Ark Found

Chapter 22

The first thing that met Carter’s gaze was the shimmering, blue surface of the lake. They had slid, tumbled and SCUBA-dived all the way down to the body of water through the snow. Jayden’s head of black hair popped up next to Carter as he looked around for signs of Daedalus and his divers. He saw none of them down here by the lake, and looking up at the slope where the rope and pulley rig was set up, he found he could not see anyone there, either. They were all up at the camp site, he supposed.

After scanning their surroundings himself, Jayden shot Carter a wide-eyed stare. “I guess we’re certified snow divers now! Remind me to let the Professional Association of Diving Instructors know that I earned my specialty badge.” He was grinning from ear to ear.

Carter could only shake his head in wonderment. He slowly flexed all of his limbs and joints, feeling for anything that might be broken. Although he was certain he’d be black and blue all over tomorrow, it seemed like he was still able to move unhindered, though not without pain in most joints. Jayden went through the same process, and with the same results. Now that they were no longer moving, both shivered from their time immersed in the snow. Carter looked for a good spot to move to, and spotted a stand of brush closer to the water’s edge, not too far away. He got no arguments from Jayden about leaving their place of powdery concealment.

After a last glance up top to make sure they were unobserved, the two treasure seekers emerged from the snowbank. They ran across the rocky, snow-spotted ground to the vegetation, and ensconced themselves inside it. They found this to be an ideal hiding spot since it was dry and offered concealment, but also allowed them to peek out at both the lake as well as up at the slope and pulley system.

“I can see the timber,” Carter pointed through the brush to a dark brown, almost black log about four feet long and at least a foot in diameter. Jayden nodded while eyeing the top of the slope.

“They’ve got the other one up there already so it won’t be long before they come back for this one. We should make our move.”

Carter felt for the dive knife he had strapped to the inside of his left calf in preparation for the snow dive, but was appalled to feel only smooth pant leg. When he looked down at it, he saw that the knife and sheath were gone, no doubt ripped away during the tumultuous ride down here. He supposed he shouldn’t complain since he still had his backpack on, although one of the straps had broken. He wished he would have put the knife inside the pack, but couldn’t have known how bad the trip down would be.

“My knife is gone, do you have one?”

“Uh-oh.” Jayden swatted at his back. “I just realized my entire pack is gone. I was so happy to be alive I didn’t even notice!” He and Carter peered out of the brambles to see if it was visible on the ground. That would not be good as it would give away their presence. But it was nowhere to be seen.

“Look on the bright side. You’ll be a lot lighter on your feet now,” Carter said.

“Yeah, but I had my best knife in there, my Benchmade folder.” Jayden reached a hand into his front jeans pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army Knife. “This is all I’ve got. Had it since my Boy Scout days, since my Grandfather gave it to me. But you know what they say. The best knife or tool is the one you actually have with you when you need it.”

Carter nodded. “True that. It’ll have to do. We don’t need a big chunk of it, anyway, just enough of a sample to be able to do lab work on it to date it and verify its composition.”

“Oh good, because I thought we were going to lug that whole log down off of Mt. Ararat like those guys are.”

Carter suppressed a laugh. “Those guys are planning to lug two of them off the mountain.”

“Coast looks clear up there,” Jayden said, eyeing the top of the slope. “Let’s do this.”

They parted the foliage and then bolted across the open space to the salvaged timber, careful not to turn an ankle among the uneven cobblestones and snow pockets. The timber was situated such that it lay only a few feet from the water’s edge, roughly parallel to shore. They walked around it and hunkered down so that its bulk mostly shielded them from view if anyone from up top were to glance down at it.

Jayden took out his Swiss Army Knife and went to work on removing a sample from the timber. He found the log to be remarkably solid for a piece of wood that had been waterlogged for who knows how long, probably about five thousand years, if it was in fact from the days of Noah’s Ark. It wasn’t waterlogged at all. It would take some doing for Jayden to whittle it apart, not a quick process with such a small tool, so while he worked on the timber sample, Carter turned to his pack, now the only stash of gear that the two of them had in this vast wilderness area while being confronted by a hostile group. Except for the broken strap, which meant that he would have to sling it over one shoulder like a college student for the rest of their trek, it appeared to be intact. It was soaking wet on the outside from the snow, but the material was heavy denier and he thought the inside would be mostly dry. The map was what he worried about the most, but it was in a plastic bag. Still, what if the bag had ruptured during all the jostling?

