Wraith (18 page)

After leaving Nick, Drake walked over to the cafeteria to get a last cup of coffee before the mission. When he reached the galley, he stopped short. There, sitting with her back to the doorway, was Amanda. He hesitated.

The blond engineer had been as cold as ice ever since the group returned to Romeo Seven. Drake had thought they'd kind of hit it off during the first test, like there might be some chemistry there, but now it was the opposite. She wasn't just coldly professional; she was downright rude. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to know what was going on. He took a deep breath and marched into the kitchen. “Good evening, Miss Navistrova.”

Amanda turned. She looked uncomfortable, even a little pale. When she saw Drake her face darkened. “Oh. It's you.”

“Are you all right? You look a little ill.”

“I'm just having a little trouble with the underground thing. I thought I was over it, but something seems to have triggered it again. You know what? It's none of your business.” Amanda turned her back to the door again. “I don't want to talk to you anymore. Go away.”

“All right, that's it. What have I done to deserve this?”

“Right. Like you don't know.”

Drake took another step into the room. “No, I don't know, so you're just going to have to explain.”

Something snapped. Amanda slapped the table with both hands and stood up, sending her chair scooting back across the tile. She whipped around and glared at him, hands on her hips. “I know
everything
.”

“Good for you?” said Drake, dragging out the question. He cocked his head to one side, allowing confusion to cloud his features. “Is that
everything
in general, or is it topic specific?”

“Fine.” Her hands fell from her hips and her shoulders slumped in exasperation. “You really want me to spell out? Okay, I'll play. I know all about who you really are.” She pointed an angry finger at him.
“I read your file.”

“What file?”

“Walker keeps a dossier on all of us. I . . . I wanted to know more about you.” The finger dropped and she looked embarrassed for a moment, but then the anger returned. Her hands went back to her hips. “You started it. You were throwing yourself at me from the moment you arrived last time.”

“Look, sister, if that's what you call throwing myself at you, maybe you should—”

“Shut up, Merigold. I thought we might have something special, but I hate getting into anything without all the facts.” She scrunched up her nose. “I can't help it; I guess it's the engineer in me. Anyway, I read your file and I know what you're hiding. I know you're married.”

Drake took a step back and pushed his palms straight out. “Whoa, there, Nancy Drew; I don't know what file you read, but I'm not married.”

She advanced, finger up again. “Yes, you are. It's all in your file. I can't believe you waltz around pretending to be single, preying upon unsuspecting women. Did you think you were going to get me into bed?”

“Well, I . . . uh . . .” Drake stammered.

Amanda was on a roll. “I even know your wife's name,” she said, striding up and poking Drake in the chest. “Her name is Katy. You're busted, pal.”

The red flush of anger and embarrassment that had been building in Drake's face quickly subsided. He did his best not to smile. “I get it now,” he said quietly.

“I'm sure you do.” Amanda folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Drake gave no account. He posed a question instead. “When you stole the dossiers from Walker's desk, did you happen to drop them on the floor?”

The tapping stopped. Amanda's iron exterior cracked. “How could you . . .”

“I noticed before that you get a little clumsy when you're nervous. So let me ask again, Miss Navistrova. Did you drop the folders?”

She took a step back, beginning a hesitant retreat. “Yeah, I might have knocked one or two of them off the desk. So what?”

“Do you think perhaps you might have mixed up a paper or two when you picked them up?”

The iron curtain was now completely shattered. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” Drake smiled, knowing he'd just been given the best upper hand he'd ever had in a romantic relationship. He followed her retreat, backing her toward the table. “Katy is a lovely girl, or so I was told by her
real
husband. Katy is
Nick's
wife.”

Amanda bumped into the table, grabbing it to steady herself. Drake was now towering over her small frame. She fell forward into his arms and buried her head in his chest. “I must have mixed the first page of your file with the second page of Nick's. I'm such an idiot,” she sobbed.

Drake gently stroked her hair, enjoying the scent of her perfume. He would play this hand to the hilt. “It could have happened to anybody,” he said sweetly. “I'm just relieved you're not mad at me anymore.”

She looked up. “Mad? How could I be mad? I just put you through the wringer over my own clumsy mistake.” Suddenly she gasped and then buried her head even deeper. “I may have said some ugly things about you to a couple of the other engineers.”

Drake cringed and swallowed hard. “Okay . . . that was also an honest mistake. We can fix it.” He bent down and kissed her gently on the top of her head. “The two of us should just start over and forget this ever happened.”

Amanda looked up, their noses practically touching. “Really? Clean slate?”

