Captain Alysa Richards was surprised when she received the recall notice from the Air Force. Three years earlier, when she resigned her commission, she did sign up for the Ready Reserves. But the country was currently at peace, and during peacetime was not normally a time when the Reserves were called back to active duty. Colonel Gentry, the commanding officer of the OSI Undercover Unit at Hardin Air Force Base, knew Alysa's history from her previous tour. She was smart, a good agent and also familiar with the people and culture of Appalachia. She could blend into a small Appalachian town without raising suspicions.
Strangers had been spotted near an old abandoned coal mine on Hunters Mountain, near Ravens Gap, a small town in western Virginia. But the presence of strangers on the mountain wasn't the thing that raised red flags. Witnesses described the men as looking distinctly out of place, and appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. "If you see something, say something", led to reports that wound their way up the chain to the National Terrorism Center.
At the same time, more than one person claimed to have seen an apparition near the abandoned mine, a ghost they insisted they'd seen before. They even had a name for him: "Whistling Willie". Sharing ghost stories had been an Appalachian tradition for generations, and abandoned coal mines seemed to always have at least one. Apparently, the ghost spotters of Ravens Gap wanted in on the latest excitement.
Alysa was skeptical of this ghost story. If someone wanted to keep curious locals away from the mine, a good way was to have one of the strangers dress up as a ghost. Of course, that was dependent on whether the strangers were just innocent hikers taking a short cut over the mountain to the other side, or were devising an evil plot against the US government.
Alysa's ego was slightly bruised when the colonel assigned Major Mackenzie Sinclair to join her as the operation's team leader. Mac, a native of Ravens Gap, was a good choice, but Alysa wondered if Colonel Gentry doubted her ability to handle the undercover assignment on her own.
As it turned out, the investigation was almost more than Alysa and Mac could handle together.