Seven Ancient Wonders Page 2

  His hands were gloved, but if you looked closely at the left cuff of his jacket, you might catch a glimpse of silver steel. Hidden under the sleeve, his entire left forearm and hand were artificial, mechanical. How they came to be that way not many people knew; although one of those who did was Max Epper.

  Expertly trained in the art of war, classically trained in the lore of history, and fiercely protective of the little girl in his care, one thing about Jack West Jr was clear: if anyone could pull off this impossible mission, it was him.

  Just then, with a squawk, a small brown peregrine falcon swooped in from above the treeline and landed lightly on West’s shoulder— the high-flying bird from before. It eyed the area around West imperiously, protectively. Its name, Horus.

  West didn’t even notice the bird. He just stared down into the dark square hole in the mud, lost in thought.

  He brushed back some mud from the edge, revealing a hieroglyph cut into the rim:

  ‘We meet again,’ he said softly to the carving.

  He turned. ‘Glowstick.’

  He was handed a glowstick which he cracked and tossed down the hole.

  It fell for 20 feet, illuminating a pipe-like stone shaft on its way down, before—splonk!—it landed in water and revealed—

  Lots of crocodiles. Nile crocodiles.

  Snapping, snarling and grunting. Sliding over each other.

  ‘More of Sobek’s minions,’ West said. ‘Nice. Very nice.’

  Just then the team’s radioman, a tall Jamaican with bleached dreadlocks, a heavily pockmarked face and tree-trunk-sized arms, touched his earpiece in alarm. His real name was V.J. Weatherly, his original call-sign Witch Doctor, but everyone here just called him Fuzzy.

  ‘Huntsman,’ he said, ‘the Europeans just breached the Third Gate. They’re inside the Grand Cavern. Now they’re bringing in some kind of crane to overshoot the lower levels.’

  ‘Shit . . .’

  ‘It gets worse. The Americans just crossed the border. They’re coming in fast behind us. Big force: 400 men, choppers, armour, with carrier-launched fighter support on the way. And the ground force is being led by the CIEF.’

  That really got West’s attention.

  The CIEF—the Commander-in-Chief’s In Extremis Force, pronounced ‘seef’—was America’s very best special operations unit, a unit that answered only to the President and possessed the real-life equivalent of a licence to kill. As West knew from hard experience, you didn’t want to be around when the CIEF arrived.

  He stood up. ‘Who’s in command?’

  Fuzzy said ominously, ‘Judah.’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d come himself. Damn. Now we’d really better hurry.’

  West turned to his team.

  ‘All right. Noddy—you’ve got sentry duty. Everybody else . . .’

  He pulled an odd-looking helmet from his belt, put it on.

  ‘. . . it’s time to rock and roll.’

  And so into the subterranean dark they went.

  Fast.

  A steel tripod was erected above the pipe-like shaft and, led by West, one after the other, eight of the Nine abseiled down it on a rope strung from the tripod.

  One lone man, a dark-haired Spanish commando—once known as Matador, now Noddy—remained up top to guard the entrance.

  The Entry Shaft

  West sizzled down the drop-rope, shooting past three steeply slanted cross-shafts that intersected with the main shaft.

  His falcon sat snugly in a pouch on his chest, while on his head he wore a weathered and worn fireman’s helmet, bearing the badge ‘FDNY Precinct 17’. The battered helmet was fitted with a wraparound protective eye visor and on the left side, a powerful pen-sized flashlight. The rest of his team wore similar helmets, variously modified with flashlights, visors and cameras.

  West eyed the cross-shafts as he slid down the rope. He knew what perils lay within them. ‘Everyone. Stay sharp. Do not, I repeat, do not make any contact with the walls of this shaft.’

  He didn’t and they didn’t.

  Safely, he came to the bottom of the rope.

  The Atrium

  West emerged from the ceiling at one end of a long stone-walled room, hanging from his drop-rope.

  He did not lower himself all the way to the floor, just kept hanging about 8 feet above it.

