Ch. 26? Whatever
Let me trace the route Ziad and Dave are traveling, so you can better understand their story. They entered the People's Republic of China on the Nepalese border, and took a military highway west, tracing the border. This is in the Tibetan Plateau, a vast mountainous region that has a harsh beauty, and is really damn big.
Our heroes then followed the Chinese border as it curves north and west, above Kashmir and east of the Karakoram mountains, through the disputed Aksai Chin region. They then turned north and headed across the Taklamakan desert towards the city of Kashgar, the westernmost city in China.
The Taklamakan desert, though little known, is very big. In fact, it's so big that local adolescents compare the size of their genitals to the geographic region (as in "it's almost as big as the Taklamakan!).
Suffice it to say, it's going to take a while for Ziad and Dave to drive across it in a luxury sedan.
For the sake of your sanity (and my own), I'll skip ahead to the interesting bits.
Kashgar. An old Silk-Road city. Ziad was surprised. It looked more like Beirut than Shanghai, more like Afghanistan than any pictures he'd seen of China.
The people there didn't look Chinese either. He blended in better than he could have hoped.
The language they spoke sure didn't sound Chinese.
The police, on the other hand, looked and sounded Chinese. They also didn't look like they were going to mess around. An air of impending doom, trouble, fear, anxiety, and depression hung over the whole city like a thick smog.
And there was plenty of that, too.
There were a lot of soldiers there, too. Heavily armed and not exactly happy to be within bombing distance of a large war.
Dave and Ziad sped out of the troubled city as soon as they bought a bunch of gas and food.
Xinjiang province is pretty big. Have I impressed upon you how big everything is? Am I compensating for something? Who cares? Point is, shit is BIG in this part of the world. I really need you to understand that to understand this.
Actually, just look at a map. A good map, none of that Mercator bullcrap. In fact, use Google Earth. Just spend a while staring at Central Asia.
It'll do you good, I swear. You'll learn a lot.
Probably lose some friends, too.
Next stop: Urumqi. A remarkably big (okay, do you get it now? Well, do ya?) city that most people don't know or care about.
It was a long drive. Weeks had passed since they had left New Delhi after the Pakistani bombing attack.
They pulled up to a dingy hotel in Urumqi, exhausted, filthy, hungry, and low on gas. It had been days since they left Kashgar and they were ready for a nice hot shower.
Naturally, there wasn't any hot water in this hotel.
"God hates me." groaned Ziad.
"Me too, man. Me too." sighed Dave.
Cold showers were had.
A week in Urumqi. The hot water got turned on halfway through, to joy all around.
Ziad scrubbed the layers of sand and dust off the now not-so-shiny BMW.
"You think we can re-sell this?" Ziad said as he scraped a dead bug off the windshield.
"No. There's shit all over it." responded Dave.
Ziad looked at the car again.
"That's probably from when we accidentally drove through that cattle ranch."
"Yeah."
"Your fault, not mine."
"Don't judge me, Ziad. You don't even know how to drive!"
"Hush, Irishman. I like my little bubble of falsehoods."
Ziad scraped some week-old cow manure off the front bumper.
"Yummy."
They left Urumqi in far higher spirits than when they entered. A week of hot meals, general hygiene, and waving stolen money at people as a replacement for language can do that to a man.
Or a woman too, I'm not sexist.
The highway leading north towards the Altai mountains and eventually Russia was empty. They highway going south was packed with military vehicles.
"China really is supporting Pakistan, then." commented Ziad.
"Clearly." responded Dave.
"India is kind of screwed, then."
"Probably, yeah."
"Well that sucks."
"Depends on how you look at it, doesn't it?" said Dave. "The Pakistanis and Chinese are loving it. Gives them a chance to bash on their neighbor, which they've been aching for for... decades, man."
Ziad sighed.
"Damn."
After they entered the city of Altay, in far-northern Xinjiang province, Ziad could just feel himself getting closer to Shlomi and The Mysterious Man.
Russia was getting closer by the second.
The roads, however, were getting smaller.
Early the next morning, they were approaching the Russia/Chinese border.
The BMW slowed down and stopped a few metres short of the border checkpoint where a few Russian soldiers slouched around their outpost in varying degrees of slovenliness.
Their guns, however, were very unslovenly pointed right at the BMW.
Ziad and Dave climbed out of the car and approached the Russian border.
A soldier raised his rifle and called out in Russian.
Ziad raised his hands and said, "We're looking for a very mysterious man who wears a suit all the time and has a lot of friends in the special forces, er, uh Spetsnaz? Yeah, Spetsnaz!"
The soldiers conversed with each other.
One left the pack and approached Ziad.
"What your name?"
"Ziad Jarrah, and this is Dave McCormack."
"Where you from?"
"I'm from Lebanon and he's from Ireland. Well, technically Great Britain, he's from Belfast. Northern Ireland, all that jazz."
The Russian looked confused.
"Um, can you look up a Captain Karpukhin? He's with the Spetsnaz I think, he can vouch for me."
The Russian's facial expression went from confused to absolutely terrified in the time it took for Ziad to blink.
"K-k-k-Karpukhin? Yes I call boss now. Stay here. Do not move!"
The soldier sprinted back to the checkpoint yelling and gesticulating wildly at the other soldiers, who quickly snapped into action, calling on phones, radios, and would have sent smoke signals if they thought it would help.
Ziad turned back to Dave, eyebrows raised.
"Well, that went well."
The English-speaking soldier ran back.
"Karpukhin come now! Helicopter is coming. Wait here, Captain here in hours."
"I don't know if that's good or bad." said Ziad.
"Who knows?" answered Dave.
They were ushered into the small building next to the checkpoint and given tea and some bread. Ziad stared at the map of the region tacked to the wall. The map was a military map, marked with all the outposts, bases, and checkpoints the Russian military operated in the area. It wasn't all that many.
Ziad's eye was drawn to a small outpost in the suburbs of the city of Barnaul.
Next to the outpost were these words:
Главное Разведывательное Управление Генерального Штаба
A memory was blinking incessantly in Ziad's brain.
Ziad quickly searched all the other bases on the map. None had the same label.
Ziad walked back to the table where Dave had rested his head and begun snoring.
"Dave!" he whispered, shaking Dave awake.
"We need to get back in the car, now!"
"Whazzappenin?" mumbled Dave.
"I know where we're going, and I don't want to be recaptured."
"Ummfghgh Okaaay."
A customized, multi-million dollar BMW, as a matter of fact, can outrun Russian military trucks.
Author's note:
Well, they're getting back in the game.
Yessir, they are.
Mhmm. Yup.
*Hikes up jeans, spits tobacco, chews stalk of wheat*