It was a hot summer night and inspector Gilligan and his partner Wayne were on there way back to their hometown in Iowa. After a long two weeks solveing a murder case in New York City they were both very tired and very hungry. They finally got home at three o'clock in the morning. Gilligan retired to his study and Wayne was so tired he slept on the couch in Gilligan's house. Around ten o'clock in the morning Gilligan went down to wake Wayne when they reviewed their previous case. While reviewing the case around four o'clock in the evening there was a knock on the door a woman barged in acting frantically. Gilligan tried to calm her down so he could make some sense of the situation she just keeps exclaiming “they are gone, they are gone” 

Gilligan asked “who is gone you have to calm down and explain”

“my boys are gone” 

“When was the last time you seen them” Gilligan was growing impatient 

“They went into the swamp 4 days ago and never came back”

Of course there must have been a reason for the boys to go into the swamp. The woman explained that they went into the swamp to look for a treasure that is legend to be in the swamp. They said that if they went into the swamp on a canoe, and went into the swamp there would be a map in a bottle appear for the treasure. I thought it was just a storytale and told them to have fun i never knew they wouldn't come back. 

Gilligan told Wayne that he knew what to do. Ignoring the lady standing in his front door, him and Wayne left for the swamp 2 hours away in the lower part of Iowa. Upon arriving in the town something felt off. There was only a few cars on the street and all the shops seemed to be closed, which was very odd for a Tuesday afternoon.This lead Gilligan to already become suspicious. They went down to the local police station, and asked what they had uncovered about the missing boys. They said that they had deemed it as an accidental death and were not going to pursue the matter any further. 

Gilligan was quick to say “it has only been a little over four days and you have already closed the case”

The local police chief said  why yes we work very fast around here and don't take kindly to strangers poking around in our police business."

No mean to act like a noisy nancy Gilligan replied "well be off now".

Wayne stopped him by the car and expressed that he thought there was something was off about the whole thing. There was something that the sheriff was hiding from us. 

Gilligan said "oh Wayne he was just doing his job he isn't supposed to release that information about the boys they are under eighteen and besides he doesn't know who we are or that we are doing our own little investigation on this incident. Let's go to the swamp and see what we can find out about the boys disappearance."

Later on in the day the two put on their waders and went into the swamp where the boys had disappeared. The local police had trampled around the whole swamp. There were footprints everywhere. Wayne was astounded on how many people had been out to the the swamp. Why the whole town, and then some had to have been out there. How the local police could have allowed that many people out there to what they call a crime scene. It does not follow any protocol of any department ever and one other thing had made him curious as to why they had ruled it an accidental death all of a sudden. So they had decided to go back to the town and ask the townspeople. They received the almost exact answer. That it was a horrible thing that had happened and to give their condolences to the family and rushed off.

The two began to think that the whole town might know something that they don't, so an investigation to find the missing boys may have just turned into an investigation on the whole town. 

Gilligan began by telling Wayne that “there is no time to play cat and mouse with the whole town and if the boys were still out there they don't have much time left”. 

  So the two men headed to the mother's house. As they arrived Gilligan began to ask if they could see a pair on the boys shoes. She bought them the shoes, and Wayne began to analyze them as Gilligan talked to the mother. She said “ they must still be alive they must be”. 

Gilligan said “they are alive and well a little hungry but well”.

She was astounded as to how he had come up with this conclusion and if he was just trying to get her hopes up he was just a nasty man. 

“You call yourself a detective you're just a phony a man with nothing else to do but snoop in other people's business”

She snatched the shoes from Wayne and asked them both to leave, so they left they and decided that Wayne got a good enough look at the shoes to possibly find the tracks of the boys. They decided not to even bother looking by the road where everyone had been, so they walked the house just as the boys did they followed a little beaten path that looked like there had been a good deal of walking on it.  Gilligan led the way as the path meet the edge of the swamp. There were only four different sets of footprints they had observed on the path. Three were from sneakers and there was one set that looked like old military issued boots. They followed the path, they just seemed to disappear in a clearing is seems as if they had just been lifted by a helicopter and flown away. The two looked at each other and decided it was best to go back and see what the aerial footage looked like of the area. When they turned around and started walking, Wayne tripped on a rock and he laid on the ground for some time. Gilligan was growing impatient. Wayne said, "look here Gilligan do you hear it?" They both put there ears to the ground to listen, and they heard a low constant sound that sounded like a generator running under the ground. Gilligan poked at the ground with a nearby stick it pushed into the ground easy for a few feet then all of a sudden stopped.

They poked around in a few other places and it was the same result over and over. For what seemed like the whole clearing they went back to the house and decided to grab some shovels to see what was under the clearing. They sneaked some shovels from the boys mother and headed back out to the clearing to unearth what was under the dirt. They began to dig. The dirt near the swamp was wet and sticky. They grew tired very quickly. When they got about four feet down, Gilligan's shovel made a thud like it was hit sompting hard. They dug around more and found that it must have been a bunker from back in the war, and the previous owners must have been paranoid after the attack on Pearl Harbor and built a bunker. They searched and searched to see if they could find an entrance to the bunker, but they had no luck and it was growing dark and being so close to the swamp at night was a very dangerous place to be. So they decided to go back to town and resume the search in the morning. On the ride back to the town, Gilligan did not say a word, which meant he was thinking about something very hard. They sat for awhile and just when they were getting into the town, Gilligan turned and said to Wayne, "I know where they are, go back". Wayne was astounded by the remark by Gilligan, and asked how he could know such a thing. Gilligan responded "we don't have time for an explanation, just drive". So he turned around and they made it back in no time at all. When they approached the spot where they had dug the dirt was all back in the ole, and grass covering it like they had never dug there before. Gilligan walked up to the place where the footprints had ende,d and had wayne go over to a nearby tree gilligan said to wayne “ when i tell you to push the tree to your right”

Trusting Gilligan, Wayne did as he said and directly in front of Gilligan a door sprung open from the ground leading into the bunker. Gilligan quickly motions for him to come over and they proceed to go down the stairs. As soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs, lights flickered on and revealed the three boys in the corner of the room. All in individual cells and a man's body lying on the floor the boys quickly jumped up and exclaimed they were saved. The two ran over unlocked the boys and took them up and once they were up they asked who was laying on the floor down there. They said it was the man that put them in there. They said he heard someone digging earlier and as soon as they left he went up and covered the hole. That was enough for Gilligan and Wayne to ask them for tonight. They went back to their mother's house and she was astounded that they had been found. The boys ran to there mother and she was so happy to see them. Gilligan and Wayne left and went to the sheriff's office in the county over who had heard about all the commotion going on in the next town over where the boys lived. Gilligan told that Sherrif that the boys had been found and returned back home and that the Sherrif of the town was responsible. He explained that the boys had walked in on him running an illegal drug deal selling confiscated drugs back on the street and he couldn't let them spread the word of what he was doing, so he grabbed the boys and had his father look after them. He had died of exhaustion in the summer heat. When the old man had filed in the hole he had dug he had a heart attack. The local sheriff of the county nearby called the FBI to have them arrest the Sheriff that was dealing confiscated drugs and charged with a list of crimes he had committed. They then went back to the boys home, and the mother thanked them so much now that the sheriff was arrested she could say thank you because the sheriff had told her that they were just trying to get her hopes up. She asked how she could repay Gilligan and Wayne and they said it was reward enough just to see the boys home safe. Gilligan and Wayne drove back to there homes to get a good night's rest.