The Omega Project

by Ernest Dempsey

  The sheriff shook his head. His cowboy hat carried a thin layer of snow on the brim. The man’s face was red from the biting cold, and he narrowed his eyes behind his sunglasses to keep from tearing up.

  “Now, hold on just a dang second,” the cop said. “There was no one here when we arrived, Agent. Maybe you got some bad information. I pulled half a dozen cops in on this little operation. You have effectively wasted my time and the time of all these other guys, too.” He motioned to the other six cops standing around. All of their coats were zipped up tight, hands covered in leather gloves. A few had scarves pulled up over their mouths to keep their faces warm.

  Petty shook his head and looked out over the area. They were standing on the overlook, the parking area where Sean’s vehicle still sat.

  “Seems like my information was good,” Petty said, pointing at the vehicle. The doors to the SUV were still open. The cops had checked it out upon arriving but found nothing of use inside other than the registration. The vehicle belonged to Tommy Schultz but had been purchased as a company vehicle for the International Archaeological Agency. A quick check of the tags reiterated that fact. “He was here,” Petty reinforced. “That car belongs to his best friend. I suppose that’s just a coincidence.”

  The sheriff bit his bottom lip and adjusted his belt. His gut was hanging over the waistline, and the maneuver did little to prevent that from happening again.

  “Look, I don’t know what you want, Agent Petty. We did what you asked. No one was here.”

  “You did what I asked?” Petty leaned sideways, letting how truly incensed he was be expressed by his posture. “Are you serious right now? Because what I asked you to do was arrest Sean Wyatt and hold on to him until I got here. But you didn’t do that, did you? I mean, I don’t see Sean Wyatt anywhere!” He spun around, making a full-blown mockery of the sheriff and his team. “Is he…is he in one of your squad cars over there?”

  “No.” Petty answered his own question. “Well then, where is he? He was right here! How did he get away?”

  The cop swallowed back his anger and answered the question. “There were…other tracks when we got here. Someone must have picked them up. Maybe they knew we were coming.” There was more than a hint of disdain in the cop’s tone—and a healthy dose of suspicion, as well. “Maybe you told someone we were coming. You trying to cover up your own investigation, Agent?”

  The man was grasping at straws, and they both knew it. Petty had seen that trick a million times. When someone felt like they were being blamed and knew they were in the wrong, deflecting some of that blame was a useful tool. But it wouldn’t work on Petty. He’d used it before and he was too smart to fall for it himself.

  “Where. Did. Sean. Wyatt. Go?” Petty’s voice remained steady, full of righteous indignation.

  “We don’t know. I already told you that.”

  “The tracks. Do they go back into town?”

  “The road was already cleared when we got here. Has been all day. Only place we saw tracks were here, on this gravel patch of trail leading up here to the overlook.”

  “And could you tell which way they turned out of here before you and your men drove all over the snow and crushed the evidence?”

  The cop shook his head in shame. “No.”

  “Of course not!” Petty threw his hands up high in the air and then let them fall, slapping against the outside of his legs with a pronounced whap.

  “I don’t think they went back into town, though. If they had, someone would have seen them. We would have passed them. On our way out here, we didn’t see any other vehicles on the road.”

  “They could have left before you even left your donut-covered desk.”

  The sheriff snorted a derisive laugh. “I wish we could get donuts out here. Good ones, anyway.” He clearly didn’t care that the federal agent before him had passed a snide comment his way. That or he simply didn’t understand the insult.

  Petty had to admit: He was raking this guy over the coals pretty hard and the man hadn’t winced, had even thrown back a little smart-aleck jab of his own. The cop had moxie; Petty would give him that, but the problem still remained. Sean Wyatt was on the loose.

  Based on what the sheriff said, Wyatt was probably heading west, toward Glacier National Park, but why? Did he hope to find sanctuary there, perhaps hide out in the dense forests until things died down?

  Surely not.

  It was much too cold to try and make a go of it in the great outdoors, at least without the proper equipment and training. Petty was certain Sean had picked up some wilderness survival training along the way, but the man was no expert, and on top of that he was in a part of the world he didn’t know that well. Petty figured Sean had visited this area before, but it was hardly the woods out behind his childhood home.

  Sean was out of his element out here in the wide-open West.

  Petty had his team back in DC running checks for any known associates Wyatt might have out here, but so far nothing promising turned up. What was he up to? Heading to Canada?

  That wouldn’t work, either. The northern border was already on lockdown, the Canadian authorities watching for him to pop up in some desperate attempt to flee the country. Even with extradition in place, finding Wyatt in the vast wilderness of Canada could prove tricky were he able to make it there.

  Still, that didn’t seem like what was going on here. Petty didn’t know for sure, but it seemed like Wyatt was following a very specific path.

  “What is this place again?” Petty asked.

  The sheriff had fallen away to his thoughts and barely heard the question.

  “I’m sorry; what was that?”

  “This place,” Petty said, waving a hand around. “Camp Disappointment. Why is this important?”

  The sheriff looked at him like he’d fallen out of a turnip truck and landed on his head. “Why is it important? I guess they didn’t teach you about the Corps of Discovery expedition in your fancy schools back east.”

