[Thursday 5:18 p.m.]

Yuri Andreevich was mad as hell. After his one-on-one with Tanzan Mino, he knew he'd been screwed. Sticking a couple of "pilots" from Mino Industries in the cockpit. It was just the old GRU trick, surveillance under the specious guise of "support." He'd seen it all before.

But he'd had an idea. A flash. What about the woman Nikolai had seen? The one he said was T-Directorate?

A knockout. That's what Nikolai had claimed, so she shouldn't be hard to track down. He'd been methodically working the crowded corridors of the North Quadrant, checking every open doorway. Although the facility was huge and sprawling, he figured she'd probably be somewhere here close to Command Sector.

Where the hell could she be?

One thing was sure: Tanzan Mino was as sharp as all the rumors said. The bastard had been on-site for less than a day and already he'd suspected that something was brewing. So he'd made his own preemptive strike.

The problem now was, how to outsmart him.

This T-Directorate operative had to be the way. After he got her into a receptive mood, he'd lay out his case. Point out he had enough to worry about in the cockpit without playing flight instructor to a couple of Mino Industries greenhorns. He'd never flown an experimental plane with civilian copilots and he damned sure wasn't going to start now. Especially now.

Govno! Where the hell was she?