The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (53 page)

“What’s the matter?” Thomas asked as he and Claire saw what was going on.

“Your Indian boy wants to take another route.”

“Why, is this one blocked farther ahead?” John Henry asked.

Gray Dog didn’t answer, he only turned and beckoned the three to follow. They did, exchanging looks that lent credence to their confusion. As they followed they noticed the ice walls seemed to become more transparent and Claire was still in wonder at what she was seeing. To her it was like being inside of a giant diamond of magnificent brilliance. They saw Gray Dog ahead as he waited. He was barely discernable in the weak light that filtered through the ice.

“Well, I don’t see any block in the road,” Taylor said as Gray Dog looked at him. Without speaking he waited for John Henry and Claire. He struck alight a match and put the flame to a torch. As the flame grew in strength Gray Dog held up the torch and placed it near the wall of ice. Claire saw what he had seen earlier and then she screamed, and this time the echo never died, it went on to the ends of the earth.

The men awaiting an order outside heard the scream and it was powerful enough that several large rocks were dislodged from the cliffs above them. All men, Rebel to marine to naval personnel, exchanged worried looks. They had been silent and apprehensive after stepping foot onto Ararat and now this. The column waited as the echo finally died away.

Inside the tunnel John Henry had taken Claire into his arms as they saw the horrific sight. There were six men in the ice. The face of each was frozen in a grimace of horror as they had obviously drowned. The sheer shock of how they died locked into a mountain was startling to Taylor and Thomas. It was Ollafson who entered the tunnel and was not shocked but saddened at what he saw. He stepped up to Gray Dog and pried the torch from his hand. He held it to the ice wall and examined each face as best as he could.

“I do not know him.” He shifted the torch as McDonald entered the area and gasped as he saw the frozen bodies suspended in an animated fight for their lives. “I do not know this man either.” Again he shifted the torch to another body. This one was situated about four feet over the professor’s head, so he reached up to place the torch as close to the tortured features of the well-dressed European man as he could. “Professor Antanov.” He moved the torch to the next frozen body. This one had severe damage to his skull as if he had been hit in the head by a large stone during the avalanche and flood that killed him. “Professor Ali Kasseem. I know both of these men. They disappeared three years ago. Both men are tenured professors at Oxford University.”

“Well, it looks like they may have lost that tenure,” Jessy said as he removed the torch from Ollafson’s hand and then handed it to Gray Dog. “Continue. We will still go this way.”

Gray Dog looked from Taylor to John Henry, who only nodded his head.

“All these men are old soldiers. The colonel is right; we move forward through here.”

Gray Dog didn’t reply. He simply turned and vanished once more.

“Still, it may help to forewarn those that follow us,” Claire said as she eased herself out of Thomas’s embrace. She looked embarrassed as she replaced her hood. “I apologize for my womanly hysterics. I have seen dead men before, I assure you.”

“Should I start moving the men in, Colonel—Jesus Christ, the saints be with us!” Sergeant Major Dugan said loudly and started crossing himself when he saw what it was that had held up everyone and the reason for that lingering scream. Even Dugan’s exclamation was still echoing. John Henry turned to Claire with a smile.

“Yes, you may have seen dead men, but it looks like the rough and tough Irishman before you may have made wee-wee in his pantaloons.”

As Dugan turned away from the frozen bodies staring back at him he failed to see what everyone was snickering about.

*   *   *

The incident with Sergeant Major Dugan made the passage past the frozen explorers a little easier for the men to take with a brave front, thanks to the rumor spread by Colonel John Henry Thomas, a man Dugan would never, ever forgive for spreading it—after all, he only lost control of his bladder a little.

The laughter made everyone forget where they were, if only momentarily.

The column was a day and a half from the summit.

20

ONE HUNDRED MILES NORTH OF TRABZON HARBOR, THE BLACK SEA

The crew of the U.S.S.
Carpenter
knew the late-arriving
Yorktown
could do her no good in her fight to keep the tow barge,
Argo
, afloat. The
Chesapeake
was docked at Trabzon, where she was off-loading her contingent of marines for transport to the rail link at Talise for their rendezvous with Lieutenant Parnell, so she could not come to the aid of the battling
Carpenter
.

