Shadow of the Tomb Raider--Path of the Apocalypse

by S. D. Perry

  Harper’s voice hissed into her ear again, the signal very slightly stronger.

  “…report. Have… target? What’s your… copy?”

  Mitchell took off the helmet and disabled the radio before putting it back on. She replayed the recent events, considering her own performance thus far. She’d foreseen Lara using the maze to get out, and had chosen the very same tunnel that Croft had, one of only a few routes that could bypass the site’s upper entrance.

  And now she’s on it. Running. Did she have access to the same maps that they had? Would she know where she had to drop to get to the climb out?

  Doesn’t matter. Mitchell knew what Croft was looking for. She’d follow and create another opportunity.

  She stopped long enough to grab a small roll of wet-tape out of her kit and cover the hole in her ear, then worked the blood out of her ear canal with her finger, the roaring silence of the cave clear once more. She heard echoes floating down from above, a man’s voice, demanding a response. Harper.

  Idiot. Where was he going? Why had he left his position? Hadn’t she asked for radio silence for at least twenty minutes? Had he not agreed to that? She knew the commander believed that Mitchell was entirely loyal to him, but that wasn’t the case at all. She had joined Trinity for the opportunities to fulfill her potential. Harper had recognized her abilities, but that was like recognizing the sky was blue; she didn’t owe him anything for noticing. Lately she’d been thinking about moving on to something else, bored by the competitive dynamic, the testosterone poisoning and ridiculous ideology flamed by Harper’s tireless ego. She’d played along for too long, perhaps.

  We’ll see. If she survived, she would reassess. Resolving the unique relationship that she and Lara had entered into was her only interest at the moment.

  Mitchell took out a flashlight, laid it across the CZ and pointed both at the ground, starting after Croft. If Harper interrupted her again, if anyone tried to interfere, she’d kill them.

  * * *

  The minutes stretched out. Harper waited. The air was getting harder to breathe as the dark tightened its grasp, squeezing him. Mitchell was taking her goddamn time.

  Two shots spilled out of the passage to the maze in quick succession, close enough to make his ears ring. Mitchell! He tapped on his lamp and hurried to the opening.

  The sudden cessation of the dark was such a relief that he followed the light further, to a split where the western branch tilted down. A handful of bats fluttered out into the pale light of his headlamp, disappearing into the dark behind him. He was sure the shots had come from below, and hurried on with his Glock up and ready, sidestepping down the rocky slope. Mitchell didn’t fire without a target in sight.

  He came out of the sloping tunnel into a long, low chamber with four openings. He hesitated, sweeping the dark, rocky holes.

  “Mitchell, report,” he snapped. She’d had enough goddamn time and he was close. If she hadn’t just killed Croft, they’d have a better chance if they—

  There were three more shots, clearly coming from a thick crack on the western wall, a pause, and a fourth. No return fire.

  He ran for the crack, boots pounding the mucky rocks. He squeezed inside, shuffling sideways into a tunnel that soon opened up enough for him to walk straight. He ducked beneath the dripping stone as he ran.

  “Mitchell, report,” he said again. “Have you hit the target? What’s your position? Do you copy?”

  The tunnel twisted and opened into a wide slope that curved south. He thought he heard running footsteps, a patter of sound, close enough that he expected to see the runner cross the slope in front of him. Where was it coming from?

  “Mitchell!” he called, crouching his way forward. He saw an opening in the rocks, hidden by a bulge in the stone on the north side of the passageway, and hurried to it, boots skidding in the crap. He stumbled into the hole, following the tight, downward spiraling curve. “Mitchell! Answer me! What’s your—”

  He was still following the curve and wasn’t watching his feet as closely as he should have been, the toe of his boot landing wrong on an angle.

  Harper lost his balance and pitched forward, stumbling, and the tunnel opened up suddenly, straight down.

  He fell, cracking his knee on a rock at the lip of the hole, dropping through the dark, crashing on the bare rocks two and a half meters below. His right ankle twisted painfully under his weight.

