The coffee could wait.
Mitchell asked Gary Wallace, the man in charge of overseeing the storage of all the complex’s weapons and ammunition, for his rifle. He took a seat at a nearby table, disassembled his weapon, and began to give it a quick cleaning.
“Any word on who the mystery guest is?” asked Jackson as he reassembled his weapon.
“Apart from the fact that he’s flying up here from Texas, I know nothing about the man,” replied Mitchell, wiping down the trigger mechanism of his weapon.
Jackson grinned. “I figured since you’re sleeping with someone from the intelligence section that you might have some insight.”
“Not a word, she’s just as in the dark as we are.”
“Don’t you find it odd that we know nothing about this potential client? I mean, unless it’s a short-notice mission, like our trip to Liberia, we usually get a heads-up on what we’re getting into before we take on a new assignment.”
Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. “He must be one of those eccentric Howard Hughes-types that likes to keep to himself and shuns the spotlight.”
Thirty minutes later, with their weapons stored away, Mitchell and Jackson swung by the cafeteria, grabbed a couple of coffees, and made their way upstairs to the main briefing room.
Already seated in the room was Mike Donaldson. A tall Texan with a full head of white hair, Donaldson had been a lieutenant colonel, intelligence officer, with the U.S. Air Force before coming over to Polaris as the head of the intelligence section. He was wearing a beige turtleneck sweater and gray slacks that made him look like a university professor from the 1970s.
“I was wondering when you two might show,” said Donaldson.
Mitchell glanced over at the clock on the wall. “Hey, let’s have none of that today. We’re five minutes early.”
“For once,” replied Donaldson with a smile.
“I guess he knows us all too well,” remarked Jackson as he sat down in a high-backed, dark-blue, leather chair.
Mitchell said, “So Mike, what can you tell us about our mystery guest?”
“All I know is his name.”
“Which is?” asked Jackson.
“David Houston.”
“Well, they don’t get more Texan than Houston,” observed Mitchell.
A minute later, the door to the briefing room opened and in walked General O’Reilly.
As one, Mitchell, Jackson, and Donaldson respectfully rose to their feet.
O’Reilly was dressed in a snug, dark-gray suit for the meeting. For a man in his late fifties, O’Reilly kept himself in superb shape and still looked as if he could throw on his West Point uniform and play football with the current team. His head was smooth-shaven. His dark-brown eyes shone with a keen intellect. The only concession to growing older he allowed himself were the silver-rimmed reading glasses that he wore suspended around his neck.
A moment later, a man wearing a cream-colored cowboy hat on his head sauntered into the room. He wore blue jeans and an open-necked white shirt with an undone charcoal-colored jacket.
“Gents, may I present Mister David Houston,” announced O’Reilly.
“Sir,” replied all three men in unison.
“Please, call me Dave,” said Houston, sticking out his hand in greeting to Mitchell, his Texas accent coming on strong.
“Ryan Mitchell,” said Mitchell as he shook the man’s hand. It was the firm handshake of someone who worked hard for a living, not that of someone who sat behind a desk. Mitchell saw that Houston looked to be in his early sixties, fit, with dark-blue eyes, and had a wide rakish smile on his tanned face.
“Nate Jackson.” He shook Houston’s hand; like Mitchell, Jackson was surprised by the man’s strength.
“My God, you’re a big fellow,” exclaimed Houston. “You must have played football in college.”
“No, sir, I never went to college. I enlisted in the army the day I turned eighteen.”
“Well, that was Uncle Sam’s gain and some college’s loss,” replied Houston with a wink.
Mitchell grinned to himself. The man surely knew how to work a room.
“Mike Donaldson, at your service,” said Donaldson. Unready for Houston’s vise-like handshake, he grimaced in pain.
“Sorry about that, Mike,” Houston apologized as he let go of Donaldson’s hand. “Don’t know my own strength some days.”
“Sir, would you happen to be David Houston, owner of Olympus Space Technologies?” asked Donaldson.
“That I am,” he replied proudly.
“It’s quite an honor to meet you. Yours was the second civilian company to resupply the International Space Station.”
“We would have been first if the bureaucrats at NASA could have agreed on a launch date,” replied Houston, sourly.
O’Reilly offered Houston a seat at the table.
Houston sat down, removed his hat, and ran a hand through his thinning blond hair.
Tammy Spencer, O’Reilly’s personal assistant, opened the door and walked in carrying a silver serving tray. On it were five cups and a carafe of fresh coffee. Tammy wore a blue dress with a strand of pearls around her delicate neck. She was a beautiful African-American woman in her early thirties, who had lost a leg below the knee to a roadside explosive device in Iraq. Under her dress, she wore a state of the art prosthetic. Unless you knew of her injury, you would never have been able to tell that she had an artificial leg.
“Morning, Tammy,” said Mitchell with a smile.
Tammy shot him a not now look. They had played this harmless game ever since they had first met. Their friendship, however, was one of deep respect for each other. She set the tray down and went back to her desk.
O’Reilly poured his and Houston’s coffees; everyone else was on their own. As soon as everyone had a coffee, O’Reilly asked their guest how the flight from Dallas was.
Houston smiled. “When one has a fleet of private jets on standby, no flight is really ever that bad.”
His comment elicited a chuckle from the other men in the room.
“Mind if I borrow one for the weekend to fly my wife and me to Florida?” joked Jackson.
“If y’all can find what I’m looking for, I don’t see why not,” replied Houston seriously.
“I don’t know where this is going, but I’m in,” said Jackson.
“Why don’t we let Mister Houston tell us why he would like to hire our services first,” admonished O’Reilly. Sometimes he wondered if Mitchell and Jackson could do anything without the need to kid around.
Jackson sat back in his chair, grinning like a teenager.
“General, like I said, please call me Dave,” said Houston as he turned in his seat and fixed his deep-blue eyes on the three men sitting across the table from him.
“Gents, how much do you know about mining in outer space?” asked Houston.
“Practically nothing,” said Mitchell, answering for everyone.
“Well, it’s the next big thing, and you can tell yer kids that you heard it from me. I’m not talking about flying to Mars or other such nonsense, but actually mining minerals and bringing them back to the Earth from the Moon or perhaps from near-earth asteroids.”
“Not meaning to sound disrespectful, but that sounds a bit far-fetched,” said Mitchell.
“And expensive,” added Donaldson.
“Hear me out, fellas,” said Houston as he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or even cheap, but trust me, it is going to happen. Private companies like mine will dig for precious minerals in outer space in the next decade or so.”
Houston paused to take a sip of coffee. “It may not be profitable in the near term. However, in the long run, once we have established the viability of mining in outer space, the profit margin will quickly and irrevocably swing into the black, and stay there forever.”