“Helicopters?” Maggie asked.
“Folks out here are used to seeing strange lights in the night sky. Some claim they’ve seen helicopters,” Donny explained. “There are a couple of ranchers in Cherry County who use helicopters to check their herds.”
“These are no ranchers’ helicopters.” Nolan shook his head. “Those make noise. I’m talking black ops helicopters.”
“And others have claimed they’ve seen alien spacecraft,” Donny added with a tone that was meant to nullify both claims.
“Followed by fighter jets,” Nolan said, not paying attention to Donny who now rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his massive chest.
“That was only one time,” Donny came back with. “We’re smack-dab between NORAD and STRATCOM,” he told Maggie. Then to Nolan he said, “There wasn’t any verification from either military base on fighter jets in this area.”
“Of course not.”
Maggie stood back and watched them. There was obviously a lot of information left out of her x-file. Nolan pinned her down with his eyes.
“So maybe you can tell us,” he said. “Is there some classified government project?”
She looked back at the butchered animal, noticing how the open wounds still looked raw in the fading light. Then she met the rancher’s eyes.
“What makes you think the government would tell me?”
That’s when the two-way radio clipped to Donny’s belt started squawking.
Even in the Nebraska Sandhills, Maggie recognized the codes. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
CHAPTER 4
TEN MILES ON THE OTHER SIDE
OF THE NATIONAL FOREST
Wesley Stotter struggled with the tailgate of his 1996 Buick Roadmaster. The wireless microphone stabbed at his Adam’s apple but remained attached to the collar of his flannel shirt. He was fully aware that he was live streaming yet he was caught speechless, his eyes glued to the sky.
Lights exploded in the distance. Blue and white moving up then down, right to left like no aircraft Stotter had ever seen. But he had seen similar lights before.
“Son of a bitch,” he said out loud, suddenly not caring if the FCC slapped him with another fine. They had been trying to run him off the air for more than a decade but Stotter was used to people trying to shut him up. As a result, UFO Network—his grassroots organization dedicated to proving the existence of extraterrestrial beings and the government’s attempt to cover it up—only grew stronger. He had built a loyal following of thousands. Tonight his radio and webcam audiences were in for a real treat.
“You will not believe this, my friends,” he said, adjusting the wireless mic as he pulled at the car’s tailgate. It finally dropped open with a crack, metal scraping on metal. Without looking, he found a duffel bag and his fingers frantically searched inside the bag until he found the camera.
“More lights in the night skies,” Stotter began his narration while trying to calm his shaky fingers. Sometime in the last several years arthritis had started to set in, making everything a challenge. He wiped his sweat-slick palms, one at a time, on his khakis and continued to fumble with the buttons on the camera.
“Friends, I’m in the Nebraska Sandhills tonight, just outside of Halsey and about ten miles east of the national forest. Holy crap! There they go again.”
The lights made a sharp pivot and headed straight toward Stotter. There were three, like bright stars in tight formation, moving independently but together as a unit.
He swung the camera up, relieved to see the viewfinder open and the night-vision function on. The Record button was a bright red. It took every bit of concentration for Stotter to steady his hands.
“Those of you listening who are Stottercam subscribers, you should be getting a shaky view of this incredible sight. For the rest of you let me attempt to describe it. The lights are going to come directly over me. Friends, it looks like Venus and two companions—that’s the size and brightness—only they’re moving together through the sky, slowly now. But just a few seconds ago they were shooting up and down, independent of each other. Almost like polar opposites.”
Stotter had been chasing lights in the night sky since he was old enough to drive. As a boy he had listened to his father tell stories about his days in the army. John Stotter had been stationed at the army’s guided missile base at White Sands shortly after the end of World War II where a classified program did test launches of German V-2 rockets. Fifty miles to the east was a nuclear-testing facility at Alamogordo and also nearby was the army’s 509th airfield just outside Roswell, New Mexico.