The Lost Ark (27 page)

I fell forward through the cabin, spilling over the complex dashboard. Faye ended up in the co-pilot seat. Wind thundered through the cabin. I pulled the unconscious pilot off the control stick. Churning water rapidly filled the windshield. Faye screamed—

I yanked hard on the column. The stabilizers kicked in and the craft swung out of its steep dive. I adjusted the cyclic and we flew low over the water.

Faye looked at me, face ashen. “A Disneyland ride from hell,” she said, holding a hand to her chest. “I think I’ll be sick for a week.” Suddenly her eyes widened and she pointed and I dodged to the left just as the emir’s
jambiya
lodged deep into the control panel, cracking glass and severing control knobs. The chopper slewed to the side, on a collision course with the canyon wall. I reached for the throttle, but the emir was clawing at my shoulder, digging his fingers deep into my wound. Pain registered in my brain as bright white flashes. I struggled to retain consciousness.

The cliff rapidly approached.

I grabbed the emir’s hand, slick with my own blood, and twisted his fingers until they broke. He screamed. I adjusted the column, and we immediately banked to port, safe.

“Hold the column steady, Faye,” I said, gasping.

“How?” Panic in her voice.

I grabbed her hand, placed it on the control stick. “Like this, Faye, and keep it steady.” I turned and faced the emir.

Who was now holding the pilot’s 9mm Browning, aimed at my chest.

* * *

Wind blasted through the open cabin door. I could see the corrugated canyon wall sliding slowly by as if in slow motion. The wall was composed of layers of glittering quartz. Faye managed to keep the craft steady. Maybe too steady. Omar held the Browning in his right hand. The pinkie and ring finger to his left hand were swelling fast. He was bleeding from a cut lip. “Goodbye, Sam Ward.”

“If you kill me,” I said quickly. “Who will fly your craft?”

He paused, and looked at the pilot. So did I. The pilot could have been dead, although snot appeared to bubble in and out of his left nostril. Blood trickled down through his thick hairline and across the bridge of his nose. He looked like he’d gone a round or two with Tyson.

“Your pilot is in bad shape, emir.”

Omar shrugged. “I’ll take my chances with the girl.”

I snorted. Faye was in the cockpit behind me. I turned my head slightly in her direction. “The girl?” I snorted. I raised my voice. “She just might be the
worst
pilot in the world.”

Did she understand? Or was she insulted?

I should have known better.

Faye threw the stick forward, and the craft pitched violently, and the emir fell into me. We grappled with each other. Although he lost the gun, he ended up more or less on top of me. Immediately he leveled two punches into my damaged shoulder. Yellow starbursts erupted in my head. Each punch like another gunshot. I wanted to pass out.
Needed
to pass out.

“Sam!” cried Faye. “I’m losing control!”

The helicopter swerved hard to starboard. The emir and I rapidly slid toward the cabin door. I reached out and hooked my good arm around the doorframe. My legs swung out into open space. The emir slid into me, clinging to the material of my jacket. The wind pummeled us. The chopper continued to swerve to starboard, and Omar lost his grip, screaming, sliding down to my waist. He looked down, then looked up at me with panic-sticken eyes. His face was white.

“Help me...Sam,” he said, and tried to claw his way up my dangling body.

“Quit…moving…asshole,” I said through clenched teeth.

I tried to pull both of us up, but there was no strength left in my arm. So we hung there, and the wind thundered over us. Faye had somehow managed to level the chopper. Good for us. I heard her shouting my name, but I was too weak to answer. I rested my forehead against the cool cabin frame. The coolness felt nice. I think I was running on hot. Perhaps, I mused silently, we would hang from the doorway until the chopper ran out of fuel.

Omar spoke from below, his voice rising up as if from a deep well. It had an odd strength to it, as if he had tapped into some previous unknown reserve. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she, Sam?”

“Noah’s ship was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

He slid a little further down. “You won, Sam.”

I shook my head. “No. You simply lost.”

And then he was gone. I looked down and watched him hit the landing skid, flipping briefly, his screams lost in the thundering wind. The rocks below were unforgiving, which echoed my sentiments exactly.

