Carter had removed Daedalus’ gun from his pack while waiting for Jayden. It was loaded with a full magazine. He eyed the escape route he had identified as giving them the most chance of success. The opposite shore of the lake from where they had come out of the snow featured a gentler incline up to the main mountain slope. It lay a decent distance away from the Treasure, Inc. camp, although he was sure that Daedalus would be breaking camp now that he had his timber samples (one of them, anyway), and that the map had been discovered missing. Carter was hoping that having discovered the ark, if that’s what this was, would make him care less about no longer having the map. But that didn’t seem to be the case, and he knew that even if he didn’t care about the map, Daedalus preferred that he and Jayden disappeared off the face of the Earth rather than having people walking around who knew where the Noah’s Ark find was.
This was life or death, Carter knew. And life was up that slope. It didn’t have much snow, but it had enough vegetation to offer some concealment for part of the way.
“That way.” Carter cocked his head toward the opposite slope. He didn’t want to point and risk telegraphing their plans to their adversaries, who could be observing them with binoculars. “You start running, I’ll provide cover.” He waggled the pistol. Jayden nodded and moved to a crouching position from which he could spring into a sprint like a track runner.
“Go!” Carter fired off a shot at a man visible beneath the pulley system. It was an accident, but he smiled in satisfaction nonetheless as he watched the structure fall over as his bullet severed the rope, a very lucky shot. Jayden was springing and bounding across the open shore of the lake, zigging and zagging to make an erratic course while still moving very fast. Carter blasted off two more rounds, aiming at the same general area even though he could no longer see any human targets. They had wisely moved behind cover, he decided, since he didn’t register any movement coming down the slope. Yet he knew they probably would mount an offensive soon when they saw their foes absconding with the map.
Carter maintained his post at the timber until he saw Jayden disappear into a copse of scrubby reeds at the lake’s edge, beyond which the basin sloped upward. Firing a last shot up at the downed pulley rig, he dashed across the open space as Jayden had done. He was nearly to the same vegetation Jayden had disappeared into when he saw the dirt kick up in front of him and felt something sharp slice his right cheek. He didn’t stop moving, and a few seconds later had made the plant cover where he dove to the ground and crawled forward, looking for Jayden.
“Over here!” he heard his friend snarl. Carter felt his cheek and his fingers came away warm and sticky. He figured he’d been hit with a fragmented piece of rock the bullet had struck when it hit the ground in front of him. Close call. It seemed like the longer he chased after the ark, the closer and more frequent those calls got. Was it really worth it? He knew he had done his job and then some. He could easily have reported back to the client what had happened on the Titanic site and walked away on good terms, with the job no doubt satisfactorily completed. But that would be taking the easy way out, and that’s not what Carter Hunt did. Noah’s Ark, if it was real, and certainly the map salvaged from the Titanic, belonged in the public eye for all to see, not under the auspices of some private collector like Daedalus to sell to the highest bidder, never to be seen again. No, that was simply unacceptable if he had anything to say about it.
Carter resolved to see this assignment through as he belly-crawled through the brush toward Jayden’s voice. He heard and felt another bullet smack into the ground somewhere off to his right, but it was pretty far away and it was clear that they were shooting blind into the vegetation. Still, blind or not, being shot at was not something to take lightly, and so Carter picked up his wormy pace, slithering along even faster.
“This way!” Jayden called out to him through the tall reeds just as Carter saw him, higher up and to the left. He low-crawled the rest of the way to him, careful not to bend the reeds too much and give away their position. Carter pushed his way through. A little bit farther on and the ground started to slope up so that it was no longer flat, but not as steep as the path they’d taken on the way down.
They reached the edge of the reeds where there was a small clearing, maybe twenty feet across to where the next stand of vegetation began. From their current position they could not see through the plants that concealed them to monitor what was happening at Daedalus’ camp.
“How you holding up?” Jayden asked Carter, noting the blood on his face and Daedalus’ gun still in his hand. “We’re going to have to move really quick across the open space here, but if we can get across that, we’ve got pretty solid vegetation cover most of the way up.”
“I’m ready. As soon as we think it’s clear.” Carter dared to stick his head out of the reeds and look to the right. “Can’t see around this bush.”
“You want to both go at once or one at a time?”
“I think both at once, because if we go one a time, they could see the first one with not enough time to shoot, but then have a heads up on where to aim by the time the next guy goes.”
“Okay, so I’ll go first!” Jayden grinned, his infectious humor an attempt at lightening the mood in what was otherwise a serious situation for them. Being pursued by killers, lightly wounded, with a bare minimum of gear between the two of them in a snow-covered mountain wilderness, sometimes called for a mood-lifter.
“Let’s both go at once, fast as we can, straight shot, no zig-zagging. Should take less than five seconds.”
“Yeah but remember, we don’t want to go smashing into the bushes on the other side, because if the tops of them move too much, they might see it.”
“Right. Ease in gently.”
“That’s what she s—”
“Jayden, seriously. Is there ever a time — never mind. Let’s do this.“ He and Jayden crept to the very edge of the reeds and then listened for any sign of their pursuers. A steady wind began to blow, making it more difficult to hear over the rustling reeds, but also making their own movements less noticeable. Hearing no human activity, Carter gave a countdown from three. On one, they raced across the small clearing to the scrubby vegetation on the other side, both of them reaching it at the same moment. Carter planted a foot down hard right before reaching the tall plants, turned himself sideways, and sort of fell into the plant growth on his side, landing on the ground in between woody stalks. Jayden performed a different set of maneuvers that were equally as effective, and in a minute the two of them were on their feet, able to stand at only a slight stoop while still being surrounded by plant life.
Jayden pointed up and to their left. “I eyeballed it just before we went in. That’s our course.”
Carter unslung the remaining strap off his pack and set it on the ground. “Hold on. I have something that’ll help.” He dug around in the pack for a few seconds. “Things got a little jostled around in here, but here it is…”
“A little?” Jayden said. “More like put to the shake test.”
Carter pulled out a simple plastic compass. He opted for plastic because of its light weight compared to metal, with the durability not all that far behind. “Let’s take an actual bearing. We can’t afford to head in the wrong direction. We need to get out of this engagement zone ASAP.”