by Fritz Galt
Even if they reached others, they couldn’t drink the water. Herders and their livestock were sick.
If they were stuck on that mountain, they would be stranded in deep snow. There was no phone coverage to call for help. The car, with its feeble heater, was slowly dying. Technology had become virtually useless.
He had a physician, a scientist, two peaceniks, a blubbering environmentalist, a crazed Formula One wannabe, and a diplomat and his loony wife. That was his crew. It was man pitted against nature. And nature had all the advantages.
He had no idea how people survived in Mongolia, but man was a stranger in the wilderness, not the other way around.
Somehow, the van made it down off the mountain and the headlights showed flatlands all around.
And nestled up under the steep hillside, its back to the north wind, sat a single family ger.
But was anybody home?
Jake picked up the scent of something burning. “What’s that smell?”
“Burning dung,” Nicole said. “Someone’s home.”
The van sputtered and stalled, and the grandfather removed the key. Jake doubted the vehicle would ever start again.
The ger door opened, and a man emerged carrying a lantern and a large-bore hunting rifle. He wore an olive-colored garment shaped like a tunic. He had a rope for a belt and a fedora for a hat. With his fierce expression, he resembled a modern-day Genghis Khan.
As their diplomatic and negotiating team, Matt and Nicole jumped out to identify themselves.
The hermit’s wind-burnt face looked older than his spry body would suggest. His look was suspicious, but as they talked, he gradually warmed to them. Mostly he appeared surprised to see anyone stop by.
Jake jumped out to listen and make his presence felt.
Matt introduced Jake to the man.
The guy said something serious, then held up a hand to the snowflakes that danced around him.
Nicole translated. “He said, ‘Good men come in the rain.’”
It wasn’t exactly rain, but Jake got the point and appreciated it. He also took it as a sign of welcome.
“He’s a park ranger,” Nicole explained.
A ranger and not a herder? They must have entered the Strictly Protected Area.
“He tracks wildlife and wards off poachers,” she explained.
As she talked, Jake studied the accoutrements of the ranger’s ger. There was a solar panel set up on a pole, a satellite dish on another pole, and a motorbike leaning against the dwelling.
“Does he have any means of communication?” he asked.
Matt stepped in and posed the question.
The ranger said, “Tiim.”
Jake knew that word. “Has he seen police today?”
Matt asked the ranger, who shook his head.
Maybe Werner Hoffkeit had followed through and gotten the Mongolian police to stand down.
“But he heard about you on the radio,” Matt said.
That stopped Jake cold. “In a good way?”
“Not good,” he said.
Then Jake sensed movement in the snow behind him. Maybe the police had been lying in wait. He heard the patter of feet.
The ranger raised the muzzle of his rifle. He crouched down and set the lantern in the snow. Then he put the butt of the gun to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.
Jake raised both hands. “We come in peace,” he said.
The rifle gave off a boom, and the bullet cracked near Jake.
There was a gasp behind him, then the sound of a body falling to the snow.
He looked around.
The ranger had just shot a wolf. The rest of the pack turned and fled.
Jake’s shock turned to instant relief, and gratitude.
“May we come inside?” he asked.
The ranger waved for all the visitors to enter his humble abode.
“’We come in peace,’” Nicole repeated under her breath. “This isn’t some movie.”
Courtney helped Bill Frost out of the car. Tracy stepped out, tranquilizer gun at the ready. Nils brought his medical kit. And Eve gave the driver a hand closing the vehicle’s doors.
The park ranger seemed overwhelmed to see so many people all at once.
There was a warm glow inside the ger, and Jake became an instant fan of burning dung. He advanced on the glowing stove. But the ranger had other ideas. He nabbed Jake and motioned for him to take his parka off. Then the guy took it outside.
“What was that all about?” Jake asked.
“You reek,” Nicole said. “He’ll provide you with a new coat.”
Only then did Jake realize how dangerous it was to wear a gasoline-soaked coat in a felt enclosure heated by an open flame.
Without being told, the grandfather removed his sweater and left it outside.
When his eyes were accustomed to the brightness of the ger’s interior, with a fire in the stove and the lantern set on a table, Jake finally spotted a young woman standing against the far wall. Her face was gaunt and her eyes watchful, but she seemed barely able to contain herself.
“Tiim,” Jake told her.
“What?” Nicole said.
“I don’t know why I just said that,” he said. “It was the first word that popped out.”
“Sain baina uu,” Nicole told the woman.
Oh, right. That was what the embassy’s operator said.
“Hello. My name is Saran,” the young Mongolian said in a gentle voice. “I am the daughter.”
“You speak English,” Jake said.
“What’s so surprising about that?” Nicole snapped. “The Peace Corps has been teaching English in Mongolia for twenty-five years.”
Now he had managed to offend everyone.
A quick look around the ger revealed several carcasses hanging from meat hooks and three electronic devices: a transistor radio on the table, a flat screen TV against one wall, and a two-way radio sitting on a dresser.
“Does the ranger know about the manhunt?” he asked Matt.
“He mentioned it.”
