The Cradle of Life (12 page)

Good odds, she thought.

And then a memory came to her—

Working on one of the dolmen—the burial mounds—in Chasong. She had been surprised by a squadron of NVA soldiers. They'd marched her to a base camp twenty miles away, near Chosan. Bound her hand and foot, left her with two guards in a tent and four outside.

Terry had killed all six without making a sound. Without using a gun, or even a knife.

She looked up, and saw him casting surreptitious glances around the interior of the half-track. Lara followed his eyes, saw his gaze stop on the guard sitting to his right. She saw it the same time Terry did—

The guard had left the flap on his holster unbuttoned.

“Tempted?” she asked.

Terry turned and smiled at her.

“Not by him.”

Another memory came to her, and she chased it away.

She didn't have time for this now.

“This isn't some second-chance honeymoon, Terry. This is business, understood?”

“All work, and no play—is that it, Croft?”

She nodded. “That's it.”

“Well then.” Terry settled back in his seat. “Let's talk about work. What do I need to know?”

“That we have the better part of a day to find Chen Lo. And get back what he stole.”

“Well. We'd better get cracking then.” He leaned forward. “The Shay Ling will be in Luoyang. But they have spies all over China, so we have to get into the country undetected. If we slip into Beijing, we can go by truck—”

“Truck?” Lara shook her head. “How about something a tad faster?”

“I'm game,” Terry said. “What do you have in mind?”

She told him.

 

As Armin Kal watched the half-track pull away. Karenkov, his second-in-command, came up alongside him.

“Good riddance, yes sir? That Sheridan.”

Kal shook his head. “I can't believe we're rid of him so easy. He'll be back, I suspect.”

“I hope not, sir.”

“As do I, Vasily. As do I.” Kal shook his head. “That woman has balls to go off with him.”

“She has balls to come in here at all, sir.”

Kal nodded. “Mmm. Well. Sheridan's cell being empty, we now have a space to fill, don't we?”

“Yes sir. I was thinking Mr. Donovan.”

“Yes. Mr. Donovan. Good.” Kal patted Karenkov on the shoulder. “Take care of it, will you?”

Karenkov turned and headed back toward the prison.

When he was out of earshot, Kal took out a satellite phone he'd been given several months back as a way of maintaining exclusive contact with a certain party interested in “undesirables.” It seems this certain party had a usage for experimental subjects no one would miss—should said experiments ever go wrong.

This certain party also had an interest in the Shay Ling, who were known to frequent this Godforsaken part of the world from time to time, and had phoned Kal just a few hours earlier asking him to be on the lookout for—in particular—the group's leader.

Surely this certain party would be curious to know of someone else's interest in the Shay Ling, as well.

Kal dialed the number he'd been given. The phone rang—once, twice, three times.

On the fourth ring, a woman answered.

“Yes?”

“I need to speak to Doctor Reiss, please,” Kal said.

“Doctor Reiss is not available,” the woman said.

“Then please give him a message for me.” Kal looked off into the distance, where the half-track's taillights were just now vanishing into the storm. “This is Armin Kal. You can tell him that someone else is looking for Chen Lo. A woman named Croft—Lara Croft.”

“A tad faster.” Terry shook his head, as the scenery outside the cockpit whipped by. “You always were the master of understatement, Croft.”

Lara was about to reply when the pod hit a wind shear, and they were smacked sideways. Her head slammed into the canopy glass next to her.

Even wearing a helmet, her ears rang with the impact.

“Christ, here we go again,” Terry said, grabbing hold of the single lever in front of him. “Trying to control this thing is like trying to fly a rock.”

The only controls in their pod were directional, passive—they had no infrared signature for the Chinese to lock missiles onto, no e-m signature to trace or identify. They might as well have been a meteor, hurtling through the atmosphere—which was the idea, after all.

They didn't want anyone—not the Chinese, or the Shay Ling—to see them coming.

They were in north China now—Barla Kala lay half a day and two thousand miles behind them, the NATO base in Turkey an hour in the past. They'd launched from there at o-four-hundred after catching a few hours of sleep in the belly of a cargo transport. They'd flown in through Russian, then Mongolian airspace, the glider strapped to the belly of a Blackbird SR-71 stealth fighter, Terry and Lara crammed into the small craft like sardines.

“There it is,” Lara said, raising a hand and pointing directly ahead of her. “Our landing pad.”

Directly in front of them was a tranquil lake, surrounded by mountains on three sides. They were coming in from the open end of the formation.

“Hope it's deep enough,” Sheridan said, frowning. “We're going to hit pretty fast.”

