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Sgt. Soraya Salazar cursed her luck. She and Roy were a good fit. He was snarky, she was serious. He was inventive, she was by-the-book. She'd been about to propose when duty called. There was family to be contacted, aunts to be consoled.
Several months ago, an object had fallen from the sky onto the top of Old Baldy, which is the popular name of Mount Livermore in the far Western corner of Texas. It appeared as a small, indistinct blip on radar. But as soon as it landed, both the area and the object were impenetrable by radar. Some local hikers volunteered to look at the site. As soon as they'd gotten within a half-mile of Old Baldy, there was radio silence, and they were never heard from again.
The USAF flew an airplane into the area. It too was lost. The Army insisted that of all Military divisions, they were best fit to solve this mystery. Team Apple had been composed of a group of six soldiers, a medical team consisting of a surgeon and two nurses, and Salazar's uncle, General Hector Salazar. Also lost. That was her first call. A second team was sent. And also lost.
The Army got a call from the President: The public was scared. Get in there, find out what's going on – or else the House majority would insist that they fire a tactical nuke on American soil, obliterate any enemies, and remind the Russians or the Chinese that America will not tolerate an assault on its home territory.
Roy had gotten on one knee when she'd gotten the second call. She had been given the daunting task of investigating the anomaly that the U.S Army had given the unnerving nickname of Area 51-B.
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SPC Roy Williams thought that was just the sort of stupid decision he'd come to expect from Congress. "Only Americans are allowed to bomb America!" he said over the com.
"That's uncalled for, Williams. It's just you and me, and whoever is up there – unauthorized - on American soil."
"Or whatever's up there..."
Soraya held up her right hand, and Williams crouched behind a boulder. He heard her sigh. The uniforms they wore were just short of being a camouflage version of Haz-Mat suits. They'd both been on iodine tablets, in case of excessive radiation. NASA had suggested that, should the object appear to be a meteorite, the team would merit the extra iodine. He'd been hoping that it was a UFO.
For her part, Soraya was on edge. Her uncle was MIA, as were two Army teams, four civilians, and a plane. She knew the only thing that would stop her Uncle Hector from finishing his task was death itself.
She'd called a stop because Area 51-B lay before them, under a thick dome of fog-like particles. Whatever it was, it was preventing all forms of communication and radar from passing through it. "Time for a sampling. Use Prof. Henning's wand."
Williams took the wand and waved it through the pseudo-fog three times. On his fourth and last pass, both the wand and its collection box lit up like a Christmas tree and vanished.