  Harper staggered sideways, sweeping the Glock, taking in a flat, ugly chamber with tunnels branching off to every side. Empty, cold and dark. Crawling with bugs.

  He looked up at the hole he’d fallen through, reaching for it, the barrel of the Glock almost touching the lowest rocks.

  Something chirped. Harper turned, wincing at the pain in his ankle, and saw a big white lizard crawl out of a crack high in the wall, a few meters away. It chirped again, a raspy sound, like it was straining air through its many teeth, tilting its blind face to one side.

  Harper targeted it but didn’t fire. It wasn’t big enough to be a threat, but he couldn’t stop himself from making a face, viscerally repelled by the hideous thing. It screeched at him, and he jumped at the unexpected change of pitch. It was a sound like someone stomping on a mating cat, or a bird being burned to death. He’d had plenty of time to make comparisons, sitting at the top of the labyrinth and listening to the creatures call, but he hadn’t realized how loud they were, or expected to be so disgusted by the reality. Corpse white and eyeless, bones visible beneath its gelid skin, the monster abruptly went silent, then turned and darted back into its hole.

  Harper tapped his mic, spoke calmly. “Mitchell, report. I’m in the maze, do you copy?”

  No answer. No footsteps, no shots. He had blundered into the tunnels, expecting to find Croft bleeding out and Mitchell standing over her at every single turn… And now he didn’t know where he was, let alone anyone else. The maps they had of the maze were incomplete, only the tunnels closest to the dig marked clearly.

  It’s fine. You’re fine. Croft and Mitchell both got down here somehow, and you’re right behind them. Croft had to be heading for the climb that bypassed the main tunnels, and Sergei was waiting at the top of that climb. The rest of the team were coming in from the airstrip. She wouldn’t escape.

  Assuming she’s even alive. Mitchell had fired six shots. It was hard to believe all of them had missed. But then, why didn’t she respond? He had to be close enough for Mitchell to have heard him. Even if the radios were useless, he’d been shouting. Or had Croft got hold of Mitchell’s gun somehow? No, that was impossible.

  Maybe she decided not to answer. The thought made him uneasy. The problem with leading people like Mitchell, you couldn’t entirely depend on them to defer to authority when they were hunting, and there was no leash to yank. It was possible that Croft had taken her down with an arrow… He couldn’t actually imagine it, but he hadn’t thought Hux would go out on this one, either.

  Harper hobbled closer to the wall, studying the marks that the dig team had left behind. The footsteps he’d heard had been just north of him, he was sure of it, possibly deeper than where he was. He picked the northernmost passage that was designated as connecting to another and started walking, ignoring the pain in his ankle and his knee. He had light and the Glock and a purpose—he was hunting, too— and it beat the shit out of waiting in the airless dark for his players to play.

  I’m coming for you, now, he thought, steadying himself against the filthy rocks as he moved deeper into the winding, narrow passage. Even the not so distant scream from one of those repulsive monsters couldn’t dim his fierce resolve, or the persistent feeling of fatefulness. The endgame was in sight.

  * * *

  Setting up for the incoming Trinity thugs was a lot like staging a play. Props, lighting, costumes, directions for the actors. Jonah focused on the idea that he and Miguel were about to perform a scene, which was true… And it was also true that his plan could get both of them killed, but focusing on that wasn
’t going to help. He’d been roped into a drama-society production back at high school—and now he remembered the advice the teacher had given him: Relax, stick to the script, don’t psych yourself out. Once the curtain goes up, you’ll be fine. All totally reasonable, but when they heard the approaching engine, Jonah’s throat went dry.

  Since Miguel was shorter than Smith and clearly not blond, he was kneeling by the guards. The dead men were face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs.

  “Head down when they come in, wait until they’re all out of the vehicle, then left to right, until they fall down,” the pilot said. Was he reminding himself, or Jonah? He seemed less nervous than Jonah felt.

  “Exactly,” Jonah said. He would be firing right to left. He wished he could use the shotgun, but it was the wrong prop; the guard’s fancy pistol would have to suffice. “And remember, one of them won’t be dressed in combat gear. Don’t shoot him, unless he pulls a weapon.”