Pretty fast was an understatement—they were rocketing in like a missile, no surprise really, considering they'd cut loose from the SR-71 while that craft was moving at Mach five.

“Going to change the angle of impact just a little,” Terry said, grabbing hold of the lever again. “So we don't slam into the surface and snap in two.”

Lara nodded, and then suddenly they were out over the lake, hundreds of feet of open water going by in a heartbeat, impact seconds away, and then they slammed into the water—

And shot back up into the air again, like a skipping stone.

There was a little rowboat directly in their path. The image barely had to register—an old man standing up in the boat, staring right through the windscreen into her eyes—when they shot past him (Lara hoped he'd ducked in time), and headed straight for—

A rock wall on the opposite side of the lake.

All the maneuvering in the world couldn't stop them from slamming into it.

Lara reached down, and yanked the only controls she had access to—

The eject levers.

With a loud whump, the canopy flipped open, and flew backward. Lara and Terry's seats shot high up into the air, the force of the wind snapping her head back against the top of the seat as—

The canopy snapped off the glider, smacked into the lake—

The glider smashed into the cliff, shattering on impact—

And with a puff barely audible over the roar of the air rushing past them, their chutes shot open, and Lara and Terry fell to earth.

 

They landed in a field near the lake. Stashed the chutes, changed their flight uniforms for less conspicuous clothes.

“So you going to tell me a little more about this job now?” Terry asked. “Like what it is Chen Lo stole from you?”

“Not important.” Lara paused a moment, got her bearings, then started off down a dirt path at the side of the field.

Terry caught up to her. “Bloody hell, Croft. Don't take me for thick. Look at what M-I-Six has gone to just to get us this far. A Blackbird, Croft, you know how much that little flight back there cost?”

She smiled. “Not as much as the glider.”

“Ha. What I'm really wondering, though, is why send a tomb raider? What is it we're after—a scepter? An obelisk?”

“At the risk of sounding like the proverbial broken record—worry about the Shay Ling, Terry. Ah. There we are.” Lara smiled, and pointed straight ahead.

“‘There we are' what?” Terry frowned. “That?”

“That” was a farm, a hundred yards down the road. There was a small wooden house with a thatched roof, and a one-story wooden barn. Chickens and goats, horses, and a single, massive cow wandered aimlessly about the yard.

“That,” Lara said.

“Welcome to the nineteenth century,” he said as they drew close. “Ah, Croft. The ditching was good—well done. But expecting to locate a vehicle in a place like this? You planned badly.”

Lara pointed to a pair of old horses nibbling next to a stack of hay.

“How about them? Will they do?”

“Hardly.”

“Well, how far do we have to go?”

“Farther than that—hey, hang on a minute.” Terry had caught sight of a truck on the far side of the barn. He strode toward it confidently…

And stopped.

No wheels.

But now he started forward again, heading for what looked to be a motorcycle, hidden beneath a plain canvas cloth. He whipped the cloth off—

To reveal a bicycle—a rusty two-wheeler, no gears, a flat front tire.

He shrugged.

“Ah—the proverbial bicycle built for two, Croft? What do you say?”

“Hardly.”

“Thought you had a thing for wearing tight little shorts.”

She pushed past him, headed for the side door of the barn, and pushed on through, Terry a step behind.

“I expected better, Croft. I expected much, much better. Now let me say I do have a contact in Beijing who might be able to get here with a car in a few hours—I stress the might, and we'd have to pay her handsomely for…”

He came up beside her and stopped short.

“You were saying?” Lara asked.

Terry shook his head. “Never mind.”

The two of them were looking at a small arsenal of equipment. Motorcycles, guns, gadgets, clothing…

A woman—middle-aged, dressed in traditional Chinese peasant garb—stepped out from behind a large equipment locker. She looked incongruous among the gleaming steel gear.

Lara felt Terry tense beside her.

“It's all right,” she said to him. “This is our contact—Shumei.”

Contact was perhaps an understatement, considering how long Lara had known the woman before. Shumei had been the first person Lara had met, on her very first expedition into China, looking for the dagger of Xian. Over the last decade, their paths had crossed half a dozen times during Lara's trips into Asia.

“Lara. I saw you come in over the lake.” She shook her head. “I expected better. You know how much that glider cost?”

“I know.” Lara turned to Terry. “He was driving.”

Sheridan frowned. The two women laughed and hugged.

“Everything ready?” Lara asked.

“Of course. Your clothes and guns are there—” Shumei pointed to one corner of the barn. “Knives back there.” She pointed to a table nearby. “And I took the liberty of tuning your bike.”

