Chapter 13: Behind the Lines

"I don't know what to tell you, Ben." Maury said apologetically. "Your bike is a piece of shit."

It was the next morning. Despite the fact that he'd had almost no sleep last night, Ben hadn't felt this well rested in years. Spending the night with Lara had been ... He frowned. No time for that now. There were more important things at stake. Ben groaned. The last time his bike had been trashed, Mo had been able to fix it right up, better than before.

Hmm. On second thought, Ben didn't want to think about Mo right now, not with the imprint of Lara's body still hot in his memory. "You can fix it, though, right?" He was disgusted to hear how pathetic his voice sounded.

"Nope." Maury shook his head and looked sadly at the bike he had spent the entire night trying to breathe life into. "I fixed it up a bit, but it ain't never gonna be anything other than a piece of shit."

Ben shook his head. This couldn't be happening. "You want me to get something for you? New forks? A blow torch? I can—"

"Ben!" Maury cut him off. "I already got a blow torch and new forks won't help. Ben, I'd have to replace every damned component. The engine is shot, the frame is being held together with tin foil, and your engine processor can't play tic tac toe." He put a comforting hand on Ben's shoulder that the big biker shrugged off. "It'll run for now, but the first time you push it, it's gonna to blow up in you face."

"But—" The old guy had to be wrong. He had to.

"No buts, Ben. It's time to give that bike a rest. Send it on to that highway in the sky."

Ben looked at his bike sadly. "Damn." That bike and he went way back. He'd beat a guy into pulp for it fair and square, almost twelve years ago. With a sigh he settled onto the familiar saddle. "Well, it has to last me at least through today. We've got business to attend to."

Maury just nodded. "Fort Kennedy." He gave Ben a long steady look. "Do you have any idea what you're gonna do when you get there?"

It was a question Ben had been asking himself for days. "Get in, bust them up, get out." It was as good a plan as any.

"What about Lara?"

Ben glared at him. "What about her?"

"If you go in there and get yourself killed with a damn brainless idea like that, what's gonna happen to her?"

Ben cut him off with a sharp gesture. "Listen, you old bastard. I put up with a lot of shit from you 'cause you and Torque go way back, but you're pushing it!"

The old guy gave a sage nod that made Ben want to knock his block off. "Hit a sore spot, huh?"

Ben's glare could melt armour plate. "Watch it."

Maury angrily shook a cane under Ben's nose. Ben tried to swat it aside, but Maury was having none of it. "No, you listen to me." Ben just stared at him, fuming. "That woman upstairs loves you, and she'll follow you to hell. If you go off with some half baked plan like the one you gave me, you're either gonna get her killed, or you're gonna get yourself killed and break her heart. Either way, you won't be doing Father Torque's or the Polecats memories any good."

Ben was mad enough to chew steel. "I made a promise, and I'm gonna keep it!"

Maury stared down an Ben, an angry frown on his face. "You're vengeance won't mean a damn thing if you die along with them."

It was only deference to his dead mentor that stopped him from slugging Maury right in his big fat face, cripple or no. Instead, he reigned his temper in and let out a long unsteady breath. "Are you done?"

Maury turned away in disgust. "Yeah, I'm done. Go get yourself and Lara killed. See if anyone's dumb enough to avenge you."

Ben just sat on his bike, fuming. If he didn't have to wait for Lady Grace, he'd have ripped out of here. Where was she, anyway? She had said that she would be right down. All she had to do was 'freshen up a bit'. Women. It had been a while; Ben had forgotten that 'a minute' to them could take forever.

They'd crawled out of bed at dawn, not that they'd really been sleeping before that. Ben had no adjectives for what waking up with Lara Croft in his arms was like. It was like every night in his life that she hadn't been there was incomplete. The way she smelled, the way her breath whispered out of her barely open lips. The way she curled up against him, how her long sinuous back lay against his chest...

It wasn't just the sex, although that had been great.

More than great. They'd sat up and talked about ... everything. About her plane crash in the Himalayas, her problems with her father, Ben's time in the marines; how he'd decked his CO and spent almost a year in the brig before being dishonourably discharged. It wasn't like she was the only person in the world he'd slept with, but he could honestly say that he'd never been closer to a person or more intimate then he was last night with Lara.

