"Heartland"

Episode 303
(aired the week of 10/11/1998)
Case # 89-8777

Log line: When a forest area turns into a bone-dry wasteland virtually overnight, a government agriculture official turns to the O.S.I.R. team for help.

Synopsis: When a forest area turns into a bone-dry wasteland virtually overnight, a government agriculture official turns to the OSIR for help. The official, a biochemist named John Valentine, meets Praeger and Donner at the area. He tells them that the area, which spans some 600 acres, remains this way despite recent heavy rain.

Praeger and Donner split up to check out the area. They come across an injured man in the nearby woods. He is suffering severe dehydration and some form of psychosis, talking wildly about some sort of fire that engulfed him. Praeger and Donner take him back to the mobile lab for examination by Hendricks. There, he identifies himself as Joe Mansfield, an airplane mechanic at the nearby military base. He can't remember what happened to him or even why he was in the forest in the first place.

Outside the lab, Praeger encounters the local police chief, Phil Pratt, who has arrived to check on Mansfield's condition. Praeger senses that the chief is less than sincere. Meanwhile, at the lab, Mansfield vanishes while Hendricks' back is turned.

At that moment, Axon, who is surveying the barren site, is almost killed when he inadvertently ignites an underground pocket of hydrogen. Axon is shaken but unharmed.

In a follow-up interview with Valentine, Donner learns that the government gave the area to the Cree nation back in the 1960s as part of a land-claim settlement. Prior to that, the military had unearthed some remains while digging for an airstrip. It seems the area used to be a Cree burial ground. Valentine also tells Donner that the military base where Mansfield said he worked had shut down a year ago. As far as he knew the only work Mansfield did was helping out in his sister's store in town. Donner goes there to look for Mansfield.

At the store, Mansfield's sister tells Donner that she sent her brother to the doctor. At the doctor's office, Donner meets up with Mansfield and Dr. David Lands, a Cree elder. Mansfield refuses to talk to Donner and leaves the office.

Back in the area where Axon was nearly killed, Praeger and Axon count 20 holes that have been created by hydrogen explosions, but they are asked to leave the area by Pratt, who has arrived with some helpers to fill in the holes. The OSIR investigators comply but remain suspicious about the police chief. That evening, while Donner is looking over the area where the hydrogen pockets are exploding into the night, she is attacked by a knife-wielding Mansfield. Pratt, standing nearby, shoots and kills Mansfield.

As she performs an autopsy on Mansfield at Dr. Lands' clinic, Davison finds traces of some sort of virulent chemical in his spinal fluid. Praeger talks with Dr. Lands, who was seen at the site the night Mansfield was shot. Dr. Lands replies that he was doing nothing wrong, that he has a right to be on Cree land.

Continuing to examine the holes, Axon discovers a trace of the same chemical that was found in Mansfield's spinal fluid. He determines that the substance may have come from chemical weapons that were buried in the area by the military. Some of the chemicals seeped down to the water table, separating the hydrogen from the water and sending it up to the surface. Searching the area further, Axon finds 10 such weapons, all filled with nerve gas. The team now realizes that Pratt has been digging up these weapons.

Donner takes a vial of the nerve gas to Valentine for his help examining it. But she is intercepted by Pratt and his men, who take her captive and hold her at a remote forest hideout where they have stored the weapons they have unearthed. She realizes how crazy Pratt is. He intends to use the weapons to expose the shortcomings of what he considers a corrupt government. Struggling to break free of her restraints, Donner breaks her vial of nerve gas on the floor. Wearing protective gear, Praeger and Hendricks rush into the cabin, where Hendricks injects Donner with an antidote. Pratt and his men succumb to the gas.