The Grays by Whitley Strieber

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!
NO NO 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.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Oh aaaaaa . . .”
    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,
“Was
that a UFO?”
    “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