The Dig: A Taskforce Story Read Free Page A

just look at the dirt. We need to see if there’s anything under the ground. Walls, wells, graves, that sort of thing.”
    “Who’s paying for this shit?”
    She told him. And that’s when he’d really become grumpy.
    Jennifer, riding with Sweetwater, made sure their pickup with Pike at the wheel was still behind them, then turned back around to the front just as Sweetwater took a left turn off Highway 2, heading east on a dirt road, bouncing along and leaving a dust cloud like a mini-tornado in their wake. She said, “How much farther?”
    Sweetwater said, “’Bout ten minutes, give or take. How long will it take to get this done?”
    “Depends on the size of the plot. From what you said, we should be able to finish in a day. I did my research on the flight over, reading through the archives from the Office of Archaeological Studies at the Museum of New Mexico, so I’m up to speed on what to expect.”
    Sweetwater looked a little queasy at the statement, something Jennifer tucked away for no good reason. Just a tidbit that was worth filing in her subconscious. She continued, “As a matter of fact, they’ve done quite a few surveys around here, locating sites from both the Ceramic and Archaic periods. Why didn’t you just have them do the investigation? It was no trouble getting them on the phone, and they seemed a little surprised that you’d brought us in.”
    Sweetwater looked downright nauseous at her words. He fumbled a little with the radio dial, trying to get something to come in, then said, “Well, that’s mighty big of them to say that now. All I care about is preventing the loss of indigenous artifacts, like an Apache migratory campsite or some other settlement. When I talked to them, they said they’d put it in the queue for survey, but that wasn’t going to work with the dam being built.”
    Jennifer took Sweetwater’s words at face value, catching Pike’s visage behind the wheel in the side mirror, all venom and disgust at the entire effort, bouncing along behind them and eating all their dust. She focused back to the front, smothering a smile.
    She’d spent a great amount of time trying to figure out what made him tick, and had given up. Whenever she thought he was intolerant or chauvinistic, he would end up surprising her, showing a softness that was completely out of character.
    He could be more trying than any man she’d ever met, but she held the edge and she knew it. Pike could threaten all day long, but there was a connection with him that was real. She knew, beyond the grumpiness, no matter what she did, he liked her. Which was a high school way of saying he had a crush on her, and also pretty much summed up their relationship. A sort of twisted juvenile bond between grown adults. A stagnant level she tolerated because his ability to connect had been short-circuited by the loss of his family. Pike might be capable of killing men with a soda straw, but he had no skills operating in her world, and it was so easy to twist him about, something she enjoyed. Up to a point.
    Pike had once saved her life at great risk to his own, with nothing for a reward other than the fact that she’d lived, and she would never forget that. He could stomp and scream all he wanted, with her tweaking him at will, but at the end of the day she would do what he asked. And he would do the same in return.
    But it
was
fun tweaking him.
    They bounced over a set of cattle guards and Jennifer saw the line of foliage marking the Pecos River off on the horizon, a small tributary from it snaking out in the desert scrub-oak toward them. Sweetwater pulled the truck up short and she saw construction in the distance, a bucket-loader with piles of sand next to it.
    The dam.
    Sweetwater said, “Well, this is it. You see the tractor up there? That’s the head of the dam. From there to here I’ve found some artifacts, but I’m not sure if they’ve just been washed out by the river, or if this is really a settlement worthy