K.J. nodded. “Yes, of course. Well, GPR machines work by shooting electromagnetic pulses at the ground. The pulses hit objects and bounce back to a receiver. The amount of time it takes for this to happen determines the depth of the objects. Our machines then take that information and use it to form a tomographic image of the subsurface.”
Ben frowned.
“In other words, a three-dimensional image.” K.J. produced a large computer tablet and positioned it so everyone could see. He touched the screen and a series of three-dimensional blocks popped up. He flicked through them until he found the one he wanted. Then he tapped on it, enlarging the image. Slowly, the block rotated in a circle. “This block represents a ten-foot square slice of land. My experts tell me its located southwest of the mesa.”
“Looks like you’ve got something,” Graham remarked. “About eight feet underground.”
“Mr. Graham is referring to this.” K.J. pointed at a black area. It stretched across the block’s entire north side. “It’s a metal box of some sort.”
“What type of metal?” Beverly asked.
“Unfortunately, our equipment isn’t sophisticated enough to perform that type of analysis.”
“Emma could do it,” Graham interjected.
“Uh, okay.” K.J. shot him a confused look. Then he swiped his fingers across the screen, twisting the horizontal block to its southeastern side. “Do you see those?”
“They look like pipes, extending out from the box.” I paused. The design reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “Where do they go?”
“Everywhere. My people have mapped twenty-six of them so far. They snake across the clearing to different places. Then they shoot upward, stopping about eighteen inches beneath the surface.” He used his fingers to shift the screen again, giving us an angled downward view of the box. “This pipe seems to be the shortest. It rises almost straight up.”
A memory clicked into place. “I’ve seen this before.” I produced Justin’s Capitalist Curtain papers and leafed through them. Before long, I saw a familiar diagram labeled Smokescreen. It consisted of a large box-shaped machine along with an elaborate pipe system and over a dozen little notations. “Here it is. The box looks like some kind of fancy smoke machine. The pipes must’ve been used to distribute smoke throughout the clearing.”
“That would explain why Milt saw smoke right before the trucks disappeared.” K.J. scrunched up his brow. “A system like that would’ve taken days to install.”
“Justin must’ve known the location in advance. Hell, he probably picked it out.”
“That’s quite possible,” he acknowledged. “Okay, we know where the smoke came from. But that doesn’t explain how the trucks disappeared.”
“Did your people find anything else?” Beverly asked.
“Well, yes. But it most likely predates the 1949 incident.”
“Let’s see it anyway.”
His fingers manipulated the screen. The blocks shrank in size and shifted backward, joining similar blocks. Then he stretched the blocks downward, turning them from squares into rectangles. “Okay, this is a deeper view of the clearing.” He pointed toward the bottom of the screen. “See that?”
“That white stuff?” Beverly squinted. “What is it?”
“My experts believe its a layer of bones, buried about twenty-three feet beneath the surface.”
I blinked. “Are you sure?”
“Nearly positive. As I mentioned, our ability to distinguish materials is limited. But analyzing shapes of objects within layers is a much easier matter.”
“That’s a lot of bones.”
“Indeed. They estimate we’re looking at dozens — possibly hundreds — of skeletons.”
I sat up straight. “We found an ancient altar on top of the summit. Someone carved pictographs on it. They depict people dying around the mesa.”
“Interesting.” K.J. looked thoughtful, but only for a moment. “But ultimately, unimportant for our purposes.”
“Perhaps. But a lot of people died here once upon a time.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Chapter 66
“Here’s your workspace.” Corporal Wendell opened a door and ushered us into a separate conference room. “I’m at your disposal until further notice.”
The room was nearly identical to the previous one, right down to the pitcher of ice water and clean glasses occupying the middle of the table. The only difference was a single laptop lying on a chair.
“Also, you’ve been cleared to visit the main clearing as well as the mesa,” Corporal Wendell continued. “Would you like me to take you there?”
I picked up the laptop and sat down. “Not yet.”
“Very good, sir.” And with that, the corporal exited the room.
I fired up the laptop and passed it to Graham. “See what you can find out about the history of tribes in Kentucky, particularly as it relates to the mesa.”
“What’s the point?” he asked. “Those pictographs were drawn long before your grandfather came here.”
“I know. But there still could be a connection.”
“How can I help?” Beverly asked.
I pulled the classified files out of my satchel and handed her two of them. “I need another pair of eyeballs on these.”
While Graham dove into the Internet, Beverly and I huddled over the files. My fingers turned pages as I reread reports and stared at black-and-white photos of Justin Reed and Dan Rellman.
We worked in silence for the next twenty minutes. Then Graham cleared his throat. “I may have something.”
I glanced up. “Oh?”
“Around 1400 or so, a prehistoric group known as Caborn-Welborn grew out of the old Angel chiefdom. They lived mostly along the Wabash and Ohio rivers.”
“So what?” Beverly said. “There must be hundreds of groups who’ve lived in this state at one point or another.”
“Yeah, but do any of them have pottery like this?” He twisted around the laptop and showed us the screen.
Looking close, I saw an image of an ancient bowl. It was buff-colored, unpolished, and featured a faded pictograph.
Beverly studied the pictograph. “It’s just like the one on the summit.”
Indeed, it was. The pictograph showed a bunch of dead bodies, lying in piles around the mesa.
“That’s just one side.” Graham clicked the touchpad a few times, revealing two additional pictographs painted on the same bowl. Both images matched up with the other ones we’d seen on top of the summit.
“Nice find,” I remarked. “What happened to the tribe?”
“That’s the other interesting part. Apparently, they disappeared during the 1700s.”
I recalled the radar image of bones around the mesa. “Or died off.”
Graham turned the laptop around and began to scroll through a webpage. “In the early 1800s, scholars collected oral histories in this area. One of the stories, popular at that time, described how a great tribe from the Ohio River area used to send its warriors on a sacred quest to pick fruit from a sky garden. The first to do so was awarded leadership of the tribe, which was relayed to the others via a cloud of specifically colored smoke. At that point, the men would converge upon the sky garden and bask in the glory of their new leader. This practice continued unchecked for many years.” He paused. “That is until a race ended in controversy. Multiple smoke signals were released from the sky garden at the same time. This angered the gods. They sent a cloud of colorless smoke across the land, wiping the tribe from existence.”
“The sky garden must be that small forest atop the mesa. And obviously, the tribe didn’t disappear… its members died.” Beverly frowned. “But how? Where’d the smoke in that story come from?”