The Cradle of Life

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The Cradle of Life Page 5

by Dave Stern


  Perhaps it was her imagination, but the water did seem to be falling faster, harder, from the holes in the temple roof. And the huge support column nearest her seemed inches away from coming entirely off its base.

  She finished cutting through the second bar, moved on to the third. Six in all, on the side she was cutting, and now the cage hung at such an angle that the Orb was poised to roll out the second she’d finished slicing through.

  Her mind returned to the markings on the Orb. Perhaps they had something to do with the circumstances of the temple’s building, what treasures Antipater had decided to store there, and yet that was wrong, too, because all the fragments she’d found stated with no uncertainty that it was Alexander who’d decided which treasures were to be brought here, and which were to be stored in Alexandria.

  It was a mystery all right.

  She was through the fourth bar, and saw now that she only needed to cut one more for the Orb to fall free.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead. Lara wiped it away.

  She was halfway through the fifth bar—really, a hard punch would snap it now, and the waiting Orb tumbled right into her hand.

  “Lara, watch out!”

  That was Jimmy—with a panicked overtone to his voice.

  The temple was collapsing—that was her first, instinctive reaction.

  She looked up, expecting to see part of the roof falling toward her. Nothing. She looked down.

  Her mouth fell open in shock.

  They were no longer alone in the temple.

  Six men, in full diving gear, armed with spearguns, had joined them. The boys were fighting them—they’d been surprised, as well, Lara saw, because both brothers were being held from behind. The Petrakis struggled, but the other men were well trained.

  Nicholas elbowed the man who held him at the chest—hard enough to make a resounding thump. The man only grunted.

  Light glinted off something in his hand—a knife.

  The blade flashed—Nicholas fell to the ground, blood gushing from his throat. He flopped once on the ground, then lay still.

  “No!” Lara screamed, but her shout was lost in the guttural noise Jimmy made as he saw his brother fall. Jimmy reached for Nicholas—

  The man nearest him darted forward, quick as lightning, Lara had never seen anyone move so fast. He punched Jimmy square in the stomach.

  The air went out of Jimmy in an audible whoosh.

  Then the man dragged his hand up Jimmy’s chest, and Lara saw that he hadn’t just punched Jimmy, he’d stabbed him, sinking the blade of his knife deep inside his body, and now that blade was traveling upward, as well, gutting Jimmy, and Lara blinked. She couldn’t see for a second, she felt ill, she—

  Watched Jimmy fall backward, near where his brother lay. The two boys, side by side.

  Boys. She had to stop thinking of them as boys—and yet in the instant she watched them die, that was all Lara could think of, images of the two of them as they had been.

  Little boys, following her around like love-struck puppy dogs. Do this, do that, take me here, take me there—

  Look where she’d brought them to now.

  Spears flew through the air at her.

  Lara dropped the torch, sprung off the cage, and landed on the wall. Another spear hit behind her. A second chunked into the wall above her head. A third passed right between her thighs, so close it tore the fabric of her wet suit.

  She looked down and saw that the man who’d killed Jimmy had thrown that one.

  The two of them locked eyes.

  He was Asian, Lara saw. A face she didn’t know.

  But one that now she would never forget.

  Lara watched as he walked over to the Alexander statue, which was now so tilted that its base was partially submerged, as well. He collected the equipment she’d left there, including her speargun—and the medallion from the statue’s eye. Damn it.

  She had to get down to the temple floor again to stop this man. Climbing was out of the question, though, she’d be a sitting duck, and it was too far to jump…

  Unless she could land in water.

  Lara scanned the temple—there. Halfway across the interior, she saw a pool that looked deep enough for her to risk a dive. One problem, though—there wasn’t a handhold in sight.

  A spear flew past, close enough to graze the hair on her head, reminding her that she couldn’t stay where she was, either. She had to get moving.

  The spear stuck in the wall next to Lara, deep enough that the wall vibrated with its impact.

  Aah. That gave her an idea.

  Lara faked a move forward, and another spear flew through the air, anticipating where she would be. It chunked in the wall, just ahead of the first.

  Perfect.

  She cursed out loud for effect, then faked the same move again. With the same result.

  Another spear in the wall. And then a third, right on its heels.

  That should do it, Lara thought, and launched herself for real now, diving forward through the air, and grabbing onto the spear closest to her.

  It held for a second, then snapped off in her grasp, and as she tumbled the Orb dropped behind the statue.

  Lara used the momentum from her jump to grab onto spear number two.

  That broke, as well, but she used it to swing forward again, to number three, and even as number three snapped, she stretched out, hands above her head, and jackknifed into the water, even as another volley of spears flew past.

  Lara went down as deep as she could and stayed there.

  She waited ten seconds, fifteen, thinking about what had just happened up above, wondering who the men were, how they’d followed her, formulating a plan of action.

  Kill them all.

  Which she would need a weapon for. Jimmy’s murderer had her speargun. But—he’d missed the modified .45. Lara hadn’t seen it, either. She thought—she hoped—that it was lying somewhere in the shallow water at the statue’s base.

  Only problem was getting there.

  She swum twenty feet along the bottom, then quietly surfaced in front of the damaged support column.

