Wraith (7 page)

On Saturday, Danny Sharp drove his family through the snowy labyrinth of central D.C. on the way to the National Museum of the American Indian. He'd never been fond of meandering around a cavernous building to look at other people's stuff, but Carol had a heavy dose of Navajo in her blood and she wanted the kids to learn about the Native American role in the nation's history. She was right next to him, talking about something that was obviously important to her, but Danny wasn't listening. He could not get Cerberus off his mind.

Danny had always struggled with leaving his work at the office. The official term was
compartmentalization
. Academically, he knew how it worked—mentally separating an emotion or a piece of information and locking it away in a subconscious filing cabinet. But he was never very successful in its application. Pilots used compartmentalization to help them shut out all other concerns and focus on flying. Intelligence analysts like Danny used it to bury a secret so deep that even a drunken stupor could not bring it to the surface.

Unfortunately, compartmentalization was a developed skill that some people had a knack for and some did not. Danny had discovered long ago that it was a good thing he wasn't a drinker.

He knew that he should let Cerberus go for a while—that he should focus on his family on his day off—but he was obsessed with solving the problem Walker had entrusted to him. Cerberus was dead in the water until he found a solution. He simply couldn't put it out of his mind until the task was complete.

“We can do that. Right, Dan?” Carol's use of his name snapped him back to the moment.

“Uh, right,” Danny answered, wondering what he'd just agreed to. He let it go. He was sure to find out eventually; probably during an argument two or three weeks down the road.

They left the car in a nearby parking garage and crossed a slush-covered street to the museum. As they left the cold behind and entered the warm interior of the building, Danny tried to purge his work-related demons. Before him lay a series of landscapes from Native American life, accented with several fountains and a dozen pleasant scents. He followed his nose and saw the Mitsitam Café, where museum employees were showing patrons how to prepare some Native American dishes. He breathed deeply. Maybe he would finally be able to put his work aside and enjoy just one afternoon with his family.

They walked through a few exhibits and took a quick break at the café, and by midafternoon, Danny had totally let go of Cerberus. After the meal, Carol suggested they find the display of Navajo art. Danny laughed with his kids and flirted with his wife as they followed the signs to the back of the museum. Then, as they rounded the last corner, something stopped him dead in his tracks.

Before him, hanging in a large case next to the entrance of the Navajo exhibit, was a stunning piece of art. A beautiful assortment of earth-toned feathers and colorful beads hung from a two-foot-diameter wicker ring that encircled a web of cords. The whole piece must have been five feet tall. But it wasn't the size or the beauty of the artwork that made Danny stop short.

“Dream Catcher.” He let the words audibly slip from his mind.

“Du-uh,” teased Carol. “You act like you've never seen one before.”

He didn't respond.

Dream Catcher.
Danny couldn't focus on anything else for the rest of the trip. No amount of stunning art or sweet scents could snap him out of it.

The solution worked itself out in his mind naturally, as if it were a process that he simply observed rather than propelled. It all made sense, assuming they could get the funds. The boss might not like the idea of a new piece of hardware, but it was the only solution Danny could see. Scott Stone would help him. Scott would argue the viability of his creation with enough diagrams and formulas to make any man's head spin, let alone Colonel-Richard-T.-Walker-U.S.-Army.

“It'll work,” Danny said to himself, “I know it will.”

“What, honey?”

“Nothing.”

At home, Danny picked at his dinner and continued to work out the details in his mind. He'd have to convince the colonel to clear Scott into the program before he could even contact him. Then he'd have to get Scott to forward a paper summarizing the Dream Catcher concept. No, that wouldn't be enough. He needed to get to Ohio, to see the project at its birthplace, before he could make a solid plan.

Danny's mind was still racing through the options as he lay in his room waiting for Carol to put the kids to bed. Maybe he should call the colonel and go into work tonight. After all, this thing was a national priority, a tasker from POTUS himself. If this solution was really viable, he should get cracking. Could it really wait until Monday?

Carol shut the bedroom door, interrupting Danny's worries. There was something pleasantly odd in her expression. “The kids are asleep,” she whispered, giving him a little wink. She made a show of pulling something very small and silky out of the dresser, lit a candle, doused the lights, and slinked into the bathroom.

