The Cradle of Life (17 page)

Reiss tapped his foot impatiently. The bodyguards on either side of him—Sean's men, he couldn't be bothered to learn their names, there were so many of them—shifted positions, scanning the surrounding buildings, their weapons at the ready. Off to the west, the sun was setting over the mainland.

Reiss looked at his watch: 7:03. They should have been in the air already. Sean knew better than to keep him waiting, he didn't understand what the holdup was here, he—

Suddenly the door leading onto the building roof slammed open and Sean raced out. From the expression on his face, Reiss knew it was not good news.

“Chen Lo is dead,” Sean said simply.

Reiss shut his eyes and took a minute.

This was not a problem. It was not inherently a bad thing that Chen Lo was dead—he had been planning on doing just that himself. The only bad thing was how that death now might affect his timetable for obtaining the Orb.

He opened his eyes. “It was Croft, I suppose?”

“And Sheridan. They killed twenty Shay Ling, give or take.”

“Impressive.” And it was, but Reiss didn't give a damn about the Shay Ling. “Did she get the Orb?”

“No. Xien has it. He's on his way to Shanghai. Croft is, too, I'll bet.”

“Of course she is.” Reiss rubbed his forehead. Given her background, Croft alone would be fully aware of the magnitude of the threat Pandora represented. She would never stop until she had the Orb.

He was beginning to get a migraine. He was beginning to wish he'd never heard the name Lara Croft.

All thoughts of turning her to his side had vanished. He wanted her dead now—almost as much as he wanted that Orb.

“We have to change the location of the rendezvous,” Sean said. “We—”

“No.” Reiss climbed aboard the copter. Sean followed, a confused look on his face. Both men strapped in.

“But if she comes to Shanghai—” Sean began.

“Oh, there's no if. Croft will be there waiting for us. So we will be there waiting for her.” He leveled a thin smile at Sean. “In force.”

Sean nodded, and pulled out his cell. “I'll get on it right away.”

“Please have a contingency plan in place, as well, Sean,” Reiss added as his security man began to dial. “Let's not underestimate Croft and Sheridan.”

“No sir, I won't.” Sean turned away then and began talking into his phone. Guns, personnel, diversionary operations to keep the local authorities occupied—Reiss listened with approval, then looked to the pilot and gave a curt nod.

Sean's men slammed the door behind them and the copter rose into the air.

 

Three fill-ups at gunpoint, one run-in with local authorities, and a frantic chase along the railroad tracks leading into Shanghai later, Lara and Terry were on the roof of a fish market overlooking the flower pagoda. Directly beneath them was a market square crisscrossed with a maze of handmade signs, banners, and rickety-looking telephone wires. The few scattered farmers and shopkeepers that remained in the square were hurriedly closing up their stalls for the night—almost as if they knew something bad was about to happen.

Lara checked her watch and realized they were right.

It was 8:58.

She checked her guns, reloaded courtesy of the local authorities she and Terry had encountered earlier, then crouched down next to Terry at the roof's edge. He lay flat out on the roof, scanning the area.

The flower pagoda was opposite them, in the center of the square. Behind it was a newer-looking brick building, with a helipad on top. On noticing it, Lara realized instantly that was how Reiss would come in, where he would want to make the exchange.

“There's one.” Sheridan pointed toward a dimly lit alley to their right. Light glinted off the grille of a car, waiting there. “Another Mercedes. That's a half-dozen cars altogether—make it four men in each. Plus the ones we saw creeping in on foot.” He shook his head. “The good doctor isn't taking any chances.”

“We'll have to,” Lara said. “To even things up.”

Terry looked up at her now and smiled. “Seems like old times.”

She smiled, as well, remembering what had happened after Terry got her loose from the NKA.

“Thirty, forty against two.”

“Just once I'd like to go somewhere with you where there weren't people trying to kill us.”

She had to smile at that.

“That's the first time you've smiled because of me, Croft. In a long while.”

“It's the first time I've seen you in a long while, Terry.”

“Yeah. Well…” He shrugged.

Lara turned to him, her face suddenly serious.

“Why'd you do it, Terry? How does someone wake up one day and leave everything they've worked for? They offered you a command—”

“They offered me a desk,” Terry snapped. “A nice cozy office. A nice cozy life.”

“All you had to do was say no—”

“That wasn't it, Croft.” He stood up now, too. “I'd started asking the wrong questions. ‘Why this mission? Why not that one?' I got tired of doing things somebody else's way. And it was always going to be somebody else's way.”

“But deserting your men, your country—”

“I've paid my price for that.” He looked her in the eye. “I don't know what it says about me, but leaving my men, my country, didn't hurt as much as I thought. Leaving you was what did. You're a hard act to follow, Croft.”

She didn't know what to say. Terry had never—not in all the time they'd been together—opened himself up to her like this.

“The reason you and I got along? We both despise being normal. We both love what we do too much to leave room for much else. We're two of a kind, you and me.”

“Terry.” Lara shook her head. “We're nothing alike.”

“I don't think we're alike. I think we're a pair. Opposite—and alone.”

He leaned in closer. Almost as if he was going to kiss her.

“Wait,” Lara said.

Terry looked up and then he heard it, too.

