Chapter One
2016
The tiny brush swept away sand to expose long buried features in the rocks below. Sixteen feet beneath the desert surface, the air should be cooler, but Dr. Jack Stafford was soaked in sweat. It wasn’t the personal discomfort that bothered him; the moisture dripping onto the object, clotting the sand and frustrating his efforts to be gentle challenged his patience.
The archeologist tossed the brush onto the sand and yanked the damp bandana from around his neck. He gazed up to the lip of the trench hoping to find a breeze, while scrubbing the cloth across his forehead. A tent erected to shade the archeological team from the intense desert sun, only served to block any breath of wind that might help cool the people at the bottom of the dig site.
This was supposed to be the culmination of thirty years of research for Dr. Jack, as his students knew him. As the leading professor of archeology at the University of North Dakota, he theorized that the origins of Homosapiens happened earlier than most of the current literature. They had it wrong to say that modern man sprang from an ‘accidental’ gene mutation at the same time as Neanderthals or apes. Many of his peers didn’t share the same opinion—well none of the other academics believed him.
Stafford knew those educated eggheads thought he was crazy. They wouldn’t or couldn’t accept the contention that modern man sprang from deliberate gene manipulation by unknown beings. Humans were alone in the universe and it was only a matter of time until someone found the missing link, they said. They wouldn’t take his research seriously. He’d shown them the proof. Hard evidence in the historic record, both written and archeological, still they wouldn’t budge.
Sweat stung his eyes again adding insult to his emotional injuries. After a last scrub with the bandana, Jack went back to sweeping away sand. Rivulets of fine quartz, granite, and sandstone flooded down from above the object being cleared. Cursing, the professor threw down the brush and stood up. Two students nearby gave him concerned glances and went back to their digging.
Bloody sand, bloody heat, bloody dessert, he snarled in his mind. Those damned ignorant hypocrites that won’t appreciate the truth when it’s right in front of them. How much more do they need before they believe what’s staring them in the face.
His outstretched left hand gripped the ladder rung while he glanced back at the abandoned brush. The artifact, almost uncovered, now buried once more. Damn sand, mentally swearing he stomped up the ladder, the metal rungs clanging under his boots.
At the top of the pit, he strode to a table in the shade of an awning. There were four tents at the site, one covering the excavation, one housing the female team members, one for the male members and one for him. Support workers came out every day from An Najaf. The table held a metal twenty-gallon keg of drinking water for the crew. Stafford pulled a paper cup from the dispenser hanging on the side of the barrel and held the delicate container under the spigot watching as the cup filled with water.
Jack sighed after the water drained down his throat relieving the tension tightening the muscles in his neck. They were three weeks into a twelve-week dig in the south-west desert of Iraq. There had to be something solid, something irrefutable here, to prove his theory to the detractors. The research he’d strained and stressed over for the past thirty years pointed to this location.
Looking between the tents, the desert stretched to the horizon. Nothing larger than a grain of sand broke the flat khaki surface. The nearest inhabited settlement was El Barouch, little more than a wet spot in this ever-shifting dusty ocean. Six men and two women came from An Najaf, fifteen miles further west each day bringing food and water for the archeology team. The town had a safe and monitored water supply. No sense risking a long case of disease like diarrhea from tainted water. They made the thirty-mile trip in a small truck years beyond its sell by date.
Frustration and waning hope made his hand crumple the paper cup and drop it into a garbage can under the table. A student, Tracy Craven hopped off the top rung of the ladder and shouted his name as she ran toward him. Her hands cupped something Jack could only assume was a precious object.
“What is it Tracy?” the professor didn’t get excited anymore. He’d been on too many disappointing digs.
She stopped in front of him extending her clasped hands forward. They were trembling and her breathing seemed ragged.
“I found it just now. It looks like a Sumerian tablet...I think.” She was a bright third year student, who struggled with insecurity. Despite this limitation, Jack thought of her as one of his best pupils. He sighed and stared at her hands as she opened them.
In the center of her left palm sat a clay tablet the size of a standard playing card. It had the familiar cuneiform symbols that characterized the Mesopotamian writing. He dug into his pants pocket for a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on before lifting the tablet from her gloved hand. Extremely nearsighted, the archeologist pushed the glasses up onto his forehead, before raising the fossilized clay to his nose squinting at the writing.
Stafford’s blue eyes shifted back and forth across the ancient text. Decoding it quickly, he looked up at Tracy, with an expression of barely suppressed joy.
“Did you take pictures and measurements before you moved this?” The old man could hardly breathe as he waited for an answer.
