Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan

by Jonathan W. Stokes

  “Do you guys ever leave a city without everyone trying to kill you?” asked Dax.

  Molly shrugged. “This is pretty much how we leave every city.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Good News and Bad News

  ADDISON REMOVED HIS SCHOOL blazer and settled back in his seat. He was dismayed to find his dress shirt—one of his favorites—drenched in sweat. He cast a sidelong look at Dax. “My uncle says you have a knack for coming through in a pinch, but that was cutting it a bit close.”

  “Hey, that wasn’t easy what I just did!”

  Addison decided to let the matter rest. The gentle sloping dunes of the desert were spread out beneath them like the folds of a blanket. The early evening sky was a darkening blue with amber glowing at the sunset edges. It was a decent world, Addison decided, as far as worlds went.

  “This is beautiful and all,” said Dax, cutting in on Addison’s thoughts, “but where am I going?”

  Addison was not at all sure. “Head toward Mongolia,” he suggested.

  “Can you be more specific? Mongolia’s a big country, and I like to know what I’m aiming at.”

  Addison decided it would be prudent not to keep flying in the wrong direction at one hundred and fifty miles per hour, so he pulled his notebook from his blazer pocket and handed it back to Eddie. “Eddie, take a whack at Sir Frederick’s clue.”

  Eddie stared at the cursive script Addison had traced from Sir Frederick’s sword. “I can’t read French.”

  “You can read Chinese and you can’t read a little French?”

  “Addison, I can’t read all the languages.”

  Molly sighed. “We nearly killed ourselves getting this clue and we can’t even read it.”

  “Do you want my help?” asked Dax.

  “I think you’ve helped enough,” said Addison curtly.

  “Even if we could read the clue, it’s hopeless,” said Eddie. “The triads have guns. The Russians have guns. We can’t do this on our own. We should get back to civilization and alert the authorities.”

  “Which authorities?”

  “I don’t know—the US embassy. Maybe the CIA or the Chinese police.”

  “Eddie’s right,” Molly put in. “I’m worried sick about Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel—we have to do something.”

  Addison shook his head. “The Chinese police are on Madame Feng’s side. And even if the embassy decided to help us, they wouldn’t have any better idea of how to find Aunt D or Uncle N than we do.”

  “Well, we’re in a plane full of bullet holes, and we have no idea where we’re going.”

  “We will just as soon as we crack this clue.”

  “Do you want my help?” Dax cut in again.

  “Dax, I appreciate your willingness,” said Addison. “But we’ve established that languages are not your strong suit. You don’t know Chinese, you don’t know Danish, and your own dog knows more German than you do.” He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms crossly. He felt bad for digging into Dax. Addison liked to maintain impeccable manners, and right now he knew his manners were extremely peckable.

  Dax flew for a few moments in silence. “I’ll get us into Mongolia. We’ll land at the first big city we reach and figure it out from there. In the meantime, you can all get some rest.”

  Night fell as they soared over the ancient ruins of Gaochang in the Mutou Valley, a gorge nestled deep in the Flaming Mountains. Raj patched up Dax’s cuts and bruises with his first aid kit. Eddie ate the remainder of Raj’s emergency rations.

  Addison read his father’s copy of The Secret History of the Mongols until his eyelids grew heavy and his head began to nod.

  Toward midnight, once Eddie and Raj were asleep, Molly leaned across her seat and whispered to him. “Addison, do you think the Black Darkhad are real?”

  “You mean the Ghost Warriors Uncle Nigel talked about?”

  Molly nodded.

  “If you’re asking me if I think the Khan is guarded by eight-hundred-year-old ghosts, the answer is: probably not.” He thought back to the vision he’d seen earlier in the alleyway . . . the Mongol with fiery eyes, a messianic beard, and tangled black hair streaming down his back. “Out of curiosity, why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” said Molly. “It’s just that I thought I saw something on the street today in Kashgar.”

  Addison frowned, but his jet-lagged brain was too addled to pursue the thought much further.

  • • • • • •

  It was three a.m. when Addison woke to see Dax nervously tapping the instrument panel. He did not like to see a pilot nervously tapping an instrument panel. “Engines running okay?”

  “The engines are running great,” said Dax.

  Addison sighed in relief.

  “It’s the rest of the plane I’m worried about.”

  Addison contemplated this for a moment, but soon found himself drifting back to sleep. He awoke a few minutes later to the sound of the port engine coughing and sputtering.

  “Buckle up,” said Dax.

  Addison did so. He also buckled the special seat belt for Mr. Jacobsen and fastened on the dog’s goggles.

  The tiny plane bucked like a bronco, one engine wheezing asthmatically.

  “Talk to me, Dax,” Addison shouted over the wind whistling through the windshield’s bullet holes.

  “All right. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Let’s start with the bad news.”

  “The bad news is there’s no good news.”

  “Well, then, what was the good news?”

  “I just told you there’s no good news.”

  “Well, then, what was the bad news?”

  “That there’s no good news!”

  “Dax, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “We got an engine out.”

  Addison looked out the port window. “I thought you said the engines were fine.”

