The Genesis Conspiracy Read online

  The men conversed for a moment before turning toward the rig where he was hiding. As they got closer, they split up with each taking a different side of the trailer. Knowing that he would immediately be discovered, Pete cranked the engine, shifted the transmission, and stomped the gas pedal. The car leapt from the ramp in reverse. As the tires struck the pavement, Pete shoved the gears into drive, and the tires squealed as they fought to find traction on the damp asphalt. The gunmen were caught off guard but managed to fire off a couple of shots before darting out of the way. One bullet struck the left side view mirror and ripped it from the car. The other shots went wide of the target.

  As Pete sped past the attackers, he glanced to his right and studied the face of the shorter man. The defiant stare confirmed his earlier suspicions—it was Oleg. The failed mission and the death of his friend suddenly made sense. Unknowingly they had accepted a traitor into their circle. Oleg had brought him the magazine with Alexi’s cryptic note only because he had no idea what it meant. He needed Pete to solve the riddle. Alexi must have suspected a traitor and that’s why he hadn’t written out the coordinates for Oleg to deliver. Now Pete was faced with bigger questions. How deep did the problem extend and was it time to go to his boss at the CIA and tell him what he’d been doing in his spare time?

  1

  Gobi Desert, Mongolia Present Day

  The late afternoon sun reflecting from the parched, reddish-orange hills created a surreal scene that looked more at home on the surface of Mars than in the deserts of central Asia. Surrounding the rolling, barren expanse were outcroppings of jagged rock, known to the locals as Shabarakh Usu, but to most of the world they were known as the Flaming Cliffs. It was here in 1923 that the famous paleontologist and adventurer Roy Chapman Andrews made his most significant discovery in Mongolia—dinosaur eggs. Before then, no one was sure how dinosaurs reproduced. That discovery, along with the numerous ones which followed, brought the Gobi Desert to the forefront of paleontology. Scientists, explorers, and thieves from around the world came to tap the new resource. Now with the obvious finds already discovered, new secrets of the past were harder to unearth.

  “Fire in the hole!” Jake Evers’ counterpart from the Russian Academy of Sciences gave him a puzzled looked, obviously not understanding the term. Jake responded by sticking his fingers in his ears.

  “Ah,” Pavel replied, removing the hearing protectors from around his neck and fitting them on.

  Jake inserted the key into the fire control box, waited for the capacitor to charge, and pressed the ignition switch. The series of timed explosions that followed resonated across the dry riverbed and echoed from the low hanging cliffs. In less than a second, five weeks of preparation had come to an end.

  “Did it work?” Pavel asked anxiously.

  Jake ducked his head into the small domed tent, which served as an environmental shield from the harsh desert winds, and checked the computer. After clicking an icon from the toolbar at the top of the screen, a multicolored image appeared.

  “Got it!” he exclaimed.

  On the screen before them, a topographic map displayed the results of the test. Shown across a grid that spanned a thousand square meters were five peculiar shapes in crimson that stood in stark contrast to the blue-green background.

  “Are you certain they’re not part of the natural formation?” Pavel asked.

  “There’s no mistaking it,” Jake answered, pointing to the screen. “These blue areas have a uniform density. That’s sandstone. However,” he continued as he studied the dimensions on the grid that were displayed at the bottom of the image, “these red ones match perfectly with the density of the ones we tested from the museum. And look at the shapes—three sauropods, a theropod, and maybe…protoceratops. The head certainly looks right.”

  “This is very exciting!”

  “The marvels of modern technology,” Jake replied.

  “But this does not make sense.” Pavel’s expression marked his genuine confusion. “Why so many in one spot? And also, it’s just not possible for these sauropods to have died with a protoceratops. There are 25 million years between them.”

  “They all died at once,” Jake shrugged. “One catastrophic event—a deluge.”

  “Nonsense. That’s theology, not science.”

  “And yet look at the screen. Accept it or not—” But before Jake could finish his statement, their conversation was interrupted by Jake’s co-worker and lifelong friend, Murray Williams.

