Babylon rising: the secret on Ararat Page 21

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  THIRTY-FOUR

  "YOU'RE SURE EVERYTHING will be safe?"

  It was early in the morning and Murphy and Bayer were standing on a patch of ground away from the tents, by the horses. Behind them, the rest of the team were busy making breakfast and cups of hot tea.

  Bayer touched his hand to his chest. "Of course, I will watch over them. There will be no problem." He patted the automatic holstered at his waist.

  "Okay," Murphy said. "We're going to cross the Araxes Glacier and explore the area around the Ahora Gorge. If nothing else, Whittaker should get some good footage on the glacier."

  Bayer sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette, staring off into the distance, while Murphy went back to the tents to help pack the rucksacks with ropes, carabiners, ice screws, crampons, and ice axes.

  Leaving Isis, Reinhold, and Bayer, along with the

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  horse-packer and his sons, the rest of the team checked their GPS equipment and headed toward the glacier, their plan being to traverse east at relatively the same level around the mountain. They would save the strenuous upward climbing for later.

  The morning air was crisp and exhilarating. The sky was bright blue and not a cloud could be seen. But as Murphy knew, appearances on Ararat could be deceptive. Within an hour a clear sky could deliver a raging blizzard.

  The team moved at a good pace across the rocks and occasional snow drifts on the shady sides of the mountain. Even though it was early in the morning, they began to unzip their jackets and open them up. It was important to let out body heat and reduce the sweating to a minimum to keep their clothes dry and reduce dehydration.

  We're getting closer , Murphy thought excitedly, adrenaline surging through him as he entered a rock-strewn gully.

  Isis watched the little group as they disappeared into the snowfield. The ache in her legs felt good, and despite a night of feverish dreams, the clear mountain air had invigorated her. She felt herself beginning to relax for the first time in weeks. Or was it simply that she felt better when Murphy was around? She looked for a sunny rock with a good view of the mountain where she could enjoy a few more minutes of leisure before cleaning up the pots and pans, and saw Professor Reinhold sitting on a rock at the front of the meadow where it

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  began to drop down the mountain. He, too, liked the sun, but he also liked the slight breeze. The only thing he didn't like was having to hold the pages of his book down while he read. The breeze kept trying to turn them for him.

  Bayer was nowhere to be seen.

  When the team reached the Araxes Glacier, they unloaded their spiked crampons and put them on. They each hooked on to a rope for safety, with about forty feet between each climber, and began to cross a sea of white snow covering the glacier. Murphy was leading the team, with Valdez behind him. Next came Lundquist, and Hodson brought up the rear. Whittaker had a separate rope tied to the main rope between Lundquist and Valdez, allowing him the freedom to move forward or backward to take pictures.

  Despite Valdez and Lundquist's suddenly dropping to their armpits in the snow as they fell into small crevasses covered by snowdrifts, crossing the glacier was relatively easy.

  Descending the east side of the glacier was more difficult. The snow had turned into ice. Murphy was pounding in some ice screws when he slipped and fell a few feet before catching himself. He hooked onto the belay ropes to drop the seventy feet to the rocks below, aiming to leave the ropes in place for the climb back up on the return trip.

  He hoped they'd still be there.

  * * *

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  "Beautiful, aren't they?" Reinhold said, pointing to the horses. The horse-packer's sons were feeding them hay and talking to them. Isis wondered whether the horses understood Turkish.

  "Yes, they are. And the boys look after them well. You don't always see that out here," Isis replied. "This is the first time I've seen you with your nose out of a book," she laughed.

  Reinhold smiled. "You can never learn too much. When we find the ark--or I should say if we find the ark, whatever's left of it--I want to make sure I know what we're looking at, how stable the structure is. And, of course, if it really is the ark. There's been plenty of time for someone to plant fake remains on the mountain."

  "You mean like the Turin shroud?"

  "Exactly. Although your Professor Murphy probably believes that's legitimate."