“You're a saint.” Lara caught sight of a stack of communications gear on a table. “May I…”

“Go on.” Shumei turned to Terry. “So. This is him.”

“That's him,” Lara agreed, picking up one of the satellite phones.

“Imagine that. I'm world famous,” Terry said.

Shumei shook her head. “Infamous, I would say. Come on—let's get you some gear.”

Lara dialed. Hillary answered.

“Croft Manor.”

“It's me,” Lara said.

“Ah. What is the happy couple up to?”

Lara ignored the jibe. “Accessorizing. Where are we on reading the Orb?”

“Bryce is doing a lot of frowning. Here—I'll put you on speakerphone.”

There was a click, and then Bryce's voice was in her ear.

“No key.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Maps have a key, Lara. A legend, a scale—yes? The Orb's key is not on the Orb. It must have been lost—”

“Or was somewhere in the temple,” she responded. “Go through every image I took. Start with things near the Orb. The key would have been linked to it in some way.”

“Right.”

“Right. Tell Hillary I'll call back later.” Lara hung up the phone, just in time to catch the tail end of the conversation between Shumei and Terry.

“It's not like Lara to take a partner,” she was saying.

“Oh, we've worked together before.”

“So I understand. So where are you two going?” she asked, helping Terry on with a jacket.

“Maybe a nice walk, fresh mountain air.” He shrugged. “Stop by and see my friends.”

“You have friends here?”

“The Shay Ling.”

“The Shay Ling?” Shumei looked past Terry to Lara, and shook her head. “You need more weapons.” She walked over to a table piled high with ordnance, and began sorting out clips for Lara's .45s.

Five minutes later, the pack was full, and digging into the small of Lara's back. She and Terry were perched on motorcycles, the farm and Shumei to their rear, the dirt road and the mountains in the distance before them. A sliver of orange and red off in the distance caught her eye. It ran up one side of the nearest mountain and down the other.

She squinted, and saw that, in fact, the sliver continued as far off into the distance as she could see.

“The Shay Ling watch all the roads,” Terry said. “We'll have to go around the back—”

Lara was still looking at the sliver. “We'll go straight.”

Terry looked at her like she'd grown two heads. “Ah—maybe you didn't hear me, Croft. They'll have men on every road from here to Luoyang.”

Lara smiled and shook her head.

“What?”

“Not every road,” she said.

 

If only Alexander had kept going, Lara thought. If he hadn't stopped at the Hesperus, who knows what might have happened. Perhaps the Bay of Bengal wouldn't have seemed like the end of the world to him. He might have reached Cambodia. And from there, China. And maybe, just, maybe…

He might have made it far enough to see this.

She brought her bike to a stop, and looked ahead and behind her, down the length and breadth of the Great Wall. Almost twenty-five-hundred kilometers long, supposedly the only manmade object on earth visible from the moon. Finished sometime in the third century
B
.
C
., if she was remembering right, although sections of it certainly would have been complete in Alexander's time. Probably this section, in fact—running as it did right along the old China–Mongolia border, it would have been one of the first to be built.

They'd been traveling on this part of the wall for about two hours, heading west. So far they'd only come across a single group of elderly tourists, standing outside a tour bus parked near the base of the wall. The look on their faces when Lara and Terry had driven by high above, on their motorcycles—

Priceless.

“Hey!”

She looked down. Terry, traveling for the last few miles on the road running alongside the wall, had stopped, as well.

“We need to think about heading south!” he called up.

She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. Terry was right, they needed to turn for Luoyang soon. Which meant coming down from the wall.

Five minutes farther on, she found a long, sloping stairway that led to the ground. A minute later she was back on terra firma and searching the road ahead of her for Terry.

Ah. There he was—looking up at the wall, hoping to catch sight of her.

Suddenly, she felt like a bit of fun. Terry was always fun to play with, she remembered. Mainly because unlike ninety-nine point nine percent of the population, he could keep up with her.

Lara smiled, and gunned the motor. Came up behind him on a curve, shortcut through the brush, and—

Shot past him, close enough that he struggled to maintain control of the bike.

“Bit rusty, are we?” she called back.

Terry's only answer was a smile.

A second later, he'd blown by her, gotten twenty feet ahead.

At which point, he started slaloming across the road, weaving from left to right in front of her to block her way.

“I think it's coming back!” he shouted.

Lara shot straight down the center line.

“I expected better from a Scot!” she yelled as she flew past.

“I don't expect anything from an Englishwoman!” he replied—and just as she was almost past him, he accelerated, and their wheels locked.