by Kevin Tinto
Chapter 40
Leah opened her eyes to a mosaic of light, sounds, and aromas. It took minutes before her vision focused enough that she was able to recognize K’aalógii. Hands gently brushed back Leah’s hair as the girl’s face stared down at her own.
She opened her mouth to speak, but instead, she was wracked with a cough that felt like she’d hacked up a lobe of her right lung. When the fit subsided and she opened her eyes again, two faces were staring down on her.
“Welcome back to the living,” Garrett said, his relief evident in both his voice and countenance. “You were dead when Appanoose carried you out of the lodge.”
Leah could barely whisper. “Dead? What are you talking about?”
“When he carried you out of the sweat lodge, you weren’t breathing and didn’t appear to have a heartbeat. I wanted to do CPR, but the Ancients held me back while Appanoose put you down by the fire and revived you like he’d expected it to happen.”
Leah tried to sit up, but her upper body felt like it was weighted down with a hundred pounds of rock. She dropped right back down on the blanket and surveyed her surroundings. She was lying under the mesa overhang, on a bed of pine boughs and blankets, with several more stacked on top of her. She lay between two mounds of hot rocks, the same as those used during for the sweat lodge rituals. Heat radiated off the stones, warming the air around her to create beads of sweat on her forehead.
Sunlight penetrated the overhang, and from the angle of the light, Leah figured it had to be morning. She’d gone into the sweat lodge sometime during the middle of the night, so she’d been unconscious for several hours.
At least.
“How long was I in the sweat lodge?” she croaked.
“I’d say three, maybe four hours,” Garrett said. “I tried to intervene several times but they held me back every time.”
“You must be exhausted,” Leah said. “Staying up all night, wondering if I was going to make it.”
“The lodge wasn’t last night, Leah. You’ve been in a coma for more than seventy-two hours.”
The shock, and then effort trying to respond to Garrett, triggered another fit of coughing. Suddenly, her mind was flooded with memories of the sweat lodge and what she’d experienced with Appanoose. The shock gave her a burst of strength.
She reached out and grabbed Garrett’s forearm. “I saw it all, Garrett. The Ancients, the reason for their capture, the complex, the mountains, two suns in the sky….” Leah drew a deep breath. “Oh my god, Garrett. I saw the end as well…it’s all our fault…we’ve ruined everything.”
Before she could continue, Garrett took her hand gently in his. “I know why you saw all those visions. There’s no need to panic.”
“No need to panic?” This time she managed to keep the coughing down to a few hacks. “You have to believe me when I tell you, Appanoose showed me everything. The Ancients. They weren’t part of some random science experiment. They’re colonists—destined to settle on another planet. By removing them from stasis, we’ve set in motion the destruction of Antarctica, maybe even the entire planet. We have to return them to Antarctica. We have to do it now.” She had to stop, this coughing fit so intense that she thought she might pass out.
Garrett nodded as she spoke, his only expression a look of quiet concern. “Appanoose showed me why you were unconscious for days—I’ve been a pain in his ass, to say the least.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not listening to me!”
“Leah—Appanoose dosed you with a hallucinogen.”
Leah dropped her head back onto the blanket. The peyote cocktail, the heat, the chanting. “It seemed so real,” she said, relieved that it might have all been just a drug-induced series of high-definition hallucinations. “That was the doozy of bad trips,” she said, managing a faint smile. “Oh, crap. I was supposed to check in with Gordon. He’s gonna think I blew him off.”
Garrett looked grim. “You can’t feel any guilt about that. In fact, I went to grab the satellite phone, to arrange a medical evacuation—checked where we stashed it at the bottom of the green gear bag—and it was gone. So I made for the quad—figured I’d get to somewhere I could make a call, but after about thirty steps I felt cold steel on my neck. When I was able to turn around, I found old ‘Noose’ standing there, that military blade out, telling me in pretty clear language what would happen to me if I tried leaving the Settlement.”
