CHAPTER 43

  CAUGHT IN A WHIRLWIND

  It was Sunday morning. I was asleep in my room at the Desert Rose when shouting tore through the courtyard. A truck screeched away. The shouting didn’t stop. I realized it was Dr. Peterson yelling. She was banging on the door next to my room.

  “James!! James!! Wake up!!” she screamed.

  I opened my eyes and listened. Dr. Peterson continued to bang on James’ door.

  “James! Get up! We have a problem.”

  I squinted at the clock on the bedside table — barely six a.m.

  As I got dressed, I could hear James finally answering the door. He sounded like he was asleep himself. “What is it?” He asked.

  “They are here. They had the tribe revoke our permit. They are shutting us down. They are here, and they have gone out to the site. We gotta go!”

  I quickly made it outside and saw the two of them standing in the doorway of James’s room.

  I asked, “What’s going on?” Other members of the crew were now also standing outside their doors, trying to figure out what the yelling was all about.

  Dr. Peterson turned to me. She looked desperate.

  “Dr. Peterson, what is it?” I asked again.

  “Pack your research. Everything. Get out now. I don’t want you losing what you’ve found.” She was frantic and serious. I was confused.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “This happened in Ohio,” she said. “They revoked our permits. Seized everything. We left with nothing. Now, the same thing has happened here. The tribe, which issued us permission to the site, has been asked to revoke our permit.”

  I asked, “By whom?”

  Dr. Peterson, exasperated, said, “Who do you think?”

  I must have looked blank. She snapped back at me.

  “Dr. Bayne,” she said. “It’s Bayne. He is here to shut down the project. Please get your research together and go! Go now, before we lose everything!”

  She then turned to James and asked him to go and clear out her room. She told him to do it before they came back with a search warrant and confiscated everything.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that is going to happen?”

  Dr. Peterson responded, “You don’t fully understand this. But that is exactly what happened to us in Ohio. We left there with nothing but our word. No proof of anything. That is what they want. They do not want us to have any proof.” She turned again to James, “Go now!” He finally jumped to it and ran down the corridor to her room with an empty suitcase. She then grabbed her keys and headed to her jeep.

  I followed her. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She did not stop. “I’ve gotta get to the site. I need to see what I can do to stop it.”

  I ran to catch up with her. I ran around to the other side of the jeep and got in as she started up the engine.

  “You have no idea what you are getting into,” she said. She quickly pulled out of the parking lot.

  “I can’t believe any of this,” I said.

  “Believe it. If I am right, when we get to the site, we will see Bayne and his men, and they will have destroyed everything.”

  I’d been fooled by Bayne before, but destroying someone’s work? I could not even believe that I was going to be coming face to face with the man who had once been my partner.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The Smithsonian protects its narrative,” she said. “And we threaten it. I thought I had more time before being discovered here. It was my mistake. Had I known when I sent that letter of interest to you and Bayne that he would eventually be working against our beliefs, none of this would be happening. He would not have even been able to find us. Regardless, he never answered our call, so I am a little confused as to how he found us here.

  “You asked Bayne to come here?” I asked.

  “Yes, I told you, there were two people we wanted, you and Bayne. Anyway, it was before he joined up with the Smithsonian. It was a big mistake.”

  I didn’t know what to think at this point. In the first place, I found Dr. Peterson’s conspiracy theories hard to believe. Her hands shook on the wheel. I questioned whether I really wanted to be a part of any of it at this point. Mimi would never forgive this.

  As we hit the dirt road, a cloud of dust rose in the distance. Something flashed low in it — metal on rock. We pushed closer until the bulldozers came into view. They stopped us and asked us to leave. We could not see anything else until we were closer. As we arrived at the site, we could see bulldozers. They had pushed the trailer into the corridor where the dig was taking place. Everything outside the corridor had been pushed into the hole.

  “Stop the jeep!” I yelled. I wanted her to stop so we could get out. She slammed on the brakes, and we skidded to a stop some fifty yards from the site. We both jumped out and ran the rest of the way. As we approached, from around the backside of the site, we saw some reservation police. They stepped in front of us.

  “This does not concern you,” they said. “You should not be here. This is reservation land.”

  Peterson screamed, “I have a permit. This is my personal property you are destroying!” She tried to push past the men, but they held her. I stood by, not sure what to do.

  I asked, “Please, sir, let us just go get some items from the trailer before it is too late.”

  One of the men said, “The site is being destroyed. It is not safe for you to go any closer.”

