by D. I. Telbat
I forced a patient smile. Sometimes my juvenile temper rose up through my exterior, but I held it back.
"If you would've read my application, you would've seen that I'm fluent in Mongolian at the conversational level."
Schumacher paused a few seconds in surprise, then flipped two pages.
"Oh. I see. And you read and write Cyrillic?" He narrowed his eyes. "You learned this in prison?"
"A Russian guy we called Russ taught me Cyrillic. I learned Mongolian from twenty-four cassette tapes. It's taken me seven years, Mr. Schumacher. I'm not merely an ex-con. In a way, I've been in Bible school getting ready for all of this. I've been taking classes and reading everything I can get my hands on about Mongolia. And can you imagine people's response if I went to their churches asking for money and support? Not all of them, but many would be just like you. They wouldn't read my material and all they'd see is a big scorpion tattoo."
Schumacher had gone pale, which was not my intention. He stuttered a couple of words then shut his mouth. I rose to my feet.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Schumacher. I wouldn't have come except Randy asked that I meet with you before I left."
"Left? Um. When are you leaving?" He stood and straightened his tie.
"Tonight, on a container ship bound for Istanbul. From there, I'm hitchhiking to the Air Force base northeast of Adana to find a flight over the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, and Kazakhstan—avoiding China as much as I can."
"And you're staying with Randy?"
"That's right, but it'll take me the better part of June and July to get there."
"Right, right. Well, you seem to have the boldness for it. You're really going for it then, huh?"
"It's a calling I can't shake."
He scratched his chin.
"Well, seeing that you know the language and seem to have some miraculous survival skills, which you'll need, I'll push your application through. Just make sure you stay with Randy and listen to him! He's been doing this for twenty years. Why you guys picked Mongolia, I'll never understand."
"I didn't pick it." I smiled. "God did."
"Of course. Well, welcome aboard, Andy."
And we shook hands.
*~*
Chapter 2
I had purposely chosen a Russian container ship to take me across the Atlantic Ocean so I could practice my Cyrillic writing. Mongolian Cyrillic had derived from Russian Cyrillic in the 1940s when Russia stood as a communist country beside Mongolia. The two languages were close enough for me to get some extra hands-on practice from someone besides Russ on the prison yard.
Gino met me at the harbor with my small pile of gear: a duffle bag, a backpack, a bicycle, and a uni-haul—a one-wheeled sort of trailer that attached to my bicycle seat. It was all I owned in the world.
Gino set the bicycle before me and admired its mechanics.
"There it is, Andy. It would take more than a sledge hammer to break those welds, I think."
He was right. I had designed the frame, and a welder from Gino's congregation had done the rest. The frame looked like a squashed, inverted Y, and the welds were as bulbous as fists on the aluminum alloy frame. It was a three-speed with one hand brake for the rear wheel. Extra precautions were made regarding maintenance. Once in Mongolia, a bike shop wasn't something I wanted to locate—though I'm sure there were parts shops in the larger towns. The frame was solid, though still sleek, with no adjustable parts that could rattle loose. The seat was welded in place, premeasured for my height. The wheels had been the trick for a low-maintenance machine. They were mags—hard, black plastic, with titanium sealed bearings. No lubrication would be needed. And the tires were solid poly. I didn't want an air tube patch kit to bother with or even a spoke wrench. The bicycle was essentially tool-free.
"She's beautiful, Gino!" I ran my hand down the frame.
"I still wish you would've let us paint it. It's a junkyard on wheels, if you ask me!"
"No, no." I flicked a finger at a metal flake. "That's the look I need. At a glance, nobody'll bother to consider stealing it. Besides, if it's painted, I might baby her. I don't want to do that."
"But you insist on calling it a 'her,' huh?" He laughed. "You've come a long way, Andy. It's been some years in the making. Just look at you. Off to Mongolia!"
I took a deep breath.
"You've been like a father to me, Gino, and then some."