  “They are. But they stop working when there’s no fuel.”

  “We’re out of gas?” Addison exclaimed.

  The starboard engine popped, stuttered, and sputtered out.

  “The tank’s full of gas, but it’s not getting to the engines,” Dax shouted over the wind. “The fuel line was rusted through last time I checked.”

  “Why didn’t you fix the fuel line?”

  “Maintenance is the copilot’s job.”

  Mr. Jacobsen lolled his tongue and lapped at Addison’s cheek. “How were you going to fly a plane with a busted fuel line?”

  “I was going to buy a new one with the money you paid me to fly the plane.”

  “That sounds like circular reasoning.”

  “Circular reasoning is still reasoning,” said Dax.

  Addison considered this. “Wait a second: I paid you when we landed in Kashgar. You gambled away our fuel line money.”

  “Listen, there’s no need to point fingers, there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

  “What did I do?” asked Addison.

  “You got me beat up by gang members before I had a chance to win our money back!”

  The plane drifted into a nosedive. Addison realized the situation was getting serious.

  Dax fought hard on the tiller. “To be fair, getting riddled with bullets probably didn’t help the fuel line any.”

  “Can you get us down?” Addison called over the howling wind.

  “You think I don’t know how to crash-land a plane?”

  “I think that’s the only way you know how to land a plane!”

  “Hey, listen! I may not be the best pilot . . .” Dax trailed off.

  “Was there a ‘but’ in there?”

  “No, I was simply stating a fact!”

  The plane lost altitude fast. Addison saw the desert rising up to meet them.

>   “Are we going to die?” Eddie shouted from the backseat.

  Addison did not have time to formulate a response. “Dax, tell me you have parachutes!”

  “I do . . .” Dax gripped the yoke with grim determination. “But they’re stowed in the cargo hold. Sorry about that.”

  Addison tried to find the right words to express his anger. The ground was hurtling closer. He bitterly regretted that Dax was going to get in the last word.

  Dax smiled. “Don’t worry, kid. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

  The Gobi Desert raced toward the windshield at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. Addison shut his eyes tight to the sound of tearing metal as the plane crashed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Camel Trader

  ADDISON THOUGHT HE WOULD see his life flash before his eyes, but instead it was mostly just sand and airplane parts. Dax clipped the crest of a dune, slowing their speed, before slamming into the next dune. One wing sheared off completely as they carved a deep furrow through the sand. Addison realized that the good thing about having no fuel reaching your engines is that they do not explode when you crash. He was quite pleased to find the bright side in all of this.

  He wiped sand from his eyes and kicked out the emergency exit window. He crawled from the wreckage, patting himself to make sure he still possessed 206 bones and hadn’t divided any in two. “Is everyone alive?” he asked, coughing through a throat full of sand.

  He heard a series of groans as everyone hauled themselves out of the flattened Apache. Addison struggled to his feet, fixing his rumpled tie. He tried to look unflappable, but really he was quite flapped. His fear of heights was not altogether pleased with the past few minutes. “Right, then. Nothing like a small plane crash to make one appreciate the smaller things in life.”

  Dax was last to heave himself out of the wreck. He stared at his crumpled plane and cradled his head in his hands. Mr. Jacobsen offered him a tentative lick, but Dax was inconsolable.

  “At least we’re alive,” said Molly.

  Addison gazed at the endless sands of the Gobi. “For now.”

  “I’ve never lost two planes in one day before,” said Dax. “This must be some kind of record.”

  “You only lost one plane,” said Molly, trying to comfort him.

  “But I lost it twice.”

  Addison turned in a slow circle, surveying the distant moonlit horizon. “If we knew which direction to head, we could at least go after the next clue.” He turned to Eddie. “You’re fluent in Spanish. Spain is right next to France. You’re sure you can’t take a crack at deciphering the clue?”

  “There are thousands of languages in the world and only one Eddie. I’m sorry I haven’t learned French!”

  Addison needed a place to vent his frustration. He wheeled on Dax. “My aunt and uncle are out there somewhere and we’re stranded in the Gobi Desert with a one-winged airplane. I want you to know, you will not be getting any referral business from me!”

  “You’ve known me for twenty-four hours, kid. What do you know about me?”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  Dax brushed sand off his stubbled chin and stood up. He towered over Addison, anger flickering in his eyes. “Yeah, kid. You’ve seen me get nose up on one hundred and fifty yards of runway in a firefight. Twice. You’ve seen me hold my own against a giant Russian vor who attacked me by surprise in Kashgar. You’ve seen me go thirty-six hours without sleep since you hired me in Macau. But ever since we met, you’ve treated me like I’m useless. Your uncle seems to think I’m good for something; why don’t you?”

  “As far as I can tell, the only things you’re good for are getting beat up and crashing airplanes.”

  “Well,” said Dax, shifting the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, “at least I can read French.” He pulled his toolbox out of the cargo hatch and headed to the starboard engine.

  Addison stared after him. He was nonplussed, but quickly slingshotted back to being plussed. He walked around to the starboard wing. “French?”

