Project Daedalus

Produced by Al Haines









==============================================================

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License,

http://creativecommons.org/

==============================================================





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.

It's begun, he thought.