Drake lowered his head toward hers, moving in for the kill. “Clean . . . slate,” he said in his best sultry voice, letting his lips part as they grazed hers.

“Merigold!”

Drake jerked his head up at the sound of his name. The sudden movement of his square chin caught Amanda in the nose. She staggered back against the table with a yelp.

Walker stood in the doorway of the galley, holding a coffee cup and looking utterly confused. “What the . . . What're you two . . .” He blinked and shook his head. “Never mind. Merigold, you need to get to the conference room, stat. The final briefing is in five minutes.” He stared at them both for another second, and then he turned and walked into the hallway, muttering to himself.

Drake turned back to Amanda, only to see her cautiously checking her nose for breaks, her eyes bleary from the attack. His previous advantage was gone, totally wasted. “I'm so sorry,” he said, trying to recover the moment. “He surprised me and I . . . Your nose, it's . . . I'm so sorry.” It was no use; the moment was lost. He turned to leave. “I have to get going.”

Satisfied that her nose would remain small and straight, Amanda flicked the remaining tears from her face, walked forward with purpose, and grabbed the retreating pilot by the wrist. She spun him around, caught the back of his neck with both hands, and, pulling his head down to her level, planted a long hard kiss on his lips. When finished, she pulled her lips back, held his head in her hands, and said, “Fly well tonight. I'll be here when you get back.” Then she spun him back around and gave him a hard slap on the rear, sending him out the door.

On his way out, Drake looked back and gave her a puzzled smile. He couldn't help but wonder if he'd just been sexually harassed.

When Nick arrived at the hangar, it was buzzing with activity. His usual ritual of a quiet moment with the aircraft was out of the question. In fact, there'd been someone with Dream Catcher around the clock since they'd arrived; Scott's team would not leave this one to chance.

Dream Catcher was already mounted in the B-2's weapons bay, and a friendly face was waiting for Nick underneath. “She's ready and raring to go,” said Danny, motioning him toward a stepladder below the open hatch. “Should be a smooth ride.”

Nick put his helmet on. “Thanks, but the ride isn't what I'm worried about. It's the recovery. If I can't dock this puppy, I'll have to bail out and we're back to square one. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the ejection will kill me.”

They continued the arduous process of getting Nick
installed
into Dream Catcher, as Scott and Danny liked to call it—as if he were just another piece of hardware—including fastening the electric leg straps.

“Hey,” said Nick, as Danny worked. “Where was Merlin during the flight briefing? Isn't he flying chase?”

“Didn't you hear?” Danny completed one leg and moved to the next. “Merlin never came back. Had someplace else to be. The colonel said you don't need a chase plane, anyway, since Dream Catcher isn't a drone anymore.”

“But the recovery. What if—”

“You're all set.” Danny patted him on the calf and then Nick heard the electric whine of the hatch door rising into place. The light around him faded into darkness.

“Don't forget to try out the pilot stimulation system,” the intelligence officer called through the aircraft's composite hull. “I think you'll be
shocked
by how well it works.”

*   *   *

Two hours later the B-2 flew high above Romeo Seven and Walker's voice boomed over the secure frequency. “Mission players, this is Lighthouse. Everyone check in.”

“Mother's up and ready,” Drake replied.

Nick monitored the frequency on one of Dream Catcher's receptors, but the closed bomb bay doors were blocking some of the transmission. His reception was spotty at best. It was just radio wave interception, not a two-way link. As part of Dream Catcher's stealth, transmitters were kept to an absolute minimum. He couldn't talk to the rest of the team on the radio; only to Danny over a dedicated line in Dream Catcher's umbilical, then via satellite link after deployment.

“Hazard's ready,” Danny chimed in, with obvious excitement in his voice. “Baby is ready as well.”

Nick hadn't caught Walker's entire transmission, but he heard Danny and he cringed when he realized that
Baby
referred to him. “I've got to get a new call sign,” he complained to Danny over the link. “I can't fly around being called Baby all the time.”

“Sure you can,” said Danny. “I read a self-help book that said, ‘if you don't want to become a victim of your circumstance, you have to own it.' How about we make you a patch with a picture of Dream Catcher superimposed over a bottle and pacifier?”

“Thanks but no thanks. And in the future, I don't want to know about your self-help books.”

“Suit yourself. We're approaching launch altitude. Go ahead and run your prelaunch checklist.”

Nick called up the digital checklist on his viewscreen. Under the heading
PRELAUNCH
it said,
NO PILOT ACTION REQUIRED
. “You mean the one that tells me to sit here and not touch anything?”

“That's the one. I'll take care of everything up here.” The link clicked as Danny switched to the radio transmitter. “Mother, Hazard is ready for launch.”