  Isis was rather disconcerted to hear him referred to as her Professor Murphy. "I have no idea what he believes," she said airily. "But what about you? I find it hard to believe you'd leave your precious research behind to take your life in your hands on Mount Ararat if you didn't think there was something here."

  Reinhold kept his smile in place, but his boyish eyes had hardened. "Oh, I think there's something up here, all right. The question is, what?"

  Progress toward the Ahora Gorge was becoming more difficult as the team entered a large boulder field. Some of the rocks were as large as a small house. Climbing

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  around the boulders or over them was beginning to eat up time and energy.

  "Let's rest for a minute," Lundquist suggested, his face streaked with sweat.

  "Come on, Lundquist, we don't have the time. We got a schedule here," protested Hodson, looking to Murphy for confirmation.

  Murphy was about to speak, but Whittaker put a hand on his shoulder. Then he put a finger to his lips. He seemed to be listening for something.

  "What is it?" Murphy whispered.

  Whittaker didn't reply, but then Murphy could hear it too. A faint crackling in the distance, like waves dragging stones down a beach. He looked up the slope, back the way they'd come, and suddenly he could see it.

  "Rock avalanche!" he yelled. "Take cover!"

  Murphy and Valdez scrambled toward the house-shaped rock to their right. Hodson and Lundquist were trying to reach a similar rock twenty feet below them.

  Whittaker for some reason started running toward the avalanche as if he had some sort of bizarre death wish. For a moment Murphy thought he was going to have to turn around and pull him back. Then he saw that Whittaker had spotted a perfect nook scooped into the boulder field just above them. I guess he's done this more times than I have , Murphy thought as he hurled himself to the ground alongside Valdez. He rolled just in time to see Whittaker squeezing off one last shot with his camera before the huge wave of dust and rocks surged over his position and crashed into the rock Murphy and Valdez were sheltering behind.

  As the tremendous noise overwhelmed them and the

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  dust forced them to close their eyes, Murphy tried to picture Lundquist and Hodson's last position. He had no idea whether they'd managed to get out of the avalanche's path in time. For several agonizing minutes Murphy clung to the rocks, waiting for the dreadful grinding and crashing noise to stop, signaling that the danger had passed. Eventually he pushed himself to his feet. Holding his scarf over his nose and mouth against the choking dust, he moved down the boulder field, trying to locate the other members of the team. Valdez and Whittaker were soon at his side.

  "Hodson!" he shouted. "Lundquist! Where are you?"

  There was a muffled "Here!" and Murphy saw movement in the rubble. Hodson was staggering to his feet and then Lundquist, too, began to emerge.

  Hodson put a hand to his forehead and it came away bloody. "I was making for that rock over there when this guy trips me up. Luckily we fell into a hole. Otherwise that would have been it."

  "You never would have made it," Lundquist protested, brushing himself off. "You were lucky I grabbed you in time."

  Hodson glared at him and spat into the dust. "Whatever."

  "Look, the main thing is we're all okay," Murphy said. "Thanks to Whittaker's sharp senses."

  "You never know who's going to save your life, do you?" Whittaker grinned, snapping off a shot of the disheveled and dusty mountaineers.

  Then they heard another sound and their heads all je
rked up at the same time. Was it the sound of another avalanche starting? They listened, readying themselves

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  to dive to shelter if they needed to. But it was too far away. A steady pop-pop-pop back from the direction of the camp.

  Gunfire.

  The only ones to hear them coming were the horses. Their ears went up first. Then their nostrils flared as they began to sniff the air. They snorted a couple of times and whinnied softly.

  The noise of the horses made the dozing horse-packer open his eyes. He looked at his horses to see what was wrong. Could they smell a pack of wild dogs?

  The horse-packer sat up just in time to see a figure stepping out from behind a rock. He had a rifle in his hand and a scarf covering his face. He was heading for Professor Reinhold, back on the rock with his book.

  The horse-packer was about to shout a warning when he heard another sound. The sound of a round being chambered. It came from his left and he turned to see another masked gunman, his rifle pointing straight at the horse-packer's heart.

