The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (60 page)

He assisted Claire to her feet and then frowned at Gray Dog, who held his hand up for Dugan to help him up also. The sergeant major shook his head and walked away.

*   *   *

By the time Claire and the others arrived they saw all one hundred-plus members of the expedition standing at the edge of the crater that the dynamite created over the remains of the Ark. Not a word was said as the snow and ice settled around them.

Claire stumbled as she saw the precise way the ice had cracked. It opened up the area directly over the petrified vessel. There was also an opening extending three hundred feet, making the effort of lowering men down into the cave system moot. Now they could walk a little ways downhill and then take a slick ramp right up to the old cave. She finally made it to the edge, where Gray Dog held out an arm and arrested her forward momentum before she went into the void in front of her.

“Thank you. Clumsy of me.”

Gray Dog only nodded and then turned to see just what they had uncovered.

The circle of men waited until they could see through the falling ice crystals still floating in the air, giving the scene a surreal look.

John Henry saw it first. The curved bow of the Ark was visible clearly for the first time and it was a shocking sight. Thomas took a deep breath as he realized for the first time what he was really looking at. Myth, legend, and children’s tales of wonder were all there before them.

The men were silent as they viewed the thing they had come to see. All thoughts of the war, of the hardship in getting here, even the deaths that had occurred at the hands of an angered God, vanished as they beheld the greatest sight any man in the history of the world could ever have imagined.

Most men, either from the North of the South, marine, sailor, or soldier, could see for the first time what Lincoln’s train of thought had been at approving such a risky mission. The Ark was capable of immense power. Perhaps even the power to heal, if the world could see that this was the very beginning for all men regardless of race or birthplace.

“Wow!” was all the articulate Jackson could say.

At that moment the snow stopped and the sun actually showed itself for the first time in days. It spotlighted like the foot lamps of a theater one of God’s greatest gifts to man—the Ark.

Only the bow had been exposed to the modern world. Just two hundred feet of the petrified fossil could be seen as the rest vanished into the now blue-colored glacier. The sunlight made the ancient wood sparkle as if God was highlighting his gift of life to man.

One of the more amazing sights was the fact that everyone could see the beginnings of the raised section of housing on the deck of the Ark. It was even shingled in a rough sort of way. All assumed it was the living quarters for the family of man—Noah and his offspring. The deck from their vantage point looked to be far more sloped than previously thought. Even the wooden pegs used to adhere one plank to the next could be made out in the petrified wood. It was clearly an engineer’s dream of ancient wood carving and building. Jackson knew that John Ericsson would have had a stroke upon seeing God’s design for a vessel. For once Ericsson was outdone.

“It a shame we’re not taking it out of here. If we only had the time.”

“How do you figure?” John Henry turned and asked Jessy, who was looking at the destroyed cave.

“At the opening of the excavation there is only a small wall of ice remaining to impede us from removing the bow section from the glacier and just sliding it right out of the grave it’s trapped in. The way it looks”—Jessy squinted his eyes against the sudden brightness—“we would have almost a straight run to the base of the mountain. Maybe two or three days to transit back down with our prize.”

“Don’t let Professor Ollafson hear you say that. It will get him wound up tighter than a five-dollar Ingersoll watch.”

Both Jessy and John Henry turned to see a smirking Captain Jackson, who was proud of his simple, witty remark.

“Well, I think the world will have to be healed by the knowledge that it was Americans”—he looked at Taylor directly—“
all
Americans that found this. And it will be heavily documented.” He turned away from Jessy after making his point and then faced an astonished Daniel Perlmutter.

“Think you can capture the scope of the discovery now, kid?”

“Oh, yes! Before the darkness would have affected the quality, but now! Boy, oh boy. The sun will be directly overhead in two hours. It will expose the Ark and give the images true depth, and you know you can always use good lighting, why this is—”

Perlmutter failed to notice that he was standing there alone as the others had quickly walked away once he had started harping on his favorite subject—his work.

