The woman, the bitch, was no fool: An insight he'd come by the hard way. But maybe the CIA guy—what had she said his name was?—Vance?
How the hell did he get here? However it had happened, he was being kept in the West Quadrant. It had been no trick to find him.
He was a godsend; his help would make the scenario possible. Now it merely required split-second timing.
He glanced up at the big liquid crystal display screen on the far wall, noting it read zero minus eight hours ten minutes. He should be back in the West Quadrant now, catching some sleep—if Taro Ikeda knew he was here in the hangar, there'd be hell to pay—but time was running out.
Tanzan Mino had listened icily to his renewed arguments against additional personnel in the cockpit, then declared that the viability of the program depended on having backups. Merely an essential precaution. End of discussion.
Bullshit. As soon as the political games were played out, the CEO was planning to get rid of him, probably by some "accident."
Well, screw him. And that's where the American came in. The thing to do was just appear to be proceeding with the countdown normally, keep everything innocent. Then, at the last minute . . .
He stared up at Daedalus I one last time, watching as the maintenance crews finished the last of the preflight scramjet preps. And he shook his head in amazement that Andrei Androv and all his damned propulsion engineers could create a genuine technological miracle and still be total bumblers when it came to what in hell was really happening.
These technical types thought they were so brilliant! But if it had taken them all this time to realize they'd been fucked by Mino Industries, then how smart could they really be? Made him wonder how the Baikonur Cosmodrome ever managed to get so much as a turnip into orbit.
Now these same geniuses had to get Daedalus II flight- ready in just a few hours, and had to do it without anyone suspecting what they were doing. Finally, they had to be ready to roll into action the instant the "accident" happened. No trial runs.