"Green Fireballs"

Air Force Staff Sergeant Gerald Wilkins marched stiffly into Kirtland Air Base Debriefing Room A-113, empty but for a single metal table and three equally uncompromising metal chairs. The base had been upgraded the previous year, 1947, with funds left over from a World War II allocation, but comfort didn’t seem to be a priority during the upgrade.

Along with the table and chairs, two older men waited for him: the base Commanding Officer, Colonel Riley, a veteran of twenty-eight B-17 missions over France and Germany, and another fellow. The Colonel could have taken a desk job after twenty-four missions, but he continued flying for another month until they pried him out of the cockpit with a promotion and a crowbar. Every crease and line on his face was put there by the flak and the dreaded German fighters that met him on those missions.

Standing beside Colonel Riley was a somewhat younger fellow without a single crease or white hair on his doughy face. One look at his off-base, non-regulation grey suit, and Sergeant Wilkins knew this would be no ordinary debrief.

“Have a seat, Sergeant,” the Colonel said, offering one of the uncomfortable but functional chairs.

Though he’d been taught never to sit in front of a superior officer, Wilkins had also come to learn never to refuse anything the Colonel offered or asked for. The Sergeant sat, but his back remained ramrod stiff.

The Colonel glanced at the silent man next to him, then went right on with what must have been a well-practiced speech. “Sergeant, I expect you’ve heard about the encounters some of our pilots have reported during their recent flights into and out of Kirtland. You’ve probably heard about some kind of…”

The Colonel’s voice trailed off as he looked to the stoic man beside him for guidance. The Suit gave no such direction, so the Colonel returned to his speech.

“Some kind of flying interference of an as-yet unknown type. The Weather branch think it may be meteorites, but there are others who…” Riley paused again and chewed his lip before finishing the sentence. “Disagree.”

Colonel Riley Leaned both weathered hands on the back of the metal chair in front of him, and stared straight into the Sergeant’s eyes. “I understand through scuttlebutt that you may have had your own experience a few days ago.”

Sergeant Wilkins searched his memory quickly to figure out who might have squealed on him. The last thing he wanted was to have the Base Commander think that he was hallucinating, or worse, making crap up to make his boring post a little more exciting.

“Sir,” Wilkin began,” I can’t imagine who might have told you—”

“I’m not asking you about anyone else, Sergeant!” the Colonel replied gruffly. He quickly softened his tone. “Look, Gerry,” he said, using the sergeant’s first name, a rare informality, “we’re all mighty confused about these… things, whatever they are. If you have any information to share, son, anything at all, we need to hear it.”

The silent Suit beside him said nothing, but crossed his arms as if daring Wilkins to tell him something he hadn’t already heard.

Wilkins swallowed in his dry mouth, then shifted slightly in his seat. “Sir, I—I don’t want to be one of those fellows who—”

“You’re a good airman, Wilkins. Whatever you tell us won’t go beyond these four walls. Your name will never be on any report, and it’ll have no effect on your career.” As if he needed the ultimate assurance, Colonel Riley stood at attention. “You have my word on that.”

Wilkins eased back a fraction of an inch, then took a deep breath.

“It was Sunday night, sir, December 5th. I was pulling flight line guard duty for Airman Franklin, who said he had a hot date.” The Sergeant shook his head at the obvious impossibility of that statement. “I was on the furthest west section of the flight line, out by the ammo bunkers and the inner fence line. It was a quiet night, quiet enough that I could hear some car horns from traffic over in Albuquerque. No clouds, no wind, nothing unusual.”

The Suit continued his silence, though his stare spoke volumes.

“Until?” Colonel Riley asked.

Wilkins jumped slightly when the Colonel spoke, rudely awakening him from the memory of that crisp December evening. “Well, sir, I had just watched a C-47 land around twenty-one-thirty hours, watched it taxi down to the east hangar area, where it was met by four or five staff cars and a couple of civilian rigs from off-base. I knew then something unusual had happened, but as there were no emergency vehicles scrambled, nor any codes announced, I figured it was some sort of onboard disturbance that the military police would handle.”

The Sergeant looked at his feet for a moment, then resumed his straight-backed posture. “I usually check the areas behind the ammo bunkers every fifteen minutes, since they can’t be observed from the end of the runway. I walked past Bunkers 7 and 8, then made a turn past the auxiliary generators for the runway lights.” He took a deep sigh. “That’s when I spotted it.”

“It?” Colonel Riley parroted back. “Saw what, Sergeant?” All friendly familiarity had disappeared from his manner.

Sergeant Wilkins looked straight into the Colonel’s eyes. “The green fireball, sir. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Oh, I’d heard about the Foo Fighters that chased our boys across half of Europe during the War. I heard you’d had an encounter with one of them, too, sir.”

