Chapter 7 - The Debriefing RoomThe interrogation room inside the Nellis base command center looked nothing like the police holding cells depicted in movies. It was windowless, paneled in sound-dampening acoustic foam, and illuminated by sterile, recessed LED panels that buzzed at an almost imperceptible frequency.
Mark sat rigidly at a polished steel table, wringing his hands together while a digital clock on the opposite wall ticked off the seconds in stark red numbers.
The heavy steel door clicked open, and Pauline walked in. She was no longer wearing her bright red jacket; instead, an Air Force logistics officer had provided her with a clean, neutral gray windbreaker, though she still wore her comfortable walking shoes and carried her worn leather purse.
“They’re going to suspend my license, aren’t they?” Mark muttered, staring blankly at the metal table. “Federal investigators are probably combing through my flight simulator records right now. I panicked. When Captain Vance passed out, I froze. If you hadn't stood up in that aisle...”
“If you hadn't cut the fuel flow when I told you to, we’d both be a smoking crater in the foothills,” Pauline said, pulling out the chair opposite him and sitting down with practiced ease.
Mark looked up, his eyes wide and desperate. “Who are you, Pauline? Really. My whole life I’ve flown commercial routes by the book. I’ve never seen anyone command military airspace like that. The F-35 pilots didn't just respond to you—they obeyed you.”
Pauline unzipped her purse, reached inside, and pulled out a small, old-fashioned silver cigarette case—though she didn't open it. She just turned it over between her fingers, tracing the engraved insignia of a delta-wing jet soaring across a sunburst.
“Back in nineteen-eighty-four,” Pauline began softly, her gaze drifting toward the acoustic wall panel as if looking right through it, “before civilian GPS, before digital flight management systems, and long before you were born, Jensen, we didn't have auto-land. We didn't have automated redundancies that kept a plane in the air when the primary bus fried.”
She paused, her eyes snapping back to meet his.
“We had analog dials, raw telemetry, and iron nerves. I spent twelve years as a lead test pilot at Area 51—back when official documents pretended Groom Lake didn't even exist on a map. I pushed experimental titanium platforms past Mach 3 before the government even admitted those planes had a tail number. When you’ve spent your life flying machines that were literally trying to tear themselves apart at the edge of the atmosphere, a failing commercial turbofan on a twin-jet feels like driving a Sunday sedan.”
Mark sat in stunned silence, the magnitude of what he was hearing finally settling into his brain. “You... you tested black-project aircraft?”
“I tested the platforms that your modern commercial jets were reverse-engineered from,” Pauline said quietly. “And right now, Colonel Thomas outside is trying to figure out how to classify a commercial emergency landing that involved two active-duty stealth interceptors responding to a retired ghost pilot’s personal call sign.”
Before Mark could reply, the heavy door clicked open again.
Colonel Thomas stepped back into the room, holding a secure encrypted tablet in his hand. His expression was a mix of severe military protocol and profound, reluctant admiration.
“Well, Widow Six,” Thomas said, tossing the tablet onto the table between them. “The FAA is spinning their wheels trying to figure out why a commercial 737 diverted into restricted military airspace. But the Pentagon has already invoked a national security blanket clause over the incident.”
Pauline raised an eyebrow. “And what does that mean for the first officer and the passengers out in the terminal?”
“It means,” Thomas replied with a faint smirk, “that according to official federal records, SkyFlight 404 experienced a standard hydraulic fault, diverted safely under routine military clearance, and First Officer Mark Jensen executed a textbook emergency landing under the direct mentorship of an experienced FAA safety inspector on holiday.”
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Mark blinked, his jaw dropping. “An... an FAA safety inspector? That’s my cover story?”
“Unless you'd prefer to explain to a congressional subcommittee why you were escorted by a pair of top-secret F-35s responding to a cold-war era black-project call sign,” Thomas dryly remarked.
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