KallMeKris

So they were separated but moving in the same direction.

And at 8.43 a.m., Les radioed in because he had found a wine bottle, two liters, and fragments of a label still visible.

And Mahoud noted the GPS coordinates and they kept moving.

A few minutes later, Les called again because there was something in the bushes that looked like toilet paper.

And it was pages from a daily planner.

And the paper weathered and brittle after 13 years printed in German.

And then there was the call that changed everything.

And it was when he would say, Tom, we have some bones here.

Hood reached Les at 9.14 a.m.

at the base of the north-facing cliff at the edge of a small hill, and it was one of the only shaded spots for miles in any direction.

And on the ground nearby, scattered across a radius of roughly 150 meters from the cliff face, were things a family carries.

a passport, a bank ID card, the photograph still legible after 13 years in the desert sun, and a toothbrush, and the remains of a small shoe and a wallet.

And Mahoud would open the wallet, and every ID card inside bore the same name, Cornelia Meyer.

and the bones were close by.

Two sets of adult remains, bleached white by years of direct sun, scattered by wind and most likely by animals.

And Egbert and Cornelia had made it eight or nine miles from wherever the van had been broken down over rough ground in street shoes in the July heat.

And you have to know that in July, like there's been reports of people's soles of their shoes being melted because the sand is so hot.

And Mahoud stood there for a moment and absorbed what that meant.

And he wrote about it later saying, quote, to reach this spot required them to have hiked eight or nine miles over rough terrain in street shoes in July.

In my mind, they had earned a lot of respect for this accomplishment.