"First names all around then." He nodded toward the woman on his opposite side, a striking auburn brunette in a crisp business suit. "Let me introduce you to my Vice President of Special Projects, Megan Breen. One way or another, she's generally behind whatever good things our company manages to accomplish."

Megan reached over to shake Annie's hand.

"I hope you'll attest to hearing Roger say that when it's time for me to renegotiate my salary," she said.

Gordian gave Annie a wink. "Poor Megan's still got a lot to learn about the unshakeable loyalties between former warbird pilots."

All at once, Annie's smile became overlaid by something other than humor.

"You were downed over Vietnam, weren't you?" she said.

Gordian nodded. "By a Soviet SA-3 while on a lowalt sortie over Khe Sanh." He paused. "I'd been flying with the 355th out of Laos for about a year, and spent the next five on the ground at Hoa Lo Prison."

"The Hanoi Hilton. My God, that's right. I've read how its inmates were treated. About its star chambers ..."

She let her voice trail off. These had been rooms eighteen and nineteen of what American POWs called the Heartbreak Area, known as the Meathook and Knobby Rooms, the former for reasons that were self-explanatory, the latter because of the clumps of plaster that covered the walls to dampen the screams of the tortured. Say what you wished about the French, who had left Hoa Lo as a legacy of their colonization of the region--just as the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island was a historic testament to their rule of Guiana in South America--they had to be respected for having built escape-proof prisons that could impose behavioral modifications on the most hardened incorrigibles, the brutal inhumanity of those facilities notwithstanding. And quick studies that they were, the North Vietnamese had made full practical use of their inheritance.

"I've likewise heard about your exploits," Gordian said. "Six days evading enemy soldiers in the Bosnian countryside after an E&E from an F-16 at twenty-seven thousand feet." He shook his head. "Thank heaven you were rescued."

"Heaven, my survival manual, my radio beacon, and an iron stomach I've been razzed about my whole life, but that's uniquely suited to the consumption of grubs and insects," she said. "These days, with the GAPSFREE recon and guidance systems you designed available on almost every fighter plane, it's less likely a pilot's going to be blindsided the way I was."

Gordian looked a bit uncomfortable.

"You give me too much credit, and yourself too little," he said, and then gestured around the room. "Though I'd bet we agree that this is really remarkable."

Annie nodded. Unless her judgment had gone totally awry, she'd just gotten a flash of genuine modesty from Gordian--a rare trait for someone of his stature, as working around powerful men had taught her, often through lessons of a highly unpleasant nature.

"This your first launch?" she asked.

"Other than as a tourist, yes," he said. "When our kids were, well, kids, my wife Ashley and I got a car pass and took them to see an Endeavor takeoff from the public viewing site. That was spectacular enough, but to be inside an actual firing room ..."