Ark Found

Chapter 25

“We’ll take a break while I check in on the sat-phone.” As expected, Phillipo received no arguments from his two expedition team members. After they had lugged the heavy timbers an appreciable distance to a spot where he thought they would be well hidden enough, they turned their attention to tracking the Omega Team pair. So far, however, they had turned up no trace of them. He had thought he had an edge over them since he had a walkie-talkie with which he could communicate with local trekking guides, and he hoped one of them might report a sighting. He had asked about a pair of hikers who had become separated from their group, hoping that putting out the word might bring in a report of a sighting. But nothing came in.

Visually, they had strategically set up concealed nests in key places offering good visibility for long distances, monitoring huge tracts of land with binoculars that most hikers used to get up and down from the mountain, and still nothing. His brother would not be pleased, he knew. And yet, it was past time to phone in a report. He lit up his sat-phone and dialed Daedalus, who answered on the first ring.

“Tell me.” His tone gave away nothing as to his mood.

“We moved the timbers closer and hid them in a safe spot. Then—”

“Of course. But do you have the map back?”

“We haven’t found them yet.”

“What?” Phillippo could hear his brother’s anger through the phone. “How is that possible? There aren’t that many routes up and down the mountain! There are three of you!”

“I know. And we have looked, believe me, we have stationed ourselves strategically, separating when necessary to cover more ground. I have been in communication with local guides, requesting to be notified if they are sighted, and we have used binoculars, all to no avail.”

“You must not be trying hard enough!”

Phillipo gritted his teeth and told himself to stand up to his brother for once in his life. “I can assure you, it is not that.”

“Well then what is it?”

“They must have taken an alternate route back down. Either that, or they went even higher up. But they don’t have supplies to last long up there, and they’re not acclimated for that, so I doubt that is a real option for them.”

“There are no other routes down!” Daedalus screamed.

“Well if they continued down the eastern flank….”

“Eastern flank! Don’t be ridiculous. If they did that they would end up in… Iran!”

“Where are we, anyway?” Jayden asked. “I don’t remember any of this.”

Carter stopped moving, shrugged off his pack and took out the binoculars. He held them to his eyes and focused on the flat expanse of brown sand he could see far below and out as far as their naked eyes could see. “It’s just a lot of desert.”

“Yeah, I’m getting thirsty just looking at it. I’m glad we left the snow behind, though.”

“I’m glad we left the guys with guns behind who would kill us for the old piece of paper in my pack. Staring out at the view isn’t going to get us down there, so we might as well keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

“I guess we need to get down anyway, wherever it is. Straight up and over this thing is no longer an option.” He glanced up at the snow-capped peak far in the distance.

“Got that right,” Carter said, sipping some water from a canteen. He shared it with Jayden and then pulled his pack back on.

The two set off down the mountain, the climate growing more arid as they descended. Despite a paranoid sense that they were being tracked, they detected no trace whatsoever of Daedalus or his cronies. “Maybe they gave up on us in order to get those logs down off the mountain and into town where they can start analyzing them,” Carter theorized aloud. “That can’t be an easy task.”

“Yeah, maybe they figured that we’re not worth it, for once. The only thing that makes me question it is that we have the original map from the Titanic. Somehow I doubt Daedalus would let that pass him by so easily.”

Carter shrugged and they wore on in silence, the crunch of their boots on the rock and dirt mountainside the only sounds as the morning wore on. He marveled at how peaceful it was, yet for a natural setting, how little wildlife they saw. Only a few birds, and on the way up, some goats, sheep and head of cattle. He supposed that there was life here if one knew where to look, but that without dense forests, it was more difficult to come across. By the time Carter handed the backpack off to Jayden for his turn to shoulder the gear, they were nearly to the bottom of the mountain, and working up a good sweat as the air became progressively warmer.

“Last chance to do a little survey,” Carter said, reaching for the binoculars.