Chapter Sixty

Faye tied the pilot’s bomber jacket around my damaged shoulder, stanching the bleeding. A very bad tourniquet, but it would have to do. I needed a doctor. I needed pain killers. Instead, I pushed the pilot aside, and sat in the pilot’s seat.

“I hope you know how to fly this thing,” she said.

I scanned the controls. I knew my way around a cockpit. “We’ll be fine,” I said, and eased the control stick forward, increasing the power to the two 1,500-horsepower turbines. I kicked down hard on the rudder pedals and turned the cyclic over to the side, and snapped the tail around, banking sharply to port. I twisted the throttle all the way against the stop, and we streaked hard and low over the steep mountainside.

Faye grinned, and rested her head on my good shoulder. “I take it you
do
know how to fly this thing.”

* * *

Hovering at five hundred feet above camp, I was wary of return fire, although I knew that light-caliber machine gun rounds would be ineffective against the ASW’s armored cabin. And as of yet, the Kurdish soldiers did not suspect who was flying the craft.

The snowstorm had almost cleared, now just a light sprinkling. The launcher sat like a giant wart on the snowy landscape. Near the rear of the launcher I could see Caesar firing his weapon like a true terrorist. Farid was with him. Farid was holding something shaped vaguely like a baby.

I checked the instruments, easing the collective downward, holding the grip of the cyclic gently between the fingers of my right hand, controlling the balance of the aircraft, the throb of the rotor blades diminishing considerably until the landing skids touched down.

Caesar looked our way, eyes widening in shock. His red nose could probably be seen from outer space, along with the Great Wall of China. Faye waved from the co-pilot seat.

Farid looked at me and grinned, shaking his big head. Promptly, the bodyguard squeezed off a few more shots in the direction of the soldiers, then grabbed Caesar by the shoulder. Soon, both were running toward the craft.

* * *

Once Farid and Caesar were aboard, we deposited the pilot in the snow. As I lifted the craft into the air, my feet finessing the rudder pedals, the dull throb from the propellers deepened. I’d missed that sound. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the ASW’s armor. We rose to a height of four hundred feet.

“I was getting a little worried,” said Caesar. He noticed the make-shift bandage around my shoulder for the first time. “Appears you’ve had a tough time of it.”

“He’s been hurt, father,” said Faye. She reached out and caressed my right hand, the same hand that was gently maneuvering the cyclic. “He was hurt saving our asses, I might add.”

Caesar patted my shoulder. Although it was my good shoulder, a shockwave of pain pulsed through me. “Anyone have any painkillers?” I asked hopefully.

Caesar picked up the first aid kit and frowned at the head-sized dent in it. He opened the box and produced a bottle of aspirin. I ate four raw. Anything to dull the pain.

“Where to now?” asked Caesar.

Before I answered, I looked over my shoulder at Farid. The big bodyguard was hunched behind the co-pilot seat, the cabin too small for him to stand erect. He was staring down through the cockpit window. I saw now what was in his arm. The warhead.

“What do you think, big guy?” I asked him, arching an eyebrow. “Give them something to remember us by?”

Farid was covered in blood that did not appear to be his own. “Do it,” he said grimly.

I flicked on the arming switches to the two Hellfire missiles, both equipped with the newly-developed blast/fragmentation warheads, and hung from pylons under the fuselage. I took a deep breath, willing the aspirin to act quickly. Seconds later, the laser seeker locked onto the coded laser energy reflected from the target. The laser-guided Hellfires were ready.

“Hold on,” I said.

I flicked a switch and the helicopter shuddered as the first rocket, propelled by a single-stage, single thrust, solid propellant motor, exceeded a thrust of five hundred pounds and left its rail, blazing through the afternoon sky, reaching speeds of upwards near 950 miles per hour.

The missile, capable of leveling tanks and concrete factories, as they had done so well in Desert Storm, entered the Scud launcher. There was a brief pause before a blinding explosion illuminated the mountainside like the dawning of a new sun. I immediately launched the next Hellfire, and the mountainside erupted into a burning pyre, black smoke billowing into the air.

