The drones, flying at sunset high enough to disperse their engine noise, always out of the direct rays of the sun so they didn’t sparkle, came back with the goods, from five thousand feet that looked, under magnification, to be more like five hundred. Swagger went through the images at Hill Air Force Base, in Ogden, Utah, just west of Salt Lake City, which was the nearest spot with the necessary technology.

“Do you see it?” asked Neill, who’d masterminded the aerial recon with his usual nonchalant genius while making smart-guy comments the whole time.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Swagger. “I’ve got it down to two.”

He gave his two selections. Neill punched buttons at a keyboard, the two images came up side by side on a giant screen more usually given to the display of Russian bombers on Siberian tarmacs. To the uninitiated, it was just a blur and smear in odd shades, imprimatured by a digital display at one corner that expressed latitude and longitude, altitude, time, weather. But Swagger got it, homed in on one, homed in further on a specific area and requested the blowup.

“I’m seeing what looks like, um, a post? It’s not a natural structure. It’s clearly man-built. Is that what everybody else sees? Can you bring it up more?”

Neill diddled—clickety-click, clickety-clack—and selected the piece of picture in which the post-like thing was featured, brought it to center screen, and blew it up nice and big.

They were in the darkened theater of an air force room, decorated with photos of supersonic fighters, gray-haired generals, and flags. The screen was the only thing that differentiated the chamber from a Kiwanis Club.

Nick said to Colonel Nickel, who was the USAF representative at the meet, “Colonel, wouldn’t you have some guys who can read these things at a high level? Any chance you’d loan us their eyes for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” said the colonel. “Always happy to pitch in.”

He disappeared quickly, leaving the hard core alone.

“If we can get NSA on them hard,” said Nick, “maybe we can pick up some commo linked to a foreign intelligence service. With that, we can go to FISA. If we get a FISA warrant, we can go prime time on their asses.”

“That works,” said Neill.

“It better, because that’s going to be your job. Bob, tell me what you’re seeing.”