Ignition. Part 29

"Thanks for keeping your cool in the Launch Control Center." Iceberg had difficulty finding the right words as they walked.

She shook her head grimly. "A lot of people died under my watch. Two of them right in front of my eyes."

"Yeah, and if you had tried a crazy stunt-like I would have-there'd be a lot more bodies, half the people on the firing floor, maybe. I'm not sure anyone else could have pulled that off, that kind of cool control. You really made a difference, Panther."

Nicole turned her head and smiled back at him. "So the Iceberg begins to melt."

He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Maybe . . . just a little." He leaned more weight on her as they shuffled to the LCC.

She lowered her dark eyes, then ran a finger through her short, fluffy hair to loosen the sweat-dampened strands. "I have to admit this morning was more ... ah exhilarating than I've had in a long time. I remember my aviator days, my astronaut training. It was tough but rewarding." She swallowed. Iceberg squeezed her shoulder as they walked, remembering how good it felt to hold her.

Nicole continued, "I had been having my doubts about leaving the 'real work' as an astronaut and 'selling out' to administration and politicking. Those are your words, you know." She was quiet for a moment, then looked up at him. "But I'm good at this, Iceberg. I shouldn't have to feel guilty because I'm cut out for something different." She touched the gold key on the necklace she wore. "These are my dreams and my decisions, and I don't need to follow anybody else's plans but my own."

"Especially when some jerks keep getting on your case about it," Iceberg said with a self-deprecating smile. "Must have been tough to deal with that Phillips guy."

"It's been tough dealing with you too, sometimes."

A van pulled up, bearing the Atlantis crew back to a secure area. Gator had already been hauled off by helicopter to the base hospital at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The crew-his crew-staggered out of the van, still in their orange pressure suits. NASA personnel swarmed around them. Still leaning on Nicole's shoulder, Iceberg grinned at them all. Burns and Purvis spotted him and pushed through the crowd. The rest of the crew followed. The group had spent so much time training together, rehearsing this mission, never expecting the ordeal they would actually endure.

The last to leave the van, Alexandra Koslovsky moved slowly as if she were an old woman with rheumatism. He wondered if her foot had been seriously injured. She blinked at the clear sky, standing tall.

After speaking quietly with the rest of his crew, Nicole helped Iceberg shuffle over to Alexandra. The Russian cosmonaut stood like a soldier waiting to report. "Thank you for your a.s.sistance in rescuing me, Colonel Iceberg," she said, seeing his beaten appearance. "I am happy to report that Lieutenant Commander Gator's injuries do not appear to be life-threatening, and we expect him to survive and recover."

Nicole squeezed Alexandra's hand. "I'm so sorry about Andrei," she said. "I was there with him. I wish I could have done something to prevent it. He died a hero."

Alexandra nodded, her face a still sculpture. Then, like a shock wave rippling across her skin, emotion briefly filtered through her cold mask until she covered it up again. She returned a brisk nod. "And I must apologize for the death of Mission Commander Franklin. Both men died bravely." She shook her head before continuing. "But unfortunately both men are still dead."

Hearing the sudden sharpness in her words even in this sad situation brought the point home to Iceberg.

He knew exactly what she meant.

Amba.s.sador Andrei Trovkin, the big bearlike Russian, had done exactly what Iceberg would have done himself-and Trovkin had died for it. Sometimes b.a.l.l.s-to-the-wall action was called for . . . but sometimes it was better to keep your head and just wait. All his life. Iceberg had had difficulty telling the difference between those two situations.

"I'm glad you didn't end up dead, Iceberg," Nicole said, "though you sure tried hard enough to get yourself killed."

He hugged her back. "I'm a slow learner, but I'm persistent."

Later, inside her own office in the LCC, Nicole opened the charcoal-gray Personal Data a.s.sistant she had recovered from the suit jacket Mr. Phillips had tossed in the back of her helicopter. She already knew some of the answers, but perhaps this contained more details.

Iceberg and Amos sat beside her, watching and waiting. The medics hovered outside the door, desperate to haul Iceberg off to a hospital-but he wanted some answers first. Nicole hadn't argued. This was probably the only way to get him to sit still for a while, and it felt good to be comfortable next to him after so many months of brooding tension between them.

Though the computerized device was small and hand held, its hard disk was crammed with information, useful data she could unlock to determine just what had driven the dapper little man to such a bizarre plan.

It would take months to unravel it all, but some of the details might be close to the surface, where Mr.

Phillips could gloat over them.

She handed the PDA over to Amos. "You're the expert, Amos," Nicole said. "He told me his name wasn't Mr. Phillips."

"Thanks." Amos set right to work, using the blunt plastic stylus to call up file after file. Nicole leaned over and squinted at the murky liquid crystal display, studying the information.

