The Lost Ark

by J. R. Rain

  Bullets suddenly ripped through the ice to my right, moving rapidly to cut me down. I jumped to the side, rolled, and returned fire. Behind me, I could hear Caesar’s own weapon rattling away; at least he wasn’t shooting at me. Farther up the slope, two soldiers scrambled for cover behind a snow-dusted boulder.

  I ran hard for the black chopper. As I did so, a bullet tore through the armpit of my jacket, but missed me. I kept my head down and alternately fired in the direction of the soldiers above.

  Thirty yards from the chopper…

  As it prepared for lift-off, the combined sounds of the twin turbines and rotor blades was almost deafening. I picked up my speed.

  Twenty yards…

  The chopper lifted slowly in the air, scattering snow in all directions. It hung briefly above the slope. Then turned to port, on its way down the mountain.

  “Ah, hell,” I said, and tossed aside my weapon and angled across the hard-packed ice to cut-off the rising aircraft.

  * * *

  The big cabin door opened. Omar appeared holding a small revolver. The muzzle flashed. Bullets impacted the ice in a random pattern around me. Luckily, the emir was a horrible shot. I considered varying my course, until I realized a varied course might match the emir’s own erratic shooting pattern.

  I saw one of Omar’s shooting problems: Faye was beating his exposed back with her fists, forcing him to hold her off while he methodically snapped off shots at me. Maybe Omar was thinking twice about Faye joining his harem.

  I ducked as a bullet whistled past my right temporal lobe. He was getting closer.

  Omar finally backhanded Faye, sending her reeling into the cabin, where she disappeared from view.

  The son of a bitch.

  I was ten feet from the helicopter.

  Point blank range.

  The Arab grinned and nodded, as if confirming once and for all that he would be victorious in the end. His destiny and all that shit. I watched his finger tighten around the trigger—

  But he was out of bullets. He blinked uncomprehendingly at first; then, in anger, hurled the revolver at me, which promptly bounced off my shoulder, and hurt like hell. Lucky throw. And as the helicopter gained altitude, I jumped and extended my fingers…and grabbed hold of the starboard landing skid.

  * * *

  The ASW attack helicopter lifted quickly to five hundred feet. Straight up into the swirling snow. I dangled like an autumn maple leaf at the end of a bare branch. I adjusted my grip, knotting my arms around both the horizontal skid and forward vertical skid. The chopper continued to gain altitude. Snow fluttered crazily, stirred by the downblast generated by both of the main rotor blades and the four-bladed tail rotors. Below, the camp was barely discernible through the storm. The missile launcher looked like a dark cancer on the pristine landscape.

  I swung my right leg up and over the horizontal skid, taking the weight off my arms. I caught my breath and tried to think clearly. My left leg hung out into open space. My face was pressed against the metal skid. Wind pounded me. A few moments later I realized it was impossible to think clearly. But I knew I had to get on board the chopper. Somehow.

  * * *

  The chopper swept low over the mountain. The wind hammered me into immobility. I feared that I would be torn away by the thundering wind. I tried reminding myself that I was a fearless explorer, but that didn’t work. I told myself to think of something positive. But the best I could come up with was that I hadn’t fallen yet.

  Below, the Ahora Gorge appeared majestically, cutting deeply into the heart of Ararat. Meltwater from the Abich glacier fell hundreds of feet down a steep cliff into a churning whirlpool. The pool fed a frothing river that marched down the center of the gorge.

  Omar appeared again in the cabin door, this time with an AK-47. I kicked away from the horizontal skid and shimmied up the forward vertical, which arched underneath the belly of the chopper. Sparks ricocheted behind me. I was safe for the moment, away from his angle of fire.

  The chopper banked to port and gained altitude until we were hidden within the eye of the storm, surrounded by the roiling gray mist. Here, the beat of the rotor blades was amplified, unbearably loud. The mist had a way of dampening the skids, which may or may not have been intentional.

  The chopper hovered like a UFO seeking its next bovine victim. I swung my feet around the arched vertical skid. Time passed slowly. The helicopter pulsated with life. The cloud continued to billow and fold in on itself, stirred awake by the spinning rotor blades. I had a sickening feeling about what was to come next. And I wasn’t disappointed.

  The chopper tilted forward, then dove down through the cloud cover, its mighty turbines drowned by the thundering wind. The clouds opened; the mountain appeared through the slashing snow.

  The chopper suddenly leveled, turbines grinding, stabilizers shuddering. The tremendous gravitational forces tore my hands loose and I swung upside down, held in place only by my crossed legs. Blood rushed to my head. I reached up and gripped the metal landing skid just as the chopper banked to starboard, throwing me hard into the vertical skid. The shock caused my breath to burst from my lungs.

  Omar appeared once again like a bad dream, squeezing off a few more shots, but I was already moving hand over hand up the vertical skid and away from his line of fire. I dangled under the craft like a South American spider monkey, minus the prehensile tail. And certainly not as cute.

