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forward on my belly, I could make it. There were enough folds in the earth to allow me to remain out of sight. It would suck, and I’d probably destroy my clothes, but I could cover the hundred meters on my belly without being seen. I’d be spotted for sure from the air, but I’d be invisible from the ground.
    I started forward, inching along when I heard the unmistakable thump of rotor blades beating the air. I stopped moving and fixated on the sound.
    There was a helicopter spooling up on the other side of the bunker. And it was going airborne.

Chapter 7
    Jennifer sluiced the dirt in her makeshift seine, finding nothing yet again. Sweetwater scooped out another thin layer and flipped it to her. She began shaking the chickenwire again, sorting out the dirt from the potential evidence of human existence from a bygone era.
    They’d been at it for about ten minutes, excavating around the small flag she’d placed earlier, and she was in heaven. Finally working toward a scientific find of an ancient civilization. She couldn’t help but feel the adrenaline of discovery. Something was down here, and, while she’d be disappointed if it ended up being a broken piece of fence line, she enjoyed the process. Much, much more than Pike would ever understand.
    He talked a good game about Grolier Recovery Services, and wanted her as a partner, but she understood why. He only wanted to use their company in the service of the US government. To bastardize it like a whore to facilitate operations that were questionable at best. As she sifted the sand back and forth, she realized he’d never understand the thrill of the hunt. Never want to get dirty solely for the joy of the find.
    She pitched the sand aside and waited for the next load, wondering if she was making the right decision. Wondering if Pike was worth the effort.
    Sweetwater sank the shovel in again and hit something. He brought the shovel up, intent on driving it past the resistance and she shouted, “Wait!”
    She scrambled over and pushed him aside. She grabbed a trowel and a paintbrush and went to work, scraping the ground with care. In thirty seconds she uncovered something. In sixty seconds, she was looking at her find in confusion.
    Sweetwater leaned over her and said, “What’s that?”
    She said, “I don’t know.”
    She scraped again, lengthwise, then used her paintbrush to clear off the dirt. What appeared was a section of a black obelisk, dull and checkered, like a length of carbon fiber. She scraped some more and reached the end.
    Sweetwater said, “Holy Jesus . . . Chris was right.”
    She turned to him and said, “What? Who’s Chris?”
    Before he could answer, a black SUV pulled up next to the riverbank from the access road, hitting the rough terrain full-on and spraying them with dirt, full of menace and unspoken power. The doors opened, spilling out men.
    Jennifer stood, seeing the dull gray of gun barrels sprouting like a bad rash. All trained on her.
    She raised her hands, confused, and heard Sweetwater say, “Chris, hey, she found it!”
    The lead man swung his butt-stock, hammering Sweetwater in the head and driving him to the ground. Sweetwater wailed and clawed the dirt, saying, “Chris, wait!”
    The man turned to her and said, “Get on your knees.”
    She did so.
    Sweetwater said, “She found it! Jesus, what are you doing? What’s with the guns?”
    The men closed around the dig site and began working much faster than she had, unconcerned with any damage to fragile archaeological relics. In seconds, they brought out a five-foot section of something looking like the blade of a helicopter, one end torn and showing a honeycomb substance like Styrofoam.
    The man called Chris said, “I told you to prevent the dam and that we would search.
We would search.
”
    Sweetwater said nothing, cowering. Jennifer said, “Sir, wait. I was hired to confirm or deny the presence of an archaeological site. That’s why we’re here. I’m not sure what