A/N: The "set piece" of this chapter, as well as the title of it, was inspired by the video game "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's tomb", the greatest treasure-hunting game prior to Uncharted (in my humble opinion). If anyone's played it, you will probably recognize it from the level that bears the same name as this chapter. Hat's off to the Indy TRILOGY! :)
"That's a real fixer-upper!"
Nate's comment was in reference to a metal building that was coming into view just ahead of him. He could only yet see a corner of it protruding from an outcropping about twenty yards ahead and down a little from his current position, but it was rusty and creaked in the breeze the blew by. "I guess real estate is limited when you're a miner," he observed. Carefully picking his way over some loose boulders, he plodded up to the corner of the cliff, resting his hand on the rough rock face as he edged along the ledge he was traversing. Just around the outcropping, his view opened up into the vast, sweeping landscape of a gorge that dropped hundreds of feet to the tree and scrub-growth dotted valley below and seemed to stretch out for miles ahead, the entire scene alight with the soft glow of the low-hanging evening sun. The building he had seen was perched right on the edge of this yawning expanse and was much bigger than he originally suspected, consisting of two parts: the smaller section which he had first seen which had a relatively low roof, and a wider, taller building attached to the back of that building- nearer to the gorge- with a broad, shallow-pitched roof and few windows. Thick, metal cables came from the back of the bigger building and stretched out across the valley, supported by evenly spaced iron pylons and sloping upward towards the peaks on the other side, stretching so far that the ends disappeared into the low-hanging clouds.
Surveying the stunning vista with awe, Nate hummed and put his hands on his hips. "Then again- 'location, location, location'." Returning his gaze to the cables, he added to himself, "Looks like I found my elevator. Now I just need to know if it still runs." He scratched the back of his neck, his hand bumping up against the RPG and the AK-47 he had taken from his last encounter with Floki's goons, then started walking.
Finding a gentle, scree-covered slope, Nate slid down it and approached the building, quickly finding a rusty and dented old door on the front. He tried the handle but found it locked. With a huff and a frown up at the steel-sided walls, streaked with orange and brown from oxidization and in places broken down by rust into a jagged-edged honeycomb of decay, he walked around the side of the building and found a siding panel that had come loose and was curled up on the bottom corner. Nate grabbed it, careful not to cut himself on the razor-like edges of the sheet metal (after all, when was his last tetanus shot?) and pulled up on it until he created a big enough gap to crawl through. Dust and dirt rained down on him as he squeezed through the opening on his hands and knees; the concrete slab beneath him was cold and damp, and inside the building was dark and gloomy. A wave of dank, musty odor washed over him as he stood up, and in the murky shadows before him, he could see the vague outlines of something very tall- several of them, in fact. Pulling out his angle-head flashlight, he flicked it on.
The beam of light spilled over twenty-foot high industrial racks, lined up in rows that left narrow aisles between them and each mounded with disorderly piles of equipment long forgotten. The racks filled the room wall-to-wall, except for a swath of clear floor about fifteen feet wide in which Nate currently stood. "It's some kind of warehouse," he murmured, playing the light back and forth across the room. He meandered forward a few steps, kicking a heap of moldy tarps and sending a couple rats scurrying. Scrunching his nose in disgust, he flashed the light over in the corner and found a propane forklift, its yellow paint faded and peeling and a pallet of broken concrete bags on its forks, sitting haphazardly across the open area as if someone had simply jumped off it while it was still moving and left. As Nate mused over the curious state of the abandoned compound, he suddenly heard voices very nearby; a door crashed open, and someone flicked a switch which set the few overhead lights that remained functional to glowing.
"He's here somewhere," one of the voices said. "The report said he would be getting near the gondolas by now."
"Shit!" Nate hissed under his breath, jumping quickly behind the closest rack as he saw several of Floki's goons come strolling in. Apparently he was not quick enough, though, as one of them seemed to have spotted him in the dull light that filled the decrepit room.
"There he is!" a different voice shouted. The exclamation was followed in short order by heavy gunfire directed at Nate, who crouched low behind the cross-bracing of the metal rack and a partially- rotted crate, the latter of which was being quickly blasted to bits by bullets.
"Great! Just great!" Nate pulled out his 9 mil and fired off a few shots in return, then pulled his body up as tight as possible in an attempt to take shelter behind the narrow frame of the rack. Slipping his gun back in its holster, he instead pulled out a grenade he had plundered from the revolutionaries back at the bridge. With a glance at his opponents, he pulled the pin and hurled it through the air, the ducked down to wait for the blast.
