Well, holy crap.

I went out into my hot tub tonight, as I often do. The grandkids that I watch every day had gone home. I had dinner on the stove. The laundry was washed and folded and put away.

Dogs fed.

I stepped into the darkness and sank into the bubbling water. Ahhhhh.

As I always do, I raised my eyes to the sky.

And I saw a jet going over.

Now, you need to know that I live in North Central Massachusetts. There are only a few flight paths that go over my house. Every one of them shows me jets that are way, way, WAY up there. I only see a little silver spark up there. But I follow those sparks every night, as they cross my sky.

After almost a decade of sitting in my hot tub, watching the sky, I have figure out that there are only a few flight paths that go over me.

There is the path that clearly goes from Boston up to Montreal or Quebec. There’s the one that goes much higher up, along the eastern sky, seemingly from the south to the north along the coast.

I know the paths. I know the lights.

So tonight I was a little bit surprised to see a jet’s light coming up across my sky from South to North.

“Odd,” I thought. “Why is it in the middle, in between the two usual north to south flight paths?”

I put my head back, feeling the hot water on my aching neck.

And I saw that right behind the first little twinkle of light, there came another. Right behind it. Following the very same odd path.

And behind that? Another.

I was more than intrigued.

I began to count. 5–6–7…..there were SEVEN jets, flying high, crossing a flight path I had never seen before.

Wow.

There was a moment of quiet, a moment of clouds, and then?

Five more silver lights, showing five more jets, all of them flying in a very straight line. One after the other, they crossed the sky above me. From south to north they went.

Then there was a short break.

And five more silver jet lights came along, on the exact, exact, same path. From the south to the north. They went diagonally across the paths of the flights that I have watched every night for almost ten years.

They were on a mission. They were in a line. They were clearly NOT passenger jets.

So.

What the hell were they? And where were they headed?