by Fritz Galt
Every second that passed heightened Jake’s anxiety. What excuse could they give for their party wandering around the Mongolian countryside?
Finally the officer reappeared and stared at Matt.
Matt stared back.
“Uh,” Jake said.
“Yes?”
“He lifted the gate for you.”
“Oh.” Matt slowly moved out of the shade of the booth and back onto the open road.
And in that way, they entered the land of camels and dinosaurs.
One more sick cow crossed in front of them, and Matt had to wait.
Animals ruled the road like the sacred cows of India.
Only, these were dying before their very eyes.
The Land Cruiser got back to speed, and the passengers in the rear seats sat back in preparation for the next long stretch of road.
Along the way, utility poles held up telephone and power lines for the next hotbed of civilization.
About twenty minutes later, Matt pulled the car onto the gravel shoulder and stopped.
Jake scanned the flat horizon and saw only an empty stretch of road. “What is it?”
“Time to check on the horse.”
Jake was confused.
“Otherwise known as a rest stop.”
The men walked to the front of the car while the women found a boulder in the gulley to the rear.
Even though the wind had a bite, sunshine more than compensated for it, and Jake was able to take off his gloves to do his business.
“Shame to waste all this liquid,” Nils said.
A lone pickup sped past with two horses peeking out of the flatbed. Off to market with them, Jake imagined.
“Lots of speeders on this stretch,” he commented.
“I’d say that truck was going a good 100 miles per hour,” Matt said. “Drinking and driving is a big problem out here. Mongolians can’t tolerate alcohol well.”
“Like Native Americans?” Jake asked.
Matt nodded.
“Probably due to a genetic polymorphism of the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme,” Nils said.
“Not many cops out here,” Jake said.
“No cops at all,” Matt said.
“Not to mention ambulances,” Nils said.
“No hospitals for hundreds of miles,” Matt said.
“Ja. You crash, you die,” Nils said.
Matt turned to Jake.
“Watch it, bud.”
“Sorry.” Matt turned back. “But I think you may have a point.”
Jake wasn’t aware of any points.
“There aren’t many police cars,” Matt said, “but there was that checkpoint back there.”
“Do you think they would have caught Bill there?”
“Or, he would have avoided it.” Matt zipped up. “How sure are you that the van we passed wasn’t his?”
Jake finished and zipped up, too. “I checked the license plate.”
“What number were you looking for?”
Jake wiped his hands on the back of his pants and pulled the phone out of his pocket. His latest email from Supriya Rao read, “License number 0859 UNH.”
Matt thought about it, his eyes on the cloudless horizon. “UNH? I don’t know that one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every aimag has its own Cyrillic letters, and Ulaanbaatar’s letters look like YB or YH followed by a third letter. I’ve never seen a UN.”
“Wait a second,” Jake said. “Did you say ‘Cyrillic?’”
Matt looked at him. “Yeah. I assumed you don’t speak Russian.”
“What’s UNH in Cyrillic?” Jake asked.
“That would be YHX.”
“Back in the car,” Jake said. “That was it back there.”
“What? We passed Bill’s van?”
“Yes. The license plate on the disabled Russian van read YHX. His driver must have translated that into the English sounds UNH.”
“Ladies,” Matt summoned the women. “We have just found Bill’s car.”
Strangely, there were no cheers from behind the boulder. Jake would have to explain later.
Rather than pull a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane and head back north, Matt had other ideas.
“Buckle up,” he said. “We’ll return on a back road in case the police are following us.”
But there were no back roads.
He pulled the front wheels off the shoulder and they dropped into a field of stones.
“Matthew!” Eve shouted angrily from the back seat. “What are you doing?”
He was too busy steering to answer, and Jake was too busy looking for a handhold. The vehicle jolted and shimmied. Jake found himself bouncing off his seat and landing in a different position with every bump.
He looked back. The scientists were peeling themselves off the ceiling.
Matt had to make his own trail through the flat terrain. He avoided fixed rocks and weeds that stood out in mounds like sagebrush. Out the back window, they kicked up a cloud of dust.
The clear air was suddenly pierced with the wail of a police siren. Were they being followed?
Matt slowed down and edged into a deep wash.
The siren grew louder as the police car sped closer.
There was a narrow vehicle track between boulders, and Matt nearly scraped sides.
The police car couldn’t have traveled across the desert at that speed, yet the sound grew louder.
With the Land Cruiser pointed straight down, Jake felt about to fall through the windscreen.
The siren was ugly and screeching, designed to clear all traffic out of its way.
Matt worked the car back and forth until his tailgate was out of sight.
The siren was so loud it seemed to be on top of them.
Matt made a tight corner, then released the brake and rolled silently into the middle of the dry riverbed.
Twenty-foot cliffs on both sides muffled the sound of the police car. But the siren hung in the air like a vulture circling overhead.
Matt turned off the engine and set the parking break.
The passengers listened wordlessly.
The siren didn’t change pitch or direction. Where was it coming from?
Jake held his breath and stared at the lucky charm that hung from the mirror. If survival meant joining that religion, he would.