“Does he know who we are?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“What are the police saying about us?”
“The national police have a warrant for our arrest.”
“Who, specifically, does ‘our arrest’ refer to?”
“You, Nils, and Tracy,” Matt said.
“Do they know about Bill Frost?” he asked.
“Bill Frost?” Saran, the young Mongolian, cried, suddenly part of the conversation.
Jake turned to her.
She was looking at Bill, who sat with his leg up on a bed.
“You are Bill Frost?” she asked.
The muscular television celebrity looked around at her, an inquiring and defensive look on his face.
“I love you,” she said.
She pointed at the television.
“National Geographic channel is my favorite.”
While the popular preservationist and his newfound fan got to know each other, Nils pulled Jake aside.
“We need to fix that ugly bruise.”
“What ugly bruise?”
Nils touched Jake’s forehead, and he leapt back.
“What was that?”
Nil opened his medical kit. “That’s how you cracked the windshield.”
Jake felt his forehead. It was wet and sticky over one eyebrow. Then he looked at his fingers. They were bloody.
“Yeah. We’d better fix it,” he agreed.
With a white bandage wrapped around his head, Jake looked like an escapee from a psychiatric ward.
But what did appearances matter among friends? Soon he was up and engaging Matt in conversation.
“What does the park ranger know about the manhunt?” he asked.
There was little privacy in a round tent the size of an interrogation room, but the others were occupied watching Bill Frost’s show on Antarctica.
“He knows what he hears,” the tall young diplomat
said, leaning close to discuss the topic with Jake. “He has a long-range, two-way radio and he monitors the police airwaves. They spotted our headlights on the mountain and are trying to track us down.”
“Hoffkeit!” Jake seethed.
“The FBI Director? What does he have to do with this?”
“Either he didn’t call off the CIA, or the CIA didn’t listen to him.”
Jake thought about their precarious situation. Here they were in a ger owned by a man who knew about the manhunt. It was only a matter of time before the ranger figured out that they were the fugitives. How long would his hospitality last?
As if listening to them, the two-way radio suddenly crackled with another transmission. A voice came into the room loud and clear.
Jake had heard that voice before. “Detective Bold.”
The park ranger was listening to the receiver with a concerned look.
“What’s he saying?” Jake asked his diplomat in residence.
“Police are fanning out in the area. He wants anyone to report the sighting of foreigners.”
“This is a huge park,” Jake said hopefully. “The size of West Virginia.”
“He’s talking about the area around the Altan Tolgoi Mine.”
That seemed to reveal something about the Mongolian’s true concerns. The mine was Detective Bold’s “Strictly Protected Area.”
“How close is the mine?”
Matt, not the expert on directions, put the question to the ranger.
“He says we’re thirty-five kilometers away.”
Jake calculated the square area. That made for a large perimeter for the police to patrol. Still… “I have to keep moving,” he said.
“We just got here.”
He needed to get a jump on the police and reach the mine first. “I’ll have to expropriate the guy’s motorbike.”
“Don’t tell our host that.”
“Matt, we’re way past diplomatic protocol. It’s time to take matters into our own hands.”
He had Cal Frost to stop, a plot to expose, and Amber Jones, one intrepid reporter, to rescue.
He stood up. “I’m taking the bike.”
At that, the young woman tore her eyes away from the screen and looked at him. “Do you need a ride?” she offered in her sweet voice.
“Do you know how to get to the mine?”
“Of course.”
“Then let’s ride.”
The park ranger was willing to lend him a deel, the Mongolian outerwear that was perfectly designed for winter conditions. But he was less willing to lend him his daughter.
“Tell him I’ll send both Saran and the motorbike back,” Jake said.
But there really was no discussion. He was taking the motorbike.
The young woman stepped outside to warm up the bike, and Matt leaned over Jake by the doorway.
“What’s the plan?” Matt asked under his breath.
Jake looked around the ger. Bill Frost was laid up with a possible fracture and still watching himself on TV, all the while entertaining Eve and Courtney with tales of his adventures. Meanwhile, Nicole’s host grandfather was stoking the fire, and the two scientists had cornered Nicole to translate questions for the ranger.
Jake listened in on their conversation.
“With the desert drying up due to climate change,” Nicole interpreted the Mongolian ranger, “the wild game must risk congregating around the few springs still available. He has found many wild camels and Przewalski’s horses killed by wolves that lurk around the springs.”
“But isn’t the water in the springs contaminated?” Professor Tracy Woolman asked.
Nicole translated the question.
The man’s response was accompanied by a sour look. “‘It’s a good year for vultures.’”
It only served to remind Jake of how much was at stake.
“The plan,” he told Matt, “is to bear witness to what’s going on down here. In the morning, you need to refuel the van, get it up and running, and bring everyone down to the mine where Nils and Tracy can take more samples.”
“What do you expect them to find?”
“I don’t know. But part of the mine is within the national reserve. And that area has been blurred out on Google Earth. So I looked into it and found out that according to U.S. geospatial imagery, there are four large rectangular bodies of water inside the park. Which doesn’t sound natural to me.”
