Shadow of the Tomb Raider--Path of the Apocalypse

by S. D. Perry

  Jonah frowned. “Why do you look like you just ran a 10K?”

  “Trinity was watching Marin. They probably have eyes on us, too. They gave chase. Clearly, they were worried about what he might tell me. Do you think the pilot will be willing to change his plans? Miguel, right?”

  She handed the phone to Jonah, then squatted next to her pack and started shoveling in her clothes.

  “Lara…” Jonah trailed off, not even able to find the words.

  “I know, it was a risk,” she said, looking up at him. “But think about it—we could spend days searching for the right river, the right mountain. Look at the coordinates: this dig is practically on the way. And there’s a file with the site mapped out, including where Trinity laid charges. What we need won’t be hard to access, at all.”

  “What makes you think Marin was telling the truth?”

  Lara broke eye contact, rising to step to the desk.

  “Well, they shot at us,” she mumbled, picking up her books. “Marin was hit in the shoulder.”

  Before he could respond, she quickly went on, turning to face him again. “It wasn’t a bunch of soldiers after him, it was a trained team. He’s obviously important to Trinity, to merit that kind of attention.”

  “Or they’re all in on it,” he said. “You think you set off this doomsday prophecy, right? That makes you a player in this. Maybe they need you to go to this dig and figure something out for them, to work the big mojo. What’s a flesh wound, if they can maneuver you like this?”

  “My instincts say otherwise. I don’t trust him, but I believe him. He lost his family in the tsunami and had a wake-up call about what’s actually going to happen if Dominguez is successful.”

  She looked so certain. Jonah scowled. How was he supposed to argue with instincts?

  Why do you want to?

  He realized he was irritated with her and gave it voice immediately rather than let it keep steering him towards a fight. “I’m mad because you snuck off to a spy meeting without even telling me. One that turned out to be dangerous.”

  Lara nodded, her gaze softening. “That’s fair.”

  “I mean, we’re both here, right? What’s the point, if we’re not working together? I wake up and you’re gone? There was no reason to go alone.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Jonah exhaled heavily. “Okay.”

  She let him enjoy the apology for about a second before she was nodding at the phone still in his hand. “What do you think? About Colombia?”

  “I don’t even know.” He squinted at the screen, at a tiny grid marked with Xs. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “If you think it’s worth a shot—”

  “I do. It’s a gamble, there could be nothing worth finding, but that would be a few hours wasted in all. If it pays off, we could be on our way home before Dominguez even knows we beat him.”

  Jonah nodded. “I guess it’s Colombia, then.”

  Lara grinned and lifted her pack, shoving the books inside. “Brilliant. Is that tea for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You are brilliant,” she said, and stepped forward and hugged him. “I know this is more than you bargained for. I really am sorry.”

  And this is why I’ve got your back, right here. Lara was a sweetheart. She was family.

  Speaking of backs… He returned the embrace but quickly let go. Her shirt was soaked.

  “You might want to change before we go. Maybe wash up a little. I mean, if we’re going to be sitting together in a soda can for the rest of the day.”

  She smiled. “Give me five minutes, I’ll be ready.”

  Jonah nodded, and went to collect his bag. He hoped the pilot was amenable to altering his route.

  * * *

  Jonah Maiava and his friend—an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties—showed up at the airfield on time, each carrying a couple of packs. Miguel Riviera waved to them from next to his Cessna, one in a line of five parked along the dirt strip, and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

  Just keep your eye on the prize. Jonah had offered a lot of money for what they wanted—a private trip to Peru so his friend could look for some kind of archaeology thing, hidden ruins or something. Private, meaning “off the grid.” Which meant filing a false flight plan, and Miguel getting his license pulled if they got caught.

  You won’t get caught. And if you do, you know who to pay.

  He sighed. He thought he’d put all this behind him. He took tourists through the Amazon basin or to the Yucatan on eco-trips now, and while he didn’t make half as much money as he used to, it was legitimate work, legal work doing what he loved. Two days ago, he would have turned Mr. Maiava down flat.

