Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

mood to name him Hero of the Soviet Union.

He stood up, stretched and yawned. "I think I'll catch a few hours' sleep. We'll begin programming the President's responses first thing in the morning."

"What time is it now?" Suvorov inquired dully. "I've lost all track of day and night in this tomb."

"Five minutes to midnight."

Suvorov yawned and sprawled on a couch. "You go ahead to bed.

I'm going to have another drink. A good Russian never leaves the room before the bottle is empty."

"Good night," said Lugovoy. He turned and entered the hallway.

Suvorov waved halfheartedly and pretended he was on the verge of dozing off. But he studied the second hand of his watch for three minutes. Then he rose swiftly, crossed the room and noiselessly made his way down the hallway to where it made a ninetydegree turn toward the sealed elevator. He stopped and pressed his body to the wall and glanced around the edge of the corner.

Lugovoy was standing there patiently smoking his cigar. In less than ten seconds the elevator door silently opened and Lugovoy stepped inside. The time was exactly twelve o'clock. Every twelve hours, Suvorov noted, the project's psychologist escaped the laboratory, returning twenty to thirty minutes later.

He left and walked past the monitoring room. Two of the staff members were intently examining the President's brain rhythms and life signs. One of them looked up at Suvorov and nodded, smiling slightly.

"Going smoothly?" Suvorov asked, making conversation.

"Like a prima ballerina's debut," answered the technician.

Suvorov entered and looked up at the TV monitors. "What's happening with the others?" he inquired, nodding toward the images of Margolin, Larimer and Moran in their sealed cocoons.

"Sedated -and fed heavy liquin concentrations of protein and carbohydrates intravenously."

"Until it's their time for programming," Suvorov anded.

"Can't say. You'll have to ask Dr. Lugovoy that question."

Suvorov watched one of the screens as an attendant in a laboratory coat lifted a panel on Senator Larimer's cocoon and inserted a hypodermic needle into one arm.

"What's he doing?" Suvorov asked, pointing.

The technician looked up. "We have to administer a sedative every eight hours or the subject will regain consciousness."

' "I see," said Suvorov quietly. Suddenly it all became clear in his mind as the details of his escape plan fell into place. He felt good, better than he had in days. To celebrate, he returned to the dining room and opened another bottle of port. Then he took a small notebook from his pocket and scribbled furiously on its pages.

Oscar Lucas PArked HIS CAR in a VIP slot at the Walter Reed Army Medical School and hurried through a side entrance. He jogged around a maze of corrinors, finally stopping at a double door guarded by a Marine sergeant whose face had a Mount Rushmore solemnity about it.

The sergeant carefully screened his identification and directed him into the hospital wing where sensitive and highly secret autopsies were held. Lucas quickly found the door marked LABORATORY. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and entered.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," he said.

"No, Oscar," said Alan Mercier. "I only walked in a minute ago myself."

Lucas nodded and looked around the glass-enclosed room.

There were five men besides himself: General Metcalf, Sam Emmett, Martin Brogan, Mercier and a short chesty man with rimless glasses introduced as Colonel Thomas Thornburg, who carried the heavy title of Director of Comparative Forensics and Clinical Pathology.

"Now that everyone is here, said Colonel Thornburg in a strange alto voice, "I can show you gentlemen our results."

He went over to a large window and peered at a huge circular machine on the other side of the glass. It looked like a finned turbine attached by a shaft to a generator. Half of the turbine disappeared into the concrete floor. Inside its inner diameter was a cylindrical opening, while just outside lay a corpse on a translucent tray.

"A spatial analyzer probe, or SAP as it's affectionately called by my staff of researchers who developed it. What it does essentially is explore the body electronically through enhanced X rays while revealing precise moving pictures of every millimeter of tissue and bone."

"A kind of CAT scanner," ventured Brogan.