The Prisoner's Gold

13

Cobb was on the verge of falling asleep in the passenger seat of the Toyota Land Cruiser when he spotted a camel in the distance. Since it was the first living thing he had seen in the desert in two days, he asked McNutt to steer closer so they could get a better view.

So far, this had been the highlight of their trip.

The camel was wandering aimlessly through the sand on the south side of a long strip of endless gray tarmac that seemingly touched the horizon. The animal looked sickly and thin, its two humps sallow and dull as it lumbered over the arid turf.

McNutt didn’t want to spook it, so he slowed as he approached the beast. ‘Do you know how to tell the difference between a Bactrian camel and a dromedary?’

Cobb was prepared for most things, but not that question. ‘Nope.’

McNutt pointed at the animal’s back. ‘Bactrian camels have two humps and dromedaries have one. To help you remember, imagine the capital letters for B and D and turn them on their sides. This camel looks like a B, which means it’s a Bactrian.’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘A BBC documentary. Can’t get enough of them. Plus it helps to know what animals might trample on you when you’re in a hide, sweating your ass off for days in the desert, waiting to put a bullet through a terrorist’s face.’

‘Been there,’ Cobb admitted.

‘Done that,’ McNutt added as he waved goodbye to the camel.

Then they lapsed into silence for another hour.

Cobb was increasingly impressed with McNutt, who, without the audience of the rest of the team, had kept his typical zaniness to a minimum. They had left Florida separately before meeting up in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where McNutt had arranged for them to travel to the border. Cobb had been surprised to find a small group of Marines waiting for them with forged passports bearing phony visa stamps; as far as he knew, no US forces were stationed in Kyrgyzstan at all. From there, the men had smuggled him and McNutt down to the bustling city of Kashgar in western China.

After their Marine escorts departed, McNutt had secured the Land Cruiser, an Uyghur guide, and a few weapons. They had set out on an actual highway, which loosely followed the Silk Road of old, but quickly discovered how little time they would spend on blacktop. They had frequently encountered areas of the road in such disrepair that they had been forced to travel for miles on the shoulder. Many of the construction projects they had passed — if that’s what they could be called — were often little more than mountains of gravel dumped into the middle of the road for later renovations. More than once they had seen billboards proclaiming that the work would be done on schedule … in December of 2004.

In this part of China, travel wasn’t measured in miles.

It was measured in days.

Maggie, who remained in Florida to research other aspects of Polo’s life, had warned them of this concept, but it didn’t really sink in until they got here. She had also explained the bleak terrain they would encounter. While the remnants of the Loulan kingdom had still been of note during Polo’s time, the city itself had been abandoned after a natural disaster more than a thousand years ago. In the millennium since, the area had been all but forgotten.

One look was all it took.

It was obvious why no one returned.

Identifying Loulan as ruins was an insult to good ruins everywhere. Sandy brown soil stretched for miles in every direction. Without the aid of their guide and their GPS, they wouldn’t have known they had reached their destination.

As recently as the 1980s, archeologists had found man-made evidence of a former settlement including canals, burial domes, and hundreds of ancient objects. Now there were virtually no signs of life except for an occasional polished rock or hand-cut fragment of petrified wood.

They were driving on top of the former salt lake, which wandered no more thanks to multiple dams on the Tarim River. The lake had dried up completely, leaving only patches of sand that looked smoother and lighter than the pebbly ground.

‘Might as well stop here,’ Cobb said.

‘Why?’ McNutt asked as he slowed the vehicle to a halt. ‘This rekky is going to be as useful as a helicopter with an ejection seat.’

Cobb understood McNutt’s frustration. It had been a difficult journey, one that seemed likely to produce no leads. ‘Well, we’re here now, so let’s look around for a bit.’

McNutt climbed out of the vehicle and spat on the arid ground. It was the only moisture in sight. ‘If it’s okay with you, I’ll let you handle the archeological shit. I’m more concerned with checking out the potash setup. I don’t want to get caught with our pants down.’

Cobb eyed the distant facility, glimmering in the desert heat several miles away. He knew McNutt wasn’t being lazy. Rather, he was being security-conscious. If anyone would detect their presence here, it would be the guards at the mine. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Now that I’ve seen the terrain, I’m going to call Maggie and find out exactly what we’re supposed to be searching for.’

‘Before you do that, maybe you should look at the truck.’

Cobb raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

McNutt pointed at one of the tires. ‘It’s been feeling sluggish in the turns. I thought it was just the terrain, but it looks like we have a slow leak.’

‘No worries,’ Cobb said as he glanced at the tire. It was extremely low on air. ‘I’ll have Ali work on it. It will give him something to do while we look around.’

Mashuq Ali, their guide, had spent the bulk of the journey sleeping in the back seat. He would occasionally wake to eat and he insisted on stopping five times a day so he could get out of the truck and pray toward Mecca, but other than that he barely said a word.

McNutt lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘About time he did something other than eat, pray, and sleep. Who does he think he is: Julia Roberts?’

McNutt walked away laughing as Cobb stayed behind to explain what needed to be done. Ali assured him that he would handle it as soon as he finished praying. Cobb was tempted to stay behind and fix the tire himself but ultimately decided he had better things to do. Their goal was to get in and out as quickly as possible, and that meant starting their search immediately.

Cobb pulled out his satellite phone and called Maggie, who was in the war room with Garcia. They were expecting his call sometime that day. ‘Well, we made it here safely, but there isn’t much to see. Not even a deserted site.’