Suddenly compartmentalizing Cerberus didn't seem so difficult. It could definitely wait until Monday.

Bright and early Monday morning, Danny stood in front of Colonel Walker's desk, trying to summon his courage while waiting for his boss to finish a phone call.

“Look, Tarpin,” Walker growled into the receiver, “I don't like the blackmail I hear in your voice. You'll get me the information I need out of the pure goodness of your heart or I'll go to the vice president and identify you
by name
as an interagency roadblock!” He slammed the receiver down in its cradle, muttered, “Spooks,” and then turned his attention to Danny. “All right, tell me what you've got, and make it quick.”

The colonel's less than exuberant mood threw Danny off. All the moisture in his throat seemed to evaporate, and he could barely get his first words out. “Sir, I . . . I have that new idea you're looking for. You know, in regards to Cerberus.”

All hope for an attaboy or even a smile faded as Walker grunted his response. “Mm-hmm. Spit it out.”

Danny regrouped and tried to continue. “Uh, I saw something in the postaction report from the last operation. The supervising general noted with emphasis that he couldn't accomplish the goal with the tools at hand. I think he's right; I think what we need is a new tool.” He stopped and took a breath.

“Go on . . .”

“Sir, I think our problem is not in the striker, but in the reconnaissance aircraft. The Predator just doesn't fit the bill. To use it we have to knock down portions of any radar net and, in the Iraqis' case, so many of their radars are mobile that they quickly fill the gaps.”

Walker's eyes drifted from Danny to his desk in thought. “I'd have to agree with that,” he said, then looked up again. “Okay, Captain, what do you have in mind?”

His boss's shift into guarded openness boosted Danny's resolve. “Sir, what we need is a new piece of hardware—one that will enable us to determine a human target's position without being detected, even in a robust air defense environment.”

Danny involuntarily stepped forward as he pushed in to the final pitch. “When I was at Holloman, we had a civilian who worked on our stealth materials, a ‘stealth engineer,' if you will. He also spent a lot of time at Whiteman Air Force Base, working with the stealth bombers. His name is Dr. Scott Stone. Dr. Stone once told me about an idea for an unmanned reconnaissance jet that could be launched from a B-2's bomb bay, completely integrating the reconnaissance and attack pieces of the puzzle. I think he's still working on that concept at Wright-Patterson, but I don't know how far he's taken it.”

“Did he have a name for this aircraft?”

“Yes, sir. He called it Dream Catcher.”

*   *   *

That evening Danny stood in his kitchen, trying to placate his fuming spouse without really answering her questions. “Yeah, honey, I know I said this job would mean less travel,” he said with a conciliatory tone. “And it does. But I never said it meant no travel at all.”

Carol did not respond; she just folded her arms and glowered at him.

“Look, it's not like I have a choice here; TDYs are part and parcel with the whole military gig, you know. When Uncle Sam says go to Ohio, you go to Ohio.”

“Fine,” came the terse reply, “but I don't understand what this thing is, and why you didn't know about it until today. You'd think you would have remembered to give me a few days' warning that you were going to miss your daughter's birthday.”

Colonel Walker had been surprisingly accommodating, at least where the Dream Catcher idea was concerned. Danny even thought he'd seen a hint of excitement in that stonewall face. Unfortunately, his proposal was so successful that it shot him directly in the foot.

Danny had thought it would take several days to coordinate all the details, but his boss smelled progress, and Colonel-Richard-T.-Walker-U.S.-Army was never one to put off progress. He immediately started making phone calls and pulling strings.

Tomorrow, instead of having birthday cake with his daughter, Danny would fly out to Wright-Patterson and indoctrinate Dr. Stone into Cerberus. Then he would spend a week getting to know the details of Dream Catcher and help Scott develop a timeline to bring the concept to reality. “Air Force Materiel Command has a new concept,” he explained to Carol, “and they want somebody from Plans Division to take a look at it.” It was the best explanation he could offer without getting her a top secret clearance.

“Well, why can't Frank go?” Carol persisted.

“Frank is in the Navy.”

“So, what happened to ‘One Team, One Fight'?”

“That's just something we say around the foreigners, honey. Nobody really believes it.”

