A few hours later, the Megafortress rendezvoused with a real Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 aircraft that was modified for aerial refueling. Within half an hour, the B-52 was fully topped off with fuel. With the DC-10 in loose formation, the B-52 made its way across the north Atlantic, using bursts of its Laser Radar system to be sure it was well out of visual range of other aircraft. The DC-10 was on a standard over-water flight plan, en route to Glasgow, Scotland. About an hour prior to landing, the B-52 again hooked up and filled its tanks from the DC-10. The big converted airliner headed immediately for landing in Scotland—it was now dangerously low on fuel, even though a conventional DC-10 can make the trip across to Europe easily with plenty of fuel reserves. Its stealth wingman had nearly sucked it dry.

The EB-52 continued right across Europe, overflying countries without clearance. The reason was simple: No conventional radars could see it, so no one knew it was up there. It flew across a dozen western and central European nations without a hint of its presence. Even in crowded airspace, it was able to keep its distance so no other aircraft could see it, changing altitudes or maneuvering far enough away to keep out of sight.

John “Bud” Franken, Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired, thoroughly enjoyed the danger of what they were doing. As the aircraft commander aboard the Sky Masters test bed aircraft, he had seen his company’s planes do some amazing things—but even when the EB-52 was doing nothing but flying straight and level nearly seven miles above the Earth, it was still amazing. Franken was a former U.S. Navy test pilot and test squadron commander, and he had flown in every Navy aircraft design, both operational and ones that never made it past “black” status, over the past twenty years—but he was truly awestruck by the EB-52.

In his soul he would always be a Navy fighter pilot, but his heart now belonged to the experimental EB-52 Megafortress.

His mission commander, sitting in the right seat across the wide cockpit, was as young as Franken was old, as operationally inexperienced as the pilot was combat-tested. Twenty-five-year-old Lindsey Reeves was simply a natural-bom systems wizard. It didn’t matter if the system was a complex, high-tech flying battleship like the EB-52 Megafortress or her pride and joy—a 1956 Aston-Martin DB4 GT Sanction I convertible, which she restored herself, including rebuilding the engine—she could look at it, experiment with it for a few minutes, and instantly figure out how it worked. Sky Masters Inc.’s worldwide team of headhunters had recruited her at the age of sixteen at a county science fair in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where she had won the competition by modifying a radio receiver to pick up Global Positioning Satellite navigation signals—at a time when GPS was still a classified military program.