Читать книгу Hot As Ice - Merline Lovelace, Merline Lovelace - Страница 9

“It’s been ten days.”

Frustration added a grating whine to Greg Wozniak’s voice as he glanced around the small group of scientists, researchers, and intelligence analysts crowded into the oceanographic station’s mess.

Several day’s growth fuzzed the cheeks of the men. Red rimmed their lids and traced fine lines through the whites of their eyes. Shoulders slumped under layers of wool shirts and thermal underwear.

They were all tired, all showing signs of sleep deprivation and disappointment. The initial burst of excitement that had sustained them through days and nights of constant experimentation and vigilance had seeped away.

“We brought Stone’s body temperature back to normal range almost a week ago,” Wozniak reminded the group unnecessarily. Shoving his coffee mug aside, he pleaded his case for the third time in as many hours. “We’ve pumped every possible combination of drugs through the Iceman’s veins.”

“He has a name,” Diana put in coolly.

Ten days of constant contact with the short, ro-tound cyro-geneticist hadn’t improved her opinion of him. Wozniak shrugged and picked up the threads of his argument.

“We can’t use the paddles on Stone’s heart many more times or we’ll completely destroy the muscle. I think it’s time to officially declare him dead and let me get on with the cloning process.”

Across the table from Diana, Dr. Irwin Goode wrapped thin hands around his mug. Liver spots darkened his fragile skin. His fingers trembled. She’d heard the Nobel Prize winner speak at a convention some years ago and was saddened to see how much the brilliant scientist had aged. If his body had succumbed to the march of time, however, his mind still functioned with razor-edged sharpness.

“Major Stone’s brain showed evidence of low level activity after the first shock,” the silver-haired Goode reminded his younger colleague calmly.

“Not enough to restart his biorhythms.”

“But enough to allow an early determination that he’s not completely brain dead. As you’re well aware, the law as currently written doesn’t allow cloning live human subjects without their consent.”

“I know!” Wozniak groused. “It’s just my luck Stone doesn’t have any close relatives left alive to authorize the procedure.”

With some effort, Diana bit back a sarcastic comment on his warm, caring humanity.

“We agreed on one more attempt,” Goode reminded him. “If the current combination of proteins and acids we’re pumping into him don’t produce cell activity, we’ll reevaluate the protocol.”

“Pull the plug, you mean,” Diana muttered.

Behind the lens of his rimless glasses, Dr. Goode’s eyes held a look of mild reproof. “I mean we’ll reevaluate the protocol.”

She bit her lip, embarrassed by her unprofessional remark. After ten days of intense, around-the-clock trial and error, they were all on edge. And just about out of options.

In her heart of hearts, Diana didn’t hold out any more hope of reviving Stone than the others. Yet every time she touched his now warm skin or peered through a microscope at tissue samples to search for signs of protein regeneration, she seemed to lose a little more of her scientific objectivity.

In ten days, Major Charles Stone had become a personal challenge to her, almost a quest. Her years of study, her countless hours of research, all seemed to have led her to this remote, isolated Arctic station.

To him.

Metal chair legs scraped as Diana shoved away from the rickety table. She wasn’t ready to give up on the pilot yet. She couldn’t. With a nod to her colleagues, she left the small, boxlike room that served as mess hall, card room and conference center.

The recovery team’s arrival had severely crowded the already cramped station. To make room for the extra supplies and equipment, the obliging oceanographers had shoved their computers against walls and moved their acoustical sounding devices into the long, snakelike tunnel that connected the collapsible sheds.

Generators hummed as Diana picked her way past stacked boxes and various pieces of gear. The hot air pumped through the double walls kept the temperature inside the station at a toasty sixty-five degrees, so the occupants didn’t have to pile on too many layers. Boots, snug leggings and a wool plaid shirt worn open over thermal silk long johns provided Diana with sufficient warmth and a measure of mobility.

Before entering the storage shed where Major Stone lay suspended between life and death, she ducked into the cramped side room the recovery team had converted into a lab. She’d already checked the latest cell samples once this morning but wanted another look.