NASA security marched through the LCC halls, trying to put a lid back on the situation. The FBI milled throughout the building. It would only be a matter of minutes before NASA Headquarters, the White House, Congress, and all the security forces in the free world would start clamoring for attention. Not tomention the reporters.

"This is the real stuff here," Amos said. "His name was Thomas Carrington Benchley Jr. Man oh man, what an ego."

Nicole stared down at the letters on the PDA screen. "Typical."

Amos said, "I'll cross-check his personal files." He tapped with the stylus, opening up one journal entry after another. Memos, logs, strident letters to investment companies. "We'll need to verify the leads, but it's a good guess he didn't expect anyone else to find this information. His mother died when he was young and left him with quite an inheritance. Looks like he was an upper-cla.s.s kid, an only child."

Iceberg leaned back in his creaking government chair, wincing in pain. "No surprise there."

From NASA security, she had already heard part of Rusty's story- that "Phillips" was once a high-powered rogue trader on Wall Street who had dumped everything into initial public offerings of high-tech industries and aeros.p.a.ce, hoping for that big breakthrough . . . but his money went faster than the breakthrough came. He had lost his s.h.i.+rt on those investments and got screwed in bad trades, big-time.

Publicly, he had lost the whole family fortune, two hundred million dollars. His wife and kids were now eating Chef Boyardee and eking out a Spartan lifestyle, barely getting along on what little insurance he left them. Nicole bet they didn't have fond memories of their dad.

But he had made other illegal deals, other contingencies, so that he came out with a golden nest egg . . .

and a whole new ident.i.ty.

Iceberg heaved a deep breath. "Good thing he wasn't any more successful at the new career than he was in the old one."

Amos chuckled. "Well, his bank account isn't getting any bigger today."

Nicole laughed out loud. "That's for sure. They'll find that suitcase of gemstones as soon as they track down Senator Boorman out in the swamps."

A rap came at the door. "Ms. Hunter, we really need to get Colonel Friese to the hospital."

"How long are those medics going to make me stay in an uncomfortable bed with sheets that smell like bleach?" Iceberg said.

Nicole smothered a grin. "Not long enough."

Amos straightened his round-lensed gla.s.ses and winked at Nicole. "Hey, if you're going to be eating hospital food for a few weeks, how about we all sneak out for some Fat Boy's barbecue? Then, while he's stuffed and satisfied, the medics will be able to operate on him without him feeling the pain!"

Iceberg leaned forward and tried to punch his little brother on the shoulder, but his joints were too stiff and sore to even make a fist. He fell back against his seat and groaned, finally unable to function. Amos and Nicole laughed as the medics came in to take Iceberg away.

67.

MERRITT ISLAND.

NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE.

THE MILLIONS OF HUNGRY creatures in the swamp made a deafening racket. Thousands of individual voices, each one disgusting or frightening or threatening in its own way: whining bugs, croaking frogs, biting insects, buzzing gnats. Water trickled and splashed. Creatures moved through the underbrush, large ones, dangerous ones, unseen predators.

Senator Boorman clung to the rough bark of the tree. Spanish moss dangled just out of reach, infested with all-too-large spiders. Ants crawled on his hands and legs. He had given up trying to brush them off, because other things preoccupied him.

He had climbed to what he hoped was safety in the dense branches of a Georgia pine, bothered by sharp evergreen needles and sticky resin that clung to his clothes and the palms of his hands. Boorman thought of multicolored coral snakes slithering through the branches . . . large and deadly Florida panthers just waiting for a free lunch . . . long-tusked wild boars that were so prevalent they left ripped-up patches ofgra.s.s all across the site.

Boorman was wet, exhausted, hungry, and caked with mud and swamp slime . . . in short, utterly miserable. And the pine tree he had climbed in desperation was not actually very tall after all.

Two enormous bull alligators waited in the gra.s.sy area that surrounded the gnarled tree, their backs lumpy with ridges, their skin black as demons of night.

Both gators yawned wide, showing the pinkish insides of their cavernous gullets, flas.h.i.+ng enough wicked teeth to line all the freeways in Nebraska. They had treed him on his headlong flight, but they refused to go away. The snorting alligators continued circling the trunk . . . waiting, smelling their quarry above.

Boorman swallowed. He hoped rescue would come soon.

He searched the sky, squinting. The sun was bright, and the air was clear-but he saw no circling helicopters, no search parties beating the bushes to find him and take him away from all this.

They had to know where he was. They had to come find him. Somebody would come.

He knew they would want to rescue him. He hoped they would rescue him. He was a United States senator, after all.

Boorman looked down again and clung to the tree so tightly that the bark hurt his hands. Those alligators down there appeared to be getting hungrier every minute.

He looked up to the sky again and waited.