Hot As Ice

by Merline Lovelace

  "The spy plane?"

  "The spy plane."

  Adam Ridgeway smiled as another "Aye, aye, sir," rifled through the control center. Sliding a hand under his wife's arm, he squeezed gently.

  "Strange how much that woman reminds me of one of my very best agents," he murmured.

  "She should," Maggie replied smugly. "One of your very best agents personally trained her."

  She took a last look around the control center, then set her champagne aside. Laughter danced in her eyes when they locked with her husband's.

  "Let's blow this joint. The new team has work to do, and we've got a book and a baby to make."

  A half hour later, Diana Remington faced Nick across an expanse of polished mahogany. In her ivory silk blouse and navy blue suit with its slim, calf-length skirt, she defied the stereotypical image of a molecular biologist. In Nick's considered opin­ion, she looked even less like an undercover oper­ative.

  As her code name suggested, however, Reming­ton's silky, silvery blond hair and elegantly tailored suit belied her unique talents. Artemis was the Greek name for Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. The modern-day incarnation seated across from Nick was every bit as skilled as her mythical counterpart at tracking and bringing down her prey. This time, it appeared, her prey had already been found.

  Diana's green eyes were wide with astonishment as she stared across the table at Nick. "They dis­covered what in the ice?''

  "The body of an air force pilot."

  "One of ours?"

  "We think so. There are no identifying labels of any kind on his flight suit or helmet. That's a sig­nificant factor in itself. Additionally, the age of his equipment helped pinpoint his identity. All evidence indicates he's Major Charles Stone, whose plane disappeared from radar screens at 2235 Zulu on No­vember 2, 1956."

  Diana let out a low whistle. "He's been lost for more than forty-five years?"

  "Apparently so. No trace of him or his plane were ever found."

  "Didn't the air force mount a search and rescue operation when he went down?''

  "They couldn't." Nick's dark eyes held hers. "His aircraft had just entered Soviet airspace when it disappeared from radar."

  "Oops."

  "Exactly."

  The tip of Nick's twenty-four karat gold Mount Blanc pen tapped the cover of a plain manila folder. The pen was a gift from Maggie and Adam. The folder contained the data Mackenzie Blair had hast­ily milked from the OMEGA's supercomputers.

  "If this pilot is in fact Major Stone," he contin­ued, "he was flying a U-2, known in the air force by the nickname of Dragon Lady. It's a high-altitude, all-weather surveillance aircraft developed in the early fifties to collect data on Soviet ICBMs."

  “I saw something about it on the History Channel a few weeks ago," Diana said. "Isn't that the plane Francis Gary Powers was flying when he was shot down over Russia in the early sixties?"

  "It is," Nick confirmed. "Although the U.S. in­sisted the U-2's were only collecting weather data, the Soviets put Powers on trial for espionage. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, but exchanged after serving only two. The incident gave Eisenhower a political black eye and put Ken­nedy at a real disadvantage in the court of world opinion when the Cuban missile crisis came along."

  Diana leaned back in her chair and played with a strand of her shoulder-length blond hair. Far too busy to waste time primping in the mornings, she'd be forever grateful to the savvy stylist who'd talked her into a wash-and-go spiral perm and a few age-defying highlights.

  Not that she worried unduly about her age. At twenty-nine, she was one of the youngest biologists at the prestigious Harrell Institute, a private, non­profit consortium of scientists chartered to help de­fine medical and moral standards for genetic re­search.

  It was her other job that had carved the character lines at the corners of her eyes, she thought wryly. OMEGA tended to plunge its agents into situations that sent the pucker factor right off the charts. From the expression on Nick's face, she had a feeling his first official act as the new director of OMEGA would definitely have that effect on her.

  Sure enough, Lightning tapped his shiny gold pen once, twice, all the while shooting her a considering look. When he tucked the pen into his suit pocket, Diana braced herself.

  "The president is scheduled for a summit meet­ing with the new Russian premier next month. He isn't particularly anxious to reopen an old, embar­rassing chapter in U.S.-Russian relations prior to the meeting."

  "No, I can see he wouldn't be."

  ''Nor does he want to unnecessarily inflame cer­tain right-wing groups in this country who still see Russia as the evil empire and are looking for any excuse to resume the Cold War. If the Soviet Union shot down Stone, as they did Powers, relations be­tween Russia and the U.S. could get real tense, real fast."

  "No kidding," Diana murmured.

