Chapter 1: Arrival
Field Station Delta: A paranormal military thriller.
Welcome to Field Station Delta. This novella is a paranormal military thriller that I am releasing as a serial for my readers on Substack.
Wyoming, 2009
Field Station Delta
Day 1, 08:15 hours
The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter bucked a little as it turned, jolting Senior Airman Emily Metzger out of an unpleasant flashback.
“Five mikes out,” the pilot called.
“Copy that,” Metzger said. She shook her head a little as if that might clear out the afterimages. The doctors back at Walter Reed had approved her for active duty, although it had taken some pushing from Metzger’s new... What was Dr. Cartwright, exactly? Friend? Definitely not. Patron? Maybe.
At any rate, Cartwright had authority, and she'd used it to get Metzger’s psychiatrist to sign off on her reassignment. Who needs a complete therapy course when you have pills?
Metzger smiled bitterly and then leaned to one side to catch a brief glimpse out the nearest window. “That’s town?” She could barely hear her own question over the noise of the helicopter.
“What?”
“VAN CLEEF!?”
“Such as it is, yeah,” the pilot yelled.
Metzger hadn’t heard of the place until a week ago. It didn't even have a page on Wikipedia. Some poking around on search engines had revealed that the “town” of Van Cleef, Wyoming had a population of about twenty-five (as per the last census) and consisted of a handful of small farms clustered around “downtown”— nothing more than an empty post office that was shuttered two years ago, and a general store which doubled as a one pump service station.
And not far away was Metzger’s new posting, Field Station Delta, a place that was classified up to her elbows. She’d never even heard of TOP SECRET ULTRAVIOLET before. Whatever this place was, official acknowledgement of its existence was probably buried deep in some Pentagon black budget file. Metzger shifted in her seat uneasily, wondering why she’d let herself get involved with whatever it was Dr. Cartwright represented.
“Brace yourself, Airman!” the pilot called out. “It's always choppy landing out here!”
Metzger shrugged. She doubted that the flat as a pancake Wyoming plains could offer anything that the mountains of Afghanistan hadn't thrown at her. But thinking of the mountains reminded her of her last mission, and that —
The helicopter jolted five feet to the left and Metzger's eyes bugged out as she grabbed a ceiling strap. “Holy—!”
The pilot laughed. “They never believe me.”
A minute or two later, and a couple jolts more, the chopper touched down at the research station, a cluster of low, nondescript buildings. It could have been an office park, if not for being deep in the middle of nowhere. There was a satellite dish—a big one—and a cluster of antennas on one roof, but nothing that would really stand out as curious. A faded metal sign on the nearest structure read “UNITED STATES AIR FORCE – ATLOG.”
Metzger grabbed her two heavy duffel bags and hopped out of the Black Hawk. The downdraft from the rotor blades mussed up her red hair, but she didn't fuss with it. Largely on account of her hands being full.
She looked around, taking stock of the place. Given the way her life had gone the last six months or so, Metzger wouldn't have been completely surprised if the whole thing was some kind of elaborate cosmic practical joke, and nobody would be here waiting for her arrival at post.
The dust kicked up by the chopper had just begun to settle when she noticed a man in Air Force fatigues walking towards her from the direction of the buildings.
“You Metzger?” he said as he approached.
“That I am.”
He shook her hand firmly. “Senior Airman Miguel Valdes. Welcome to Medicine Wheel Ranch.”
She looked at him, nonplused.
“Oh, nobody stationed here actually calls this place ‘Field Station Delta,’” said Valdes. “It's just ‘The Ranch’ to us. You know, all this land used to be a privately owned cattle ranch, until the DoD acquired it through eminent domain back in the nineties. Anyway, I've been sent to help you get settled in and give you the ten-cent tour. Here, I'll take one of those bags.”
Metzger smiled. She could handle them, but it was a nice gesture. “Thanks,” she said as she passed one to him. As Valdes led her to the barracks for the on-site Air Force personnel, Metzger gestured to the faded sign. “What’s ATLOG?”
Valdes chuckled. “ATLOG is us. Stands for ‘Advanced Technical Logistics and Operations Group.’ Designed to tell the public—and Congressional bean counters—precisely nothing about what we really do here.”
Metzger couldn’t help wondering herself what precisely an Air Force special operations squadron did out on the edge of the Wyoming badlands but decided to keep her mouth shut for the moment. Based on Cartwright’s vague hints, and her own... uncanny experiences in Afghanistan, she thought she had a pretty good idea.
After they had stowed her gear, Valdes brought out a couple of Cokes from the barracks’ minifridge. “The rest of the guys are out on a route march now. I'll introduce you when they get back. You got here just in time! The unit’s planned a movie night tonight, with homemade pizza by yours truly,” he did a mock bow. “In the meantime, I should take you to meet Doc Bradford. She just loves showing new arrivals the Medicine Wheel.”
They made their way to the building with the satellite dish where Valdes said the ARG or “Applied Research Group” had their offices. They found Dr. Alicia Bradford at a workbench littered with an eclectic assortment of old dusty books, stone arrowheads, and pottery decorated with intricate patterns. Bradford herself was a slightly built woman in her mid-twenties. She had brown hair that tumbled past her shoulders in natural curls and wore an ebullient smile as they entered.
“Ah, you must be Airman Metzger. I’m Alicia, resident archaeologist at the Ranch.”
Metzger nodded. Archaeologist? “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” she said.
“Should we go take a look at your pride and joy, Doc?” Valdes said with a wry grin.
