Wraith (9 page)

Nick hated the Spangdahlem gym in winter. The French-made building had not been updated since the United States took over the base after World War II. It had no heat system. Everything was cold, and because of that, it all seemed harder—the heavy bag, the mat, even the other guys' knuckles. He rubbed his hands together and tried to make his way from the locker room to the auxiliary gym without letting his feet make contact with the tile floor.

He was glad when he finally made the transition from tile to mat, where the surface seemed at least ten degrees warmer. Following the tradition of Japanese jujitsu, Nick made a short bow while standing in the doorway. Then he quickly made his way to the other side of the room, where he found Oso warming up. The two of them stood quietly for a while against the back wall of the auxiliary gymnasium, working through their pre-class stretches.

Oso's Wizard Flight had returned to the base several minutes ahead of Devil, and by the time Nick landed, Oso and Shooter were both gone. The weapons officer's rapid departure from the squadron made him uncomfortable. Even though Wizard and Devil were separate flights with separate missions, they had ended the day working together at the same target, and that required a joint debrief, especially when everything went as pear-shaped as it had. It wasn't like Oso—even the new, timid Oso—to blow off procedure.

“I guess you had a pretty short debrief with Shooter,” said Nick, trying to open the conversation with the indirect approach. “By the time I got back, you were already gone.”

“Yeah.” Oso barely acknowledged the statement and continued his stretching. His mind was somewhere else.

Nick slipped back into a habitual rhythm of silent stretches, attempting to limber up in the cold air. Soon, however, the lack of conversation became awkward, and he had never been good at awkward silences. “Any reason you blew off the joint debrief with my flight?”

Oso was stretching his neck muscles and had turned his face away. When he turned back, his face held a look of resignation. He locked eyes with Nick. “We're screwed.”

“Whaddaya mean we're screwed?”

“I mean the commander's really ticked about what happened today. Didn't you get the message?”

“No, I didn't check my e-mail after the flight. I was too busy looking for my weapons officer, but he bugged out without a debrief.” A subconscious flag told Nick he was letting his frustration get out of control, but he ignored it.

“We're to report in at the commander's office at zero seven hundred tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” said Nick dryly, “thanks for telling me now. You could've at least let me get a decent night's sleep and told me in the morning.”

“Nah, I want you to suffer with me. Misery loves company, you know.”

“I don't need any misery. You're miserable enough for all of us.”

At the front of the room, the sensei stood and clapped his hands. The fighters obediently paired up, and, by virtue of proximity, Nick and Oso became unwilling training partners for the rest of the evening.

The very first drill was torso conditioning. Two fighters would stand side by side with their hands placed on the back of their heads and trade roundhouse kicks to the gut as a way to strengthen their core. As if that wasn't enough abuse, the coach always followed with leg conditioning, for which the fighters stood face-to-face and traded kicks to each other's thighs.

Most of the time, Nick could depend on Oso to use about half his power, not wanting to cause real damage or accidentally break a rib; but today the first kick to his gut confirmed that Oso was carrying a lot of pent-up aggression. Nick responded in kind. Oso fired back even stronger. Each man did his best not to show the pain in his reddening face. The thigh kicks were no better.

After the conditioning drills, the coach spent a little time on some new techniques, then dedicated the rest of the evening to sparring. Nick and Oso remained paired. They had sparred before, but never in the midst of an argument.

The two pilots limped to a corner of the mat and squared off. The only protective gear they wore were mouth guards. This school of jujitsu did not use gloves, and other pads might get in the way of a takedown or provide an unfair advantage in an arm bar.

“So, what made you wuss out today?” Nick asked. He had decided that as long as they were going to have an argument, he might as well go all out.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Oso delivered a punishing kick to Nick's already bruised thigh and then threw a jab at his chest that sent him retreating backward.

“I mean the Irish Cross. We could've taken out that SAM without losing anybody.” Nick feigned a straight kick then stepped in with a hooking punch, lightly popping Oso across the jaw. “Don't forget to keep your hands up, boss.”

“Very funny.” Oso threw a jab at Nick's nose that didn't connect. “It just didn't look good. Bug and Shooter weren't ready.”

“The wingmen?” Nick circled left, looking for an opening. “Those two were plenty capable of handling that attack. Besides”—he blocked a right cross—“all they had to do was fly around and not get shot. Your two-ship attack was doomed from the beginning, and you left me holding the bag.” The last word came out as a grunt as Nick shot in with another right hook.

This time Oso fended off the punch, but it was all the distraction that Nick needed. With his deflected right hand he grabbed the shoulder of Oso's gi and stepped deep inside his defenses. His sweep caught both of Oso's legs and the older pilot sailed toward the mat, landing hard on his back with an involuntary grunt.

Nick backed off to admire his work. He bounced on the balls of his feet and motioned to Oso to get up. “Let's try that one again. Or maybe you've lost your nerve on the mat, too.”

