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“Kelly, it’s April.”

“How’s it going out there?”

April said, “A couple of cracked windows but otherwise we’re okay. The Weather Channel says the storm’s moving inland and breaking up.”

Eamons nodded, then realized that April couldn’t see it. “We lost power here for a few hours but it just came back on.”

“Listen, Kelly,” April said, lowering her voice slightly. “I think I’ve found something.”

“What?”

“It might not be important, but you told me we should look for anybody who’s getting an unusual amount of money, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, as soon as you can get here, I want to tell you about him.”

“Who?”

Lowering her voice still further, April said, “Len Kinsky, the public relations director.”

Roberto had nothing to do. Al-Bashir had gone back to Africa or someplace, leaving Roberto with instructions to sit tight in Houston and pump his contacts inside Astro Corporation for information about Randolph’s plans to fly his backup spaceplane.

But the contacts had run dry. They all claimed that Randolph wasn’t telling anyone about his plans. Other than a quick trip to Venezuela several weeks ago, nobody seemed to know anything about what Randolph would do next. Not even his public relations guy had a clue. Or so he claimed.

Then came Hurricane Fernando, and everything was put on hold for a few days while they rode out the storm and cleaned up after it.

Now Roberto sat in his modest apartment and waited for one of his contacts to phone him. He hated to wait. I could be out cruisin’ downtown, he told himself. What good’s the money I’m makin’ if I gotta sit here like a punk in a holdin’ tank and wait for some damned pendejo to phone me? I shoulda given him my cell number. So he remained in the apartment, sitting in the reclining chair in front of the TV for hours on end, getting up only to trudge to the refrigerator for another can of beer, or to the bathroom to relieve himself. His anger smoldered, simmering hotter with each passing hour.

If I go out somebody’ll call and I’ll miss it. He won’t talk on the answering machine. So I gotta wait here like a fuckin’ moron.

Roberto was asleep in the recliner when the phone rang. Instantly awake, he grabbed it and growled, “Yeah?”

“You told me to call,” said the contact’s voice.

“So whatchoo got to tell me?”

“Nothing new.”

“Nuthin’? Whattaya mean nuthin’?”

“They got a booster back up on the launchpad and they’re going to put the spaceplane on it.”

“That’s somethin’, ain’t it?”

“It’s what they were going to do before the hurricane.”

“When they gonna launch it?”

The man’s voice hesitated. “This isn’t for a launch. They don’t have the government’s approval for a flight. They’re just checking out the connections, making sure the spaceplane and the booster fit together okay.”

“And then what?”

“They’ll take ’em down, I guess.”

“You get paid to do more’n guess, man.”

“Randolph’s keeping his cards close to his vest. Nobody knows what he’s planning to do next.”

“Somebody’s gotta know.”

“Well, yeah. The chief engineer must know. Van Buren. But she’s not talking to anybody.”

“She ain’t talkin’ to you, is what you mean.”

“She’s not talking to anybody! I’m telling you, nobody knows what’s coming up next. The whole fucking company could collapse. Randolph could declare bankruptcy and we’ll all be out on our asses.”

Roberto was not an engineer, nor a technician, not even a high school graduate. But he had the dogged capacity to pursue a course stubbornly and not be deterred by any excuses.

“Lissen to me,” he said slowly. “If that engineer knows what’s goin’ down, then he’s the one you gotta pump.”

“She.”

“He, she, whatever. You find out from her what Randolph’s gonna do.”

“She won’t talk to me about it. I’ve tried and she shuts up like a clam.”

Roberto thought that he could open up a clam, no problem. But he kept his patience and asked, “You mean there’s nobody else in the whole fuckin’ company knows what Randolph’s gonna do?”

A long hesitation. Then the man said, “Maybe his secretary. She makes all his appointments and stuff.”

“Lean on her.”

“I don’t know about that She—”

“You lean on her, man. Or I’ll come down there and do it for you.”

“Hey, you don’t have to do that.”

“Then you do your job.”

“I’m not getting paid enough for this.”

“You’re gettin’ paid plenty. Now earn it!” Roberto slammed the phone down. Fuckin’ jerkoff.

On Matagorda Island Len Kinsky heard the phone connection click dead. He felt cold and clammy and realized he was sweating. If only I can get April to come to New York with me, he thought, maybe I could get her to tell me what I need to know about Dan’s plans.

Of one thing Kinsky was certain. Mating the spaceplane to a booster was no test. Dan was planning to fly the bird. When, where, and how: those were the questions Kinsky needed to find answers for. He knew Roberto would not wait long, and the last thing he wanted was a visit from that Neanderthal.

Matagorda Island, Texas

Dan craned his neck looking up at the clean, lean line of the gleanting white booster and the graceful silvery swept-wing spaceplane perched atop it, its needle nose pointed into the bright morning sky. The weather had turned friendly, blue sky dotted with fat puffs of white cumulus clouds sailing sedately on the breeze coming in from the Gulf. He could smell the tang of the sea and the sweet odor of the distant pines.

You’d never know a hurricane had blown past here a couple of days ago, Dan thought. The launchpad had been cleaned of the scrub and debris that had littered the area in the aftermath of the storm. The puddles and outright ponds of rainwater had either been pumped dry or evaporated in the sunshine. To Dan’s happy relief all of Astro’s buildings had survived Fernando with only minor damage. His Jaguar had suffered the most: its ten-year-old fabric top had ripped off in the storm and the car’s interior looked like a swimming pool when he went out to check on it

Could have been a lot worse, he said to himself as he slowly walked around the perimeter of the launch platform, admiring the booster-and-spaceplane combination. The gantry structure had been rolled away from the platform; only the umbilical tower stood beside the booster, with a pair of heavy electrical cables running from it to hatches in the top of the booster and just below the wing root of the spaceplane.

“You look happy, chief,” said Lynn Van Buren, pacing along beside him. Like Dan, she wore a hard hat with her name stenciled onto it just below the stylish Astro Corporation logo.

“Rocket’s on the pad and all systems check, from what you told me,” Dan replied. “Why shouldn’t I be happy?”

“What do we do now?” she asked.

Dan leaned his back against the sturdy steel railing of the platform and gazed up again at the spaceplane, thinking, She’s built to fly. She shouldn’t be sitting here on the ground. She ought to be up in the sky, where she belongs.

“All the checkouts complete?” he asked Van Buren.

“Aye-yup. All the connectors are mated and all systems are functioning. Batteries and fuel cells fully charged.”

Dan looked into the engineer’s hazel eyes. She seemed amused, expectant, as if the two of them were playing a game and she knew what his next move would be.