Majestic by Whitley Strieber

The massive Soviet installations had ridiculously poor abilities, ranges like eight and ten and twenty miles.
    Try two hundred miles. And in a few years, five hundred.
    Major Gray did not answer Hesseltine directly. The major's sense of humor ran to formal jokes, which he would tell to generals' wives. Later, if they remembered him, they might say to their husbands, "Who was that young officer who told the joke about the pot roast?" And their husbands would laugh the sad, interior laugh of generals.
    "The ranch is a hundred and twenty miles northwest of Roswell."
    Hesseltine stood up and went to a large, black shade that covered something on one wall of the room. On this shade were stenciled the words, secret. authorized personnel only.
    "Lock us down, please, Winters," he said to their clerk-typist who was sitting at a typewriter pecking out an order in triplicate for three more reams of onionskin.
    PFC Winters got up and pulled a similar shade down on the door to the office, and locked that door. Then he went to each of the three windows and pulled a more ordinary brown shade. The room was now dim and yellow.
    "Secure, sir," Winters said. He turned on the overhead lights, which came alive with a pale, fluorescent flutter.
    Hesseltine raised the large shade. It revealed a wall map of New Mexico. There were various colored pins in this map, representing the presence of radar installations and air bases. A large section marked off by black dotted lines was labeled, "Proving Grounds." This area, which would become the White Sands Missile Range, was where the captured German V-2 rockets were being tested.
    Hesseltine pulled down a parallel ruler that was attached to the map and maneuvered it until one side was in the middle of the dot that represented Roswell.
    "A hundred and twenty miles north-northwest? That isn't anywhere. No installations nearby."
    "What about a stray from the proving ground?" There was always a possibility that a rocket had gone off course.
    "No problems since last month. And that baby got found two weeks ago."
    Gray now walked over to the map. "Private aircraft?" "It's a restricted flyover area. There would have been an intrusion alert."
    Gray stared at the map. "That's flat, miserable country. What does the man run?"
    Hesseltine, from a suburb of Philadelphia, hadn't the least idea what ranchers raised in godforsaken deserts.
    "Dunno," he said, "maybe lizards."
    "There wouldn't be any money in that."
    "Why, sure there would," Hesseltine said eagerly, realizing that Gray had taken his absurd remark at face value. "Plenty of money. Lizardskin wallets."
    "It's not very likely, Hesseltine."
    "A stray private flier was forced down in a storm. It's a matter for the civilian authorities," Hesseltine said. He covered the map. "Raise the blinds, Winters."
    "Yes, sir."
    "Not yet, Mr. Winters," Gray said. He put his finger on the map. "The flier was well within restricted airspace when he was forced down. We're required to examine the wreckage." He picked up a telephone and called the sheriff's office in Maricopa. "This is Major Gray at Roswell." "Yeah?"
    "I just read your report on the plane that went down on the Ungar place."
    "He came in this morning. Says it's a big mess. A bunch of tinfoil that you can't tear. I guess you guys know all about it."
    "We'd like to take a look at the wreckage. Can you give us driving instructions?"
    "Bob can do that himself. He's down in Roswell. You'll find him at Wooten's on North Main."
    "I know the place."
    "You get your directions from Bob. We haven't been out there. No call for us to go, not if you guys are going.
    It's way the hell out in the middle of nothin', where that plane went down."
    Gray hung up the phone. "Looks like this could be an all-nighter. We gotta go find the rancher. He's apparently buying ranching paraphernalia at Wooten's."
    Only Major Gray would use a word like that in ordinary conversation. Paraphernalia.
    "You mean reins and scabbards and whatnot?"
    "I