Jack shuddered, but Carolyn Adjemenian shook her head, sending her geek tiara flying. She got up and retrieved her glasses. "For God's sake, no!" she laughed.

Herman actually slumped, but Jack was sure as hell relieved.

"No, no," she went on. "It's definitely from this planet, but it's not a pure breed. It's some kind of mixture of species, and since separate species can't interbreed, that means this animal has more than likely been engineered."

That remark hung over them like ripe fruit.

"Basically, it is very close to a chimpanzee, but with some interesting upgrades."

"Upgrades?" Herman leaned in, looking at the gene map on her computer screen, studying it intently.

"To answer the question of what it is exactly, I had to try and isolate the asterisked base pairs… the genes that were different from normal chimp DNA. Then I tried to determine how those genes differed from a chimpanzee's normal DNA and what parts of its body were affected by the change.

"As I said, a chimpanzee is our closest living relative… 98.4 percent of human DNA. We know now that chimps and Homo sapiens basically split into two separate species only about four million years ago. Gorillas, for example, split from us nine million years ago, orangutans split fifteen million years ago. Since the chimpanzee's split with Homo sapiens is so recent, you can see why chimps and humans are almost identical on the DNA scale. In some sequences they are perfectly parallel, in others they differ only slightly."

"Which ones differ?" Herman seemed energized by this new idea.

"Well, chimps don't have the same communication abilities as humans. They have less-developed fine-motor dexterity. They have an opposing thumb like us, but their fingers are longer, designed to walk on their knuckles, so they're less adept with tools. However, chimps are the only animals besides humans who use tools. For instance, a chimp will use a pole to knock down a banana."

"But he can't change the transmission on a Chevy," Jack countered. Susan turned and glared at him, so he decided he'd better keep quiet.

Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Chimps have a different intelligence. They score about like a three-year-old human child on a standard IQ test. But that doesn't mean they're less intelligent than us. It's just that their intelligence is different. If you took the smartest human-Einstein, let's say-and you dropped him in a chimpanzee's natural habitat deep in the Congo, poor old Albert would last about two days." She paused. "So, intelligence is a relative concept. Chimps are stronger than humans and can run much faster over short distances. They have a better sense of smell, but, beyond these, and a few other minor discrepancies, they are far more similar to us than different, with a variation of only one-point-six percent on the entire gene map."

Herman pointed at the computer screen. "This animal we have mapped here is different from a chimp in what way?"

"One difference I found was for neurotransmitters. They signal impulses between neutrons in the brain, which means this animal thinks more like a human than a standard chimp would."

"Fascinating," Herman said, studying the screen. "That neurotransmitter gene had to have been spliced into the chimp zygote," Dr. Adjemenian went on. "It would improve rapidity of brain processing, facilitate nerve growth, as well as dexterity. The genetic engineering would also change various muscle proteins." She paused and looked at them.

Susan picked up the fifty-page gene map. Zimmy went to a chair across the room and sat. Like Jack, he didn't want to hear any of this. He and Jack liked chimps just the way they were.

"Next, I looked at the second asterisked gene, called the Troponin Myglobin gene, which deals with communication. This animal, while it still may not be able to talk, will understand much more than a normal chimp when it comes to human language. Next is the Conexin gene. It's involved with processing sounds, so it's also part of what I see as a communications upgrade. Put it all together and, in essence, the animal we have here has been upgraded from 98.4 percent Homo sapiens to about 99.1."

"What does it look like?"

"Beats me," she said, then she looked at Jack and smiled. "But it's probably not going to buy its clothes at the Gap." Jack smiled back.

"It has fur, probably for warmth, but its face might be more human than chimp-like-maybe a slightly larger head because it has more developed areas in the brain. Its fingers are probably shorter, and it doesn't walk on its knuckles. It might prefer walking upright, yet could still run on all fours. But these are only guesses."

Now they all sat in silence trying to conjure up this beast.

"I have a question, Doctor," Susan said.

"Sure."

"Does this animal really exist, or could this just be some gene map that somebody put together, a hypothetical or virtual animal?"

"Good question," Jack blurted.

"It is a good question," Carolyn Adjemenian agreed. "There is no way anybody could do this without taking a DNA sample from the animal and scanning it. It would be virtually impossible to come up with this by reverse-engineering it. There are things in the genome that would be impossible to make up-like the structure of the coding regions and their connections to one another. Is that clear?"

"No," all of them said at once.

"The answer to your question is: This is legit. Somebody has actually upgraded a chimpanzee and fed the hybrid animal's DNA into the computer to construct this map. But I haven't a clue as to why."

Zimmy didn't have a clue either, but Jack and the Strockmires had been over it all before when this thing was an imaginary, hybrid space alien. Now they were back to

Herman's theory of a genetically engineered monkey-human. A chimera with the strength of ten. A disposable soldier.

Suddenly, Jack heard the same noise he'd heard outside Donna Zimbaldi's apartment-four car doors slamming. Then he caught a glimpse of someone running past the window in a low crouch.

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.