Wilton, Kentucky. I know, it’s very odd and very disturbing. What’s even more of a concern is that there are civilians in the field around him. He’s got his plasma deployed and he’s ready to run, but he ain’t running. There have gotta be video cameras down there, all kinds of trouble. I’m doing a scramble, I’ve got to get that guy out of there. Do you think you could get Glass in the hole with Adam? Let’s reassure him that it’s just a friendly warning that they might spill their own secret. And let’s please find out what we can about what in sam hill they’re up to.”
He waited until he heard Wilkes’s grunt of assent. The good colonel did not like to be dictated to, which is why Rob did just that whenever he had a chance.
ALFRED AIR FORCE BASE WAS a training facility. It was still up and running largely because Kentucky’s senior senator was a member of the Armed Services Committee and powerful enough to hold onto his bases.
Whatever, Rob was damned relieved that the place was still operational. He widened the image on the overhead satellite, punched a couple of keys, and saw a white outline of the base superimposed over its location. The base was barely thirty miles from the unfolding incident.
IN THE FIELD IN KENTUCKY, they were standing in helpless amazement, watching the object. Nancy Jeffers had gone home, because she and her husband had no wish to leave their baby alone with something like this taking place. Katelyn and Conner were also gone, and Dan was just as glad. A child had no business out here, and he thought that Kelton was letting his boys get way too close with that camera of theirs.
Without warning, a clap of thunder hit. Dan cried out, they all did. Chris Jeffers covered his head with his hands. Dan saw a double star wheeling in the sky. Then he heard the shriek of a jet and realized that what he was looking at were afterburners. “It’s the Air Force!” he shouted.
Its underside glowing in the light being given off by the object, the fighter howled past so low that a hot stench of burning jet fuel washed over them.
The object turned purple. It moved, wobbling, above the ground.
The voice in the thing cried out, “Help me, help me, oh God, no!
The light rose into the sky. It hung there, still wobbling slightly. The jet’s glowing afterburners turned and started back.
“Stop it! Stop that!” came the voice. Then more screaming.
Maggie Warner screamed with her, crying into the agony of it.
In that instant, the object rose a hundred feet or so, then shot off to the north literally like a bullet. It went faster than Dan had ever seen anything go.
The jet passed over again, its engines screaming. It turned and followed the object. They watched the afterburners creep away into the sky.
Into the silence that followed, Chris said, “God help her.”
“That was a UFO,” young Jimbo Kelton announced.
Maggie asked,
“Dear heaven,” Harley Warner said, “I think so.”
Dan was looking at a small shadow in the field standing where the glow had been. “Folks,” he said, “uh, I don’t think we’re alone here.”
But when he shone his flashlight toward it, there was nothing there.
SIX
LAUREN GLASS WAS ENJOYING TEDDY Blaine’s lovemaking, powerful and persistent from this sweet, rough guy. As a fellow Air Force officer, he was carefully disinterested in Lauren’s classified work, and that made this particular affair very fun and very easy. As long as she was involved in heavily classified work, Lauren’s plan was to keep the lovers moving through her life. Nobody deep, because it made it too hard to keep her secrets.
When Colonel Wilkes called her, she tried to ignore it. She pushed the chiming out of her mind, concentrated on the warmth under the covers, and the fabulous young man who was loving her.
The warble became a whine.
“Oh, Lauren,” Teddy whispered, sinking down onto her, burying his face in her neck, kissing her now gently, pressing his prickled cheek against her soft one.
“My love,” she said, and thought that she really did kind of mean it. Which meant—should she ditch him on the never-get-too-close theory?
The whine became a wail.
He jerked like he’d been stuck with a pin. “I don’t believe this.”
“My cert’s up,” she said, referring to the security certification system on her computer, which started automatically when she began receiving a classified message.
But why was he after her now, at—what—jeez, it was 3 A.M. She’d been in the cage for six hours yesterday waiting without result for Adam to at least take a breath, and she was most certainly not ready to return to his dark, claustrophobic hole.
Throwing off the covers, she went over and typed her password. Code came up, four lines, which she sight read. “They’ve got a virus,” she muttered, striving not to reveal to him her true horror. The message communicated extreme urgency. Something was wrong.
“Let somebody else fix it.”
“I have to go,” she said, going to her closet and starting to dress.
“Miss Indispensable.”
“Unfortunately.” Zipping her jeans, she went over and kissed him. “I’ll be back, love,” she said.
He drew her toward the bed. Briefly, she sat down. They kissed. She looked into his eyes. She sighed. “You know the rules.” And she realized how much she hated what she did—how deeply, profoundly twisted it felt… but she loved the perks, and, quite frankly, she was also sort of okay with Adam. The facility was a hole, but at the bottom of that hole was a most extraordinary being.
The thought that Adam might not be well crossed her mind. That made her hurry even more. She threw on a sky-blue cashmere sweater and her black jacket. After a perfunctory brush of her hair, she strode across her large living room and out the door.
She did not look back toward Ted. When she returned, he might well be gone. Fine, she’d rustle up another roll in the hay, maybe a civilian this time.
She had a lot for a girl of twenty-six. But she did a lot. As far as anybody knew, there was only one person on this earth who could do what she did. No doubt there were others, but how to find them? The Air Force had never been able to succeed at that, which was fine by her, since it meant that she could name her price, which had been promotion to full colonel. So now Mike’s orders were requests… but this was one she would certainly meet.
In the elevator, she turned her mind to her work. What could be wrong? She wished the elevator would go faster. She arrived in the condo’s garage, strode to her car, and sped off to the facility. It wasn’t far. She couldn’t live far from Adam.
She turned two corners onto Hamilton, and made her way down the tree-shaded street to the old house.
Wilkes met her at the door, which was unusual in the extreme. “A glow-boy kiped a newbie in the forbidden zone and there were civilian witnesses,” he said all in one breath. “I want you to query Adam on it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s so extremely unusual, obviously.”
“You understand, they don’t have the concept of treaty. They don’t know what that is. And they futz with newbies all the time. You just don’t see them do it, because they stay in the approved zones.”
“You know this?”
“What if I told you that they’re a rambunctious, fun-loving bunch of extremely brilliant but weird people? How would that sit?”