“Yep, flat ground for miles once we get down there.” Jayden’s voice had an edge of concern to it. “Say Carter, can I take a look at that map you have on your phone?”

“Sure.” Carter handed him the phone before going back to his binoculars. He scanned the flat terrain again, noting the featureless sand, while Jayden brought up the digital map and adjusted it to show the Mt. Ararat region.

“Looks like in the distance a little sandstorm is kicking up,” Carter noted.

Jayden continued squinting at the phone screen. “Hey Carter, do you have the compass?”

“Yeah.” He opened one of the zipper pockets and took out the simple magnetic compass.

“I’d say we’ve come about ten miles since yesterday. Which way are we facing?”

“Southeast.”

Jayden’s only reply was a very deep breath that made Carter look over at him. “What’s up?”

“I really hope I’m wrong, but….” He hesitated while looking up from the phone map and out across the dusty landscape that stretched seemingly to infinity ahead.

“Out with it, Jayden. You hope you’re wrong, but what?”

“I think that’s Iran.”

A weighty silence settled over the duo as they considered the land before them. The implications were both many and deep. Carter let the binoculars hang by the strap around his neck while he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Are you sure? Maybe it’s Armenia? That’d be better.”

But Jayden was staring at the phone map again, this time while shaking his head. “No, it’s the northwesternmost tip of Iran, I’m sure of it. Look, here’s the peak of Mount Ararat, there’s Turkey and the town of Dogu, where we left from, and here’s how we must have picked our way around….”

“No wonder we haven’t seen those guys,” Carter said, referencing Daedalus and his disciples.

“Yeah, even they aren’t crazy or stupid enough to just waltz into Iran.”

Carter eyed his friend. “We’ve got to go back. We’ve got no visa to be here. You know what would happen.”

“Yeah I’m not looking forward to letting people know that my new address is some impossible-to-write name of an Iranian prison, either. But on the other hand, I’m not looking forward to receiving a bunch of lead slugs.”

Both Jayden and Carter had been to Iran before, on deployment with the US Navy. But serving the largest military force in the world and wandering into a hostile nation alone and unaffiliated with any official purpose, with no travel papers, permits or visas of any kind, were completely different stories.

“We’re Westerners, Jayden. Americans, even. We will stand out like sore thumbs if anyone sees us.”

But Jayden already seemed to have made up his mind as he pulled a bandana from his pocket and wrapped it around his face, sunglasses over that, hat pulled down tight. “We can’t go all the way back the long way, Carter. Never mind the threat from Treasure, Inc. We don’t have the supplies—food, water.” He checked the phone map again. “We just need to skirt the edge of Iran for fifteen miles or so, then we can duck back into Turkey and head back to Dogu.”

Carter brought the binoculars to his eyes again. “I don’t see anybody or anything, anywhere.”

“That’s good. Maybe we should get going before that changes.”

They each ate a Power Bar and drank some more water before setting out into Iran, Carter shouldering the pack, Jayden with the binoculars around his neck in case they needed to see what lay ahead. Walking northeast, they hiked down all the way off the mountain until the land was flat, at first with hard-packed dirt, but then they found themselves trudging through a layer of loose, brown sand; not as much as a classic Sahara type landscape, for they could feel hard dirt beneath the sand, but there was enough loose sand to be blown about by the formidable wind that persisted here.

Carter kept a close eye on the compass as they trekked, knowing that they could not afford to veer off course and wander deeper into the anti-Western nation. Not only that, but their water supply was perilously low to be travelling on foot in such a hostile environment. He mentally kicked himself as they walked along for getting them into such a dicey situation. The only consolation was the heft of his backpack, which he knew contained the enigmatic map from the Titanic. By the time the sun was nearly straight overhead, its heat pushing down on them like a physical force, Jayden stopped moving forward to check something with the binoculars. Not realizing he had stopped, Carter kept walking. When he turned around after not hearing the shuffling footfalls he’d become accustomed to somewhere behind him, he saw Jayden staring into the binoculars.

