Chapter 6
My eyes follow his actions carefully as he moves forward, towards me; taking one cautious step at a time.
"Stay away, or I will have to kill you" I say, my voice rising.
"Very well then, since I spent all of my bullets killing them, I have no choice but to surrender to you, Lady Croft" Pierre says, smiling falsely. My eyes dart towards the corners of the room where two bears lie dead.
"Get down on your knees and tell me how you came here in the first place." I say, my voice never losing its angry touch.
"There was a door, now it's trapped by debris" He explains and points toward what I take are slabs of a crumbled wall.
I contemplate my choices for a moment. There is a small rope hanging down from the remains of the above room's floor. There are two poles beside it that look like they might be easy to climb. And one gold switch beneath the pedestal on which the vial is kept. With a little help from someone, I might just make it back up.
"DuPont" I say, my gun still in his face.
"I smell something cooking" He snickers.
"If you could get to that switch and pull it, the mechanism will work and the rope will come down. We could get out of here" Although I know that Pierre will probably betray me the second he gets out, I have no other chance of getting that potion and living. I check my watch. 36 more minutes.
Not enough time.
"Zip, I need you to send a helicopter to the same co-ordinates in about an hour. Can you do that?" I ask, one hand to my earphone and the other still pointing my handgun at DuPont.
"Yeah. Yeah, sure. Hurry" He reminds me.
I turn to DuPont and say, "Do that for me and I'll reward you handsomely." I try to imitate the voice of Jacqueline Natla.
"There's more to life than money, Lady Croft…" Pierre repeats what I had said to him a year ago in St. Francis Folly, Greece. "But I will do it, since I don't believe in this philosophy" He continues and snickers.
Before I can say anything, he adds, "But my poor foot is out of duty. So, you take that difficult little switch and I will take that rope"
I smile obliviously. Something fishy is going on in here. I just know that Pierre plans to abandon me with the vial as soon as I lower the rope.
"Okay" I lie and try to hatch a plan as I watch him scramble up the pole. Once he gets to the top, I slowly wedge my feet into small cracks and grab ledges to pull me up. My leg aches like hell but I try to ignore it.
Once I reach the switch, I grab it with both my hands and let go the ledge onto which my feet were resting. I feel myself being lowered as the switch slowly comes down.
"Hah!" Pierre's voice echoes as he grabs the rope and flings himself onto the floor of the above room.
"You are so naïve, Lady Croft! Did you believe for one second that I would form an alliance with someone like you?" His voice blares in my ears. I turn my head and grab my handgun from the holster. I put my feet onto the wall and turn.
And I see him about to cut my only chance of escape. I see him pointing a knife at the rope.