The effect was almost instantaneous. Panic and commotion set in as the goons dove for cover, the grenade went off, and Nate bolted from his hiding place, running full speed toward the forklift. As he leaped to clear a pile of buckets and shovels that was in his way, he heard the squawk of a radio.
"Backup! Send backup!"one of the thugs shouted into the radio. "He's here at the gondola station!"
Nate's feet hit the ground, but in his haste he misjudged his landing and tumbled. Desperately, he clambered to his feet and kept running, knowing the gunfire would start again any second. With a leap onto the seat of the forklift, he savagely cranked the key and the old engine whined as it turned over. Bullets began to ricochet around him once more, glancing off the roll cage of the machine. The ignition fired and the forklift sprang to life, and Nate quickly yanked on the levers to lift the pallet off the ground, then rammed the accelerator to the floor. The rear end of the lift fishtailed as he swerved into the aisle and drove directly toward his attackers, the pallet of concrete acting as a very effective shield from the gunfire, and the men began screaming and yelling as they realized what was about to happen. "Clean up on aisle four!" Nate yelled as he aimed for the corner of a rack and rammed the machine into it full-force. The henchman were jumping and scrambling away as the giant metal shelf tilted, the strained steel groaning and popping as it leaned further and further to the side, until gravity took over, and the unit fell into the adjacent rack. Both collapsed to the ground with a mighty crash of metal bars and tools and wooden crates, the noise echoed deafeningly around the warehouse to fill the air like the cloud of disturbed dust that kicked up from the impact, until both noise and dust eventually faded and silence once again filled the room, save for a few muffled groans from the men who had gotten buried under the detritus.
"Not my first time knocking over an end display," Nate muttered as he surveyed the damage. Suddenly he heard the door at the end he had entered on crash open, and he looked over his shoulder to see more henchmen swarming in. As bullets whistled, Nate groaned and added, "And now these guys look like they want to talk to the manager!" His eye fell on the propane tank mounted directly behind him on the forklift. "Oh crap, not good!"
Leaping from the lift, he scrambled onto the twisted metal side of the fallen rack, now laying at a steep angle towards the corner of the building. Bounding over a broken crate, Nate swung down on the crossbar of the rack and landed by the door, now pinned open by the mound of debris that had spilled from the shelves. He ducked and threw his arms over his head as bullets pinged off the walls around him and he dashed through the door just as the inevitable happened and the propane tank exploded, caught in the savage onslaught. The blast knocked Nate to the ground as the whole building shook with the shock wave.
He was back on his feet in seconds, his heavy steps pounding the concrete as he ran for all he was worth, not wanting to take chances with any survivors there may be behind him or with the backup who would be arriving any time. Before him lay several cable cars, lined up in a trench down the middle of the building, just waiting to depart through the massive open bay at the other end through which the late day sunshine poured in. Nate's joints ached from the amount of times they had made hard contact with the ground that day, but he pushed through the sensations as he careened up to the car at the front of the line and ducked into it, muttering "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon..." as he scanned over the few controls present inside. Finding what he was looking for, he rammed a lever forward and stepped back from the modest control panel.
A low, barely audible hum started up from somewhere in the building, and Nate glanced anxiously around. For a long minute nothing happened, and he was beginning to despair of using the gondola at all when suddenly the car lurched forward hard enough that Nate fell to the ground- again. A mechanical groan and a squeal pierced the air, and the gondola began moving along its cable toward the bay. Nate picked himself up, more than a little irritated at his constant bouts with gravity, and mumbled, "Gonna need my knees replaced before I'm goddamn fifty..."
The sunlight slanted across the car, starting at its nose and slipping backward along its length as it edged its way out of the hangar, and before long Nate was climbing steadily higher above the valley as the old trolley rattled its way up the cable, carrying him far away from any goons left on the other side. When he was far enough away from the hangar to make out any detail through the open bay door, he finally allowed himself a satisfied grin, and he leaned his elbows on the edge of the window to gaze out at the breathtaking landscape below. Grateful for the breather, he chuckled to himself.
"Y'know, it's moments like these that really make treasure hunting worth it. I mean, look at the view!" His smile grew as he observed the golden, waving grasses far below speckled with intermittent trees and a meandering river snaking through the gorge. "This is the kind of stuff you really want a camera for!" It didn't take long for him to follow that line of thought to its obvious conclusion, and his smile disappeared just as quickly as it came, a scowl replacing it. "Whatever," he breathed. "Gotta stay focused- get to Sully and the others!"