The sound of a helicopter, closing fast.

 

“On your command,” the pilot announced.

Reiss looked down out of his window and saw the helipad lit up below.

“Hold here a moment,” he said and nodded to Sean.

His security chief pulled out the thermal imager and aimed at the square. The imager looked for all the world like a videocamera with an oversize display screen—in its case, though, the screen provided a negative image of whatever the lens was pointed at. In this case, the area immediately surrounding the pagoda.

Sean pressed a button then and the screen filled with red dots. Each dot represented a heat signature—a man—more than likely, one of Sean's men. Reiss stopped counting at thirty.

“One of those is Croft,” the doctor said.

Sean nodded. “She'll be somewhere with a vantage point of the helipad.”

“I'll make the call,” Reiss said. “Have your men start forming teams.”

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Speak.”

“Xien?”

“Yes.”

“This is Reiss. We are prepared to land.”

“We're prepared to receive you. Give us your landing coordinates.”

Reiss frowned. He wondered if Xien had any plans to duplicate his brother's foolish action—to try and hold him up for more money.

“We're using the helipad. My men have the situation well in hand,” Reiss replied. “But I do appreciate your offer of assistance.”

“Why don't you set down in the square instead? That way, my men will also have things covered.”

Reiss was about to turn him down, and none too graciously, when he thought of Croft. No doubt she was in position already and, were he in her shoes, the helipad would most certainly be the place she was watching most closely. Surprising her at this stage of the rendezvous could only help them. And as for Xien's men being in control of the situation on the ground…

Reiss glanced over at the imager, and the handfuls of red dots scattered all over the square, and smiled.

His men were everywhere.

“Fine,” he told Xien. “The square it is. And in case you weren't aware—Croft is here.”

Xien waited a moment before replying.

“Oh, I'm aware.” Even over the phone, Reiss could hear the menace dripping from the man's voice. “We'll deal with her.”

“Please do.”

Reiss hung up the phone then and thought:

And then we'll deal with you.

 

The helicopter was coming down.

But not where Lara had expected.

She cursed under her breath and then shouted to Terry.

“They're not landing on the helipad!”

“I can see that,” he said. “They're going to use the square!”

Lara looked down. Two men were emerging from the shadows of the pagoda. One carried a large case in his arms. The other was Xien.

She started scurrying across the rooftop, looking at the maze of wires and signs directly beneath her, trying to figure out some way to get down there without getting killed.

“Croft.”

She turned. Terry was looking left; she followed his gaze.

On the building next to the fish market, a huge neon sign, shaped like a dragon, hung from a thick wire cable that stretched completely across the square. Lara smiled.

That would do.

She kicked her pack over to Terry.

“Extra clips. Another gun,” she said. “You'll need them.”

He nodded.

“See you down there.”

As Reiss's helicopter roared by, Lara took a running leap and jumped onto the building next door.

 

They hovered just above the ground, the rotors kicking up dust clouds from the bare earth below. Xien stood almost directly beneath them, giving the all-clear signal. Reiss saw another man standing next to him, holding a case that—this time—looked the proper shape and size to contain the Orb.

Inside the copter, in the seat next to him, Sean was receiving signals from his men on the ground through his earpiece.

“All clear so far,” he told Reiss.

At those words, the pilot glanced back, waiting for the go-ahead to land.

But the doctor hesitated. Something about the idea of touching down, of committing himself to the ground for however brief a period of time, made him suddenly uneasy. He didn't want those rotors to stop, or slow down, for a second.

Croft
, he thought.
Sheridan.

His fear was ridiculous, of course. Unreasonable. He had thirty-odd men in position, highly trained every one of them, plus however many Shay Ling Xien had waiting in the shadows. Call it an even dozen—which made the odds forty-something to two. But still…

His instincts told him not to land. And Jonathan Reiss always listened to his instincts.

“This is far enough,” he said. “We'll make the exchange from here.”

Sean nodded and reached below his seat for the suitcase.

 

Lara jumped from the roof directly onto the cable. Caught it with both hands and hung there a moment, suspended in the space between the dragon sign and the building. Then she pulled herself up and sat on the cable, her legs dangling.

The helicopter hovered in the center of the square. Xien and his man stood nearby. As she watched, the copter door opened and a man climbed out onto the landing skid.

Reiss wasn't even going to land, she realized. They were going to make the exchange right now.

Lara looked down. A secondary steel wire held the sign tight against the building, prevented it from sliding down the cable. She drew one of her Colts and shot that wire away—the sound of the isolated gunshot swallowed up by the roar of the copter's rotors.

She holstered her gun then and spun around. Braced her feet up against the wall of the building, reached behind with her hands, and held on tight to the dragon's neck.

Then Lara pushed off.

Slowly at first, then picking up speed, the dragon sign began to slide along the cable, heading toward the center of the square.

 

Reiss saw Sean holding onto the skid with one hand, holding out the suitcase of money toward Xien with his other. Xien, in turn, was holding up the case with the Orb in it toward the copter.

The doctor allowed himself a small sigh of relief. The exchange was going to come off clean. His fears had been for naught.

He glanced at the imager screen then, and froze.

A single red dot was moving toward them—very quickly.