The men shook hands, then Tsengel galloped off to tend his herd. Pitt, Giordino, and Noyon mounted three of the stout horses and loped off toward the north.
"Your father is a good man," Pitt said as he watched Tsengel's dusty trail disappear over the horizon.
"Yes, but he is sad to be away from the ground of his birth. We are doing well enough here, but I know his heart lies in Hulunbuir, the land to the southeast."
"If he can prosper here, then I'd say he could make it anywhere," Giordino said, eyeing the barren landscape around them.
"It is a struggle, but I will help my father when I am older. I will attend the university in Ulaanbaatar and become a doctor. Then I will buy him all the camels he desires."
They crossed a grainy plain, then threaded their way through a series of sharp sandstone uplifts. The horses plodded their way along without guidance, following the route the way a Grand Canyon mule knows every step to the Colorado River. It wasn't long before Pitt and Giordino found their backsides chafing in discomfort. The horses were outfitted with the traditional Mongol saddles that were constructed of wood. Like most children of the Mongolian Steppes and desert regions, Noyon had learned to ride before he could walk and grew up accustomed to the hard, unforgiving riding gear. For outsiders like Pitt and Giordino, it was like riding a park bench over an infinite row of speed bumps.
"You sure there's not a bus stop or airport around here?" Giordino asked with a grimace.
Noyon thoughtfully considered the question.
"No bus, other than at the village. But airplane, yes. Not far from here. I will take you to it."
Before Giordino could say another word, Noyon kicked his horse and galloped off toward a ridge to the east.
"That's all we need, an extra side trip," Pitt said. "Shouldn't cost us more than a ruptured spleen or two."
"Who's to say there's not a Learjet waiting for us on the other side of that ridge?" Giordino countered.
They turned toward Noyon's dusty trail and spurred their horses to run, the animals eagerly galloping after the lead horse. They charged up to the base of the ridge, then flanked around its northern tip. The horses' hooves clopped loudly as they crossed a wide section of level sandstone. Winding around some large boulders, they finally caught up with Noyon, who sat waiting in the shadow of a rocky spire. To Giordino's chagrin, there was no jet or airport, or sign of any means of air transportation, for as far as the eye could see. There was just more flat gravelly desert, punctuated by the occasional rocky bluff. At least the boy was truthful in one regard, Giordino thought. They had in fact traveled only a short distance off their original path.
Pitt and Giordino slowed their horses to a walk as they approached Noyon. The boy smiled at them, then nodded toward the back side of the ridge behind him.
Pitt gazed at the ridge, noting only a rocky incline covered in a layer of red sand. A few of the rocks were oddly shaped and seemed to reflect a faint silvery hue.
"A lovely rock garden," Giordino mused.
But Pitt was intrigued and rode closer, noting two of the protrusions were proportionally shaped. As he drew near, he suddenly saw that they were not rocks at all but a pair of partially buried radial engines. One was attached to the blunt nose of an inverted fuselage while the other was mounted to an accompanying wing that disappeared under the sand.
Noyon and Giordino rode up as Pitt dismounted and brushed away the sand from one of the buried cowlings. Looking up with amazement, he said to Giordino, "It's not a Learjet. It's a Fokker trimotor."
-31-
THE FOKKER F. VIIb lay where she had crashed, undisturbed for over seventy years. The inverted plane had collected blowing sand by the truckload, until her right wing and most of her fuselage was completely buried. Some distance behind, the port wing and engine lay hidden, crushed against the same rocks that had torn it off during the forced landing. The nose of the plane was mashed in like an accordion, the cockpit filled to the brim with sand. Buried in the dust, the crushed skeletons of the pilot and copilot were still strapped in their seats. Pitt brushed away a thick layer of sand from beneath the pilot's window until he could read the faded name of the plane, Blessed Betty. "Heck of a place to set down," Giordino said. "I thought you said these old birds were indestructible?"
"Nearly. The Fokker trimotors, like the Ford trimotors, were a rugged aircraft. Admiral Byrd used one to fly over the Arctic and Antarctic. Charles Kingsford-Smith flew his Fokker F. VII, the Southern Cross, across the Pacific Ocean back in 1928. Powered by the Wright Whirlwind motors, they could practically fly forever." Pitt was well versed about the old airplane—his own Ford trimotor was wedged in with his collection of antique cars back in Washington.
"Must have been done in by a sandstorm," Giordino speculated.
As Noyon watched from a respectful distance, Pitt and Giordino followed the sand-scrubbed belly of the fuselage aft until they found a slight lip on the side. Brushing away a few inches of sand, they could see it was the lower edge of the fuselage side door. Both men attacked the soft sand, scooping away a large hole in front of the door. After several minutes of digging, they cleared away an opening around the door, with room to pull the door open. As Giordino scooped away a last pile, Pitt noticed a seam of bullet holes stitched across the fuselage near the door.
"Correction to the cause of crash," he said, running a hand across the holes. "They were shot down."
"I wonder why?" Giordino mused.
He started to reach for the door handle when Noyon suddenly let out a slight wail.
"The elders say there are dead men inside. The lamas tell us that we must not disturb them. That is why the nomads have not entered the aircraft."
"We will respect the dead," Pitt assured him. "I shall see that they are given a proper burial so that their spirits may rest."
Giordino twisted the handle and gently tugged open the door. A jumbled mass of splintered wood, sand, and broken pieces of porcelain tumbled out of the dark interior, settling into a small pile. Pitt picked up a broken plate from the Yuan Dynasty, which was glazed with a sapphire blue peacock.
"Not your everyday dinnerware," he said, recognizing it as an antiquity. "At least five hundred years old, I'd wager." Though admittedly no expert, Pitt had acquired a working knowledge of pottery and porcelain from his many years of diving on shipwrecks. Often times, the only clues to identifying a shipwreck's age and derivation were the broken shards of pottery found amid its ballast pile.