The off-road vehicle equipped with GPS and a satellite phone had been flipped by the storm—lifted clean off the ground and rolled three or four times. The violent impact knocked both the GPS and satellite phone out of commission. The other jeeps fared no better: blown tires, engine bays and air intakes packed solid with sand and gravel, the kind of damage that left a vehicle utterly immobile.
Even compasses spun uselessly in the Gobi. According to the American leader of the expedition, Professor Brynn Jackson of Stanford, there might be a massive magnetite deposit somewhere nearby, throwing off all readings.
“Don’t mention it. I saved it from yesterday. I’m really not thirsty.”
Wu Peng wet his cracked, peeling lips as he spoke. A fellow graduate student of Dr. Joe’s and, like Lin Hui, f
