Hector got the phone away from Ronald Hunt and let Brian try calling. Unfortunately no one answered, not even Dr. Mason.
“The doctor has been answering until a few minutes ago,” Ron said.
“Let me go in and talk with him,” Brian said.
Hector shook his head. “There are enough hostages in there as it is,” he said.
“Lieutenant Salazar,” a voice called. Hector turned to see a tall, slender Caucasian approaching, along with a bearded, powerfully built Afro-American. Sterling introduced himself and Wayne Edwards. “I’m acquainted with your chief, Mark Witman, quite well,” Sterling said after the introductions. Then he added: “We heard about this situation involving Sean Murphy so we came to offer our services.”
“This is a police matter,” Hector said. He eyed the newcomers with suspicion. He never liked anyone who tried to bully him by saying he was bosom buddies with the chief. He wondered how they’d managed to cross the crime scene barrier.
“My colleague and I have been following Mr. Murphy for several days,” Sterling explained. “We are in the temporary employ of the Forbes Cancer Center.”
“You have some explanation of what’s going on here?” Hector asked.
“We know that this dude’s been getting progressively crazy,” Wayne said.
“He’s not crazy!” Brian said, interrupting. “Sean is brash and imprudent, but he’s not crazy.”
“If someone does a string of crazy things,” Wayne said, “it’s fair to say he’s crazy.”
At that moment everyone ducked reflexively as a helicopter swept over the building, then hovered over the parking lot. The thunderous thump of the rotor blades rattled everyone’s ribcage. Every bit of dust and dirt smaller than medium-sized gravel became airborne. A few papers on the card table were swept away.
George Loring, commander of the SWAT team, came forward. “That’s our chopper,” he yelled into Hector’s ear. The noise of the aircraft was deafening. “I called it over so we can get to the roof the moment you give the green light.”
Hector was having trouble keeping his hat on. “For crissake, George,” he screamed back. “Tell the goddamn chopper to move off until we call it.”
“Yes, sir!” George yelled back. He pulled a small microphone clipped to one of his epaulets. Shielding it with his hands he spoke briefly to the pilot. To everyone’s relief the chopper dipped, then swept away to land on a helipad next to the hospital.
“What’s your take on this situation?” Hector asked George now that they could talk.
“I looked at the floor plans supplied by the head of security, who’s been very cooperative,” George said, pointing out Robert Harris for Hector. “I think we’d only need a six-man team on the roof: three down each stairwell. The suspect’s in the fifth-floor lab. We’d only need one, but we’d probably go ahead and use two concussion grenades. It would be over in seconds. A piece of cake.”
“What about the nitroglycerin in the office?” Hector asked.
“I didn’t hear about any nitro,” George said.
“It’s in a glass-enclosed office,” Hector said.
“It would be a risk,” Phil interrupted, having overheard the conversation. “The concussive waves could detonate the nitroglycerin if it’s in a solid state.”
“Hell, then,” George said. “Forget the grenades. We can just come out of both stairwells simultaneously. The terrorist wouldn’t know what hit him.”
“Sean’s no terrorist!” Brian said, horrified at this talk.
“I’d like to volunteer to be with the assault team,” Harris said, speaking up for the first time. “I know the terrain.”
“This is not amateur hour,” Hector said.
“I’m no amateur,” Harris said indignantly. “I trained as a commando in the service and carried out a number of commando missions in Desert Storm.”
“I think something should be done sooner rather than later,” Dr. Levy said. “The longer that crazy kid is left up there, the more damage he can do to our ongoing experiments.”
Everyone ducked again as another helicopter made a low pass over the parking area. This one had “Channel 4 TV” on its side.
Hector yelled for Anderson to call the complaint room to have them call Channel 4 to get their goddamn helicopter away from the scene or he’d let the SWAT team have a go at it with their automatic weapons.
Despite the noise and general pandemonium, Brian picked up one of the telephones and pressed the redial button. He prayed it would be answered, and it was. But it wasn’t Sean. It was Dr. Mason.
SEAN HAD no idea how many cycles he should let the thermal cyclers run. All he was looking for was a positive reaction in any of the approximately one hundred and fifty wells he’d prepared. Impatient, he stopped the first machine after twenty-five cycles and removed the tray containing the wells.
First he added a biotinylated probe and the enzymatic reagents used to detect whether the probe had reacted in the series of wells containing Helen Cabot’s cerebrospinal fluid. Then he introduced these samples into the chemiluminescence instrument and waited by the printout to see if there was any luminescence.
To Sean’s surprise, the very first sample was positive. Although he fully expected it to be positive eventually, he hadn’t expected a reaction so soon. What this established was that Helen Cabot—just like Malcolm Betencourt —had contracted St. Louis encephalitis in the middle of the winter, which was strange since the normal vector for the illness is a mosquito.
Sean then turned his attention to the other wells where he would be searching for the presence of oncogenes. But before he could start adding the appropriate probes, he was interrupted by Dr. Mason.
Although the phone had rung intermittently after he’d spoken with Sergeant Hunt, Sean had ignored it. Apparently Dr. Mason had ignored it too, because on several occasions it rang for extended periods. Sean had finally turned the ringer off on his extension. But apparently it had rung again and apparently this time Dr. Mason had answered it because he’d gingerly opened the door to tell Sean that his brother was on the line.
Although Sean hated to interrupt what he was doing, he felt guilty enough about Brian to take his call. The first thing he did was apologize for striking him.
“I’m willing to forgive and forget,” Brian said. “But you have to end this nonsense right now and come down here and give yourself up.”
“I can’t,” Sean said. “I need another hour or so, maybe two at the most.”
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Brian asked.
“It’ll take too long to explain,” Sean said. “But it’s big stuff.”
“I’m afraid you have no idea of the hullabaloo you’re causing,” Brian said. “They’ve got everyone here but the National Guard. You’ve gone too far this time. If you don’t come out this minute and put a stop to this, I won’t have anything to do with you.”
“I only need a little more time,” Sean said. “I’m not asking for the world.”
“There’s a bunch of gung ho nuts out here,” Brian said. “They’re talking about storming the building.”
“Make sure they know about the purported nitroglycerin,” Sean said. “That’s supposed to dissuade them from heroics.”
“What do you mean, ‘purported nitroglycerin’?” Brian asked.
“It’s mostly ethanol with just a little acetone,” Sean said. “It looks like nitroglycerin. At least, it’s close enough to fool Dr. Mason. You didn’t think I’d make up a batch of the real thing, did you?”
“At this point,” Brian said, “I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
“Just talk them out of any commando action,” Sean said. “Get me at least one more hour.”
Sean could hear Brian continue to protest, but Sean didn’t listen. Instead he hung up the phone and turned back to the first thermal cycler tray.
Sean hadn’t gotten far with the oncogene probes when Janet came through the stairwell door trailing computer printout sheets.
“No problem finding the Forbes travel file,” she said. She thrust the computer paper at Sean. “For whatever
