Wraith

  Drake switched on the autopilot and looked over at Murph. “Looks like another job well done. They never saw that one coming.”

  “Yeah. You got ’em,” Murph replied, scribbling on a clipboard. He finished the note, leaned back in his seat, and reached over to shake Drake’s hand. “That completes your checkride, Lieutenant. Congratulations. You are now a B-2 aircraft commander, and I believe that makes you the youngest B-2 AC in history.” He rubbed his hands together. “That calls for a little celebratory flying. Wanna see something cool?”

  “That phrase,” said Drake warily, “along with ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ and ‘Here, hold my beer,’ is something you never want to hear your pilot say.” He pursed his lips. “And there’s one more I can’t remember.”

  Murph took the controls and switched the autopilot off again. “Watch this.”

  Drake slapped him on the arm. “That’s the one.”

  The older pilot pushed the throttles to their limit and shoved the stick forward, causing Drake to grip the dashboard. At the stealth’s maximum speed and a mere fifty feet off the deck, he pulled the nose into a steep climb.

  Drake watched with growing concern as the altimeter spun through five, six, seven thousand feet. At ten thousand, Murph pulled the throttles back to idle and jerked the control stick all the way to the left.

  “Whoa!” exclaimed Drake. “Are you crazy?”

  “Trust me.”

  By the time the bomber became completely inverted, the nose was well below the horizon and they were accelerating back toward the dark earth. Murph gave the aircraft a negative-G push to control the dive and continued the roll. Once the wings were level again, he pulled up aggressively, pushing the aircraft’s G limits to make it level by two hundred feet. He looked over at Drake and winked. “That’s how it’s done, sonny boy. Who says you can’t roll a bomber?”

  Suddenly the world beyond the windscreens froze, as if the aircraft had stopped in midair. The cockpit flooded with light, and both pilots turned and squinted over their shoulders to see a thin figure silhouetted against a very ordinary-looking doorframe. The intruder angrily stepped into the cockpit and slammed the door.

  “Which one of you two chuckleheads wants to explain what you’re doing with my simulator?” asked Drag. He was scary enough when he was happy, but at the moment he looked downright angry.

  “Uh . . . sir, we . . .” Drake could not come up with a response.

  Murph broke in. “Sir, we completed the checkride and I was just experimenting with the capabilities of the aircraft.”

  “Baloney. You were screwing around. Do you have any idea how much it costs per hour to run this simulator?”

  Drake and Murph sheepishly shrugged their shoulders.

  “A lot more than you two minions make in a day.” The DO fixed his hawklike glare on Murph. “You know as well as I do that what you just did is well beyond the real bomber’s capabilities. The bank angle limiter in the real aircraft would never let you roll it over like that.” He folded his arms and looked back and forth between the two. “That mission in Afghanistan last year and the medals you earned from it made you leaders in this community, whether you like it or not. That means you don’t have the luxury of screwing around. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” The reply came in unison.

  “Good. Murph, clean this up. Drake, follow me. I have a paper for you to sign.”

  As Drake followed Drag out of the simulator, he wondered if the paper he was to sign would be a finance form authorizing Drag to dock his pay for wasting simulator time. To his relief the DO led him into a secure room and handed him clearance paperwork instead. Drag gave him a strange choice. Decline the offer for the new clearance, or blindly sign his life away.

  Chapter 24

  Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio

  30 December 2002

  Eleven months after the epiphany at Charla’s coffee shop, Danny sat with Scott and the core Dream Catcher team in Specter Blue’s cramped conference room, trying not to wither under Walker’s usual dark scowl.

  They had beaten the impossible timeline by three full weeks. The paper airplane had become a reality. But Walker had not yet seen it, and they were all a little nervous.

  “General Windsor sends his apologies for being unable to attend,” said the colonel. “He’d love to be here, but he feels that the presence of a flag officer might draw undue attention to these proceedings. You never know who is watching. Since that leaves me to be the judge of your work, you had better impress me.”

