Page 48 (1/2)

He and Joe drove through the night When they reached the waypoint, they pulled off the desert track and parked the VW behind the curved slope of a sand dune

While Joe brushed away the tire tracks, Kurt pulled out a tarp He peeled a thin fil an adhesive layer Laying the tarp facedown and dragging it across the ground caused the adhesive to pick up a fine layer of sand as grains stuck to its surface

Satisfied, Kurt flung the tarp over the top of the VW, staked it in the ground and dumped several small bucket loads of sand on the top

Joe returned just as Kurt finished Joe blinked as if his eyes were deceiving him

“What happened to the VV?”

“Ia s to spot it”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “probably not even us I lose ht never find”

Kurt hadn’t really considered that He looked around for landmarks, but the desert offered only endless dunes in every direction He pulled out a GPS receiver and dropped a pin,spot He hoped that would help

As Joe pulled on his own backpack, Kurt slid a pair of snowshoes on his feet They were n, not the tennis rackets of old, but they would do the saht out over a wider area and allow hiing through it with every step

Joe donned a si

Ninety minutes later they crested the latest in a series of endless dunes As they reached the top, they caught wind of a helicopter approaching from the south

Scanning around for the source of the noise, Kurt spotted a flashing red beacon in the sky It looked to be noat five hundred feet and headed straight for them

“Get down,” Kurt said, dropping flat to the ground and trying to burrow in the sand like a sidewinder

Joe did the same, and in a moment they were just about covered up to their necks Despite this cae, the helicopter continued toward the course

“This looks bad,” Joe whispered