He glanced up at the slope while Jayden whittled away at the log, and then after finding it clear, he unzipped the pack and took out the map. Still in its sealed plastic bag and none the worse for wear. He put it back in the bag and then stowed it away in his pack. He briefly checked his other gear and found it all to have survived the ordeal and be still serviceable.

Feeling satisfied with his inventory management, Carter glanced back up to the rope and pulley system at the top of the slope and saw a man standing there.

“We got what we came for. Let’s get that other timber and prepare to move out,” Daedalus called out to his expedition team as he walked toward his pack. He was pleased with the dive, and his mind was still flooded with what he had seen at depth in the lake. Noah’s Ark. There can be no doubt! His team had collected two solid timbers that had been loose in a pile on the bottom inside the large wooden boat shape. He’d taken a lot of high definition video and now wanted to secure the invaluable footage by placing the memory card safely inside its case in his pack.

While the other two divers broke down their SCUBA equipment, the lookout man went to retrieve the SCUBA rig that had been on standby in case it was needed, but ended up going unused.

“You got it,” he called out to his boss, feeling satisfied that things were going well. He hoped to be promoted within the organization following this most important expedition. But when he reached the rope and pulley rig, he looked around but didn’t see the extra tank. He leaned over the edge of the slope and eyeballed the steep terrain on the way down to the lake to see if it had somehow fallen over the side, but didn’t see it. Again he searched the camp area briefly without success. The tank must have been knocked over the side when the first timber was hauled up on the pulley rig, he thought. Deciding they would probably find it when they went back down to haul up the second timber, he began to focus on that instead. Besides, he reasoned, it would be a bitch as it is transporting those two timbers all the way down the mountain. If they couldn’t find the SCUBA rig, it was just one less thing to carry. As long as it wasn’t found anytime soon by Turkish authorities — that was the only reason Daedalus would care about it. They didn’t want to give away the location of Noah’s Ark, after all, or be hounded after more than they already were for looting historical artifacts.

The lookout man turned to the pulley system and began readying it for the next timber haul. He re-rigged the harness for the timber and activated the pulley to send it back down to the lake shore. As he looked down the rope line to make sure it was operating smoothly, his vision registered an anomaly down on the lake shore — something that hadn’t been there before. Was that the missing SCUBA rig? He reached for a pair of binoculars in his jacket in order to investigate.

Meanwhile, Daedalus reached his backpack and opened it to put the camera memory card inside it. He noticed right away that something was off: the zipper pulls were in different positions than how he normally left them. He’d had the same pack for a while now and was very familiar with it. He always left the different zipper pulls for each compartment in the same position, which he found made it easier to keep track of which compartment they opened. So to see them set differently made him wonder if someone other than him had gotten into his pack. He quickly turned around to see if any of his team was observing him, but the other three men were going about their business of breaking down the dive gear and readying the harness for the remaining timber.

Opening his pack, he went immediately to where he’d stashed the map, in a semi-hidden zippered compartment inside the main compartment, so as to be both well-hidden and protected deep inside the pack. He felt the breath leave his body.

The map! Gone!

He had to get down on his knees or risk falling over. He told himself to make certain he hadn’t somehow misplaced it inside the pack — it had a lot of compartments, after all, and at first he had occasionally “lost” things inside it after not being able to remember which section of the pack he’d put them in. But no, this was different. He was absolutely positive he’d put that map right there. Nothing else inside the pack seemed to be out of place. Only the—wait a minute. His hands went to the concealed carry firearm compartment and immediately found it to be feel distressingly flat.

My pistol! Gone. Daedalus seethed, for this brazen theft meant one of two things. Either he had a very serious traitor in his own expedition, or the Omega Team was proving itself more effective than he would have given them credit for. He stood up from his ransacked pack and was about to approach the nearest of his expedition mates when the lookout man called his name, over by the rope and pulley rig on the edge of the slope.

