Free Wraith by James R. Hannibal Page A

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.”
    â€œMiguel 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?”
    â€œFirst 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.
    â€œHelp,” 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.”
    â€œI 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.”

Chapter 14
    â€œNo, no, that’s not right,” said a blond woman seated directly across the conference table from Danny. “It’s going to take at least three additional weeks to get the kinks out of the engine design.”
    Only a few hours had passed since Danny arrived on base, and already they had identified Scott’s core group of ten experts and obtained Cerberus clearances for all of them. The twelve team members had now crammed into Specter Blue’s tiny conference room—the room at the end of the short gray hall—for their first planning session.
    While Danny was feeling claustrophobic, Scott did not seem to mind the enclosed space at all. However, from the expression on the genius’s face, Danny could tell he
did
mind the pushback he was getting from the blond woman.
    According to her file, Amanda Navistrova was a two-time graduate of MIT, with master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and thermodynamics. She had never bothered to get a doctorate in her field, but Scott had confessed earlier that her breadth of experience more than covered for any lack in paper credibility, even if she could be—as he termed it—impertinent. Amanda would be the lead engineer for Dream Catcher’s propulsion systems.
    â€œAnd look how close the long-range transmitters are to the engine