Ark Found, page 24
part #2 of Omega Files Adventures Series
“Kick it in the sides.”
“Why do I have to kick it? You want it to be mad at me?”
“Just do it, you’re over the part where they kick it.”
Jayden dug both booted heels into the animal’s ribs at once and braced himself for a lurch. No reaction. He tried again. “He doesn’t seem to care.”
“Harder!”
“I don’t want to break his ribs!”
“You won’t. C’mon, before somebody wakes up.”
“Okay, gonna kick him hard. Here goes…” Jayden slammed both heels into the camel’s sides, and this time it brayed loudly, an ugly sound, sort of a cross between a cow and a horse. But it didn’t get up.
Carter jumped off the camel. “Stay put. Let me try something else.” He’d seen camel drivers walk behind the dromedary before and swat them, so he tried that, wary of being kicked.
He looked around for a switch and found one hanging from the saddle assembly. He grabbed it and used it to swat the camel’s hindquarters hard, with a clicking sound from his tongue. That did it, and the camel lurched to its feet.
“Carter we never untied it!” The animals were tied to a packing crate of some sort that had been set in the sand. Carter found the end of the rope lead and untethered it. He pulled the camel by the lead to the crate, which he was able to stand on to raise his height enough to be able to jump onto its neck.
Suddenly they heard a shout followed by pounding footsteps. “They see us, let’s go!” Jayden kicked the camel again while Carter made the clicking sound as he yanked on the lead. The dromedary finally started to move forward. Not at a trot, though, but at least it was walking.
“Carter, we can run faster than this, maybe we should just—”
“No, this will be faster over the long haul. Here, you shoot if you have to, I’ll steer.” Carter handed him the pistol, but right at that moment the camel decided to break into a trot, and the resulting jolts caused Jayden to drop the gun. He flailed for it but saw it cartwheel across the desert floor until it was lost in their quadruped’s wake.
“Sorry, I lost the gun.”
“What!” Carter called back as he tried to read the compass in his headlamp’s red glow while bouncing up and down.
“Should I take us back for it?”
But that question was answered for them by the sound of a gunshot from the nomad camp. Carter saw a patch of sand kick up about twenty feet off to their left. “No! Keep going, we only had six rounds left for it, anyway.”
Carter switched off his headlamp so as not to provide a shining beacon in the night to target shoot at. Then he began zig-zagging the camel, jerking the reins right and then right again before going back left, in an attempt to make for a more difficult moving target.
Another shot was fired but he didn’t see—or feel, luckily—where it ended up. He kept up the zig-zagging, with the camel cooperating and keeping up a good trot. It was not as fast as a horse, but Carter thought the ride was somehow smoother, which was a good thing, because now he needed to pass the compass back to Jayden, and that was something they could afford to lose even less than the gun.
“Jayden, put your hand out in front of you and I’m going to hand you the compass.”
“What?”
Carter repeated himself, yelling loudly since they were now out of hearing range of the campsite.
“Okay.” Jayden stuck his hand out by Carter’s right side, palm outstretched.
“Hurry up, I need two hands to hold onto this ship of the desert!”
Carter pressed the compass into Jayden’s palm and held it there until he felt his fingers curl around it. “Got it?”
“Got it.” Jayden withdrew his hand and held onto the saddle to steady himself.
They heard another gunshot and this time Carter turned around to look. What he saw shook him to his core. Another camel and rider silhouetted in the darkness behind them, but not all that far. He had no doubt that the nomads were expert riders and would catch up to them in short order. Deciding that all the zig-zagging was making it easier for the wanderers to catch up to them, Carter clicked his tongue at the camel and kicked it once with his feet to spur it on. It did, galloping a little faster across the cracked dirt.
“We going the right way?” Carter called back. He gave him a heading.
“I need the light to read the compass.”
“Here.” Carter swiped the headlamp from his forehead and held his hand behind him until he felt Jayden take the lamp from it. Another gun blast punctuated the desert night. Jayden slipped the headlamp over his forehead and aimed the beam at the compass held flat in his hand. It took a while to get a confident reading while bouncing around on the dromedary, but after a bit he tapped Carter’s shoulder and pointed at about a forty-five degree angle off to their right.
Carter immediately corrected their steed’s course, pulling the reins to the right and letting go once its head was pointed in the indicated direction. They rode on at full gallop, and after a while it dawned on Carter that no more shots had been fired. He glanced behind them and saw the solitary camel rider, but farther back now. Maybe they had given up, Carter thought, or run out of ammo.
They had made reasonably good progress during the camel chase, too, Carter thought, now able to see real detail of Mount Ararat once again. Turkey lay ahead; they were getting there. Still, he knew the nomads were a crafty people and that they might be trying to lull them into a sense of complacency, so he deliberately kept the pack animal running along at full trot for longer than he wanted to. He didn’t know how long camels could keep up this pace, if they would keep running until they had a heart attack, or would just stop and lay down when they had had enough, but he hoped the latter.
“Definitely faster than walking,” Carter told Jayden.
“Yeah, easier on the feet, too. Our feet, at least. Sorry buddy.” He patted the camel’s back.
