The Cradle of Life

by Dave Stern

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Is there anything you wouldn’t?”

  He laughed. “You like that about me.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Sorry.” Sheridan smiled. “Just making a point.”

  “Noted. So again—are you interested?”

  “And again—what do I have to do?”

  She met his eyes. “You have to take me to the Shay Ling.”

  Sheridan suddenly found something interesting to look at on the cell floor.

  “The Shay who?”

  “Ignorance doesn’t become you.” Lara pressed closer to the bars. “A man named Chen Lo took something from me—I want it back.”

  “You—or M-I-Six?”

  “We’re in this together.”

  “Now who’s being two-faced?”

  Lara bit back the first reply that came to mind, which was she’d get in bed with Satan himself if it meant her getting a shot at the people who’d killed the Petrakis. Damned if she was going to tell Terry Sheridan about them unless she had to. Damned if she was going to expose any of her feelings to him at all.

  “As I said,” she told him, “it’s business.”

  Sheridan moved closer to the bars as well, till his face was scant inches from hers. “The Shay Ling are hard to find, but then you know that—or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “The government will wire you five million pounds when we succeed. Call it second chance money.”

  “I don’t need any second chances,” Sheridan said.

  “Happy where you are?”

  “Don’t press me, Croft.” He smirked. “Maybe we should call it life insurance for you.”

  “Ha.” She met his eyes. “I don’t need any life insurance.”

  Terry shook his head.

  “You and I, Croft—working together. I can’t see it, somehow.”

  “Easier to see through you that way.”

  Terry paced back toward the window, disappearing from her view. “What happens afterward, Lara—when M-I-Six decides that having me back in the world is not such a good idea?”

  “Then I’ll feel sorry for whomever they send to get you.”

  “Who they send is not the point.” He stepped forward again, stared straight at her. “It’s you I’ll hold responsible.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Doesn’t that frighten you at all?”

  “Do I look scared?”

  “No.” Sheridan smiled. “You have authorization to kill me.”

  “Anytime, any reason.”

  “That must have pleased you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “What is it they say, ‘Hell hath no fury…’?”

  “Oh, please.” Lara shook her head, and laughed. “You weren’t that good.” Her voice hardened again. “Are we going to do this or not, Terry? Make up your mind—the clock is ticking.”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  “Fine. On to candidate number two.” Of course, there was no candidate number two, there was only MI6 itself, and Lara didn’t like the idea of working that closely with them, but if Sheridan was going to pass…

  She’d do what she had to.

  Lara spun on her heel, and walked back to Arman Kal, who was standing a discreet distance away from Sheridan’s cell. “Let’s get out of here,” she told the man.

  Terry called out from behind her.

  “The Shay Ling are ghosts, Croft! They move constantly, their home base is the most remote region of mountains in China. Maybe on Earth. I’m the only one who can get to them without being killed.”

  Lara stopped.

  “Is that a ‘I’m interested in your deal, Lara’, and ‘All right, I’ll take you to the Shay Ling, Lara?’ If so, you’ll have to be a little more exact than ‘region.’”

  “Get me into China—I’ll get you to them in a day.”

  “That’s about what we have.” Lara turned to Kal. “Unlock the cell.”

  He shook his head. “This is a very bad idea.”

  “It’s my call, and I want him out.”

  Kal sighed, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “As you wish.”

  He waved the guards forward. There were four locks on the door—each of the guards took out a key and unlocked one.

  Terry Sheridan stepped out into the hall. Cracked his knuckles, smiled at Lara, at Kal, and then turned to the guards.

  “Boo!” he said suddenly.

  All four flinched as one, and took a step backward. One tripped over his own feet, and stumbled to the ground with a clatter.

  “Priceless,” Terry said.

  “Stop showing off,” Lara told him. “Come.”

  The two of them, walking side by side, followed Kal down the corridor.

  “Five million pounds, Croft,” Terry said. “I’ll be able to hobknob with the same crowd as you.”

  “When the job is done,” Lara said. “Until then—no money, no guns, no weapons of any kind.”

  “Talk about taking the fun out of life.”

  “You don’t have time for fun, Terry. Your only concern is Chen Lo. Run, you’ll be hunted. Give me trouble, you’ll be back here. Are we clear?”

  He nodded. “We’re clear.”

  Kal slipped on his headphones again, and Lara saw they were about to reenter the main cell block.

  “Brace yourself,” she told Terry. “They’re quite loud.”

  The noise started up again—and just as quickly died down.

  Lara was puzzled. Then she realized everyone was looking past her, at Terry. Assuming that she was with him, so she was under his protection, so she was no longer a target for their abuse.

  She didn’t like how that made her feel.

  “Keep moving,” she told Terry.

  “Sure, Croft.” He smiled thinly, then, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, “You’re in charge.”

  She’d forgotten what a cold bastard he could be.

  They climbed in the half-track. Lara and Terry sat opposite each other on the bench seats in the back. A guard sat on either side of each of them. Add in the driver, that was six of them to handle Sheridan. All of them armed, while he was weaponless.

  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. Ka
renkov, 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.”

  Seven

  “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 equip
ment. 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.”