Before Leah had a chance to respond, K’aalógii, who had continued stroking her hair, said, “Díí aláahdi haz’ą́nii bee baadiidááł. Da’njahí góne’.” She reached into the air with both hands and drew two circles. “Naaki jóhonaa’éí”.
This time the young girls’ words didn’t seem as strange as they once had.
You are the one who will lead us, she had said, to a place between the Fourth and Sixth… The Fifth Domain.
“Naaki jóhonaa’éí.”
Leah almost could have predicted K’aalógii’s next words before she spoke them.
A place that has one plus one suns.
Chapter 41
The remains of David Samuelson amounted to little more than a mass of twisted climbing line and bones. Jack had a visceral reaction. He backed up, turned around and vomited, tears streamed down his cheeks.
A group of unknown Special Operations soldiers had already obtained and documented the intelligence, then split in a hurry. Wheeler’s worst-case scenario—unless it had been Americans.
“Mr. Jack! Mr. Jack!” Kajir sprinted around the perimeter of the spring, something held up in his hand. When he got within ten meters, Jack knew exactly what it was, because he’d gotten cases of them for Marko: MRE. Meals Ready to Eat. American military. The empty wrapper had at one time contained two high-energy bars.
It was all too obvious—and infuriating. Wheeler had sent a Special Operations unit in before Jack arrived, and had already executed a high-altitude dive into the hot spring. Likely one of the divers, freezing his ass off, needed a snack to help ward off hypothermia after exiting the water. It was sloppy, leaving identifying wrappers behind—but, then again, they’d left just about everything else here, except weapons and ammunition.
The fury and anger boiled up. If Jack got back to the states alive, he knew one thing for certain. Wheeler was a dead man.
The bastard set me up, knowing if I took the bait, I’d be out of the country. He was hoping I’d get killed, solving one problem, or making it easier to round up the entire Antarctic crew. Killing two birds with one stone.
This time, Wheeler might just have successful disposed of Jack Hobson, and there wasn’t a damn thing Jack could do about it. That might also explain the helicopters searching the shoulders of Ararat. Special Operations were good—but so were the Turks. It’s likely, given the messy withdrawal from the well, that the Special Operations team had to blow off the mountain to an extraction in a hurry to avoid capture, or, they had indeed found something extra-terrestrial in nature, and it was imperative they get out alive in order to get the intelligence back to Wheeler.
Jack fumbled inside his pack for the two sat phones. He chose Paulson’s phone number, but when he tried to make the connection, nothing. The phone’s secure satellite service had been deactivated and he was locked out of the device. He dropped it on the ground and tried the second satellite phone with same result. It wasn’t lack of service, which might be explained by the geomagnetic anomaly reaching into the upper latitudes—the phones were locked down.
***
Hawar stood at the edge of the cavern, looking down the mountainside without expression. The heavy ‘thwack’ of military helicopter rotor blades echoed off Ararat from nearly every direction. The horses were safe inside the cavern, but Kajir and Camir and Jack Hobson would be in great danger if they were caught out in the open, returning from the Western Plateau.
Hawar swung an AK over his shoulde
r and shoved many loaded magazines into a canvas bag. He opened one of the wooden crates and pulled out a rocket-propelled-grenade rifle and five rounds of Iranian high-explosive rounds. That was the maximum load he could carry and maintain any speed while running up the mountain with other weapons and gear. He loaded the rounds into the canvas bag, along with the AK magazines, and slung the RPG gun over his shoulder, using the strap to hold it in place.
He turned to Bazi and said in Kurdish, “I’m going to help Mr. Jack and your brothers. You stay here. You must keep the horses calm. When the helicopters swoop down, it’ll spook them.” Hawar hesitated and then pointed a finger. “Do not leave the cavern for any reason, Bazi. Do you understand?”
His youngest son, showing no fear, nodded.
***
Jack was kneeling near the remains of David Samuelson, saying a prayer. Kajir and Camir spoke in semi-panicked Kurdish, but Jack paid no attention. He was thinking of the young man’s family and how much pain his death must have caused them and Jacob Badger.
