They made their way to the nearest ger, which was more than double the standard size. The circular felt tent was nearly a hundred feet across and stood over ten feet tall. Pitt found a white-painted entry door, which on all Mongol gers faced south. Rapping his knuckles on the doorframe, he shouted a cheery "h.e.l.lo." The thin doorframe didn't flex at all under his knocking, which echoed with a deep resonance. Pitt placed his hand against the felt wall and pushed. Rather than simply a forgiving layer of canvas over felt, the wall was backed by something hard and solid.

"The big bad wolf couldn't blow this thing down," he said.

Grabbing an edge of the canvas covering, he ripped a small section off the wall. Beneath was a thin layer of felt, which he also tore away. Under the layer of felt he exposed a cold metal surface painted white.

"It's a storage tank," Pitt said, touching the metal side.

"Water?"

"Or oil," Pitt replied, stepping back and eyeing the other phony gers dotting the encampment.

"They may be large by nomadic-tent standards, but they are still relatively small for oil tanks," Giordino remarked.

"I bet we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. These things might be buried thirty or forty feet down, and we're only seeing the tops."

Giordino scuffed the ground and loosened a small rock, which he picked up and rapped against the tank. A deep empty echo reverberated through the tank.

"She's empty." He took a half step, then lobbed the rock at the next closest ger. The stone bounced off the side, producing a similar pinging sound.

"Empty as well," he said.

"So much for your pot of coffee," Pitt replied.

"Why would some empty oil tanks in the middle of nowhere be disguised as a fake village?"

"We may not be far from the Chinese border," Pitt said. "Maybe someone is concerned about the Chinese stealing their oil? I'd guess the target audience is an aerial survey or satellite imaging, at which heights this place would look pretty authentic."

"The wells must not have panned out if these tanks are all dry."

Wandering around the phony village, the men realized there was no food or water to be found and the mystery lost its allure. They worked their way through the string of fakers, hoping to find some emergency supplies or something more than an empty oil tank. But all the tents were the same, masking large metal tanks half buried in the sand. Only at the very last tent did they find that the door actually opened, revealing a pumping station dug twenty feet into the ground. A maze of pipes led to the other storage tanks, fed from a single four-foot-diameter inlet pipe that protruded from beneath the desert floor.

"An underground oil pipeline," Pitt observed.

"Dug and placed with the help of a tunnel-boring machine?" Giordino posed. "Now, let's see, where have I seen one of those lately?"

"It's quite possible that our friends at Avarga Oil have struck again. May have something to do with the deal they are cooking up with the Chinese, but for what purpose I can only guess."

The two men fell silent again, fatigue and disappointment damping their spirits. Overhead, the rising sun was beginning to bake the sand-and-gravel floor around the mock village. Tired from their all-night trek and weak from lack of food and water, the men wisely decided to rest. Ripping sections of the felt covering from one of the tanks, they bundled a pair of crude mattresses together and lay down in the shade of the pumping house. The homemade beds felt like a cloud to their tired bones and they quickly drifted off to sleep.

The sun was dropping toward the western horizon like a fluorescent billiard ball when the two men finally roused themselves. The sleep break did little to restore their energy levels, however, and they departed the village in a lethargic state. They began hiking with noticeable effort, yet moved at a snail's pace, as if each man had aged forty years in his sleep. Pitt took another bearing with his watch against the sun's rays and led them in a westerly direction again, foregoing any thoughts of trying to trace the underground pipeline. They moved in unspoken unison, willing their bodies forward with each step, as the first hints of delirium began to fog their minds.

The winds gradually began to kick up again, jabbing and swirling in sporadic gusts as a prelude to the force that was to come. The northerly wind brought with it a cold chill. Both men had carried a thin section of felt from the storage tank and wrapped their heads and torsos in the fabric like a poncho. Pitt targeted a distant S-shaped ridge for a bearing as the sun slid away, focusing his efforts on maintaining a straight course. As the winds picked up, he knew his North Star compa.s.s would be obscured, and the last thing they needed in their state was to be wandering around in circles.

An annoying mantra, "move or die," began to repeat endlessly in his head, urging him forward. Pitt could feel the swelling in the back of his parched throat and tried to put the unyielding thirst out of his mind. He glanced at Giordino, who bulled ahead with listless eyes. Both their energies and exhausted mental capacities were concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Time seemed to fade away for Pitt, and consciousness nearly as well. He drifted along, then felt his eyes pop open, not sure if he had fallen asleep on his feet. How long he was out, he had no idea, but at least Giordino was still there, trudging along beside him. His mind began to wander, thinking of his wife, Loren, who served in Congress back in Washington. Though lovers for many years, they had only just recently married, Pitt reasoning that his days of globe-trotting adventure were behind him. She'd known the wanderl.u.s.t would never leave his blood, even if he didn't. Within months of his ascension to the head of NUMA, he grew restless with managing the agency from its Washington headquarters. It was Loren who urged him to take to the field, knowing he was happiest when working with his first love, the sea. Time apart would make their love stronger, she told him, though he doubted she meant it. Yet he wouldn't interfere with her career on the Hill, so he followed her words. Now he wondered if doing so would end up making her a widow.

