Chapter 13 - The Call From Groom LakeThe autumn tranquility of the Virginia hills didn't last forever.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the landline telephone inside Pauline’s kitchen began to ring—a sharp, shrill analog ring that she hadn't heard in years. She walked inside, set her teacup on the wooden counter, and lifted the heavy receiver.
“Sanders,” she answered crisply.
“Colonel Sanders,” a familiar, modulated voice came through the secure encrypted line—the unmistakable tone of the current installation commander at the Nevada Test and Training Range. “Sorry to disturb your retirement, ma’am, but we have a tactical anomaly on the test grids that requires an old-school set of eyes.”
Pauline leaned against the kitchen counter, looking out the window at the gray rain slicking her porch. “Define anomaly, Commander. If it’s another software glitch in the drone guidance arrays, call the software engineers in Austin. I don’t debug code.”
“It’s not code, ma’am. It’s an unprogrammed telemetry spike on our legacy hypersonic drop platform—the exact same airframe configuration you tested back in eighty-eight. The current telemetry engineers can't figure out why the aerodynamic shear vector behaves erratically at Mach 4.5. We pulled your old flight test journals from the archives, but your margin calculations... frankly, ma’am, they look like magic.”
Pauline let out a low, dry chuckle. “It’s not magic, Commander. It’s physics applied with a heavy hand.”
“We need you out here at Groom Lake, Pauline. Just for a forty-eight-hour advisory session in the high-speed simulator. Name your terms.”
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Pauline looked down at her comfortable walking shoes resting by the door. She thought about the endless blue sky, the hum of high-bypass turbines, and the raw, unfiltered thrill of pushing an aircraft past its design limits.
“Send a transport plane to Dulles,” Pauline said smoothly. “And make sure the pilot knows how to handle crosswinds.”
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