“Mr. Jack. We must leave,” Kajir said. “We have not heard the helicopters—but that does not mean they will stay low on the mountain.”
Jack drew a breath and stood. “These are the remains of a young man about your age. His name was David Samuelson. I want to give him a proper burial.”
Kajir stepped back in shock, then nodded his approval.
Jack had seen enough climbers left dead in the mountains, to know that he wasn’t allowing that to happen to Samuelson. This young man deserved a proper burial on Ararat. The remains of his body, tangled up in nylon and line, left out on the open was a level of disrespect Jack couldn’t stomach.
He chose one of the canvas gear bags to serve as a casket of sorts. He looked around the site and decided upon a small mound on the ice, fifty meters away.
Jack used a folding shovel and chopped away until he had a hole about a half a meter deep. He gently laid the remains into the shallow ice grave and covered it with the cut ice. He dug out pieces of rock near the surface of the ice and began to stack them on top of the ice.
Kajir brought more rock and, within minutes, they had a meter-high rock cairn standing over the burial site.
Jack stood back and said another prayer while Kajir and Camir stood watch, ready to open fire at the slightest movement. Once finished, he returned to the spring and looked down into the waters. He could easily see twenty meters down, but there was nothing, even at that depth, that faintly resembled anything but shaped rock.
Still, even considering the risk, it seemed pointless to have made this entire trip and not shoot the video. Jack retrieved his pack, and dug out climbing line, the aluminum GoPro mount with two camera attachments, and the five pound diving weight that affixed to the bottom of the mount, a guarantee that the camera rig would sink straight down into the spring.
The two GoPro cameras were kept in a padded case. He checked one camera by initializing it. The battery bars registered full and he had a 32G SD card in each camera—enough to video for an hour, or more, at high resolution. The waterproof cases each sported a helmet attachment, and the metallic mount had the corresponding mounts, glued onto two arms. Jack slid each camera into the helmet mounts, making sure each audibly locked in place. He clipped the climbing line onto the aluminum mount, and secured the five-pound lead diving weight with plastic ties.
Jack paused, and took a breath. The next part was critical. If he got this wrong, as simple as it seemed, the entire trip was for nothing. He made sure both cameras were on video record mode, pushed down the button to start the GoPro recording, and double-checked that he saw a constant blinking light on each camera.
He attached two Fenix handheld high intensity underwater dive lights, used by SCUBA divers, to thumb-screw driven friction mounts. One light pointed straight down, one at a ninety-degree angle. Wherever the camera was pointed, the light would illuminate the water around for at least ten meters—thirty plus feet, providing high resolution video, even near the bottom of the spring.
Before he lowered the device into the spring, he checked one last time that each camera featured a blinking red light. With both cameras recording, his rig was ready to go.
Jack allowed the line to slide through his gloves, getting through the thirty meters at a speed of about a meter per five seconds. Jack twisted the line, forcing the mount to do same during the descent. This allowed the Go Pros to video three-hundred and sixty-degrees, capturing every angle down below.
He took his time, despite Kajir’s urging that it wasn’t safe to remain at the site, even for another minute. Jack nodded, telling the Kurd he’d be done in just a matter of a few minutes. After allowing the line down to a point just short of seventy meters, Jack slowly pulled the cameras up, twisting the line as he did. When the rig reached the surface, he checked that the cameras were still recording, that no water had seeped into the cases. Both were operating perfectly. He detached each camera and placed them back into their padded bag.
He was tempted to just toss the mount and the line into the spring, and be done with it, but his disgust with climbers polluting mountains with garbage of all kinds prevented him from doing that. He coiled the line and stuffed the entire rig back into his pack.
Jack shouldered the pack and told Kajir and Camir, “Time to go.”
The expression of relief on their faces told Jack all he needed to know. These seasoned fighters had an instinct for trouble, and they were expecting more than their fair share climbing down the open shoulders of Ararat.