  Next, I endured a series of aerial maneuvers that were not only insane, but would fill any number of barf bags. The chopper wove and looped and plunged and twisted, the pilot challenging the craft’s capabilities to the limit.

  But I was too stubborn, or stupid, to fall.

  * * *

  We were now deep within the Ahora Gorge, the helicopter’s tiny shadow weaving in and out of the corrugated face of the granite cliff. Compared to the enormity of the canyon, we were nothing more than a flyspeck. Before us rose the north wall. As we approached, I wondered if the emir was crazy enough to kill us all.

  Then the chopper abruptly angled up.

  I took advantage of the minor reprieve in aerial acrobatics, and swung my feet onto the horizontal skid. There I squatted, facing the open hatch. The cabin could seat up to five soldiers, although the ASW was designed for a three-man crew, including both a pilot and co-pilot. Omar, standing just inside the cabin doorway, saw me and swung his assault rifle in my direction.

  In the same instant, I lunged forward into the cabin.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The first shot impacted my shoulder like a blow from a mallet, the 7.62 mm bullet spinning me in the air, knocking the breath out of me. I collided with the emir before he could fire again, hurling the prince to his back.

  The bullet had entered my shoulder between the pectoral and deltoid muscles, exiting violently through my back. That would leave a mark. Warm blood spread instantly from both the entrance and exit wounds. For now my arm was merely numb; the pain would set in shortly. Faye was slouched behind the co-pilot seat, hanging on to the craft’s fire extinguisher, lip bleeding. She scrambled to her feet when she saw me. I could see the pilot trying to look over his shoulder, his face obscured behind the faceplate. Probably wishing he had a rearview mirror.

  Hunched forward in the small cabin, Omar stood and withdrew his ceremonial jambiya from his hip scabbard. “I assume,” he said, his voice coming to my ears as if from far away, “that if you are here, than my brother is dead.”

  I thought of Farid. I did not yet know what had happened in that small control room, but I was relatively confident of the outcome. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Faye was carefully removing the fire extinguisher from the wall. I had to keep the emir talking, despite the pain that was setting in, despite the blood pooling beneath me. “Yes, emir, your brother is dead.”

  Omar shook his head sadly, although he displayed little regret. “Am I to assume that Farid had something to do with his death?”

  “You assume correctly, emir.”


  A pained expression crossed Omar’s haggard face. It was brief and fleeting, more of a subliminal display of pain. “It was inevitable, I suppose. Kazeem was always jealous and perhaps intimidated by Farid’s skill and size. Indeed, Farid was a good bodyguard, perhaps the best, but he had gotten soft of late, and that is unacceptable.”

  “He was tired of the senseless killing. You have killed many in your quest for revenge.”

  “And I will kill more,” he said, leveling the jambiya at my chest. “At least one more.”

  He lunged forward, but a sudden burst of carbon-dioxide enriched foam pummeled him, knocking him off balance. Omar screeched in frustration and swung his blade wildly in reposte, knocking the canister out of Faye’s hand. Covered in foam, dripping from his nose and chin, the emir looked like the victim of a college fraternity prank. Faye searched desperately for something to defend herself with, and grabbed a shiny pair of pliers that was wedged behind the co-pilot chair and the floor. Sloppy maintenance. She looked at the pliers and blinked, but held them out bravely, as if she intended to ply the emir to death.

  “Sam,” she said, not daring to take her eyes off the emir, “now it’s your turn to save me.”

  Waves of pain rocked me. Blackness encroached along the edges of my vision. I needed to stop the flow of precious blood from my wounds, but now was not the time. I stood on jelly legs. Attached to the wall was a white metal box. A first aid kit. I ripped the box free from its mounts and swung it into the back of the emir’s head, knocking him forward. The jambiya plunged harmlessly into the black fabric of the co-pilot seat cushion.

  Shockwaves of pain erupted in my shoulder.

  I gasped.

  Stars flashed in my head like Vegas neon.

  The emir shook his head and pulled the weapon free from the seat. He turned and faced me and tried a quick over-the-top jab at my wounded shoulder. I parried it with a swipe of the box, which rattled in my hand from the impact.

  The emir lunged wildly again and I side-stepped the sword and swung my good arm around his neck and held on, squeezing with all my remaining strength.

  “Shoot him,” he gasped.

  Who the hell was he talking to?

  I looked up to see the pilot aiming down the sights of his Browning 9mm pistol. He removed his helmet to get a better aim. “But I don’t have a clear shot, my lord,” he said.

  “I’ll take my chances, godammit!”

  I didn’t like the direction this was going, but then Faye suddenly appeared from behind the co-pilot’s seat and swung the fire extinguisher down as hard as she could. The metal clanged off his thick skull.

  Good girl.

  The unconscious pilot slumped forward over the control column, bleeding profusely from a serious head injury, and promptly threw the helicopter into a stomach-turning dive.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  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 c
yclic 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.”