She nodded. The sunburned face sagged while tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“I could kiss you. No, sorry, that would be totally inappropriate.” He giggled. “I must put this in the safe.” Stafford began to walk around the trench and then came back to Tracy. “The hell with it,” he said, planting a vigorous wet kiss on her lips. Wearing a huge smile, Jack skipped away. Tracy stumbled back to the pit, shocked and thrilled with the attention.
The heat was stifling inside the gloomy tent. He paused a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim surroundings. A cot bed, suitcase, scattered clothes and a folding table positioned to one side of the space while a black box the size of a bar fridge stood opposite the door. Kneeling next to the old iron safe, his aging fingers dialed the combination. He pulled open the heavy door, revealing the array of priceless artifacts stored inside. Many were tiny bits of pottery, some gold jewelry, and a few scraps of clay with pictograms. A pile of ancient papers held up heavier pieces on the bottom of the cabinet. The tablet in his hand went on the center shelf inside a box with cotton padding. He closed the door and locked it. Sweat poured from his face and down his back soaking his clothes. Movement took extra energy as Jack stumbled for the door.
A tent made of ten percent canvass and ninety percent screen should be cooler than the surrounding air. Yet stepping outside, the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. A bird screamed overhead, it sounded like a hawk or an eagle. Adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose, the professor looked up at the endless blue sky. It took a few moments before he found the bird. A small black dot, circled against a mat the color of flax flowers. He smiled.
Seeing anything alive in this desert on the edge of Hell was a miracle. His gaze dropped to the people working in the pit. The team was more about keeping himself sane than making the work easier. His first solo dig happened less than twenty years before, not far from this spot. All he had then was three guides and the tools. Long days and endless nights alternating between sweating and freezing, back breaking work and being alone nearly drove him over the edge of sanity. Never again, he’d told his best friend David on the day he returned home. The dig ended as an absolute failure.
A frown pulled at his mouth. David Thorsten died three weeks after that conversation. A drunk driver struck him down. Someone said it must be a curse following Stafford from the failed expedition. Jack didn’t believe in curses.
His eyes scanned the pit below. Six sweating bodies scrambling about on the bottom, their backs bent. Squints, the label attached to most students in the sciences, he’d heard the name once and it stuck. It seemed appropriate. All they do all day is squint against the sunshine or squint at tiny bits of centuries old remains.
Three females, dressed or undressed as much as modesty would allow, labored in sopping wet t-shirts and skimpy shorts. The three male students wore just the shorts until they came out of the pit, then they’d put on a t-shirt. One of the local people swept the loose sand into a bucket and another pulled it up and dumped it onto a shaker table. None of the students would ever win a beauty contest, but they were here because of their brains not their good looks.
Look who’s talking. Balding head, long grey hair around the sides, skinny long face, and bones sticking out all over your body, you remind me of Scrooge on a starvation diet. His mouth lifted into a wry smile at the thought.
Scrooge was a penny-pinching miser; I’ve had to pinch everyone for pennies just to finance this expedition. If it hadn’t been for the few friends that I still have in this field...the thought trailed away as a noise stole his attention.
Across the pit, on the corner post of his tent, a bird had landed or was at least attempting to land. It flapped its’ wings trying to find balance on the pointed corner of the canvass. The face of the bird appeared to be hawk-like and the feet had huge talons, although the rest of the animal seemed odd.
Expecting to see mottled brown or grey colors on a bird of prey the bright plumage was out of place. Jack turned hoping to get a better line of sight on the predator. Golden-yellow eyes stared back from under hooded angry brows. The head seemed black, while greens, reds, and violent splashes of blue and mauve covered the body from neck to tail. Its’ wings and tail were deep grey, while the legs were a typical yellow. Strange, a single word came to mind as he gazed into the unblinking eyes.
Whispers, soft as a summer breeze tickling leaves on a tree came to his ears. The beak never moved. Jack’s feet shifted. A deep sense of dread began to build in his mind. The hawk was calling him, drawing his soul. Stiff legs dragged through the sand, the whispers became a shout in his head. Feet thumped to some distant drum. The pounding in his chest had another master—fear. Those eyes, pulling him toward, what? Evil, his mind shrieked. It’s going to kill you. Run!
A wry sneer appeared on his face. It wouldn’t be so bad to end it all. Finally, peace without the grief of butting heads with imbeciles. The hawk spoke again. This time, it said, “You were right Jack.” Something touched his arm shattering the trance. A scream escaped as he whirled.
“Are you alright Jack?” Justin Treek asked. His nose and mouth worked to keep the heavy horn-rimmed glasses from sliding down.
“What, yes, strange bird.” The old man took off his hat to mop the baldhead beneath with a cloth. Glancing at the tent, the bird had vanished. “Did you see it?” The words were barely a whisper.
“No, but you were right Jack.”