  Petty kept his face like stone, giving no quarter. “Why don’t you educate me?”

  “Lewis and Clark expedition? Ever heard of that?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows about that.”

  “Well, its official name was the Corps of Discovery expedition. It was put together by Thomas Jefferson to learn about the land they acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. They were also looking for a water passage from the east to the Pacific Ocean. It was in this spot they finally realized that there would be no river cutting all the way through the nation to the west. They had to go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “Thus their disappointment.”

  “Correct.”

  “Not a very flattering title for a historical landmark.”

  The cop shrugged. “If we’re done here, Agent Petty, my men and I would like to get back in our cars and head into town. No point in standing around out here freezing to death.”

  Petty nodded absently and stood there looking out over the land while the cops filed into their vehicles, each one grateful to be out of the frigid air. One by one, the police drove away, their tires flipping chunks of mushy snow into the bumpers as they left.

  Petty remained for a few minutes, still gazing out at the landscape. Why were Sean Wyatt and Tommy Schultz following the Lewis and Clark Trail? Is that what they were doing? Petty returned to his car and slid into the seat. He took off his gloves and set them on the passenger seat, then held his hands in front of one of the vents for a minute to warm his still-cold fingers.

  When he had enough feeling in his digits, he took the phone out of his coat pocket and pulled up the search app.

  The connection was weak, only showing a single bar of cell coverage in the top-right corner of his phone, but it was enough to allow at least a slow connection to his LTE network.

  After several seconds, the screen changed and populated with a list of search results. Petty tapped on the images tab at the top and then waited as the device repopulated the screen with n
ew results, this time all pictures.

  One of the first ones he noted was a multicolored map of the United States. It was divided into sections, territory owned by the USA, land owned by the Spanish, and then Canada to the north.

  He zoomed in on one area and noted it was Saint Louis. A white line shot up from there and went north through South Dakota and into the lower part of North Dakota. The line stopped at the words Fort Mandan. Then the trail went west, crossing into Montana and cutting across the entire state until it reached Idaho. Eventually, it ended on the coast in Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.

  Petty sighed and looked up through the windshield into the stark sky. He returned his gaze to the screen and traced the line back to this spot, the very place he was sitting. It was labeled on the map, too: Camp Disappointment. Based on the previous path Wyatt and his friend had taken, it was right along the same line as the Lewis and Clark expedition.

  But why? Why in the world would those two be following that famous path that was taken over two hundred years ago?

  Petty’s mind raced.

  “Think, Matt. Think.”

  He remembered his mother teaching him when he was little. Matthew had grown up with a learning disability that kept him out of the first and second grades, not attending school with other children until his third-grade year.

  He had trouble with abstract challenges, and they often resulted in fits of anger and tantrums over his inability to figure something out. His mother—a saint in his eyes—never faltered, always encouraging him to push through the difficulties both in his studies, and in life, and to think his way into a solution.

  “Think, Matty, think” was a line she’d used countless times during his youth. She always forced him to figure things out, even when it seemed like no answer was feasible.

  Now, here he was, trying to understand something that was out of his realm of expertise. He was accustomed to certain kinds of investigation, but this—this was more like code breaking in a way.

  “What’s the connection?” he said to himself. “What do Wyatt and Schultz want with Lewis and Clark?”

  That question led him to another, a more powerful one: “What do Wyatt and Schultz do?” He paused. “They’re historians, archaeologists.”

  He’d learned a good amount of information regarding Wyatt and Schultz’s activities around the world, how they were able to solve problems and figure out ancient mysteries with uncanny success. It had made the duo famous in some circles, and they were developing a reputation as two of the greatest treasure hunters of all time.

  He recalled reading that neither of them wanted to be known as treasure hunters, that those who went by that moniker were people uninterested in preserving history and only focused on increasing personal wealth.

  Those weren’t the kinds of things a criminal would say. That thought brought Petty back to a distracting one from earlier. Did Wyatt really kidnap the president?

  He shook his head and made himself come back to the issue at hand. Why? Why were these two on the same trail the Lewis and Clark expedition took over two hundred years ago?

  The answer seemed obvious now.

  Wyatt and Schultz were looking for something. They were on a hunt, trying to find something left behind by Lewis and Clark, or maybe a series of items related to that expedition. There were dozens of possibilities that tried to pop into Petty’s skull, but he pushed them back. Whatever Wyatt was trying to find was irrelevant at the moment.

  Perhaps Wyatt had abducted Dawkins because the former president was privy to knowledge about whatever Wyatt was trying to find. Rumors ran wild in that regard. There were fascinating theories as to what the presidents really knew about aliens, ancient technology, and where some of the nation’s greatest treasures were hidden. Was that why Wyatt had taken Dawkins? It was certainly plausible.

  Petty looked across the map and noted the endpoint at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

  “Well,” Petty said, “I may not know where you’re going today, but I know where you’ll end up.”