Then, imperceptibly at first, the siren began to diminish. The cliffs echoed the sound from a different angle. The cop had sped past on the highway and apparently didn’t see them creep off into the desert.
But that didn’t mean Jake and company were out of danger.
After driving awhile, the policeman might realize that the Land Cruiser had turned off the road. Would the cop remember the cloud of dust?
They had to move on quickly.
“This might be a good time to tell you,” Matt said once they could no longer hear the siren. “I have no sense of direction.”
Had Jake heard correctly? “What?”
“I never learned how to use a map,” Matt said. “I know it’s a terrible liability for someone in the Foreign Service, but I don’t know my east from my west.”
How could that be? “How were you able to pick me up at the train station? How could you direct us through Ulaanbaatar?”
“Landmarks,” Matt said. “I operate by landmarks.”
“Some people use place cells instead of grid cells and head-direction cells,” Nils said. “Very common.”
“Especially when you grow up with GPS tracking devices that tell you which way to turn,” Matt said.
“Would you mind telling us what’s going on?” Tracy inquired.
“While I mosey back this way,” Matt said, looking at Jake, “can you tell them about Bill?”
It was a long story, and it was quickly growing late with the low angle of the sun throwing the cliff’s shadow into sharp relief. But he needed to bring people up to speed.
As the car crept along trying not to kick up too much dust,
Jake spoke. He began by explaining who the National Geographic TV star was and how Bill Frost brought attention to environmental issues around the world.
“I’ve seen him lecture,” Tracy said. “He’s a total showboat.”
Then Jake recounted the initial news of Bill’s death by “homicide.” He got briefly into the Russian and Chinese dispute over Bill’s death, and the United States Government trying to stop Jake’s investigation.
“But what environmental crisis was he responding to in Mongolia?” Nils asked.
“We don’t know,” Jake admitted.
“Is it the health crisis?” Nils wondered.
“It could be. After all, he did tell my girlfriend Amber Jones, who is a journalist working on this story, that ‘lots of lives were being lost every day’ due to this, and that she’d get the ‘scoop of the decade.’ But we also know it has something to do with the mining industry.”
He could tell them about Cal Frost, with Kingston-Maes’s knowledge and approval, taking documents from Bill Frost’s house, then following Bill to Mongolia after trying to murder Jake and Bonnie. But he didn’t want to add more fear to the mix.
“What was Bogd Khan Mountain all about?” Tracy asked.
“That’s where Bill was last seen alive,” Jake said. “He probably drove that white van we saw before the police checkpoint. Now we’re driving back to pick up the trail.”
He shot Matt a look to explain the off-road portion of their trip.
“It looks like Bill may have been scared off by the traffic checkpoint,” Matt said. “So he stopped his van just shy of the aimag border. He probably wandered into the desert in search of a way around the checkpoint and then continued on his way to his ultimate destination.”
“Matthew! Why are we here?”
“Eve, dear, we were kicking up too much dust. If the police were looking for us, they’d see our cloud of dust.”
“Why are the police looking for us?”
“Eve, they’re trying to stop the search for Bill Frost and, apparently, stop the WHO and CDC from investigating.”
“Let’s find this Bill Frost and go home,” she said.
Nils objected. “We can’t go home without studying the outbreak.”
“I’m hoping…” Jake said, then hesitated. Was he working on pure theory? Was he ready to operationalize his idea? He closed his eyes and spoke. “I’m sure that once we find Bill Frost, we’ll learn the cause of the outbreak.”
“You heard the lady,” Nils said quietly. “Let’s find Bill Frost.”
The drive along the bottom of the riverbed would take a long time, and night was approaching fast.
They had to both pick up Bill Frost’s trail and find a place for the night.
Matt must have been contemplating the same subject. “Where do you figure Bill went?”
Jake thought about the abandoned Russian van back on the highway. “My guess is that Bill, and perhaps his lady friend if she didn’t dump him, either hitchhiked or headed out on foot away from the highway in order to avoid the checkpoint.”
“Let’s take the hitchhiking option first,” Matt said. “Which direction would they have headed?”
“Looks like there are only two directions,” Jake said. “Due north and due south. He was escaping the north and heading south.”
“…which meant going through the checkpoint?” Matt asked.
“Correct. My guess is that he’s out here in the wilderness somewhere making his way south, by hook or by crook.”
“You mean by foot or by caravan.”
Jake looked around the darkening desert. Yes, those would be the two options.
Matt turned his headlights on and finally found an incline where he could pull out of the riverbed.
“This could be dangerous,” he announced. “Everybody get out of the car and meet me at the top.”
Jake opened his door and began the steep climb up the dusty slope. The others followed him in the frozen darkness.
The first half minute outside the warm car didn’t feel so bad to Jake. He could handle the cold without hat or gloves. But by the time he reached the windy top, he had long since changed his mind. It was frigid, and a blustery gale nearly knocked him into the north pasture. How did Mongolians survive? He wanted back in the car.