  Two of the attackers were poised over the water near where she’d entered it, spearguns at the ready. As she watched, first one, then the other fired into the pool, then stood over it a moment, waiting.

  She noted they were Asian, as well.

  The two men were firing blind, hoping to hit her. Not such a bad strategy, since the pool was not very big at all.

  The two men exchanged a glance, then reloaded their spearpistols, and started circling the pool again.

  Lara scanned the rest of the temple interior. Along the far wall, three other attackers were finishing what Jimmy and Nicholas had started—loading up the DPVs with the filled treasure bags. She didn’t see the sixth man anywhere.

  But there was the Alexander statue—now covered almost up to the knees by water. Lara took a deep, quiet breath and swam for it. Five feet away, she spotted the Colt. Without surfacing, she picked up the gun and released the safety.

  Then she turned around. Closest to her were the two men circling the pool with spearguns, hoping to spot her.

  Lara raised the gun, sighted, and fired.

  The bullet exploded out of the water and caught her target square in the chest. He flew backward through the air, and even before he’d hit the ground, the other man was spinning, quick as lightning, raising his speargun and pointing it right at Lara.

  But she was quicker. She fired a second time, and that man fell, as well.

  Lara rose up out of the water and spun, aiming toward the first of the other three men, clumped near the DPVs.

  Movement from above distracted her, and even as she squeezed the trigger, she knew her shot was off. That upset her.

  What upset her even more was the source of that movement above her—the sixth attacker, Jimmy’s killer, determinedly making for the Orb.

  That was hers.

  A spear whizzed past her.

 
Lara dove for the ground, and rolled, once, twice, then coming to rest flat on her back.

  She raised the Colt, targeting the sixth man.

  The sixth attacker raised his spearpistol. He smiled as he closed his hand around the Orb, and took aim at Lara.

  The three remaining attackers—spread out along the far wall with him—did the same.

  Lara’s finger tightened on the trigger of her Colt. A split second before firing, she stopped herself.

  This was her last shot.

  She had four targets—four men to kill.

  Only one way to take them all out.

  Lara spun and fired at the base of the column behind her, shattering the last bits of supporting marble.

  With a loud thunk, the column dropped five feet straight down, to the temple floor. A huge chunk of the temple roof came with it.

  And then the entire cave began to collapse. Bits of earth and tile plunged all around her—from one of the leaks in the ceiling, a torrent of ocean water began pouring in.

  Lara began to run toward the DPVs, and the treasure. Toward the hole in the temple floor that was the only way out of what was now a death trap.

  A meter-square piece of tile plunged directly toward the attackers.

  To Lara’s immense disappointment, the sixth attacker—Jimmy’s killer—shattered it with a well-aimed spear from his gun.

  Even as he fired, he was pushing the others back toward the DPVs, shouting in Mandarin as he did so. On a course to intercept Lara.

  She gritted her teeth, and willed herself forward, even faster.

  As she passed the Alexander statue, a huge chunk of the petroglyph mural collapsed in front of her. She tried to leap over it, but her timing was off, and she clipped it with one foot, stumbled, and fell to the ground.

  A cloud of earth and dust collapsed directly on top of her.

  By the time it had cleared, the two men were dead, two had escaped, and the remaining DPV was useless.

  She coughed up some of the dust she’d swallowed, and started crawling on her hands and knees toward where she knew the hole in the temple floor had to be. She found it, eventually. Only one problem.

  Lara no longer had her breathing mask. Or oxygen. And by the most optimistic of reckonings, she was a hundred fifty feet from the surface. Surfacing without any sort of decompression was risky, but she’d have to take that risk.

  Behind her, the temple rumbled again. Another portion of the wall collapsed.

  First things first, Lara thought. Get out of here.

  Taking a deep breath, she plunged headfirst into the tunnel.

  Squeezing through the opening in the coral that she’d made with her DPV, Lara made her way through the winding passageway, out into the open ocean at the floor of the cliff base.

  As she emerged, she nearly collided with a tiger shark, swimming by the entrance to the tunnel.

  Lara reached reflexively for the knife at her belt. Brandished it in front of her, to warn the animal off. It paid her no mind whatsoever, and kept swimming—looking for an easier target, she supposed.

  She slid the knife back into her belt and tensed her body, preparing to spring off the ocean floor for the long swim to the surface above.

  But when she looked up, that surface—the dim light of day—seemed impossibly far away.

  She’d been holding her breath for too long already—she would never make topside, even swimming as fast as she could now.

  She needed to think this through.

  She swam back into the tunnel, through the break in the coral, and emerged back into the collapsed ruins of the Luna Temple. To a rude surprise.

  The air pocket above her was barely the size of a coffin.

  Somewhere off in the distance, she heard a great rumbling. Soon even this little air pocket would be gone, she knew, taking one deep breath, then another. The last air she would get until she reached the surface.

  And she would reach the surface, there was no doubt in her mind about that. She would find a way—she would have to—because she had to pay back the men that had killed Nicholas and Jimmy. Pay them back in kind, put a knife of her own into their hearts, make sure that those vicious killers would not get away with—

  Vicious killers, Lara thought.