"Come on now." With a wave, he hushed me, and dug into his breast pocket for a hard-bound leather booklet with a sturdy pen attached on a thin string. He handed it to me. "I want you to write in this every day. Write to me. You can't imagine what obstacles the devil will throw in front of you. He'll mess with you, tempt you, Andy. You're human, so you'll feel alone at times. That's what the journal is for. We'll call it your A-J—your accountability journal. After you fill a few pages, stick them in the mail to me. It'll help you keep your heart and your head straight because it'll also be our way of fellowshipping. A believer needs that, Andy. The church will be praying. Count on that. Trust the Spirit to lead you, and use the wits God gave you. The rest is easy."
Our parting was difficult. I didn't start living until I'd met Gino, and I'd been his project, so to speak, for seven years. Later, I found out he'd accidentally wandered into that prison infirmary the first time we'd met, when he was supposed to be on visitor status on his way to the chapel. God knows what He's doing!
#######
I'd never been on a container ship, but thirsty Russian machinery doesn't discriminate. Though I'd signed on as a crewman, I had no idea I'd be an oiler for twelve hours a day. After stowing my bike in a locker on deck, I dropped my bags in my cabin, which I shared with three other crewmen. In the belly of the beast that was as long as two football fields, I greased any mechanical joint that moved. It was my first job outside razor wire, but I was happy to be on my way east. As for my Cyrillic studies, there was little time. My oiler companion and I worked for twelve hours, then collapsed in our bunks as the two others from our cabin took the day shift. As a beginning grunt, I pulled nights.
Not a night passed in those three weeks that I wasn't covered in grease from leaning over machinery to reach a joint or movable arm. I've wondered if American ships are cleaner in the engine room. To this day, I still feel that brownish-black silk under my fingernails.
When I wasn't sleeping or working, I was studying my Bible or on the top deck growing accustomed to riding the bike. There was plenty of length to the deck, though the containers filled most of the center deck space. The bike's center of gravity was higher than a normal two-wheeler, and I do admit to several crashes toward the stern. But I'll blame those wrecks on the sea spray and the roll of the ocean.
A ship that size is a small city, though I stayed to myself mostly. There were fifteen other crewmen throughout the giant tower that rose nine levels above to the cockpit and control room—the cook, the two engineers, the navigator, the captain and his two mates, four oilers, and four deckmen. I never saw the deckmen do anything but lay around, so I developed a sneaking suspicion they were stowaways of some sort. When I tried to approach them, they avoided me like radioactive waste—after they got one look at the Bible in my hand. Thus, my socializing was confined to quarters with Lokva, my shift's second oiler.
Lokva was an older man of fifty, though he appeared to be sixty. Since he spoke slow Russian naturally, I didn't have to ask him to repeat himself. His mouth wasn't the only slow part about the gentleman. Most nights, he found a place below decks where he could just sit and oil a joint at arm's length. He was a tired, old peasant from Tomsk, he said, which was a state in Russia he hoped he never saw again. So, I oiled for the two of us and when we took breaks, we talked of his days in Tomsk. One night, he claimed to have seen God on a road once outside Novosibirsk and he said he hoped to never see Him again. All other advances about the Word or Christ were scowled away, so we settled into less important conversation to pass the time.
One morning, in the
mess hall on the third level, I prayed aloud over my meal, and Lokva heard his name from my lips. He stewed about that for two days and nights until he finally approached me.
"It was not a curse, was it? It was a prayer for well-being, da?"
"Of course." I smiled. "Well-being before God for all eternity."
"Da, da! Who wants to live forever?" Then he stalked away.
Istanbul is a majestic old city, rich as any other with culture and heritage and pollution of both land and soul. It was a hub of all sorts for three continents. Since Asia Minor was such a focus for Paul, John, and other first century leaders, I would've thought it to be more Christ-oriented. It was quite the contrary, however, for though Turkey boasts tolerance for any religion, even its Christian landmarks, it's a traditional Muslim state—though a very worldly one.
I set my bike on Istanbul's thousand-year-old streets and peddled eastward. Twice, I had to ask for directions to the small pita bread shop where I'd arranged to meet Jim Beckley, a missionary serving the Istanbul area. He was about my age and he had some good advice for me.