“I don’t think it’s very hard for them. Let’s take another heading.”
Jayden read the compass again and this time Carter made only a slight adjustment to their course. “Won’t be too long now,” Carter estimated. Still, he dared not ease back on the camel’s speed. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
They rode on under the dark night sky, lit only by a thick blanket of stars, constellations so vivid it seemed to Carter like he could reach out and pluck them out of the heavens like jewels. He thought of the phone conversation with Maddy. Not Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant…As he stared at the cracked desert floor sliding by beneath the camel’s feet, he let it morph in his mind into an image of the old map, of the three invisible ink lines he had found there…
He was still thinking about it when something began to invade his thought process, something piercing, not in a loud way—the dromedary’s hoofs were still brashest sound in the vicinity—but piercing in a different way. Illumination…He was on the verge of making a connection with the map, of what it all meant, when his mind registered light—artificial light. He had just ripped himself from his silent analysis of the map’s possible meanings when Jayden’s voice finalized the intrusion and made it very real.
“Big trouble, Carter. Those are headlights behind us.”
Chapter 29
At the mention of headlights, Carter whirled around on the camel and looked behind him. Sure enough, twin artificial lights that cast a bluish wide beam, most likely newer style xenon bulbs. The naval historian’s blood ran very, very cold.
“Not good, Jayden. It means Maddy was probably right, and that tribe contacted someone about us, either the Iranian government or some insurgent group.”
“Those desert hermits were going to sell us into slavery?”
“For political pawns, probably, but listen,” Carter said, kicking the camel hard now and urging it on with clicking sounds, “our only chance is to make it into the wooded area at the foothills of Ararat, there.”
“Pretty sure that’s Turkey.”
“Yeah. But who knows, they might not be scared of driving a few feet into Turkey, I don’t know. Or shooting at us while they stay on their side of the border.”
“I get it. We need to get into the cover of those trees.”
“Right, and from there work our way deeper into Turkey.”
Jayden spurred the camel with his boots, but the animal was already giving its all, running at top speed, which seemed woefully lacking as the vehicle raced along the hard-packed dirt behind them. Carter couldn’t make out any details about it because the lights in the front were too blinding. But the way he saw it, they were only about a hundred yards from the Turkish border now, with the plant life cover perhaps another hundred beyond that. He only hoped it wasn’t a “technical,” a type of vehicle he and Jayden had become acquainted with during their deployments in Iraq and other middle eastern Gulf states. Basically consisting of a modern pickup truck with a mounted machine gun such as a 50-cal in the bed, they were typically used by insurgent groups where one man would drive, another man the machine gun and another would ride shotgun to shoot an AK-47 or similar out the passenger side, or perhaps even lob grenades.
In this case, the motive would likely be to take them alive to use as hostages for money from relatives or companies they work for, perhaps, or else political pawns, so Carter hoped they wouldn’t be mowed down right away. Still, when they saw their meal tickets disappearing into Turkey, they might try to cut them down in a hail of lead even if they didn’t get to see the results, a sort of “if we can’t have you nobody can” attitude.
As the vehicle neared—the ground in front of the camel was now lit by the xenons—Carter debated using the zig-zag technique again to make them a more difficult shooting target, but decided that it wouldn’t make any difference for a gunner using a truck as a platform, if that’s what it was.
“Crossing into Turkey!” Jayden yelled, but his words were drowned out by the most unnatural clatter of automatic weapons fire. Dirt and sand flew up a little behind them and to their right. Carter and Jayden spurred the dromedary, which brayed as it ran a little bit faster into the neighboring country. To Carter, the open spread of brown dirt between them and the vegetation-shrouded foothills of Mt. Ararat seemed like ten miles wide, but it was only about a football field. He wished they had the gun now, for even a small amount of return fire would give their aggressors pause, but he had learned long ago not to dwell on that which could not be changed.
He braced himself for another heavy salvo from what had to be some kind of automatic weapon, even if not a mounted one, when suddenly the engine changed in pitch and they heard angry men’s voices shouting in their direction.
“Some Welcome Committee,” Jayden said as he white-knuckled the camel’s saddle horn while the animal jostled along at what had to be its maximum speed.
“We weren’t exactly invited.” Carter jerked the camel’s reins to the left to avoid a small ditch in their path that had been illuminated by the vehicle’s lights. The vehicle—Jayden was saying it was a truck, now—stopped at what Carter figured must be the Iran-Turkey border.
“They won’t cross it!” Jayden shouted jubilantly.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t shoot over it!”
“Watch that rock!”
Carter put his eyes forward in barely enough time to steer the dromedary around the geological obstacle. They cleared the small boulder and kept on going, deeper into the geopolitical safe zone that was Turkey, just as a volley of lead sparked off of the rock behind them.
“Go go go!” Jayden shouted, hunched forward as far as he could in the saddle to flatten himself out and represent a lower profile target. More shouting, and now the flicking on and off of high beam headlights for a strobe effect combined with more shooting—this time from single-shot weapons-- assailed their senses. The lack of auto-weapons fire concerned Carter. On the one hand it meant they were deemed to be out of range for burst fire weapons, but on the other, if they had rifles and knew how to use them, then they were still very much in range. As if to underscore this fact, Carter watched as a section of tree bark disintegrated ten feet in front of them.
