Ancient Echoes (3 page)

Nick Hoffman, however, looked and sounded every bit as
craggy as the surroundings, as if he'd spent his entire sixty-plus years
scouting this wilderness. Wiry and hard-muscled, with a long Buffalo Bill
mustache, he wore a battered, wide-brimmed cowboy hat, the type commonly seen
throughout Idaho with the exception of Boise. A true Idahoan never wore one too
new, too high, or with a brim too wimpy.

Rempart and the guide's argument raged on, growing more
virulent and bitter by the minute. Nick Hoffman insisted the route the
professor wanted to take was too difficult. The trail had been closed due to a
landslide, and the surrounding mountains were too steep for the students. They
were young, yes, but a week at a ski resort was about as grueling as their
lives got. Hoffman didn't waste his breath on Rempart's own pitiful physical
condition.

Rempart pointed out that taking one of the approved U.S.
Forest Service trails around the landslide would add at least a day's walk in
each direction, leaving little time at the site. His voice grew high and
impatient. “I only brought you here because the University required a guide. I
didn't expect you to interfere!”

“It's too dangerous to leave the trails.” Hoffman's
wide-legged stance projected no nonsense. “Why do you think that soil slid? The
land is steep and the silt is loose. It's like trying to stand on talcum
powder. Step on it, and you get no footing. The question is, why are you so
damned determined to get to that particular part of the Wilderness Area? The
land out there is all the same.”

“How can you know if you haven't been there?” Rempart
snapped.

Hoffman attempted to keep his voice calm and reasonable.
“Because those who went said so.
If you want evidence of
Tukudeka activity, you need to head south, like I told you.”

“Nonsense.
I want to see this
spot.” Rempart jabbed the map with his forefinger. “And I’m the one in charge
here!”

“That’s fucking pigheaded!” Hoffman shouted. His words
stunned Rempart. The much vaunted instructor couldn't believe he'd been spoken
to that way. Hoffman continued. “With the trail gone, we can’t safely get there
from here in the time you have.
Period.
Besides that,
your map isn't complete. A half mile over is a gorge. It fills up in winter and
spring. This time of year it's dry, but too damn steep even for mountain goats.
It's not shown on your fancy geo-what-the-hell map, but it's sure as hell
there. And once you’re off the trails there’s no way to easily get help if
someone is injured. I won't lead you and a bunch of kids into danger!”

The students backed up as the disagreement spiraled out of
control.

“We’re not going around the landslide.” Rempart folded the
map and tucked it in his jacket’s breast pocket. “This field trip is no longer
your concern. From here, we'll find our own way.”

“This isn't a park.” Hoffman's voice sounded low,
threatening. “It’s an empty, perilous land. Your cell phones won’t work, it’s
too big to patrol, and the wild life can be deadly. I’m the one in charge of
your safety.”

“Not anymore,” Rempart said. “You're fired.”

No one moved.

Finally, Hoffman spoke, trying to sound reasonable despite the
rush of color to his face, the vein that throbbed on his forehead.
“All right.”
He took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have spoken
that way. You’re the boss and I apologize, but we need to stay on a trail.
We’ll have time to reach an area a bit south and west of the spot you wanted to
go, but it’ll be fine, I’m sure. It’s all the same out in that wilderness,
believe me.”

Rempart drew himself up to full patrician haughtiness,
then
turned his back on Hoffman to his preferred route. Over
his shoulder he called out, “You know nothing about what’s fine for
anthropologists. Pack up and go.”

“I'm not leaving these young people, Rempart!” Hoffman faced
Melisse Willis, the graduate teaching assistant. She was one of three women on
the trip. Six feet tall, with short, head-hugging pale blond hair, and sculpted
muscles, she looked like a Nordic body builder. She grew up near Montana's
Flathead Lake, and knew survival techniques in isolated, mountainous terrain.
Nevertheless, important people had to pull strings to get her on the field
trip.

“You've got sense,” Hoffman said to her. “Do something!”

