A Mongol Empire Scenario-Desert Tides- Or how I learned to swim in quicksand

Coz1 – Wolfgang would be disappointed if he wasn’t involved in someone’s death, soon.

J. Passepartout – Even the best-laid plans can go bad.

Jwolf – Felix is like the Mafia hood who would say “Its nothing person, its just business.” Just before shooting you.

Stuyvestant – You are correct, Wolfgang doesn’t care. More on that below.

Nil-The-Frog – Yes you’ve got Wolfgang’s character pretty much right. Wolfgang needs to know where he stands in the pecking order. Once he knows that, he’s satisfied and will follow orders. With Krafft, who he didn’t like or respect he still followed orders because Krafft was the leader. He might twist Krafft’s orders but he wouldn’t break them. With Felix you have the Alpha Male and he is someone Wolfgang respects because he’s ruthless, efficient and lets Wolfgang play with his prey as long as they succeed with their task. Felix’s intelligence is more difficult to explain. He is very good at what he does, which is looking at a particular type of problem and solving it. He has a talent to quickly see what is possible and what isn’t. He knows that our friends have to die regardless of anything being found at the next monastery. After they die he can take the manuscripts and notes back to Germany where others can study them at their leisure. This talent at solving problems it matched by his willingness to use whatever measures are necessary without hesitation. Hey what can I say, he’s your ‘go to guy’ when you need help.

Draco Rexus – True, Wolfgang doesn’t care because it was his leader that said it. Now if one of his underlings were to try that there would be lots and lots of blood on the ground.

Joe

I lowered the car window down another couple of inches letting some more of the increasingly warm air blow in the car. I looked in the rear-view mirror at Aurturo, who lowered the newspaper he was reading.

“Is there too much wind to read? I can close the window if you want.”

Aurturo shook his head no.

“That’s not what’s bothering me. He held up the newspaper.

“The paper I borrowed from Vetterman has a page missing.”

“So?”

Aurturo frowned at my reflection in the mirror.

“So why is there a missing page?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was something on it that Vetterman found interesting enough to tear out.”

Aurturo looked out the side window still frowning.

“Maybe. I just don’t like little mysteries, they have a nasty habit of hiding large secrets.”

Aurturo looked out the side window and drifted off into silence. I shrugged thinking that Aurturo was seeing another conspiracy that no one else could see. I felt the need to talk and glanced over at Shara.

“Do you know anything about the next monastery?”

“Saint George? Well it’s actually called the Monastery of St. George of Koziba. It’s in the middle of the Wadi Qelt. There is a small side road we turn off on from the main road. It’s rough driving for half a mile before the road ends. Then it’s a good hour walk to get to the Monastery.”

“Great we’ll get there at just about the hottest time of the day.”

I sat there driving, thinking about the hot, sweaty hike that lay ahead when I noticed that Shara had slid over to sit next to me. I looked at her in surprise and she grinned.

“Why are you so negative? You’re about to see one of the truly astounding monasteries in Palestine and your grousing about a walk? Besides the monastery is at the bottom of the gorge and will be hidden in shadows.”

I found myself speechless for a second as I couldn’t help but notice that even though Shara was wearing Ali’s masculine clothes she was maddening distracting. I could smell the soap she used that morning as it fought with the day’s sweat to produce a perfume that for some strange reason tightened my throat into a corded knot tied tighter than a deer on the roof of a pickup truck. Suddenly the voice of Aurturo made its way through to my brain.

“The truck.”

I looked in the rear view mirror.

“What?”

“I said watch out for that truck that’s heading right for us!”

I jerked my eyes back to the road and saw a dilapidated truck piled high with produce that tilted precariously to one side in front of us. I spun the steering wheel hard to the left and shrieked at the edge of the road with squealing tires that kicked up a billowing cloud of dust that poured into my open window. The road’s shoulder was softer that the gravel road and the car started bumping on the uneven surface causing the car to violently shake. The sound of the produce truck’s horn blasted at us as it raced by, a blur of pale greens and yellows blanketed by dull brown. I couldn’t see anything in the dust cloud and was surprised when the bumping stopped. Since I still couldn’t see anything I guessed I must have found the road again when my relief was shattered as the car slammed down from its airborne leap and suddenly we were through the dust cloud and I could see again. I gripped the wheel so hard my knuckles hurt as I yanked hard to the right as the rear end of the car started sliding to the right, wheels once again screaming painfully while they kicked up gravel, which hit the car’s undercarriage with the rapidity of a pop corn popper running full speed during intermission at a Saturday night movie. I finally jerked the car back under control blinking the last of the dust from my eyes. Meanwhile the truck driver laid on his horn as the truck receded down the road sounding like the wounded howl of a bull being castrated. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Aurturo wiping his brow with his handkerchief.

“If you don’t mind Shara would you move away from Rowe. He doesn’t appear to be able to do two things at once.”

Shara grinned and slid back over to the car window.

“That was fun. One things for sure, life’s not boring around you Rowe.”

Her damn dimples almost made me lose control of the car again.

Coz1 –


Nil-The-frog – That must have been a puzzling section to read for any non-native English reader. Captain Kirk has nothing on me when it comes exploring the outer-reaches of English. But then what can you expect since I grew up watching the “Twilight Zone”. Tell you what if you wonder what the hell something I wrote means just ask. I imagine writing “tied tighter than a deer on the roof of a pickup truck” was puzzling.


True our friends can’t see that they are being followed… yet.

Mettermrck – I agree, Rowe was fully within his rights to take his eyes off the road. Too bad the truck driver didn’t agree.

Stuyvesant – Aha! You’ve finally made a mistake with your usually reliable mind, your first sign of fallibility. If you reread a couple of posts back you will notice that Aurturo put down the paper and looked out of the side window. He was therefore unencumbered by the afore mentioned newspaper and free to let his senses roam. So he saw Shara’s move, Rowe's reaction and the bug splattered grillwork of the oncoming truck. He also saw the hills growing larger and the sheep off to the right not to mention the trash pile to his left and his left foot had gone to sleep but they don’t enter into our story so I left them out.

You are right in that Higgins is assuredly frowning at Rowe at this very moment.

Draco Rexus – I think in other circumstances, as in not having a gang of nasty Germans chasing him, he might actually make a move on Shara. But in the present situation he’s, shall we say, distracted.


Jwolf – Now, now don’t go paranoid on me. Sometimes a truck is just a truck. Aurturo has proven resourceful more than once hasn’t he?

Draik – Now there is nothing self-biographic about Rowe. No sir not a bit of me is in his character. I was a real woman killer when I was young. I just tried to imagine what it would be like for those less fortunate than me in the wonderful pursuit of the fairer sex. Yep. I had to beat them off with a bat. They could be persistent little things.

J. Passepartout – Well I do admit that Felix would love to take advantage of life’s little gifts, as in an opportune accident, that makes it easier to kill our friends. But that fateful moment is still a little ways in the future.

Having problems with the next post. The damn thing just lies there on the page staring back at me. Dumb sucker. You’d think with all this practice it would fill up the page all by itself. Probably this weekend at the earliest for the next post. Unless it stops raining for like a whole day then I’ll be playing outside. Yea, what are the blankity-blank chances of that happening? Damn rain!

Joe