Hooking a stool with her heel, she dragged it closer to the long, flat counter filled with racks of test tubes and culture dishes. As Dr. Goode had as much as admitted, they were down to their last hope. They’d tried every possible protein and nucleic acid combination within the range of Major Stone’s molecular sequencing. If this combination didn’t work, if the protein and nucleic acid didn’t bind…

Flicking the switch on a laser scanning microscope, Diana slipped a slide with the latest sample under the lens. The air force had spared no cost to lease and ship in the powerful scope Dr. Goode had requested. It was one of only three in use anywhere in the world outside heavily funded and usually guarded research facilities. While Diana squinted at the hugely magnified cells, the microscope’s computers whirred through the two hundred thousand plus known protein sequences to verify the sample’s profile.

Mere seconds later, the screen blinked a complex code. With a click of the mouse, Diana sent the code to the computer’s built-in chart function.

“Damn!”

The line charting this combination remained flat and straight. Major Stone’s protein profile hadn’t changed by so much as a gnome.

Swallowing a sharp stab of disappointment, she removed the slide and started to push away from the counter. Only then did she notice the faint, almost indiscernible bluish tint at the edge of the sample.

Her breath caught. Snapping the slide back under the lens, she refocused the dual eyepieces at the edge of the slide.

There it was! A complex protein strand that had bonded with traces of nucleic acid! Unless the sample had become contaminated, the bonding was new. So why did the computer spit out the same, dead profile?

Frowning, she reset the computer and ran the entire sequence again. When the identical code came up, she swore softly.

“That can’t be right.”

Her first instinct was to consult Dr. Goode. Her second, to jab down on the stem of the functional black chronometer strapped to her right wrist.

Before Diana had left D.C., OMEGA’s chief of communications had outfitted her with a special transceiver designed to resist the extreme Arctic cold. The device looked like an ordinary twenty-dollar watch, the kind you could buy at any Wal-Mart. As Mackenzie Blair had demonstrated, however, this particular watch contained a hermetically sealed transciever that could send and receive signals from a highly classified defense satellite with bell-ringing clarity.

One quick jab on the stem activated the system and established an instant link.

“Control, this is Artemis. Do you read me?”

Mackenzie’s cheerful reply came through a second later. “I’ve got you, Artemis. Go ahead.”

“I need you to access the PIR-PSD through OMEGA’s computers.”

“Repeat, please.”

“The Protein Information Resource-Protein Sequence Database.”

“Ooooh-kay.”

“It’s the largest protein database in the world. Just type PIR-PSD into the computer and you’ll go right to it. Tell me when you pull up the home screen.”

Chewing on her lower lip, Diana waited for OMEGA’s chief of communications to plug into the international information source.

“I’m there,” Mackenzie announced a few seconds later.

“I’m going to feed you a long string of numbers. Type them in exactly as I give them to you, then hit the button that says request profile.”

“Fire when ready, Artemis.”

With meticulous care, Diana read the long series of numbers from the current sample. Mackenzie repeated each digit as she entered it into the computer.

While the PIR-PSD digested the information, Diana’s heart thumped painfully. Had the astronomically expensive electron microscope given erroneous readings? Would they have to start over, repeat the thousands of sequences within Major Stone’s profile range? Could they keep his organs functioning long enough to…

“I’m getting some kind of a code here.”

“Read it to me. Slowly!”

Diana typed the code Mackenzie fed her into the microscope’s computer and switched to the chart function. Instantly, the flat line shot upward.

“Ohmigod!”

“Something wrong, Artemis?”

“No! Something’s right! Very right!”

Here they’d been within hours of pulling the plug on Major Charles Stone, and his protein had already begun to regenerate. If this chart was anywhere near correct, he’d almost reached sufficient levels to sustain life.

Trembling with excitement, Diana advised Mackenzie she’d report back later and slid off the stool. She should notify Goode and Wozniak and the others, have them verify the anomaly. She would, as soon as she checked on the major.

He lay stretched out on the metal table, atop a computer-controlled aqueous gel mattress to cushion his body and vary his position at timed intervals. He was still naked, although the team had draped a folded sheet over his midsection. Video cameras mounted on tripods observed him from four different angles. IVs snaked from his arm, heart monitor leads from his chest. Electrodes measured the almost imperceptible brain activity that had so excited the team at first. A whole wall of monitors recorded both visual and digital data.

Her heart still pumping pure adrenaline from the chart reading, Diana stepped to the table. Major Stone lay supine, broad shouldered, superbly muscled. Fine brown hair arrowed down his chest, whorled around his navel, and disappeared beneath the folded sheet. The same tobacco brown hair lightly fuzzed his arms and legs. His buzz cut was a darker shade, and right out of the fifties.