Colonel Riley bristled. “We’re not here to talk about my service record, Sergeant!”

“No, sir!” the sergeant replied formally. “Anyway, I saw this thing following the same glide path that the C-47 had just taken. I looked back at the east hangars to see if anyone else had spotted this thing. I mean, it was big, sir, maybe the size of a fighter without wings. And it was, I—I don’t know how to describe it, sir, but it seemed like it was super-fast just floating there. Like seeing a rocket on a launch pad getting ready to take off, full of potential-like, yet taking its own sweet time.”

Wilkins looked from the Colonel’s face to that of the Suit, but found no comprehension in either of them. He shook his head, then continued.

“I had this odd feeling like, well, that I was seeing this thing again, sir. Like I had seen it before somewhere.”

“And had you?” the Colonel demanded.

“Me? No, sir!” the Sergeant replied quickly. “I’d never seen anything so strange before. It was no meteor, that I can tell you. This thing glided, sir, like a—a balloon, or a kite. Then it came to a sort of immediate halt, like it had slammed on the brakes. Then it dodged down low, almost ground-level, then it darted to the north, right behind Bunkers 9 and 10.”

The Sergeant wished there was a glass of water in the room for his parched throat, but there was none. He tried swallowing anyway, gave up, and continued with his story.

“I ran over to the near side of bunker 10, but couldn’t see it. Then—” He halted in his description, as if reliving the encounter again for the first time since the event itself. “There it was. Big as a Duesenberg it was, or maybe a P-47. No wings, not tail, no cockpit. It hovered about six feet above the ground, almost eye-level with me. And then, it—”

He paused again, and glanced at both men’s faces, rapt in attention. “Then it, well, it tried to communicate with me.”

“Communicate?” Colonel Riley said in disbelief. “What do hell do you mean?”

“It felt like the green fireball was trying to send me messages or something, I guess. It sort of pulsed and glowed brighter, then fainter, then brighter again. I felt like it was trying to…to test me, I guess, in some sort of way.” Wilkins wiped his brow, which he realized had issued a few beads of sweat. “I felt like it was trying to send me some kind of communication, maybe pictures and words, but for some reason, I just wasn’t capable of picking up its thoughts.”

The Sergeant let out another deep sigh, and concluded his debrief by adding, “Then it sort of pivoted up and took off like a bullet. Never seen anything fly that fast.”

The dam that was the Suit’s iron resolve finally broke. He took a half step towards the seated Sergeant and practically screamed, “What did you see? What did you hear? What did you tell them?!”

The Suit’s verbal assault took Sergeant Wilkins aback, but only for a moment. He regained his composure quickly, and addressed the Colonel directly. “I saw just what I told you, sir. Everything I saw and heard.” He aimed the next sentence at the Suit, matching him almost decibel for decibel. “And I didn’t tell them anything!” He paused, then added slightly less vehemently, “Sir.”

Colonel Riley spoke in hushed tones with the Suit for a few moments. It seemed like the Colonel was trying to dissuade the Suit from some form of punishment for Sergeant Wilkins, which the Suit was vehement about. Finally, the Colonel pulled rank and through gritted teeth, advised the Suit that he had no real jurisdiction on this base, and if he didn’t like his decision, he could take it up with the Colonel’s superiors.

The Colonel turned and approached Wilkins, thanked him for his candor and his honesty, and explained it would be in the Sergeant’s best interests if never spoke about this night, or his sighting, ever again.

The Colonel then placed a large, weathered hand on the Sergeant’s left shoulder. “And son, I mean, never!”

The walk back at night through the mostly deserted air base was a lonely walk. Sergeant Wilkins had chosen the route back that ignored the main roads and instead went way south near the perimeter fence, an area masked from the rest of the base by a line of low hills, topped by strands of wheat-grass, bleached dry by the winter sun.

He needed time to think. He needed time to decompress from the debriefing that was everything he feared, and nothing like he expected. He needed—

A small green orb popped out from behind one jagged hill and zoomed to a spot just yards in front of the Sergeant’s face. Wilkins came to a halt, not surprised exactly, more like annoyed.

The green Orb flashed a few times, long and slow pulses, then dimmed a bit.

“No,” Sergeant Wilkins replied. “I didn’t tell them anything useful.”

The Orb flashed another silent series of pulses, then dimmed once more.

“No, I don’t think they do,” the Sergeant answered as best he could. “I think they’re just puzzled, that’s all.”

The Orb maintained its low dimmed light for a moment, then flashed four or five times in quick succession.

“Yeah,” Sergeant Wilkins replied wearily. “I’ll just bet you will.”

The green Orb flashed one last long, slow pulse, then it zipped back behind the low hill and was gone.