One problem: the CA-90 couldn't fly.
Forty-eight days earlier, during a routine test flight, both engines flamed out at 14,000 feet. No warning, no buildup, just silence where thunder used to be. The pilots barely glided it back to the runway; one of them quit the next morning.
Since then, the jet had been sitting in Hangar 3 like a beautiful, useless sculpture. Preston threw everything at it. He brought in his best internal team: 12 senior mechanics who had built the thing from blueprints. They pulled the engines apart, rebuilt them, ran every diagnostic in the book. The engines would start, they'd run for about 90 seconds—smooth, clean, perfect readings across the board—then they'd shut down. Both of them, at the same time. Same fault code every single time. No explanation.
So, Preston brought in outside consultants. Engine manufacturer reps flew in from Connecticut, independent aerospace specialists from California, a former Air Force turbine expert from Colorado—50 mechanics total. $8 million in diagnostics, new parts, new software, new theories every Monday morning.
Same result every time: 90 seconds, shutdown, fault code.
The whiteboard in Hangar 3 told the whole story. It was covered in theories: fuel contamination, software glitch, sensor malfunction, wiring fault, turbine blade microfracture. Every single one had been tested. Every single one had been crossed out in red marker. The hangar smelled like jet fuel and frustration. Mechanics argued over tablets. Engineers stopped making eye contact with each other. The company's stock had dropped 12% since the grounding. Preston was bleeding $3 million a week in contract penalties.
And that's when Faith Brooks entered the picture.
Not through the front door, not with a resume, not with a handshake from the right person—through a chain-link fence with a pair of borrowed binoculars.
Faith lived in a converted cargo van parked in a gravel lot three blocks from the Caldwell campus. The van used to deliver restaurant supplies; now it was her bedroom, her kitchen, and her workshop all in 60 square feet.
Every morning, she woke before sunrise. She walked 40 minutes to the Houston Public Library. She sat in the same chair at the same table, and she read: not novels, not magazines, but FAA technical publications, aviation maintenance manuals, turbine engine theory, fuel system schematics. She'd been doing this for years, long before the CA-90 existed, long before she ever heard the name Caldwell. She read the way some people breathe—like she'd die without it.
After the library closed, she walked back to her van. Along the way, she'd stop at junkyards. She'd buy broken parts for pennies: small engines, generators, outboard motors. She'd carry them back to her van and fix them by flashlight. Then she'd sell the working engines to local mechanics for cash: enough for food, enough for fuel, enough to survive one more day.