  “Just got the latest weather update,” announced Murray. The man spoke with a slight Australian accent. “We might want to button ’er up for the night.”

  The three men stepped out into the fading sunlight and stood at the edge of the cliff. Dark clouds gathered over the mountains to the west, and Jake could taste the fine grit of sand that was beginning to obscure the valley floor below.

  “So much for the reliability of weather reports out here,” Jake sighed. “That storm wasn’t forecasted to arrive until tomorrow. Would you and Pavel make sure the tent is secure, take the notebook and the data acquisition box, and then hightail it back to base camp? I’ll take the other jeep and drive out to the relay to make sure we’re not in jeopardy of losing anything there.”

  “Will do,” Murray replied, “but I wouldn’t waste any time if I were you. That storm will be here in less than an hour. You will recall our unexpected adventure in Egypt a few years back.”

  Jake smiled. “You worry too much.”

  “That’s because you don’t worry enough.”

  While his two co-workers carried out his instructions, Jake made his way down the sandy incline. He reached the campsite where two Russian made UAZ 4x4’s were parked. He reached through the driver’s side window of one and retrieved a battered canvas jacket. Barely visible beneath the heavy coating of dust on the door was the acronym TERA, outlined by the shape of an arrowhead.

  TERA, or Terrain Exploration and Relief Agency, had been founded in the late eighties by a wealthy Wall Street investor, Thomas Taylor. Known for his philanthropy, Taylor wanted to leave a legacy to ensure that his wealth would be used for higher purposes. TERA’s charter was broad reaching. Exploration, natural resource development, and emergency relief were just the tip of the iceberg. As TERA’s Special Projects Director, Jake Evers had worked in every corner of the globe.

  The air being pushed ahead of the storm was even cooler than the usual temperature drop in late afternoon. Jake pulled on his jacket and looked up at the dazzling array of colors splashed across the afternoon sky. Dark purple clouds from the approaching storm stood in bold contrast to an otherwise brilliant orange sky. He smiled as he took in the scene and tilted his head back to fill his nostrils with the dry desert air. It was a beautifully painted canvas that no artist could truly capture.

  In a lot of ways, Jake Evers was as distinctive as the environment around him. Educated in the physical sciences and with extensive experience in a number of fields including anthropology and geophysics, he was a well-respected researcher. In his fifteen-year employment with TERA, he had been offered much higher salaries from other companies, even higher than what senior TERA managers made. Money, however, held no enticement for him. Jake loved his work and his co-workers, but best of all, he occasionally managed to get involved in work that drew him closer to his Creator.

  Jake had decided early in his adult life to mount an offensive against the onslaught of age by adhering to a lunch hour workout schedule that included weightlifting and bicycling. It had paid off. Although his blond hair was beginning to recede, he looked ten years younger than his real age; and he walked confidently, without seeming arrogant or unfriendly.

  As he pulled away from the site, Jake waved to Murray who was quickly disassembling the research station. Murray glanced up and answered Jake’s patent smile with a knowing headshake. The drive out to the communications relay would take at least forty minutes roundtrip, but judging from the speed of the clouds moving overhead, Murray guessed
that his friend was about to spend a night in the jeep.

  While rarely intense enough to do serious damage, sandstorms in the Gobi were a major nuisance to researchers. During the first American expedition in the 1920s, the expedition leader Roy Chapman Andrews likened the gale force torrent of yellow sand and gravel to “a thousand shrieking demons.” Jake understood the comparison. He only hoped that this storm would be short lived.

  Already a day behind schedule for a rendezvous with the other members of TERA’s Mongolian Expedition, Jake began to work through the logistics of assembling all the personnel and equipment before their planned departure. The last time they had gotten behind, he had lost three days in transit while waiting for connecting flights in several domestic airports in Russia—not something he cared to repeat.

