I don't own the Lara Croft character, and I don't profit from writing this, I'm probably too old to be writing this, in fact I probably should be doing something else
Cambodia, ...again
Lara moved swiftly and quietly across the old stones. She had watched the temple for a few minutes before leaving the cover of the jungle and heading toward the entrance. The front of the ancient temple was covered with creeping vines but the carved rock archways rose menacingly upward into the jungle canopy. She crossed the rock paved plaza, paused just a moment at the entrance, drew her pistols and entered.
Just inside, she paused again to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Careful to press against the rough wall, in order to not be highlighted against the doorway, she looked forward into the passageway. An old temple hallway with damp cool stones would be the perfect hiding place for a large snake or worse. She glanced at her twin Glock 17's. You could buy a lot of reassurance with a couple magazines of 9mm parabellums.
The end of the passageway turned into blackness. Lara sidestepped to the side of the corridor, careful to avoid falling through the pit trap she knew would be there. The Khmer builders liked their traps. The hole through the floor would surely have deposited her with the snakes, perhaps with broken legs. Beyond the trap the passage lead gently downward. She traded one Glock for an electric torch, flicked in on and headed down.
—
Ryan hated snakes. How he ended up in these sorry, third world backwaters he wasn't sure, but it always seemed there were snakes. The reason he knew, was that it was his job was to bring back proof. The news agency sent him to places where there were only rumors and Ryan brought back proof. It was Cambodia this time. Two days ago he had built a small tree stand, along a jungle road, set up house and watched.
The idea was that if the anti government forces were in this part of the country, they would have to move along this road sooner or later. Ryan's plan was to watch the road and when the rebels did move he would take photos of the equipment. That should be proof enough that someone was moving military hardware against the government.
He was looking around for snakes that might drip into his blind when he heard the trucks. He snatched his camera and waited.
—
This particular Cambodian temple had been on Lara's list to raid for years now. The rumors of a growing insurgency had moved up this particular expedition. Still she had done the research and knew what she was doing. She stopped and threw a chunk of loose rock through a shaft of sunlight in the passageway ahead.. A pause, then a roar as the roof collapsed.
Further back in the corridor Lara had to wait a few minutes for the dust to clear before she began to move forward, picking her way through the debris. She deftly scaled the rubble and climbed to the next level..
The hallway turned back on itself and Lara headed back the direction she had come. She surveyed the corridor ahead and knew that the next step would take skill and concentration. Lara smiled at this. She took a deep breath then launched herself down the passage like a gymnast. A trigger dropped a gate with sharpened bamboo spikes which fell milliseconds behind her sprint. A duck and a roll, and spring loaded stakes hissed through the air where she had been. She ran on as fast as she could even though a gap was opening in the floor of the passage way ahead. At the edge of her vision she saw another gate begin its fall to where the cruel points would crash to the ground at the edge of the gap. Khmer priests had carefully and lovingly sharpened those spikes hundreds of years ago, with the one intention of piercing and crushing someone like Lara. But she didn't slow. She reached down deep now, for her last reserves of speed. Like a long jumper her foot hit the edge of the gap and launched she herself out into the void. She felt the gate snatch at the back of her booted heel and cursed under breath, afraid for a moment that it had slowed her forward momentum too much, but with a slap she reached out grabbed the lip at the other side of the pit, and with an audible grunt her body slammed into the edge on the other side.
There was no question of letting go. With feet and arms she first lifted herself, got one arm over the lip, then two, then pulled herself up to the other side and into the passageway. She sat for a moment and looked over the edge into the darkness of the pit below, likely full of snakes or other nasties. "Sorry guys," she said aloud, "Not today." Next she examined her boot heel. The bamboo had split the leather and taken a piece out of the sole. "What a shame. Good English leather too." she muttered.
Lara now found herself at the entrance to a circular room. The room itself was a dome and in the center there dangled a rope, which led upward through the ceiling. Shining her torch upward she could see at least five concentric rock rings, one about every 3 meters before the rope disappeared. She examined the rope as closely as she could for damage. Careful not to put any weight on it. It was made of some type of fiber. It was old, there was no doubt, but it was as thick as a man's wrist. It looked like it would probably hold her, but there was no telling the condition of the anchoring mechanism far above in the ceiling. She had 50 meters of lightweight nylon cord in her knapsack but she could think of no way to anchor it at the top. "Oh well." she thought, "if it was good enough for the old boys, it will have to do for me."