That last statement hung in the cold air. The gym had grown quiet. Nick glanced around and noticed that the other fighters had stopped their own matches to watch his, gathering in a circle around the two pilots.

Oso picked himself up. There was no sport in his angry glare. All pretense of civility was gone.

The smaller pilot pressed forward and began landing punches with force. The blows came so fast that it took every ounce of Nick's skill to fend them off. He made several attempts to return fire, slowing the onslaught with a couple of well-placed shots of his own, but his efforts only delayed the inevitable.

Before Nick knew it, Oso was in close and had a solid hold of his gi. Nick knew what was coming but Oso was moving too fast; he couldn't do anything but brace for impact. Oso simultaneously twisted around and bent his knees, shifting his center of gravity below Nick's hipline. Then he pulled the Nick's chest close to his shoulder and exploded upward, taking Nick's entire body with him.

Nick felt his feet leave terra firma and watched the gym spin in front of him. The impact with the mat felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his body, knocking every bit of wind from his lungs.

When he could finally speak again, the words trickled from Nick's throat. “It wasn't your fault.”

Oso bent over him and grabbed the lapels of his gi. He pulled Nick's shoulders off the mat so that their noses were just inches apart. “Tell that to Brent.” Their eyes locked for another moment, then Oso shoved Nick back to the mat and stormed out of the gym.

Washington, D.C.

Less than a week had passed since Danny first brought Scott into Cerberus. Now the two of them walked briskly through the southwest hall of the Pentagon's E ring. “I hope he's at his desk,” said Scott, “I'd like to get this over with. We have work to do.”

“He'll be there. If Walker is anything, he's predictable. He arrives at the fitness center every morning at precisely zero five hundred hours. After an hour of sculpting his not-so-girlish figure, he hits the showers and then eats breakfast at the cafeteria. By zero seven thirty, he's riveted to his desk. He'll stay there, barking orders via e-mail, crushing dreams, and building empires, until eleven thirty, when he heads back to the cafeteria for lunch. We've got at least an hour and a haa-agghh . . .”

Danny stumbled forward, having caught his toe on what he would later claim was the only piece of loose carpeting in the entire Pentagon. He fell to the floor face-first, his head just missing the corner of a low, white-painted windowsill on the right side of the hall. The black hard case containing their timeline for Dream Catcher slipped from his sweaty palm and bounced down the hallway, sliding to a stop several feet away.

Scott continued forward without breaking stride and picked up the case. He turned it over to inspect it. “That was close.”

“Yeah, I nearly knocked myself unconscious there.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, but I mean the case.” Scott held it out for Danny to see. “Look, it's still sealed.”

“Right. Great. Good for the case. Don't worry about the fact that I almost died.”

Scott frowned at him. “Don't overstate the matter.” He held the case close, as if it was much safer in his hands than in Danny's. “Spilling this absurdly classified material all over a hallway lined with windows would have caused a mountain of paperwork.
That
is the real tragedy that was narrowly avoided here.”

“You know, having concern—or even feigning concern—for your fellow man might make you seem more human.”

“Come again?”

“Nothing.”

A few minutes later they stood in the colonel's office. Walker was standing as well, having shot out of his big leather chair the moment he first saw their timeline. “Two years? Are you out of your mind? I can't send these numbers to General Windsor. He'll laugh me back to Fort Benning.” He held up an index finger. “One year. That's what you'll get. One year maximum.”

Danny's eyes widened. “Sir, you have to understand, we're talking about building a completely new piece of hardware, in addition to making a major modification to the B-2 weapons bay. We haven't even bid out the contract for manufacture yet.” He had the sudden urge to press the vein popping out of Walker's forehead back into place, but he resisted.

The colonel slammed their proposal down on the desk with a loud
slap
. “Did you two fall off the tomato truck yesterday? This is a matter of national security, a program created under the umbrella of executive authority. Did you really think we always follow those ridiculous acquisitions regs?” He sighed and relaxed a little, changing his tone from angry boss to frustrated teacher. “Northrop Grumman will build Dream Catcher. I've already set the wheels in motion. What Boeing and Lockheed don't know won't kill them.”

Danny exchanged a wary look with Scott. “Sir, the contractors on our team work for several different companies. We're talking Raytheon and BAE in addition to Boeing and Lockheed.”

The colonel fell back down into his chair as if exhausted. “Look, I'll chalk all of this foolishness up to inexperience. Didn't you read the Cerberus nondisclosure statements? Your entire team signed their lives away to
me
on keeping this secret. Not one of them is going to go crying home to their parent company.” He spread his hands and shrugged. “They'll do the job. Their companies will get paid for their time. And if they ever spill the beans, I'll string 'em up by their thumbs.”

Danny nodded slowly in submission. “All right, sir, we'll try to cut back the schedule, but it may take a couple of days.”

“Denied.”

