The Spirit Banner (14 page)

After untying the horses and letting the animals roam where they wanted, they continued on, making their slow way across the shattered landscape. Hopefully it would take Ransom a while to discover the ruse and by then they would be well on their way to their next destination.
They hadn't made much distance by midday and any hopes of making up the time lost quickly disappeared when the road petered out shortly thereafter. One minute it was there, the next it disappeared from beneath their wheels and they discovered that they had reached the limit of human expansion, at least in this day and age. As a result, their pace slowed even more.
On the bright side, they began to see returning signs of life in the landscape around them as they left the road farther and farther behind. First it was just the occasional small bush, hardy little plants that could withstand the climate of the polluted area to the south. Then bushes and grasses began to show up with more regularity—scrub, rye, sage grass and the like—until the land ahead of them became carpeted in vegetation.
Midafternoon brought them to a wide-open plain on which a massive herd of gazelle grazed. They scattered as the trucks moved among them, and at one point Mason sped up alongside the racing beasts, clocking their speed at just under thirty-five miles an hour. Shots rang out from the vehicle behind them and Annja knew that they were going to have fresh meat for dinner that evening.
As the herd raced ahead, Mason brought the truck over a gentle rise and there ahead of them loomed the Hentiyn Nuruu Mountains, tall snowcapped peaks that rose in a ragged line that stretched out toward the horizon. In their midst was one that was larger and more prominent than the rest: Burkhan Khaldun—God Mountain.
Mason let the truck roll to a stop and Annja climbed out for a moment. There weren't too many westerners who had the opportunity to see what she was seeing and she took her time, savoring the view. Somewhere, amid those peaks and valleys, the greatest warrior the world had ever seen had been laid to rest more than eight centuries before. And she was determined to find him.
It was at that point that they ran into a problem with their local guides. Up until then Nambai and, by extension, his grandson had been keeping them on track, even after the road had stopped and they had been forced to cut across country. But now, with the mountains looming ahead of them, Nambai had a change of heart.
He refused to take his grandson any farther into the heart of the Ikh Khorig.
When questioned, he mumbled something about a dream he'd had the night before in which the spirits told him that none of them would return alive from such a trip. He was willing to risk his own life, and those of the foreigners who had paid him, but he would not risk the life of his daughter's child.
Neither talk nor threats could change his mind. Even Cukhbaatar's pleading didn't work. The man clearly believed what he had seen was an omen and nothing was going to alter that fact.
Mason paced in frustration, venting his anger on anyone who got too close. Turning back wasn't an option. They had come too far to have to backtrack and then retrace their route. Ransom was sure to get ahead of them if they were forced to do so and that was simply unacceptable.
But Mason couldn't leave the young man there to await their return, either. Recent events had clearly shown that those on their tail were willing to kill to stop them from reaching their goal, and Cukhbaatar would be a prime target for them.
Finally he stopped pacing and pulled Kent to one side. "How are our wounded doing?" he asked.
Kent glanced over at the truck where the two men were resting. "Harris is doing okay. The knife wound he took to the shoulder seems to be responding decently to the sulfa powder and it hasn't started bleeding again, which is a good sign. D'Angelo, on the other hand, is a mess."
"Can he go on?"
The other man shook his head. "Not if you want him to have use of that leg for the rest of his life. That hatchet must have been dirty as hell because I can't get a hold on the infection and I'm afraid it's going to spread. If it does, he'll wind up losing the leg before we make it back to civilization."
"All right. Thanks," Mason said, clapping the other man on the shoulder to let him know that it wasn't his fault that the news wasn't good. Things go wrong sometimes on an op; that's just the way it goes.
D'Angelo's medical condition made Mason's decision easier, though. Because Kent was trained as a medic, Mason ordered him to take one of the trucks and accompany Harris, D'Angelo and Cukhbaatar back to the city. In the meantime, the rest of them would continue on in the other two vehicles. That would give the wounded men the medical care they needed and satisfy Mason's obligation to Nambai, all in one fell swoop. It was the best he could do under the circumstances.
They divvied up the supplies, making sure both groups had what was needed to continue on their way. Farewells were exchanged, and with a last, parting wave Kent and his crew piled into their truck and headed back toward Ulaanbaatar and civilization.
The rest of the group continued on. Mason, Davenport, Annja and Nambai were in the lead truck now, with Jeffries, Williams and Vale bringing up the rear in the other, the carcass of the antelope Vale had managed to bring down tied to the roof.
