Hot As Ice

by Merline Lovelace

  As he surveyed the scene, relief shafted through him in swift, sharp spikes. There they were, the two mammoth hangars that had dominated Edwards's flight line since well before Charlie's time.

  "Look familiar?"

  Angling around, he flashed Diana a quick grin. "Like I never left."

  That wasn't true, of course. He'd recognized the two massive structures instantly, but the size and variety of the aircraft parked on the apron dazzled him. Descending the final step to the tarmac, he did a slow one-eighty while the hot concrete burned through the soles of his boots.

  Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't deny any longer that he'd stepped into a whole new world. The space-aged craft all around him made a mock­ery of his stubborn refusal to admit the truth.

  "Those are F-117s," Diana told him, descending the steps in his wake. "Stealth fighters."

  Those black, swept-wing beauties were fighters? Charlie started to salivate.

  Shading her eyes with one hand, his self-appointed tour guide to the twenty-first century pointed to a behemoth parked farther down the ramp.

  "And that's a C-5 Galaxy. At least, I think that's what it's called."

  Holy Moses! The thing had to be four stories high. Awed, Charlie did another sweep of the flight line while a blue AF sedan drove across the apron and pulled up at plane-side. A tall, trim colonel with blond hair bleached almost white by the fierce desert sun climbed out.

  "Major Stone?"

  Shifting his gear bag to his other hand, Charlie snapped to attention and whipped up his arm. The colonel returned the salute before reaching out to shake the major's hand.

  "I'm Colonel Pollock, commander of the Test Pi­lot School. Welcome home."

  The simple greeting triggered an avalanche of emotions for Charlie. Only now, with blessedly re­assuring sights and sounds and smells all around him, could he finally put to rest the panic that had been clawing at his insides ever since he'd come awake. This he knew. This was his world.

  Swallowing the boulder that seemed to have got­ten stuck in his throat, he gripped the colonel's hand. "Thanks."

  "We've got a team assembled to process your change in status."

  Change in status? Charlie felt more at home by the second. Trust the military to blanket his astound­ing return from the dead in mundane, bureaucratic terms.

  "The team has been read in," the colonel added. "They're all cleared at the highest security levels and can be fully trusted. Dr. Remington, I under­stand you're now senior scientist in charge of Pro­ject Iceman."

  "Yes, I am."

  The Iceman tag gave Charlie a jolt every time he heard it, but he had to admit it fit. So did the title blondie had assumed to explain her continued pres­ence at his side. He still couldn't bring himself to completely trust her, still hesitated to share his own theories about what had brought his plane down, but he'd accepted one stark reality.

  Right now, Diana Remington formed the only an­chor in his otherwise altered universe.

  "If you'll both come with me," Pollock said, "I'll drive you to your quarters. The processing team is waiting for you there."

  The last "quarters" Charlie had occupied at Ed­wards consisted of one eight-by-ten room on the second floor of a wooden, World War II-era bar­racks. The small, airless cube had housed him and another pilot, leaving space for only iron bunk beds and metal lockers. The building's common latrine facilities were located down a rickety flight of stairs, and the only relief from the stifling heat came from the wind that whistled through the wooden shutters, bringing clouds of Mojave sand in with it.

  The Distinguished Visitor suite Colonel Pollack ushered them to literally dropped Charlie's jaw. The living room boasted a circular leather sofa, marble-topped tables and an astonishing array of electronic equipment stacked in a wall unit. Sliding glass doors offered a spectacular view of the high desert. Two bedrooms opened off the living area, every bit as luxurious.

  "Is this how air force officers live these days?" he asked incredulously.

  "We wish," Pollock answered with a grin. "No, these are Distinguished Visitor quarters. We host everyone from princes to movie stars when the space shuttle lands, and they tend to expect some­thing a little more comfortable than your average crew dog quarters."

  The space shuttle. Charlie's glance riveted on a framed picture of the delta-winged vehicle. The ma­terial supplied by the recovery team had included pictures and information on the space program. He'd read that one of his old test pilot buddies, Deke Slayton, had gone into orbit, but the reality of space flight still hadn't sunk in until this moment.