  When he reached the edge of the wind swept plateau where his team had erected a makeshift communications station, he brought the UAZ to a stop. Nearby was a bowed metal shaft that had nearly been pulled from the ground from the force of the wind. Using all his strength to push open the door, Jake hurried over to the antenna and grasped it at the base. As he turned to place the equipment into the vehicle, he suddenly glimpsed a bright flash of light on the horizon. It appeared for a brief moment and then vanished in the rush of sand and debris swirling around the area.

  That’s strange, he thought as he shoved the rear door closed, yanked the car door back open, and gratefully slid behind the wheel. After a few seconds more, staring toward the horizon, he saw the light once more before it vanished again.

  “Who else is crazy enough to be out here?” he muttered aloud. “Guess I’d better find out.”

  When he had driven another quarter mile, he could make out the shape of a vehicle. Not surprisingly, it was another UAZ, the most commonly rented 4x4s in Mongolia. What was strange, however, was that someone had ventured into this remote location, especially in late autumn. It was certainly not the tourist season and before leaving TERA’s eastern office in Taiwan, he had checked with the Mongolian Bureau for Excavations. There were no other digs being conducted in the area, so who was this?

  The UAZ was parked beneath an outcropping of rock not dissimilar from the strata his team had been investigating. On a scouting expedition the previous year, Jake and Murray had considered this area as a potential excavation site, but they had realized that the inaccessibility of the cliff walls made it nearly impossible to test their new equipment.

  When he came to a stop beside the vehicle, he looked around for any sign of activity but saw no one. The sandy incline on the leeward face of the canyon was partly shielded from the approaching storm. It had preserved a record of the direction in which the jeep’s occupants had traveled. From the trail of footprints that led away from the UAZ into the steep mountain of sand, Jake could tell there were two people—probably a large man accompanied by a young person or woman from the size of their tracks.

  Jake was torn over what action to take next. He looked up at the storm, which was nearly at full force on top of him. As tiny bits of gravel and yellowish sand blasted his jeep, he saw that already the trail of footprints was beginning to fade. In fifteen minutes, visibility inside the canyon would drop to nothing, and his GPS signal would be lost, making it impossible for him to find his way back to base camp. As exhausted as he was from the strenuous work during the three previous days, the thought of sleeping in the back of an equipment-laden UAZ didn’t appeal to him. Shaking his head in disgust, he gave in to his curiosity about the light he had seen and reached into the middle console to retrieve a pair of binoculars. As he opened the door, he caught a whiff of a familiar smell—antifreeze.

  “Wonderful!” he grumbled aloud.

  Jake popped the hood latch, made his way out of the vehicle, and walked around to inspect the problem. As he did, he immediately saw that the source of the odor was not his jeep. Beneath the other UAZ was a puddle of greenish sand. The size of the spill indicated more than a minor leak from its radiator, and in this desert, a major problem.

  Jake walked over to the vehicle and looked under it. The lower coolant hose hanging beneath the radiator was sliced in the middle. The white interlacing within the rubber was neatly tucked away with no sign of fraying. It was obvious that the damage had not been caused by ordinary wear. The hose had been intentionally cut, and the slow drip of remaining antifreeze indicated that it had been done recently. Jake felt a sudden chill as if he were being watched.

  Quickly he leaned his back to the vehicle and pulled the binoculars from his jacket pocket. Crouched behind the front fender, he scanned the cliffs above him, following the now faint footprints to the top of the sand dune until they disappeared over the edge. He saw no sign of activity. Whoever was up there was in trouble, and Jake guessed the storm was minor compared with the source of the sabotage.

  Blam! A gust of wind slammed the hood shut on the jeep. The suddenness and timing caused Jake to shutter. He pulled his faded ball cap down tighter over his forehead and began formulating a plan. The storm left him only two choices—wait it out in the vehicle and risk being discovered or seek shelter under the cliffs on the back side of the mountain. Given the circumstances, neither option seemed preferable.

  “Show me,” he prayed instinctively.