As the day grew longer they left the plains behind and, after passing through a region of rolling hills, began to climb through a series of interconnected alpine valleys. They were slowly gaining in elevation as they went and the air took on a bit of a chill, causing several of them to break out warmer clothing. Near the end of the day they came upon a pristine mountain lake and despite the bone-chilling temperature of the water, they all took the opportunity to take a quick dip and wash up. The men went first, laughing and roughhousing the whole time, and then Annja took a turn, with Mason standing guard.
Afterward, they hung out their freshly washed clothes to dry and enjoyed antelope steaks and fresh fish that night for dinner as the sun dipped over the horizon.
It was almost enough to make Annja forget what they had been through the previous evening.
Almost.

Ransom paced back and forth in the large Quonset hut he was using as his temporary headquarters, his irritation growing as the clock ticked onward. Turning to where Santiago sat in front of their communications equipment, he asked, "Any word from our new friends?"
Warily, Santiago shook his head.
"What the hell is keeping them?"
"I don't know. Maybe they're still mopping things up."
"All right, give them another hour."
But when they hadn't reported in at the end of that time, Ransom's patience had worn thin; he'd finally had enough. "I'm tired of waiting around for someone else to do our work for us. Do we still have them on the trackers?"
Wordlessly, Santiago spun the laptop that was sitting on the table in front of him in Ransom's direction, so that his boss could see the display. Three bright red dots marked the location of the three vehicles against a sea of green lighting.
Near as Ransom could tell, they hadn't moved much since the night before. There they were, still clustered near one another in the same general place.
"How fast can the chopper be ready?"
"Five minutes, sir," Santiago replied, a hint of anticipation in his reply.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, Ransom said, "Let's pay them a visit."
Santiago pumped his fist in the air in agreement.
Ten minutes later they were airborne and headed toward the rendezvous with their unsuspecting enemies. The chopper could cover the territory much faster and more efficiently than the trucks Davenport's men were using and so it didn't take long to get into position.
Ransom held the laptop containing the tracking software on his lap, providing instructions to the pilot, while Santiago cradled his rifle in his arms, making certain the weapon was ready for action when he needed it.
No more screwing around, Ransom thought.
It didn't take long for their targets to grow closer on the screen and Ransom turned to be sure Santiago understood what he wanted.
"Remember what I said."
Santiago's eyes shone with excitement. "Yes, sir. Quick clean shots. Minimum damage to the vehicles if at all possible but collateral damage to the occupants is acceptable, even preferred, regardless of whether it is the tribesmen we hired or Davenport's team."
That's what he liked about his lieutenant. You didn't have to spell everything out for him. He had initiative in spades.
The targets were less than a mile out and Ransom gave the signal for the pilot to take it lower. He didn't want to give them any more warning than was necessary.
The pilot took the chopper down low, and behind him Ransom felt Santiago slide open the side door and ready himself for what was to come.
Screw you, Davenport, Ransom thought. Time for this little game to come to an end.
He thought back to that day when Davenport had discovered his activities on the building project. The fool should have been happy that he'd found contractors willing to use the cheaper materials that he'd had shipped in when no one was looking. If they had finished the building the way he had planned, they would have saved eleven million dollars in construction costs alone, never mind what he could have done with the interior. So what if the structural engineers had claimed the building wouldn't hold together long-term; he'd have found another inspection firm who would have said the exact opposite. All that mattered was the money they were making.
But Davenport hadn't agreed. Ransom had been humiliated and now he intended to return the favor. He'd be known worldwide as the man who found the lost tomb of Genghis Khan, and Davenport would be buried in a shallow grave in the middle of east nowhere, right where he belonged.
A glance at the trackers showed their targets should be just over the next rise. Anticipation surged in his veins.
"Get ready!" he shouted to Santiago, and the other man gave him the thumbs-up.
Like an avenging angel—one of darkness, at least—the helicopter crested the ridge and Ransom looked through the windscreen, searching for the trucks on which the bugs had been planted back in Ulaanbaatar.
At first, all he could see was brown scrub grass. Then the herd of wild horses that had been grazing on it burst into motion, surging left and right as they sought to escape the thunder of the mechanical bird above them.
"Where are the trucks?" Santiago shouted.
Ransom didn't know. Confused, he looked down at the tracker, noting that it showed all three of them almost directly below the helicopter.
"They should be down there," he replied, pointing at the screen with his finger.
But all they saw was horses.
Ransom peered carefully down into the herd below him, looking for a sign, something to confirm what he suddenly suspected, something that would prove—
There!
A horse split off from the herd, the saddle on its back now clearly visible, the blip on the screen representing the tracking bug sliding away to the left just like the animal below them.
