Fire And Ice Read Online Free Page A

was old. The Narcan could as easily kill him as save him, but she had no choice. She had to get him breathing and increase his blood pressure.
    "Mummy."
    "Narcan!"
    Ronnie slapped a fresh hypo into her glove. Sarah entered a vein, pumped a half milligram, massaged his faltering heart, and listened again.
    "Narcan!"
    On the third dose, the old man woke up vomiting. "Quickly." Ronnie helped her sit him up so he wouldn't choke on his vomit. But just as they had his torso erect he passed
    out, swallowed, and began to choke. Sarah cleared his airway.
    "Captain," she called to the men watching from the sick bay door. "I need the respirator from my boat. And the intubator."
    The Texan shouted down the corridor. In moments the mess boy ran in with the gear. The captain's companion, a tall, powerfully built black American, said, "What about the bullet?"
    "Would you step outside and close the door, please?"
    "Let's get something straight, Doc. Neighborhood I come from every man my age is dead or locked up. Mr. Jack is the only reason I'm not."
    "If I can't stabilize your friend he's a dead man. Get out." From what she could tell without X rays, a small-caliber bullet had entered at an angle, ricocheted off the gladiolus, plowed along the fourth rib toward his shoulder, tearing the subclavius, and lodged deeply in the lesser pectoralis.
    Lucky. Until his panicked numb-skull shipmates took it in their collective heads to remove the bullet. A mess boy who had served as a hospital nurse had been drafted to perform the wholly unnecessary operation. Morphine was prescribed to anesthetize the already unconscious victim. . Generous in the extreme, they had emptied the ship's dispensary into the old man's veins and set about butchering the remains of his shoulder. The bullet was in deep, and eventually they gave up and left it where they should have in the first place.
    That the overdose hadn't killed him outright was either a miracle or a testament to a constitution of titanium alloy. Judging by his harsh features, Sarah was inclined to believe the latter. His face might have been chiseled from igneous rock: sharp brows, hawk nose, square chin, cropped white hair and nary a jowl or a sag in the skin. And he bore the marks of torture from long ago—his back was crisscrossed with ancient scars, his fingernails and toenails had been ripped out.
    Yet whatever luck had kept him alive then and deflected the bullet today had held. The crew had heard on the ham radio cruiser network that the hospital yacht Veronica was bound for Pulo Helena. And who should hove over the horizon but Doctor Mike and Doctor Sarah?
    "Mummy, we're moving."
    The ship was definitely moving, heeling into a turn. "I know," said Sarah.
    "Where's Daddy?"
    "I don't know. Help me with this."
    "But—"
    "First things first—our patient. Don't cry, dear, I need you." She got him tubed and on the respirator and listened to his heart again. He seemed stable, the Narcan taking at least temporary effect.
    "Okay, darling, now we'll find out what the devil is going on here." She called for the captain. He came, accompanied by the black American.
    "How's he doing, Doc?"
    "Where is my husband?"
    "On the beach," said the black.
    "What? You left him on the beach? Where's our boat?" "We got her cradled up, safe on the main deck."' - "You shipped our boat? You can't—"
    "Done deal, Doc."
    Sarah tried to absorb the impossible. Ronnie looked ready to cry. Sarah put her arm around her automatically. She was aware that they had in essence been kidnapped, but all she could think about was Michael and the miles the ship's propellers were already churning between them. "You've stranded my husband," she said angrily. "He'll be frantic with worry. You can't just leave him there!"
    "You can go back and get him as soon as the old man's on his feet."
    "On his feet?" she echoed. "He needs to go in hospital." The black man shook his head.
    "The sooner he's in hospital the better chance he has of