  Charlie's pulse leaped. Maybe, just maybe, he'd qualify for the program like Deke and get to fly one of those babies. Excited by the idea, he followed Pollock to the dining room, where a half-dozen mil­itary personnel had jumped to attention. Every blasted one of them, he noted wryly, had one of those toy computers propped on the table in front of them. Diana had carried hers all the way from the Arctic. No one, it seemed, could function these days without one.

  Colonel Pollock made the introductions. Finance, personnel, operations, public affairs, the flight sur­geon, the shrink, a medical tech, the chaplain.

  "Would either of you like something to eat or drink before we get started?" the colonel asked the new arrivals. "The fridge is fully stocked, or we can call the Officers' Club and have them send over a couple of trays."

  Charlie looked to Diana, who must have sensed how eager he was to reclaim his life. Shaking her head, she declined the offer.

  "We ate box lunches on the plane. I'm okay for now."

  "Fine, let's get to it. Major Stone, if you'll sit here, I think Captain Rivera gets first crack at you."

  The slender, black-haired personnel officer waited until all parties were seated. Her dark eyes gentle, she slid a form across the table.

  "This your copy of AF Form 2098, which offi­cially changes your status from Missing and Pre­sumed Dead to Present for Duty. I've already up­dated the master personnel data system."

  "That's all it takes, huh? One piece of paper?"

  "That's all." She gave him a moment to read the form before passing him several others. "This is a set of orders reassigning you to the Test Pilot School here at Edwards, and this is a request to convene a special promotion board. The board will assess whether you should have been promoted along with your peers at various stages in your career."

  "There were a lot of folks who thought I was lucky to make major."

  She responded with a smile. "Your record says otherwise, sir. I've calculated the number of pro­motion boards you missed. Given your date of rank of, uh..." She stumbled over the year, swallowed hard, spit it out. "Of 1951, you'll get a total of seventy-two shots to everything up to and including major general. Sign here, sir."

  Charlie hadn't recovered from the shock of hear­ing that he'd be considered for promotion to general when the serious young finance officer hit him with an even greater whammy.

  "I retrieved your pay records from the archives, sir. At the time your plane went down, you were drawing twenty-five hundred and six dollars a month, plus another thousand hazardous duty pay. You were missing for five hundred forty months, which means you're entitled to back pay in the amount of..."

  His fingers flew over a small plastic pad with but­tons. Charlie had just figured out that three inch square was some kind of a miniaturized calculator when the lieutenant calmly announced the total.

  "One million, eight hundred ninety-three thou­sand, two hundred and forty dollars."

  "What!'

  The finance officer tapped the plastic keyboard again. "Yes, that's right. One million, eight hundred ninety-three thousand, plus change."

  Dazed, Charlie could only gape at the man.

  "Colonel Pollock said you'd need an advance against the amount due, so I drew out two thousand in cash. The rest we'll deposit electronically when you establish a bank account. If you'll sign here, sir."

  While the lieutenant counted out a stac
k of crisp new bills, Charlie caught Diana's glance.

  "Looks like you'll be able to replace your Golden Hawk with a Porsche. A whole fleet of Porsches, for that matter."

  The laughter dancing in her green eyes generated the craziest urge to reach over, bury his fists in her shoulder-length waves, drag her to him, and kiss the woman senseless. He hadn't touched her since that little session in the exercise room at the top of the world, but he wanted to. Lord, he wanted to!

  With a wrench, Charlie turned his attention back to the business at hand. "All right, let's get to the important stuff. When do I climb into a cockpit?"

  The flight surgeon exchanged a glance with the shrink. Clearing his throat, the physician took the point.

  "We can't put you back on flying status until we fully understand the physiological and psychologi­cal effects of your incarceration in the ice. That could take months, Major Stone. Or years."

  "I've already lost all the months and years I in­tend to lose."

  The doc looked to Colonel Pollock. Leaning for­ward, the senior aviator reinforced the flight sur­geon's position.