Matt, the officer in charge of Environment, Science, Technology, and Health, agreed.
“So what’s your plan?” Matt inquired, concern written on his young face.
“Mine? Tonight, I need to find Amber. She might be in the middle of those lakes, unless Cal Frost has gotten to her first. Only when he’s behind bars will we find out who and what’s causing all this mayhem.”
“And what if you don’t make it to the mine?”
“Mr. Justice, I’ve crossed oceans and deserts and overcome enormous obstacles to get to this point. Don’t tell me I can’t go another thirty-five kilometers to that mine.”
“I don’t doubt your resolve,” Matt said.
“What worries me,” Jake said, “is how we’re going to get everyone out of here. There’s no means of quick evacuation.”
To this, Matt seemed to have already contemplated a solution. “The ambassador has an airplane.”
“That’s interesting,” Jake said.
“And there’s a paved runway at the mine.”
“Go on.”
“It’s highly unusual, since the plane is strictly for his use.”
“How many passengers can it hold?”
“I believe eight.”
“That’s big enough to exfiltrate our team,” Jake said. “But not big enough to bring in reinforcements and extract everyone.”
“What do you mean ‘bring in reinforcements?’”
“Don’t you have marines at the embassy?”
“They’re strictly off limits.”
“Okay, are there any military forces stationed nearby?”
“You’re talking about bases in Japan and South Korea.”
That shot down any hope of armed support.
Matt seemed disturbed. “Why are you talking about the military?”
“Because I’m afraid this is a very big problem that requires a very big solution.”
“Jake, we’re not going to start World War III. Do your recon, and we’ll leave under diplomatic cover.”
Jake was beginning to see the wisdom of keeping the operation small. But still, it might be messy. “Can you ask the ambassador?”
“I’ll try.” Matt began by checking his phone. “But I don’t have a signal.”
“Then get on that radio and find a way through to the ambassador. We need his airplane pronto. I’m going in.”
With that, Jake placed his fur hat tenderly on top of his bandage and ducked out of the ger.
Saran was just pulling up.
He swung a leg over the back of the motorbike.
“Saran,” he said as they got underway. “That’s a pretty name.”
“It’s Sarangerel in full. My name means ‘Moonlight.’”
He looked up. Like a friendly galactic neighbor, the full moon dominated the horizon. He could discern every detail etched in its glowing face. Then he held on tight as they roared off into its light.
Through the loose strands of Saran’s long black hair that flapped against his cheeks, Jake learned about where the two were headed.
She told him that Altan Tolgoi was named after a nearby peak. But he should not expect any hills. Instead, they would see a giant hole in the ground.
Each work shift at the operation employed over a thousand miners, truck drivers, and mechanics. There were three shifts and workers flew down from Ulaanbaatar every two weeks in continuous rotation.
“What do they mine?” he asked.
“Copper and gold,” she said. “Valuable metals.”
“How do you know so much about the mine?”
“Everybody knows about Altan Tolgoi. It’s one of the biggest mines in the world. Besides, I go there once or twice a week.”
“What for?”
“For food and gas.”
“Do you drink the water there?”
“Some of the miners do to save money. But I buy bottled water from China.”
Jake had pictured a lonely encampment with a few mistreated miners, but he was slowly getting a much different impression.
“Most of the local herders have moved out of the area,” she continued. “The dust is bad, grass doesn’t grow, their hair and teeth fall out, and the mine has desecrated the sacred land.”
He could already see a yellow cloud begin to blot out the moon. Arc lights peered into the workings far below. And the headlights and taillights of over twenty monster trucks came and went along a single strip of road. As Saran indicated, the mine was in full operation twenty-four hours a day.
But that wasn’t the only light he saw. With pulsing red and blue strobes, two police cars were converging on their motorbike at breakneck speed.
“Turn off your headlight,” Jake said.
Saran turned off the headlight.
It resulted in a far bumpier ride, but at least they were less visible to the cops that came at them from opposite directions.
“Can you go any faster?” he urged.
It was a Chinese-made, 150cc Mustang Shineray motorbike, and they couldn’t expect much more speed.
As it was, Saran was pushing the speedometer up to the seventy km/h mark, and that was all they needed to outrace a couple of low-slung cop cars built for highway driving.
They neared the arc lights with the two police cars in hot pursuit.
“Where do I go?” Saran asked. “Should I head for the gers?”
“What gers?”
“Where the workers live. That’s where I get my food. It’s easier to hide there.”
But that wasn’t where Jake wanted to go. He wanted to head directly for the rectangular lakes where Amber had made her last, aborted attempt to place a call. A call to him.
Then a pair of bullets crackled overhead.
The police were firing at them from both directions.
“Head for the ger camp,” he said.
The two of them lay low on the seat despite the rough terrain.
The vast wasteland of the mine stretched out before them. As far as he could see through the cloud of dust, huge Komatsu trucks descended thousands of feet into the pit and hauled out tons of giant rock. The mine looked like a child’s sandbox, except that the excavation seemed to extend forever.