  Two days ago, Mama still had the home. His mother ran a small nursing home for a handful of old women, only blocks from the beach. No one had died in the flood, thank God, but Mama had broken her arm and there was no money to rebuild. His father had passed away years ago, and Miguel was her only son.

  Miguel had been worrying over it when his friend Hector told him that there was a big Polynesian guy looking for a private flight to Peru, an American. Hector said that Jonah was all right, not a criminal type. If it had been drugs or guns, that would have been a different story, but a trip to look at ruins? Miguel still knew most of the guys running private airstrips all the way down to Argentina, ones that certain officials could be paid to ignore. Not the most scrupulous bunch, the airfield owners, but this young woman apparently had money to burn. For the right price, most of them would sell their own mothers.

  We all have our price. Jonah had been reasonable and clear—they needed to get to the Andes of central Peru without anyone knowing about it. And he had presented half the money up front, in cash. More than enough to take care of Mama and her friends, and that was half. If a rich grad student wanted to take a tour, that wasn’t so bad. And he was 99.9 percent sure that they weren’t going to get caught.

  Miguel shifted from one foot to the other and back, watching the big man and his friend approach. They could get where they needed to go on a commercial flight in a third of the time—and for a fraction of what they were paying— then rent a private plane locally. Why were they hiding?

  “Miguel,” Jonah said. “This is the friend I told you about, Lara Croft. Lara, this is Miguel Riviera.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Croft.”

  “Call me Lara,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. She had a sweet, youthful face, but her gaze was much older. Much cooler. And she carried herself like an athlete; balanced, good posture. Not a student, maybe. Out of his league, definitely, and he never hit on customers, anyway.

  Miguel pulled out the map he’d worked out that morning, where he’d marked places to refuel. He used a pencil to point to the route he meant to take. “We’ll have to make several stops, but assuming the weather holds, we can reach Peru by—”

  “I’m sorry,” Lara said. “Can we make a stop in Colombia first?”

  “Colombia?”

  Lara motioned to his pencil. “May I?”

  He handed it over and she studied the map for a moment before marking an area north of Los Indios, not far from the northern coast.

  “What’s there?” It was a swath of jungle with nothing nearby, heavy greenery and hills. The Santo Almeda brothers ran an airstrip not far from where she’d indicated.

  “A dig site. A Trinity dig site.”

  Miguel frowned. “Trinity—they’re that historical research group, or something like that?” He knew they’d been working ruins just outside of town for a few months, which meant money for the local markets—they had a lot of employees to feed—but they had generally kept to their compounds in the hills to the east. Nobody knew much about them.

  “I want to be honest with you, Mr. Riviera—”

  “Miguel, please.”

  “Miguel. I know you have no reason to trust us, but here’s the truth: I’m trying to stop Trinity from doing something terrible. The mountains in Peru
are where we ultimately need to go, but there’s information that should tell us where, exactly, at this dig in Colombia. Trinity doesn’t want me to interfere with their plans, which is why we need to go looking in secret. And we need to be quick about it.”

  “Won’t they know you’re looking when you get to this dig?”

  “It’s not active,” she said. “There shouldn’t be anyone there. And we only need a ride, we’re not expecting you to help us look.”

  “We’ll pay for the extra stop,” Jonah said.

  Miguel hesitated. Davi and Gabriel Santo Almeda were temperamental, and could be picky about who dropped in. They also hung out with a bunch of lowlifes. Last time he’d been by, some hopped-up lunatic had pointed a gun at him. Gabriel and his friends had laughed, and Davi hadn’t bothered to intervene. Miguel had hoped to never see them again.

  “How much?”

  “Name it,” Lara said.

  “Within reason,” Jonah added.

