Ark Found

Chapter 28

Two hours passed while Carter and Jayden waited for everyone in camp except the guards to fall soundly asleep. Two men they felt they could handle, but the entire tribe? The time did not pass as slowly as they might have expected, since their minds were occupied with a heady mix of trepidation, excitement, critical planning, and a general fear of the unknown that would have made sleep difficult even had they allowed it. Even after the day’s exhausting activities, they were able to stay alert while at least resting by laying down in their lean-to and pretending to sleep. But in curt, whispered phrases, they lay the plans for their escape from Camp Nomad, as Jayden had dubbed it.

At first, Jayden was openly doubtful about their odds of a successful getaway. He questioned that the nomads would really be turning them in to anyone. But Carter laid out the facts: if Maddy was right, and they were planning on turning them in, it would absolutely be easier to escape now than later. Also, even if the nomads weren’t planning to turn them in — they needed to get to Africa as soon as possible to continue their search for the ark. Which ark, Carter was no longer exactly sure, but he hadn’t had time to think further on that issue; he only knew that the longer they stayed here, the longer they were giving Treasure, Inc. to make their next move, while making no move themselves. Finally, Carter pointed out that the nomads had already threatened them with violence and were in fact holding them captive against their will, decent treatment or not. Jayden reluctantly agreed that in light of all this, they would have to undertake what he termed the most “hairbrained jailbreak plan ever in the history of the world.”

Everything was ready: the gear they anticipated needing, such as the compass, flashlights, and pistol, placed in accessible places such as pockets or clipped to the outside of the pack, which still safely concealed the precious map and the satellite-phone. Boots on, clothing on, a second backpack strap improvised out of strips of cloth torn from the tent blankets so that it would stay securely on Carter’s body while in rapid motion. They were ready.

One at a time, they reoriented themselves in the lean-to so that their heads faced the exit. The guards had lapsed into less of a walk-the-perimeter routine, and more of a stand-around-and-talk, then patrol-a-little-bit-every-twenty-minutes-or-so routine. Carter couldn’t blame them, and was actually surprised they were as attentive as they were, given the circumstances.

“Next time they look in here, we go,” Carter whispered. Jayden nodded. Every twenty minutes or so one of them had taken a look into their lean-to, and not from very close. They lay there, peeking out from beneath their blankets, fully dressed and kitted out, waiting to move. Somewhat frustrating was that they could hear the guards talking, not about anything important by the tone of it, and the occasional quiet laughter, but just shooting the breeze. Carter had just begun to wonder if they’d be here all night simply waiting for them to stop talking when the sound of their voices started to come from a different direction. They were moving again.

Carter tapped Jayden on the shoulder. Almost time. When the plan was conceived the guards had mostly been apart, talking only in passing. But for the last hour or so, after everyone was fully asleep, Carter guessed, they had spent more time together, conversing, possibly smoking and sharing the wine. He preferred them to be apart, since it made for a clean one-on-one takedown for him and Jayden, very stealthy. Two men sneaking up to the same place was inherently less stealthy than two going to physically separated targets. But either way, they both knew they were capable of getting the job done.

Sure enough, they could hear the guards chatting to one another as they walked behind the rear wall of the lean-to. Carter quietly threw the blanket off of him and pointed out of the lean-to’s entrance and to their left. Jayden nodded before shedding his own blanket. No moon lit the night sky, but the campfire, which the guards periodically kept going strong by adding more wood, provided a decent amount of light throughout the camp.

Carter looked to their right, to make certain no one else besides the guards happened to be up. Seeing no one in that direction, he crept to a kneeling position and stuck his head out of the lean-to entrance. Looking left, he also saw no one, and could still hear the guards taking their leisurely stroll around the shelter.

He and Jayden exited the lean-to at the same time, Carter on Jayden’s left. He wanted to get around the corner of the shelter to be shielded from view by most of the rest of the camp, should someone happen to look out of their shelter or get up for some reason. They crept around the side of the lean-to and crouched, waiting for the pair of patrols to walk around the structure.