Danny packed as light as possible and gently explained to his daughter why Daddy wouldn't be there for her party. He hated missing any family event, particularly his kids' birthdays, but this wasn't the first one he'd missed, and he knew that, as long as he worked for Uncle Sam, it wouldn't be the last.

The next morning, Danny stepped down the stairs of a Learjet C-21 in front of the base operations building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He wore his standard blue uniform and carried with him a blue canvas satchel. A short, dark-haired man met him halfway between the building and the aircraft. He was bundled against the cold, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his overcoat, a scarf wrapped tightly around his long neck. “Daniel,” he said with a slight shiver. He was about the same age as Danny, still in his twenties, but his tone was that of a teacher addressing an annoying student.

“Only my mother calls me Daniel, Scott,” Danny replied.

Scott rolled his eyes, nearly causing them to disappear into the sunken sockets on his pale, gaunt face. “Is your mother going to explain what is so important that you came all the way out here to interrupt my work?”

“It'll have to wait until we get to your office.”

Scott shrugged, and without another word he turned and started walking toward a row of buildings and hangars.

In their earlier work together, Danny had become accustomed to Scott's mannerisms. He was rude, arrogant, and condescending, but after a while, these abrasive personality flaws became almost endearing. Or perhaps Danny just told himself that. The real reason Danny or anyone in the Air Force tolerated him was that Dr. Scott Stone was a genius, pure and simple. And geniuses were nice to have around.

After a long walk, during which Scott staved off all of Danny's attempts at small talk, they stood in front of a thick steel door protected by a biometric lock and a numeric keypad.

“You'll have to wait outside while I clear the office and sign you in,” said Scott.

“No, I won't,” said Danny, grinning as he placed his thumb on the scanner and typed in a code. The door clicked open without complaint. Scott gaped, and Danny basked in the glory of the genius's shock. “I think you'll find that you have more clearances than you did yesterday, as well.” Danny pulled the heavy door wide. “Colonel Walker's phone calls can
literally
open doors.”

Despite the drama of gaining entrance, Scott's office was disappointingly small. Danny half expected the door to open into a massive hangar filled with super-secret aircraft and weaponry, guarded by black-masked ninjas. Instead, they entered a very short hallway with only seven small rooms, three on each side and one at the end. The walls, the carpet, the desks, and the chairs were varying shades of gray. “This is an interior designer's worst nightmare,” said Danny. “Then again, I doubt if there are any interior designers with clearance enough to set foot in this place.”

“Miguel comes in once every two years to oversee changes to the carpet and furniture,” said Scott.

Danny chuckled, but Scott's flat expression did not change. The engineer motioned at one of the small rooms. “In here. Now, what is this great secret that brings you into my domain?”

“First there's some paperwork I need you to sign.”

Once that formality was out of the way, Danny tucked the papers into his blue canvas satchel and smiled at Scott. “Welcome to Cerberus,” he began, and then he explained everything—the objective of the program, the failed missions, and the reason he had come to Wright-Patterson. “We need Dream Catcher. The circle of stealth isn't complete without reconnaissance.”

Scott took a moment to take it all in and then he opened a small safe, pulled out a CD, and inserted it into his computer.

Twenty minutes later, Danny had yet to utter another word. Dream Catcher wasn't just a concept; it was a completed design. There were scaled schematics surrounded by equations that he couldn't hope to understand. There were detailed explanations of each system, including avionics, propulsion, structures, skin, and more. There was even a diagram of a stealth bomber's weapons bay, containing a huge rack for a deployable drone. Scott said something but Danny was too busy staring in wonderment at the screen to process the words. “I'm sorry, what did you say?” he asked, regaining his capacity for speech.

“Help,” repeated Scott. “I'm going to need some help. As much as I'd like to take the credit, I didn't do all of this myself. Dream Catcher falls under a generic stealth program known as Specter Blue. While it is certainly the most mature project we have, it is not the only one. There are a number of contractors working on different aspects of the Dream Catcher concept alone, and that's only the ‘paper airplane.' We'll need a real live manufacturer to put this thing together.”

“I know, Scott,” Danny reassured him. “And I'm told we'll get all the support we need. Dream Catcher won't remain a paper airplane for long.”