That was what had made Maury's little 'hint' so hard to swallow. From the very beginning, he'd known that hunting down Gunny was a fool's errand, a suicide trip. That was OK; it was a price that Ben had been willing to pay. Up until now, he'd always assumed that Lady Grace wouldn't be there when the end came. He'd tried to persuade her last night to let him go this alone, but she'd been against that in pretty uncertain terms.

Lara didn't do anything by halves. It was probably the one main reason that she had survived all the crap she'd put herself through. When she fought, she fought with everything she had. She made love with the same intensity, and she stuck to what she believed in the same way. Now, like it or not, he had a partner, one that would stuck with him through thick and thin. It meant he had to change his game plan, only the damn thing was he didn't know how.

Gunny and his boys were too many. Never in his wildest dreams could Ben, or Ben and Lara, take on over a hundred bikers. More than that, how did Williams and this damned 'Pipeline' fit into things? Even if Gunny had pulled the trigger, Williams had given the orders, and that had all been done for the Pipeline. Was getting Williams enough? Did he have to shut down this pipeline, too?

Tell me when enough is enough, Father. Ben silently implored. Let me know when I've done you right. Just like every other time, there was no answer. Ben was alone.

Well, maybe not alone. As Ben sat scowling on his bike, Lara came downstairs and his mood lightened right up. It was hard as hell to stay pissed off when a woman looked like she did and smiled at you like you were the greatest man on Earth. She swayed up to him, trailing her rucksack and gave Ben a long, lingering kiss.

"Good morning," She whispered into his ear. The way she said it was like foreplay. Ben tried to keep his scowl up but couldn't. He mumbled something and then she skipped off to her bike, stowing her bag in one of her saddle pouches. She got onto her bike and then waved to the stairway. Ben looked over and saw Maury. His scowl returned.

"Thank you, Maury" She called out across the garage. "For everything." Maury waved back, which pissed Ben off even more. Lara cocked Ben a curious look. "Aren't you going to say good bye or anything?"

In answer, Ben started his bike with a thunderous roar then burned rubber out of the garage. Maury was right. It was running rough and the timing was off. It wasn't burning as much oil as it had been yesterday, but it still was. Damn. He didn't want to get a new bike.

Knowing that Lady Grace was on his tail, he pointed his wheel towards Fort Kennedy and sped off full throttle.

Lara chased Ben down the faded roadway. She was in good spirits, despite the fact that she and Ben were riding into the mouth of hell. She most definitely had no regrets about last night, save that it was over. She and Ben had squeezed as much out of the time they had, but inevitably morning had come.

After Ben had gone downstairs to check on his bike with Maury, Lara had made a few calls, first to her editor and then one other. She had been on her way downstairs when she had heard Ben and Maury's shouting match. She was touched by Maury's concern, even if it were perhaps misplaced. She and Ben would be fine. By no stretch of the imagination would the going be easy, but they'd pull it off. Lara had been in worse scrapes, and she'd always pulled through. She just knew that she was going to make it. When a hundred thousand tonnes of stone was coming down around her ears in the Atlantean pyramid, she'd had that same confidence, and this was no different. Now she had Ben on her side. That could only make things better.

When she had come downstairs, Ben and Maury's mood had been palpable as soon as she walked through the door. Ben had been sitting on his bike with a dark scowl on his face and Maury was grumping away in the front office. She'd plastered a smile on her face and given Ben a quick kiss in an attempt to lighten him up, but it had done little good.

His scowl and rude send off miffed her a bit, but Lara held high hopes. They would come through all right. They had to.

It was a long ride to Fort Kennedy, about seven hours. They had stopped off for a quick stretch and to wolf down some food. He and Lady Grace had stayed fairly quiet. Ben was as frustrated as hell. He and Lara had spent an amazing intimate night together, and as much as he wanted to spend today and a whole bunch of tomorrows just hanging around her and screwing until his dick fell off, there was serious business coming up. He had some serious planning to do, and he couldn't afford to be distracted.

For the most part it was working. I've just got to ignore the way she fills out that shirt, forget how her lips feel as they run down my chest... Ben shook his head, trying to clear it. Planning would have been easy if he just knew what he was facing, but he knew fuck all about Fort Kennedy. He knew the area but hadn't been there in almost ten years. It had just been a burned out two hundred year old fort before; who knew what had been done to the place since then. All that rushed through his head were possibilities and eventualities. What if Gunny had his guys fortify the place? Maybe there were sentries and security systems. If the Pipeline was being funded and set up by WCC, was it flammable? Explosive? Poisonous? Most importantly: how was he going to get into and out of this whole mess keeping himself and Lara in one piece?

