The Ransom of Black Stealth One

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Because the very nature of stealth is ambiguity, we need not be surprised that the subject is both top secret and high profile. It was not my intent to ferret out and publish information that might compromise the security of existing programs. My advisors assure me that I did not. Those now active in aerospace programs did, however, help me focus on the better sources in open literature, and critiqued my preliminary design of Black Stealth One. Retired engineers free to swap brainstorms, and to critique my own fictional stealth techniques into something like feasibility, include Everett Elerath and Joseph Vasilik. William Brubaker made his library available and has my thanks for it. A few whose employments are more sensitive must remain, in their jargon, “low observable.” To them I offer generic thanks.

Weston, who was not a light sleeper, at first sensed only a dull impact through his bedroom floor to the mattress. It did not shake him fully awake and he was unable, later, to testify how long it took him to become aware of the door buzzer. Too long, at any rate. He did recall that the digital clock downstairs in the living room read “02:51” when, conservative as always, he slipped a raincoat over his pajamas, his old .45 service automatic heavy as a curbstone in the right-hand pocket.

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