"All the sensitive areas are under heavy security now. They are impossible to penetrate."
Terrific, Vance thought. "By the way, how does your son, the test pilot, figure into all this?"
"All along he was planning to . . . I don't know. He refused to tell me. But it doesn't matter. Now that two Mino Industries guards are being put in the cockpit with him, whatever he was planning is impossible. So we have to do something here, on the ground."
"Well, where is he?"
"He is in the hangar now."
"I'll need to see him."
For one thing, Vance thought, he probably knows how to use a gun. All Soviet pilots carry an automatic and two seven-round clips for protection in case they have to ditch in the wilderness somewhere. Our first order of business is to jump some of these Mino-gumi goons who're posing as security men and get their weapons.
"By the way, do you know where they're keeping the American woman who was brought here with me?"
The old man's eyes grew vague. "I believe she's somewhere here in the West Quadrant. I think she was transferred here around eighteen hundred hours, and then a little later her suitcase arrive from hangar."
"Her bag?" His pulse quickened.