Through a shroud of static, Nick heard Drake's reply. “Drop him, Hazard.”

“Deployment countdown is running,” said Danny. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

There was a rush of air as the bomb bay doors swung open. Dream Catcher would plummet a thousand feet below the bomber before her engine lit and she leveled herself out. Nick's muscles tightened in anticipation. A message appeared on his viewscreen.

DEPLOYMENT SEQUENCE INITIATED . . .

“Three . . . two . . . one . . . launch.”

Nick felt his own weight evaporate as the aircraft dropped from the B-2. It was a surreal feeling, floating to the top of his cocoon while a series of messages flashed on the screen in front of him.

DEPLOYMENT SUCCESSFUL

AUTO IGNITION ACTIVATED . . .

IGNITION SUCCESSFUL

AUTO LEVEL ENGAGED . . .

Gravity took hold and Nick dropped into his pads with a grunt as Dream Catcher brought herself to level flight.

AUTO LEVEL COMPLETE

AWAITING COMMAND . . .

He cautiously took the flight controls and released the autopilot. The aircraft gave in to his command and he slowly banked back and forth in a series of small S-turns. She felt a little ungainly, but she was manageable.

“Hazard, this is Lighthouse. What's Baby's status?” The radio intercept was much clearer now.

Nick selected the satellite voice channel with Danny. “Tell him she flies like a pig but she's better than the simulator.”

“Lighthouse, Baby says it flies better than the simulator.”

“Chicken,” said Nick.

“Hey, I'm saving you from the wrath of the geeks. There are at least ten people down there who will spit in your coffee if you call their creation a pig.”

“Let's move on to set one,” said Walker. “Have Baby initiate a shallow left turn.”

The test flowed smoothly through increasingly complex flight maneuvers and Nick was awed by the technology at his command. The 120-degree screen filled his vision so that he felt like he was flying a hang glider, with nothing separating his body from the terrain below. The enhanced black-and-white image of the desert was incredibly sharp, broken only by a heads-up overlay of green flight data. He could make out every detail of the Romeo Seven facility, even though it was several miles away and thousands of feet below him.

When Danny was satisfied with the little aircraft's flight performance, he asked Nick to engage the autopilot and remotely programmed a sequence of maneuvers. “Since I've got control,” he said as Dream Catcher began the sequence, “why don't you try that other test we talked about?”

“You mean you want me to shock myself.”

“Once again, you're such a wuss. Given the potential for long-term missions, the PSS is a medical necessity. We
have
to test it. Just arm the system and get it over with.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Nick reached for the toggle labeled
PSS
and flipped it to
ON
. Below the toggle, yellow lights on a black rectangle warned,
PSS ENGAGED
. Nick clenched his fists and closed his eyes, preparing for anything from a mild shock to the aircraft exploding around him. He took a deep breath and pressed the button. Instantly both of his legs jerked as every muscle tightened. He released an audible grunt at the pain; it was as if hundreds of tiny needles had pierced his legs all at the same time. Unable to see his legs in the cockpit, he sniffed the air, half expecting to smell burning cloth and flesh.

“How was it?” Danny asked.

“Are there any messages you'd like me to pass on to your family after I kill you?”

“That bad, huh?”

“There's no doubt that it stimulates blood flow, but you might want to dial back the voltage.”

“Hazard, this is Lighthouse. Let's move on to the sensor tests,” Walker prompted.

“All right, Nick,” said Danny, “let's try out the selective viewing mode. This could be a bit disorienting, so prepare yourself.”

“Got it. She's still on autopilot. I'm ready.”

“Okay, when Baby makes her next turn, let's focus on home base. Use your trackball like you would use the mouse on your PC at home. Simply click on the screen and drag a rubber band over the area you want to see. I'll be watching it all on a monitor at my station.”

A little flashing cross appeared on the screen. Nick held down the trigger and used the trackball to drag it across Romeo Seven, and a box made of dashed lines expanded behind the cross. It went solid when he released the trigger.

“All right,” Danny continued, “here's where it gets weird. Hit the ‘target' command on your keypad. You'll notice that the image on the screen stops moving in real time with your aircraft. You're stabilizing your cameras on the target, where they will remain—no matter which direction you're pointing—until you tell them to do otherwise.”

Nick's internal gyros tumbled a bit as the aircraft continued around its holding pattern while the desert scene that filled his vision remained stationary, changing only in perspective. “You're right,” he said, “that is weird, but I'm okay if I cross-check the heads-up display.” He focused on the green flight data overlying the image. Even though the picture of the outside showed a level environment, the attitude indicator showed that the aircraft was in twenty degrees of bank and the compass was turning. “I'm okay,” he repeated.