  "That's why you're heading north. Your civilian credentials give you the perfect cover to take part in the recovery operation. If the team of other sci­entists already en route to the Arctic Circle suc­ceeded in breathing life into this iceman, we want you there to—"

  "What!" Diana bolted upright. "They're going to thaw this guy out?"

  "They're going to try. Apparently the body is perfectly preserved."

  "It can't possibly be that well preserved! Cyro-genics isn't my specialty, but I know frozen cell technology hasn't advanced far enough yet to undo damage caused by forty plus years buried in ice."

  "The Dragon Lady flew at such high altitudes that their pilots wore the equivalent of space suits. Dr. Irwin Goode, who worked the U-2 program dur­ing its inception, thinks the pressure suit may ac­count for the remarkable state of Major Stone's body."

  Since Goode had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize some decades ago for his pioneering work in the superoxygenation of living microbes, Diana re­frained from arguing the point.

  "Is Goode part of the team headed for the Arc­tic?"

  "He is. So is Dr. Gregory Wozniak, who, I've been informed, recently cloned an ice-age mouse found in a cave in northern Siberia from a single strand of its fur. If Goode and company can't revive Major Stone, Wozniak wants to try cloning him."

  Diana shook her head, both repelled and excited by the possibilities. Tremendous advances occurred in the field of genetics every day. Just last year paleoarcheologists had unearthed a frozen, stone-age mammoth and had hopes of crossing its DNA with that of a modern-day elephant. Still, for every step forward, there were a number taken back.

  "Best I recall, Dr. Wozniak's clone lived all of two days," she said slowly.

  "If this one lives two hours, you're going to be right there beside him, holding his hand." Nick's gaze drilled into hers. "The president wants every­thing about this man kept absolutely secret until we ascertain the facts surrounding his plane's disap­pearance. In the remote chance they actually bring Major Stone—or some version of Major Stone— back to life, we want you to act as his handler."

  "But..."

  "He'll be confused, frightened. Your job is to get next to him, Artemis. Win his trust, find out what happened all those years ago."

  "All right. When do I leave?"

  "An air force C-21 is standing by at Andrews, fueled and ready for takeoff. I advised the pilot that you'd be there in an hour."

  "An hour!"

  Diana gulped down an instinctive protest. She had planned to have dinner with Allen tonight. She'd already cancelled twice this week.

  She consoled herself with the reminder that Allen McDermott was a brilliant, dedicated scientist in his own right. Although he knew nothing about Diana's work for OMEGA, he understood that the pressures of her job at the Institute often required her to back out of their dates at the last minute. Allen would understand.

  She hoped.

  Flipping the folder shut, Nick slid it across the desk. "This file includes a complete background dossier on Major Stone—his academic reports, mil­itary records and a psychologic
al profile. By the time you reach the Arctic, you'll know all there is to know about the man."

  Diana had plenty of time to digest the file while a sleek, twin-engined C-21 ferried her to Eilson Air Force Base, just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. There she boarded a four-engine turbo-prop C-130 Her­cules equipped with skis.

  When she finally climbed out of the 130, air chilled to a lethal twenty below by howling winds slashed at the eye and mouth slits in her ski mask. Dazzling blue-white light shimmered on the vast sheets of snowy ice, almost blinding her. Clumsy in her five layers of thermal underwear and outer Ex­treme Cold Weather gear, she waddled to the sim­ilarly bundled driver who zoomed up on a snow­mobile just as the C-130 touched down.

  "Welcome to the Arctic, Dr. Remington. Climb aboard and we'll get you out of the wind."

  Huddled behind the driver, Diana skimmed across the packed snow to the collection of modular, box­like buildings that constituted the U.S. Arctic Oceanographic Research Station. Once inside, she stripped off the bright orange cold weather jumpsuit and most of her layers.

  "Diana!"

  Greg Wells hurried forward to greet her. Short, bald, and radiating unbridled excitement, he was the world's leading expert on cyrogenetic regeneration. Diana had met him before at conferences and wasn't particularly impressed.

  ''Dr. Goode and I were thrilled to hear you were joining us," he said, pumping her hand. Without giving her a chance to do more than catch her breath, he swept her down a narrow corridor crowded with boxes and equipment. "I know you're anxious to view the find. He's right in here."

  A few moments later, Diana stepped into a frost-coated storage annex and almost fell over her boots. She stumbled to a halt, mesmerized by the body stretched out on a metal table.

  He was naked, bathed in harsh white light from head to toe, and absolutely the most magnificent male specimen she'd ever seen.

  Chapter 2

  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, rotound 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 ocean-ographers 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 bec
ome 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...