  Well. The idea that there were people looking for Lara and Jonah wasn’t appealing; he’d definitely preferred thinking that she was a grad student… But he was already breaking the law, and he could do a lot with the figure that had popped into his head. Including pay whatever it cost to calm the Santo Almeda brothers down. Probably.

  “What terrible thing does Trinity mean to do, that you think you can stop?”

  Lara met his gaze directly. “Does it matter? Do you want this job, or should we find someone else?”

  She had a point. “I can take you there. But if we’re being so honest, you should know that I can’t vouch for the character of some of the men we’re likely to encounter along the way. Especially where you want to go. Money can smooth over a lot, but some of these people are criminals. Killers, crazies.”

  Not only did the young woman not look frightened at the prospect, she actually smiled, just a little. “We can handle ourselves.”

  Miguel glanced at Jonah, whose expression was unreadable. The big man blinked back at him, waiting.

  Name it.

  Miguel blew out a breath, nodding. “Okay. Yes. Colombia.”

  * * *

  They stopped first in the short, jagged foothills of the Cordillera Isabelia in Nicaragua, where a handful of men with guns glowered at them until Miguel hopped out and did some talking, handing out “fees” for the use of the bumpy, rocky strip. After that, the men were all smiles, first happily escorting Lara and Jonah to a really unpleasant outhouse, then inviting them to share their lunch—a root stew with chunks of some gamey, unrecognizable meat. Lara firmly reminded herself that she needed the protein, ignoring the tiny claw she had to discreetly spit out. They ate quickly in the oppressively humid heat, the air slick with the smell of petrol and hazy with smoke, the noise from the fuel pump killing the need for conversation. In barely an hour, they were back in the air.

  The interminable day passed as they flew over lush green hills and muddy lakes, small villages glittering with tin roofs and chain-link fences. They veered out over the Pacific several times, Miguel regularly changing altitude, the effect somewhat nauseating in the unpressurized plane—hot and then cold, falling and rising and banking. Lara packed her kit for the site and pulled out the disposable phone again to read and reread the information Marin had given her, committing the simple maps to memory.

  She looked again at the riddle they’d found before the tsunami. “Chase the heart of the serpent to the silver-crowned mountain, where the twins confer,” she read out loud. “Ever heard of the hero twins, Jonah?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there are legendary twins in most cultures—Castor and Pollux, Romulus and Remus, arguably Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Maya hero twins were great players in the Mesoamerican ballgame, competing against the gods of the Underworld to avenge their father’s death.”

  “That’s what we’re looking for?”

  She smiled at his expression. “For our purposes, the twins could represent anything—a pair of lakes, mountains, caves, or perhaps something man-made…”

  After a while she ran out of guesses. Jonah started rereading a battered pulp novel and finally slumped down in his seat, dozing. Miguel mostly kept to himself, occasionally pointing out places of interest—a national reserve, mountains and rivers that delineated one country from another.

  They refueled in Panama, in the tropical heat of a flat lake area, deep in a swampy jungle. Lara estimated that they were close to the border with Colombia, although she thought it impolitic to ask; of the small group of suspicious men who greeted them, several were dressed like soldiers, and none were welcoming. Miguel had told Lara and Jonah to keep close to the plane for this stop, which was just as well. Stretching was an incredible relief, but moving about in the full heat of the afternoon was like walking through syrup. It was beautiful, though—the greenery was vibrant, the earth rich and dark, the sky a thick, lustrous blue.

  They ate boiled trout and beans, and a man with a nasty scar over his eye stared at Lara and licked his lips when he saw her notice. Jonah noticed, too, and his expression made the scarred fellow find something else to stare at. Had she been on her own she would have dealt with it—whatever his intentions, the man had the physique of an overfed bulldog—but she had to appreciate the value of one’s best friend being the size and shape of a top power-lifter. It saved a lot of trouble.

  When they got back on the plane, Miguel said that he thought they could be at the Colombian dig by dark. Lara nodded and tried not to let her dread well up at the hours slipping by. They could only go as fast as they could go. She would head for the Blue Labyrinth as soon as they touched down, take pictures, and figure out the clues on a night flight to Peru. They could be looking for the city by tomorrow morning.

