Treasure of Khan

The Czech motorcycle and sidecar bounded over the sea of grass like a Jet Ski hopping the waves. The aged bike groaned over every bump and rut but charged steadily across the hills. Pitt's hand ached from holding the throttle at full, but he was driven to coax every ounce of horsepower out of the old motorcycle. Despite the lack of a road and the wallowing sidecar, the old cycle charged across the empty grasslands at almost fifty miles per hour. At their sustained speed, they were widening the gap between their pursuers with every mile. But at the moment, it was an inconsequential point. The motorcycle's tires left an indelible track in the summer grass, which offered a conspicuous trail to their whereabouts.

Pitt had hoped to discover a crossroad that he could use to obscure their tracks, but all he found was an occasional horse path, too narrow to hide their tire marks. Once, he saw a light in the distance and attempted to steer toward it. But the brief ray vanished under a dust cloud, and they were left ru

They had entered the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, a vast former inland sea that covers the lower third of Mongolia. More stony plain than billowy sand dune, the arid landscape supports a rich population of gazelles, hawks, and other wildlife, which thrive in a region once swarming with dinosaurs.

None of that was visible to Pitt and Giordino, who could just barely make out rising granite uplifts among the sand and gravel washes. Pitt leaned hard on the handlebars, steering around a jagged stone outcropping before following a seam through giant boulders that eventually opened into a wide flat valley.

The motorcycle picked up a burst of speed as its tires met firmer ground. Pitt was blasted by thicker swirls of dust, though, which made the visibility worse than before. The three-wheeled machine charged across the desert for another hour, smacking shrubs and small rocks with a regular battering. At last the engine began to hiccup, then gradually stuttered and coughed. Pitt coaxed the bike another mile before the fuel tank finally ran as dry as the surrounding desert and the engine wheezed to a final stop.

They coasted to a stop along a flat sandy wash, the silence of the desert enveloping them. Only the gusting winds whistling through the low brush and the blowing sand skittering over the ground tested their hearing, blown raw by the motorcycle's loud exhaust. The skies above them began to clear and the winds settled down to just sporadic bursts. A sprinkling of stars peeked through the dusty curtain overhead, offering a snippet of light across the empty desert.

Pitt turned to the sidecar and found Giordino sitting there caked in grit. Under the twilight, Pitt could see his friend's hair, face, and clothes saturated with a fine layer of khaki dust. To his utter disbelief, Giordino had actually fallen asleep in the sidecar, his hands still tightly gripping the handrail. The cessation of the engine's blare and the nonstop swaying eventually stirred Giordino. Blinking open his eyes, he peered at the dark, empty wasteland surrounding them.

"I hope you didn't bring me here to watch the submarine races," he said.

"No," Pitt replied. "I think it's a horse race that is on tonight's billing."

Giordino hopped out of the sidecar and stretched while Pitt examined the wound to his shin. The arrow had just nicked the front of his shin before embedding itself in a cooling fin on the motor. The wound had stopped bleeding some time ago, but a splatter of red-based dust ran down to his foot like a layer of cherry frosting.

"Leg okay?" Giordino asked, noticing the wound.

"A near miss. Almost nailed me to the bike," Pitt said, pulling the broken arrow shaft from the engine.

Giordino turned and gazed in the direction they had traveled. "How far behind do you suppose they are?"

Pitt mentally computed the time and approximate speed they traveled since leaving Xanadu. "Depends on their pace. I'd guess we have at least a twenty-mile buffer. They couldn't run the horses faster than a trot for any sustained amount of time."

"Guess there wasn't a short road down the back of that mountain or they would have sent some vehicles after us."

"I was worried about a helicopter, but they couldn't have flown in that dust storm anyway."

"Hopefully, they got saddlesore and threw in the towel. Or at least stopped until morning, which would give us a little more time to thumb a ride out of here."

"I'm afraid there doesn't appear to be a truck stop in the vicinity," Pitt replied. He stood and turned the motorcycle handlebars in an arc, shining the headlight across the desert. A high, rocky uplift stretched along their left flank, but the terrain was empty and as flat as a billiard table in the other three directions.

"Personally speaking," Giordino said, "after that marble-in-a-washing-machine ride down the mountain, a small stretch of the legs sounds glorious. Do you want to keep marching into the wind?" he asked, pointing along the motorcycle's path, which led into the face of the breeze.

"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.