As a biologist, Diana appreciated beauty in all life forms. Stone wasn’t handsome in a classical sense, she decided. His features were too rugged, his jaw too square and blunt. She had to admit, though, his raw masculinity shot her scientific detachment all to hell. That, and the fact that she had absorbed so many details of his life by now that there was no way she could view him objectively.

According to the extensive background dossier Mackenzie had compiled, Charlie Stone had lost his parents during the Depression and was raised by an aunt. He’d worked at a variety of odd jobs while in high school, but still managed to letter in baseball and football. From the many comments in his high school yearbook, he’d won as many cheerleaders’ hearts as he had games.

When World War II broke out, he lied about his age to enlist in the Army Air Corps aviation cadets. He’d flown P-51 Mustangs in Europe, and F-86 Sabre jets six years later in Korea. He’d been engaged for a brief period to an army nurse, but the affair fizzled when she mustered out of the army and went home. Stone had then been selected for test pilot school and moved to Edwards Air Force Base, California, where he flew with the likes of Chuck Yeager and future astronaut Deke Slayton.

He was from the old school. Tough. Tested. The kind of brash, fearless flier who pushed himself and the aircraft he tested to the edge of the envelope. He’d racked up hundreds of hours in various experimental airframes when the CIA had “requested” him from the air force to help shake out the bugs on the supersecret U-2. A little more than a year later, he’d dropped out of the sky.

“I wonder what you’ll think of your world if…when you wake up.”

She laid her hand on his arm, comparing the feel of his skin to the temperature displayed on the monitors. Despite the chill air inside the makeshift laboratory, he was warm to the touch.

“It’s not the same world it was in 1956,” she said, willing him to hear her voice, hoping he’d respond to the stimulus of human contact. “From what I’ve read about the Cold War era, I think you’ll find it’s better. Then again, maybe we haven’t come as far as we like to think we have.”

She stroked his arm gently, dredging up images from his time. Eisenhower facing off with Kruschev. Sputnik. Polio victims imprisoned in huge iron lungs. I Love Lucy and Howdy Doody in grainy black and white. Chrome-laden Cadillacs with sharklike fins. Or did all that chrome come later?

She’d have to pull up the interactive time capsule Mackenzie had compiled. The gee-whiz program provided visuals and audio on everything from popular foods of the fifties to Hit Parade favorites crooned by the likes of Patti Page and Frankie Laine.

“We’ve conquered polio,” she told him, “but Lucy and Ricky still reign supreme on late-night TV. You can catch them just about… Yikes!”

She jumped back, almost choking in surprise as the arm she’d been stroking jerked straight up.

Disbelieving, Diana gaped at the upraised limb. Was it just a reflex? A response to the stimulus of her touch?

Her heart pounding, she dragged her astonished gaze from his arm to his face and nearly jumped again. His eyelids twitched. She was sure they’d twitched.

“Major Stone!” Her voice spiraled to an excited squeak. “Can you hear me?”

His forehead creased in a frown.

“Major Stone!” Her pulse hammered so hard and fast she could scarcely breathe. “Open your eyes.”

Deep grooves bracketed his mouth. The muscles of his neck corded, making Diana’s own throat ache painfully. From the corner of one eye, she saw the bank of monitors light up like a Christmas tree. A shrill beep sounded, stretched into warning buzz. Another alarm pinged. Within seconds, a whole chorus was chirping away.

The alarms brought one of the research techs rushing through the door behind her. “What’s going on?”

“He’s waking up!” Diana threw over her shoulder. “Get Dr. Goode. Immediately.”

She whipped back around and felt every ounce of oxygen leave her lungs.

He’d opened his eyes! Wild confusion filled their blue depths.

“It’s all right.” Reining in her galloping excitement, she infused her voice with deliberate, soothing calm. “You’re safe. You’re at the U.S. Arctic Oceanographic station.”

His eyes narrowed, dissected her face, her red-and-brown plaid shirt, her jeans. When he brought his gaze back to hers, his throat worked. A sound halfway between a groan and a croak escaped.

“Don’t try to talk yet.”

He jerked his arm again and grabbed a fistful of her shirt. Astonished by his strength, she let him drag her down until their faces were only inches apart. With an effort that was painful to watch, he swallowed and tried again. Finally, he forced out a single syllable.