Devlin saw the struggle on the powerfully built teaching
assistant's face, but Rempart held her future in his hands. Melisse didn't dare
confront him. “I'm sure,” Melisse said, “Professor Rempart would never do
anything that might endanger himself. Or anyone else.”

Hoffman took his case to the students. “You don't want to do
this.”

Devlin's gaze met those of tag-along Brian Cutter, his best
friend who tried to do whatever Devlin did and never quite succeeded.

Baby-faced, stocky Ted Bellows jutted out his chin as he
waited for Devlin and Brian's decision. He tried to look macho and burly, but
with thick carrot-colored curls and a red-tinged pug nose, he only looked
porcine. His mother sat on the university's board of trustees and had insisted
that her son take part in the activities of the famous Dr. Lionel Rempart.

Vince Norton's eyes showed fright as he peered through
black-framed glasses at his fellow students. A wispy man with a boy's body,
glasses and shaggy brown hair that never saw a comb, Vince’s claim to fame—and
reason for being on this trip—was his ability as a computer nerd. He oversaw
care of the equipment, including a satellite computer connection back to the
University.

Devlin faced the two remaining students. Rachel Gooding was
slight of build, plain with long brown hair, and was the Anthropology
Department’s best student. Brandi Vinsome was the child of aging hippies who
built their organic farm into a multi-million dollar business. Brandi’s round
face was red from exertion, and her overly generous hips and pendulous breasts
had been squeezed into too tight jeans and a skimpy red Nautica hoodie. No one
understood why she had been chosen for this trip.

The girls, too, looked to Devlin for a decision. Alarms
jangled in his head. To stay here without a guide and to be led by someone who
knew nothing of the area was foolhardy in the extreme and potentially deadly.

His inner self urged retreat as his senses sharpened to every
sound, every smell. Somewhere, a branch snapped like a gunshot, and nearby, an
owl hooted. Many Indians considered owls a portent of death.

But it didn’t take him long to realize, just as Melisse had,
that Lionel Rempart controlled his future. He stepped closer to Rempart. As he
did, his shadow, Brian, joined him, as did the porcine Ted, and scrawny,
quivering Vince.

A moment later, Rachel followed, and so did Brandi, who
looked more scared of going off alone with someone as scruffy as Hoffman than
of staying.

Hoffman's world-weary gaze slowly moved from one to the
other. “Heaven help you,” he muttered,
then
spat,
gathered his belongings, and without another word, walked away.

Mongolia

BACK IN HIS
GER,
Michael
desperately tried to reach someone on his telecommunications equipment and got
only static.

The loud engine of an old GAZ truck sounded in the distance.
He ran out of the
ger
and watched as it approached.

His assistant, Li Jianjun, jumped out of the truck first.
Right after him, the two field experts, Batbaatar and Ravil Acemgul, exited the
vehicle.

“The men, they've run away,” Jianjun said to Michael. “We
tried to find them, but couldn’t. They were too scared. Long gone. They even
stole a truck!”

“I saw the skull and demon picture.” Michael folded his
arms. “Who did it?”

“We don’t know,” Jianjun answered. Born in Beijing, he was
now a Canadian citizen. Of medium height, with a slim build, his appearance and
demeanor were more like that of a college student than a man of 35 years. When
he was eight, his family moved from Beijing to Hong
Kong,
and from there to Vancouver, Canada. He worked at Microsoft in Seattle, bored
out of his mind, when he met Michael Rempart. Michael needed someone with
Jianjun’s technical abilities, and Jianjun needed someone who would use and
appreciate the full capability of his programming skills and computer hacking
know-how. They worked together the past seven years.

 “None of us saw or heard anything. When we woke up, we
saw that someone had managed to come inside while we slept.
Creeped
me out!”

“The men can’t be blamed.” Acemgul felt deeply embarrassed.
He was responsible for the workers. Middle-aged, he was of Kazakh descent as
were many people in the western part of Mongolia. With skin burned dark by the
sun, he had broad cheekbones and a high, straight nose. His bearing held all
the strength and athletic ability of a master horseman, common among Kazakhs.
“They are superstitious, uneducated.”