  "We also have to consider the fact that you've never flown today's high performance aircraft."

  "I've flown the Dragon Lady. Cruising along at 65,000 feet for upwards of eight hours is about as high performance as you get."

  ''The U-2 has undergone at least five generations of modifications since the last time you handled the controls. You might recognize the airframe, but that's about all. Assuming the docs find you fit to fly, it would take you at least a year to re-qual on the new avionics and aeronautical systems. Then there's your age..."

  "I'm only thirty-one."

  "By your count," Pollock said evenly. "By ours, you're seventy-six. We'll have to get a special waiver from the Secretary of the Air Force, and she'll have to decide whether to put someone who's gone through what you have back in the cockpit of a multimillion-dollar aircraft."

  He hesitated, then laid the truth on the line.

  "Senator John Glenn just rode into space again at the age of seventy-seven. NASA justified his flight by needing to study the effects of the aging process in a zero-gravity environment. But that was a second shot for a man with a whole pile of polit­ical clout behind him. If I were you, I wouldn't count on picking up your career where you left off."

  "Well, hell!"

  Charlie sat unmoving while the world he'd just reentered crashed and burned around him for the second time.

  A queer little ache started in Diana's chest as she watched a now-familiar mask come down over his face. After all he'd gone through, to be told he couldn't do what he'd done best—the only thing he'd ever wanted to do—had to be a crushing blow.

  "Let the docs look you over," the colonel said quietly. "Then I recommend you take some time to think about things. Use some of the leave you've accumulated over the past forty-five years, explore the present a little. You may decide there's some­thing you'd rather do with the rest of your life than strap yourself into a cockpit."

  Pollock left unsaid that once the major's story broke, Charlie wouldn't have time to fly. Diana knew, if he didn't, that he'd be swamped with re­quests for appearances on talk shows, for interviews, for lectures. He'd no doubt pull down another cou­ple of million for book rights to his incredible story, even more in movie options.

  She chewed on the inside of her lip as Charlie absorbed the colonel's advice.

  "You're right," he said at last. "I need to take a little time, look up some friends. Can your people track down a few individuals for me?''

  If the air force couldn't, Diana certainly could. She made a mental note of the short list of names Charlie supplied the personnel officer. There were only four, three men and a woman.

  "I'll get on this ASAP, Major."

  Pollock rose. "That's about it for the paperwork side of things. The docs want at you now. Dr. Rem­ington e-mailed them the recovery team reports.

  "I transmitted them electronically," she trans­lated, catching Charlie's blank look.

  "We'll get out of their way and let them have at you," the colonel said. Once more he gripped Char­lie's hand. "We're operating on your schedule here, Stone. You tell us when you're ready for Phase Two in Operation Iceman."

  "Yes, sir."

  The others filed out, leaving Diana and Charlie with the psychiatrist, flight surgeon and med tech. The docs had already poured over the biomedical data she'd transmitted but asked Charlie's consent to run more tests. This time, he agreed to cooperate.

  An hour later, both docs agreed that Major Stone's physical condition and mental facility were astounding considering his ordeal in the ice. Folding his stethoscope into his bag, the flight surgeon sur­veyed the array of carefully labeled glass tubes and plastic specimen cups the med tech was storing in a carrying case.

  "We'll take these samples right back to the lab, but I'll need to check you into the hospital to do a complete evaluation of your cardiovascular, pul­monary and musculoskeletel systems. We'll make that part of Phase Two," he added with a quick glance at Charlie. "After you've enjoyed some of that leave Colonel Pollack suggested."

  Diana escorted them to the door and handed them each a business card. "I'd like you to e-mail me the lab results. I want to keep current on Major Stone's medical status."

  "No problem, Dr. Remington." Fishing one of his own cards out of his uniform pocket, the flight surgeon passed it to her. "Just in case you need to reach me."

  "Thanks."

  When she went back into the living room, Charlie had opened the sliding glass doors and wandered out onto the flagstone patio. Hands planted on his hips, he stared at the slowly purpling dusk.