“Almost got it.” Jayden was cutting away on the timber with his Swiss army knife. No sooner did he complete his sentence than a gunshot echoed into the lake basin and a bullet thudded into the log, sending a shower of splinters up into his face. He and Carter immediately lay prone behind the log, waiting to see if more gunfire was coming. Another shot rang out and a bullet thudded into the ground near Jayden’s feet.

“Do you have the sample?” Carter asked. “And not a piece with lead in it.”

“Almost.”

“I guess I don’t need to tell you to hurry up.” As if to underscore his point, another round embedded itself into the old timber, splintering more of it off.

Jayden reached his hand up holding the knife and stuck it into the section of wood he’d been working on. He pried at the lumber for a few seconds while they heard shouts from the men above.

“They’re mobilizing to come down here,” Carter said, an edge to his voice. “We’ve got to go.”

“Got it!” Jayden pulled his hand back down with a foot-long sliver of wood just as bullet smacked into the log where his hand had been. Carter had been mulling over their options while Jayden was cutting the sample free. Climbing back up through the snow was not an option — the tank air would probably run dry even if they could climb their way up, which he seriously doubted. Not only that, but now that they were getting shot at, going to the camp would be like entering the dragon’s lair. Obviously, they had learned that map and gun were missing.

Carter had removed Daedalus’ gun from his pack while waiting for Jayden. It was loaded with a full magazine. He eyed the escape route he had identified as giving them the most chance of success. The opposite shore of the lake from where they had come out of the snow featured a gentler incline up to the main mountain slope. It lay a decent distance away from the Treasure, Inc. camp, although he was sure that Daedalus would be breaking camp now that he had his timber samples (one of them, anyway), and that the map had been discovered missing. Carter was hoping that having discovered the ark, if that’s what this was, would make him care less about no longer having the map. But that didn’t seem to be the case, and he knew that even if he didn’t care about the map, Daedalus preferred that he and Jayden disappeared off the face of the Earth rather than having people walking around who knew where the Noah’s Ark find was.

This was life or death, Carter knew. And life was up that slope. It didn’t have much snow, but it had enough vegetation to offer some concealment for part of the way.

“That way.” Carter cocked his head toward the opposite slope. He didn’t want to point and risk telegraphing their plans to their adversaries, who could be observing them with binoculars. “You start running, I’ll provide cover.” He waggled the pistol. Jayden nodded and moved to a crouching position from which he could spring into a sprint like a track runner.

“Go!” Carter fired off a shot at a man visible beneath the pulley system. It was an accident, but he smiled in satisfaction nonetheless as he watched the structure fall over as his bullet severed the rope, a very lucky shot. Jayden was springing and bounding across the open shore of the lake, zigging and zagging to make an erratic course while still moving very fast. Carter blasted off two more rounds, aiming at the same general area even though he could no longer see any human targets. They had wisely moved behind cover, he decided, since he didn’t register any movement coming down the slope. Yet he knew they probably would mount an offensive soon when they saw their foes absconding with the map.

Carter maintained his post at the timber until he saw Jayden disappear into a copse of scrubby reeds at the lake’s edge, beyond which the basin sloped upward. Firing a last shot up at the downed pulley rig, he dashed across the open space as Jayden had done. He was nearly to the same vegetation Jayden had disappeared into when he saw the dirt kick up in front of him and felt something sharp slice his right cheek. He didn’t stop moving, and a few seconds later had made the plant cover where he dove to the ground and crawled forward, looking for Jayden.

“Over here!” he heard his friend snarl. Carter felt his cheek and his fingers came away warm and sticky. He figured he’d been hit with a fragmented piece of rock the bullet had struck when it hit the ground in front of him. Close call. It seemed like the longer he chased after the ark, the closer and more frequent those calls got. Was it really worth it? He knew he had done his job and then some. He could easily have reported back to the client what had happened on the Titanic site and walked away on good terms, with the job no doubt satisfactorily completed. But that would be taking the easy way out, and that’s not what Carter Hunt did. Noah’s Ark, if it was real, and certainly the map salvaged from the Titanic, belonged in the public eye for all to see, not under the auspices of some private collector like Daedalus to sell to the highest bidder, never to be seen again. No, that was simply unacceptable if he had anything to say about it.

