“Come on, Jabez. Where are you?” he said quietly through clenched teeth.
Puffs of dust started kicking up as the bullets started to rain down from the hilltop. It looked like six men lined the edge of protective barrier that ran along the driveway at the top.
Sean had just given the signal to Adriana for her to lift off when he noticed some movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Jabez running at a dead sprint towards the helicopter.
“Wait a second,” Sean ordered just as she was beginning to get the machine airborne.
Sean flung open his door and yelled out at the Arab. “Hurry. We have to move!”
Jabez never looked back up. He could see the rounds of metal pounding the dirt all around. Some of the snipers had noticed him and now the trail of gunfire was chasing him towards the helicopter.
Sean jumped back inside as Jabez neared the open back door. As soon as he reached the open back door, Adriana began to pull the aircraft off the ground again. Jabez launched into the floor of the back part of the chopper as it lifted off the ground. Adriana pulled the stick gently, veering the helicopter away from the small mountain. A few bullets panged off the metal shell of the cabin for a moment before they gained some distance and altitude.
Jabez breathed heavily in the back of the helicopter, taking in huge gasps of air while he put on a headset that had been hanging on the wall.
Sean turned around and looked back at him. “I thought you weren’t going to make it,” he said into the microphone that wrapped around near his mouth.
“I didn’t think I would either,” the Arab replied. “But I appreciate you waiting on me.”
“What about your men?” Adriana interrupted the mushy conversation.
“I will let them know not to return to the fortress. We will certainly need the trucks to navigate the mountains north of Ararat. We could fly, but I seriously doubt there will be many good places to land. Not a lot of level space in that mountain range.”
Adriana leveled out the helicopter high above the Armenian plains. Off to the left, the two peaks of Ararat Mountain loomed ominously. There had been something mysterious about the place, like it had long held a secret that the world needed to know. Now that mystery was mostly gone. If the ark of Noah was somewhere else, Ararat would become just another mountain.
“It is beautiful,” Adriana commented as the soared by in the afternoon sky, leaving the mountains behind and pulling up new ones in the distance.
Sean thought about it for a few minutes. Firth stared out the window at the enormous peaks. He must have been cold because he pulled his jacket tighter around his torso.
“There is another problem you have yet to consider,” the professor said after a long period of silence.
The headsets were filled with the strange background noise associated with flying in a helicopter.
“What’s that?” Sean twisted his head to look at Firth. He had almost reached his limit with the professor’s negativity.
Firth faced him while Jabez leaned forward, finally having caught his breath. “Even if the map we found in the pit was legitimate, we don’t have a starting point.” He cocked his head back and gazed at the Arab. “How big is this town of Ararat?”
Jabez shrugged. “Maybe thirty thousand people. Perhaps more.”
The professor raised his hands as if demanding an answer. “You see? While that is a small town, it will still cover a considerable amount of land. How do we know the center point for where Saint Gregory started his journey? You can’t exactly draw a line with a map if you don’t have a starting point. And if you begin with just anywhere in the city, you could end up being far off course in the middle of the desert mountains.”
Sean realized his point and turned around to face forward. He could see the outline of the city up ahead in the distance against the backdrop of the mountains.
“He must have left another clue,” Adriana said, her eyes still locked on the horizon in front of her. “Gregory doesn’t seem like he would have just scribbled some information on the floor of a dungeon without having first created a waypoint.”
That had to be it. Sean scratched his face while he considered her statement. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his stubble had become a little itchy. For a second he was distracted by wondering how men with beards could tolerate the irritation. He refocused his mind back on the task of figuring out what Saint Gregory could have left behind to guide them to the ark.
“Jabez,” he said and turned around again. “Do you know if there is a something in the town of Ararat like a monument or some kind of tribute to Gregory?”
He shook his head. “No. I do not know of anything like that. However, there is a statue in the middle of the town that is very old. Some people have said it has been there longer than the city itself, that the first inhabitants placed it there.”
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of statue?”
Chapter 31
Lindsey’s mercenaries ran down the hill in front of him and DeGard with Will and Kaba in the lead. The old man couldn’t move very fast, which wasn’t an issue at the moment considering the helicopter would take a few minutes to start. He just hoped Wyatt and his friends hadn’t tampered with anything. It was unlikely they’d had time since their escape had been narrow. The chopper would be tight with Kaba and Will, plus his four remaining men. It would have to do. He didn’t want to leave anyone behind. Or did he?
The Frenchman was nearing the end of his usefulness. Lindsey wondered how much more he could get out of the former professor. At this point, they were simply following Wyatt.
He and DeGard rounded the bend at the bottom of the hill and approached the helicopter. Kaba was already warming up the engines and the other men had taken seats in the back.
Will was walking swiftly towards the two slower movers. “I’m pulling up the transponder right now. We will know exactly where they are and where they’re headed in a few minutes.”
“Excellent,” Lindsey responded between labored breaths. A cold gust of air picked up and rolled across the flat, carelessly flipping his white hair around.
He was still considering the fate of his French employee. While he would be more than happy to have him tossed out of the helicopter as he’d had done to another man a few weeks before, it would be a shame if the need for his expertise arose on the final leg of the journey. He would let DeGard live…for now. It was a certainty, though, that the man’s usefulness would run out soon. Then he would give the Frenchman his reward.
As if hearing his name in Lindsey’s thoughts, DeGard spoke up. “Where do you think they’re going?” he asked above the noise of the helicopter’s engine.
“We’ll know shortly,” Lindsey shouted back.
He left the Frenchman standing alone for a moment before the birdlike man caught back up again. The two climbed into the chopper. The men on board made room for Lindsey, and were sure to give him enough space. For DeGard, however, they did not, forcing him to squeeze into a small space on the edge of the seat next to a man with a wide jaw and a piercing set of grayish blue eyes that seemed to stare straight through.
DeGard tried to make himself comfortable but was clearly unable to, so he resigned himself to the fact that he was just going to be ill at ease for the foreseeable future. He hoped that their destination wasn’t far away.
Will turned around and shouted into the rear cabin. “Looks like they are headed towards a small town to the north. Won’t know until they stop if that is where their destination is. But it’s the only town in the area.”
“Why would they go there?” Lindsey asked into the headset. “Unless they think there is something of significance in the town.”