  He raised his hands and slowly turned his head to see a third gunman moving quickly toward Isis's tent. Beside him, his sons were awake, and the horse-packer put his hands on their shoulders to keep them still, but they needed no prompting. They had lived long enough in these mountains to know that when a rifle was pointed at you, you simply trusted in Allah and waited to see what would happen next.

  Reinhold was still deep in his book when he felt the hard jab in his back. He turned and looked into the barrel

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  of a rifle held by a man with a scarf over his head. He slowly raised his hands. He could see Isis emerging from her tent as another gunman grunted something to her in Turkish.

  This doesn't look good , he thought. Not good at all .

  The gunmen herded everyone into the cooking area. One of the men held them at rifle-point while the other two searched the tents. They came out holding a few items that they wanted.

  The leader of the gunmen spoke to the horse-packer in what sounded like Kurdish. Reinhold couldn't understand the words, but his meaning, emphasized with hand gestures, was clear enough. They wanted him to take his horses and sons and leave. As long as he kept his mouth shut and didn't alert the authorities to what had happened, they wouldn't be harmed. The horse-packer gave Reinhold and Isis a pitying look, then began leading the horses back down the trail.

  The gunmen turned their attention to Isis and Reinhold, roughly tying their hands with old pieces of nylon rope. Jabbing at Isis with the point of the rifle, one man was asking her something urgently in Turkish.

  Reinhold realized he had an urgent question of his own.

  Where was Bayer?

  Just then there was a clatter of rocks farther up the mountain, and the gunmen swung their rifles around instinctively. The leader shouted a few words in Kurdish, and he and one of the other gunmen started jogging down the trail in the direction the horse-packer and his sons had gone, dragging Isis between them. Reinhold was left alone with the third gunman. The

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  gunman waved a finger at him and said something Reinhold didn't understand, but he was sure it was something along the lines of "Don't try anything." He wished he knew enough Kurdish to be able to tell him, "You've got to be kidding."

  Then there was another clatter of rocks and the gunman swung his rifle around in the direction of the noise. Out of the corner of his eye, Reinhold could see a dark figure approaching fast. The gunman saw it too, but too late. His head was jerked back by a powerful hand and a knife blade flashed. He clutched his side, made a retching noise, then collapsed to his knees as Bayer pulled the blade out and wiped it roughly on his fatigues. He looked at Reinhold fiercely, pressing his finger to his lips. Reinhold nodded. Then Bayer jogged away in the direction the other two gunmen had taken, and Reinhold was left staring at the bloody corpse as the last twitches of life left it.

  After a while he walked a few feet away, toward the tents. He didn't know what to do. Eventually he went back to the corpse and pried the rifle out of the dead man's grip. He hoped he'd know how to use it if he had to.

  Suddenly the camp had gone very silent. Even the wind had dropped to a whisper. He strained his ears to hear the slightest sound. He thought he heard a cry. Was it Isis? He dreaded to think what might be happening to her. Then he heard a crack. Then another. A noise like rocks falling down a steep slope. Then silence.

  He waited, expecting at any moment to see the two other gunmen returning to camp. Then he'd have to use the rifle. He suddenly realized how foolish it was to be standing in the middle of the meadow, a sitting target.

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  He started running toward the glacier, searching to find a boulder large enough to hide behind, when he heard a shout.

  "Professor Reinhold! It is okay, my friend. No need for running!"

  He turned and there was Bayer, grinning from ear to ear as he led a pale-looking Isis back into camp. She was clearly trembling.

  "What happened?" Reinhold asked when they reached him.

  Bayer shook his head. "Very bad men. Very bad." Then he grinned again. "But also very stupid. And now very dead."

  He let go of Isis and she collapsed into Reinhold's arms.

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  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING Murphy was sharing a mug of steaming tea with Isis while the rest of the team sat around the fire. It was all he could do not to hug her to him, but she seemed to be happy he was simply there. The high-speed trek back to camp from the glacier had been brutal, as they pushed themselves to exhaustion, not knowing what would be awaiting them. Now that they were all together again--and alive--for the first time there was a palpable sense of brotherhood.