  Miguel nodded. “You really think this is going to work?”

  “Yeah,” Jonah said. “They’re going to see what they expect to see, right?”

  “Right,” Miguel said. “But what if one of them is actually paying attention when they pull up?”

  Then we’re screwed. “They won’t,” Jonah said. The faint engine sound was getting louder.

  “What if they start shooting right away?” Miguel asked. “Do we fall back to the jungle, or can you blow up their truck or something?”

  “Blow up their truck?”

  “Like, shoot the gas tank.”

  “I don’t think that even works,” Jonah said. “And honestly, I’m not that great of a shot.”

  Miguel turned to look at him, blinking his light eyes. “Didn’t you say you were ex-military?”

  “I said I was in the army, but that was a long time ago,” Jonah said. “In New Zealand. And I was a cook.”

  Miguel was starting to look sincerely worried. He picked at the Velcro strap to the vest beneath his shirt, fingers working nervously. “But with the guards, you were so… You took them out like a professional or something.”

  Jonah almost told him the truth, that he’d been crazy lucky, but the engine was getting close and there was no time for another plan. The curtain was about to go up.

  “This is going to work,” he said, recalling the pep talks from his drama teacher. “Clear your mind as much as you can—and if you can’t, that’s okay, too, just let yourself be in the moment and do what you know you’re capable of doing.”

  “Okay,” Miguel said, and blew out a breath. “You’re right. We got this.”

  A single headlamp rose and bumped over the crest of rock to the east, the engine squealing.

  Jonah adjusted the uncomfortable helmet and turned his back to the incoming vehicle, standing half behind one of the trucks they’d moved so that the new arrivals would have to park behind them. He’d traded shirts with Reddy and tried to ignore the cold sticky spots under the protective vest. At least the holes weren’t obvious.

  Miguel turned his head away as the rusting truck clattered into view, reaching down as if to adjust handcuffs. Smith’s helmet was big on him, and the pilot had slid it back to cover his hair. Jonah pointed the nine-millimeter, a Glock, at the back of Reddy’s head, listening to the badly maintained engine sputter to a stop.

  Stick to the script. Jonah raised one hand up in a wave, still facing away. He stepped forward and to his left so that he was near parallel with Miguel, clearing them both to fire as soon as they turned. He’d never been good with guns but Lara had worked with him on it, dragging him to the range every now and again. He could hear her calmly reminding him to relax his eye, to visualize where the rounds were going to go, not to pull the trigger but to squeeze it gently.

  The single headlight went out, and two doors creaked open, passenger then driver. The jungle was recovering from the noisy intrusion, nocturnal life again taking up its chorus.

  A man with a slight lisp called out, “What’s the word, Reddy?”

  Jonah pretended he hadn’t heard, listened to boots hitting the ground. Two men from the front, a third hopping down from the back.

  “Who is that?” someone else called. “Sergei? You on guard duty?”

  Footsteps, coming closer. Showtime.

  Jonah nodded for Miguel’s benefit, then turned and sighted the target farthest right, a tall Asian man holding an equipment bag, a Kevlar vest hanging off his shoulder. The lamps they’d set up were perfectly placed.

  The gun’s hair trigger spat out four rounds, all of them smacking into the man’s broad chest. He was dead before he fell, the bag jangling to the ground, and Jonah had moved to the next target, a short, olive-skinned man who was scrabbling for his holster. He wore a vest and was gray at the temples.

  Miguel fired three times and someone shouted but Jonah only saw the man’s face contorting into a vicious mask as he grabbed his gun, only saw the exact place he wanted his own rounds to go. Jonah squeezed the trigger, and two ugly holes appeared in his forehead. The short man dropped.

  “Stop! I’ll fucking kill him!”

  Jonah saw that Miguel’s target, a burly young redhead with the broken nose and cauliflower ears of a boxer, had managed to survive getting shot—blood poured from his left shoulder in two places—and had jumped up into the back of the truck. He had grabbed another man, a pale, dark-haired guy in khakis who had his hands up and an expression of absolute terror on his otherwise nondescript face.