"Don't be afraid to learn in silence," Jim said. "Where you're going, they have a violent dislike sometimes for those who try to change them. They've been forced to change in the past by both China and Russia over the years, and they're sick of it. They might smile and agree with you, but their hearts are contrary. God gives us the courage to take the Word to the people—but use your head. Show these people you're not afraid to learn from them and they won't be afraid to learn from you."
Though we'd spent an hour together, it was too brief. We both had places to be, so we went our separate ways, but Jim and I parted friends as well as prayer partners.
I peddled east and south through that day and into the night. Near midnight, I stopped between towns and pulled off the highway a good distance to set up a tent-less camp. It was nearly July and the weather was favorable, praise God, because a rain shower would've decimated my gear. My funds were too limited to rent shelter. That first night on foreign soil, I ate canned food and slept under the stars. Wild beasts prowled on the rocky, grassy steppes nearby, but I only smiled with my eyes closed. The God I served was Lord over even the beasts of the field.
In the morning, I wasn't on the road an hour before a trucker stopped to give me a ride. After he admired my bike for a moment, we strapped it onto the back of his truck, along with my trailer, and I stowed my duffle bag and backpack with me in the cab. The trucker spoke only Turkic, so our communication was limited. From a picture, I learned he was a proud father of a newborn baby girl, and husband of a smiling wife as plump as a cherry.
That evening, he offered the driver's seat to me, but I flat refused. He was too drowsy to continue driving and I hadn't driven since the last car I'd stolen at age sixteen. So he pulled onto the shoulder and we both slept in the cab until morning. I won't dwell on the lack of comfort through that night, but I was happy to be back on the road once daybreak came.
The Turk stopped at the next town and I continued on my bike. It was like this for three more days. Half the time I peddled, my legs growing stronger as the soreness faded; and half the time I was a passenger—thankful for every mile I could rest. A couple of the last drivers who picked me up spoke English, and God steered the conversations in a way that I could share my testimony and purpose in Asia. Seeds were planted, and Lord willing, there will be increase.
When I finally reached the US Air Force base in Incirlik, I was weary and barely able to speak. I merely showed my passport like a backstage pass, and collapsed inside a barracks on the first bunk I noticed. It must've been someone else's bunk because in the night, men roughly moved me down a row and covered me with a blanket.
The next morning, I was as giddy as a schoolboy as I ran about the base, searching for a free ride farther east. I was willing to set down anywhere inside Mongolia. The country was three times the size of France, but I'd get to Randy eventually in the far eastern side of the country on the Kerulen River. That's what my bike was for. Anywhere there weren't roads, there were game trails, since animals outnumbered humans several times over in Mongolia. But regardless of all the sorties being flown by the Air Force, no one was flying that far east. Most were headed south to Iraq, or southeast to Afghanistan.
At the end of the day, I found myself seated on a spare tire staring at the nearest runway. I wasn't defeated, only postponed.
"Lord," I prayed aloud, "I'm certain the answer is here. You've kept me safe thus far. Please, show me what to do next."
"Who you talkin' to, boy?" a man asked.
Jumping to my feet, I turned to see a man who could've been my equal as an oiler in the belly of a Russian ship. He was in his mid-fifties with white hair totally askew and a beer belly so large, it gave me flashbacks of one of my foster parents.
"I was praying."
He eyed the sky cautiously, maybe half-expecting lightning to flash down from the overcast heavens.
"Prayin' for what?"
"A pilot."
"What kinda pilot?"
"Any kind, as long as he's headed east. Are you a mechanic?"
"Among other things. I'm a base bum. Private." He shot his thumb at the military personnel hangers. "They don't touch my plane and I don't touch theirs. Where east you goin'?"
"Mongolia."
Again, he glanced at the sky.
"And this is somethin' you prayed for? A pilot goin' to Mongolia?"
"That's right."
"How often do you get what you pray for?"
"Well . . ." I shrugged. "As long as I'm in God's will, I pray for God's will to happen, so you could say, I receive everything I pray for."