  Danny turned to Scott and raised an eyebrow. “Here we go,” he whispered, and then stood and scooted his way behind the chairs to the end of the room. “Right through here, Colonel,” he said, opening a door into darkness.

  Danny led Walker and the rest of the group across the polished concrete floor of a massive hangar, their footsteps echoing through the cavernous expanse. At the center of the hangar, a column of soft white light illuminated a small, makeshift enclosure constructed of aluminum frame walls and covered with burgundy curtains.

  When the group reached the structure, Danny felt as if he should say something, but he knew that Colonel-Richard-T.-Walker-U.S.-Army was not a patient man. He chose to keep it simple. “Colonel Walker, may I present Dream Catcher,” he said, and he pulled back the curtain.

  An alien object, scarcely bigger than a speedboat, rested on a low pedestal at the center of the space. Its dark skin absorbed the light from above, giving no discernible reflection. Viewed in profile, it took the shape of a flattened teardrop, sloping quickly upward to its thickest and then gradually thinning until it terminated in a point at the rear. From above, it looked like a rounded, contoured triangle, with no discernable boundary between fuselage and wings. There was no vertical stabilizer, no protrusions or angles at all. Graceful slopes and gentle curves defined the entire vessel. Even the intake scoop and exhaust port conformed to the shape of the airframe, rather than rise above the profile like a traditional engine nacelle.

  “So this is Dream Catcher,” said Walker.

  “Actually,” said Scott, “the technical name for this vessel is the ‘low observable reconnaissance aircraft,’ or LORA. Dream Catcher is the name of the underlying concept. It refers to the mission of capturing signals from above a target.”

  Colonel Walker fixed his gaze on Scott. “LORA is boring and academic, Doctor. We’ll call it Dream Catcher. In covert operations we still maintain the late Strategic Air Command’s flair for the dramatic. It keeps the money flowing.” He turned to the rest of the group. “What impact does the engine cavity have on signature?”

  “Nil, sir,” responded Amanda Navistrova. “We accounted for it in the original design. Believe me when I say we’ve thought of everything.”

  The colonel frowned. “Only fools believe they’ve thought of everything. Now, tell me why I can’t see any flight control structures.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to reply but no words came out, and Danny wondered if anyone had ever spoken to her like that before. “The flight controls are under the skin, sir,” he said, covering her stunned silence. “They run the entire circumference of the aircraft, with twenty-one surfaces in all. The skin at the extremities is flexible, and the movement of the flight control structures underneath causes the edges of the craft to ripple, much like you might see when observing a stingray at the aquarium.”

  “That’s quite unique. What spawned that idea?”

  “Actually, the wing-warping concept comes from the Wright brothers, who came upon it by watching birds in flight. So I guess you could say it was God’s idea. We’re simply imitating his design.”

  “Mm-hmm,” grunted Walker, as if he had already lost interest in his own question. He leaned forward, looking closely at the skin. “And where are the sensor windows?”

  “Bob, get the lights,” Danny said with a grin. A me
mber of the group broke off and walked to the opposite side of the temporary enclosure, flicking a switch mounted on the metal frame wall. The hangar went completely dark. Then there was a sharp click and the hum of electricity filled the air. Four black lights mounted at the top of the walls blinked on, flooding the whole enclosure with faint purple light. The drone’s skin changed from uniform black to a purple patchwork of diamonds and trapezoids.

  Danny gave a dramatic sweep with his hand. “I would have said ‘abracadabra’ but I thought that might be a bit much.” He paused for the expected laughter, but the colonel just scowled at him impatiently.

  “Ahem . . . yes, well, as you can see, the skin appears to have a uniform texture and color to the naked eye, but it is actually a composite of several different materials.” He strolled forward and indicated some of the shapes on the side of the aircraft. “For instance, each individual sensor window is a slightly different compound, engineered to allow the necessary signals, such as infrared images or radio signals, to pass through to the sensor packages inside.”

