Ark Found

Chapter 17

The ground surrounding Carter and Jayden was strewn with boulders that were interspersed with short green grass. After riding in a Suburban most of the entire morning, they had been dropped off here for the trek on foot up the volcano. Had they not been part of the tour, Carter reasoned, they would have had to rent a vehicle, leaving a paper trail, and then leave it out in the open. He wondered how Daedalus had managed it, if in fact he was up on the mountain somewhere. It bothered Carter that “Ararat” could also mean Little Ararat, or even another part of Turkey, possibly even Armenia or Iran, since the modern day political lines were different from five thousand years ago.

“Steve. I said Steve,” Jayden repeated, nudging Carter with a light body slam.

Carter was wrested from his thoughts and said, “Sorry, Brad, my mind got lost in that spectacular view.” He turned away from the volcanic peak and faced Jayden. They had decided to use bogus names when interacting with the group, including the tour outfitters, which they had paid in cash. Carter was certain Daedalus knew their real names.

The group itself was both boisterous and varied, a crazy assortment of people from all walks of life, totaling fifteen altogether including the three guides. There were Armenians, Turks, Americans, Europeans, and Japanese. The oldest was a man of 68, and the youngest a girl of 11. One couple even brought their dog along. Almost everyone had more than one camera, usually a Canon or Nikon DSLR, and then maybe a GoPro or cell-phone camera, even though there would be no cellular service after the first day of trekking up into the mountain. On the drive over, the guides had gone over the routines to expect, and now the group was ready to begin its ascent. For those heading to the summit, at an altitude of over 16,000 feet, it would be a six-day adventure all told. Carter and Jayden, who had made it clear with the guides that they would be going their separate ways when they reached the lowest elevation ark site, were warned by the guides not to attempt going too high on the mountain without acclimating for at least a day at designated lower altitudes, as the rest of the group would be.

They began hiking, with the guides passing out ski-poles to use as walking sticks. Both Carter and Jayden declined the poles, wanting to keep hands free and knowing they could make the climb unaided. Even all the way to the summit, the climb was not a technical one that required ropes or specialized gear. One could simply walk all the way up, if they were able-bodied and took it slow enough, allowing time to acclimatize. Carter had climbed California’s Mt. Whitney as a teenager, an elevation of 14,500 feet, and Jayden had ascended McKinley in Alaska, an elevation of 20,000, so neither were unaccustomed to the effects of altitude on exertion. Time passed quickly as they traipsed through the new scenery, the brisk mountain air invigorating to their lungs. In the distance were herds of cattle or perhaps oxen, and apart from their own group, they saw no other people.

They marched up a dirt track etched out of the side of the mountain, which still had the same boulders and grass, except now the ground was steeper and the boulders were covered with moss and lichens. The first day of hiking passed quickly with casual conversation, although most of the groups who had come together, especially the couples, stayed together. One guide took point, as Carter and Jayden thought of it, while another brought up the rear and a third roved around the middle, having brief conversation with each group to make sure everyone was happy. Any doubts that the trekking guides had done this same journey many, many times before were quickly dispelled when Carter saw how efficiently they set up camp. The first drifts of snow were on the ground, and the incline just a bit steeper when they reached the site where they would spend the first night on the mountain, at an altitude of 3,200 meters. A large mess tent was erected for the kitchen, complete with a wooden sign reading, MT. ARARAT CAFÉ. Each group set up their individual sleeping tents, including Carter and Jayden.

“Glad we sprung for the four-man,” Jayden said, pounding in a tent stake with a rock. “Don’t get me wrong — I like you, man — but not in a two-man tent kind of way, you get what I’m saying?”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Carter said, hammering in a stake on the opposite side. Dinner consisted of Harissa, a filling chicken porridge, prepared quickly with camp stoves as well as a small open cook fire inside a circle of stones. After dinner, there was even Armenian cognac to go around, and then the group stayed up long enough to watch the moon rise, its pale light glinting off the snow. They retired to their tents, exhausted after a busy day of travel and hiking. The guides pointed out that tomorrow would be a long, full day of hiking, and that they should get as much rest and sleep as possible.