It was an hour later, maybe two, when the winds decided to make an appearance in earnest, blowing hard from the northwest. The stars above quickly melted away in the dust, obscuring their only source of light. As the blowing dust settled over them in a cottony haze, Pitt's landmark ridge disappeared from view. It was no matter, though, as Pitt stared down at his feet with numb fatigue.

They moved like zombies, lifeless in appearance but unwilling to stop walking. Giordino moved methodically forward alongside Pitt, as if an invisible tether kept the two men linked together. The winds grew intense, stinging their face and eyes with blasting sand that made it painful to see. Still they trudged ahead, though well off their westerly track. The exhausted men began zigzagging to the south, in a subconscious effort to flee the biting wind.

They staggered on in a timeless whirl until Pitt detected Giordino trip over some rocks and fall down next to him. Pitt stopped and reached out to help his friend up. A burly hand rose up and grabbed Pitt's, then yanked hard in the other direction. Pitt sprawled toward Giordino, tripping over him and falling into a bed of soft sand. Lying there dazed, he noticed the blasting sand was no longer peppering his body. Unseen in the turbulent night, Giordino had tripped over a rock piling, behind which lay an indented cove protected from the howling winds. Pitt reached out and touched the rock wall with one hand as he felt Giordino crawl alongside and collapse. With a last ounce of energy, Pitt unwrapped his felt cloth and draped it over both their heads for warmth, then lay back on the soft sand and closed his eyes.

Beneath the screeching desert sandstorm, both men fell unconscious.

-29-

GIORDINO WAS DREAMING. He dreamed that he was floating in a still pond of tropical water. The warm liquid was unusually dense, like syrup, making his movements a slow and laborious effort. The water suddenly lapped at his face in a series of small hot waves. He jerked his head to escape the surf, but the warm moisture followed his motion. Then something about the dream became overly vivid. It was an odor, a very unpleasant one at that. A smell too powerful to reside in a dream. The repulsive aroma finally spurred him awake and he forcefully c.o.c.ked open a heavy eyelid.

Bright sunshine stung at his eyes, but he could squint enough to see there was no aqua blue water lapping at his body. Instead, a giant pink swab descended on him with a hot wipe across one cheek. Jerking his head away, he saw the pink swab roll behind a picket fence of large yellow teeth housed in a snout that appeared a mile long. The beast exhaled a breath that bathed Giordino's face in a putrid cloud of onion, garlic, and Limburger cheese.

Popping open both eyes and shaking off the cobwebs, he stared past the expansive snout into two chocolate-brown eyes shrouded behind long eyelashes. The camel blinked curiously at Giordino, then let out a short bellow before stepping back to nibble at a fringe of felt protruding from the sand.

Giordino struggled to sit up, realizing the syrupy water in his dream was a layer of sun-warmed sand. A drift of sand nearly a foot thick had piled up in the little cove during the sandstorm the night before. Weakly pulling his arms out of the mora.s.s, Giordino nudged the figure next to him similarly buried under felt and sand, then scooped away handfuls of the brown silica. The felt rustled a bit then was thrown back, exposing the drawn and haggard face of Pitt. His face was sunburned, his lips bloated and chapped. Yet the sunken green eyes sparkled at seeing his friend alive.

"Another day in paradise," he rasped through a parched mouth, taking in their surroundings. The overnight sandstorm had blown itself out, leaving them bathed in sunshine under a clear blue sky.

They heaved their bodies upright, the sand falling off them in rivulets. Giordino sneaked a hand into his pocket and nodded slightly in rea.s.surance, finding the horseshoe still there.

"We've got company," he wheezed, his voice sounding like steel wool on sandpaper.

Pitt crawled weakly from under the blanket of sand and peered at the beast of burden standing a few feet away. It was a Bactrian camel, as evidenced by the two humps on his back that sagged slightly to one side. The animal's matted fur was a rich mocha brown, which darkened around its flanks. The camel returned Pitt's stare for a few seconds, then resumed its nibbling on the blanket.

"The ship of the desert," Pitt said.

"Looks more like a tugboat. Do we eat him or ride him?"

Pitt was contemplating whether they had the strength to do either when a shrill whistle blared from behind a dune. A small boy bobbed over the sand, riding a dappled tan horse. He wore a green del, and his short black hair was hidden under a faded baseball cap. The boy rode up to the camel, calling it by name as he approached. When the camel popped his head up, the boy quickly looped a pole-mounted la.s.so around the animal's neck and pulled the rope tight. Only then did he glance down and notice Pitt and Giordino lying on the ground. The startled boy stared wide-eyed at the two haggard men who resembled ghosts in the sand.

"h.e.l.lo." Pitt smiled warmly at the boy. He climbed unsteadily to his feet as a pool of sand slid off his clothes. "Can you help us?"

"You ... talk English," the boy stammered.

"Yes. You can understand me?"

"I learn English at monastery," he replied proudly, enunciating each syllable.

"We are lost," Giordino said hoa.r.s.ely. "Can you share food or water?"

The boy slipped off his wooden saddle and produced a goatskin canteen filled with water. Pitt and Giordino took turns attacking the water, taking small sips at first then working up to large gulps. As they drank, the boy pulled a scarf out of his pocket, which was wrapped around a block of sun-dried curds. Cutting it into small pieces, he offered it to the men, who gratefully split the rubbery milk residue and washed it down with the last of the water.

"My name is Noyon," the boy said. "What is yours?"