by Roland Smith
“What are you grinning at?” Rafe asked, irritably.
“Family dinners,” I said, my grin broadening.
Ship of the Desert
AN HOUR AND FOURTEEN MINUTES later, the ticked-off Cindy and wounded Rafe pushed away from shore and started downriver. They did four complete three-sixties before getting the kayak bow pointed in the right direction. Rafe shouted instructions at Cindy through each revolution, but it seemed to me that it wasn’t Cindy causing the problem. It was Rafe.
Ethan shook his head as we watched them disappear around the bend. “I hope they’re strong swimmers.”
We walked up to where he had tied the camel. Ethan was favoring his right ankle, but not nearly as badly as he had been the day before. The camel looked like she was carrying the entire contents of a flea market on her back.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ethan said. “Don’t worry. We can get rid of this stuff along the way if we think we can do without it.”
“Where are you going to sit?”
“I’m not sure I want to sit up there at all, but I guess I should try so I don’t aggravate my ankle, which should be as good as new by tomorrow. What’s our next step?”
“I recalibrated my altimeter next to the river. When we get up to where they split off, we’ll compare Phillip’s drone photos to the topography maps and maybe figure out where they’re headed.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ethan said. “But at some point, you’re going to have to get some sleep. You’ve been up all night stumbling across the scree. You look hammered.”
He didn’t have to tell me. I felt hammered, but hoped part of it had to do with worry and not exhaustion.
“Let’s go,” I said.
WE ARRIVED A LITTLE AFTER NOON at the spot where our path had diverged. The scree felt like lava. I stared down at my boots to make sure they weren’t on fire. There wasn’t a shadow on the entire slope.
I looked up at Ethan. Somehow he had completely changed his appearance. Or else Lawrence of Arabia was on the camel. He was decked out in baggy white cotton pants, a white kurta, and a white keffiyeh on his head, all of which he had managed to change into on camelback without me seeing him.
“You brought that with you?”
Ethan shook his turbaned head. “It’s either Elham’s or Ebadullah’s.” He tapped the camel on a front shoulder with a trekking pole. The camel immediately lay down. He climbed off. The donkey trotted over and rubbed against the camel’s side.
“Dead man’s clothes,” I said.
“I don’t think they’d mind.” Ethan took a long drink of water. “There’s a reason they’ve dressed this way for centuries. My core temp has dropped by at least twenty degrees since I put these on. There’s another set if you want them.”
“No, I’m good,” I said, although I wasn’t. I was burning up. I looked at my watch, which my dad had given to me on Everest. It did everything but make him a good dad. It was a hundred and fourteen degrees out. Ten degrees hotter than the day before. It was going to be a long day.
Before Rafe and I headed down to the river, I’d stacked a few rocks up to mark where the trail split. I spread the topo maps and drone photos out on the ground along with the watch that did everything. Plank of course had provided another fancy watch with the gear, but I hadn’t taken it out of the box because I hadn’t had the time to figure how to use it, what with people getting injured, murdered, and kidnapped.
“So this is where they took off,” Ethan said.
I pointed. “To the northeast.”
He shaded his eyes and looked in that direction. “Odd, isn’t it? It would have been a lot easier for them to head down to the river and follow it east.”
“Unless they know something about what lies upriver that we don’t know.”
“What lies in the direction they’re traveling is China.”
“I’m sure there’s something before China.”
“My point is, are you sure this is the way they’re headed?”
I looked northeast along the scree. It looked exactly like the scree in every other direction. Undisturbed. What looked like a freeway in the dark looked like a hillside of treacherous rocks the size of fists. If I were in Ethan’s boots, I’d be raising the same doubt.
“It was clearer last night when the rocks were freshly flipped. The sun has obviously dried them out. I don’t know what else to do but follow along where I think they were headed and hope we stumble across a cigarette butt.”
Ethan grinned. “Sounds like a plan. Just checking.”
I looked back down at the maps. “I just need to pinpoint where I think we are on the map and photos. I’m hoping to discover something up ahead that—”
“Whoa!”
I looked up, thinking that maybe he had twisted his ankle again. But he was standing right where he had been, staring at his wrist. “GPS,” he said.
“What?”
“I have a signal.”
I looked at my own watch, and sure enough, the GPS had connected to a satellite a couple hundred miles above us. I now knew exactly where we were, but if we couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, it did us little good.
Ethan fished his cell phone out of his pack, turned it on, and shook his head. “No cell towers around here, and Cindy has the only sat phone, which she’s probably drowned by now.”
“If I’d known, I would have asked her to give it to us,” I said.
“And she would have said no way. She found it in Phillip’s stuff when her cell went dead. Girl’s addicted to her cell. She only has one useful hand. The other hand always has a phone in it.”
“I wondered if you and her were—”
Ethan laughed. “Not my type, and I’m not her type either. She was doing that stuff with me at the river to get under Phillip’s skin and because she didn’t want to go for a hike. The moment you disappeared up the hill, she disappeared into her tent. The only time she came out was to hold a phone above her head to see if she could catch a signal.”