He continued to sulk at the window of the cable car as it put the hangar further behind and the valley further below, climbing slowly enough that Nate was beginning to resent how much time it would allow him to agonize with himself. He was only pulled out of his introspection by a few dots that appeared on the horizon, starting small but quickly increasing in size as they flew his way. "What the heck?" he said to himself, his expression contorting into one of confusion.
His eyes gradually widened as the shapes became more distinct, and he swallowed a growing lump in his throat. "Those are no birds."
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that another car had left the hangar and was creeping up the cables behind him. "Oh no, not good," he said. The car was moving at the same speed as his, meaning it couldn't possibly catch up unless his car quit, but he knew that this was the backup the guys at the warehouse had called in, and he was guessing they weren't going to be very happy. Standing straight, he pulled the RPG from his back and checked his ammunition: two rockets. Just two rockets.
"Ahh, perfect." he loaded one into the gun and returned his gaze to the dots on the horizon, which had now gotten close enough to resolve themselves into the shape of airplanes, and they were definitely packing guns. A noise came from behind and Nate turned to see a helicopter approaching from the other direction. The chopper had sneaked up on him and was within firing range, an oppurtunity it availed itself of as it fired a warning enfilade at the gondola. "Shit!" Nate cursed, dropping down to avoid getting hit.
Tempting as it was to blow the chopper out of the sky with the RPG, Nate decided to save his ammo for the planes, which he guessed were probably packing the greater firepower out of the two. Instead, he pulled the machine gun off his back and raked a line of bullets down the side of the cockpit, and the chopper pulled away to circle around again. Nate whirled around to meet the planes and was startled to find them practically on top of him- heavy machine gun fire strafed the gondola and he staggered to the side, catching himself on the window frame for support as the whole car shook from the impact. He tried to recover fast enough to shoot one of the other planes behind it, but they were too fast, roaring overhead after each taking a potshot at what was- comparatively speaking- nearly a stationary target. As the planes roared off to a safe distance away to turn around and take another shot at him, Nate growled to himself about the absurdity of the fight: Compared to their speed and maneuverability, he was literally a sitting duck! "This is so not good!" he said to himself. "I've gotta do something fast!"
Instead of simply banking around on a lateral turning path, one of the jets decided to nose directly up, cutting across the setting sun which silhouetted it dramatically against the blood-red sky for a moment before corkscrewing around to head his direction again. "Goddamn show-off!" Nate yelled, bracing the RPG against his shoulder as they approached him. The sunlight shone off the tips of the wings as the fighter jet screamed toward him, the unforgiving sky a gleaming orange, a red-hot griddle suspended in the atmosphere. Nate gritted his teeth, knowing that their guns had a far greater range than his. "Like hell you're stopping me from getting my friends out of here! I'll rescue them even if its over my dead body!" He leaned his shoulder against the side of the car bracing himself for the inevitable impact, and lined up his sights.
Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat! The cable car shook with the force of heavy artillery, and Nate squeezed his eyes shut and fired, then a second later slipped halfway down the wall as he lost his footing. The rocket streamed through the air and collided with a plane, taking out its port side wing and sending it into a tailspin to crash in the valley below. Nate shot back up, pumping his fist in the air and letting out a whoop. "Yeah! Take that, you son of a-"
Another shot shook the car, and it suddenly lurched to a stop, Nate once more catching himself on the window. Craning his neck, he looked around the top of the gondola car and saw something in the trolley mechanism sparking, and his stomach turned over. "Oh crap!" he said. "Dead in the water!"
Glancing behind him, he saw that the other cable car was now making quick headway on him, while to his right the remaining airplanes and the helicopter were banking around for another swipe. From the other direction, coming down the opposite cable toward him, he saw another gondola, still a good half mile away, but he thought he could make out a turret mounted along the side of it. He growled. "I'd ask if this could get any worse if I wasn't afraid of jinxing myself!"
The helicopter reached him first and opened fire on him, and Nate returned for all he was worth, strafing the side of the chopper with bullets from his AK. The helicopter roared by again, seemingly content to just be an annoyance while the bigger guns on the planes took their toll on him. He set his jaw and put the machine gun on his back, intending to pull out the RPG for its last rocket as the planes came in for another round. He was distracted by hoots and cheers from the gondola approaching from behind, and when he looked back at the planes, his heart dropped into his boots.
