It's cramped. Like, really cramped. The ceiling of the dormouse is maybe six inches above me and I'm laying down flat on my back, clutching at the parachute strapped to my back and praying I heard that 'yellow cord, orange cord' thing correctly. I exhale loudly and turn my head towards Lara, whose also squashed on her back. Her eyes are closed lightly and her lips are still, looking not so impressed nor terrified of our current situation.
"You do this often?" I mutter shakily, half in jest.
"Not often, but before," she replies coolly.
"So, what happens when we get close enough to Vymes' place?"
She gestures at the outline of a hatch at the bottom of the recline we're laying on. "The port for the chemical spray will open and the panel will tip up."
"And we'll just-" I swallow hard, "…fall out?"
"That's right."
"But! What if we aren't in the right position or something? Isn't there a huge treeline where we are?" I shake my head and peer down the shaft, imagining slivers of light slicing through the corners of the hatch as it twists open and the floor lifts. I imagine a huge beast with its jowls wide and hungry swallowing us whole.
"There will be a treeline," she explains. "We'll have to navigate through it."
"I don't know how to do that!" I almost shout, insides boiling with a heat of sudden panic. I can't believe I'd forced her to take me; I should have known she'd pull all of this James Bond garbage, I should've listened when she said it would be too-
She grabs my shoulder and tips my chin up to meet her gaze. "Everything is going to e alright," she says.
I nod.
"There's a small area where Vymes harvests the pine and auctions off the lumber. It won't be good landing ground but the forest will be sparse. That's where Wally is going to drop us."
"So…I'm not gonna get impaled on a rogue tree branch or something?"
"No," she mutters sternly. Her collected demeanor reduces the roar in my stomach to a slow burn. I catch my breath and tighten my grip around the cord on my right. Just don't pull them at the same time and you won't die, I think. If Lara can do this, so can I.
Just as I'm beginning to get my heart-rate down, the walkie-talkie clipped to her waistband beeps three times. Passively, she fidgets a bit with something on her left side. "Here," she says, handing me a visored gas mask. "You'll want to put this on."
I squint at her like she's crazy, which I'm sure I've done before. She shrugs and slips hers on over her head, adjusting the filters on the end and checking the rubber seal along her forehead. Quickly, I do the same.
She gestures at me from the corner of my eye. Three extended fingers. Two extended fingers.
Oh my god, I'm about to die.
The hatch springs open, and orange, powdery gas fills the space. The floor tips up, dumping us out into the open morning air before I have any time to protest. All of my organs rush up as I'm sent plummeting so fast my brain can't get a grip on itself. The tangerine cloud blinds three corners of my sight, every direction but down, as I struggle to remember all of the information Lara had spat at me before boarding. Six seconds. Yellow cord. Four seconds, pull the yellow cord. Two seconds. I fumble for the string on my chute.
One second!
I yank the cord as hard as I can and suddenly I'm sucked back up into the sky. Holy shit. Holy shit. The chute blooms like an orchid above me, a web of black twine cradling the strapped that circle most of my body.
Not over yet though. The plane is still dumping the agent and if there are trees around me, I can't see them. I narrow my eyes under the visor and struggle to make out my surroundings. Below, I can just barely see the shadow of what looks like the ground rising slowly.
I brace myself, and even though I hit pretty hard, I managed to land in an open area.
"Lara?" I call out, unsure if I should be making noise but suddenly assaulted with the idea that she wasn't as lucky as I was. Uneasily, I look up and watch the obscuring substance dissipate and settle, revealing no sign of another parachute.
The gas mask makes a protesting noise as I remove it. The air burns my throat and my eyes, but I don't think she could hear me through it and for a moment I just stand there, listening. Silence. Not even birds, or frogs, or anything. Silence, and silence.
And then, a far-off crash. Shit. I start off slow, tracking down the direction , before undo hooking the straps of my chute and leaving the tarp and the pack there. "Lara!" I shout, navigating over logs and stumps and roots that littered the earth. "Where are you?"
Another crash, this time closer. I slow for a second, then pick up the pace when the bright orange reflection of her chute catches my eye.
It's in a tree. Of course it's in a tree. I follow the strings down to where she should be hanging and see her just as she unstraps herself and takes a nasty fall straight down.
"Hey! Be careful!" I dive to her side as she's struggling to sit up. She lets out a low groan and rubs the back of her head stiffly.
"Caught the backdraft of the plane," she mutters. "Are you alright?"
"I landed in the clearing." The grass rustles dryly as she pushes herself to her feet.
"Good. At least one of us did." Her mask is already off and discarded.
"So, now what?" I wipe some pine needles off her shoulder blade and pluck a twig out of her plait.
"Now, we move in."
In the few hours that we spend silently creeping through the underbrush surrounding the mansion of the man she calls Vymes, an even, milky fog creeps into the forest, blanketing everything in a fine, opaic mist.
The fences erected between us and the inside were razor wire, capped with barbed treads and what seemed and smelled like electricity.
"The wilderness always finds a way in," she had whispered, gesturing me to follow closely. After a while of tracing the perimeter we came across a brook that ran under the fence and through the property. Here, the electricity was shorted and allowed for ivy vines and creepers to fester up and over the razor of the fence and the long lines of the tread at the top.
She only smiled knowingly to herself and gripped the fence, swiftly lifting herself over. Silently she withdrew a pair of wire cutters from her small pack and set to work cutting a narrow hole in the watery bottom that I could squeeze through.
The property itself was vast and trimmed, a strange mirage-like break in the infinite ocean of untouched woodland. Beyond the fog, many lights shone in a ghostly way. Red lights, long lights.
"Lasers," she whispers. The fog illuminated them perfectly where a clear day would probably render them invisible. "You seem to be granting us some good fortune, Sam."
I chuckle anxiously and shrug. "Must be in my blood."
The laser system itself is set a foot from the fence, probably to avoid false set-offs from rustling leaves and falling debris. It's just enough space to walk along comfortably. The sun is setting before we reach the sights of the regal castle itself. It's huge, and from what I can tell it could probably rival Lara's manor in terms of square footage. She scans from where we are with a small set of binoculars, though I really don't know how she can expect to make anything out in this weather, especially with the darkness thrown in. She hands them to me, and I peer through them.
Oh.
Three bodies shift around lazily on the staircase leading to the main entrance, dressed in red and yellow and green aluminous auras. Around them, the cold building is blue and dark. Heat sensing binoculars? Total James Bond move right there. One of the glowing blobs passes another a lit cigarette and they laugh esoterically. I can just hear the faintest echo of it.
"Alright," she speaks very quietly. "You are going to do exactly as I ask, understand?"
I nod vigorously, recalling our agreement. "Circle around to the side of the enclave and distract one of them long enough for me to get a shot at the others."
"Shot?"
She reaches onto her back and removes a long, black pitching sack, pulling from it a shiny, black rifle and a tiny kick stand. She attaches a scope, snapping it into place, and a few other pieces of machinery that I can't name off-hand. "Three's a crowd," she retorts. I can take care of the two if the third isn't within sight."
That nauseous tingling gnaws at my stomach again. "You want me to…?"
"It's alright," she says, kneeling in the grass and setting up the rifle. "This is silent, and I am fast. He won't have time to do anything. I just need his eyes and ears elsewhere so he can't alert Vymes."
I knead my hands nervously together and stare at the intent focus of the gun. She watches me for a bit before exhaling softly.
"I'm about to watch some more guys eat it, huh?" I shiver reflexively. She wants a minute before replying.
"These are bad men, Sam. Men that have killed and will kill again. That's the way you need to think about what happens next."
What happens next. Okay. I can do this.