  The sand being hurled from the dune stung the back of his neck. Visibility dropped to arm’s length as the first strong torrent of wind reached the canyon with a deafening roar. Jake opened the jeep once more, removed a worn nylon daypack, and lifted it over his shoulder. Without goggles it would be difficult to make his way up the sandy rise. From inside his shirt pocket he removed a pair of sunglasses. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but at least it was better than the alternative.

  With his hands cupped around the perimeter of the glasses, he started up the trail made by the nearly faded footprints. The grade was steep, and with the blowing wind, he was forced to proceed on all fours. When he neared the top, Jake dropped to his stomach and pulled the binoculars up to his eyes. Barely peering over the ridge, he looked into the canyon below, which was on the windward side of the cliffs. The attempt was useless. A full-blown sandstorm was spilling into the canyon and hammering the cliff wall. He could see nothing.

  Jake pulled his t-shirt up over the bridge of his nose to aid his breathing and leaned back against the sandy slope. His memory of the cliffs was that they perfectly outlined the canyon. Beneath the overhanging rock, he thought he could easily traverse the perimeter of the wall. It would have made an ideal vantage point under normal conditions. At least with minimal visibility, he could remain unseen from anyone in the canyon below.

  “Should have listened to Murray…” he muttered, “…again.”

  In a quick action, Jake leapt over the top and awkwardly trudged down the soft sand on the opposite slope. When he reached the outcropping of rocks to his right, he ducked into the shadows of a large slab that had fallen from the cliffs above. Certain that his approach had gone unnoticed, he began to work his way around the rim of the canyon being careful to stay out of sight. The relentless spray of sand stung the exposed skin of his ears and face, and for a moment he considered turning back.

  When he decided he could go no further, he suddenly heard a faint noise, distinguishable from the sand rushing into the canyon. He stopped and turned his ear toward where he thought it originated. Contiguous with the howling wind, he also heard a faint creaking noise that came from the formless area just beneath him. The out of place sound reminded him of the rusty hinges on the door of his grandfather’s barn.

  Through the whirring sand, Jake could see a gradual break in the slope below where he was standing leading down to the canyon floor below, but traversing it would take time. As Jake took his first step onto the slope, the edge of a jagged rock hidden beneath the sand snapped, cutting his shin just above his boot and causing him to lose his footing. End over end he tumbled down the hill until he landed hard on a lower shelf. Thankfully, the newly formed dune at the bottom of the slope had kept h
im from falling the full distance to the canyon floor. Jake lay on his back for a moment to make sure nothing was critically damaged.

  “That was elegant,” he sighed, examining the gash that ran three inches across his leg. As he was about to stand, he heard the creaking sound again, intermittent but louder than before. He crawled to the edge of the dune and discovered the source.

  “Whoa!” he muttered in astonishment.

  Halfway buried beneath the sand nearby was a black, conical shape on which was painted in nearly eroded white letters, UNITED STATES. The outline of an American flag was painted below the words.

  It’s a space capsule, he thought, recalling how he and his brother had built model kits of them when they were kids. The creaking sound came from an open hatch that swung freely in the wind. He also noticed the heaps of sand surrounding the capsule, indicating that it had recently been excavated.

  As Jake inched closer to the craft and was nearly within reach of it, his foot suddenly became entangled in a mass of ropes that draped down from the top of the craft. As he bent down to remove the cords, he realized that the opposite ends were attached to a shredded reentry parachute snagged in a twisted Ginkgo tree. Jake guessed that the tree had kept the capsule from slipping completely beneath the surface.

  As he worked his way toward the open hatch, he suddenly realized there was movement on the opposite side of the capsule. He abruptly dropped to his knees and quickly crawled back to the rocky ledge. In the excitement of the find, he had not considered that someone might still be at the site. From the safety of his hiding place, Jake thought through what he had observed. Moving slightly along the dune, he could see that the figure was small and sitting in a crouched position, possibly hiding. Could this be the person whose smaller tracks he had observed leading away from the damaged UAZ?