"Agency," a voice said after two rings.

"I need to speak with the assistant director. This is Lincoln Fellows," he said.

"Is this an emergency?" the secure operator replied. Line could hear a beeping sound indicating that his call was being taped.

"I'm afraid so. Tell him it's the Night SA at Gen-A-Tec in San Francisco and that the secure computer has been breached. We have downloads."

While he waited for Valdez, Line made a digital transfer of the cracker's image and drive-away, copying from the security tape to a backup, then loaded it on the sat-link to send to DARPA in D.C. He knew it was the first thing Mr. Valdez would ask for.

The assistant director came on the line. Line had only met him once, a swarthy, dark-haired spook with black eyes and the cold disposition of a desert reptile.

"This is Valdez."

"Sir, our secure computer has been compromised. A cracker penetrated our shadow system and completed some downloads."

"What did he get?" Valdez 's voice was calm. That was the thing about Mr. Valdez, he never seemed to be alarmed, as if he always had a tight rein on himself and the situation. It was his one overriding personality trait; that, and a reputation for utter ruthlessness.

"He got the program on engineered food. Corn mostly, some test results, some e-mail…" Lincoln 's heart was beating harder against his chest, "and the entire encryption for the Ten-Eyck Chimera project."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "You're joking," was all Valdez said.

"I think I have him on a security camera," the trembling SA inserted quickly. "A shot of him and his car pulling past the gate. I'm going to sat-link it to you right now."

"While I'm dealing with that, I want you to look through the entire hack and see if he left any electronic clutter behind."

"I will, but I don't think so, sir. He was pretty damned sharp."

"Right. Of course he was. But I thought you were sharp. That's what you said when we hired you. Obviously, we were both wrong."

Before Line could present his alibi, Valdez hung up. Line hurried across the room and hit the satellite send button. A secure channel on a scrambled frequency shot the digital image into space, where it bounced off a platform a mile up, then streaked down to the windowless DARPA headquarters inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C. Elapsed time: fifteen seconds.

Vincent Valdez quickly scanned the tape when it arrived, then sent it down to Video Enhancement with instructions to digitally enhance the license plate.

Fifteen minutes later he had a hard copy printout in his hand. It was a blowup of the back bumper on a white Camry, with California plate igi 378.

"And?" Valdez said softly to his assistant, Paul Talbot, who had just handed him the photo.

"The car came from the concierge at the new Fairview Hotel in San Francisco," Talbot said. "It was rented to a guest there. A Mr. Roland Minton, Room 3015." Talbot survived in close proximity to Valdez because, like the male black widow spider, he had learned to interact with his poisonous mate by appearing innocuous, moving fast, and staying out of range. Talbot's bland personality masked a shrewd mind that was always scheming.

Vincent Valdez stared at the photo. He hated screwups. But, he reasoned, at least the ball was still in play. He looked at his watch. It was currently 3:07 a.m. in San Francisco.

"How fast can we put a response-retrieval team in play?" he asked Talbot.

"We can scramble a team from Ten-Eyck and have them ready in less than an hour."

"That puts 'em there before five a.m. Daylight Savings out there gives us an extra hour of dark. So do it." Victor leaned back. A second thought crossed his mind… dangerous, ironic, but maybe exactly right. They were ready for a field test on one of the D-units, so why not now? He spun around and stopped Paul Talbot before he left the office. "Tell Captain Silver to send a DU along with the team."

"You sure you want to do that?" his assistant asked, turning and wrinkling his pale brow.

"Let's see if what we've been building is really worth all this trouble," Victor Valdez said, thinking that at least this would add some excitement to a monumental cluster-fuck. "Tell Silver to put a chip vest on the unit with full abort-destroy capabilities. I don't want to leave any DNA behind if it goes bad."

Talbot nodded and left the room.

Twenty minutes later, a helicopter was touching down in the desert north of Palm Springs. Its landing lights illuminated the sagebrush and sand that blew under the chopper, tattooing the side of an old weathered barn. The pilot was from a DOD scramble flight group in L.A., but he'd never been out in this part of the desert before. The area was restricted by a Code 61, which prohibited flyovers without special DOD clearance. When he landed, the chopper captain was puzzled because the place looked deserted-just barren miles of fenced, open desert. He watched as four men ran out of the old barn dressed in black government assault gear, flak-jacketed with body armor, and packing fully automatic MP-5s with thirty-round clips. Two of them were wheeling a metal cage. They slid the heavy box into the bay of the helicopter and piled in after it. The pilot looked back. There was Something alive in the box. For a second he saw unearthly fingers come out and grasp the metal bars, but then they disappeared inside the cage. What the hell? Then he heard heavy breathing and a very strange noise, unlike anything he'd ever heard before, high-pitched and angry. Suddenly, a dank, fetid odor clogged his nostrils.

"Shhh, Pan," one of the soldiers said.

"Let's go. Get it up," Ranger Captain Dave Silver ordered as he jumped into the helicopter.

The pilot pulled back the collective and the Bell Jet Ranger lifted off the desert floor, heading toward the landing pad on top of the Federal Building in San Francisco.

Roland was still hunched over his computer working offline an hour after he had finished the download from Gen-A-Tec.

He was in the zone.

It happened like that sometimes-you just lost track of everything. He couldn't get Herman on the cell phone, and the overweight attorney wasn't at Streisand's house, so Roland finished composing an e-mail to Strockmire and sent it off to Herman's computer.

TO: strockmeister@earthlink.net

FROM: cyberhood@thirdwave.net

SUBJECT: no subject

CC:

DEAR STROCK…

I want a raise… I'm too fucking good… I have again saved your dumpy white ass amp; am expecting some big bucks in return. No more of your empty promises. Send $$$!!! (heh-heh-heh)

I am e-mailing some downloads I got from the Gen-A-Tec computer. I was magnificent, by the way. I wrecked the SA they had on night duty out there. Stole all this shit right out from under his bony ass.

Enc. include the RESH file on corn, e-m, amp; some skeevy looking encryptions that were filed under DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA is a secret gov't weapons research org I've heard some evil shit about… I think we found some bodacious bogosity. Why would gov't spooks be investing in food research? What evil lurks? Gen-A-Tec had this program coded in a secure data bank so this is DEFINITELY something they don't want seen.

If you or Susie get a chance, run this out to Zimmy, my bud I told you about. He's a cryptology freak who plays with this kinda shit when no one's looking after-hours. He ties ten sun solar mega-workstations together amp; does complicated decoding problems for fun. He'll jump at this challenge, but keep it to yourself, Strock, 'cause if they catch him he'll get booted for misuse of computer time. Zimmy should be able to break this in a few nights of gut-tickling fun (heh-heh-heh).