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pilot whose performance he’d been evaluating occupied the left seat, breathing easier now that he’d completed most of his check ride.
    Outside the cockpit a star-studded night sky stretched to infinity. Inside, the instrument panel gave off a muted glow shielded by specially screened and darkened windows.
    â€œThirty-two thousand and holding steady on course niner-three-six,” the other pilot reported.
    Luke acknowledged their position and rolled his shoulders to relieve the strain of his seat harness. They’d been in the air for seven hours now, a mere hop compared to their normal missions. Tonight’s training run had taken them out over the Atlantic for an in-flight refueling. They would return to base before dawn, gliding in with the same stealth that made the B-2 invisible to the world’s most sophisticated radars—and to antiwar protestors hoping to obtain photos that would prove beyond any doubt the bomber’s presence in the U.K.
    The B-2 crews and support personnel were every bit as determined to remain as stealthy as the two-billion-dollar aircraft they flew. Hence the night-only takeoffs and landings and the fiction that their detachment was part of an exchange program at Leuchars.
    So far the ploy had worked. Would it still work if the paparazzi sniffed out the fact that Dayna Duncan’s old flame just happened to be in St. Andrews?
    From past experience, Luke knew how the media rooted around for personal tidbits to salt into their coverage of otherwise impersonal sporting events. He and Pud had once provided just the mix of glamour and romance the tabloids loved.
    The nickname tugged his mouth into a lopsided grin. Pud, short for the puddles he’d teased her about paddling around in. The teasing had lasted only until she’d taken Luke for his first white-water run.
    The experience had been as exhilarating as any he’d every experienced. It had also scared the crap out of him. When they’d gone over Horseshoe Falls, his stomach had dropped right through the bottom of the fiberglass kayak. He could still hear Dayna’s joyous whoop, still see her hair flying under her helmet and wet suit molded to her curves as they…
    Well, hell! There she was again. Front and center in his thoughts.
    Resigned, Luke checked the instruments and gave up trying to shove the woman out of his head.
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    She was still there, hovering around the edges of his mind, when he finished his mission debrief. Slinging his flyaway bag over his shoulder, he exited the debriefing area and was headed for the crew room to change out of his flight suit when one of other pilots hailed him.
    â€œThe old man wants to see you, Harper.”
    Nodding, Luke detoured to the suite of offices tucked in one corner of the massive hangar. He figured the colonel was waiting for an update on the check ride just completed and prepared a rundown in his mind.
    â€œYou wanted to see me, sir?”
    Colonel Don Anderson waved him into the office. Big, barrel-chested and as strong as a Brahma bull, Anderson had been part of the initial B-2 cadre. In the decade since, he’d racked up more hours than most pilots did in a lifetime. Customarily gruff and to the point, Anderson jerked his chin at the stranger seated in the chair angled in front of his desk.
    â€œHarper, this is Mike Callahan. He’s with the government. Callahan, Captain Luke Harper.”
    The stranger rose and offered his hand. His square-shouldered bearing suggested he’d spent at least one hitch in the military. The embroidered sharpshooter’s patch plainly visible above his visitor’s badge indicated he wasn’t someone to mess with.
    â€œHarper.”
    Callahan’s grip stopped well short of bone-crunching but something in the man’s narrow-eyed, assessing look stirred an instinctive and wholly atavistic response in Luke. Without warning, the skin on the back of his neck prickled.
    â€œCallahan’s got