  Dr. Peterson was desperate. She elbowed the man holding her and freed herself from his grasp. She ran toward the trailer. The two men yelled for her to stop, and one of the men drew his weapon. I was shocked at the sight. I stepped in front of him to stop him from shooting. The other man grabbed me and held me back. I yelled, “Dr. Peterson! Stop! They have guns!”

  She didn’t stop. As she got closer, I could see another man approach her. He grabbed her with both arms and held her from behind. He locked her arms behind her back. It was Bayne. He lifted her off the ground and carried her back like she weighed nothing. She kicked, resisting his clutches.

  The officer with the gun ran toward them and cuffed Dr. Peterson. She continued to resist, so the officer pushed her to the ground. He held her face down into the sand as he cuffed her behind her back. She screamed at Bayne, “You have no idea what you are doing! You are supposed to be a man of science. A man of truth! You are a fraud! A traitor!”

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  Her screams did not affect Bayne. The officer picked Peterson up off the ground and dragged her back to where I was standing with the other officer. I could see Bayne. He was on a walkie-talkie. He did not recognize me at first. He walked over to where we were. My throat tightened up. I had not seen him since I was left down in the hole in Greece.

  As he approached, he noticed it was me standing there. He seemed surprised. His face gave nothing away. He calmly walked up to me and said, “Jack, you should not be here.”

  “Neither should you,” I said.

  He laughed and grinned. There was continued activity over the walkie-talkies. It was hard to make out.

  The officer was still holding Dr. Peterson when she yelled at Bayne some more. “Why would you be doing this? Don’t you want to know the truth?”

  He answered, “You are fooling yourself if you think this proves anything. This is not the truth. You are wasting your time, Peterson, and your boss’s money. And you are dragging Jack here into something he does not need to be involved in.

  He then turned to me and said, “You are using this man’s own gullible beliefs to perpetuate nothing but lies.”

  “Wait a minute, Bayne. You have no idea what you are talking about!” I said. “If you would just wait and see what we have found here, you’d believe.”

  He laughed, “Jack, I was once sucked into your world of make-believe and fantasy. Look at you. You’ve thrown away your whole reputation for this nonsense. I was certain that you would have learned your lesson back in Emmett County. That should have saved you! It should have gotten you back on track. Now, here, you’re involved in something that you shouldn’t be. You’ve already destroyed your career. Your marriage. For this?”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing here worth losing your life over.”

  “You aren’t my friend! You left me there in Greece, down in that cave. All you care about is your own name and reputation. You took off on your own with that bone. You cared about no one then, and I find it hard to believe you care about anyone else today. You left me there to die.”

  “Jack, you’re misguided. I wish you could see that. You are wasting your time. You belong in a classroom. Not in this wasteland.

  Over the walkie talkie, we could hear, “We are ready, Dr. Bayne. Clear back.”

  “Roger that,” Bayne said. He then announced over the walkie, “Pull back! Everyone pull back. Proceed with the countdown.”

  He began to walk away from the site. The officers pulled Peterson and me back.

  Peterson asked, “What are you planning on doing?”

  Bayne answered, “You will see soon enough.”

  Over the walkie, we heard, “On your word, Bayne, we will detonate the site.”

  Peterson was shocked. She pleaded, “Don’t do this. You do not have to do this.”

  Bayne ignored her, “On ten, nine, eight…”

  Dr. Peterson kicked the officer holding her and freed herself. She then ran with her hands cuffed behind her back toward the site.

  “Seven, six,” Bayne continued on the walkie and then turned to the officers and said, “Let her go.” He continued, “Five, four.”

  I could not believe he was going to let her continue to the site. She was going to die! I looked at Peterson and made a quick decision. I ran toward her myself. It was so hard to run in the heavy sand, and neither Peterson nor I was getting very far.

  Bayne called out to me, “Jack! No!” Seeing that I was not stopping, he continued with his countdown, “Two, one, detonate.”

  The countdown ended.

  The ground erupted.

  Peterson was forty yards out, I was fifty—then the blast hurled us flat.

  I was lying on the ground. I covered my head as a wave of heat washed over me. A rain of sand, gravel, and shrapnel from the exploded trailer followed it. Through the falling debris, I saw Peterson lying yards away. The blast had blown her back. She was not moving. I crawled over to her to see if she was all right.

  As I did, I heard a huge crash. I looked up to see that the frame of the trailer had come crashing down to the ground only yards away from us. Whatever explosives they had used, it had lifted the trailer out of the ditch and blown the entire thing apart and into the sky. The hole in the center where the footprints had been discovered was blown open, much wider and deeper than it had been before.

  I crawled over to Dr. Peterson. She finally looked up at me. Her face was bloody. She had been hit with shrapnel from the explosion.