He threw his head back and laughed. I chuckled with uncertainty until he suddenly became silent.
"I suuuurely wasn't expectin' you. Come on. I've got to pick up a thousand pounds of marmot furs in Havsgol." He turned and headed away. "First time I ever been a godsend!"
But I was motionless when I shouldn't have been so faithless.
"Hovsgol! Hovsgol, Mongolia?" I yelled after him.
"None other I know of!"
His name was Rex and he was a base bum. That was about all I got out of him before he introduced me to Tiffany. Tiffany was his plane, a 1936 PBY Catalina, silver in color, and in rusty condition. Two huge propellers were mounted on the over-wing assembly with internally braced cantilever wing and retractable wingtip floats.
"She's an amphibian hack-job that doubles as a small cargo and transport plane, but she hasn't dumped me yet."
The machine was a barrel of bolts with wings, no doubt about it, but I boarded this answer to prayer with my luggage as Rex ran diagnostics. When he finally started the engines, the plane shook so badly, I put my seatbelt on before we'd even moved. I shook my head and laughed at the way God found ways to use anybody and anything—for His purpose.
"She sound a little off to you?" Rex asked me over the noise. "I jus' tuned ‘er up. Them Kurds work for pennies!"
I shrugged. If the plane's prop engines weren't tuned properly, I wasn't one to know, since I'd never flown in any type of aircraft before Tiffany. Remarkably, Rex didn't radio for any type of clearance from the tower before he taxied out onto one of the airstrips and pointed that blunt nose down the runway. He flipped a number of switches and levers, and I licked my smiling lips. Sometimes I smile when I'm nervous. Or maybe I simply didn't want to die frowning. Rex throttled us forward with a lurch. We spun sideways, backfired, then straightened out.
"Yee-haw!" Rex screamed as we flew down the tarmac and soared smoothly into the sky.
I sighed with relief and said a prayer of thanks. It was easy to trust God, but not so easy to trust God's tools—in this case, Rex and his flying boat.
*~*
Chapter 3
Pilot Rex pointed to a headset tangled up in cable at my feet. I put it on to speak to him through his own headset.
"You know, I'm flyin' at night for a reason," he said.
"I hadn't
considered it."
Gazing out the cockpit windows, I saw looming clouds rapidly approaching, and the sky was growing dark.
"China has airspace issues right now," Rex said. "As if they've got anything we want! Ha! To be safe, we'll swing north into Kazakhstan and squeak across the border with Russia."
I nodded my approval, though I could say nothing anyway. My mouth was dry as a mental picture of Mongolia's bordering countries came into mind. Deep in the Altay Mountains, snow-capped year-round, Russia and China pressed against one another, as if the land itself were trapping Mongolia from escaping their clutches. It was impossible to access Mongolia without crossing into China or Russia first—Russian Siberia on one side, Communist China on the other. But I favored neither and prayed for Mongolian soil.
The drive of the vibrating propellers was strangely hypnotizing, and I must've dozed off because I awoke to a black sky and Rex yelling into my ear through the headset.
"Cursed Kurds!" he swore. "Not now!"
Something was wrong. I checked my watch to find I'd slept for a couple hours. Rex punched one of the many dials on the dashboard until the glass broke and his hand was cut. He sucked the blood off his knuckle and growled audibly.
"What's happening?"
"My tanks didn't get topped off! My cursed needle was stuck on full. Everybody knows you gotta tap the thing a bit!"
"So, we're low on fuel? Talk to me, Rex."
"We're almost to Kazakhstan's eastern border. We don't have enough fuel to make Bulgan or even Dund-Us. It's just a question of where we want to crash."
I acknowledged the compass heading, east-by-northeast.
"What if we shoot straight east and go for Mongolia?"
"Beats goin' down in Russia with no purpose at all, but we still have to cross Chinese air space." He nodded at me confidently. "I'm game if you're game, but you better start prayin'. We still have to get over those mountains."
I faced the darkness and felt the fear press on my chest. All this way to die in a plane wreck?