“For my sister’s kids,” explained Sam to Cardinal, while he drove. “You know they just love this stuff.”
Cardinal just smiled. He had met the youngsters at Sam’s last family get-together. They were a pair of overly energetic four-year-old boys who had managed to run him ragged. “How long to the border from here?” he asked, hoping that it wasn’t too far. Sitting up in his seat to stretch out his aching back, Cardinal felt as if they had been driving for days.
Sam peered down at her map. “Not too far, just a few more minutes and we’ll be in sunny old Mongolia.” Their vehicle came with a GPS, but Sam still preferred to keep track of where she was on a map, just in case the GPS failed.
“It’s always sunny in the Gobi,” remarked Cardinal. “I don’t think it rains too much around here. That’s why it’s called a desert.”
“All right, mister science guy, just for your info, they can get flash floods here, and trust me, we don’t want to be trapped in one of those. Now drive,” ordered Sam, with a smile on her face, enjoying the freedom of their first assignment outside of the team. Sam knew it wasn’t normal for only two people to be out on their own; however, their briefing file had made it clear to them that this was a simple mission to find out anything they could on the missing grad students and nothing more.
Retracing the missing students’ footsteps, Sam and Cardinal first flew into Beijing, rented a vehicle, and then drove exactly the same route that the students had told their friends they intended to follow, all the way up to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. They hoped to find something along the way that might tell them what had happened to the students. It took six hours of driving just to make it to the border from Beijing, and Cardinal’s back was really beginning to bother him from sitting still for so long. The border was due to close at six p.m., and it was nearly that time. Driving through Erenhot reminded Cardinal of a city that was being rapidly built up around itself. Construction seemed to be going on everywhere; most of it just seemed like building for the sake of it. There undoubtedly was someone being paid a lot of money to build shops and houses that would probably never be used. Their briefing package described Erenhot as a growing commercial hub, but looking about, Cardinal suspected that it was nothing more than a place for black market smuggling and prostitution. He couldn’t wait to cross the border; not that he expected anything better once they were inside Mongolia.
Arriving with less than a couple of minutes to spare, Sam dug out their passports. With a bright smile on her face, she did all the talking for them in Chinese with a couple of young border agents, which Cardinal saw with a grin on his face, helped speed things along. After paying the obligatory taxes, they drove over the border into Mongolia just as it closed for the evening, stranding dozens of truck drivers from both nations in long lines on the wrong side of the border for the evening.
The hard, dry sand and rocky terrain of the Gobi Desert reminded Cardinal of his time in Afghanistan. With four tours under his belt, he had spent more than his fair share of time lying in under the scorching Afghan sun waiting for targets that sometimes never appeared. It was the lot of a sniper to wait and be prepared. Several years back, Cardinal, along with another sniper team, had been assigned to cover a U.S. SOF raid on an IED maker’s compound, which developed into a long and deadly firefight outside of Kandahar city. When the mission was over, he was introduced to the leader of the assault, Captain Ryan Mitchell. They struck up a friendship that existed to this day.
“It’s not safe to drive around the desert in the dark, so we’re gonna need to stop for the night,” said Cardinal wearily as a small town on the side of the road came into sight, its neon lights beckoning to the road-weary travelers.
“I doubt they have a five-star hotel, but as long as it isn’t cockroach-infested I’ll be fine,” replied Sam, folding up her map.
They pulled into the first gas station that they saw. Cardinal was thankful for the chance to stretch out his back and fill up their Land Rover while Sam worked her charms on a young man who recommended a hotel just off the main road. A couple of minutes later, they pulled up in front of a wooden, two-story building that was painted a garish shade of light blue with a large, golden, smiling camel hanging over the front door. The name of the establishment was written in Mongolian, Chinese, Russian, and very poor English. Sam cringed at the thought of staying at the Free Woman Hotel. Obviously, something was lost in the translation, she thought. Judging by the half-dozen other cars parked out front, it couldn’t be half as bad as it sounded. While Cardinal grabbed their luggage, Sam headed inside to see if they had a spare room for the night. At first, the hotel owner complained that they had arrived too late and that there was nothing available, but after slipping a hundred-dollar bill his way, a room on the second floor miraculously came open. After dropping their few pieces of luggage on the sagging bed, Sam and Cardinal decided to see what there was to eat in the hotel’s restaurant before getting some much-needed shuteye, knowing that another long day of driving awaited them first thing in the morning.
Taking a seat in a corner of the small, smoke-filled, but busy dining room, Sam and Cardinal perused the menu. Like the sign outside, it was written in four languages — and equally as poorly in all of them. Before too long, a young girl with a round face and pleasant smile came over. To their surprise, she spoke very good English with a slight Irish accent. When asked, she told them that she had learned English from some oil workers who had lived in the town several years back. Trusting in their waitress’ recommendations, they ordered a couple of the local beers and the house special, a lamb dish with dumplings and rice. As soon as the waitress left, Sam dug out her iPad and laid it on their table, quickly opening up a secure file on the missing students for them to review.
“So what are you thinking?” asked Cardinal as the young girl returned with their ice-cold beers.
“Well, according to the police report, we know that they crossed the border seventeen days ago, at precisely 3:15 in the afternoon, and that a major sandstorm was moving across the Gobi at that time. So it’s not inconceivable that they got disoriented in the storm and ended up on a side road somewhere well off the beaten track,” said Sam as she brought up an image of the road leading from the border to Ulaanbaatar.
Cardinal looked down at the map. “It’s roughly six hundred kilometers from the border to Ulaanbaatar; that’s a hell of a lot of distance to get lost in.”
“I agree, but if we say that they got no more than one hundred kilometers up the road before the storm hit, they would have slowed to a crawl. So I say we look from the town of Sainshand, southward,” said Sam, knowing that she was probably mispronouncing the name of the town as she pointed to it on her iPad. “It’s roughly two hundred kilometers from the border. We can use the town as a base from which to begin our search of the desert.”
Cardinal nodded his head. It looked like they had a working plan. “I doubt there are a ton of gas stations along the road, so I’ll buy a couple of extra jerry cans from the gas station before we head out in the morning.”
“And I’ll buy us some food and water as well. You never know when we may need it,” added Sam as the waitress returned to their table with their dinner.
Cardinal looked down at the food on his plate; none of it looked overly appetizing, but after trying a small portion of the lamb, he quickly changed his tune and dug in with gusto. After another beer, Sam and Cardinal made their way upstairs to get some sleep.