Project Daedalus

Retired agent Michael Vance is approached for help on the same day by an old KGB adversary and a brilliant and beautiful NSA code breaker. While their problems seem at first glance to be different, Vance soon learns he's got a potentially lethal tiger by the tail - a Japanese tiger. A secret agreement between a breakaway wing of the Russian military and the Yakuza, the Japanese crime lords, bears the potential to shift the balance or world power. The catalyst is a superplane that skims the edge of space - the ultimate in death-dealing potential. In a desperate union with an international force of intelligence mavericks, with megabillions and global supremacy at stake, Vance has only a few days to bring down a conspiracy that threatens to ignite nuclear Armageddon.

Publisher's Weekly

_"Hoover's adept handling of convincing detail enhances this entertaining thriller as his characters deal and double-deal their way through settings ranging from the Acropolis to the inside of a spacecraft. Michael Vance, formerly of the CIA, is on his way to an archeological dig when some old friends show up. First comes KGB agent Alex Novosty, caught laundering money that the KGB claims was embezzled - and he wants Michael to take charge of the hot funds. Then National Security Agency cryptographer Eva Borodin (who is Michael's ex-lover) appears with an undecipherable but dangerous computer file: the co- worker who gave her the file has since vanished. Heavies from a Japanese crime syndicate attack Michael and Eva, who are rescued by Alex, but it looks like Alex and the syndicate aren't complete strangers. Moreover, the mysterious Daedalus Corporation seems to be a link between Alex's money and Eva's file. As Michael is drawn into this deadly web, he realizes there is a secret agreement between the Russians and the Japanese - and it has nothing to do with tea-brewing customs."

_

BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER

Nonfiction

Zen Culture

The Zen Experience

Fiction

The Moghul

Caribbee

Wall Street Samurai

(The Samurai Strategy)

Project Daedalus

Project Cyclops

Life Blood

Syndrome

All free as e-books at

www.thomashoover.info

PROJECT DAEDALUS

Thomas Hoover

BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK -- TORONTO -- LONDON -- SYDNEY -- AUCKLAND

-- PROJECT DAEDALUS A Bantam Falcon Book / August 1991

All rights reserved copyright (C) 1991 by Thomas Hoover

Cover art copyright (C) 1991 by Alan Ayres

ISBN 0-553-29108-4

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 0987654321

Key Words:

Author: Thomas Hoover

Title: Project Daedalus

Hypersonic, Superplane, Edge of Space, thermonuclear warhead, Supersonic, Space Plane, Crete, Minos, Palace of Minos, Greece, Greek Islands

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.

Ovid: The Metamorphoses, translated by Horace Gregory. New American Library. Copyright (C) 1958 by The Viking Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc.

_So Daedalus turned his mind to subtle craft,

An unknown art that seemed to outwit nature.

Ovid, The Metamorphoses

PROLOGUE

_

Thursday 8:40 A.M.

_G-load is now eight point five. Pilot must acknowledge for power-up sequence to continue.

The cockpit computer was speaking in a simulated female voice, Russian with the Moscow accent heard on the evening TV newscast Vremya_. The Soviet technicians all called her Petra, after that program's famous co-anchor.

Yuri Andreevich Androv didn't need to be told the force weighing down on him had reached eight and a half times the earth's gravity. The oxygen mask beneath his massive flight helmet was crushed against his nose and the skin seemed to be sliding off his skull, while sweat from his forehead poured into his eyes and his lungs were plastered against his diaphragm.

Auto termination will commence in five seconds unless you acknowledge. Petra paused for a beat, then spoke again: _Four seconds to shutdown . . .

_He could sense the blood draining from his cerebral vascular system, his consciousness trying to drift away. He knew that against these forces the human heart could no longer pump enough oxygen to the brain. Already he was seeing the telltale black dots at the edge of his vision.