  With the swift changeability of the high desert, the temperature had dropped with the sun. Little more than a pleasant warmth lingered as Diana stepped through open doors. While she suspected Charlie's thoughts absorbed him more than the view, she couldn't help drawing in a quick breath at the vista spread out before them.

  The Mojave boasted a harsh beauty all its own. With L.A.'s choking blanket of smog some eighty miles distant, the sky glowed a deep, clear violet. A full moon hung suspended in the amethyst curtain, surrounded by a million stars that sparkled like Aus­trian crystals. Closer to earth, tall-stemmed Joshua trees lifted their short, spiky arms to the night. Yuc­cas and Spanish bayonet captured the gleam like silver swords in the shadows.

  "I've never really seen the desert by moonlight," Diana murmured, breaking the silence. "It's mag­nificent."

  He didn't respond for long moments. She thought the night had claimed him, but it was his past.

  "There used to be a roadhouse not too far from here," he said finally. "The Happy Bottom Riding Club. Pancho Barnes, the aviatrix, opened it up dur­ing the war as a restaurant and bar catering to pilots. It closed before I left Edwards, but for years all the guys from the base used to congregate there. Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, Deke. We'd check out a jeep and drive across the desert, aiming for the lights."

  Diana didn't say a word. This was the first time he'd talked about himself, the first time he'd opened up.

  “They closed the place one night. I was between mis­sions and didn't have to fly the next day, so I plugged nickels into the jukebox and listened to Pancho's tales about her barnstorming days until she finally kicked me out. On my way back to the base, the jeep blew a gasket. I was too lazy to walk and knew the milk truck would make a dawn run, so I spent the night where I was. I remember the stars were just as bright as they are tonight, and the moon seemed to hang over me like a big, golden balloon."

  She held her breath while he turned, summoning a crooked grin.

  "It's still hard for me to believe men have actu­ally walked on the moon. And I missed it."

  "Oh, Charlie." Aching for all he'd lost, she laid a consoling hand on his arm. "You've missed so much. I wish there was some way to give you back those years."

  Her sympathy seemed to embarrass the tough, ul-tramacho aviator. "Yeah, wel
l, right now I'll settle for a cold beer and a T-bone steak."

  "That we can manage. You grab a couple of beers from the fridge and I'll take care of the steaks."

  "What's this? Are you actually going to turn on a real stove?"

  "Not hardly. That's why the telephone was in­vented."

  She started to turn away, only to swing back when he caught her hand.

  "Diana."

  "Yes?"

  "I...

  The moment stretched. He looked so alone against the vast panorama of the stars, so lonely. His fingers tightened on hers. Calloused and warm, they sent little pinpricks of pleasure dancing up her arm.

  "Thanks for listening," he said gruffly. "You're welcome."

  She ached to comfort him. Ached to slide her arms around his waist and fit her body against his. Just the thought raised a flush on her skin. She only needed to take one step, a slight move forward, and she'd be in his arms.

  Without warning, the need that had swept through her when he'd kissed her at the oceanographic sta­tion surged back, sudden and fierce. Surprised by its savage intensity, she took a quick, jerky step away.

  "I don't know about you," she said with a breezy cheerfulness designed to cover her sudden, throat-closing desire, "but I'm ready for that beer."

  Chapter 6

  Diana couldn't sleep.

  Her internal clock was still shuffling between Washington, Arctic and California time. She tried to convince herself it was the two beers she'd downed with her steak that had left her so edgy and restless, but knew darned well the real cause of her sleeplessness.

  He was sacked out in the next room.

  Hoping a shower would relax her, she leaned against the tiled stall while hot, stinging pellets nee­dled her from head to toe. When that exquisite tor­ture didn't make her sleepy, she wrapped up in one of the inch-thick terry-cloth robes she found hang­ing behind the bathroom door, settled down at the desk in her bedroom, and flicked on her laptop. She might as well check her e-mail and get caught up with what was happening in her other life. She also needed to contact Allen and explain that she'd be out of town longer than she'd anticipated.