Chapter 1 - The Woman With No Name
Lieutenant Cole Davis stepped in front of the silent pilot and snapped, “Mom, move.”
Colonel Avery Mercer entered the hangar carrying a sealed black flight recorder.
A strip of faded tape on its side read: 11-17-09 / RAVEN.
The woman’s eyes moved to it.
Cole had just insulted the only person in the hangar who knew what that number meant.
For three days, nobody at Falcon Ridge Forward Air Base had managed to get a word out of her.
Not one.
She had arrived on a gray transport aircraft before sunrise seventy-two hours earlier, carrying a single canvas bag and a black flight helmet so old that its edges had been polished smooth by years of use.
There had been no ceremony.
No greeting party.
No orders distributed to the junior officers.
No rank insignia.
Her tan flight suit looked like it had seen a decade of hard landings, but every patch had been removed. Even the rectangular strip where a pilot’s name usually sat had been carefully cut away.
Naturally, the younger pilots started talking.
They always did.
Some guessed she was a contractor.
Others said she was an accident investigator.
One lieutenant claimed she was probably an engineer from a manufacturer who had never flown anything faster than a rental car.
Cole Davis had laughed louder than anyone.
At twenty-four, Cole had reasons to believe in himself.
He had graduated near the top of his class at Sheppard.
His instructors had called him gifted.
He could process cockpit information faster than almost anyone in his squadron.
He had a natural feel for speed, energy management, and angles.
And he knew it.
That was the problem.
Cole wore confidence the way other pilots wore survival vests.
Tight.
Visible.
Impossible to miss.
The silent woman had watched him for three days.
She had seen him brief missions.
Seen him argue with maintenance crews.
Seen him dismiss a sergeant twice his age because a diagnostic computer told him something different from what the sergeant’s experience suggested.
She had also watched him fly.
That interested her more.
Cole was good.
Very good.
He was also reckless in exactly the way gifted young pilots sometimes became reckless.
He believed that because he could escape a bad situation, entering one was acceptable.
That belief had buried better pilots than him.
Now he stood three feet from her in Hangar Four, one hand extended in an impatient gesture.
Behind them sat Falcon 17, a dark gray stealth fighter with its canopy closed and ground equipment arranged beneath its wings.
The woman had been studying the aircraft’s left intake.
Cole had apparently decided she was blocking his route.
“I said move,” he repeated.
Two young pilots behind him smiled.
Captain Noah Briggs, Cole’s closest friend, lowered his head as though trying not to laugh.
The woman looked at Cole.
Nothing about her expression changed.
That seemed to irritate him more.
“You lost?” he asked.
Still nothing.
Cole glanced at Briggs.
“Maybe she doesn’t hear well either.”
Briggs’ smile disappeared.
Not because of the insult.
Because Colonel Mercer had just walked into the hangar.
Mercer was fifty-six, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and possessed the strange ability to quiet a room without raising his voice.
Usually the pilots snapped to attention when he appeared.
This time, they barely noticed him.
They noticed what he was carrying.
A black metal unit roughly the size of a thick book.
Its corners were scarred.
One side had been crushed.
A faded evidence seal ran across the top.
Master Sergeant Ray Thompson followed him.
Thompson had been maintaining military aircraft longer than Cole had been alive.
When he saw the woman, his face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
The woman noticed.
So did Mercer.
Cole did not.
“Lieutenant,” Mercer said.
Cole turned.
His posture straightened immediately.
“Sir.”
Mercer’s eyes moved from Cole to the woman.
Then to Cole again.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the hangar cleared for the morning systems check, sir.”
Mercer looked around.
“The hangar looks clear.”
Cole hesitated.
“Yes, sir. I meant personnel near the aircraft.”
The colonel glanced at the silent woman.
“She bothering you?”
Cole smiled carefully.
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“No, sir. I was just asking her to step aside.”
Mercer walked closer.
Thompson stayed behind him, staring at the woman as though he had seen a ghost.
Cole noticed that now.
“What?” Cole asked.
Thompson did not answer.
Mercer placed the damaged recorder on a nearby maintenance cart.
Metal touched metal with a heavy knock.
The silent woman’s gaze dropped toward it.
For the first time since arriving at Falcon Ridge, something entered her face.
Recognition.
Cole saw it.
“So you know what that is,” he said.
Mercer’s expression hardened.
“Lieutenant.”
Cole stopped.
The colonel looked toward the other pilots.
“Everybody out except Davis, Briggs, Thompson, and her.”
Nobody moved at first.
Then everyone moved at once.
Within seconds the hangar felt twice as large.
Only five people remained near Falcon 17.
Cole folded his arms.
“Sir, if this is classified—”
“It is.”
Cole immediately unfolded his arms.
Mercer turned toward the woman.
“We recovered it last night.”
Silence.
“Where we were told it would be.”
The woman’s jaw tightened.
Cole looked between them.
“You two know each other?”