Carter and Jayden had no problem with this, and retired to their tent, zipping up the flap for not only protection against insects and wind, but also added privacy for conversation. Jayden lay on his side of the tent in his sleeping bag, staring up without saying much.

“You think we’re on a fool’s errand up here?” Carter put out into the open.

“Could be. Seems too easy. Waltz up here and find Daedalus at a well-known Noah’s Ark site? It could happen, though, who knows?”

“I’m more concerned about the map,” Carter said. They could hear soft laughter coming from one of the other tents nearby, murmured prayers of the Armenian couple, still outside, for whom this trek was a pilgrimage to a holy site as part of their faith, and a light wind rustling the tent fabric. “I’d really like to recover it, since it’s an artifact itself, and our client retained us to deliver it to her.”

“I wonder if we would have had better luck figuring out where Daedalus was staying in Doğubayazıt, and just sneaking into his place and taking the map while he’s up here! Because you know he wouldn’t actually bring along the original. What’s the point of that? He’d just use a copy or the photos.”

“Finding out where he’s staying might not be so easy though, and breaking and entering is not a crime you want to be convicted of in Turkey.”

“Ture,” Jayden considered, turning over onto his side. “I rather like my head where it is — on my neck.”

“Yeah, same here. Even letting the government get wind that we’re looking for you know what is not in our best interest. Remember, we have no permits because everything happened so fast.”

“We don’t need no stinking permits!”

The next morning saw them in the breakfast tent and nursing steaming mugs of Turkish tea around the cook fire before first light. By the time camp was broken down and packed up and they had hit the trail again, the first pink hues of daylight streaked across the sky. The team dog was out front, rooting around here and there, and hikers wondered aloud if it would get too tired to make it the full day since it was running three times the linear distance. Its owners assured them that it would not, and a comfortable enough silence fell over the group as they trekked up increasingly steeper ground through the early morning. A Pair of oxen blocked the path at one point, but the dog came in handy, barking wildly until the hefty beasts lumbered off the path and downhill.

As they trekked, Carter and Jayden kept their gazes peeled, especially up mountain, for signs of other climbing parties, but so far had seen none. Despite the chilly air and patches of snow on the ground, the exercise created enough warmth that Carter unzipped his parka. He sipped water through the hydration bladder tube coming through his pack and clipped to his shoulder strap, and he wondered why so many in the group used water bottles, meaning they had to stop, set down their packs, pull out the bottle, drink, and put it away again and re-don the pack. Still, Carter reminded himself, these were not paramilitary operators, or even ex-military, they were outdoor recreational enthusiasts, and so he told himself not to let his and Jayden’s efficiency mark them for something other than what they represented themselves as. We’re just regular Americans on vacation, climbing a mountain for the thrill of it, that’s all….

Even so, by the time they broke for lunch, Carter had to admit that he was feeling the workout. He asked himself if his time away from the service, almost a year now, had made him softer. The dog slurped up water from its bowl while the Turkish couple faced the peak of Ararat and knelt on a prayer rug. The others took photos and videos, or made brief satellite-phone calls to friends and loved ones back home. Glancing around at the vistas below, Carter was taken aback by how vast the region was. All of it qualified as “Ararat,” and so the ark could have come to rest anywhere up here, according to the Bible. It only had to be high enough elevation to make sense with the great flood waters subsiding and the ark coming to rest on what would likely be part of a mountain. He considered that the ground would be damp from the flood, and that possibly it would have sunk into a bed of mud, possibly submerged all the way beneath it. By now the wood would likely be petrified. Carter wished they could have brought a drone to obtain aerial views, but none were for sale in Doğubayazıt, and being on the run had not afforded them time to plan ahead. He reminded himself to try calling Maddy again, at camp tonight.

