The contractor squeezed a button on the transceiver hooked to his shoulder. “I’ve got an agent from the FBI at the perimeter. It’s a Nathaniel Carrington, he says that—” The man stopped, and Nate heard the crackle of a voice coming from his earpiece. “Yes, sir.” He motioned to the other contractor, who immediately lowered his weapon and walked back to his vehicle.

The man turned back to Nate, his demeanor instantly transformed to one of professional courtesy as he handed back his ID. “I’m sorry for delaying you, sir. Please follow us. We’ll lead you to the duty officer and he’ll take you from there.”

###

Nate walked alongside an Air Force major as they surveyed the burnt hills.

“Agent Carrington, I’m sorry about how the goon squad may have greeted you. You have to understand, we have lots of random looky-loos coming around, searching for all sorts of crazy crap.”

“Aliens, eh?” Nate smiled, knowing well the reputation that this installation had among the conspiracy theorists.

“That and all sorts of other ridiculous stuff. If they knew the truth, they’d really be a lot less interested. But the more we protest there’s nothing unusual going on around here, the less they believe us. So, we just work hard at keeping them at a distance.”

Nate knelt at the edge of the burnt field, pulled up a singed piece of dead grass, and sniffed it. It smelled of char, yet there was something faintly artificial about the scent. “So,” he said. “What caused the fire?”

“To be honest, I wasn’t here when it happened.” The major shifted his weight from one leg to another. “I literally just got back from the Air Command Staff College. But the contractors say it was lightning. Dry grass just caught, and it spread from there.”

Nate grabbed a plastic baggie from his evidence kit and scooped some soil in it, along with a sample of some burnt vegetation. “I can see it was strictly along your perimeter, but still, this looks like a pretty major fire. Why wasn’t it marked in an incident report?”

The major sighed. “It should have been. The contractors here have gone to shit, and you can believe that’s something I’ll be talking to the colonel about.” He frowned. “Is that why they sent you out here? Over the lack of an incident report?”

Nate studied the officer, but could detect no guile. Then again, unlike the unrealistic detectives on TV who could always sense whether a person was lying or not, Nate didn’t pretend to be a human lie detector. He was a man of facts, not “gut feel” or intuition. Facts were more reliable.