Enraged, Ransom clambered in the back, grabbed the rifle from a bewildered Santiago and began firing at the galloping beast. It took him a couple of tries, but eventually one of his shots went true and the horse toppled forward to lie still in the grass.
The pilot was ordered to land and Ransom got out, Santiago at his heels.
The horse was still alive, though just barely, when they reached it. Ransom didn't care; all he wanted was to prove his suspicions were correct. Ignoring the animal's labored breathing, he dug around in its saddlebags until he found a folded piece of paper in which his tracking transponder had been placed.
Drawn on the inside of the scrap of paper was a smiley face.
Ransom screamed in fury at the sight.
Without another word he turned and stalked back to where the helicopter was waiting.
That was it, he thought. That was the last time Davenport or his minions were going to get the better of him. By the time this was over, their bodies would lie rotting beneath the Mongolian sun.
He intended to make certain of it, if it was the last thing he did.

As the sun crept over the horizon it found Kent already up and about, preparing a quick breakfast of powdered eggs with Cukhbaatar's help. They had driven well into the night, not stopping until they had backtracked most of the way out of the Restricted Zone. The entire place gave Kent the creeps and he wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible. He figured the tank base they had passed the day before was only another mile or two up the road, which meant they would be back on the steppes by midmorning at the latest.
When he'd finally decided to call it quits for the night, he'd simply pulled over, turned off the lights and gone to sleep in the driver's seat, the other three men already snoring away in the back.
He handed two plates to Cukhbaatar, one for him and one for Harris, and then shoveled his own share of the lukewarm eggs into his mouth before taking a plate over to D'Angelo. The wounded man could barely eat, the infection in his leg filling him with fever and threatening to overwhelm his immune system if he didn't reach a hospital soon.
"Hang in there, man," Kent said, partially to himself, as he dosed D'Angelo up with another round of antibiotics and painkillers. He was starting to see the wisdom in Mason's decision to send them back.
A few moments later they got under way once more.
The first hour passed without incident and Kent was almost ready to cheer when they drove past the abandoned tank base right about the time he'd expected them to do so. The edge of the Restricted Zone wasn't too far ahead.
Unfortunately, things weren't going to be that easy.
It was Harris who saw it first. A quick glance, it was nothing more than a dark speck framed against the clouds in the distance. But something about the way it moved bothered him and so he kept his eyes on it.
A few moments later he was glad he had, for as he watched, it changed course slightly. Calculating quickly in his head, he could see that it had just moved from a parallel course to one that would intersect with their own in short order. His unease grew like a monstrous tendril deep in his gut.
That's no eagle, a voice in the back of his head told him.
He snatched the pair of binoculars out of the case he wore on his belt and brought them up to his face.
Under the high-power magnification of the military-quality glasses, the dark speck suddenly resolved itself into the bulbous front end of a Soviet-made helicopter. A Gatling gun was mounted just beneath the cockpit and what looked like rocket pods or fuel tanks hung from the body of the aircraft.
"Contact!" he shouted, so loudly that Kent flinched and nearly drove them into a ditch.
"What the hell, Harris?" Kent swore, but the other man quickly cut him off.
"We've got a military helicopter, exact model unknown, coming directly for us at two o'clock!"
Even as he said it he was pulling out his rifle and rolling down his window. While they had no evidence that the helicopter meant them any harm, none of them could forget the description the boy at the monastery had given of the men with guns who had arrived in the helicopter and killed everyone in sight. This far out in the middle of nowhere, chances were better than good that the men in the helicopter worked for Ransom and that meant they were
not
going to be friendly.
Harris knew it was crazy, thinking that he could cause any kind of significant damage to an armored chopper with just an assault rifle, but then again, stranger things had happened before. The Afghan mujahideen had fought the Soviet army to a standstill with weapons older than the one he now carried, hadn't they? So at least it was possible, right?
He did his best not to think about how many Afghans the Soviets had killed in the process.
"I see it," Kent said.
Harris's only answer was to rack the slide on his rifle. With Kent behind the wheel and D'Angelo unconscious from his injuries, it was going to be up to him to defend them if it came down to it.
Up front, Kent ordered Cukhbaatar to get down on the floor of the car beneath the dash, hoping the heaviness of the engine block would give the youth some protection. Then he began scanning the landscape, looking for somewhere that might provide them some measure of protection.
There wasn't much.
Most of the land in front of them was the same flat, rock-strewn landscape that they'd been driving through for the past several hours. Off in the distance he could see a few small rises, but it was going to take several long minutes to reach them.
Kent drove grimly on.
To their surprise, the chopper roared overhead, giving no indication that it cared about them at all.