“Definitely faster than walking,” Carter told Jayden.
“Yeah, easier on the feet, too. Our feet, at least. Sorry buddy.” He patted the camel’s back.
“I don’t think it’s very hard for them. Let’s take another heading.”
Jayden read the compass again and this time Carter made only a slight adjustment to their course. “Won’t be too long now,” Carter estimated. Still, he dared not ease back on the camel’s speed. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
They rode on under the dark night sky, lit only by a thick blanket of stars, constellations so vivid it seemed to Carter like he could reach out and pluck them out of the heavens like jewels. He thought of the phone conversation with Maddy. Not Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant… As he stared at the cracked desert floor sliding by beneath the camel’s feet, he let it morph in his mind into an image of the old map, of the three invisible ink lines he had found there…
He was still thinking about it when something began to invade his thought process, something piercing, not in a loud way — the dromedary’s hoofs were still brashest sound in the vicinity — but piercing in a different way. Illumination… He was on the verge of making a connection with the map, of what it all meant, when his mind registered light — artificial light. He had just ripped himself from his silent analysis of the map’s possible meanings when Jayden’s voice finalized the intrusion and made it very real.
“Big trouble, Carter. Those are headlights behind us.”
Chapter 29
At the mention of headlights, Carter whirled around on the camel and looked behind him. Sure enough, twin artificial lights that cast a bluish wide beam, most likely newer style xenon bulbs. The naval historian’s blood ran very, very cold.
“Not good, Jayden. It means Maddy was probably right, and that tribe contacted someone about us, either the Iranian government or some insurgent group.”
“Those desert hermits were going to sell us into slavery?”
“For political pawns, probably, but listen,” Carter said, kicking the camel hard now and urging it on with clicking sounds, “our only chance is to make it into the wooded area at the foothills of Ararat, there.”
“Pretty sure that’s Turkey.”
“Yeah. But who knows, they might not be scared of driving a few feet into Turkey, I don’t know. Or shooting at us while they stay on their side of the border.”
“I get it. We need to get into the cover of those trees.”
“Right, and from there work our way deeper into Turkey.”
Jayden spurred the camel with his boots, but the animal was already giving its all, running at top speed, which seemed woefully lacking as the vehicle raced along the hard-packed dirt behind them. Carter couldn’t make out any details about it because the lights in the front were too blinding. But the way he saw it, they were only about a hundred yards from the Turkish border now, with the plant life cover perhaps another hundred beyond that. He only hoped it wasn’t a “technical,” a type of vehicle he and Jayden had become acquainted with during their deployments in Iraq and other middle eastern Gulf states. Basically consisting of a modern pickup truck with a mounted machine gun such as a 50-cal in the bed, they were typically used by insurgent groups where one man would drive, another man the machine gun and another would ride shotgun to shoot an AK-47 or similar out the passenger side, or perhaps even lob grenades.
In this case, the motive would likely be to take them alive to use as hostages for money from relatives or companies they work for, perhaps, or else political pawns, so Carter hoped they wouldn’t be mowed down right away. Still, when they saw their meal tickets disappearing into Turkey, they might try to cut them down in a hail of lead even if they didn’t get to see the results, a sort of “if we can’t have you nobody can” attitude.
As the vehicle neared — the ground in front of the camel was now lit by the xenons — Carter debated using the zig-zag technique again to make them a more difficult shooting target, but decided that it wouldn’t make any difference for a gunner using a truck as a platform, if that’s what it was.
“Crossing into Turkey!” Jayden yelled, but his words were drowned out by the most unnatural clatter of automatic weapons fire. Dirt and sand flew up a little behind them and to their right. Carter and Jayden spurred the dromedary, which brayed as it ran a little bit faster into the neighboring country. To Carter, the open spread of brown dirt between them and the vegetation-shrouded foothills of Mt. Ararat seemed like ten miles wide, but it was only about a football field. He wished they had the gun now, for even a small amount of return fire would give their aggressors pause, but he had learned long ago not to dwell on that which could not be changed.
He braced himself for another heavy salvo from what had to be some kind of automatic weapon, even if not a mounted one, when suddenly the engine changed in pitch and they heard angry men’s voices shouting in their direction.
“Some Welcome Committee,” Jayden said as he white-knuckled the camel’s saddle horn while the animal jostled along at what had to be its maximum speed.
“We weren’t exactly invited.” Carter jerked the camel’s reins to the left to avoid a small ditch in their path that had been illuminated by the vehicle’s lights. The vehicle — Jayden was saying it was a truck, now — stopped at what Carter figured must be the Iran-Turkey border.
“They won’t cross it!” Jayden shouted jubilantly.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t shoot over it!”
“Watch that rock!”
Carter put his eyes forward in barely enough time to steer the dromedary around the geological obstacle. They cleared the small boulder and kept on going, deeper into the geopolitical safe zone that was Turkey, just as a volley of lead sparked off of the rock behind them.
“Go go go!” Jayden shouted, hunched forward as far as he could in the saddle to flatten himself out and represent a lower profile target. More shouting, and now the flicking on and off of high beam headlights for a strobe effect combined with more shooting — this time from single-shot weapons- assailed their senses. The lack of auto-weapons fire concerned Carter. On the one hand it meant they were deemed to be out of range for burst fire weapons, but on the other, if they had rifles and knew how to use them, then they were still very much in range. As if to underscore this fact, Carter watched as a section of tree bark disintegrated ten feet in front of them.
It meant they had reached the wooded area at the foothills of Mt. Ararat, though, and at that Jayden was already rejoicing. “Tress! I see trees! Never so happy to see trees in my life. Just a little farther, come on, Camel, you can do it!”
Another shot rang out, echoing off the mountain. A miss. And then they reached a bushy area through which Carter tried to drive their mount but to no avail. The dromedary reared up on its hind legs, bucking Jayden off onto the ground just as a bullet slammed into the leather saddle. Carter meanwhile slid down the animal’s neck to just in front of the saddle, which stopped him from sliding all the way off. The sound of the shot spurred him into action, and he took matters into his own hands by throwing himself off of their four-legged ride.
He and Jayden ducked into the foliage and got low to the ground. Carter reached out and hit the camel on its rear quarters, yelling “Yah!” to send it running back into Iran, acting as a temporary decoy until their attackers realized it was rider-less. It galloped away at a normal trot. Carter hoped it would find its tribe again, but he wasn’t about to linger long enough to find out its fate.