“People in the mountains did it.
People
who watch the
kurgans.
They protect everything here. They
want us to leave,” Batbaatar said.

Michael found that hard to believe. “We've been here for
weeks mapping, imaging, and now digging. Why didn’t we hear from them earlier?
This is crazy.”

Batbaatar continued. “These mountains, this land, are filled
with much that makes no sense to you who are not Mongolian. But that does not
make it less deadly.” An ethnic Mongolian, he stood five-foot five, with a
broad and stocky body and a round, flat face. Mongolians used only a single name,
and “baatar” was a common ending. It meant “hero.” A recent graduate of the
Polytechnic Institute in Ulaanbaatar, the country's capital and only modern
city, he operated the equipment, made radio contact with the world beyond
Banyan Ölgiy, and handled all things meteorological. Now, he held his head
high, as if he enjoyed talking about his strange countrymen. “But what they did
doesn’t matter because nature will stop us. A sand storm is heading this way.
A huge one.
It will hit around noon. We need to take strong
cover by that time.”

Despite the strangely colored sky, Michael could see for
miles in every direction. The storm wasn't near them yet. “A sandstorm could
set us back a week or more.”

“The sky is still clear,” Acemgul said. “I say let's see how
far we can get before it hits.”

“None of you are listening to me!” Batbaatar’s red-tinged,
wind-burned face frowned deeply. “This storm is a monster. Even here at camp I
don't know how safe we will be.”

Michael made the decision. “That’s all the more reason for
us to hurry.” He got into the truck. Reluctantly, the others followed, and soon
they reached the dig site.

The dig involved going straight down over a relatively small
area. To prevent the earthen walls from collapsing as they dug, Michael’s dig team
employed step-trenching, creating a series of large, wide steps heading
downward as the hole deepened.

As the dig neared the underground cavity, Michael bored a
three-inch hole through the soil and inserted a long tube with a periscope head
and a light. It revealed an open area containing a large rectangular object as
well as two smaller objects.

He had found something, but what it was could only be
learned by physically entering the chamber.

Michael expected to have plenty of time to breach the
underground cavity, but they no sooner reached the site when Batbaatar
incredulously announced that the storm had grown and picked up speed. Jianjun
had rigged up an Iridium satellite connection to Batbaatar's laptop so he could
continuously monitor tracking from NESDIS, the National Environmental Satellite
Data and Information Service polar orbiting satellites. The storm spanned a
full three miles across and would reach them by eleven o'clock rather than
noon.

Michael climbed down into the pit, determined to find out
more about his discovery. Acemgul and Jianjun helped.

Michael and his team had dug within three feet of the tomb
when Batbaatar called out, a desperate edge to his voice. “The storm is moving
even faster. It's still growing. In one hour, the first wave will hit. We've
got to finish up here and leave.”

Michael refused.

Twenty minutes later, the moment he had dreamed of since
first entering Mongolia happened. He broke through an opening.

The group high-fived congratulations all
around.

They worked rapidly to shore up the opening so it wouldn't
collapse while making it large enough for a man to descend into the chamber.

Batbaatar used an electronic meter to check for carbon
monoxide, methane, mold, bacteria, and other contaminants. Given the all-clear,
Michael and Acemgul donned hard hats with battery-powered Petzl caver's
headlamps, and carried tools, rope, and a digital camera. They lowered an
extension ladder into the hole along with ropes to hoist up finds. Jianjun and
Batbaatar remained at ground level watching not only weather instruments, but
also those that gave warning of any sudden shifting of the earth.

Michael descended first. He inhaled stale air with a sharp,
rancid undercurrent. He breathed through his mouth, trying to keep the fetid
smell from his nostrils, yet feeling as if it were pressing against his face,
cutting off his air. Sweat broke out on his forehead as it always did when he
went deep underground, loosening terrifying memories of his first significant
dig. He had been only twenty-six years old, in Kenya. A cave-in buried him.
When rescued, he appeared dead, his breathing and heartbeat nearly
imperceptible. Not until several minutes passed did he regain consciousness.

With those memories, as always, the idea struck that perhaps
this time would be his last.