More questions he couldn't answer, and every time he encountered another one his mind kept going back to Lady Grace and her slip hips that haunted his vision as they rode. This road trip had better end soon, before I lose my mind.

It was late afternoon, and Ben and Lara were on foot. Ben, it seemed, knew the back roads of the desert very well. When they had driven within a hundred miles of the fort he had led them onto a series of narrow winding roads and dried river beds. It added a few hours to their time but they didn't encounter any Leatherneck patrols. It would be sheer lunacy to presume that the area wouldn't be guarded. They had hidden their bikes beneath some tumbleweeds in a gully and were proceeding—armed, of course—up a rock ridge to where they could overlook the fort.

They were both ready for anything. Ben was carrying Betsy with both hands, the lever action rifle locked and loaded while Lara's hands were itching to draw her pistols. Lara was having no troubles with the steep rocks. Compared to some of the things she had scaled, this was child's play, but Ben was having a somewhat harder time of it.

She was crouching on the top of a twenty foot vertical face, watching the hillside below them for movement while Ben huffed, puffed and cursed below her. He was making slow if unsteady progress up the cliff. She didn't offer to help him knowing that he was too proud to accept it. It didn't stop her, however, from chuckling at his expense.

A minute or so later he pulled himself up and lay on his back, gasping for breath. "You're out of shape, Ben." Lara chided him. "Are you getting to old for this?"

"Blow me." He gave Lara the finger and groaned.

"Maybe later," she smiled and patted his hip. "If we're going to be here for a while, I could order up some takeaway."

He got to his feet with a grunt and glared at her evilly. She just grinned and handed him his rifle. "Can you handle the rest of the slope, or would you like me to get you another ladder?"

"Any other biker chick wouldn't give me this much lip." He muttered and continued to climb. Lara just laughed.

Ten minutes later, they came to the top of the ridge and looked below them at what was happening at Fort Kennedy. The fort sat in the bottom of a steep mountain valley. The valley floor was mostly flat, but a faded gravel road made its way along the bottom. The ruins of the old fort were visible in on small rise, but that was not the most notable feature in the valley. There were about twenty large storage vats easily thirty feet in diameter along the far side of the valley wall. They were all painted with desert camouflage patterns and no doubt were invisible to satellites. There were plenty of connecting pipes and hoses running from container to container with a larger set of pipes running out of the ground. All the pipes were either painted to match the terrain or had rock formations built on top of them.

The next thing that Lara noted was the trucks. There were about thirty tractor trailer rigs also painted in camouflage patterns sitting under the sun. All of the trailers were the ovoid cylinders of liquid transport containers.

"What the bloody blazes," Lara said softly to herself as she went to her hip for her binoculars. Beside her, Ben frowned.

"How the hell could they have set this up and not have anyone notice," he muttered to himself.

Lara handed him the binocs. "They obviously went to a great deal of trouble to avoid detection. If you try hard enough and have enough money, I suppose anything is possible."

He just grunted. They surveyed a moment in silence then Ben pointed down into the valley. "Leathernecks. Eight of them." He handed the binoculars back to Lara.

They were sitting in the shade of one of the tanks with their bikes parked near by. "If that's all the security they have, I imagine that we'll have an easy time of it."

Ben snorted. "Dream on, lady. There's a whole lot of stuff we can't see from here. They could have a hundred guys down there and we'd never know it."

Lara continued to look for more bikers but Ben was right: there were too many points of concealment. "So what now, then?"

"We gotta get closer, find out what's going on."

"That is a very wide open space we have to cross," Lara pointed out. "We'd be spotted for sure."

Ben had a thoughtful look his face. If Lara leaned close to his ear she was sure that she would hear gears turning. "We'll go in disguise."

Perhaps his gears needed lubrication. "What disguise would that be?" she asked dubiously.

"Them." Ben pointed down to a rough road cut out of the valley wall below them. A two bike patrol could be seen on it, about two miles back. "We take them out, put on their jackets and drive right up to those storage tanks."

Lara thought for a moment. "It's probably not as easy as that."

"Gotta better idea?" Ben asked.

Unfortunately she didn't. She surveyed the terrain between them and the road that was being patrolled. "We'll have to be quick about it."