Taking the whiskey again from Ming, he took a long swig. “I’m a fighter pilot. It’s in our blood. My grandfather flew B-29s over Normandy; my dad flew F-16s during Desert Storm. Even my best friend, John Rodsenow, flies test planes for Skunkworks. The Air Force was all I knew.”

The sound of dirt piling up on our hull grew more muffled as our burial deepened. I wanted to scream.

Instead, I grabbed the whiskey from Ben and swallowed until my stomach burned. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“Everything started with my grandfather. After WWII he was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and OSI, the central investigative agency for the Air Force. Did you know the United States Air Force wasn’t even established until 1947? That was the year an unidentified airborne object crashed on a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico. My grandfather was part of the official investigation, assigned to Project Grudge, which later became Project Blue Book. Data was sent to his office for analysis: reports of sightings, radar signals—all made by reputable people like military pilots and radar techs and police officers. Back then, no one had ever even used the term UFO. OSI kept a lid on everything.”

“Wait,” I said. “Are you seriously talking about UFOs?”

“Says the man who hunted the Loch Ness Monster. Sorry, ‘biologic.’ Wouldn’t want to paint you as a nutjob. May I finish my story?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Ben ignored me and continued. “My father, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hintzmann, experienced two close encounters. The first happened fourteen months after he retired from piloting jets. At the time, he was training as an aircraft control and warning operator stationed at the 753rd Radar Squadron at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. One night his phones lit up with calls from cops who claimed they were chasing three UFOs from Mackinaw Bridge up I-75. Dad checked his radar and sure enough, there they were.

“There were no written instructions for how to deal with a UFO, so my father called NORAD’s chief of staff, a Major General Todd Coleman. Dad told Coleman there were two inbound B-52s en routed to Kincheloe Air Force Base minutes away from a head-on encountered with three UFOs and asked what he should do. The general ordered the bombers diverted to another AFB; then he told my father that if any reporters or cops asked, he was to tell them there was nothing on radar and to keep everything to himself.