The Last Chamber (32 page)

Emily nodded. “Yeah, we have another unit over at their building
keeping an eye on things. We’ll keep it locked down as long as we can until the
WHO takes over.” She looked around at the carnage, assessing the situation. Her
face produced a suspicious grin. “Remind me to never come over to your place
unannounced.”

Armenian Mountains

Adriana eyed the map on her tablet. According to the GPS tracker, they
were very close to the place she had pinpointed as the possible location of the
ark.

“It shouldn’t be far, now,” she said to Jabez.

The Arab had driven them from the town of Ararat, leading the other
vehicle up into the mountains along the precipitous road. The snow hadn’t been
as treacherous as they had anticipated, but just to be safe, both vehicles were
locked in four-wheel drive.

They had been driving for over an hour, making slow progress towards
the waypoint. Conversation in the vehicle had been almost nil. The only sounds
were the occasional wind gusts and the crunching of rocks and dirt under the
tires.

The mountain range was impressive yet unspectacular. It spanned
hundreds of miles to the north, but the peaks’ bland brownish color did nothing
for eye appeal. The patches of melting snow helped improve the visual, but soon
that would be gone. The rise and fall of the road had become monotonous,
causing Firth to doze off a few times in the back seat next to Sean.

Up ahead, the road came to a sudden halt, ending in a drop off into a
narrow canyon. He was relieved the second vehicle in the caravan didn’t hit
them from behind and drive them over the edge. Jabez turned off the engine and
got out. A cold gust of air burst into the cabin of the truck, shocking Firth
to a more alerted state.

Sean and Adriana got out as well, joining their Arab driver at the
edge of the cliff. Over the edge, the rock wall shot straight down a hundred
feet. The wall itself wrapped around a slight rise in the center of the canyon
floor below. Sean got down on one knee and felt the smooth stone inside the
canyon. The light brown stone of the ravine had been molded by erosion, but it
seemed different than other canyons Sean had seen. It was enclosed in a much
tighter space. But the thing that made this particular canyon strange was the
fact that there weren’t any other like it in the entire mountain range. Adriana
had spent hours scanning the region via satellite images, and had not seen a
single anomaly like the one resting before them.

He stood back up and stared at the strange shape of the canyon. “Is
this it?” he asked in a semi-quiet tone.

Adriana glanced down at her tablet. “I think it might be,” she
answered reverently.

“The shape is unmistakable,” Jabez commented. “Look at the outline of
the canyon,” he pointed out the top edge of the wall that wrapped around to
where they were standing. “It is surely the final resting place of Noah’s ark.”

Sean peered around the perimeter. “It would have been easy for anyone
to look over this place and think it just an ordinary geological formation. No
wonder no one discovered it yet.”

“What is it?” Firth shouted from an open window in the vehicle.
Apparently, the professor didn’t want to leave the warmth of the car.

“You’re going to want to see for yourself, Professor!” Sean yelled
back.

The window rolled up slowly before the door opened and the older man
carefully stepped out of the vehicle. As he neared the edge where the others
were standing, he looked out across the span of the little canyon, his jaw
dropping wide open.

“You believe in all this hocus pocus now, Doc?” Sean asked with a
glint in his eye.

Firth quickly recovered to his dubious self. “I’m simply impressed by
the view. But,” he added, “if your theories are correct and this canyon wall
was formed by the exterior hull of the ark, where is the entrance to the
chamber?” He followed Sean’s eyes down to the bottom of the ravine to get his
answer.

“It’s somewhere down there, Doc. You’ve come this far. You may as well
come a little further.”

The professor tried to suppress something. He clenched his face
tightly, but he couldn’t help but let a sliver of a smile escape. Sean figured
it had probably been years since the old dog had done anything exciting in the
world of archaeology. While he’d been a grumbling pain in the rear, Sean
wondered if deep down inside Firth was enjoying himself.

“Very well, Mister Wyatt. Let’s see if this wild goose chase produces
a goose after all.” Firth spun around and started to return to the SUV.

Adriana stopped him. “Professor. We will have to walk in from here.”

“Oh,” his smile disappeared. “Right.”

Five minutes later, the group was trekking across the lip of the
canyon towards the other end. The terrain was rocky and treacherous. Sean
almost rolled his ankle on a loose stone that he’d not seen in his way.
Fortunately, the walk wasn’t a long one, and the group had reached their
destination at the other end of the canyon within ten minutes.

The plateau they were standing on sloped down to the level of the
canyon floor, leading to a narrow opening. Jabez looked at the members of the
group and continued down the hill. The others followed close behind. Firth
moved slower than the others, which Sean had foreseen as an issue. Fortunately,
most of the snow had already melted away, so footing wasn’t a huge problem.

They reached the bottom of the slope with relative ease and stood at
the slim entrance to the canyon. The rock walls had come together, separated
only by three feet of space. Standing at the bottom of it and looking up, the
vision was imposing.

Again, Jabez took the lead and started through the narrow pass. The
rest followed with Jabez’s four men taking up the rear.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Adriana said, staring up through
the narrow space.

“We have something like this back home, in Tennessee. We call it fat
man’s squeeze. Though, it doesn’t go this high.” He pointed up to the top.

The ground at the base on which they were now walking was much
smoother than up above. It was flat and even, filled in with a mixture of sand
and dirt. Down in the ravine the wind had disappeared, and the air had become a
little warmer.

As the group passed through the other side of the pass the canyon
opened up again, sending a chill through their bones as they were reintroduced
to open air.

“Which side should we check first?” Adriana wondered out loud. “Should
we split up and examine both sides of the canyon?”