“Absolutely! Airman Metzger, just wait until you see the Medicine Wheel—it is just fascinating!”
The trio took a Humvee and drove west towards a low, tumbled crescent of sandstone hills that rose up like an ancient arc of scar tissue on the level face of the surrounding plains. As they approached the outthrust arms of the ridge, Metzger perceived that they enclosed a vast shallow valley like the crumbling ruins of an old Roman amphitheater. She was barely listening to Dr. Bradford, who prattled on incessantly throughout the entire ride.
“The term ‘Medicine Wheel’ is, of course, an invention of the white colonizers,” Bradford was saying. “But in the Plains Indian tradition, these ancient sites are revered as places of communal prayer and pilgrimage. ‘Medicine’ is a concept that is hard to map onto conventional Eurocentric categories. I suppose ‘magic’ would be the closest equivalent—spiritual strength and preternatural abilities of the soul.”
Valdes brought the Humvee to a stop several yards from the Medicine Wheel. Two concentric rings of pillar-like standing stones stood before them, ominous and threatening, leaning this way and that like the gray weathered tombstones of unquiet dead. The double rim of megaliths enclosed a space about one hundred feet across. At the center of this rose a cairn of unshapen rock. A dozen lines of small boulders radiated outward from the cairn like the spokes of an immense wagon wheel. Even in the bright late morning sun, Metzger was uneasy about the place. As she stepped out of the Humvee, she couldn’t shake a nagging intuition of foreboding, as if she was an unwelcome trespasser on forbidden ground.
Dr. Bradford was already gushing enthusiastically about the monument.
“This is the best-preserved Medicine Wheel in existence. Hundreds of similar structures dot the northern Great Plains, but this one is unique. Archaeological surveys have yielded almost nothing—no evidence of hearths or domestic artifacts that would indicate human habitation. Very little in the way of ceremonial artifacts have been found. If our Wheel was ever used for vision quests or other spiritual rituals, it was quickly abandoned. The indigenous communities with tribal claims to the region—the Crow, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot—all of them have historically avoided this area. One of the elders I spoke with told me that none of the tribes erected these stone circles. He said, ‘That place was ancient even when my people first came there.’ And here’s the real kicker—the latest isotopic techniques indicate that the Wheel dates to at least twelve thousand years ago. Just imagine! This could be the oldest artificial structure in the Western Hemisphere!”
Metzger was staring listlessly at the megaliths, hardly registering Bradford's energetic lecture. A gloom had descended over the valley. Metzger looked up, astonished to see that the bright morning sun was now suddenly obscured by lowering clouds, dark and menacing. A harsh wind that whipped down from the surrounding ridgeline. As it whistled and whispered among the stones, she heard—or imagined that she heard—a voice, low and furtive.
Release them.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” said Bradford.
“I could have sworn that I heard a voice on the wind just now.”
Valdes shrugged. “It’s an eerie place. The wind does seem to whisper or sing to you sometimes.”
“That’s not surprising,” said Bradford. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this site is a very potent loci of intrinsic primordial energy.”
Metzger frowned. Primordial energy? That all sounded atypically woo-woo coming from a scientist. Then again, after what she’d seen on the mountain in Nuristan, who was she to judge?
All of a sudden, Metzger began to feel sick. Her head swam and her field of vision seemed to blur around the edges. A sharp pain began to build in her temples. Then her ears were ringing. She shut her eyes tight and grit her teeth.
She could hear Valdes speaking to her, but his voice seemed remote and faint. “Metzger? Metzger! You okay?”
Suddenly the pain vanished. She opened her eyes. Her vision cleared and the ringing in her ears abruptly stopped. “Yeah… Yeah, I'm fine. Just felt lightheaded for a minute.”
“Your nose is bleeding,” Bradford said.
“What?” Metzger swiped the back of her hand across her face. It came away spotted with blood.
“Better get you back to the Ranch and have the infirmary check you out, just in case.” Valdes said. He shot Bradford with what seemed to Metzger like a very knowing look. “C’mon señoritas,” he said, walking back to the Humvee. “Field trip's over.”
“Does… does this kind of thing happen out here often?” Metzger asked as she climbed into the shotgun seat.
“Well, maybe,” Bradford said.
“Maybe? It either does or it doesn’t, right?”
There was an awkward silence for several seconds. “Like I said, there’s a weird vibe out here,” Valdes finally said. “And Doc Bradford wasn’t kidding. There is a kind of energy around the Wheel. That’s what the Blue Shirts are studying.”
“Who?”
“Sorry. Our science team. You know, like in Star Trek.”
“Oh.”
“Because that’s the color of—”
“I have seen Star Trek once or twice,” Metzger said, grinning despite her anxieties. “So, is that what we do here? Watch the scientists plug away on their tricorders?”
“Not all the time.”
Metzger exhaled, then shrugged. Keep cool.
After all, it was hardly Valdes’s fault she’d been dragged into… whatever-this-was. She could have told Cartwright no. But she hadn’t. And now she had to adapt to her new situation as she found it. Still, when Cartwright had recruited her in that hospital room in Bagram, she’d expected it was to be part of something that played more to her strengths as a Tactical Air Control operative. She wanted to bring hot iron down on—
She exhaled again and clenched her fists. One thing at a time, Metzger. You only just got here.
"atypically woo-woo" should be a technical term!
Great start, intrigued already! I like the combination of a military setting and an ancient site. Quite a bit of foreboding already. And the ambiguity of the dizziness: is it due to her medical issues, or is there something else going on...