Hot As Ice

by Merline Lovelace

"Negative, Remington. We're not going any­where until we figure out how a mutant strain of bacteria developed in a lab in California was pumped into a plane home-based in Turkey."

  "That could take days!"

  His jaw set. "So it takes days."

  "Be reasonable, Charlie. We'll have to recreate the whole chain of custody for U-2 life support equipment, from the time it left the Lockheed plant to the time it arrived in Turkey."

  "Your friend said your boss had wrangled the CIA's cooperation to retrieve certain records. We'll just add a few more items to the request list."

  "A few! Unless the CIA has archived everything onto computer disks, they'll need a moving van to haul all those boxes of records."

  "That's their problem. While you're at it, ask your pal to verify Irwin Goode's present where­abouts. I might just decide to pay the esteemed doc­tor a call."

  "Over my dead body," Diana muttered, shagging a hand through her hair. She took a turn around the room to marshal her arguments, then halted in her tracks. A mask had dropped over Charlie's face, leaving it taut and strained.

  Like a hissing cat with fur ruffed and fangs bared, fear clawed its way up Diana's spine. "Are you feeling dizzy?"

  His throat worked. Jaw tight, he forced out a sin­gle harsh syllable. "No."

  "Then what...?"

  "I'm sorry, Diana. I didn't think, dammit!"

  "About what?"

  "About your dead body."

  "Huh?"

  Ignoring that less than intelligent response, he wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hustled her toward the door. "Forget the stuff in the bed­room. We're heading back to the base."

  "Charlie, for heaven's sake! What's got into you?"

  "A bug," he snarled. "A mutant microbe. And there's a good chance I passed the little bastard to you."

  Enlightenment dawned. With it came a welter of confused emotions. Chagrin. Belated acknowledg­ment. The tiniest touch of fear. Overriding all else was the awareness that Charlie had shrugged off the bacteria's possible effects on his own pulmonary sys­tem, but the thought that he might have infected her had put him in a cold sweat.

  "Wait a minute!" Diana dug in her heels. "Let me think about this."

  "There's nothing to think about. We've got to get you to the hospital, let the docs test your blood."

  "Just hang on a sec, will you!"

  His jaw set in a way she was coming to know all too well. He looked ready to toss her over his shoul­der. From the dangerous glint in his eyes, he might just have worked up enough steam to get past her defenses and pull it off. Hastily, she went into her scientist mode.

  "I agree we need to get back to the base," she said with a credible assumption of calm, "but not because I'm worried you might have passed the bug to me or anyone else. Let's look at the facts. I was with you for six days before you woke up, Charlie, and every day since. We've engaged in close phys­ical contact on a number of occasions."

  To say the least!

  "I haven't experienced any dizzy spells or exhib­ited other unusual symptoms."

  That wasn't completely true, of course. Since the moment Major Stone had opened his eyes and pinned her with his fierce blue stare, she'd experi­enced all kinds of unusual symptoms, including mo­ments of sexual excitement so intense she'd come close to blacking out.

  "You've also been exposed to a number of other personnel," she continued, shoving aside the mem­ory of those hours in Charlie's arms. "No one's reported feeling ill or suffering from dizziness."

  "How do you know?"

  "For all that the recovery operation was con­ducted in absolute secrecy, we followed a specific protocol. The team members would know to report any unusual symptoms. Likewise, the personnel cleared to brief you in at Edwards."

  The twin blades of guilt and fear knifing through Charlie's gut took a break long enough for him to process her calm assurances.

  "All right," he growled. "Let's suppose I haven't passed this bug on to you. Yet. What's to say I won't?"

  ''There are no guarantees, of course, but consid­ering that we did everything but crawl into each other's skin last night with no apparent repercus­sions, I'd say the chances of transfer are pretty slim."

  "Pretty slim's not good enough."

  Not anywhere near good enough. Just the thought he might have infected this brilliant, vibrant woman with a mutant strain of bacteria sent a icy trickle of sweat down Charlie's spine.