They were laughing softly when they walked around the side of it, one man with his head thrown back, looking up to the sky, while the other looked at him. Carter tapped Jayden on the shoulder as he sprung, the signal that it was go-time. Both ex-warriors moved fluidly and as an efficient, single unit. Jayden took the guard on the right, while Carter was responsible for the other. They had the guards in headlocks so fast the men hardly realized anything was wrong until they were having trouble breathing.

Carter knew it would only take a minor slip for their breathy gasps to turn into an audible scream, and so he looked at Jayden and nodded. It was obvious to them what they had to do. They had no desire to kill or even seriously hurt these people, they only wanted to temporarily incapacitate them so that they could be on their way. Still, there was no way to avoid some pain, and both treasure hunters were okay with that.

Simultaneously, Carter and Jayden pushed the heads of the guards into one another in swift, decisive motions that cracked their two skulls together with an audible thud. Both nomads fell to the sandy dirt like dropped laundry bags. Carter immediately put two fingers to his eyes, then pointed to Jayden and then pointed to the main camp in front of their shelter: go check to make sure no one heard that and is coming out of the tents. Jayden silently complied, and while he was creeping around the front of the lean-to, Carter dragged the first unconscious guard into their shelter. He eyed Jayden, who gave him the okay sign. No one had been alerted, at least not yet.

Carter returned for the second body. Unfortunately this man was beginning to stir, moaning softly and so Carter gave him a medium punch to the face which knocked him out cold. Then he dragged this guard into the lean-to and lay him down next to his comrade. He checked their pulses to make sure they were steady, which they were. Then he covered each with a blanket and left the shelter to join Jayden outside. Jayden looked at him expectantly and again he gave the okay sign, indicating that they were ready to proceed to Phase 2 of their hastily contrived plan.

They snuck past the far side of the camp fire, which still burned strong, sending a thick column of dark smoke high into the clear night sky. Past the visual cover of the bright fire, since while they were behind it shielded them from the view of anyone happening to peer out from the tents, they dropped to their bellies and low-crawled the rest of the way. It offered a much lower profile and was quiet. When they were behind the shelters and no longer in direct view of anyone, they stood and moved to the area behind the camp where the animals were tied for the night.

With the shelters blocking the fire light, the darkness in this area made it difficult to see the animals’ hulked forms as they sat or lay on the ground, dozing. Carter activated the red LED mode of the headlamp he wore in order to give them some light without sacrificing their night vision or alerting others to their presence with a bright light. In the red cast they could see there were a total of three camels, although only one was outfitted as a riding camel. It was a dromedary, the single-humped variety, and was outfitted with a saddle behind the hump.

“You good at riding these things?” Jayden whispered.

Carter shook his head. “Same as you, basically. Camel novice.”

“Now camel toes, that’s another—”

“Jayden, come on!” Carter whispered sharply. Was there ever a time his friend could be serious?

“Okay, so I guess one of us gets the saddle and the other the hump.” Although outfitted with only one saddle, the camel was a large one and appeared to be able to support the weight of two men. The other camels, they had noticed, were smaller in size and yet draped with hundreds of pounds of goods.

“You take the saddle, I’ll get up front. But let me get up front first. Keep watch.” Carter stepped up to the camel, which had its eyes closed while snoring lightly, its lips flapping with each breath. “Okay buddy,” he whispered. Time for a ride.” He pushed off the ground and swung a leg over the animal’s neck, glad he had improvised a new strap for his backpack, which stayed firmly in place as he mounted the beast. The dromedary stirred slightly and made a loud snorting sound, but that was the extent of its reaction.

“Okay, get on before it stands up,” Carter told Jayden, who moved next to the saddle. He jumped up on to the beast, grabbing hold of a leather handle on the saddle to secure his position atop the beast of burden. He tapped Carter on the shoulder in front of him. “Ready. How do we get it to stand up?”

“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.”