The ticking of an AirBoss watch sliced through the stale air of the command trailer. Harper, lean and hard-eyed, snapped his phone shut and bulldozed out the door, skidding to a halt in front of the convoy. A Humvee groaned to a stop. Lieutenant Colonel Black climbed out. Tall and iron-faced. Not a man you flagged down on a whim.
But Harper didn’t flinch.
“Sir, we found it.”
Black's expression stayed blank. “Found what, Airman?”
“Dekes’s flight jacket, sir.”
Black squinted. “Where?”
Harper spat out coordinates like they’d been burned into his brain. “Green River, Utah. N 38° 59’ 42.849”, W 110° 9’ 42.5736”.”
Black’s mouth twitched, a flicker of something hard and unreadable.
Officially, Dekes was AWOL. He’d punched out during a basic flight maneuver demo a few years back. On paper, he was just another ghost pilot who’d gone missing without a trace. But the story got murky when you dug.
Rumor had it he was part of something called Desert Cobra, a shadow project that worked on the fringes. They were testing hybrid planes, a crossbreed of stealth jets and spy drones. The kind that didn’t show up on radar. The kind that ran on magnetic propulsion, not jet fuel.
Word on the base was that Desert Cobra was only a sliver of something bigger. A hush-hush operation called Thin Thread. A network of subterranean bunkers, surveillance catacombs, snaking under the United States, from coast to coast. A secret web for eyes only.
They said it started in ‘64 when a handful of hikers stumbled on a cave near Green River. They got too curious. The military got curious too. Within weeks, the government had cleared the area, fenced it off, and slapped black ink over every report. The hikers got forgetful. But the tunnels stayed. A cold, winding underground artery, threading from the California cliffs to the icy docks of Eastport, Maine.
Back at the Humvee, Black’s jaw tightened.
“Did they find him?”
Harper’s mouth flattened into a line.
“Sir?”
“Dekes. Is he alive?”
Harper shifted, choosing his words like each one was loaded. “Unknown, sir.”
Black’s eyes cut into him, steady, steel-blue. “Unknown.” He tasted the word, then looked past Harper, eyes fixed on the desert horizon.
“Not for long.”
The convoy churned dust across the empty stretch of desert, leaving a brown haze in its wake. Harper sat shotgun, silent, stealing glances at Black. The Lieutenant Colonel hadn’t spoken since they’d rolled out, his jaw set, eyes fixed forward. The coordinates were 150 miles north, past the last of the barren, government-marked land on the edge of nowhere.
Harper cleared his throat. “Sir, what happens if we find him?”
Black didn’t look at him. “We’ll figure that out when we do.”
But Harper knew better. "Figure it out" wasn't in Black's vocabulary. The old man was always three steps ahead, and "if" was a word he never bothered with.
Two hours later, they reached Green River. The town was a husk of what it once was. A gas station, one café that looked like it hadn’t had fresh coffee since the 90s, and a few locals, watching the Humvees roll through like they'd seen ghosts.
Harper checked his watch. They were running against the clock.
"Sir, we're close," he said, tapping at a handheld GPS. "Half a mile northeast. Coordinates should lead us to the cave."
Black glanced at the empty gas station, then nodded toward a cluster of rocks, jagged and gray against the burnt-orange desert floor.
"Get moving."
They parked at the base of a sandstone ridge. The wind whipped sand against Harper’s face as he scanned the area. Silent, deserted, no sign of life for miles. Except for a single piece of cloth snagged on a rock.
Harper moved closer, crouching down to get a better look. It was frayed, scorched in places. Dark green, military issue.
“Sir, it’s the flight jacket. Looks like he was here.” Harper’s voice echoed in the emptiness, carried by the wind.
Black’s eyes sharpened. "He didn't go far."
They edged into the mouth of the cave. A yawning black hole in the earth, swallowing up the last of the day’s light. Harper flicked on his flashlight, sweeping the beam over jagged walls and ancient graffiti from other wanderers who’d found this place before.
But the deeper they went, the stranger it got.
Harper stopped, studying a patch of smooth rock embedded into the wall. It didn’t match the jagged, natural stone around it. A solid piece of polished metal, seamless, the kind of material you’d only see in a lab. Or on the fuselage of an experimental jet.
“What the hell is this?” Harper muttered.
Black looked at it like he’d seen it before. Like he’d known it would be here.
"Keep moving," he ordered, voice low and tight.
They came upon an iron door, bolted into the rock. No knob, no handle, only a keypad. The numbers were worn, faded, but unmistakable. Harper held up his flashlight, running the beam over the edges.
“What do you think, sir?” he asked.
Black grunted. “I think Dekes knew what he was doing.” He punched a code into the keypad, fingers flying across the numbers with practiced speed. The lock clicked. The door groaned open, a low, metallic echo.
Beyond the door, stairs spiraled down into the earth. Concrete steps, slick with moisture. Harper glanced at Black, but the old man was already descending, his flashlight bobbing in the dark.
The stairway led them to a narrow corridor, and Harper's gut twisted. The walls were lined with rows of black cables, thick as his wrist, snaking along the concrete like veins. He could feel the hum, a low, pulsing vibration in the walls.
“What kind of place is this?” he whispered.
“A place that shouldn’t exist,” Black replied.
At the end of the corridor, they found another door. This one was open, just a crack, as if someone had left it in a hurry. Harper pushed it open, flashlight sweeping over a room filled with outdated computers, flickering monitors, a mess of wires and power cables strewn across the floor.
But in the corner, a desk caught his attention. And there, amid stacks of yellowed files and old radio equipment, was a photograph.
Dekes, in his flight suit, shaking hands with a group of men. Black was in the picture too, standing off to the side, a look on his face Harper had never seen before.
“Sir,” Harper said slowly, holding up the photo. “This…this is you.”
Black snatched the photo, eyes narrowing. He looked at it for a long time, expression unreadable. Finally, he spoke, voice low and steady.
“This is a ghost town, Airman. And ghosts don’t leave clues.”
Before Harper could respond, the hum in the walls changed pitch. A high-pitched whine, the kind of sound that burrows into your skull. Then the lights flickered, and the room plunged into darkness.
Black's voice cut through the black. “Move. Now.”
They bolted out the door, sprinting back down the corridor, footsteps echoing off the concrete walls. Behind them, the hum grew louder, shifting into a roar. A mechanical rumble, like something massive waking up beneath their feet.
Harper skidded to a stop, glancing back over his shoulder. “What is that?”
“Something we weren’t supposed to find,” Black growled, grabbing Harper by the arm. “Keep running.”
They emerged from the cave into blinding sunlight, stumbling over rocks as the ground shook beneath them. Black pulled out a small black box from his pocket, pressed a button, and within seconds, the Humvees roared to life, engines idling, waiting.
“Sir, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Harper demanded, out of breath.
Black met his gaze, eyes hard as steel.
“You know everything you need to know, Airman.”
Harper opened his mouth to argue, but Black cut him off.
“Remember one thing. Sometimes it’s not about what you find. It’s about knowing when to walk away.”
They climbed into the Humvee and tore down the desert road. Harper cast one last look back at the cave entrance. A column of dust rose in the distance, like a warning.
And somewhere, deep underground, a man named Dekes was either waiting for them…or making sure they’d never come back.
The convoy vanished over the horizon and the desert swallowed up the silence once again.