We were silent, watching the burning wreckage. Faye leaned over and kissed me long and hard. When she was done she looked me in the eye. “Boys and their guns.”

“It’s a big gun.”

“I’m sure it is.”

I banked to port and rose to 13,000 feet, near the chopper’s maximum elevation and pushed the throttle forward. We reached a cruising speed of two hundred miles an hour, leaving the burning ruins of the emir’s revenge machine behind us.

I was going to need more aspirin.

Six Months Later

Mount Ararat

North Face, 12,000 feet

The three of us were in a familiar cave.

Outside was a crooked finger of rock, pointing accusingly into the morning sky. We sat before a crackling campfire, fueled by dry shrubbery. I removed a bubbling pot of oatmeal from the fire, and poured the steaming contents into three tin bowls. As we ate, Professor Caesar Roberts said, “Today is the day, dear girl, that we finally put this matter to rest.”

“Only if you say so, father,” said Faye, laughing. “Aside from the pack of ravenous wolves we narrowly escaped, I’ve found this second trip to be rather relaxing. And it’s good to be away from my students.”

The small dirt mound was still there, as I hoped it would be forever. This would be my last visit to Liz’s grave. When finished with our breakfast, I packed our equipment and helped the others with their backpacks.

Caesar looked at his daughter, running his fingers through his neatly trimmed beard. “Are you sure, dear girl, that you didn’t see it? I mean,
it was right there in front of you
.”

As Faye adjusted her backpack, she said, “For the last time, father, no. I was too worried about you two. I ran into the ice cavern with blinders on, seeing only the three of you before I was yanked back into the tunnel.”

“And you never saw a massive ship hidden behind the ice?” I asked.

“Refer to my prior comment,” she said dryly.

“What do you think, old man?” I asked.

“I think she’s telling the truth.”

I led them out the cave and onto the Abich glacier.

* * *

I had been left with a nasty scar on my chest and back. Although the scars looked impressive, they never tanned. We had landed the helicopter at a small airstrip outside of Dogubayazit. The Turkish government had officially declared that the deaths of the handful of Kurdish soldiers involved in the Omar Ali affair were, in fact, the result of a Kurdish uprising. We had been confined in Turkish prisons for over two weeks, questioned relentlessly about the activities upon the mountain. In the end, we were set free. Officially, there was no mention of Emir Omar Ali. He had died not only in shame, but in obscurity. And the entire mountain had been picked clean of the missile launcher.

Farid Bastian was back with his own people, living from one oasis to the next, following ancient trade routes, living a simple nomadic life far removed from the court intrigue of the Arab royalties. At least, that’s what he said in his last e-mail.

I’m back now with the
National Geographic
, here on this day to finish an article I had begun almost three years ago. Life is like that sometimes.

Now, high above the Abich glacier, we turned into a little-known granite canyon. Above, storm clouds were gathering. We moved deeper into the canyon until I was sure we had come to the spot where the ark had plummeted six months before. I stopped and set down my backpack. The others did the same.

“Why are we stopping?” asked Faye.

“We’re here,” I said.

She looked around the mostly desolate canyon. Massive ice cliffs rose to either side. “So where’s the ark, Mr. Ward?”

“It’s here,” I said. “Of course, it’s been buried under many dozens of snowstorms.”

“Of course,” she said, humoring me, touching me lightly on the shoulder. The gleam in her eyes was wicked. “Then again, maybe it’s right here in front of me and I’m the only one who can’t see it, like the emperor and his new clothes.”

I handed Caesar an ice shovel. “Are you ready to start digging, old man?”

He grinned. “I’ll do anything to shut her up.”

As a light snow began to fall, Caesar and I began digging. And, yes, this time I did have my camera.

The End

Also available on Amazon Kindle:

THE BODY DEPARTED

A Ghost Story

by

J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

1.

I stepped through the wall and into my daughter’s bedroom.

She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It was before dawn and the building was quiet. The curtains were open and the sky was black beyond. If there were any stars, they were lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp, pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.