Mercer ignored him.
Thompson did not.
“Lieutenant,” the older sergeant said quietly, “you might want to stop talking.”
Cole stared at him.
That only made his pride rise.
“With respect, Sergeant, I’ll decide when—”
The woman lifted one hand.
Everybody stopped.
She walked toward the cart.
Her boots made soft sounds on the concrete.
Cole watched as she approached the recorder.
She touched the faded tape with two fingers.
11-17-09 / RAVEN.
Then she turned the unit slightly.
A scratch ran beneath the tape.
It was small enough that Cole had not noticed.
Three letters.
E.S.H.
The woman closed her eyes.
For one second.
No longer.
When she opened them, Mercer said, “It’s his.”
The woman nodded.
Cole frowned.
“Whose?”
Nobody answered.
He looked toward Briggs.
Briggs shrugged.
Mercer broke the evidence seal.
The lid opened.
Inside was a hardened memory module wrapped in protective material.
Thompson inhaled sharply.
“I thought it burned.”
“So did everyone,” Mercer said.
The silent woman removed her hand from the cart.
Cole’s impatience returned.
“Sir, what exactly does this have to do with Falcon 17?”
Mercer looked at him.
“Everything.”
That answer took some of the confidence from Cole’s face.
Mercer removed the memory module.
“Eleven years ago, an aircraft using an early version of the control architecture installed in Falcon 17 disappeared during a classified evaluation.”
“Crashed?”
“Officially.”
Cole glanced at the woman.
“And?”
“And the investigation concluded pilot error.”
Thompson gave a humorless laugh.
Cole looked at him.
“You don’t believe that?”
Thompson’s eyes remained on the recorder.
“I signed the maintenance release on that aircraft.”
Cole’s expression changed.
“You were there?”
“I was.”
“And you think the investigation was wrong?”
Thompson did not answer.
Mercer did.
“I know it was.”
Silence returned.
Cole looked at the recorder.
Then the woman.
Then Mercer.
“Who was the pilot?”
The colonel took several seconds before answering.
“Captain Ethan Shaw.”
The woman’s face became still.
Cole noticed her fingers curling against the side of her flight suit.
“Shaw,” he repeated.
The name meant something.
He searched his memory.
Every fighter pilot studied accidents.
Some because regulations required it.
Good ones did it because dead pilots had lessons to teach.
“Ethan Shaw,” Cole said slowly. “Test squadron. Mojave evaluation program.”
Thompson nodded.
Cole remembered more.
“Spatial disorientation.”
“No,” the woman said.
The word cut through the hangar.
Everyone froze.
Cole’s eyes widened.
Three days.
Not one word.
Now her voice was low and rough from disuse, but unmistakably steady.
“No,” she repeated.
Mercer stared at her.
Thompson swallowed.
Cole said, “You can talk.”
The woman looked directly at him.
“That was never the question.”
Briggs turned away, hiding the beginning of a smile.
Cole’s face reddened.
Mercer almost looked amused.
Almost.
The woman turned toward the recorder.
“Ethan never lost orientation.”
Cole’s irritation faded beneath curiosity.
“How do you know?”
She looked at him.
“Because I was there.”
Cole blinked.
“That program had two aircraft.”
“Yes.”
“And two pilots.”
“Yes.”
The pieces began moving inside his head.
Slowly.
Uncomfortably.
He remembered the old accident report.
Falcon test aircraft 201 disappeared over restricted desert terrain.
Aircraft 202 returned to base damaged.
The surviving pilot’s identity had been redacted from every version Cole had seen.
He stared at the patchless woman.
“You flew the second jet.”
She said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Mercer closed the recorder case.
“We need the data extracted.”
Cole suddenly felt as if the concrete beneath him had shifted.
The woman he had called “Mom” less than five minutes earlier had flown experimental stealth aircraft when he had been thirteen.
But that still did not explain why she had arrived without rank.
Or why she had disappeared from aviation history.
Or why Colonel Mercer treated her with the careful respect usually reserved for generals.
Cole glanced at her worn flight suit.
“Who are you?”
She turned toward him.
Before she could answer, an alarm sounded from the maintenance console beneath Falcon 17.
One sharp electronic tone.
Then another.
Thompson rushed toward the screen.
“What is it?” Mercer asked.
The sergeant stared at the diagnostic page.
His face drained of color.
“Flight-control channel three just initialized.”
Cole frowned.
“So?”
Thompson slowly turned.
“The aircraft is powered down.”
Everyone looked toward Falcon 17.
Inside the dark cockpit, a single display suddenly flickered on.
A line of green text appeared.
The woman stepped closer.
Cole read it aloud.
RAVEN PROTOCOL ACTIVE.
Then another line appeared beneath it.
PILOT IDENTIFIED.
Cole turned toward the silent woman.
May you like
The cockpit canopy unlocked with a mechanical click.
And her old call sign appeared on the screen.