Danny looked at Scott for help, but the genius looked ashen. Perhaps he had never been faced with someone even more difficult to work with than himself. Danny wondered if he should shove a chair beneath the man before he passed out.

“It's not a matter of
try
, Sharp,” said Walker, oblivious to the engineer's loss of color. “You
will
make the cuts and you
will
get the revised schedule to me by eleven hundred hours tomorrow.”

Danny knew there was only one response to this totally unreasonable command. “Yes, sir.”

Very early the next morning, Danny and Scott sat in a secure room in the Pentagon basement and stared at each other across a table covered in papers, several of them crumpled. They had worked through the night and still hadn't trimmed the timeline enough.

“Look,
Scotty
, I'm telling you that we have to kill this ‘X-factor' padding or we'll never make it.” Danny knew that Scott hated to be called Scotty, but he had run out of patience.

“And I'm telling you,
Daniel
, that if you eliminate the pads, something unexpected will crop up and we'll just deliver behind schedule!”

Tension was high. Nothing had been accomplished in the last hour. Danny had to do something to bring peace back to the negotiations. “Look, we both obviously need some coffee. Let's take a break and get out of here.”

He led Scott through the labyrinth of hallways and stairwells until they emerged on Rotary Road, on the south side of the Pentagon. There was only one place where he knew he could find good coffee at four o'clock in the morning. At Twelfth and Hayes, he found his target. The lights at Charla's were just flickering on as they approached the storefront, backlighting a painting on the window of a Franciscan monk holding a steaming mug of coffee. A petite woman with salt-and-pepper hair, a kind face, and striking blue eyes opened the door for them. “You boys are up pretty early,” she observed with the brightness of a soccer mom about to offer her team some Gatorade.

“We never went to bed,” Danny admitted.

“I see. We'd better make it two double espressos, then.” She turned and signaled a teenager behind the counter who looked like he could use some coffee of his own.

The two bleary-eyed men sat on stools at a small round table and sipped at their coffee, unable to discuss their classified work and unwilling to engage in small talk because, at the moment, they despised each other.

After a few sips, Scott started looking back and forth between the Franciscan monk and the cup in Danny's hand. “What does ‘GC' stand for?” he asked, pointing at the initials on his cup. “It doesn't match the monk or Charla.”

Danny shrugged. “This place used to be Gourmet Creations, but Charla bought it when they went out of business. She must be using the stuff that was left on the shelf until her own cups come in. It probably saves her some cash.”

Scott accepted Danny's explanation without comment and raised his cup for another sip, but he stopped before it reached his lips. In the engineer's sunken eyes, Danny suddenly saw renewed vigor, like a runner who'd just gotten his second wind. “Hurry up and finish your coffee,” Scott said. “I've got an idea.”

*   *   *

By the time they got back to their planning room, Danny was in a foul mood. Scott had completely ruined his coffee break. He had pushed, prodded, and rushed Danny all the way through his cup of coffee, and Danny hated being rushed, especially when he was already tired and irritable. On the way back to the Pentagon, Scott had crunched through the snow at such a brisk pace that Danny had to jog to keep up, nearly slipping and falling several times. Now he was sweaty on top of being tired and cranky, and no one should be sweaty in Washington, D.C., in winter at a quarter to five in the morning; it just wasn't right. He angrily tossed his coat over a chair. “Fine, we're back. What's your big idea?”

“What did you say about the GC cups?”

Danny was in no mood for games. “I said Charla was using cups that were already there when she bought the store.” He wondered if this room was soundproof enough to mask Scott's screams when he killed him.

“No, you said she was using stuff that was left on the shelf.”

“Oh, good. Now we're playing semantics.” Danny started to search for a weapon. His chair would do nicely. He just needed to move his coat first.

“Off-the-shelf,”
Scott said with an uncharacteristic wink. “It's an acquisitions concept that speeds the development of new systems. Do you think the B-2 is all new technology? No, we stole the fly-by-wire system out of an F-16 and the navigation system out of a B-1. We even used modified F-16 engines. A large percentage of that aircraft is
off-the-shelf
technology. We can do the same thing with Dream Catcher.”

Danny laid his coat back over the chair. The angry expression fell from his face. He was beginning to catch on. “You mean we could cut back development time by integrating old technology with new parts? It would be like building Frankenstein's stealth jet.”

“Exactly! For example, we don't have to build a completely new engine. We just have to find one that meets our specs that's already in use . . . say . . . the engine used in the Global Hawk. Then we purchase a couple of extras for that program, only they don't go to the Hawk, they go to Wright-Patterson for
developmental use
.”

Danny stared down at the slush stains on his shoes. Scott's plan might be the solution they needed. He didn't relish renegotiating with Walker for another week to sort out the details, but the old man should acquiesce, given the potential savings in dollars and time. Finally he looked up at the engineer's expectant face. “I like it. I like it a whole lot.”