While Matt pushed the maneuverability and horsepower of the vehicle to its limits, Jake squinted to keep the dust out of his eyes and scanned the horizon for signs of life. He could see no dwellings, no fires, no lights. A howling blackness was falling over the countryside. In the last glimmer of twilight, Matt finally urged the car out of the ravine that had hidden them so well, and everyone stormed back inside.
But where would they go?
They had followed the wash back north to pick up the trail. But were they far enough north? They didn’t want to head back to the road and run into the police checkpoint.
Matt was busy looking for landmarks. “It looks like there’s nothing out here,” he concluded.
He was no help.
“I’d go straight ahead until we run into somebody,” Jake said, more afraid of police than wilderness.
The interior of the car was filled with prayerful silence as Matt followed his headlights.
After half an hour of steady, but spine-realigning progress, they joined up with a dirt track. Jake didn’t like the idea of taking a well-traveled route where they might run into authorities, but the chances of seeing anybody seemed remote.
There were no lights ahead. Just hoofprints in the dust.
“Where did you get that?” Tracy asked from the back seat.
“When we got out of the car,” Eve said.
Jake had no idea what they were talking about. “What is it?”
She handed a heavy round rock to the front seat. “It’s a dinosaur egg.”
They drove on the dirt track for half an hour, passing the fossilized egg around as a diversion.
Jake kept his eyes peeled for a warm place to spend the night. Finally he spotted what could be their salvation.
“Looks like a ger,” he said.
Etched against the backdrop of stars, glowing embers rose from the chimney pipe of a round white tent.
A cheer went up in the rear of the vehicle, and Jake pounded their diplomatic driver on the back. Only then did he realize how tense Matt was. His shoulder muscles were like marble.
“Where are we?” Eve asked.
Her husband sighed. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
As they pulled up to the solitary ger, Matt voiced his concerns. “No outbuildings. Probably a nomad. But no dogs or horses. Strange. Be prepared to be met. We need to give them a present.”
Jake checked his pockets. He still had dollars, which were all but useless in the desert.
“Perfume anybody?” Matt asked. “Potato chips? A bottle of vodka?”
No response.
“A flashlight? Some tools?”
“How about the egg,” Nils offered.
“No,” Eve said.
“Yes,” Matt said. “But only if necessary.”
Eve’s silence meant she was probably directing bad thoughts toward her husband.
The headlights fell on a neatly stacked pile of wood and a painted door with a curvy red-and-blue design.
Jake didn’t know what to expect. In the back of his mind, he worried that a Mongol warrior might charge out brandishing a longbow. He removed his gloves and reached for his handgun.
Someone did emerge from the doorway. But it wasn’t a warrior.
It was a tall blonde in a bathrobe.
“What in the world?” Jake said.
Suddenly Matt was thrown into hysterics. He laughed so hard his whole body shook. “‘Here is a rock,’” he quoted from A Bug’s Life. “‘Hey, what’s with the rock?’ ‘It must be an ant thing.’”
He was lost in convulsions of laughter.
Jake put on his gloves and studied the stately young woman in fluffy slippers. “Who is that?”<
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Matt finally regained his composure. “Thank God for the Peace Corps!”
Chapter 11
Wednesday
The next morning, Jake woke up feeling rested. He opened an eye and saw his companions sleeping in a circle inside the chilly ger. Along with the three beds lining the boiled wool walls, there was a woven tapestry, a chest of drawers, and half a horse carcass. In the middle of the tent straddled by two poles that held up the roof sat a cold Franklin stove, a table, and stools.
Jake felt a rare moment of peace in the round tent with its cosmic simplicity.
He slipped out of bed and put on his coat and boots.
When he stepped outside, he was met by a bright blue sky and the distant fragrance of manure.
Cows walked in a long line across a distant hill. The ger’s entrance faced south, and the sun was full on his face. In his imagination, he traced the low arc it would make across the sky. It would result in few hours of direct sunlight, but long hours of twilight.
He noticed a slick yellow patch just underfoot at the ger entrance. Then he recalled having to relieve himself in the middle of the night, and remembering too late to aim away from the wind.
He wasn’t made for this life. He didn’t have the endurance for harsh living conditions. All he had was appreciation.
He was a country boy at heart. But when he looked around and saw that the ground was more dirt than plants, and camel fodder was the only vegetation, he wondered how far his Boy Scout skills and FBI Academy training could get him.
The landscape was absolutely empty. The nearest neighbor might be twenty miles away. There was a road, the dirt track that had brought them there. Yet he heard no sound of engines in the brittle stillness.
He did, however, hear someone rustling inside the felt structure. He stepped aside.
Courtney Appleton ducked out. Young and leggy, she stood up straight and closed the creaking door behind her.
“Everybody still asleep?” he asked his hostess.
She nodded with a smile. “I’m not used to all the company.”
But she did have enough beds for everyone to pair off and sleep in. Unfortunately, Jake had drawn the Swedish doctor as his bedmate.
He looked at the bleak horizon. “Why is your ger all alone?” he asked.
Everyone had introduced themselves the night before, but conversation had been limited to practical questions: what to eat, who should feed the stove, and of course who shared what bed.