|
Darhan, Northern Mongolia.
A harsh, remote land, the last stop, truly in the middle of nowhere.
Pristine. Untouched. Untamed. It’s mid-winter – deadly
dzud season, when, as the old saying goes, for half a year Hell
truly does freeze over. Swirling, blinding flash snow and razorblade-sharp
ice storms sweep across the barren land, uncompromising, unforgiving,
unstoppable. Life and death – all in the blinking of an
eye, in the roll of a pair of loaded dice.
Our base of operations
is a tiny, ramshackle bush pilot ‘airline’ in the middle
of all this harsh nothingness. Three pilots, -- two Asian, one
Western -- two patched-together old cheapshit planes, four bottles
of scotch, more than enough lone-wolf bitterness, eccentricity
and disillusionment to go ‘round. Welcome to Dragon Air.
The trio are partners, friends – though at a glance they
have little in common:
Danny “Ex” Chow
(49, so nicknamed because he’s an ex-big city airline pilot,
ex-husband, ex-teacher, ex-gun runner, even briefly ex-monk at
the Zuu Monastary). A fearless crack pilot, grizzly gambler and
drinker, more knowledgeable than a dozen encyclopaedias about
just about every offbeat subject under the sun, and (despite
his A-Z of vices and character flaws) a man without an enemy
in the world.
Tai Ko, 53, the only native
of the area, and he knows every square inch of it, every rule
and how to bend it, every official, crooked or otherwise. Only,
truth be told, there aren’t a lot of ‘otherwise’.
He’s a crack mechanic who can somehow miraculously keep
the ramshackle planes airborne, often with little more than spit
and ingenuity. Neat and meticulous, a fastidious record-keeper,
and the only one who seems to at least try and collect unpaid
bills, and keep their little business afloat.
Brandon Blake, -- 38, a
ruggedly handsome ex-pat American,. A former air force pilot
who loved flying but was less fond of taking orders and following
the rules . A soldier of fortune who’d initially drifted
here and there for a few years after serving his rocky time in
the service in two war zones, always trying to find a good fit
– yet in the end only finding that petty laws and him didn’t
seem destined to get along. He found his true calling out here
in the middle of nowhere, just the planes, nature, a handful
of friends and his own sleeping demons -- and over the past 7
years has grown to understand and respect the local customs,
language and ways so well he’s now more at home here than
he ever was back in the States.
That’s the setting.
A harsh, middle-of-nowhere exotic world.Dangerous, but unpredictable
and exciting. A trio of rugged individualists. A just-scraping-by
airline ferrying supplies here and there, rescuing stranded hunters,
saving lives in medical emergencies, doing whatever has to be
done to make a buck. |