Chapter 42
Hawar crouched behind a row of boulders, watching the T129 ATAK helicopter gunship working the shoulders of Ararat. He swore under his breath. The helo was a state-of-the-art, lethal, all-weather attack helicopter, a combined effort of Turkish and Italian aerospace companies.
With a crew of two, a 20mm cannon, and a wide variety of rockets and guided missiles in its arsenal, it was a most formidable weapon. Plus, it had the ability to operate up to twenty-thousand feet in altitude. There was nowhere in Turkey that Kurds were safe from the T129.
God-willing, Mr. Jack and his sons had perceived the threat and would stay well-hidden until the helicopter needed to refuel or was called off to work another grid. The Turks only had a handful of the highly advanced attack helicopters, and even fewer deployed. It meant either that the authorities were hunting Mr. Jack or another threat of significance. They would never waste such an important resource pursuing a few Kurdish rebels on Ararat.
When the T129 swung around and suddenly gained altitude, Hawar knew the crew had spotted something.
As the T129 probed the upper reaches of the mountain, Hawar crept out from behind the rocks and started jogging up-mountain, jumping from rock to rock, running around the larger rocks and bounders with the grace only someone born of this land could muster.
***
Jack, Kajir, and Camir moved quickly down the shoulder of Ararat, stumbling and falling on the glacier’s ice, using ice-axes to self-arrest before getting solid traction with the crampons and running again. They had descended to slightly below the glacier when they heard the first echoes of helicopter blades. Kajir cupped his ears, trying to determine the direction and distance.
Jack scanned the skies around and below them. “Well, I doubt anyone flew up here to give us a courtesy ride off Ararat.”
The sudden military activity on the shoulders of Ararat meant either that the special operations team that beat them to Jacob’s Well had been made by the Turks or else someone had dropped a dime on Jack and sent the Turks hunting.
“We will be safe once we get to my father and the cavern,” Kajir said.
Jack stripped the crampons off and shoved them under rocks. He opened his backpack and pulled all his extra climbing gear, clothing, and food out of the pack to make it lighter. Not only did that make it easier to jog down the mountain, but it also meant that, should
he fall, he wouldn’t be crushed or battered by the heavy, awkward pack.
The trio had traveled another kilometer or so down the mountainside, when the sound of rotor blades got a whole lot louder. Jack watched as Kajir and Camir simultaneously dived to the ground and slid their thin bodies under rocks that would’ve hardly fit a housecat.
Jack dropped as well, but he had no way to conceal himself. He covered his face even as he realized that his blue climbing parka would be a dead giveaway if the attack helicopter overflew his location.
The T129 opened up with an intense barrage of 20mm cannon fire. The rock around Jack exploded, followed by the sound of the helicopter overflying his position.
Jack checked to make sure he had all his arms and legs and wasn’t bleeding out after having been struck by rock shrapnel. He’d gotten lucky. He’d been on the upslope side of a sizable boulder and the helicopter had been firing from downslope. Rock cover wouldn’t keep him safe for long, though.
Once the helicopter had passed over, its nose pitched up sharply and the vessel spun 180 degrees to begin another attack run.
This time Jack had no cover between him and the 20mm rounds. He had ten seconds to make a decision: make his body as small as possible or dive over the rocks and hope the 20mm shells would either impact the upslope side of the rock or pass over his head.
The choice was really no choice at all, if he wanted to live. He shrugged off the backpack and dived headfirst over the rock, unsure how far he’d have to fall before impacting the rocks downslope of the boulder.
The rounds from the 20mm cannon started blowing rock to pieces even before he hit, nearly three meters below. His bulk thudded into the rock-studded earth and his entire body went numb. He hadn’t the strength to rise and dive out of the helicopter’s range again. Instead, he lay still, playing dead. A sitting duck.
The pilot pitched up, this time in a leisurely manner, before rotating the helicopter and preparing the final attack run.
