At the Northrop plant the aircraft had been nicknamed the armadillo. Though its airframe was so smooth that nature might have given its shape to a wandering seabird, the B-2A was not everything it appeared to be. The slate-gray composites that made up its visible surface were only part of the stealth technology built into the aircraft. The inside metal structure was angular and segmented like the eye of an insect, the better to reflect radar energy in a direction away from that of the transmitter it hoped to defeat. The graceful exterior shell was designed mainly to reduce drag, and thus increase range and fuel efficiency. And it all worked.

At Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the 509th Bomb Group had led its quiet existence for years, going off and doing its training missions with little fanfare. The bombers originally designed for penetrating Soviet air defenses and tracking down mobile intercontinental missiles for selective destruction—never a realistic tasking, as its crewmen knew—did have the ability to pass invisibly through almost any defense. Or so people had thought until recently.

"It's big, and it's powerful, and it snuffed a B-1," an officer told the group operations officer. "We finally figured it out. It's a phased array. It's frequency-agile, and it can operate in a fire-control mode. The one that limped back to Shemya"—it was still there, decorating the island's single runway while technicians worked to repair it enough to return to the Alaskan mainland—"the missile came in from one direction, but the radar pulses came from another."

"Cute," observed Colonel Mike Zacharias. It was instantly clear: the Japanese had taken a Russian idea one technological step further. Whereas the Soviets had designed fighter aircraft that were effectively controlled from ground stations, Japan had developed a technique by which the fighters would remain totally covert even when launching their missiles. That was a problem even for the B-2, whose stealthing was designed to defeat longwave search radars and high-frequency airborne tracking- and targeting radars.

Stealth was technology; it was not quite magic. An airborne radar of such great power and frequency-agility just might get enough of a return off the B-2 to make the proposed mission suicidal. Sleek and agile as it was, the B-2 was a bomber, not a fighter, and a huge target for any modern fighter aircraft.

"So what's the good news?" Zacharias asked.

"We're going to play some more games with them and try to get a better feel for their capabilities."

"My dad used to do that with SAMs. He ended up getting a lengthy stay in North Vietnam."

"Well, they're working on a Plan B, too," the intelligence officer offered.

"Oh, that's nice," Chavez said.

"Aren't you the one who doesn't like being a spook?" Clark asked, closing his laptop after erasing the mission orders. "I thought you wanted back in to the paramilitary business."

"Me and my big mouth." Ding moved his backside on the park bench.