A Fragment Too Far: A Sheriff Luke McWhorter Mystery (A Sheriff Luke McWhorter Mystery, 1) - Softcover

Drasher sent a glance toward the FBI special agent in the room. Angie raised her eyebrows and gave her head a tiny tilt. His call. “One of our major U.S. aerospace companies runs it.”

“And its purpose is what?”

“First and foremost, to cover any government official’s ass that needs covering.”

“Sounds like a big job. Any particular ass-covering specialty?

He unleashed a huge sigh. Laid his hands in his lap. And entwined his fingers. More silence. Maybe he was deciding on his answer. Or deciding whether he was going to answer. Or deciding whether to abort his whole mission.

Then he seemed to realize he’d already crossed this Rubicon and needed to get to the point. “We operate at the bottom of the rabbit hole.”

“No idea where to go with that.”

Drasher said his private intelligence agency’s responsibility was to investigate UFO sightings, legitimate or otherwise. In the U.S. or anywhere else in the world when something interested them. Sightings by civilians, military personnel, local law enforcement, pilots or, as had once happened, the governor of Arizona. Sightings by anyone. But especially, sightings by anyone who might be intimidated by the noxious political correctness attitudes in the federal government.

That was the rabbit hole.

The need for it could be traced all the way back to Roswell. Within hours of that momentous summer day in 1947, the generals who ran the Army Air Forces were running for cover. Petrified by the fear that anyone might think they thought they were dealing with a real UFO crash.

Lying about what had happened in the remote New Mexico countryside. Confiscating every piece of evidence of the crashed UFO they could lay hands on.  Warning witnesses of the most drastic penalties if they ever breathed a word about what they saw. Insisting that people should forget that their lying eyes had seen anything.

Seventy-plus years later, he said, little had changed. To this day, nothing spooked officials at all levels of the American government more than being accused of treating UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors as real possibilities. Thus, the rabbit hole.

He couldn’t―or wouldn’t―tell me which POTUS had created the IRAD solution. Said Truman would have if he’d thought of it. Or Eisenhower. Even Nixon.

“But one of them finally realized we needed a rabbit hole. Literally. A hole in our intelligence capabilities where serious UFO and alien visitation researchers could disappear. And deal with their data in total privacy. That’s what my IRAD does. It’s been the only way to get around the official timidity and look seriously at the evidence.”

“Your IRAD squad. It’s been active in Flagler for a while?”

“We’ve come and gone and come and gone and, now, we’ve been back for three years. Chalk it up mostly to the erratic Professor Huntgardner and his claims and stories about his fragment. They’re like Tootle, the Little Engine―they just keep going. And coming. And now they’re getting people killed. One of our people, too, to our profound regret.”