  38

  Columbia Falls, Montana

  Emily pulled into the driveway. The gravel was covered in a thick layer of snow, and it crunched under the tires as she drove ahead. The four wheels turned, slipping now and then on the slick, unstable surface beneath.

  The drive from Browning to Columbia Falls had taken nearly ninety minutes, when it typically took much less than that. Snow fell the entire time, limiting visibility and causing the roads to be far more treacherous. Four-wheel drive helped as long as it was mostly snow on the roads and the road crews had salted the pavement prior to the storm coming, which caused the dry powder to melt into slush.

  Still, it could have been dangerous, and Emily did everything in her power to be cautious, keeping a firm grip on the wheel at all times.

  They’d arrived safely at their destination, and as Emily steered the SUV up a slight hill, the cabin appeared around the bend in the trail. There was a huge garage to the left with two big bay doors and a carport built into the right-side end. An old tractor sat there hooked up to a long belt. From the looks of it, the owner of the place had rigged the tractor as a sort of mill.

  Sean stared at the cabin with wide eyes. “This. Place. Is. Awesome,” he said.

  He opened the door as Emily shifted the vehicle into park and killed the engine. Tommy stepped out, too, his boots crunching as they sank deep into the fresh powder. A heavy layer of snow coated the cabin’s roof, along with the shorter roof that hung out over the entrance atop the stairs.

  The second SUV pulled up next to them, and two men dressed in black peacoats got out. Their weapons were holstered within the folds of their outerwear, but Sean knew just how fast those guns could be produced if needed.

  Emily made a circular motion with one finger. “Check the perimeter,” she said. “When you’re certain it’s clear, you guys can set up camp in the downstairs apartment. Should be beds for all of you, plenty of food in the fridge, and water, too. You know the routine. Two-hour shifts.” The men nodded and drew their weapons, then they spread out to check the area. Two went around behind the cabin. Another one trotted through the snow to the back of the garage and adjacent outdoor shop. The last of her operatives moved quickly back down the driveway, scanning both sides of it to make sure no threat was hiding out in the forest.

  The cabin was three stories tall, including the basement. The windows of the lower floor were only seven or eight inches above ground level. A large porch jutted out from the front of the cabin. It stood over the entrance to the basement, which appeared to be another apartment, the one Emily assigned to her agents.

  “Who did you say owns this place?” Tommy asked.

  “Not sure I did.” Emily shut the driver-side door and walked around to the back. “You guys wanna help me with your gear, or am I also the bellhop?”

  Sean snapped back to the moment. It was like being in a winter wonderland, surrounded by dense forests of coniferous trees, all coated in pure, fresh snow. There was an eerie silence to winter settings like this. Sean had always sensed it. He didn’t know how to describe it, but whenever he felt it, he was never afraid. It was a serene sensation, a kind of odd peace that permeated everything: the mountains, the trees, the rocks, the animals, the snow, and even him.

  Sean remembered some of the bigger snowstorms he’d endured in his younger days. The last one was when he’d been living in Chattanooga. That night, around six to eight inches of snow had fallen, covering the city in a pristine white blanket. Sean had awoken early and gone outside before anyone else was up. That was the last time he’d felt this kind of serenity. There were no sounds of cars, people, or pets. Just a heavy quiet. Feeling it again, he wished it was a sensation he could get more often.

  Back in Southern Tennessee and North Georgia, snow was a rarity, only coming around once or twice a year, and when it did, the accumulation was almost nothing, a few inches here, half a foot there. When it snowed more than a couple o
f inches, cities shut down, schools closed, offices worked on delays. In the South, unlike up here, there was no real need to invest money in machinery and resources that could keep the roads clear.

  Sean sighed and walked around to the back of the vehicle. Emily stepped aside so he and Tommy could grab their things. Then Sean shut the back gate and followed Emily and Tommy toward the cabin.

  They ascended the stairs with caution. The last thing any of them needed was a foolish injury due to carelessness. A hospital visit wouldn’t be possible. Once they set foot there, federal agents and local law enforcement alike would pounce.

  Emily stopped at the door and entered a passcode on a little panel to the right of the doorframe. She pressed the enter button, and the front flap on the panel flipped open on a hinge. Inside was a single brass key. Emily took the key, inserted it into the door, and twisted. The door opened easily and swung wide.

  The three stepped into the cabin and closed the door behind them. Tommy half expected it to be warmer than outside, but he quickly realized that it was almost as cold inside the cabin.

  “Does this place have heat?” Tommy asked, rubbing his hands together to warm them.

  “Over there,” Emily motioned to a black woodstove in the corner of the room. There was a short stack of wood next to it, as well as kindling and some stacks of newspaper.

  “There’s more wood outside,” Sean said. “By the garage.” He’d noted the pile on their way in and had already counted on this place being heated solely by fire.

  “We do have electricity, though,” Tommy said. He flipped on a light in a side hallway. There was a washer and dryer and a large sink. To the right of those, at the end of the corridor, was a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower-tub.

  Sean noted the thermostat on the wall near the entrance. The screen was blank, the little box disconnected from any source of power. He understood why. Running heat in there would consume a decent amount of energy, energy they could use on lights.