  Scott joined him and gestured to one of the trapezoidal panels on the underside of the craft. “In addition, LORA . . . er . . . Dream Catcher has maintenance access panels for her more mundane systems, such as hydraulics and propulsion. These doors are made of the same material as the basic structure, but their frames—the seals, if you will—are covered in a special substance that responds differently to certain wavelengths of light. Using this lighting we can easily see the panel outlines.”

  “So . . .” said the colonel, leaning in even closer. “How do you get them open?”

  Scott motioned for Bob to switch back to the white light. Then he walked over to a laptop sitting on a folding table and pressed a few keys. A miniature parabolic antenna, mounted on a small stand, swiveled to point at the aircraft. There was a sharp hiss and the panel popped open, forcing Walker to jump back. A fog of vapor slowly spread from the interior of the craft, revealing a tangle of wires and a panel of circuit breakers.

  “Scott has just remotely activated the left rear avionics panel,” said Danny. “The edges of the door and its frame are covered in similar putties. They bond when the panel is closed, forming a seamless skin and an airtight seal. A small bottle of Freon is attached to the underside of the door. We use it to cool the putties, causing them to separate.”

  “Incredible,” said Walker, eliciting a smile from Danny, who realized that his team had finally been able to impress Old Ironsides. “When will she be ready for testing?”

  Danny glanced over at Scott, who gave him a slight nod. “She’s ready for testing now, sir,” he said. “Which proving ground would you like to use? Utah? California?”

  Walker turned from the craft to face the team. “Neither. I have another facility in mind.”

  Chapter 25

  Somewhere over New Mexico

  New Year’s Eve 2002

  “It’s dead ahead,” the pilot of the C-130 Hercules shouted to Danny over the engine noise, his smile painted an eerie green by the faint glow of his night-vision goggles.

  Danny could not return the smile because of his nausea. When would he learn? He had to brag that Dream Catcher was ready. He couldn’t have asked for a few more days. Now he was spending his New Year’s Eve making a long flight in a loud, poorly air-conditioned aircraft, bored to tears and ready to puke. “I don’t see anything but darkness,” he shouted back, squinting at the windscreen.

  “Oh. Sorry about that. Here, use this.” The pilot handed him a night-vision monocle. “And you’ll want to sit down in that engineer’s seat and strap in. This runway’s a little rough.”

  Danny sat in the seat centered behind the pilots and clipped on the restraints. The seat wasn’t exactly comfortable, but at least it had a cushion, a welcome relief from the nylon web seating in the back of the plane. He flipped on the monocle and peered over the pilots’ shoulders at the scene before them. Ahead lay an all but forgotten airstrip. Large Xs that appeared light green in Danny’s monocle marked the full length of the runway. They warned civilian and military pilots alike that the field was condemned and unusable, but the warning to civilians was hardly necessary. The field was nestled in a desert valley, protected by nearly ten thousand square miles of restricted airspace that belonged to the surrounding facilities: White Sands Missile Range, Holloman Air Force Base, and Biggs Army Airfield.

  Before the journey, Walker had filled Danny in on the testing facility’s history. In its heyday, it was known as Biggs North One, serving as a practice deployment facility for the men preparing to take F-86 Sabre Jets into combat over Korea. Later it was used as a target field for B-52 crews to practice runway bombing, leaving it a registered hazard zone thanks to the potential for unexploded ordnance.

  Most of those who remembered the service of Biggs North One had disappeared, fading into retirement, and the little field appeared to be fading into history, slowly being consumed by the dust and the desert wind. But appearances were often deceiving. Biggs North One continued to serve. It just had a new name.

  “Welcome to Romeo Seven,” shouted the C-130 pilot.