  "So who were they?" Murphy asked Bayer, realizing that, amid the euphoria of Isis's safe return, he hadn't inquired about the identity of the gunmen.

  "PPK for sure," Bayer replied.

  Isis looked at him quizzically and Lundquist stepped in, happy to show off his knowledge of Turkish politics.

  "Kurdish rebels. The Worker's Party of Kurdistan, to be exact. They recently discovered that they can get

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  money for their cause by kidnapping tourists and holding them for ransom. That is most likely what they were going to do with you."

  Bayer nodded. "Exactly."

  Murphy looked thoughtful. "You're probably right, but I want to be sure."

  Bayer looked affronted, as if Murphy was questioning whether he really had saved Isis. "What do you mean?"

  "I want to examine the other bodies. See if there's any identification."

  Bayer shook his head, as if this was typical American craziness. "Rebels, that's all they were. What else could they be?" He got up suddenly. "But come, if you want to see them, I can take you." He grinned. "I don't think they will have gone anywhere in the night."

  Murphy, Valdez, and Bayer hiked down the trail until Bayer motioned them to stop and pointed into a side gulley.

  "There."

  They walked to the edge and looked over. Before they even saw the bodies they heard the noise. Murphy motioned them to approach slowly. Valdez unslung his machine pistol and slipped off the safety.

  They peered over the edge and Murphy gasped. A writhing, heaving mass of shaggy brown bodies was tearing at the corpses of the gunmen, the bloody remains of which were being tossed around like rags. A pack of maybe fifteen wild dogs snarled and growled as they fought for the tastiest morsels, but from the looks of the bodies, the best pickings were already gone.

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  "Holy--" Valdez spat and chambered a round. Bayer put a restraining hand on his arm, but it was too late. As one, the dogs pricked up their ears and turned in their direction.

  Valdez shook off Bayer's arm. "You think I'm scared of a bunch of dogs?"

  "You should be," Bayer said quietly, backing away. "These are not like dogs in your country. These are beasts."

  The wolflike dogs were now eyeing the three men hungrily
and nosing the air.

  "Come on," Murphy said. "Animals that hunt in packs are basically cowards--and I'll bet these pooches prefer their meat already dead."

  He started picking his way through the rocks and down the slope, and the dogs began to back off, snarling, snouts lowered to the ground. Reluctantly, Valdez and Bayer followed.

  Valdez fired a round into the air and the dogs backed off a little farther. The three men knelt over the bodies, and while Valdez kept an eye on the dogs, Murphy sorted through the grisly remains, searching for anything that might give them a clue to the gunmen's identity.

  "Hurry," Bayer whispered fiercely.

  Valdez shot Murphy a panicked look and got to his feet. Then suddenly two dogs launched themselves out of the pack, and Murphy heard the stutter of the machine pistol as Valdez cut them down. As the bodies lay twitching at their feet, Murphy hoped that the rest of the dogs would retreat.

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  He was wrong. Their hunger was stronger than their fear.

  With the instinct of true pack hunters, the rest of the dogs advanced as one. Bayer drew his knife from his boot, cursing the fact that he had left his pistol back at the camp. But at least he had a weapon. Murphy had nothing.

  "How many rounds in that clip?" Bayer asked Valdez urgently.

  "Not enough," came the grim reply. "And I think they know it. If they rush us, we're finished."

  "And all because of what? To see if these men are KGB?" Bayer spat.

  Murphy picked up a rock and hurled it at the nearest dog, hitting it squarely in the shoulder. The dog snarled contemptuously and took a step forward. It seemed to sense the men's fear.

  Suddenly, the unexpected happened. From the other side of the gulley a tall, slim man walked slowly toward them. He was wearing a gray robe with a wide leather belt around his waist, and Murphy could see dark, piercing eyes above a ragged gray and black beard. He carried a twisted staff that was almost as tall as he was.