The group eased back onto the trail and continued up the volcano. Much of the time there was silence and Carter and Jayden dared not have conversation that involved their agenda, but when others in the group did strike up a conversation, or when the dog barked and everyone told it to be quiet, they would seize the opportunity to discuss what might lay ahead for them. “Do you think Daedalus will be armed?” Jayden asked.

“Don’t know,” Carter replied in a low voice, “but we have to assume that he could be. A man like Daedalus — with both means and a lack of moral scruples — would be able to get almost anything he wanted. It just depends how important he thought being armed was compared to the hassles it would involve, if any.”

Other than the knives, multitools and hatchets they carried that would not look out of place with camping or outdoors gear, Carter and Jayden were unarmed.

“Hopefully we can do a stealth infiltration of his camp,” Jayden said. Carter agreed, and then they trudged on in silence. The air became chillier as the elevation increased, and the parkas were zipped back up. After a while, Carter and Jayden found themselves having to deliberately hold back their pace in order to stay with the group, and they were glad to think that tomorrow they would strike out on their own. At base camp they had joked with the guides about the possibility of getting lost, saying that if all else failed, down was the way back, right? But they knew it wasn’t that simple. Besides Turkey, Mt. Ararat shared borders with Iran, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Traipsing down without knowledge of where they were going meant that they could end up in an unforgiving nation with no travel visa. A very serious matter were they to be detained, the trekking operation had warned them.

When the sun was visibly lower in the sky, the guides announced they had reached their campsite for the night, a craggy, snow-strewn plateau with a steep drop-off on one side, and a long, gradual slope on the other, while the summit of Mt. Ararat lorded over them above a steep incline. While they set up camp, Carter took out a pair of binoculars (he told he group he was an avid bird watcher) and scanned the territory below the steep drop-off, looking for any signs of backpackers. But he saw none; he scanned the other directions as well, but they were just as free of human presence.

After dinner, the lead guide took Carter and Jayden aside and asked them if they were ready to go off on their own in the morning. “The ark site is down there,” he said, pointing down the steep incline, “and then that way for probably ten kilometers uphill,” he finished, pointing out of sight.

Carter and Jayden nodded enthusiastically, playing the part of gung-ho adventure travelers. “Game on!” Jayden gushed.

“We’ll miss you guys,” Carter said. “You’re a great group, but we’d rather see the ark than the summit, and unfortunately we don’t have time for both.”

“I understand,” the guide said. “I just wanted to confirm that you are leaving us in the morning — I assume you will dine with us for breakfast?”

Carter nodded. “That’s right, then we’ll pack up with you, but when you guys head up there…” He looked up at the snowy summit. “…we’ll be going down there.” He looked down the steep incline.

“Do you think we’ll meet any other climbers at the ark site?” Jayden asked the guide. He was fishing for information on whether the guide knew of other climbing parties there, and of course whether they might be Treasure, Inc., but he thought it was a reasonable enough question to ask without raising suspicion.

“Probably not,” the guide answered. “There’s not much to see, really, just the vague outline of something that might be a ship. Every now and then people come digging for timbers, but most people who come up here just want to go to the summit.”

“Well, we better enjoy the company of other humans while we can!” Jayden said to Carter, before adding to the guide, “Hopefully we won’t get too sick of each other!”

The guide laughed. “Yes, well that’s another reason why group travel is recommended. Good company!”

That night in the tent, Carter used his satellite-phone to check his messages. “Got something from Maddy!” He told Jayden. He listened to the message, disconnected, and then recapped it for Jayden. “She says she’s still on a dig in Kyrgyzstan. Wants to meet up when we’re done if possible.”

“I’m sure she does,” Jayden said with a suggestive lilt to his voice. Carter pressed the button on his phone to call Maddy. “I’m going to tell her where we are — just approximately, not exactly- and what we know so far about the map and our search, to see if she has anything that might help us.” But the call went straight to voice-mail. Carter left her a message.

Outside it was dead quiet, with none of the group having the energy to stay up after the day’s uphill trek, knowing they faced another day of it tomorrow.