*   *   *

An hour later the men had begun clearing off the one-hundred-and-fifty-foot exposed section of the Ark. The mood was far better now that they had something meaningful to do. Even Corporal Jenks was far more festive than he’d been before the detonations. Perlmutter had decided to photograph the Ark and the men that had found her first. He would position the shot from the edge of the void down onto the deck with the Ark’s new crew standing onboard. He could see the many awards he would receive for the documentation of the greatest archeological find in history.

Many of the men still working above on the ice shelf saw Gray Dog running toward them. He found John Henry and pointed down the mountain.

“Signal from Parnell,” he said.

This got the attention of Claire, Jessy, and Jackson. Dugan was late reporting the same thing and gave Gray Dog a dirty look for beating him to the punch.

John Henry quickly raised his field glasses. Three rockets were just starting to fall after they had reached their highest arc. Parnell was signaling imminent danger from the plain below. As he watched another three shot up into the clear blue sky.

“Answer Lieutenant Parnell, Sergeant Major,” Thomas said as he scanned the expansive lands beneath Ararat.

Dugan ran to get the naval ordnance crew to signal with rocket fire that Parnell’s message had been received. All knew that if the night sky was as clear as the daylight hours they would be able to signal Parnell with the large Morse lamps they had hauled to the summit with them. Then they would learn the particulars of the danger signal.

“What do you think it is?” Jessy asked as he removed the field glasses from John Henry’s grip and scanned the world below for himself.

“My guess would be that we will have company soon. Either up here or down there in ambush.” He smiled at Taylor.

“And your thinking is never wrong?” Jessy asked as he slowly lowered the glasses but still stared at the lands beneath Ararat.

John Henry knew the point Jessy was making and he decided that it was time for truth.

“Only once.” He faced Jessy. “Only one time, and that killed me inside.”

Taylor slowly looked at his brother-in-law. He only nodded.

John Henry saw the understanding and then started to walk away. He stopped though when he saw Claire in the distance talking with Jackson. She glanced his way and there was just a hint of a smile. Thomas nodded his head and then a smile slowly broke out. For once it didn’t feel manufactured in any way. Jessy saw this but raised the binoculars back to his eyes.

“Let’s try and not make another mistake, because you may have just as much riding on this if you’re wrong.” He lowered the glasses and then smirked at John Henry.

“I may have at that.” Taylor saw that the colonel’s eyes never left the face of Claire.

*   *   *

John Henry was inside the Ark where headquarters had been established now that there was bright sunlight available and shelter was now abundant—a little old and musty, but still better than spending the night wondering if your tent was going to blow away. He decided that he would catch up on his journal entries that he had let slide since they started to traverse the mountain. He was using the lamp to see with. He was having a hard time concentrating because the decision he had just made was weighing heavily on his mind.

Thus far Jackson had some men start removing the ice that was blocking access into the house-like structure atop the Ark. So far they had uncovered nothing much other than unrecognizable objects from a time long past. A few petrified animal remains that could be as old as the mausoleum that sheltered their corpses. One area that made every man who saw it take pause was what looked as if it were the familial quarters of the Ark’s passengers. It had been a revived Ollafson who had recognized the bedding pallets that may have been used by Noah and his kin. There were frozen hides of some long-dead animals that looked as if they were some ancient form of mattress. Oil lamp bowls that had been dead for thirteen thousand years. Lamps that may have illuminated a frightened family as they were tossed about in a flood-induced terror. There was a large cooking pit that had an exhaust that ran high and vanished through the battered and torn roof of the living quarters.

John Henry had been furiously working since late last night when they received the Morse signal from Lieutenant Parnell and his command on the Plain of Ararat. The situation, he had learned, was fast becoming untenable and now he had to send instructions to the marine telling him what to do.

Since yesterday the most disturbing thing discovered since they opened up the cave’s ceiling was the Angelic symbols found along the main bulkhead of the familial quarters. There were six lines of characters and five characters per line. Claire and Ollafson were doing their best trying to interpret the symbols. John Henry could hear their muted mumbling in the room next to the starboard animal pens of the Ark. The voices gave John Henry pause as they talked. It was as if he were hearing ghostly voices from a long ago past. Eerie, some would call it.