  Which means you need to sleep if you can. Miguel would have to catch a nap while she and Jonah checked out the dig. She hoped he would agree to not stopping for the whole night. For the price he and Jonah had finally worked out, she didn’t think there’d be any objections.

  They took off from the rutted mud airstrip, ever south.

  Lara didn’t sleep, exactly, but for a time her thoughts became heavy and dull, the steady blur of the engine lulling her to the barest of awareness. She could see the mural from the Temple of the Moon in her mind’s eye, the towering wave crashing down. She saw the clear sky darken with an approaching storm, heavy clouds gathering from the air, lightning crackling through the swirling, ominous mass. She saw a terrified child clinging to the church roof, falling, swept away, while in the distance a great serpent rose from the sea, its eye a black sun, shining across the water, searching for her…

  She realized that Jonah had moved up to talk to Miguel at some point, their voices low beneath the drone of the engine, pulling her awake. The evening light blared through the small cabin.

  “…didn’t think I’d be seeing any of these people again, this side of the grave,” Miguel was saying. “Davi runs things. He’s not as bad as his brother, but he only steps in if there’s money in it for him. Their crew is worse.”

  “Who’s Davi?” Lara asked.

  “Davi and Gabriel Santo Almeda,” Jonah said. “They own the airstrip where we need to go. We’re still an hour out.”

  “How far is it from the dig?” Lara asked.

  “Miguel says maybe fifteen, twenty klicks.”

  Lara nodded. Good. The closer the better.

  “Do you need more cash to get us a ride?” Jonah asked.

  “No, there’s still enough,” the pilot said. “Though I hope you don’t mind driving in some flunky’s busted truck. I’m more concerned with personal safety. When I spoke earlier of unsavory men, I was thinking mostly of the brothers. The last time I saw them, Davi was clean but Gabriel had a habit. Cocaine. He’s the older of the two, so Davi doesn’t give him orders. They keep a lot of guns, and so do their friends. It’s important that we are passive with them, that we say and do nothing that might make them feel suspicious or anxious.”

  “Fun,�
� Jonah said. “Any chance they’ll try to shoot us down?”

  “No, I’ll radio first, and they know my plane anyway,” Miguel said, but he didn’t sound all that certain. “Perhaps it’s better if you say nothing about Trinity, though.”

  Lara could see from the nervous glance he threw back at her that he was worried.

  “Once I have a deal with Davi, he’ll keep the rest in line, but you should go nowhere unattended while we’re here.”

  “I understand,” Lara said.

  “I’ll stay with the plane, while the two of you go see this place,” Miguel said. “Only a few hours, you say?”

  “Less, I hope.”

  Miguel nodded. “We don’t want to stay any longer than we have to. I’m going to tell them that you’re photographing ruins all through the basin for a research study, your institute has paid to see this site—and that we’re expected to land at Los Indios before dawn. The officials there would be quick to send out a search.”

  Lara and Jonah both nodded. The threat of a visit by the authorities should deter these brothers from taking them hostage, or killing them for what they had.

  “Did you leave on good terms, last time you came through?” Jonah asked.

  “I wouldn’t say good, but not openly hostile,” Miguel said. “I always paid.”

  He hesitated, then added, “I’ll tell you all about my checkered past, if you’ll let me in on what it is you think you’re going to find here.”

  Jonah glanced back at Lara, who considered it briefly, then shook her head. Miguel deserved to know what they were up against, but if a confrontation with Trinity lay ahead in all this, it was safer for him if they thought he was some smuggler they’d hired for his plane. Which, essentially, he was. Marin’s betrayal of Trinity meant there was a chance that they were sending soldiers to all of their digs, but that would take time. She didn’t think they had the bodies, not close at hand… Although what she didn’t know about Trinity could fill a book. It was all a risk.