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CTO had personal connections with the vendor. I suspect personal means the wife or sister was there and they had this as a family business. You know "here is money from my company that go to your company and each of us will get a big pie off it" type of shady deal.

If they said they were done then the next work would be demanded with holidays cancelled. By padding they got time off.

As I understood it, they weren't quite done. They were at, say, 90%, and confident they could do the last 10% after holidays and before release.

But the CTO insisted on Death March-style hours, so the author told the CTO they were at 80%, and then doled out the milestones from 80% to 90% over the week his team was away.

Had he said "Uhh, hey boss, we're already at 90%", the CTO would have said "Great, then work 26/8 over Christmas to get to 100%!".