I didn’t know why, but I was kind of relieved. It wasn’t like I cared about who liked whom, but I’d been a little disappointed when it looked like Ethan was interested in Cindy. And I wasn’t knocking Cindy. She wasn’t the outdoorsy type, and there was nothing the matter with—
What am I doing? I never think like this, and even if I did think like this, now is not the time! What’s the matter with me?
I looked at the GPS coordinates on my watch, then tried to find them on the map. For some reason, I was having a hard time with this simple task. The map didn’t seem to make any sense to me. Then I forgot the coordinates and had to look at my watch again, and the numbers didn’t make sense.
“You’re not sweating,” Ethan said.
“What?” I looked up and wondered who the man in white was.
The man in white squatted down next to me. “Drink some water.”
“Not thirsty.”
“You’re slurring your words.”
“I’m what?”
“Drink. You have heat stroke. I think we need to—”
THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER was a bouncing, rocking sensation. I thought I was in the hull of a ship with my hands and feet tied. My eyes felt like they had been glued shut. I had to rub them to get them open. I was assaulted by a piercing white light. I looked down at my hands. They were tied with climbing rope. There was a climbing harness around my waist cinched down to a . . .
“What is this?” I yelled. “Who—”
The ship came to a sudden stop. I felt myself sinking. The white light disappeared and was replaced by blue sky and Ethan’s worried face.
“You okay?”
“Why did you tie me up?” I shouted.
“You’re sweating,” he said. “That’s great.”
“So you were with them from the very beginning!” I jerked on the ropes.
Ethan’s expression changed from worry to utter confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re with t
hem!” I shouted.
My outraged accusation did not cause the reaction I thought it would. Ethan started laughing. Which enraged me even more. If my hands hadn’t been tied, I would have strangled him.
“Chill out,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself. I’ll untie you.”
This stalled my outrage. I began to think that maybe I had misjudged the situation. Ethan was being too reasonable and cheerful. I stopped struggling, but I continued to glare at him as he loosened the ropes.
“Sorry about the tie job,” he said. “But I didn’t know any other way to keep you on the camel after you conked out.”
“Conked out?”
“Yeah. Eyeballs rolled up to the top of your sockets. Caught you before you did a face plant on the rocks. For a second, I thought I’d lost you to the great beyond. Managed to get you cooled off and hydrated. Had to get you out of your clothes into something cooler.”
I looked down at what I was wearing. Baggy cotton pants and a kurta. Dead man’s clothes, which I have to say were more comfortable than climbing pants and a T-shirt.
“I wet you down and rigged a shelter with tent poles on the back of the camel,” he continued. “The problem was keeping you in place. Had to truss you up to keep you from falling off and cracking your head on the rocks.”
It started to come back to me. Not the kurta, the wetting, or the trussing, but the reason he had to tend to me.
“Heat stroke,” I said.
“Bigtime. More like heat fist. A knockout.”
Ethan got the last knot undone. I rubbed my numb wrists.
“So you’re not a terrorist or a kidnapper.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Ethan said with a grin. “Just a common climber. Heat stroke is bad news. I had it once. Not as bad as your dose, but bad enough. It was disorienting. When I snapped out of it, I had no idea what had happened. Didn’t know where I was for a while. I got it the same way you did. Exhausted, stressed, dehydrated . . . pushed my body too hard, and my body pushed me over the edge.” He handed me a bottle of water.
I took a sip. “Where are we?”
“Still heading northeast.”
“How long was I out?”
Ethan looked at his watch. “A little over four hours.”
I clambered off the camel on shaky legs. Ethan grabbed my arm to steady me. We were still on scree, but the rocks were bigger than the rocks we’d been traversing earlier. To the north of us was a towering hill covered in trees, shrubs, and boulders the size of cars.
Ethan handed me a white cotton cloth the size of a pillowcase.
“Make yourself a keffiyeh like mine,” he said. “No arguments. Secure it with your headlamp. You gotta keep the sun off.”
I draped it over my head and immediately felt cooler. Ethan pulled my headlamp out of my pack. I slipped it over the cloth, certain I looked as ridiculous as he did, but I didn’t care. It was perfect for the conditions. If I’d had it on earlier, I might not have conked out, as he put it.
I pointed. “What’s on the other side of the hill?”
Ethan grinned. “A valley.”
“Very funny. All hills have valleys. I’m serious. Did you look at the map?”
“Yeah. There’s a valley and, beyond that, a plateau. When you checked out on me, I thought about taking you back to the river, but that wouldn’t have gotten us any closer to the perps. With nine captives, they have to be heading someplace that has food, water, and shelter, and it has to be close, because they’re on foot. My guess is they’re hiding out in the valley.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Not bad. I wrapped it, and I’ve been using the trekking poles.”
“Sorry I passed out. If you hadn’t—”
“No problem,” Ethan interrupted. “You’re still going to have to take it easy. Heat stroke can kill you.”
“Well, thanks for taking care of me.”