  I asked her, “Are you alright?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you move?” I asked.

  “I don’t know…I think so,” she said. I didn’t know if she meant that she wasn't all right because she was hurt or because she had lost everything.

  The rain of debris, gravel, and sand came to an end with only a huge cloud of dust remaining. We were in the middle of it, and I couldn’t see Bayne or anyone else. I helped Dr. Peterson up. She was cuffed, bleeding from a cut across her forehead, but alive. We both walked over to the site to take a look. We then heard the engines of the bulldozers start up again. Through the dust, we could see their lights as they began to move closer to the hole.

  As we approached the edge of the great hole in the sand, we could see that the intense explosion had forced the wooden barriers that once held back a wall of sand to be now bent back in a circular form like the points on a crown. The rock where the footprints had been was nothing but a pile of rubble and debris. The hole was much deeper, and any hope for anything to be left intact was lost.

  Peterson and I stood at the edge of the now great crater and looked down. Sand began pouring back into the hole. Life drained out of her face. I recognized the fear in her face. Like a waterfall, sand poured back into the crater. With the wind swirling around, there were hundreds of pages of paper from the trailer spinning in a whirlwind left over from the explosion.

  Dr. Peterson was overcome. She did not know what to do and, without hesitation, walked into the deep sand hole, sliding down the sandy sides toward the center.

  “Dr. Peterson, no,” I said, but she did not stop. The bulldozers rolled toward the crater, pushing tons of sand in their path. One began to push the frame of the trailer toward the hole as well. I knew it was just a matter of time before they would get to the crater and Dr. Peterson would be buried under the weight of the debris.

  Without a second thought, I slid down after her. I wasn’t letting her die alone. I slid down much faster due to my weight. I was able to catch up with her.

  “Dr. Peterson,” I said. “We have to get out of here. There is nothing left here. If we do not go now, we will be covered with debris. Those bulldozers are filling in the hole. They will not care if you and I are here. Please, come with me.” I reached out to stop her from sliding any further. I could see the despair on her face. The despair in her eyes stopped me cold. I grabbed her and pulled her with me.

  I told her, “It’s alright. You will move on from here. You have your research and everything in your room still. This is not over.”

  Just then, on our left, a wave of sand and debris came down as the first bulldozer reached the hole and began to fill it in.

  “We have to leave now!” I said. Then, across from us, another bulldozer came to the edge, and an even bigger wave of sand and rock came tumbling down. The center of the crater was now filled with sand and debris. At one point, Dr. Peterson came to and tried to crawl out, but with her hands cuffed behind her back, it was too hard for her. I clawed at the sand and slid back down. I then had her climb up on my shoulders to get her up above me. As she climbed up the angled incline to the top, I was able to push her up above me while struggling to maintain my own foothold in the deep sand.

  As she finally reached the top, she turned and flipped herself over the top. I then tried to claw my way up even further, but without her added weight, I couldn’t get a solid foothold and began to slide backwards again. I looked up to the edge to see her but failed. The next thing I knew, a huge wave of sand came flowing over from the right, on top of me. The waves were washing over me and pushing me farther down the hole. I clawed at the sand, but nothing held. The sand continued to wash over me. I closed my eyes. This was it. Then, through the sound of the bulldozer engines, I could hear a familiar voice. I recognized it. It was calm.

  The weight pressed against my chest. The sand filled my ears. Then I heard it. “I brought you here. I am here now. This is not your end.”

  I continued to roll deeper into the hole until my body pushed up against a plank of wood. The wave of sand above me finally stopped. I reached out my arms to find a way out. I was able to get a grip on the rocks next to me and pull myself up. I pulled my body up out of the sand. I couldn’t hear anything anymore. The entire hole was heavy with dust, and I couldn’t see very far above me.

  The hole was filled halfway, and the sand continued pouring over the top edges. I pulled myself up the slope to the top when I realized that I could now hear the bulldozers again. I could also hear voices calling out to me. Their calls were frantic. I tried to call them back but couldn’t.

  Through the dust, I could see rays of sunlight shining through. All at once, to the left and above me, the light drew dark. As I looked up, I could see the frame of the trailer being pushed to the edge of the hole. I was afraid. I knew I had to get out of the way of its path or be crushed. Frantically, on all fours, I crawled to the side away from where the trailer was going to tumble down. Then, the trailer came crashing down and, in its wake, it created another wave of sand that came powering down.

  The trailer tumbled and rolled over itself on its destructive path to the center. I was out of its way, but not out of the wave of sand that had built up around it. The sand again washed over me and pulled me down again. Everything but the pounding in my ears was silent. The sand pushed against my closed mouth.