“See something?”

Carter looked in that direction but saw only the same unbroken expanse of blowing sand and brown, hard-packed dirt.

“I think so, yeah. Weird.”

“What is it?” Carter didn’t want to walk all the way back to him if he could help it. But at the same time he could tell that Jayden was definitely transfixed by whatever he was looking at through the lenses. Could it be just a trick of the optics? He was certain it was too soon for them to begin experiencing hallucinations due lack of water.

“I think I see a road.”

Carter looked in the same direction Jayden still focused on with the glasses. He couldn’t see anything, not even a break or anomaly in the blowing sand.

“You positive?”

“Not positive, but I see shimmering heat waves, and for just a second I thought I saw a flat strip…” He trailed off as he continued staring through the binoculars.

Carter reflected on what this would mean if it were in fact true. A road was both good and bad. Good because it offered a landmark, something to orient themselves by, perhaps an easier means of travel at least for some distance, as well as possible encounters with people who might be of assistance. They could hitch a ride, for example. On the other, darker, hand, a thoroughfare represented potential interactions with authorities, including military, or militia groups, bandits, the possibility of stepping on an Improvised Explosive Device; he and Jayden were only too familiar with the dangers of IEDs from their time serving in the middle east.

All of these thoughts were swirling around in his brain when Jayden said, “It’s a road. Positive. Just saw a truck drive past.” He pointed off to their left, indicating that the road led away from them on a perpendicular path.

Jayden checked his compass, very glad now that he had gotten into the habit of never going into the wilderness without a real, physical compass, not an electronic app. “The road, if it does actually lead off the way you’re pointing, is not heading in the direction we need to go in.”

“Figures,” Jayden said, letting the binoculars drop around his neck. “Water?”

Carter took the single remaining canteen from his pack, shook it so that they could hear the low volume of water remaining that sloshed around inside, and handed it to his friend. “Just a sip,” Jayden said, aware for the need to conserve. He took one, handed it back to Carter, who did the same before putting the canteen away in his pack.

“Looks like we have no choice but to cross the road to follow our course back into Turkey,” Carter said as they began to hike again. “It must be a pretty small road, though, since we didn’t see any major highway or anything like that when we were camped out up the hill last night.”

“No, it’s just a little dirt road,” Jayden said.

“We’ll find out soon enough.” But as they walked through the sand, the wind continued to pick up to the point that visibility was reduced to only 100 feet or so ahead of them in any direction. They tightened their clothing, pulled down their hats and bandanas, but Carter could still feel the sand chafing his skin. He had to recheck the compass frequently to make sure they still headed toward the road. He began to worry about how difficult they would be to see now — what if they wandered out onto the road and were hit by a passing truck that couldn’t see them? With the howling wind and scraping of sand, it was hard to hear much, either.

Walking on, they glanced periodically in all directions but still saw nothing but a disorienting world of shifting sands and muted brown hues. Both found it tiring to be sandblasted as they walked, hunched over into the wind and stinging particles. Conversation became impractical and they struggled on in silence, with Carter keeping a close eye on the compass. After a while, when he confirmed they were still heading in the intended direction, he grabbed Jayden’s shoulder.

“We must have passed it by now.”

“We probably crossed right over it,” Jayden agreed. “Let’s just keep moving, then.”

They set out once more, toughing it out against the elements as they forged across the wind-blasted desert, heads hunched over against the blowing sand. Conditions deteriorated to the point that Carter was about to suggest that they simply hunker down in the sand and wait for it to clear, when the wind began to let up. Not a whole lot, but enough to make the pelting grains more bearable and to lessen resistance as they trudged forward. They continued travelling until the sandstorm abated and Jayden was able to use his binoculars again.

They stopped for a water break — getting very low now — while Carter checked the compass heading and Jayden scoped out their environs through the optics.

“Okay, I definitely see something now,” Jayden said. “Wow!”