Garrett stepped off of the commercial jet in Panama City. This was not his choice destination on his trip to South America. Revolt had struck in Panama, and small arms fire could be heard in the city. Garrett continued to think of how almost everywhere in the world there were people discontent almost to the point of revolt. This was something common in time, but widespread political corruption was becoming more evident every day everywhere in the world. Garrett quickly boarded a car with two other colleagues. Garrett, in the back seat, opened his luggage and pulled out an AK-47. He had purchased this for a few dollars out of necessity the previous year on a trip to the Mideast. Keeping this low so as not to arouse the crowds of people on the streets, Garrett loaded a clip into the weapon and chambered a round. The people in the street all around were rioters, and any one of them could possibly become violent.
Garrett had purchased the AK-47 while on a trip to several former Soviet states. This had been his first trip specifically for archaeology, at the age of twenty-seven. The five years prior to that had been spent in the Marines. In the Marines, Garrett had commanded a squad in missions across the world. He had first seen action in Afghanistan searching for Osama bin Laden. The next year was spent fighting against insurgents around Iraq. The year after that was spent at home training, but then Garrett spent the last two years of his military career fighting to keep China from recapturing Taiwan. Fortunately this had not escalated into nuclear war, but China had lost over two million men and hundreds of billions of dollars in materials. The temporarily weakened Chinese army was now fighting against rebellions around the country attempting to get freedom from Communist rule. China had blamed the United States and the other Democratic powers in the Americas and Europe for the rebellions, and the rebellions were actually being spurred on by those powers. They denied it, though, because they argued that it was only their principles that were spurring on the rebellions and that if China elected a Democratic leader then the rebellions would stop.
Those were also the years that Communism overtook several other countries. The socialists who had been gaining power in Spain gradually changed their views until they were openly Communist. Russia had also had its previously weak Communist party gain back power until it held most of the country's power. They finally took back total power of the country in 2015. Cuba, now supported by the newly Communist Russia and Spain, as well as the other Communist countries of Vietnam, North Korea, China, and Taiwan, began to launch an island hopping campaign in the Caribbean, and had taken control of several islands. The Democratic powers, with the threat of nuclear arms and overwhelming numbers that the Communists now controlled, could only covertly attempt to stop their advance. The year that Garrett left the Marines, in 2017, North Korea invaded and overwhelmed South Korea. No one could stop the Communist advance without the threat of nuclear war. That is why Garrett went to archaeology. He wanted to look to the relatively bright past instead of the darkness that clouded the future.
The car sped through Panama City to the waterfront. There, the small arms fire sounded closer. There were no people around that Garrett could see, but John, one of his colleagues, pointed out a freshly slain police officer. Garrett judged that the officer had been dead for only a few minutes. The body was still warm, but the blood had not been flowing from the two holes in it for long. One shot had apparently hit an artery, and blood was gushing out in a small fountain from the man's shoulder. Garrett instructed John to take the man's M4 and looked around the area to see if there was anyone suspicious visible. John recovered the man's gun and ammunition and got back into the car. After several minutes a small single-engine floatplane landed several hundred feet away from the water's edge and taxied to the beach. The pilot, another colleague of Garrett's, stepped out and helped the three to move their things from the car to the plane. Without incident the plane taxied out and took off.
The plane turned south and began its long trip south. Garrett was joining several archaeologists. They were at a sight of unknown origin where recent heavy rains and an earthquake had unearthed several pyramidal structures. Garrett wanted to see the structures and study them firsthand. Only a few pictures and sketches had been provided of the pyramids. The ground around them was bare as if the earth has just sloughed off of the pyramids. Garrett had also procured a topographical map taken several years prior to the expedition. Once the GPS coordinates of the pyramids had been marked on the map, it was clear that the pyramids had all been covered with large mounds of earth prior to their discovery after the earthquake.
As the small plane continued to fly south over the South American mountains and jungles, Garrett continued to look at the map. He took measurements between each of the pyramids, and as he was sketching lines between each of them he saw a pattern begin to form on the map. There were eight pyramids that had been uncovered. These were arranged in pairs. Two of these pairs aligned on a bearing of 10 degrees. The other two pairs aligned on a bearing of 100 degrees. These two lines crossed and created an X. The inner pyramid in each pair was an equal distance of 478 yards from the intersection of the lines. The entire formation formed two squares and a crosshairs between them. Between each of the pyramids in each pair the distance was 179 yards. Garrett then looked to the intersection of the two lines of the crosshairs. There was another mound there. This mound was almost three hundred feet tall, which was larger than the other two hundred foot tall mounds. The peak of the mound was almost exactly in the center of the crosshairs. Garrett checked the GPS coordinates of all of the pyramids and they did not include that mound.