“About what?” He was having trouble focusing. Stupid kid should get a haircut, the thought caused a giggle. Justin ignored the crazy antics from the professor.
“This site, this dig, we found it.” Justin was here as a graduate student working on his master’s degree.
“Forgive me; I don’t know what you’re saying?” Stafford could feel the ground tilting.
“Here, sit down—Katie we need your help.”
Katie Watson, the team medic, initially trained to be a doctor before switching to archeology after her best friend Justin took her to a dig. They were not and had never been intimate, although their actions would lead a casual observer to believe otherwise.
She rushed up the ladder, grabbing a trauma bag from a tool trunk near the water keg. Training took over as she knelt next to the expedition leader.
“Jack, its Katie, what are you feeling?” Her hand touched his wrist finding a pulse. Justin could tell she was counting. “Get some water.” Her eyes turned up toward her friend. “He’ll be fine in a minute.” The concern she felt folded lines in her brow.
Justin did as she commanded.
“Can you tell me what’s happening Jack?” He wasn’t answering questions and his pulse raced as if he had run a marathon. The skin on his wrist was cold and clammy. Could be a case of sunstroke, if he didn’t come around in a few minutes, we’ll have to rush him to a hospital. It was thirty miles to An Najaf, and there was no guarantee they had any medical facilities.
“The bird,” the archeologist mumbled. “It spoke to me. Did you see it? Strange creature, part hawk, part...” He frowned.
“No I didn’t see the bird. What did it say?” She was becoming certain of her diagnosis.
“Here’s the water.” Justin handed her the paper cup. Their fingers touched. She smiled up at him and this time her face and her eyes said the same thing.
“He should be fine in a few minutes. Here Jack, have some water.” She put the cup to his lips and tilted. “Did you see a bird around here, in the last few minutes?” She asked over her shoulder.
Justin shook his head and shrugged. “He said something about a bird when I told him we found the rune symbols. He sounded crazy.”
“It was pretty.” Stafford smiled. “I thought it was strange.”
“Have some more water and relax,” she patted his arm before dragging Justin a few feet away.
“Is he going to be alright?” Genuine concern sounded in his voice and written on his face.
“I’m not sure, if he doesn’t improve in half-an-hour we better take him to a hospital.” Her hands were propped on her hips.
Justin glanced over her shoulder at their leader. The old man sat in the chair, head back, mouth open. He seemed dead.
“I’m not leaving, not when we’re this close to proving his theory. Somebody has to stay here and I’m next in line of seniority.”
“Yeah so, I’ll take Roger, at least he speaks Arabic.” She sighed. “We can go back to work for now, I need to check on him again in half an hour. What a time for him to get sick.” They climbed down the ladder. Katie told Roger to ask the Al-Glall tribesman on top of the pit to keep an eye on the professor.
Justin, Katie, and Samantha poured plaster over a clay tablet measuring four feet by three feet, broken into a thousand pieces, probably by an earthquake at some distant time. The slab seemed to be otherwise complete and the plaster would help preserve it during transport back to the States. A quick read showed them an expanded version of the smaller tablet found earlier.
“Jack always said there was some truth behind the story of Ea and Au. Both are listed on this plaque.” He pointed at the drying plaster. “I wonder what the world is going to think when this hits the headlines.”
“They won’t believe it at first,” Samantha said. She was studying philosophy as a minor. “The major religions are going to have a hemorrhage though.”
“Why?” Trudy asked from a few feet away. “They’ll just denounce this as fiction like the Dead Sea scrolls. Their followers will get back into lock step and the world will move on.” Her mind more worried about Jack than debating philosophy.
Digging and scraping in the pit came to a halt. Everyone was listening to the conversation, each of them had their own opinion, yet unwilling to share it with the group.
The tribesman on the lip of the pit shouted. All eyes turned up and saw him pointing in the direction of the sick old man.
“He’s having a convulsion,” Katie shouted and ran for the ladder. She reached the top and stepped off. Expecting to find Jack flopping on the ground foaming at the mouth, instead, an enormous wall of red dust was advancing across the desert—dust storm. It would be on them in minutes. Already, tendrils of sand skittered away toward the advancing vortex.
Screams broke the panic freezing her body. One of the Arabs was jabbering and pointing at the pit. “What’s he saying Roger?” She had to shout over the rising wind drowning out any normal conversation.
“We need to get down here to survive. He says the wind will kill us up there.” The locals from the village working on the surface were already on the ladder.
“Help me with Jack,” she pleaded. Roger and two other students helped the professor to the ladder. How do we get a semi-conscious man down there without any proper equipment and get it done in the next couple of minutes? She ordered the others to take cover. They scrambled down the ladder as the tents began to shred and the sky disappeared in a red darkness.