Thomas stopped writing and flexed his hand. His eyes roamed to the oilcloth satchel. Claire had wanted to take it into the room with her and Ollafson to compare to the newly discovered symbols, but John Henry had refused. The satchel with its contents would not be handled any longer by anyone on the expedition. That was what his conundrum was. He had to kill two birds with one stone, and one of those birds he had grown rather fond of over the weeks.

“Here it is,” said a voice from the ragged opening. Jessy was there and he was silhouetted in bright sunshine before stepping into the darkened interior. Taylor held up a large cloth-covered package he had retrieved from John Henry’s tent. “What is this?” he asked as he placed the parcel on the table next to the satchel. Taylor pulled up a camp chair and sat. He removed his hood and then reached into his tunic for a cigar and lit it with the aid of the oil lamp. He sat back down as John Henry finished his journal entry.

“What’s in here?” he asked again as he toyed with the twine that held the bundle together.

“You should know. You found it many years ago.”

Taylor raised both brows as he looked from John Henry to the filthy white cloth bundle he held. John Henry slowly slid the bundle away and then waited.

“Sir!” Dugan said from the opening. “Private Willard and Gray Dog. Took some doin’ to get the Indian to report, but here he is.”

“Show them both in,” Thomas said.

The first in was one of Jessy’s men. A nineteen-year-old private from Alexandria. A boy bred in a fine family and well educated for the time. John Henry had noted that the kid spent a full two years at the Virginia Military Institute. The real draw to the boy was Taylor’s statement that he was also the best damn rider he had ever seen. Willard spoke to horses and they did his every bidding. It seemed his father was a fine horse breeder and Private Willard, or Sam, as Jessy called the boy, was most knowledgeable about the equine species. The private stepped in and lowered the hood to his parka. The boy looked frightened as he removed a woolen cap also and twisted it in his hands. Gray Dog squeezed past Dugan, giving him a strange look as he did.

“Is that how you report, Sam?” Jessy said as he leaned back in his chair and puffed on his cigar.

“Uh, no, Colonel.” The boy stood ramrod straight and then snapped a salute, first toward Taylor, and then thinking better of it directed the respect toward John Henry, who immediately returned the salute. Gray Dog watched this as he stood next to the boy and he was non-plussed at the respect shown to the two officers. Gray Dog just stood there looking at Private Willard, who was keenly aware the Indian had his eyes on him and was feeling a bit nervous about it.

“At ease, Private,” John Henry said.

Willard did not place himself at ease at all. He continued to twist his stocking cap in his hands.

“The colonel informs me you’re one hell of a horseman,” John Henry stated.

“Yes, sir, some say that’s a fact.”

“You have also had some international travel before the war started, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir, my pa and me had to travel to Europe for horse flesh, Colonel, sir. For breeding purposes.”

John Henry saw that the boy was barely able to shave. The chin whiskers on his fresh face were sparse and his cheeks as red as a schoolchild. But John Henry knew he had no choice. Besides, it would take the youngest person on this mission out of here. That was the least he could do. He only wished he could send Claire out with him.

“Good,” Thomas said as he exchanged looks with Jessy, who was silently smoking his cigar and watching. John Henry, then held up a letter. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw it was addressed to the president of the United States and was sealed closed. John Henry reached out and took a hold of the satchel’s handle and then opened it. He felt the air in the room grow far colder than it had been a moment before. He quickly placed the white envelope inside and then hurriedly closed the satchel. Jessy and Dugan saw how fast John Henry had done this. It was if the colonel were afraid if he left the satchel open for too long Azrael would escape like a crazed genie in a bottle. “You are going home, Master Willard.” John Henry slid the satchel toward the boy.

“Sir?” Willard said, confused. His look went from the Yankee colonel to a stunned Jessy, who said nothing, but he did remove the cigar from his mouth and then looked at Thomas waiting for the explanation.