Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs by Max McCoy Read Free Book Online

my brown-eyed friend."
    Walter Granger was an adventurer, big-game hunter, and veteran of several expeditions to Outer Mongolia before the borders were closed to foreigners. In fact, Granger had been a key figure in an American Museum of Natural History expedition to Mongolia that, in the 1920s, had discovered the very first dinosaur eggs known to science.
    Although Granger was graying at the temples, he stood ramrod straight at six-feet, one-inch tall and there wasn't an ounce of fat on his tanned body. His only physical defect was a badly mauled right ear. He was dressed this morning, as he was every morning, in a khaki shirt with loops over the pockets for cartridges. His ever-present bush hat was also khaki, with a leopard-skin band taken from the cat that had chewed off most of his right ear. Granger wore the hat, even indoors, claiming that he could hear better with it on.
    But beyond his obvious qualifications—and in spite of his idiosyncrasies—the real reason Granger had been asked to lead the expedition was that Indy trusted him. Years before, Granger had saved him from becoming the main course for a tribe of Polynesian cannibals by convincing them that blue-eyed foreigners were much tastier than the common brown-eyed variety—and setting them on the trail of a notorious Dutch slave trader named Conrad.
    The tribe later thanked Granger for the tip.
    Granger knocked out his pipe in an ashtray and dropped the stem in one of the cartridge loops over his breast pocket. Then he cleared the middle of the table and unrolled a map, using the salt-and-pepper shakers and Indy's coffee cup to hold down the curling edges.
    "I laid out the route this morning while waiting for you to arrive," Granger explained. "It is subject to your approval, Jones, but I think you will agree it makes the most sense. From Shanghai we will travel by rail to Kalgan, where the tracks end at the base of the Shen Shei Mountains. From there, we will take a treacherous stretch of road that serpentines along the cliffs and leads to a gateway in the Great Wall at Wanshan Pass. That's roughly a thousand miles from here."
    "Yes, I believe that is the route my father took," Joan said. "He said as much in one of the last letters I received."
    "It is the only way in or out," Granger said. "The pass was used by caravans for a thousand years before Marco Polo saw it.... After gaining the plateau, we have a three-hundred-mile stretch called Desolation Road to the capital at Urga. There, it will be Indy's job to obtain the necessary permits from the Russian-controlled government. Otherwise, the expedition is over."
    "I'll use my charm," Indy quipped.
    "If all goes well to that point," Granger said, "we will obtain camels for our caravan from one of the many traders along the Urga Road. Then we will set out toward the west, and penetrate hundreds of miles into the Gobi. The desert is the haystack, and your father, Sister Joan, is the proverbial needle."
    "But if luck is with us," Indy said, "we'll have gathered some clues along the way to guide us in the right direction."
    "And if it isn't?" Joan asked.
    "Hopeless is not strong enough a word," Granger said.
    "Then I will pray for luck," she said.
    A young Chinese man entered the restaurant, searched for Granger, came to the table, and handed him a handful of manifests.
    "I'd like to introduce you to a rather capable fellow," Granger said. "This is Wu Han, a scholar and jack-of-all-trades who has helped to put the expedition together these last few days. Frankly, I told Brody that I didn't think I could do it. And I couldn't have if it hadn't been for Wu Han here."
    Wu Han bowed to Joan, then shook hands with Indy.
    "It has been a pleasure to help my American friends," Wu Han said in perfectly accented English. "I only hope that I can continue to be of service. Is this your first time in Shanghai? Perhaps I could arrange some entertainment."
    "This is old hat for Dr. Jones," Joan said, "but it's my first time