"Sure." She reached for the keys, then turned back to wave to Ken. But he was already climbing aboard and didn't notice.
"Isn't it odd?" I mused, "We still haven't heard zip out of Noda. He must have realized by now we have his silver case. What's he planning to do? Where'll he try to head us off?"
"Good question." She turned the key in the ignition. "I'm not going to feel safe till we've got the actual goods on his phony sword. Not just some dummy data."
"My guess is he'll try and nail us at the airport. It'd be his best shot."
"At least Ken was smart enough to make the reservations under fake names, so he won't know which flight to watch."
"There're not that many. He could be covering them all. On the other hand, he'll assume we're arriving via the MITI chopper, so maybe we can dodge his hit squad."
"I feel like I've been run through a wringer." She was pulling out of the slot, backing around to begin making her way through the rows of staff vehicles, all with special Tsukuba parking stickers.
"You can say that again. Who could have guessed all the . . ."
I'd reached around to check the back window, hoping to get the heat going, when my field of vision turned an incandescent orange, bright and glaring, as though the sun had just come in for a close encounter. Before I could turn to see what . . . the dashboard rose up and slugged me in the teeth, as a shock wave flung us both against the seat belts.
We're dead, I thought. We've been bombed. Noda's just dropped . . .