A flash of light emitted from the lead aircraft in the formation, a sight which Nate knew very well what it was. "Missiles?" he squawked, his voice cracking from the stress he was under at the moment. "Oh, no,no,no." He looked frantically around as the projectile ripped through the sky toward him with the promise of a sudden death if he didn't think of something quickly. As the moments dwindled, Nate leaped into the rear window of the cable car, pulled out his handgun, and then jumped out of the gondola, hooking the crook of his pistol around the cable to zipline down it. A moment later he heard the explosion of the missile hitting the gondola he had just left, and with a quick glance down he saw the car plummeting in a ball of fire to the earth below.
The wind whipped by his ears as he sped toward the cable car behind him on the and he gritted his teeth as he focused in on his landing zone, knowing he had to time his release perfectly to make it through the window of the car. "Got room for one more?" he shouted in response to the shocked looks he saw on the faces of the goons inside the car. They raised their weapons to try to shoot, but before they could even get a bullet off Nate was upon them, crashing through the front window of the car and using his momentum to deliver a crushing blow to the nearest thug, sending the man sprawling unconscious on the floor. The next runner up received a kick to the crotch before Nate grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him out the side of the car, and the third was promptly dispatched with a single bullet from Nate's 9 mil.
Taking a moment to survey the damage he had just wreaked, he quipped, "This is why I was never popular on car rides." His monologue was interrupted by a blast of gunfire that shook the gondola as another plane flew by. "Damn!"
He whirled around and pulled the AK-47 from his back and managed to squeeze off a burst at the last of the jets as they passed, but the rounds did little to injure the armored aircraft. As they regrouped for another strike, Nate turned and surveyed the control panel of the gondola as an idea formed in his mind. "I think I just have to hold out until that car on the outbound side gets closer- then I can take control of that turret and reverse the car's direction to keep climbing!"
Bracing the machine gun in the crook of his arm, Nate sighed in resignation as he watched the planes finish their turn and begin the trip back to him. "Why do I feel like I've done this before?"
From his position in the compound he could see the ridge, beyond which lay the gorge which he had heard the nuisance of a man they called Drake was currently crossing via cable car. He could not see the battle that was raging at that moment, but he could see some of the effects of it, and as another thin plume of black smoke trailed up into the sky from what he knew was another plane going down, Garnier leaned forward on the windowsill and steepled his fingers under his nose, his eyes narrowed, a low, dark sigh escaping his lips.
The door behind him creaked open on rusty hinges and then shut just as noisily. From the weight of the footfalls entering the room, it didn't take a genius to know who it was, thus Garnier addressed the person without looking. "Do you see that smoke, Floki?"
Silence. Then a low rumble, "I'm blind in one eye, not two, monsieur." The last word was spoken with a mocking tone.
Mathis turned to face the big Icelander, deciding to spell it out for him anyway. "That is one of your planes meeting an untimely end. More and more of your men are falling, all to just one man." He chuckled humorlessly. "So much for all that confidence in your team's ability."
Floki grimaced, more and more disgusted by this Frenchman he was forced to put up with every passing interaction. "The fight is not over. Drake is a very lucky man, but his luck is bound to run out eventually."
"You underestimate him," Garnier said in no uncertain tone. "That has been your problem this whole time- you think too little of his capabilities. You act as though he's a minor inconvenience, a mere schoolboy to be overlooked." He scoffed. "The reality is that he's at least your equal, a titan of treasure hunting. I would suggest you take your job a bit more seriously."
"You, I suppose on the contrary, think very highly of him," Floki said sullenly, then scoffed. "Shame he was too smart to work for you."
Garnier snarled and crossed his arms. "If you cost me my opportunity for global recognition, Floki, I swear- to god- I will haunt you for the rest of your days. I will hunt you down and make you die a miserable and painful death!"
"That's if you're not dead yourself by the time this is over," the Icelander retorted. "You are just like Alexander- convinced of your own entitlement to fame and glory!" He spat on the ground at Garnier's feet. "If Drake doesn't kill you, someone else will get tired of you and your ego and take a shot of their own." Turning away to walk out of the room, Floki added over his shoulder, "You'd better hope it's not me."
As the door slammed behind the big brute, Garnier heaved a sigh, his brow furrowing, and said to himself, "We seem to have reached the unfortunate position of being mutually antagonistic and mutually dependent on each other." His frown twisted a little more. "The race begins to see who will claim the ultimate glory."
Meanwhile, walking at a brisk pace down the hall outside the room the Frenchman was in, Floki addressed the man he considered to be his second-in-command, an equally muscle-bound specimen with a bald head, impossibly square jaw, and vast shoulders. "Baldur," Floki snapped, "get the men ready for a fight. The American's going to be here soon, and we will raise hell for him when he comes!"