Carter resolved to see this assignment through as he belly-crawled through the brush toward Jayden’s voice. He heard and felt another bullet smack into the ground somewhere off to his right, but it was pretty far away and it was clear that they were shooting blind into the vegetation. Still, blind or not, being shot at was not something to take lightly, and so Carter picked up his wormy pace, slithering along even faster.

“This way!” Jayden called out to him through the tall reeds just as Carter saw him, higher up and to the left. He low-crawled the rest of the way to him, careful not to bend the reeds too much and give away their position. Carter pushed his way through. A little bit farther on and the ground started to slope up so that it was no longer flat, but not as steep as the path they’d taken on the way down.

They reached the edge of the reeds where there was a small clearing, maybe twenty feet across to where the next stand of vegetation began. From their current position they could not see through the plants that concealed them to monitor what was happening at Daedalus’ camp.

“How you holding up?” Jayden asked Carter, noting the blood on his face and Daedalus’ gun still in his hand. “We’re going to have to move really quick across the open space here, but if we can get across that, we’ve got pretty solid vegetation cover most of the way up.”

“I’m ready. As soon as we think it’s clear.” Carter dared to stick his head out of the reeds and look to the right. “Can’t see around this bush.”

“You want to both go at once or one at a time?”

“I think both at once, because if we go one a time, they could see the first one with not enough time to shoot, but then have a heads up on where to aim by the time the next guy goes.”

“Okay, so I’ll go first!” Jayden grinned, his infectious humor an attempt at lightening the mood in what was otherwise a serious situation for them. Being pursued by killers, lightly wounded, with a bare minimum of gear between the two of them in a snow-covered mountain wilderness, sometimes called for a mood-lifter.

“Let’s both go at once, fast as we can, straight shot, no zig-zagging. Should take less than five seconds.”

“Yeah but remember, we don’t want to go smashing into the bushes on the other side, because if the tops of them move too much, they might see it.”

“Right. Ease in gently.”

“That’s what she s—”

“Jayden, seriously. Is there ever a time — never mind. Let’s do this.“ He and Jayden crept to the very edge of the reeds and then listened for any sign of their pursuers. A steady wind began to blow, making it more difficult to hear over the rustling reeds, but also making their own movements less noticeable. Hearing no human activity, Carter gave a countdown from three. On one, they raced across the small clearing to the scrubby vegetation on the other side, both of them reaching it at the same moment. Carter planted a foot down hard right before reaching the tall plants, turned himself sideways, and sort of fell into the plant growth on his side, landing on the ground in between woody stalks. Jayden performed a different set of maneuvers that were equally as effective, and in a minute the two of them were on their feet, able to stand at only a slight stoop while still being surrounded by plant life.

Jayden pointed up and to their left. “I eyeballed it just before we went in. That’s our course.”

Carter unslung the remaining strap off his pack and set it on the ground. “Hold on. I have something that’ll help.” He dug around in the pack for a few seconds. “Things got a little jostled around in here, but here it is…”

“A little?” Jayden said. “More like put to the shake test.”

Carter pulled out a simple plastic compass. He opted for plastic because of its light weight compared to metal, with the durability not all that far behind. “Let’s take an actual bearing. We can’t afford to head in the wrong direction. We need to get out of this engagement zone ASAP.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Jayden concurred. Carter took a compass heading and then pocketed the instrument. Then they set out in that direction, walking as fast as possible though the plants without bending them too much so as to draw attention. They kept up a steady pace but would stop periodically for a few seconds at a time to listen. On one of these stops, Carter could barely make out voices, too faint to tell what was going on or where they were coming from. Somehow, he doubted Daedalus would be just sitting around, though. Something told him they should keep moving, that they needed to get back to town in Turkey and leave the country as soon as possible.

But first they had to get off this holy mountain.