  They were just crossing the fence line and Danny could see the small apron with its run-down barracks and two crumbling hangars. There was no light coming from them at all. “Where’s the real facility?” he asked, but the pilots either didn’t hear him or were too busy to answer. The left-seat pilot focused on the runway and expertly manipulated the controls while the right-seat pilot looked under his goggles at the control panel and counted off the altitude from the radar altimeter. “Two hundred . . . one hundred . . . fifty . . . thirty . . . ten . . .”

  In one slow, deft movement the pilot brought the control wheel back and reduced the throttles to idle. Danny felt the thump of the wheels touching down and then the second impact of the nose gear as it found the pavement. The pilot wasn’t kidding about the rough runway; the big plane bounced along like a four-by-four on a jeep trail until it eased to a slow crawl. Still using his NVGs, the pilot coaxed his craft to one side of the runway and then reversed direction to head back toward the buildings. He stopped on the apron, right in front of one of the old, run-down hangars.

  “Aren’t you going to shut her down?” shouted Danny.

  “Nope. We can’t risk shutting ’em down in case one of ’em doesn’t start again, and we definitely don’t want to be sitting here when the sun comes up. You guys get off and then we’re outta here.” He nodded toward the wing. “Watch out for the props, though. They’ll tear your head right off!”

  There was nothing else to say, except thanks for the ride. Danny shook the hand of each pilot, unbuckled his harness, and then went back to supervise the off-loading process.

  The crew walked Dream Catcher and its rolling rack down the ramp of the C-130 like pallbearers carrying a fallen soldier off his last flight. They moved with care and precision; white gloves protected the drone’s skin from contaminants on their hands. It seemed ludicrous that they were working so hard to keep Dream Catcher pristine. Soon they would strap the drone into the bomber’s bay and drop it into the troposphere from twenty thousand feet. If it survived, they would still have to get it back into the bay in midflight, and that would be the real trick.

  Danny shook his head. “Remind me again how the docking system works,” he said to Scott.

  “It’s simple. Dream Catcher will fly on her programmed profile up to the bomber’s open bay. On the spine of the craft there is a rotating panel where the docking latch is housed. The drone will use laser spotting to center herself and then flip the panel, exposing the docking latch. After that, she’ll fine-tune her position until the two are connected.”

  “You make it sound so easy. Isn’t there a lot that could go wrong?”

  Scott took on an offended look. “Trust me, Daniel. The computer simulations went off without a hitch. It is going to work.”

  “Maybe, but
I’ll be a lot happier when we’ve completed a few successful flight tests.” Danny turned from Scott and looked around for the first time. He was struck by the dark, barren wasteland surrounding them; there was nothing here but dilapidated buildings and dry, dusty landscape. He sighed. “Join the Air Force. See the world.”

  Chapter 26

  Danny stood in the darkness, listening to the sound of the C-130’s engines fade away. The test team and the security troops looked to him for what to do next, but he was at a loss. He turned to Scott. The engineer shrugged.

  Suddenly, the sound of an electric motor and grinding gears erupted from the hangar. The doors slowly slid open, revealing an interior that was even darker than the night outside. When the noise stopped, Danny heard the distinctive clop of combat boots on concrete. Presently an imposing silhouette emerged, like a shadow stepping out of the fog. A familiar voice boomed, “Well, don’t just stand there like idiots. Get that thing in here before you blow the whole thing!”

  Danny smiled. “Good evening, sir. I thought we left you in Ohio.”

  Colonel Walker strode into view, offering a rare smile. “Yes . . . well . . . I have an excellent travel agent. The illusion of being in two places at once adds to my personal mystique.”

  An armed soldier joined the colonel and directed the loaders as they brought Dream Catcher into the hangar. The others grabbed the luggage and the crates of equipment and made a pile just inside the doors. Once that operation was complete, an unseen hand reactivated the doors and they slid slowly closed, enveloping the group in utter blackness.

  “All secure?” the colonel asked the void.

  “Locked and ready sir,” the void replied.