  She pulled the diving glove off her left hand, and slid it, backward, over the glove already on her right. An extra layer of protection.

  She would need it.

  Lara pulled the knife out of her belt again, and slashed her right forearm. Blood welled up instantly in the cut.

  She stuck the knife away again, and dove.

  Through the coral, through the tunnel, toward the open ocean again. Felt a rumbling behind her as she swam that she knew was the final collapse of the Luna Temple.

  Blood billowed from her arm as she emerged from the underwater cliff.

  The tiger shark was nowhere in sight.

  Come on, you cold-blooded bastard, Lara thought, waving her cut arm about in the water. Thrashing like a wounded animal. Come and get me.

  The first attack came from directly behind her.

  She spun just as the shark shot past. A bolt of blue-and-gray lightning. God, it was fast. But that run had just been a test—a feint to see how badly injured Lara was. It hadn’t come within five feet of her.

  Not close enough for what she planned.

  Now the animal was circling. It came about and faced her again, its cold, dead eyes weighing her.

  Lara let herself go limp.

  And the shark struck—even faster this time, coming straight for her.

  At the last possible second, Lara’s left hand shot forward, clenched into a fist. She punched the shark right in the nose. An old diver’s trick—the shark veered off, convinced again that this prey was not worth the risk.

  As it swam past, Lara grabbed onto its fin with her double-gloved right hand, and held on for dear life.

  The shark bolted for the surface, thrashing and weaving as it tried to rid itself of its unwelcome passenger.

  For her part, Lara just concentrated on holding on. Her breath was already gone, and she felt the beginnings of a faint queasiness that she knew could represent the bends, but she couldn’t worry about either of those things now, as she narrowed her whole world down to her right hand and the fin, to squeezing with every ounce of her strength, ignoring the throbbing pain in her wound, the rush of the water sliding past her, the seemingly endless expanse of blue above…

  The shark swam.

  The animal thrashed hard to the left—Lara’s body went with it.

  Then the shark thrashed back to the right, and its tail caught Lara square in the stomach.

  She went flying backward—her hand let go of the fin.

  No, she thought.

  “No.”

  She said the word aloud—and opened her eyes to find herself bobbing on the surface of the ocean. Calm, featureless, no sight of land or boat anywhere.

  Her entire body was a bruise. Her right hand was numb.

  She felt consciousness slipping away.

  She reached out and grabbed a piece of wood as it drifted past.

  Draped herself over it and activated the transmitter on her collar.

  Everything went black.

  Later. The sun burned down on her from high above. She felt something sticky, and wet on her face. Dried saltwater—dried blood, who knew which?

  Not her.

  She closed her eyes again.

  She opened them with a start.

  It was later now. The sun was at four o’clock, drifting toward the horizon.

  Something was wrong.

  Lara pulled herself up farther on the driftwood.

  The water around her shifted.

  Before she could move, something slammed into her from beneath.

  The shark? No, too big for the shark, too hard for the shark.

  Whale, she thought, adrenaline surging through her system as she rolled to the side and—

  Touched metal.
>
  The thing beneath her rose up, breaking the surface, sending her rolling backward.

  It was a submarine.

  Lara found a railing and held on.

  The conning tower popped open. Hillary burst through the door, a panicked expression on his face.

  Bryce followed a second later.

  “Oh my God,” Hillary said, stumbing down the ladder in his haste to get to her. “Oh my God.”

  He knelt down next to her, and from somewhere, produced a mug. It smelled like tea.

  He held it up to her lips, and Lara drank.

  It was tea.

  “Oh. I needed that,” Lara croaked.

  Hillary continued to look stricken.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  “It’s not that bad,” she repeated, struggling to sit up.

  “It’s awful!”

  Lara turned and saw Bryce poking at the remnants of her new digicam, which dangled off her shoulder.

  “This is awful,” he repeated, looking as distressed as Hillary had. “Lara, I spend countless hours making sure you have the best equipment. I don’t think you appreciate that—”

  “Bryce,” Hillary interrupted, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Not now.”

  Bryce humphed, and glared at Lara. “That means you don’t appreciate me.”

  She reached out and shoved him to the deck. He looked up at her, shocked.

  “What did I say?”

  “Not what you said—what you are. A pain in the arse.”

  It was only then she saw the piece of driftwood she’d been hanging on to.

  With the word Konstantinos painted on it.

  Four

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, an hour out from the airport, the waiting finally got to Monza.

  “Ridiculous!” He’d been holding his pen in one hand, flicking the point in and out, his impatience growing with each passing minute. Now he squeezed the barrel tight between thumb and forefinger, only for an instant, but his strength—like the rest of him—was prodigious.

  The barrel snapped.

  Monza laid the shards on the table in front of him, and cleared his throat. “Did you—did any of you know he’d moved the meeting to…this?”

  As he spoke he spun in his chair, making eye contact with each of the five people sharing the main cabin with him in turn. First those seated behind him, San, Krev, and Al-Sabah—then, directly across the cabin, Duvalier—and finally, the sole woman in their group, seated directly across a small serving table from him, Madame Gillespie.

 

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