  He wasn't afraid for himself. He'd flown too many combat missions and strapped himself into the cockpit of too many test aircraft. Like most of his fellow pilots, he'd learned to calculate the odds of survival, then consciously ignore them.

  Adding Diana to the equation threw every cal­culation out the window.

  His fists balled. He hadn't prayed in a long time. Not in over forty-five years, as a matter of fact. Yet suddenly Charlie found himself beseeching the higher power who'd preserved him in ice to spread a similar protective shield around Diana.

  With a cool look, the object of his prayers wrenched his attention back to her. "You breathed in this particular bacterium with the oxygen pumped through your life support system. It appears to have been absorbed through your lungs into your blood­stream. Unless someone pumps more of those suck­ers into the air around me, there's a very low like­lihood I drew them into my lungs."

  She was overstating the matter, deliberately downplaying the risk. He didn't need a Ph.D. to figure that out. But her unruffled calm produced its intended result. Slowly, Charlie unbunched his fists.

  "Okay, you've almost convinced me."

  She puffed out a relieved breath. "Good."

  "Almost."

  To his profound disgust, the hand he lifted to curl around her neck shook like a leaf. She must have felt the tremors when his fingers tunneled under her hair, but thankfully refrained from comment.

  "I couldn't forgive myself if I caused you hurt, Diana."

  "Really?" Her head tilted back a few degrees, until it rested lightly against his hand. Beneath a fringe of dusky black lashes, her eyes glowed cat green. "Are we speaking in the physical or meta­physical sense here?"

  All right. He'd stuck his neck out this far. He might as well lay it right on the chopping block.

  "Both."

  He waited, half hoping and half scared out of his gourd that she'd reciprocate. "Funny."

  The husky murmur raised a new set of chills on Charlie's skin.

  ''I was thinking something rather similar just a few moments ago."

  She wasn't ready to say the actual words. Neither was he, for that matter. They didn't need to. The slow heat that transferred from her skin to his fin­gertips said it all.

  He'd fallen in love once, or thought he had. The cute little army nurse he'd romanced into a brief, passionate engagement had shipped home, hung up her uniform, and ultimately married her high school sweetheart. Right now, Charlie could barely remem­ber her name, much less her face.

  His fingers tightened on Diana's soft flesh. Her hair tumbled over his hand in cotton-soft waves. His chest tight, he breathed in the mixture of shampoo, salt spray, and woman that was hers alone. God, he wanted to kiss her!

  Uncurling his hand and putting some distance be­tween them took everything he had. He felt as though he was letting go of his lifeline, splashing into a dark, icy sea yet again. He could only pray she'd be there again, smiling down at him, if and when he woke up again.

  "Here's the deal," he said, steeling himself against the acute sense of loss just a few feet of separation engendered. "If you're in no imminent danger of contamination, as you insist, we'll head back to the base...with one quick stop along the way."

  "What stop?"

  "The Lockheed plant in Burbank. It's only a few miles out of the way."

  "But..."

  "Just one quick stop."

  "Charlie..."

  "Lockheed developed and produced the U-2, Di­ana. They probably subcontracted out the life sup­port system, but Kelly Johnson would
have main­tained the overall production records right there in his Skunk Works. Johnson never gave out all the pieces of the puzzle. If the program's been declassified, as you say, I might still be able to pull a few strings and get access to..."

  "The Burbank plant closed years ago, Charlie."

  "What?"

  "It's true."

  "It can't be! Lockheed Aircraft produced some of the world's finest aircraft. Hell, when they started work on the Dragon Lady, they were turning out seventeen P-38s, four B-17s, and six different ver­sions of the Hudson bomber a day!"

  "As far as I know, they're still turning out some of the world's finest aircraft," Diana assured him hastily. "But real estate costs in L.A. went berserk in the sixties and seventies, and Lockheed moved their production plant down to Marietta, Georgia. The Skunk Works moved to Air Force Plant 42, in Palmdale. I remember reading about it in the back­ground dossier they gave me on the U-2 program."

  Relief swept through him in palpable waves. He didn't want to imagine a world without the creative genius of Clarence "Kelly" Johnson's famous Skunk Works.