The problem was the same as they’d had in the Atlantic: The swells were nearly swamping the large barge, so much so the captain of the
Carpenter
was close to ordering the
Argo
’s crew off the ship. The barge sailors were already tired from bailing, pumping, and keeping the flotation bags filled, and that meant constant use of the man-powered billows that supplied the air bags with the necessary air to keep the
Argo
afloat.

The captain, a young lieutenant, J.G., kept his eyes glued to the binoculars as he scanned the
Argo
’s high-water mark. It looked as though the hard work of not only
Argo
’s crew, but of the barge’s navy riggers was finally paying off. He took a deep breath and lowered his glasses.

“The damn cargo is just too heavy, Captain. That barge was designed for calmer seas than we have shown her. Ericsson didn’t figure on the winter swells in the Black Sea.”

The captain nodded his agreement and then smiled.

“I’ll let you mention that little bit of information to Ericsson upon our return.”

“No thank you, I value my head too much.”

“There,
Carpenter
is signaling,” the captain said as he once more raised his glasses. The signal lamp blinked off and on several times, lasting a full five minutes. He soon lowered the glasses feeling far better than he had a moment before when he thought they were about to lose Colonel Thomas’s prized possession.

“What does she say?” the first officer asked.

“They’ve controlled the flooding in the inner hull area and have added the last four flotation bags to her hull. She’s stable for the moment, but they’re fearful of any gale that may spring up. They say they cannot reinforce the hull again. She will founder.”

The first officer raised his own glasses and scanned the towline, and from there his eyes traveled to the barge. She was riding extremely low in the water.

“Damn dangerous,” he said.

“The
Argo
’s crew will not come above decks. They refuse to allow the sea to take a hold of their vessel.”

“Ericsson’s boys. They would rather die and go down to Davy Jones’s locker than to face Ericsson after failing to keep his baby afloat.”

“Can’t say as I blame them,” the captain said as he moved his glasses around to make sure their end of the towline was taut.

“Ship ahoy!” came the call from the
Carpenter
’s crow’s nest and her two-man lookout.

“Where away?” he called out.

“Two points off our stern!”

The captain swung his glasses around and fought to clear the mist behind the towed
Argo.

“Thank God, it must be either the
Yorktown
or the
Chesapeake
,” the first officer said as he too raised his binoculars.

The captain finally spied a tall mast through the haze of the late afternoon. He smiled. It was a frigate, more than likely the
Chesapeake
on her way to meet them after discharging the marines ashore.

“Ah, there she—”

“Second vessel ahoy, a thousand yards behind the first!”

The captain lowered the glasses for the briefest of moments when his heart skipped a beat. One American ship he could believe, but both arriving at the same moment in the middle of the Black Sea was a little too convenient. He raised the field glasses again.

“Two French frigates, can’t make out their class!”

“Damn,” the captain said as both he and the first mate saw the battle flags of the two French warships simultaneously. The captain zeroed in on the bow of the fast-moving frigate in the lead. “That’s the frigate
Especial
. Thirty-two guns and an oaken hull.” He now concentrated on the second, even larger frigate. “This is not good, Lieutenant. It’s the
Osiris.
The two newest class of warships in the French navy.” He lowered the glasses and shook his head. “It seems someone is out to impress us with their firepower.”

“Yeah, all we need now is for the British to show.”

“Now would be a good time for
Chesapeake
and
Yorktown
to arrive. I’m feeling a little naked out here with just our guns and a floating weapon that will sink if one of those French sailors even sneezes against her hull hard enough.”

“Tell me, why are we here again?” the first officer asked jokingly.

“Yes, it does make boring blockade duty seem more attractive, doesn’t it?”