—
The four trucks had passed leaving diesel fumes hanging in the air. Ryan was back to worrying, now, but now he wasn't worrying about snakes. There had been one Soviet era command car and three - two and a half ton trucks, obviously American, obviously left over from the Vietnam War. The troops in the back were not wearing any uniforms so presumably they were not Government troops. But Ryan wasn't so sure. It nagged at him that the equipment was so well maintained for rebels stuck in jungle camps. It had also surprised him that the trucks had been traveling into the interior. Perhaps supplies going in, but rebel troops should have been coming out of the jungle.
Ryan was curious enough that he packed up his blind and tree stand and climbed back down his tree. Off the road, covered in the brush was an old Honda dirt bike. This he kick started and headed slowly up the jungle road after the trucks.
—
Lara leapt as high as she possibly could, snatched the rope well above her head and began to hand over hand up the rope. It reminded her of boarding school gym class when they would race up the rope to tag a ceiling support where the rope was anchored. 6 meters up, at the second level this notion was disturbed. A solid thud and a tug from below made Lara glance downward. What she saw was far more inspiring than any Gym teacher. The first dome, through which she had climbed had collapsed inward. Has she been seconds slower she would have been caught and crushed by the ring of stones.
As the second level started to cave inwardly, she shot up the rope, hand over hand. Now she fairly flew, hands and arms quickly pulling the rope in, legs and feet clamping and extending. The third level collapsed on air, where her feet had been and gave a mighty jerk to the rope. She slipped back down a few inches before she caught herself. "You'll have to do better than that, Lara." she thought as she climbed onward. Arms burning now with exertion and nearly choking on the dust that was being blown upward by the collapsing tunnel, she noticed as she passed the fifth level that it was not a dome but rather a ledge. With a gasp and a push she swung out sideways and let go of the old rope just as it came loose of its anchor at the top of the chamber and slithered back down through the hole she had just climbed . As her feet touched down on a solid rock floor, she crouched for just a second wondering if this level too would fall in. The rumbling of collapsed masonry below her died. In the silence she could hear only her own heavy breathing. Apparently this was the top level.
The chamber was lighted by tiny shafts of light through the masonry of the domed ceiling. This she knew was the highest chamber in the temple, the dome supported by the archways of the temple. The walls were carved with bas relief demons and across from where she crouched, lighted by a wide shaft of sunlight was a carved stone altar. The object on the altar was what caught Lara's attention. In fact, it was the focal point of the whole chamber. About as big as a cricket ball it appeared to be a Frog Demon carved from red volcanic rock. But what really drew her attention were the eyes of the little demon.
The eyes gleamed dimly through countless years of dust. Made of rubies as big as Lara's thumbnail, the eyes bulged out, as if looking for their next victim. "Well, little guy," she said to the idol, "It looks like you are coming with me."
The way out was at the opposite side of the shrine. It was a rock door tapered at the edges so that it could not be pulled from the outside yet braced on the inside so that it could not fall or be pushed into the shrine. With a heave and a push, Lara pushed the wooden blocks to the side and the door fell open in a swirl of dust. She picked up her knapsack and the idol and stepped out into the sunlight.
—
Ryan stopped his ancient motorcycle every 5 or 6 minutes and listened for sounds of the rebel trucks moving through the jungle. Sometimes he could see the exhaust plumes when the road crossed downhill of him but mostly it was triple canopy jungle so he would have to stop, kill the engine and listen for the convoy. The track got worse and worse and after about an hour Ryan could tell that the trucks had stopped. Once again he covered the Honda off the side of the road and carefully crept forward.
He came upon the trucks parked spaced widely apart, backed into the trees. There were two security guards but they were smoking and lolling around at the back of the trucks. Ryan rarely carried a weapon and he knew he had pushed his luck about as far as he liked, following them here. He had no idea where the rest of the troops were or what they might be doing. Following them on foot into the jungle could turn into a disaster. Maybe he could get a shot of whoever was in the command vehicle so he climbed a tree with a good view of the trucks and settled down to watch and worry about snakes.
—
Li Than was a careful man. He knew the location of all the known ruins in this part of Cambodia his position at the Interior Ministry gave him access to such information. What it didn't give him was the location of the particular artifact he wanted. Li had been systematically looting the ancient ruins and temples of Cambodia for years. It had been a hobby of his to collect wonderful works of art created by the previous kingdoms occupying the land and he had neatly compiled them into his own private collection. He considered himself the curator of the beautiful and valuable artifacts of his country. That no one else was permitted to see or study them was not his concern.
He had been waiting for Lady Croft to make this visit. When she had applied for a travel visa to Cambodia, Li had his men travel to the provinces likely to be visited by Lady Croft and start the rumor of insurgency. Nothing serious enough to require the government to send troops, just enough so that Li could control access, letting Croft in and keeping others out.
After that it had been a small thing to follow her to this particular temple. Known to contain traps, Li decided to let her do the dirty work of retrieval. Soon another piece of history would be his.
