“Here. But that thing and one pistol against whatever they have, I’m guessing three pistols and—”
Carter made several quick cuts into the tarp with the knife and handed it back to Jayden. Then he threaded the rope through the new cuts he’d made. The entire assembly he’d just worked on almost blew away when he tried to shake it out and open it up. But he had it by both ends of the rope, which pulled it together sort of like a jellyfish bell.
And then the first gunshot rang out.
“Times up, Carter, what’s our move?” Jayden answered the round with one of his own fired into the foliage, where the Treasure, Inc. team was just now emerging.
Carter tossed the nylon sheet up into the air and let the wind fill it out, expanding it to a full form that was constrained by the ropes Carter had woven into it. He held the trailing end of the rope while the tarp started to take off into the air.
“Go fly a kite! That’s your response?” Jayden said angrily.
“Here, take this, wind it around your left hand so you can still shoot. Don’t let go of it or you’ll be left behind and there won’t be anything I can do. Here it goes!”
Jayden knew from past experience that when Carter had a plan, it didn’t always seem to make sense but that it was usually best to go with it. Now, facing a gun battle against three angry black market antiquities dealers who would prefer he had never existed, Jayden took the end of the rope and wrapped it around his left wrist a few times, then gripped the end with his left hand, so that he could let it unravel if he needed to but it couldn’t accidentally slip out. Then he aimed the gun toward the oncoming adversaries while Carter finished grappling with his odd construction.
Carter tossed the material into the air as another Treasure, Inc. gun blast went off. This time the wind caught the expanded surface area of the contained tarpaulin and lifted Carter a little into the air, allowing the bullet to smash into the rock he had had his right foot on only a moment earlier.
“Whoa!” Jayden wasn’t expecting the sudden acceleration as the wind filled the tarp and began pushing it along like a sail. Unlike sailing, though, he was being dragged along the ground, ankles bashing into raised boulders which he couldn’t look out for since he was still aiming the gun at the oncoming pursuers. “We’re sailing, Carter, but you forgot the boat, and the bikini babes and the margaritas. This cruise really leaves a lot to be desired!”
He fired a round as Daedalus came out of the bushes, the only one of his team wearing a woodland camo pattern jacket. “Smug jackass!” he yelled as he was dragged up the hill. It was uncomfortable going, but he had to admit that it was saving his life at this point, as they were moving along at a good clip, faster than a human could run on the uneven, sloped ground.
Whether Carter could control where they were going was another matter, but right now neither of them cared as long as they were being taken away from their assailants. Daedalus’ crew shot more bullets at them, but they were out of range and landed harmlessly into the dirt behind them.
They were being blown in the same direction as the wind, which was sideways along the face of the mountain. But Carter found that by pulling the rope in his left hand (he had another in his right) that he could somewhat steer the jerry-rigged parachute. He pulled the ‘chute down to the left and the wind filled it at an angle, blowing them slightly up slope as well as laterally. He faced the direction in which they travelled, while Jayden faced the rear so as to monitor and defend from their aggressors.
The wind kept up its blustery force, whipping them along the mountain while their pursuers fell more and more behind. Jayden would kick off the ground when he got solid footing, and this would temporarily increase their speed slightly while he was airborne. After a while Carter started doing it too, and when they were both airborne at the same time, their speed increased dramatically for those few seconds. Carter continued “steering” the parachute, and after a while they found that they had made their way significantly up the mountain. Jayden looked down on the Treasure, Inc. group, and saw them as small dots on the barren slope, hopelessly far away now. They could still see them with binoculars, but there was no way they could catch up.
And still they raced along the ground with the wind. Jayden even let out a little whoop, like a surfer catching an awesome wave, so caught up was he in the exhilaration of not just being alive, but of having fun doing it. But even as he was dragged up the face of the holy volcanic mountain, Carter couldn’t help but think of the sacred document stashed away in the backpack that was still slung over one shoulder.
The hidden lines, the fact that it had led to a seemingly unknown artifact site with timbers that appeared at least superficially as though they could belong to a boat as old as the fabled Noah’s Ark. It was all so heady, so enrapturing, that as he stumble-dragged along the ground, pushed by a fierce high-altitude wind, he considered that if he were to die, if a rogue round from Daedalus’ gun were to find his skull, or if the winds became too unpredictable and he was carried aloft in the chute and dashed apart on the side of the mountain somewhere, that he would still be happy with his life and, indeed, with this Omega Team mission. He felt that he was doing what he was born to do and that calmed his demeanor, made his outlook more open and accepting of different possibilities and outcomes…
“Hey Carter, really you run a great parasailing operation, but I feel like I’ve more than got my money’s worth at this point and I’d like to come down now, okay? Don’t worry, you’ll get my five stars on Yelp all the way!”
Carter bounced out of his introspective thoughts and scanned the mountain ahead. They had reached a plateau of sorts, snow and even ice-covered by the looks of it. The terrain changed here, and the mountain became to Carter’s eyes more mountain-like and less giant sloping hill, which could describe much of Mount Ararat. But this section appeared to have an edge they were headed straight for that for all he knew could be a steep drop-off. He lacked confidence in his spur-of-the-moment constructed parasail that he would be able to stop them in time if he waited much longer so he pulled hard left on the cord to send them into a hard right turn, up the mountain. This took them further into the middle of the plateau, which was very rocky and spotted with ice patches.
Carter eyed the landscape up ahead and saw that it was pocked with large rock outcroppings, some of them as tall as he was, and made a decision.
“Okay Jayden, you’re right, we’ve had enough fun for one day. On count of three I want you to let go of your rope, so start unwinding it off your wrist now, copy?”
“What?” Most of what Carter said had been lost to the formidable winds.
“On three, let go of the chute!” Carter bellowed as loud as he could in Jayden’s direction.
At this Jayden nodded with vigor, eyeing with apprehension a crag of rock coming up.
“One!…T—” An exhalation of air replaced the rest of the word as Carter was body-slammed into a boulder, but he continued the count. “Two! And, Three — release!”
Carter let go of his rope smoothly and tumbled away on a relatively level patch of icy ground. Jayden, who had to be a bit more careful, as he was still carrying the handgun, also let go of the rope without incident. He opted for a different, more difficult landing, which was to literally hit the ground running. His legs pedaled fast, pumping high to avoid rocks while maintaining enough speed to keep upright after disembarking at what he guessed to be around twenty miles per hour. Somehow he managed to stay on his feet, gun in his right hand. The only snafu was when Carter’s pack was knocked loose from his shoulder and Jayden nearly tripped over it. He saw it coming, though, and high-stepped over it like a track star, smoothly dodging a cluster of snow-covered rocks after that before coming to a stop, still on two feet, where Carter lay sprawled on a thin sheet of hard-packed snow.