It meant they had reached the wooded area at the foothills of Mt. Ararat, though, and at that Jayden was already rejoicing. “Tress! I see trees! Never so happy to see trees in my life. Just a little farther, come on, Camel, you can do it!”
Another shot rang out, echoing off the mountain. A miss. And then they reached a bushy area through which Carter tried to drive their mount but to no avail. The dromedary reared up on its hind legs, bucking Jayden off onto the ground just as a bullet slammed into the leather saddle. Carter meanwhile slid down the animal’s neck to just in front of the saddle, which stopped him from sliding all the way off. The sound of the shot spurred him into action, and he took matters into his own hands by throwing himself off of their four-legged ride.
He and Jayden ducked into the foliage and got low to the ground. Carter reached out and hit the camel on its rear quarters, yelling “Yah!” to send it running back into Iran, acting as a temporary decoy until their attackers realized it was rider-less. It galloped away at a normal trot. Carter hoped it would find its tribe again, but he wasn’t about to linger long enough to find out its fate.
With Jayden now leading the way, the two mountain trekkers slipped into the foliage and began making their way around the base of Mt. Ararat, deeper into Turkey.
#
Doğubayazıt, Turkey, ten hours later
“Flight’s booked,” Carter told Jayden, pocketing his smartphone. With tickets purchased in cash, they rode in a public bus that made long distance runs across the country, in this case from Doğubayazıt to Ankara, where they were to board a flight direct to Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia.
“We have to deplane at Addis Ababa International to board a smaller connecting flight to Axum, and they said there may be a short layover, maybe half a day in Addis Ababa, unless we decide to book a charter, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Jayden let his head loll back on the seat. “Cross that bridge when we get to it…That worked out so well for us in Turkey—I mean, Iran.”
Carter shrugged, undeterred. “Hey, it could have been a whole lot worse.”
“I just hope our trusty camel steed found its way back home.”
“Me too. It was going the right way last we saw, at least. So—” But when he looked over at him, Jayden was asleep. He couldn’t blame him. The day had been another long one, especially coming on the heels of the one before that. They had walked from the foothills of Mount Ararat back to the trekker staging area, and from there hitched a ride back into Doğubayazıt with a returning guide group. During this ride they used the same false names they had given their own trekking company with whom they had promised to report back after returning to town to let them know they had returned safely. This tour operator knew the one they had booked with, and promptly called them to let them know their clients were safely on the way back to town. After tipping that driver, they had returned to their hostel and checked out, paying in cash before going directly to the bus depot.
With Jayden asleep, Carter decided to do some research on the town of Axum and where they would focus their hunt for the ark once they got there. He had used the Internet connection at the hostel’s café to download numerous articles from the web about the area, and soon, as the old bus wheels rumbled across a vast ag-scape of farmland, pastures and scenic snow-capped mountains in the far-off distance, his mind was occupied and racing to make connections related to the old map that was still tucked safely away in the hidden compartment of his backpack.
#
Ankara, Turkey
Grand Ankara Hotel & Convention Center
“Maid service, sir. Would you like—”
Daedalus yelled at the door without opening it. “I do not wish to be disturbed! I will call if I need anything.” After the muffled apology that issued from the other side of the door, Daedalus walked back from the entranceway onto the plush carpeting of his main suite, which afforded a beautiful scenic view of majestic mountains in the distance. He jabbed at the remote control button that slid the curtains across the window and stewed in the ensuing dimness.
Glaring at his watch, he saw that it was almost an hour past the time when he should have heard from his brother, that incompetent, overpaid oaf who was still in the field. Meanwhile, his archaeological expert—also vastly overpaid in Daedalus’ opinion-- had not yet weighed in with any insights regarding the ultra-high resolution, professional grade scans of the map image he had sent him, going to great lengths to do so over an encrypted, highly secure network. He snatched up his specially encrypted smartphone and dialed the number to the satellite-phone his brother was supposed to be monitoring.
It was answered on the fifth ring. “Phillipo, is that you?”
“Yes, Daedalus. How are you?”
Daedalus let loose a sigh of pure exasperation. “You tell me how I am! Do you have the map yet?”
“No.”
The black market treasure kingpin closed his eyes in an attempt to remain somewhat calm. “Have you tracked down those two thieves?”
“My dear brother, I am sorry to report that we have failed in that task.”
Daedalus’ face went beet red. He lost control and shouted at full volume into the phone, which was on speaker mode, while the veins in his neck bulged. “Then what good are you? Why do I employ you? Tell me!”
A few seconds of silence passed during which Daedalus could hear the sounds of birds squawking, like the audio track to a serene nature setting. Then Phillipo’s voice came back on.
“I do have some information on their whereabouts.”
“Tell me.”
“I inquired with the local trekker’s network and learned that the two hikers who had separated from the Ararat Trekking group that left from Dogu were picked up by another trekking company’s van yesterday, and transported to back to Dogu.”