  Their pilot. Red had a heavy silver semi pointed at the terrified guy’s head.

  Jonah raised the Glock, squinting, finding Red’s twitching right eye. If he missed…

  Get him to move.

  “Why would I care if you shoot your own pilot?” Jonah called, and watched the kid’s dull eye churn, saw him decide to change tactics. Before Red had even started to swing his gun around, Jonah found the space between his own heartbeats and squeezed, a single round. The kid went down like a ton of bricks.

  The pilot staggered forward, shrieking, hands as high as they could go. “Don’t kill me! Swear to God, I won’t ever work for these people again! It was contract work, I only did it for the money—”

  “Be quiet,” Jonah said.

  “—and I only ever moved people and equipment, I never saw anyone get killed or—”

  Jonah pointed the gun at him. “Hush!”

  The pilot shut up, his eyes wide and shocked. There was blood on the side of his face from Red. Jonah let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, lowering the weapon. Miguel was okay, he was okay.

  “What’s your name?” Jonah asked, walking toward the truck, pausing to look at the dead men on his way. He didn’t like killing, didn’t believe in it as a practice, but sometimes there was no other way.

  You’ve killed more than your share, following Lara. The thought was an unhappy one, and he did his best to set it aside. Not the time.

  The pilot hadn’t answered, and Jonah realized the man was still stuck on hush. Jonah pointed the gun at the ground, moving to the back of the truck.

  “You can talk, man. Just stop yelling. What’s your name? I’m Jonah.” He looked at Red, another genius who hadn’t gotten around to putting on his Kevlar. Not that it would have changed anything. The round had punched through his right eye.

  “Winters, Brian Winters.” He had bad teeth, pitted and yellowing.

  “How long have you worked for Trinity?”

  “Less than a year, and only a few times.” Winters lowered his hands slowly, keeping them in clear sight. “Ah, four times. It’s their plane, they just paid me to fly. I knew they were shady, what they were paying, but I never saw anything like this, I swear.”

  Jonah thought he might be telling the truth. He glanced at Miguel, who gave a tiny shrug.

  “If we let you go, what are you going to do?” Jonah asked.

  Winters radiated sincerity. “Whatever you want.”

  Good answer.

  “Tell yo
u what,” Jonah said. “Start walking back to the strip. If you stay on the road, you can get there in about four hours.”

  “I could take one of these trucks,” Winters said hopefully.

  “If I trusted you, that would be a possibility,” Jonah said. “But I don’t. No offense. I mean, I believe you’re sincere, and if Harper trusted you, he probably would have left you with the plane—but if I’m wrong, I can’t have you getting to a radio or those guns back at the compound. I guess you could hang out with us until we’re ready to leave, but there may be more shooting.”

  “Okay, no, I’m good,” Winters said, nodding. “None taken, I mean. Thank you.”

  He climbed down from the back of the truck and hurried away, looking back over his shoulder every other step, stumbling into a run by the time he’d reached the edge of the jungle. He was gone a minute later.

  Miguel had stood up to watch the pilot run away, as Jonah walked back to join him. “Sucks to be that guy,” he said.

  Jonah nodded. “Long walk.”

  “I shot high,” Miguel said. “And then he was running, and I missed.”

  “You did great. It all worked out.”

  “It happened so fast.” Miguel shook his head, took a shaky breath—and then smiled. “I thought you said you weren’t much of a shot.”

  “I’m usually not,” Jonah said. “Hanging out with Lara… I guess I’m getting better.”

  Miguel’s smile faded. “Is that a good thing?”

  Jonah didn’t have a ready answer. He would die—he had died—for Lara, and would do it again… but his loyalty and love for her couldn’t stretch to cover the people lost in the tsunami, and the idea that he was becoming a better killer didn’t sit well with him, not at all.

  Miguel must have read something in his expression. “So, what next, my friend?” he asked.

  Jonah sighed. “The hard part. We wait.”