I should have thanked him for saving me. If Ethan hadn’t been there, I might have died on the blistering scree. I looked up at the hill again.
“Looks pretty lush compared to the scree.”
Ethan followed my gaze. “Definitely water on the other side. A stream or two running down to the river. And we need water. I used all but a pint putting out your heat stroke.”
“Are you sure they came this way?”
Ethan reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of cigarette butts. “Hansel and Gretel have a bad nicotine habit. Gauloises and Marlboros. Unless one of them is smoking two different brands, at least two of them are smokers.”
I looked at my watch. We had about five hours of daylight left. Plenty of time to reach the valley on the other side of the steep hill. The GPS was still working. “Let’s look at the map.”
The valley had a blue river or stream line snaking down the center of it. I followed the blue with my finger. By the elevation markings, it looked like it ran through a deep gorge and emptied into the river where our base camp had been.
“Looks pretty rugged,” Ethan said.
“Which is why they didn’t take the easy path along the river.”
Ethan nodded. “Which means they know a lot more about this terrain than we do.”
“They have to be locals,” I said.
Ethan shook his head. “Maybe one or two of them. I’ve been thinking about that. Aside from Plank, the only people who knew where we were climbing were Phillip and Zopa, and I don’t think they told anybody.”
“How about the helicopter pilot?”
“Maybe. But I didn’t get the kidnapper-terrorist vibe from him. Did you?”
“To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to him at all,” I admitted. “The only impression I got was that he was in a hurry to dump us and get back to Kabul.” I folded the map. “We better get moving if we want to get to the first valley before dark.”
Ethan shaded his eyes and looked at the hill.
“A bit of a hike,” he said.
The Hike
It’s more than a bit of a hike. The first thing we discover is that kurtas and baggy pants are not designed for clambering up incredibly steep hills, sometimes on all fours. They tear easily and get tangled. We change back into our pants but keep the keffiyehs on our heads. The second thing we discover is that camels are not designed for steep rocky inclines. A third of the way up, our camel balks, becoming as immovable as the boulders we are winding our way around. No amount of shouting, tugging, or prodding will make her take another step. The donkey becomes so incensed by our efforts, it bites Ethan in the butt . . .
“OUCH!”
“Now you can say you’ve been bitten in the ass by an ass.”
“That’s not funny,” Ethan said, rubbing his gluteus maximus.
“Yeah, it is. What do you want to do?”
“Cut this cantankerous camel loose.”
We unloaded everything, took off the saddle and halter, and sorted through the gear. I suggested we take only what we needed.
“You never know what you’ll need,” he said. “I think I’ll take everything I own.”
I dumped half my stuff to make room for extra climbing gear.
During all of this, the camel didn’t move and was still glued in place as we put on our packs and continued up the hill. I looked back after a few yards and was happy to see that she and the donkey were slowly making their way back down the hill.
Carrying the packs made the climb more difficult, but on the bright side, it was cooler with the trees and shrubs, maybe 100 degrees instead of 110 degrees, and we were on the right track. Every few feet, we spotted a perfectly clear footprint in the dust, almost as if someone was leaving it there for us to follow.
“Zopa,” I said.
“How do you know? It could be anyone’s. Do you know Zopa’s boot pattern?”
“No, but I know Zopa’s personality pattern, and I bet you a dollar this is his boot.”
“You’re on. Of course, I won’t be able to collect if we don’t find water on the other side
of this hill.”
With that grim thought, we continued on. Halfway up the hill, we stopped and shared the last pint of water, which did nothing to slake our thirst. Ethan was right. If we didn’t find water on the other side, there was a good chance we wouldn’t be leaving Afghanistan alive.
Two-thirds of the way up, my prediction that we would reach the valley on the other side before dark was shattered. The sun went down.
“At least the moon is full,” Ethan said.
The moon was bright, but not bright enough to light our way. We would have to use our headlamps.
Ethan sat down on a boulder. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m bushed.”
I was too, and he was carrying at least twenty more pounds than I was. I joined him on the boulder. We sat there for several minutes, catching our breath.
“I’m tempted to camp right here,” Ethan said.
“How’s your ankle?”
“I can barely feel it among my other aches.”
“It’ll be cooler with the sun down.”
“I’m not serious about staying here,” Ethan said. “We have to find water. I just need to rest for a bit.”
I needed to sleep for a week.
“I don’t think I thanked you for coming along with me,” I said.
“Forget it.”
“Why did you come?” I knew why I was following them. My mom, Zopa, and now Alessia. I had a feeling that Zopa wanted me to follow him. That somehow he knew I would follow. But why had Ethan come? He barely knew any of us, including the film crew.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” he answered. “And to be even more honest, I’ve been having second thoughts with each step I’ve taken up this miserable hill, which I think we should start calling a mountain, because that’s what it feels like to me. But getting back to your question, I guess I tagged along because it seemed like the right thing to do. Call it a sense of duty. My alternatives were to stay at camp, head downstream with Rafe and Cindy, or go after the bad guys with you. The bad guys won out. Most people run away from bad guys. It’s kind of fun running toward them.”