“Who…?”

“Who am I? My name is Diana Remington. Dr. Diana Remington.”

She heard the sound of running footsteps behind her. Greg Wozniak barreled through the door. Excitement and his dash down the hall had turned his chubby face brick red.

“Is it true? Is he waking up?”

“See for yourself.”

Diana started to edge aside. The hold on her shirt kept her tethered to the table as Major Stone’s gaze shifted to her colleague.

“I… I don’t believe it!” Wozniak breathed, almost as inarticulate as their subject. “How…? When…?”

Diana waited until a huffing Dr. Goode had joined them to relate the astounding sequence of events.

“It happened so fast. Without warning. I was in here checking his vitals when his arm jerked. A few seconds later, his eyes opened.”

Goode’s glance was riveted on Stone. Little of the excitement Diana and Greg Wozniak were feeling showed on his wrinkled face.

“I don’t understand it. The sequence profiles showed no indication that his protein was beginning to regenerate.”

As much as Diana wanted to share the results of the test she’d had Mackenzie run using OMEGA’s computers, she couldn’t break her cover. “The microscope must have been giving us faulty readings.”

“Impossible,” Goode stated emphatically. “I calibrated it myself.”

“Well, one of the solutions we fed him obviously worked.” Still pinned against the table by Stone’s grip on her shirt, Diana made the introductions. “Major Stone, this is Dr. Irwin Goode, a Nobel Prize winner in bionetics. He worked with the U-2 spy plane program years ago. And this is Dr. Greg Wozniak, who…”

She broke off, gasping, as Stone’s biceps flexed again. With a sharp tug, he yanked her down. She ended up sprawled across his body, with one hand planted square on his naked chest, the other scrabbling for a grip on the metal table. Ice blue eyes lasered into hers.

“Not…spy,” he rasped with savage intensity. “Wea…ther flight.”

Oh, Lord! In her excitement, she’d forgotten that the U-2 program was so highly classified during Major Stone’s time that not even Congress knew about the intelligence gathering flights over the Soviet Union. It had been a CIA show from start to finish, back in the days when the agency called all the shots without any pesky laws or Congressional oversight to curb their operations.

From the information Mackenzie had put together on the U-2 program, the operation was classic CIA. The pilots stripped down to the skin before climbing into their flight suits. They carried no personal items, wore no identifying insignia or rank. Even their aircraft was unmarked. If forced down over enemy territory, they’d been instructed to deny any attempt at intelligence gathering and admit only to collecting weather data.

Which is exactly what Major Stone was doing now.

“It’s okay,” she said, trying to lever up a few inches. “The U-2 program is no longer classified.”

He didn’t let go. If anything, his scowl grew even fiercer.

Diana’s OMEGA training had included brutal and highly effective techniques for breaking just about any hold, but she figured smashing Stone’s wrist bones against the edge of the metal table wouldn’t exactly win his confidence.

“It’s okay,” she repeated, ignoring the fact that her breasts flattened against his chest and her mouth hovered only inches from his. “We’re on your side.”

His jaw worked. “Wea-ther flight.”

Oh boy! He obviously intended to stick to his oath to keep all aspects of his mission secret.

Admiration for his courage gripped Diana. He had to be confused, disoriented. Had to be wondering how in the world he’d arrived at a remote oceanographic station. Yet he wasn’t about to admit to a thing except his cover story.

“You can trust us,” she said softly. “We know you’re Major Charles Stone, United States Air Force. We know you were detailed to the CIA in early 1955 to test and put into operation a new, single-seat, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. We also know you were flying that aircraft when it disappeared from radar at 2235 hours on November 2, 1956. What we don’t know is why it went down, but we’re hoping you’ll tell us that.”

He stared at her, his features taut and grim. After what seemed like a lifetime, his grip on her shirt loosened. She eased up a few inches.

She didn’t say anything for several moments, wanting to give him time to digest what he’d heard so far before she dropped the bomb about his forty-five year snooze. She looked to her colleagues, then back at Stone, only to discover that his glance had locked on something just over her shoulder.

“What…the…hell?”

The harsh, rasping exclamation ripped from deep in his throat. Diana took a quick look behind her, saw the digital clock mounted on the wall. The time, day, month, and year flashed in iridescent green. Dragging in a deep breath, she faced the Iceman again.

“Yes,” she said slowly and clearly. “That’s the correct date.”