code.”

Jack checked his watch, not sure where this was going.

Carlton continued: “There are two theories of why we carry around this ancient viral code. One scientific camp says it’s there to protect us against a new viral attack, basically genetic memory lying in wait until it’s needed again. The other camp says it’s merely old viral code that became absorbed into our DNA over the course of millennia. Literally the baggage of evolution. I’ve come to believe maybe it’s both. Especially as these bits of viral code can be found in DNA across animal species, from the lowliest burrowing mole to us humans. It’s like we’re carrying these identical chunks from some ancient source and keeping it for some future reason.”

Jack heard an edge of excitement enter the doctor’s voice. “What’s the point here, Doctor?”

“Yes, of course. I’m rambling. We’ve been studying the genetic code of that foreign chromosome, and Zoë had the brilliant idea to compare the sequence to various data banks, including the Human Genome Project. Within an hour, we had a hit.”

“What do you mean?”

“The genetic code of the extra chromosome. We found the exact same code already buried in our junk DNA-and not just ours but most animals’.”

“What?”

“The extra chromosome in these test subjects matches a set of old viral codes locked in all animal DNA, including our own.”

“Okay, but what does all that mean?”

“It means that animal kind-at least vertebrates-might have been exposed to this extra code before. Sometime in our evolutionary past. We dealt with it, and it became an inert part of our genome. Only now we’ve encountered it again. In active form.”

“Active?”

“I’ll let Zoë explain. She has the better grasp on this.”

Before Jack could object, the phone was fumbled and a new voice spoke. “Hi, Jack. Sorry to bother you.”

“How are you holding up, Zoë?”

“Okay. I just need to keep busy, to be useful.”

His ear picked up the strain, the tears hidden behind her words. It drew an ache from his heart, echoing his fear for Lorna. “Tell me what you learned, Zoë.”

Her voice grew firmer, moving away from that well of grief. “Before we left ACRES, my husband, Paul, had been studying the DNA, highlighting certain sequences of code, what we call genetic markers. It was plain what he suspected. The markers were unmistakable.”