"We have a magician's trick to perform first," Pitt said.

"What trick is that?"

"Why," Pitt said with a sly smile, "how to make a motorcycle disappear in the desert."

• • • •

The six horsemen had quickly given up any effort to keep pace with the faster motorcycle and settled their mounts into a less taxing gait, which they could maintain for hours on end. The Mongol horse was an extremely hardy animal, bred over centuries for durability. Descendants of the stock that conquered all of Asia, the Mongol horse was nail tough. The animals were renowned for being able to survive on scant rations yet still gallop across the steppes all day. Short, sturdy, and, on the whole, mangy in appearance, their toughness was unmatched by any Western thoroughbred.

The tight group of horses reached the base of the mountain, where the lead horseman suddenly held up the pack. The dour-faced patrol leader peered at the ground though the heavy eyelids of a bullfrog. Shining a flashlight, he aimed the beam at a pair of deep ruts cut through the grass, studying them carefully. Satisfied, he stowed the light and spurred his mount to a trot along the trail of ruts as the other horsemen fell in behind.

The commander figured that the old motorcycle could travel no more than another thirty miles. Ahead of them, there was nothing but open steppe and desert, offering few places to hide for over a hundred miles. Conserving the horses, they would track the fugitives down in less than eight hours, he estimated. There was certainly no need to call in mechanized four-wheel drive reinforcements from the compound. It would be a meager challenge for his fellow horsemen. They all grew up learning to ride before they could walk and had the bowlegs to prove it. There would be no escape for the fugitives. A few more hours and the two men who had embarrassed the guards at Xanadu would be as good as dead.

Through the black night they forged on, riding into the blustery winds while tracking the linear trail left by the motorcycle's tires. At first, the taunting sound of the motorcycle's throbbing engine beckoned on an occasional gust of the rustling winds. But the sound soon evaporated over the distant hills, and the riders were left to their own quiet thoughts. They rode for five hours, stopping only once they reached the gravely plain of the desert.

The motorcycle's tracks were more difficult to follow over the hardened desert surface. The riders frequently lost the trail in the dark, halting their progress until the tire marks could be located under the glow of a flashlight. As dawn broke, the buffeting winds that had blinded them with sand the entire journey finally began to diminish. With the morning light, the trail became more visible, and the horsemen hastened their pace. The patrol leader sent a scout ahead, to alert the others in advance if the trail was lost over particularly hard stretches of ground.

The horsemen followed the trail through a sandy wash sided by a rocky bluff. Ahead, the terrain opened into a broad level plain. The motorcycle tracks snaked through the wash then stretched into the distance, clearly rutting the hard, flat surface. The riders began picking up speed again when the commander noticed his scout perched at a stop a few dozen yards ahead. At his horse's approach, the scout turned to him with a blank look on his face.

"Why have you stopped?" the patrol leader barked.

"The tracks . . . have disappeared," the scout stammered.

"Then move ahead and find out where they resume."

"There is no continuation of the tracks. The sand . . . it should show the tracks, but they just end here," the scout replied, pointing to the ground.

"Fool," the patrol leader muttered, then spurred his horse and wheeled to the right. Riding in a huge arc, he circled around the front of his stationary troupe, finally looping his way back to where they stood waiting. Now he was the one with a confused look on his face.

Climbing off his horse, he walked beside the motorcycle's tracks. The heels of his boots pushed easily into a light layer of sand that coated the hard plain. Following the twin trails of cycle and sidecar, he studied the ground until the tracks came to an abrupt end. Scanning the area, he saw that the soft layer of sand covered the ground in all directions. Yet the only visible markings were those made by the guards' horses. There was no continuation of the motorcycle tracks, no human footprints, and no sign of the motorcycle itself.

It was as if the motorcycle and its riders had been plucked off the ground and vanished into thin air.

-26-

PERCHED LIKE EAGLES HIGH in a nest, Pitt and Giordino peered down at the proceedings from sixty feet above the desert floor. Cautiously scaling the nearby rocky edifice in the dark, they had discovered a high indented ledge that was perfectly concealed from the ground below. Stretched flat in the hollowed stone bowl, the two had slept intermittently until the horsemen arrived shortly after dawn. Lying to the east of the horsemen, the morning sun aided their stealth, casting their pursuers in a bright glow while they remained nestled in the ridgetop's shadow. Pitt and Giordino grinned as they watched the horsemen mope in utter confusion around the abrupt end of the motorcycle trail. But they were far from out of the woods yet. They watched with interest as two riders took off ahead, while the other four horsemen split up and searched along either side. As Pitt had hoped, the horsemen focused their search forward of the trail's end, not considering that the two fugitives had backed down the trail before taking to the rocks.

"You realize, Houdini, that you are just going to make them mad at us," Giordino whispered.

"That's all right. If they're mad, then maybe they will be less observant."

They watched and waited for an hour as the horsemen scoured the grounds ahead before regrouping at the trail's end. At the patrol leader's command, the riders spread out along the trail and retraced their original steps backward. Again, a pair of horsemen rode off to either side, with two of the riders approaching the edge of the rock ridge.

"Time to lay low," Pitt whispered as he and Giordino hunkered down into the hollow. They listened as the clip-clop of horse hooves drew closer. The hidden men froze as the sound paused directly beneath them. They had done their best to brush away their tracks before climbing the rock, but it had been done in darkness. And they weren't the only things at risk of exposure.

Pitt's heart beat a tick faster as he heard the riders converse for a moment. Then one of the horsemen dismounted and started climbing up the rocks. The man moved slowly, but Pitt could tell he was moving closer by the sound of his leather boots scuffing against the sandstone boulders. Pitt glanced at Giordino, who had reached over and clasped a baseball-sized stone near his leg.

"Nothing," the man shouted, standing just a few feet beneath the concealed ledge. Giordino flexed his rock-holding arm, but Pitt reached over and grabbed his wrist. A second later, the mounted horseman shouted up something to the rock climber. By his tone, Pitt guessed he was telling the man to get moving. The scuffle of hard leather on soft rock began to move away, until the man reached the ground a few minutes later and remounted his horse. The clopping hooves echoed again, then gradually faded into the distance.

"That was close," Giordino said.

"Lucky thing our climber had a change of heart. That knuckleball of yours would have left a sting," Pitt replied, nodding toward the rock in Giordino's hand.

"Fastball. My best stuff is a fastball," he corrected.

Gazing off toward the trail of dust kicked up by the horsemen, he asked, "We stay put?"

"Yes. My money says they'll be back for another visit."

Tags: Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net