*   *   *

In just a few hours their worry would be multiplied when the British warship,
Westfield
, slowly pulled into the eastern Black Sea. As it stood, the Americans were outgunned ninety-six guns to thirty-two. Even the American navy couldn’t pull a battle like that out of the fire. They needed help and they needed it fast before someone realized they could call their bluff and blow the American ship and her tow barge of equipment to pieces.

Colonel John Henry Thomas’s expedition was fast running out of time.

MOUNT ARARAT, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The storm hit the expedition moments after they had started erecting the shelters for the night’s camp. They would settle in for the snowy, windy night with hot food in their bellies thanks to the United States Navy and their foresight to include coal in their supplies. They had enough coal for five days of cooking and heat, after that they would have to rely on the sparse trees of Ararat. Grandee handed out plates of hot beans and corn bread. How he managed to bake corn bread no one dared ask. They accepted the hot meal gratefully after the strenuous march up the mountain.

John Henry Thomas stood on a small incline and watched as the men ate and erected their shelters. He’d called this halt not only for sleep but to also confront Ollafson about the route they were taking. After certifying that this was the fastest route, Gray Dog had reported that they could cut their time in half by changing direction. He wanted the column to veer to the left and take the glacier route. It was smoother and had far fewer crevasses for men to fall into. They had nearly lost four men already when the ice they were walking on gave way. That was when Gray Dog reported the alternate route.

Grandee walked up to John Henry and held out a plate of food. The colonel nodded and accepted it. He immediately spooned beans into his mouth and was pleased with the rich taste.

“My wife couldn’t boil the water to cook the beans,” John Henry said to Grandee with no preamble. The large black man listened politely as John Henry chewed. “She had to learn how to cook like most soldiers have to learn how to fight.” He lowered the spoon and looked at Grandee. “Only they learned far faster than she did. Many a night when I was close to home while on patrol I would stop in and she would fix me dinner. You could imagine how good an actor I had to be when she fed me chicken that had looked as if it had got caught in the P. T. Barnum museum fire. It was horrible.” He scooped another spoonful of beans into his mouth, chewed, and then a sad look came to his face. He handed the plate back to Grandee, who accepted it without comment. He turned away, figuring the colonel had lost his appetite while thinking about his dead wife.

“Thank you, Mr. Grandee.”

By the time Grandee stopped and turned, John Henry had vanished into the falling snow. The mess steward turned away and saw Claire looking at him.

“The colonel not hungry?” she asked.

“Well, Miss, he is and he isn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, a man has certain appetites, and the colonel’s just not hungry for what old Grandee’s cookin’, is all. That’s one lonely man. I figure that’s what he’s hungerin’ for.” He laughed lightly. “Yes, sir, that’s what I figure.”

She watched Grandee turn away with the plate of food. She saw the activity around her and she pulled her thick coat tighter. With the absence of light the mountain took on a far more ominous tone. The men were in a jovial mood, but every now and again she would see them looking at the crevices and cracks as if there were some beast ready to spring at them from the mountain.

“I see our intrepid leader has no appetite this lovely evening.”

Claire turned and saw Steven McDonald standing next to her. She made no attempt to answer his observation.

“I have noticed your recent proclivity for avoiding my company since our French friend was asked to leave us a few days back.”

Claire turned and faced the Englishman. “Since Colonel Thomas is no man’s fool, and since he shook out Renaud so easily, I thought it best we keep our distance before he suspects the French fool wasn’t the only one he had to worry about.”

McDonald smiled as he leaned into her shoulder. “Such high praise for a man that you clearly despise. Imagine that, Madame Claire Richelieu, cowed by a man.” He laughed lightly and then started to turn away. “Do not get too close, my love, unless you would like to take up permanent residence here with him when this idiocy is concluded.”

Claire watched the British officer vanish into the tent he shared with Ollafson. When she turned back she felt that deep-seated chill once more. She decided to take a brief walk to shake out the cramping in her legs. She knew she wasn’t fooling herself about John Henry; it seemed he hated her and her chosen profession so much that he could not see her as anything other than an underhanded woman playing men for information. She didn’t know why his opinion of her meant so much. But it did.