“Roger,” said Danny, “then let's continue. Now I want you to zoom in on the facility. You can do this by double clicking your trigger on the center of the box. Once you've done that, it should fill the forward portion of your screen.”

Once again, Nick did as he was told and the result was just as Danny predicted. The screen divided into three sections. The far left and right screens were black, but a perfectly clear view of Romeo Seven filled the center screen as if he were hovering just a few hundred feet away.

Danny had Nick command a traditional infrared view on the left screen and a radio frequency display on the right. The infrared display was largely uninteresting—Romeo Seven was so well insulated that it looked cold and abandoned—but, on the other side of his display, the RF screen was alive with activity. Small flecks of red, blue, and green flashed at random against a black background. Nick began to see shapes amid the chaos, boxes formed by the constantly shifting flashes, and soon he was able to relate them to the buildings at Romeo Seven. “The RF display is highly active,” he told Danny.

“I know. I can see everything you can see.”

“Good. Then tell me what I'm looking at. I thought home base was supposed to be ‘emissions silent' except for the test frequency.”

“It is. Those signals aren't coming from the facility. Baby's receptors are incredibly sensitive. What you're seeing is residual RF energy bouncing off the buildings. It comes from cell phone towers, radio stations—anything that sends out a radio signal. All of that energy propagates through the atmosphere and reflects off solid surfaces. To Baby's RF suite, that's how you would look walking down the street of any town. Welcome to the Information Age.”

“That's a sobering thought. No wonder so many people are getting brain cancer.”

“That's never been conclusively proven,” said Danny.

“Uh-huh. Sure. How do I break out the important signals?”

“You need to turn Baby's gain down to filter out the chaff. At that sensitivity, a real signal will be too obtrusive to pinpoint.”

As if to illustrate Danny's point, Walker broke in over the radio. “Hazard, this is Lighthouse. Give me a status report.” During his transmission a bright green blob filled Nick's display, covering the entire facility.

“I see what you mean,” said Nick, lowering the gain on the display until the shapes and colors disappeared.

“Lighthouse, we're just doing some fine-tuning,” said Danny.

“Roger, Hazard. Let us know when to begin the transmission sequence.”

This time, Walker's transmission only produced a small green dot on Nick's display. “I'm ready,” he said, and Danny repeated the call to the rest of the team.

On his left display, Nick brought up a stored image of the facility and the locations where the engineers would stand when they made their transmissions. They would use two types of cell phone and three forms of radio communication in the hope that Dream Catcher would be able to differentiate between them and pinpoint the coordinates of each. As the sequence began, irregular red and green dots appeared on Nick's display. He clicked on each one using his cursor control and each time a set of latitude and longitude coordinates appeared in the bottom right corner of the display. He cross-checked his results with the known coordinates. Dream Catcher's performance was flawless.

Nick convulsed as pain shot through his legs. When his body relaxed, he tasted blood in his mouth and felt the pain where he'd bitten his tongue. He looked down at the still-illuminated
PSS ENGAGED
light. “Danny?” he said with slightly impeded speech, his tongue throbbing.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“I really am going to kill you after we land.”

“Why? What'd I—” Danny stopped in midsentence. “Ohhh, right; I forgot to tell you to shut down the PSS.” He switched to an informative tone. “Yeah. After initial activation, the PSS discharges automatically every thirty minutes until you turn it off. That information was on page sixty-four of your manual.”

“I'll give you one guess as to where you can shove page sixty-four.”

As Nick glanced down to flip off Danny's torture device, he noted that his fuel was getting low. The tank was down to the level they had set for beginning the recovery test. He asked Danny to relay his fuel status to Walker.

“Mother, commence your recovery,” Walker ordered.

“Wilco,” Drake replied. “You heard the man, Hazard. Let's bring him in.”

Nick keyed in a command to initiate the recovery sequence. As Dream Catcher automatically turned toward the rendezvous point, he brought up the prerecovery checklist on his left screen and began to follow the prompts.

When the bomber grew large enough to fill a third of his screen, he disconnected the autopilot and flew it manually, just to warm up his reflexes. From this point forward, he was on his own. Merlin was not there to talk him through it if things went south. Chase planes had been a vital part of military flight tests since the days of Wright Field in the twenties. The chase pilot could maintain a big picture that the test pilot didn't have. What could possibly have been so important that Merlin had abandoned him when he needed him most? Nick took a deep breath, wiped the perspiration from his brow and started closing in, heading for a spot just below and slightly aft of the closed bomb bay.