That plan would have made sense, but Sean remembered something he’d
seen a long time ago as a child that made him think otherwise. “When I think about
Noah’s ark, the pictures from my childhood always had the door to the ark on
the left side.”

“But how do we know which way it sailed in?” Jabez asked.

“It would have been coming from the same direction we came from.”

“Why do you say that?” Firth entered the conversation.

Sean smiled. “Because the Bible speaks about the original location of
the garden. It talks about where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet. That
means originally it would have been to the southwest. If it sailed to the
northeast and entered this valley from the same direction we came that would
have put the door on that side over there?” he finished his rationale by
pointing to the right side of the curved wall.

“You’re assuming they put the door on the same side as the one on the ship,”
Firth remarked.

“If you want to go over and look on the other side, be my guest. But
if there is anything to find down here, my money is on the right side.”

Sean started trudging across the canyon floor. Contrary to much of the
surface they’d walked upon so far, there were still a few inches of snow left
on the ground that crunched under his shoes as he walked. Adriana stayed right
behind him.

“Fine,” Firth said and fell in line with the others.

There was a smooth path that seemed to line the ground around the wall
of the canyon. The center had formed a slight rise, making it impossible to see
all the way to the ground level on the other den. The group marched along the
narrow path, scanning the wall for any trace of evidence that they were in the
right place.

Then, they saw it. Up ahead, cut into the smooth stone, was a narrow
hole. It stood about eight feet tall, and three feet wide. The opening had not
been cut smoothly, and the edges of it were jagged, making it appear as though
it were a natural recession in the rock.

No one said anything for a few moments. Then, Jabez spoke up. “We are
on very sacred ground,” he said as he bent down to one knee.

His men did the same, all with heads bowed in silent prayer or
meditation. Sean wasn’t sure what to do so he simply bowed his head. After half
a minute, the men all stood again. Jabez gave an approving nod towards Sean,
which he took as meaning it was okay to go forward.

Sean removed a flashlight from a coat pocket and turned it on,
proceeding into the darkness of the cave. Adriana and Jabez’s men did the same,
leaving Firth standing out in the cold.

“Are you sure it’s safe to go in there?” he asked. The last of the
brethren entered the cavity without responding. Finally, the old man produced a
flashlight of his own from a coat pocket and followed the group in.

Inside, their flashlights cast a dim glow on the stone walls. They
were in a narrow corridor, roughly hewn from the mountain stone. The group
proceeded in single file, with Sean in the lead and Firth in the back, much to
the latter’s dislike. For someone so apprehensive to lead the way, he certainly
didn’t enjoy bringing up the rear.

As they moved deeper into the mountain, the air became thick, damp
with moisture. The walls were wet to the touch, though the ground under their
feet remained mostly dry. After winding their way through the tunnel for
several minutes, the passage opened up into a larger space. As each person left
the corridor and entered the giant room, more and more light was cast upon the
walls, enabling the visitors to get a better look.

Flashlight beams danced along the grayish-brown walls that extended
high to a domed ceiling fifty feet overhead. The rock had been carved out with
laser precision. Unlike the jagged passageway through which they’d come, the
sides of the enormous room were perfectly smooth.

Jabez’s men set their duffle bags down and produced flood several
battery-operated floodlights. As each lamp was turned on, the incredible sight
before them began to piece itself together. Across from the corridor, a mural
of astounding detail had been carved into the wall, spanning sixty feet across.
The images engraved into the stone depicted a story in a seven stages. All of
them featured an enormous boat. In one of the pictures, animals of every kind
were lined up in twos, making their way to the ship. Other images displayed
eight people in long, flowing robes performing some kind of examination on the
animals. Another part of the mural portrayed a bearded man standing on a hill,
speaking to a throng of people. The next scene showed the boat on ocean waters.

Below the mural of the flood story, three dark doorways were cut into
the wall. But the thing that got everyone’s attention wasn’t the shadowy
portals. Strewn across the floor, and the stone steps leading up to the
doorways were dozens of bodies.

Firth jumped back at the sight, startled for a man who had surely seen
his share of skeletons, given his field of expertise.

The decomposed corpses were decorated in a strange variety of
clothing. Some appeared to be warriors from the Bronze Age. Their shields and
short swords were still in remarkable condition. A few bodies bore the armor of
Roman Legionnaires. Some of their large shields had massive dents in them.

Sean moved slowly across the floor towards the scene. He stopped near
a skeleton of a man whose shield bore the Templar cross, his tattered white
cloak had darkened with time, and become brittle.

Adriana had stepped away from the group and was checking out a body
off to the side. “Sean, you should take a look at this.”

He quickly took a few big steps over to where she was standing and
immediately realized what had gotten her attention. At their feet were three
corpses in a much lesser state of decay than the others. But it wasn’t just the
tissue and bone that had piqued their interest. The bodies were clothed in
Russian Red Army uniforms.

“Professor?” Sean got the older man’s attention. He was still standing
near the entrance of the room. “How long ago did these men die?”

Firth shuffled over to where Sean and Adriana were standing, Jabez
followed closely to see what was going on. The professor slipped straight into
research mode as he knelt down with his flashlight in hand and examined one of
the bodies.

“Based on the state of decay and the timeframe of when those uniforms
were used, it appears they were here sometime in the late 1940s, perhaps early
fifties.” He made the statement as if it were irrefutable fact. “But what are
they doing here?”

“Interesting you should ask that, Professor?” a new, gravelly voice
interjected into the conversation.

Everyone spun around to see who else was in the room. Jabez’s men
started to withdraw their weapons, but they couldn’t react fast enough. Five
men and a woman in winter coats and black pants were standing in the doorway to
the corridor with weapons aimed at the group. From behind them, an old man
stepped crookedly through the mercenaries, followed by a taller, narrow figure.