Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,4

the adrenaline rush of days spent trying not to die, he felt completely spent, yet at the same time he was filled with a rare contentment. He’d set right a wrong Valdez had done him, restored a cultural artifact to its rightful owner—granted, he’d been the one to steal it in the first place—and now was going home with more real money in his pocket than he’d had in a long while.

The tribe had paid his fee for retrieving the golden staff, but the mayor of Guayaquil had paid even more for the pleasure of getting his daughter back alive. The fact that the latter deed had been purely, if somewhat irritatingly, accidental only made the reward that much sweeter. It was the kind of luck that didn’t come his way often, and he couldn’t wait to share the story of his good fortune with Victor Sullivan, his best friend and sometime partner in ventures like this one.

There were several squalling children on the flight, and the sumo-size passenger in the seat behind him didn’t seem very happy about Drake reclining his seat, but he felt impervious to the world’s attempts to disrupt his contentment. With in-flight music quietly piped into his brain through the free headphones, he managed to sleep through the movie, waking up just long enough for the gooey chicken and broccoli dish that might have been dinner or maybe some kind of breakfast omelet if the congealed stuff around the chicken and veggies turned out to be egg.

The flight landed almost fifteen minutes early—just before ten o’clock in the morning—and when Drake unbuckled his seat belt and stood up, obviously content and well rested, he thought he caught several envious glances from other passengers. Most of them looked pale and weary, but he felt good as he retrieved his backpack from under the seat and his duffel from the overhead compartment. The sumo who’d been unhappy about his reclined seat was still trying to unwedge himself from 17D when Drake filed off the plane.

As he traveled from one terminal to another, he smelled cinnamon rolls, and his stomach rumbled. He had managed to keep down the hideous concoction the airline had fed its passengers, but he was definitely hungry again, and cinnamon rolls were one of his lifelong weaknesses. Like kryptonite—if kryptonite was soft and warm and covered in sugar and Superman liked to eat it. Or something, he thought.

While waiting in line for his cinnamon roll and looking forward to American coffee, he reached into his pocket and took out his cell phone, which had been off for the duration of the flight. He turned it on and saw that he’d missed some calls during the flight and had some messages. The first one consisted of a woman’s drunken rambling, and he decided it must be a wrong number. The second message was from Vivian, the woman who operated as his travel agent whenever he needed to make a journey that kept his movements off the grid. Drake did a little too much improvising for Vivian’s taste and she often chided him for not using her services more often, but this call was to admonish him for flying from Ecuador to the USA using his own passport. He didn’t like to do it, afraid to draw any scrutiny from Homeland Security, but he was just a guy visiting South America, not some jihadist taking flying lessons and then spending a few weeks training to blow himself up in some secret mountain stronghold in Afghanistan.

The third message was from Sully.

“Nate, it’s me. Call me as soon as you get this. Something’s up, and I could use a second set of eyes. Another brain wouldn’t hurt ei—”

The phone beeped, and he glanced at it, surprised to see that it was Sully calling again. He thumbed the button to switch over to the incoming call.

“Sully,” he said, frowning. “What’s so important?”

Motion out of the corner of his eye drew his attention, and he flinched, on edge after the last few days, but it was just the girl behind the counter handing him a bag that exuded the delightful aroma of cinnamon.

“You on U.S. soil, Nate?” Sully asked.

“I’ve got a layover in Chicago,” Drake said as he made his way to a small table where he could sit with his back to the corner.

He could hear Sully pausing and thought he heard the man exhale. Smoking a cigar, Drake thought. Sully quit about once a month and spent a