Chapter 50
Adriana eyed the map on her tablet. According to the GPS tracker, they were very close to the place she had pinpointed as the possible location of the ark.
“It shouldn’t be far, now,” she said to Jabez.
The Arab had driven them from the town of Ararat, leading the other vehicle up into the mountains along the precipitous road. The snow hadn’t been as treacherous as they had anticipated, but just to be safe, both vehicles were locked in four-wheel drive.
They had been driving for over an hour, making slow progress towards the waypoint. Conversation in the vehicle had been almost nil. The only sounds were the occasional wind gusts and the crunching of rocks and dirt under the tires.
The mountain range was impressive yet unspectacular. It spanned hundreds of miles to the north, but the peaks’ bland brownish color did nothing for eye appeal. The patches of melting snow helped improve the visual, but soon that would be gone. The rise and fall of the road had become monotonous, causing Firth to doze off a few times in the back seat next to Sean.
Up ahead, the road came to a sudden halt, ending in a drop off into a narrow canyon. He was relieved the second vehicle in the caravan didn’t hit them from behind and drive them over the edge. Jabez turned off the engine and got out. A cold gust of air burst into the cabin of the truck, shocking Firth to a more alerted state.
Sean and Adriana got out as well, joining their Arab driver at the edge of the cliff. Over the edge, the rock wall shot straight down a hundred feet. The wall itself wrapped around a slight rise in the center of the canyon floor below. Sean got down on one knee and felt the smooth stone inside the canyon. The light brown stone of the ravine had been molded by erosion, but it seemed different than other canyons Sean had seen. It was enclosed in a much tighter space. But the thing that made this particular canyon strange was the fact that there weren’t any other like it in the entire mountain range. Adriana had spent hours scanning the region via satellite images, and had not seen a single anomaly like the one resting before them.
He stood back up and stared at the strange shape of the canyon. “Is this it?” he asked in a semi-quiet tone.
Adriana glanced down at her tablet. “I think it might be,” she answered reverently.
“The shape is unmistakable,” Jabez commented. “Look at the outline of the canyon,” he pointed out the top edge of the wall that wrapped around to where they were standing. “It is surely the final resting place of Noah’s ark.”
Sean peered around the perimeter. “It would have been easy for anyone to look over this place and think it just an ordinary geological formation. No wonder no one discovered it yet.”
“What is it?” Firth shouted from an open window in the vehicle. Apparently, the professor didn’t want to leave the warmth of the car.
“You’re going to want to see for yourself, Professor!” Sean yelled back.
The window rolled up slowly before the door opened and the older man carefully stepped out of the vehicle. As he neared the edge where the others were standing, he looked out across the span of the little canyon, his jaw dropping wide open.
“You believe in all this hocus pocus now, Doc?” Sean asked with a glint in his eye.
Firth quickly recovered to his dubious self. “I’m simply impressed by the view. But,” he added, “if your theories are correct and this canyon wall was formed by the exterior hull of the ark, where is the entrance to the chamber?” He followed Sean’s eyes down to the bottom of the ravine to get his answer.
“It’s somewhere down there, Doc. You’ve come this far. You may as well come a little further.”
The professor tried to suppress something. He clenched his face tightly, but he couldn’t help but let a sliver of a smile escape. Sean figured it had probably been years since the old dog had done anything exciting in the world of archaeology. While he’d been a grumbling pain in the rear, Sean wondered if deep down inside Firth was enjoying himself.
“Very well, Mister Wyatt. Let’s see if this wild goose chase produces a goose after all.” Firth spun around and started to return to the SUV.
Adriana stopped him. “Professor. We will have to walk in from here.”
“Oh,” his smile disappeared. “Right.”
Five minutes later, the group was trekking across the lip of the canyon towards the other end. The terrain was rocky and treacherous. Sean almost rolled his ankle on a loose stone that he’d not seen in his way. Fortunately, the walk wasn’t a long one, and the group had reached their destination at the other end of the canyon within ten minutes.
The plateau they were standing on sloped down to the level of the canyon floor, leading to a narrow opening. Jabez looked at the members of the group and continued down the hill. The others followed close behind. Firth moved slower than the others, which Sean had foreseen as an issue. Fortunately, most of the snow had already melted away, so footing wasn’t a huge problem.
They reached the bottom of the slope with relative ease and stood at the slim entrance to the canyon. The rock walls had come together, separated only by three feet of space. Standing at the bottom of it and looking up, the vision was imposing.
Again, Jabez took the lead and started through the narrow pass. The rest followed with Jabez’s four men taking up the rear.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Adriana said, staring up through the narrow space.
“We have something like this back home, in Tennessee. We call it fat man’s squeeze. Though, it doesn’t go this high.” He pointed up to the top.
The ground at the base on which they were now walking was much smoother than up above. It was flat and even, filled in with a mixture of sand and dirt. Down in the ravine the wind had disappeared, and the air had become a little warmer.
As the group passed through the other side of the pass the canyon opened up again, sending a chill through their bones as they were reintroduced to open air.
“Which side should we check first?” Adriana wondered out loud. “Should we split up and examine both sides of the canyon?”
That plan would have made sense, but Sean remembered something he’d seen a long time ago as a child that made him think otherwise. “When I think about Noah’s ark, the pictures from my childhood always had the door to the ark on the left side.”
“But how do we know which way it sailed in?” Jabez asked.
“It would have been coming from the same direction we came from.”
“Why do you say that?” Firth entered the conversation.
Sean smiled. “Because the Bible speaks about the original location of the garden. It talks about where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet. That means originally it would have been to the southwest. If it sailed to the northeast and entered this valley from the same direction we came that would have put the door on that side over there?” he finished his rationale by pointing to the right side of the curved wall.
“You’re assuming they put the door on the same side as the one on the ship,” Firth remarked.
“If you want to go over and look on the other side, be my guest. But if there is anything to find down here, my money is on the right side.”
Sean started trudging across the canyon floor. Contrary to much of the surface they’d walked upon so far, there were still a few inches of snow left on the ground that crunched under his shoes as he walked. Adriana stayed right behind him.
“Fine,” Firth said and fell in line with the others.
There was a smooth path that seemed to line the ground around the wall of the canyon. The center had formed a slight rise, making it impossible to see all the way to the ground level on the other den. The group marched along the narrow path, scanning the wall for any trace of evidence that they were in the right place.