  Dax loosened lug nuts with a spanner and opened the engine. He drained water from the coolant system, filling his canteen. “When I was a bush pilot in Algeria, I spent eight months in a French prison for a fistfight with a Moroccan loan shark.”

  Addison raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you spent eight months in a French prison for a fistfight with a Moroccan loan shark.”

  “You never asked.” Dax drained the remaining coolant from the engine, filling a second canteen with water.

  • • • • • •

  Dax squatted in the desert sand, studying the clue in Addison’s notebook. “This French is medieval.” He held the page to the crescent moonlight. “Luckily, the prison where I learned French was pretty medieval, too.” Dax squinted his eyes, jaw muscles working his toothpick, and slowly translated.

  “‘Praise be to the Lord, my Rock,

  who trains my hands for war,

  my fingers for battle.

  God is my shield, my sword, my helm, and my lance.’”

  “Sir Frederick said that already,” said Eddie.

  “It’s important,” said Addison. “We’ve found Sir Frederick’s shield and sword. My guess is the next clue will be his helm.”

  Dax read farther.

  “‘In the city of the son of the Khan

  Lies a sanctuary for the idol worshippers of Buddha.

  One hundred seven will watch over you.

  Pray at the one that will show you the way.’”

  Dax flipped the notebook shut and tossed it back to Addison. “Mean anything to you, kid?”

  Addison nodded and gazed across the open waste. He had already finished reading The Secret History of the Mongols and knew the city of the son of the Khan. “Karakoram.”

  “Karakoram? That place is a ghost town. There hasn’t been anything there for centuries.”

  “Can you get us there?”

  Dax slowly nodded. “If we travel by night and don’t meet any bandits, it’s possible. First things first, we need to find a nomad camp with water and food, or else the Khan won’t be the only one dead in a tomb.”

  Addison retrieved his messenger bag from the wreck. “Pack light,” he called to his team. “Take only what you need!”

  Dax filled a few more canteens with water from the portside engine. Addison pocketed the flare gun he found in the glove box. Raj helped Dax slice parachute cords for rope and bottle engine grease for fuel. Dax cut canvas from a parachute and wrapped it around his head like a turban to shield him from the coming day’s sun. Addison lightened his pack, reluctantly parting with his prized white dinner jacket.

  “Here,” Dax said as they readied for their march north. “I siphoned water from the radiator. We can share.” He took a plug and handed it to Addison.

  Addison balked, waving him away with a shudder.

  Dax turned to Molly. “He doesn’t like sharing?”

  “He doesn’t like germs,” said Molly, wiping the lid and taking a pull.

  “Well, he won’t like dying of thirst, either.”

  The group set off across the desert in the deep of the night.

  • • • • • •

  Even though he was missing a second night’s sleep, Dax’s pace never slowed. He was eager to put miles behind them before the merciless sun crested the edge of the world. Addison’s group hustled to keep up with Dax’s long strides.

  After an hour of hiking, Eddie fell far behind. Eventually, he collapsed under the weight of his bags. Circling back to help him, Addison discovered Eddie had packed way too much. He and Raj riffled through Eddie’s bags.

  “The complete Beethoven sonatas?” said Addison, pulling out two heavy volumes.

  “I thought maybe I could practice if we ran across a piano.”

  “In the Gobi?” Add
ison tossed the books into the sand. Eddie couldn’t bear to watch. After Addison dumped out a metronome, a portable desk lamp, and several pairs of loafers, they were back on their way.

  Raj zigzagged across the group’s path, foraging for food in the desert waste. Toward five a.m. he began shouting and waving excitedly. When the group caught up to him, he proudly produced a handful of grubs from under a rock. “I found us some breakfast!”

  “Slugs?” asked Molly.

  “They’re filled with protein!”

  “Raj, we’ve only been in the Gobi for two hours,” said Addison. “We’re not starving to death.”

  “More for me.” Raj gave one grub a tentative nibble and elected to stick the rest in a pocket for later.

  The sky was already lightening in the east. Addison joined Dax at the top of a ridge. The pilot pointed to the fourth star of Cassiopeia and drew a line to Polaris, the North Star. “We need to keep heading northeast.”

  “How far is Karakoram?”

  “Hard to say without a landmark. Maybe sixty miles.”

  “Sixty miles!” said Eddie, readjusting the straps on his backpack.

  “The Gobi’s five hundred thousand square miles. Sixty miles isn’t that much.”

  “It’s enough to kill us!”

  “The icy-fingered grip of death,” said Raj solemnly.

  Dax shot him a quizzical look.

  “Sixty miles!” Eddie said again. He stared at the vast expanse of desert. “Outer space is fifty miles up. We’re literally closer to outer space than we are to Karakoram!”

  They traveled through false dawn, the deep sands sucking at their footfalls and slowing them down. Near daybreak, Raj emitted an excited yelp. He ran a few steps, threw down his pack, and dropped to his knees.

  Addison assumed he had discovered water. Instead, to his horror, Addison saw that Raj was hunched over a large, steaming pile of dung.