‘Really?’ Garcia said. ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’

‘Did you give me the correct coordinates?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Then we’re in the right place.’

Maggie chimed in. ‘Unfortunately, we knew this was a possibility. The weather there is notoriously bad. I’ve heard stories where the temperature has fallen over sixty degrees in less than an hour. When the temperature drops, the wind sweeps in and covers everything with sand.’

‘And that’s what I’m looking at: sand.’

‘Not us,’ Garcia said, ‘we’re looking at static. Are you wearing your glasses? Because right now we aren’t getting your feed.’

On previous missions, the team had used high-tech flashlights that recorded and transmitted video, but for this journey Garcia had given Cobb aviator-style sunglasses that would accomplish the same task. Meanwhile, McNutt had chosen yellow-tinted shooting lenses. The glasses sent video signals via Bluetooth to a laptop in the vehicle, and it forwarded that information back to Florida.

‘Hang on,’ Cobb said as he turned on his glasses. ‘We just arrived on site. I didn’t want to set up the broadcast link until I touched base with you. Give me a minute.’

Cobb pulled a small satellite dish out of the vehicle and set it up on a tripod. Then he ran a line to his laptop that allowed video files to be transmitted at an incredible rate of speed. Within seconds, Maggie and Garcia were seeing a live broadcast from Loulan.

‘Much better,’ Garcia said as he tweaked some settings on his end. ‘We can see everything that you’re seeing — which isn’t much. You weren’t kidding about the sand.’

Cobb slowly turned in a circle to give them a view of everything. Other than the Land Cruiser and McNutt walking in the distance, they saw nothing but desolation.

‘Jack,’ Maggie asked, ‘do you see anything resembling the site?’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘I don’t mean an actual town. I mean remnants of the Chinese excavation. Perhaps a section of wall that is barely visible in the sand or a landmark of any kind?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Cobb said as he walked away from the SUV. ‘As I mentioned, we just got here. The place is so barren I didn’t know where to start.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Maggie said, ‘neither did Rustichello. He felt confident that the treasure had something to do with Loulan, but if you can’t even find the deserted city, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. We were hoping that you might stumble upon a clue of some kind — a carving on a wall or perhaps a geographic feature that matches a note in the manuscript — but the truth is there’s very little we can do with sand.’

Cobb grimaced. ‘Yeah. Didn’t think so.’

‘Jack,’ Garcia said, ‘why don’t you walk around the site with your glasses turned on? Just record as much as possible, and we can analyze it later.’

‘Why? Do you have something better to do?’

‘Actually,’ Garcia said, unsure if Cobb was mad at him for being dismissive or if he was simply interested in the latest findings, ‘Sarah needed our help with the Italian job. I’m trying to find the latest schematics for the gallery’s security system, and Maggie is helping with some translations. Of course, we can do that later if you prefer.’

‘Nah,’ Cobb said. ‘That sounds more promising than what we’re doing here. I’ll record anything I find that isn’t sand, and if I spot something interesting I’ll use the GPR to take some underground images. Other than that, there’s not much we can do.’

Garcia breathed a sigh of relief, glad that Cobb wasn’t angry at him. ‘Sounds like a plan. Call back if you need anything.’

After hanging up, Cobb spent the next hour probing the sand with ground-penetrating radar, or GPR. The briefcase-sized device couldn’t detect objects covered by solid rock — for that he would have needed a much larger, much more powerful version of the technology — but it was perfect for studying the sandy soil. If there was anything important buried beneath his feet, Cobb would see its outline on the video screen.

He walked the nearby desert in a grid, similar to the pattern they had used in Egypt. He marked the periphery with tiny wooden posts and used string to organize the rows of his search. Using his glasses, he filmed the rocks and rubble on the ground, occasionally making out a faint line in the sand that might have been a former wall. He marked those with tiny ribbons that he tied to the nearest string.

All in all, it was the most boring hour of his life.

When he was done, he turned to find McNutt. He quickly realized that McNutt had climbed the rear-mounted metal ladder to the luggage rack on the roof of the SUV. Lying on his stomach, the sniper was now checking out the distant mine with a telescope since the facility was beyond the range of his riflescope. The Marine obviously didn’t care that the vehicle was still up on a jack. He knew it was strong enough to handle his weight, too.

Cobb ignored him and focused on Ali instead. The guide had abandoned the tire-changing operation and was now sipping on a water bottle while sitting in the shade of the SUV. They hadn’t really needed the man much — occasionally for interpreting and twice to bribe officials — but this was the first time he had disobeyed a direct order.

Daily prayers were one thing.

Laziness was something different.

Cobb headed over to give the man a piece of his mind.

But before he had a chance to say anything, his thoughts were interrupted by McNutt, who had sprung off his stomach and onto his knees as if he had been stung by a scorpion.

‘Chief,’ McNutt shouted from the roof of the vehicle. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a convoy of Vikings coming this way.’

‘What?’ Cobb blurted.

Even Ali seemed surprised. ‘Vikings? What are Vikings?’

‘Three BvS 10s — tracked troop transports. Bastards can go over anything and don’t have to stop a tread to turn. Looks like a fifty-cal mounted on the lead Viking, but hard to tell at this distance.’ McNutt started to climb down the rear ladder. ‘We’ve been spotted.’

Cobb swore under his breath as he tossed his gear onto the back seat. Then he ran to help Ali, who had suddenly found the motivation to put the spare tire on the Land Cruiser.

None of this made any sense to them.

They were parked in the middle of the desert.

With nothing but sand and rock for miles.

Why in the world were they being attacked?