  Both Johnson and the Skunk Works were icons of his era. A flimsy structure with packing crates for walls and a circus tent for a roof, the facility was originally set up to design and build a new fighter for the Army Air Corps during WWII. Security around the new project was so tight, other Lockheed employees couldn't help but wonder what Johnson was brewing. The inevitable comparisons to the Kickapoo Joy Juice brewed by Andy Capp's comic strip characters in Dogpatch's "Skonk Works" made the rounds, and the name stuck.

  Charlie's first exposure to Johnson came in the mid-fifties, when the dynamic engineer designed and built the first U-2 in a mere eight months. In Major Stone's considered opinion, the Dragon Lady was Johnson's finest achievement. And if he knew Kelly Johnson, the engineer's records were far more complete and detailed than those of the CIA.

  "Where's this Palmdale?" he asked Diana.

  "If we take a different route back to Edwards, it's right on the way."

  "Well, what do you know?" For the first time today, Charlie felt as though things were finally aimed in the right direction. "Let's get our gear and hit the road."

  A quick call to OMEGA notified the headquarters of the reason behind their relocation. Mackenzie had just arrived back in D.C. Typically, she shrugged off her wasted trip to the west coast and cheerfully promised to send someone out to retrieve the sen­sors and cameras. She also agreed to advise Light­ning of the change in plans.

  That task done, Diana joined Charlie in the bed­room. Collecting the various pieces of clothing they'd bought and worn for the past few days strained the limits of the paper shopping bags. The handles broke on one, and the bottom gave out on another when she threw in her still-damp slacks and top.

  "Hang on," she told Charlie as he scooped up his toiletries and prepared to dump them helter-skelter into his gear bag. "I saw some trash sacks under the sink in the kitchenette."

  She returned with the box of plastic sacks and tossed him a couple. "They're not very elegant, but they'll do the trick."

  Bemused, Charlie rubbed the membrane-thin plastic between his fingers. "When did they come up with this stuff?"

  Diana paused, taken aback. He'd acclimated so smoothly to the world as she knew it, she tended to forget he'd skipped almost a half century.

  "I don't know. Sometime in the early eighties, I think."

  "Amazing."

  "You wouldn't think so if you worked in solid waste management. That stuff isn't biodegradable. It doesn't decompose," she translated. "As a result of our dependency on plastic products, this gener­ation is about to be buried in its own garbage. But that's another lecture for another day."

  Stuffing her wet things into one of the bags, she tossed the rest of her clothing into another. "Ready?"

  Charlie cast a quick glance around the room. His gaze lingered for a moment on the bed. When his eyes met hers again, Diana read both regret and a grim reality in them.

  "We'll get through this," she promised. "To­gether. And when it's over, we might just have to come back to this little hide-away and finish what we started here."

  A grin worked its way across his face. ''Without the cameras."

  "You got it."

  They were halfway down the crushed shell walk to the car parked in a wash of moonlight when Char­lie's own internal systems went on full alert. He didn't know what set them off. Maybe it was the unnatural stillness of the night beneath the unceas­ing murmur of the sea. Or simply the heightened awareness of a man who senses danger to his chosen mate.

  Whatever triggered them, his instincts were prim­itive, predatory, and all male. His jaw locked. His muscles corded. Eyes narrowing, he slowed his step and searched the rocks on either side of the path.

  "Get back to the cottage," he said softly.

  "What...?"

  "Now, Diana."

  He half expected her to bridle at the abrupt com­mand, but suddenly she, too, tensed. She spun around, sweeping the mounded sand with a hard glance just as a stooped, shadowy figure stepped from behind one of the rocky projections a mere ten yards away.

  Charlie recognized him at once. The scientist's stooped shoulders and wreath of whispy white hair made him instantly recognizable. And the hand he kept tucked in the pocket of his ill-fitting sports jacket made him infinitely dangerous.

  Chapter 13

  "Dr . Goode! What are you doing here?"

  Diana played it dumb while she did a swift visual of the figure standing in the shadows just yards away. She didn't see a weapon, but the hand he had buried in his jacket pocket warned her not to make any precipitous moves.

