Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta Read Online Free PDF Page B

have cooked up today. Feast your eyes on the
not-yet-patented Mark Two Brinker-Parikh nanophage, guaranteed to zap cancer
cells, dangerous bacteria, and other internal nasties . . . most of the time,
anyway.”
    Smith moved closer and studied the hugely magnified black-and-white image on
the monitor. It showed a spherical semiconductor shell packed with an
assortment of complex molecular structures. A scale indicator on one side of
the screen told him he was looking at an assembly that was just two hundred
nanometers in diameter.
    Smith was already familiar with the Harcourt research team's general
concept. Brinker and Parikh and the others were focused on creating medical
nanodevices—their “nanophages” —that would hunt down and kill cancer
cells and disease-causing bacteria. The interior of the sphere he was examining
should be loaded with the biochemical substances — phosphatidylserine and other
costimulator molecules, for example — needed either to trick the target cells
into committing suicide or to mark them for elimination by the body's own
immune system.
    Their Mark I design had failed in early animal testing because the
nanophages themselves were destroyed by the immune system before they could do
their work. Since then Jon knew the Harcourt scientists had been evaluating different
shell configurations and materials, trying hard to find a combination that
would be effectively invisible to the body's natural defenses. And for months
the magic formula had eluded them.
    He glanced up at Brinker. “This looks almost identical to your Mark One
configuration. So what have you changed?”
    “Take a closer look at the shell coating,” the blond-haired
Harcourt scientist suggested.
    Smith nodded and took over the microscope controls. He tapped the keypad
gently, slowly zooming in on a section of the outer shell. “Okay,” he
said. “It's bumpy, not smooth. There's a thin molecular coating of some
kind.” He frowned. “The structure of that coating looks hauntinglv
familiar . . . but where have I seen it before?”
    “The basic idea came to Ravi here in a
flash,” the tall, blond-haired researcher explained. “And like all
great ideas it's incredibly simple and freaking obvious ... at least after the
fact.” He shrugged. “Think about one particularly bad little mother
of a bacterium —resistant staphylococcus aureus. How does it hide from
the immune system?”
    “It coats its cell membranes in polysaccharides,” Smith said
promptly. He looked at the screen again. “Oh, for Pete's sake . . .”
    Parikh nodded complacently. “Our Mark Twos are essentially
sugar-coated. Just like all the best medicines.”
    Smith whistled softly. “That is brilliant, guys. Absolutely
brilliant!”
    “With all due modesty, you are right about that,” Brinker
admitted. He laid one hand on the monitor. “That beautiful Mark Two you
see here should do the trick. In theory, anyway.”
    “And in practice?” Smith asked.
    Ravi Parikh pointed toward another high-resolution display—this one the size
of a wide-screen television. It showed a double-walled glass box secured to a
lab table in an adjoining clean room. “That is just what we are about to
find out, Colonel. We have been working almost nonstop for the past thirty-six
hours to produce enough of the new design nanophages for this test.”
    Smith nodded. Nanodevices were not built one at a time with microscopic
tweezers and drops of subatomic glue. Instead, they were manufactured by the
tens of millions or hundreds of millions or even billions, using biochemical
and enzymatic processes precisely controlled by
    means of pH, temperature, and pressure. Different
elements grew in different chemical solutions under different conditions. You
started in one tank, formed the basic structure, washed away the excess, and
then moved your materials to a new chemical bath to grow the next part of the
assembly. It required constant monitoring and absolutely precise