  "You sound surprised to see me," the scientist replied. "I don't understand why. You've raised a number of questions regarding my work with the initial U-2 cadre. Surely you must realize I would want to answer those questions in person."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Come, come, Diana. One doesn't attain the years or the stature I have in my profession without acquiring a number of acolytes. One of the young men I trained now works at the CIA. He couldn't tell me, of course, who had requested copies of my early studies but thought I'd be pleased to know my work was still in demand. It took me a while to trace the requests to you."

  "How did you find us?" she asked, abandoning all pretenses.

  She sensed rather than saw Charlie inch away from her. She guessed instantly he intended to di­vide Goode's attention...or draw the man's fire.

  "It was quite difficult," the elderly scientist ad­mitted, "but I finally pinned down the origination point of an e-mail you sent to a colleague at the Harrell Institute."

  Well, so much for supposedly secure computers! Mackenzie wasn't going to be happy with the fact that the technology touted by its designers as ab­solutely, positively inviolate had already been com­promised. Probably by some pimply-faced high schooler with nothing better to do than hack into top-secret systems.

  Another almost imperceptible movement had her praying Charlie wouldn't do anything noble or stu­pid, like make himself a target to save her.

  "What do you want?" she demanded, trying to focus Goode's gaze squarely on her.

  "Surely, it's obvious. I want to... Please, Major Stone, I must ask you to remain quite still."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then I'm afraid you'll force me to a drastic measure I would rather avoid."

  With obvious reluctance, the Nobel Prize winner withdrew his hand from his pocket. Diana expected to see a gun. She'd much rather have seen a gun than the slender glass tube he clutched in a hand spotted with age.

  Her breath left on a hiss. ''Is that what I think it is?"

  "I doubt you're familiar with this particular de­rivative, Dr. Remington. The army has strictly con­trolled information relating to Mycotoxin T-4."

  "What the hell is Mycotoxin T-4?" Charlie snarled.

  "An airborne biological agent," Goode explained with gentle patience. "
A considerably more pow­erful derivative of Mycotoxin T-2, known in the seventies as Yellow Rain."

  "T-2 was banned by the 1975 Biological and Toxin Weapons Treaty," Diana whispered hoarsely. "In its milder form, it inhibited DNA, RNA and protein synthesis. Its more virulent form caused al­most instantaneous vomiting and diarrhea, followed rapidly by hemorrhaging and asphyxiation. I..." She gulped in a steadying breath. "I didn't even know there was a T-4 derivative."

  "It was developed some years ago," Goode said. "Purely for research purposes, of course."

  "Of course."

  "I should hate to break the vial and loose it here. Given this breeze, it could carry to some of the other cottages at the resort. Shall we go back inside?''

  Her pulse hammering, Diana darted a swift look at Charlie. Moonlight sculpted his face into harsh planes and angles, but she read the same wild thoughts in his shadowed eyes as raced through her own mind.

  Time. They needed to buy time. Talk Goode out of whatever desperate measures he'd planned. Get into position for a counterattack...one that wouldn't give him time to smash the glass vial he clutched.

  "Walk backward, if you please, keeping your hands where I can see them."

  They backed up awkwardly, their footsteps crunching on the crushed shell, the trash sacks knocking their knees. The ocean's roar deadened all other sounds. The rocky cliffs covered with ice plant cut off any view of the beach below. It was as if the world had narrowed to this narrow, moon-washed path and the three people who trod it.

  When they reached the small portico that fronted the bungalow, Charlie's knuckles whitened where he gripped the sacks. He was measuring the dis­tance, Diana guessed, preparing to sling one of the bags.

  "No heroics, Major. You and Dr. Remington must die, I'm afraid, but do you really wish to re­lease this virus into the air and take an undetermined number of innocent civilians with you?"

  Goode said it so calmly, with absolutely no in­flection in his voice, that Diana's blood iced over in her veins. She knew then that there'd be no nego­tiation, no bargaining. Only an agonizing, if mer­cifully swift death.

  "You're right-handed, are you not, Diana? Please retrieve the key card from your purse or pocket with your left hand and open the door."