  By the eerie yellow light of his original glowstick, he beheld a rectangular room about thirty metres long. The room’s floor was covered by a shallow layer of swampwater, water that was absolutely crawling with Nile crocodiles—not an inch of floorspace was crocodile-free.

  And directly beneath West, protruding half out of the water, were the waterlogged, half-eaten bodies of two twentysomething Sudanese men. The bodies lolled lifelessly as three big crocs took great crunching bites out of them.

  ‘Big Ears,’ West said into his throat microphone, ‘there’s a sight down here that’s not PG-13. Tell Lily not to look down when you two reach the bottom of the rope.’

  ‘Righto to to that, boss,’ came an Irish-accented reply over his earpiece.

  West fired a luminescent amber flare down the length of the atrium.

  It was as if the chamber came alive.

  Deeply cut lines of hieroglyphs covered the walls, thousands of them.

  And at the far end of the chamber, West saw his goal: a squat trapezoidal doorway, raised several feet off the watery floor.

  The eerie yellow glow of the flare also revealed one other important feature of the atrium—its ceiling.

  Embedded in the ceiling was a line of handrungs, leading to the far raised doorway. Each rung, however, was lodged in a dark square hole that disappeared up into the ceiling itself.

  ‘Wizard,’ West said, ‘I’ve got handrungs.’

  ‘According to the inscription in Imhotep’s tomb, we have to avoid the third and the eighth rungs,’ Wizard’s voice said. ‘Dropcages above them. The rest are okay.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  The Eight traversed the atrium quickly, swinging hand-overhand down the length of the chamber, avoiding the two suspect handrungs, their feet dangling just a few feet above the crocs.

  The little girl—Lily—moved in the middle of the group, clinging to the biggest trooper of the Nine, her hands clasped around his neck, while he swung from rung to rung.

  The Low Tunnel

  A long low tunnel led away from the atrium, heading into the mountain.

  West and his team ran down it, all bent forward. Horus had been set free and she flew out in front of West, gliding down the passageway. Lily ran fully upright.

  Water dripped from the low stone ceiling, but it hit their firemen’s helmets and rolled off their curved backs, away from their eyes.

  The tunnel was perfectly square—1.3 metres wide, 1.3 metres high. Curiously, these were exactly the same dimensions as the passageways inside the Great Pyramid at Giza.

  Like the entry shaft earlier, this horizontal tunnel was intersected by three cross-shafts: only these were vertical and they spanned the entire width of the tunnel, cutting across it via matching holes in the ceiling and floor.

  At one point, Lily’s guardian, the large trooper named Big Ears, mis-stepped—landing on a trigger stone just before he leapt across one of the cross-shafts.

  He knew his mistake immediately and stopped abruptly at the edge of the shaft—

  —just as a gushing waterfall of swampwater came blasting out of the upper hole, forming a curtain of water in front of him, before disappearing into the matching hole in the floor.

  Had he jumped, the rush of water would have taken him and Lily down into the unknown depths of the lower hole.

  ‘Careful, brother dearest,’ the team member in front of him said after the water had passed. She was the only woman in the group and a member of the crack Irish commando unit, the Sciathan Fhianoglach an Airm. Old call-sign: Bloody Mary. New one: Princess Zoe. Her brother, Big Ears, was also a member of the SFA.

  She reached out and caught
his hand and with her help he leapt over the cross-shaft and, with Lily between them, they took off after the others.

  The Water Chamber (The First Gate)

  The low tunnel opened onto a chamber the size of a small chapel. Incongruously, the floor of this chamber seemed to be made up of a lush carpet of green grass.

  Only it wasn’t grass.

  It was algae. And beneath the algae, water—a rectangular pool of perfectly flat, undisturbed water.

  And no crocs. Not a single one.

  At the far end of the chamber—beyond the long placid pool, just above the waterline—were three low rectangular holes, burrowing into the far wall, each roughly the size of a coffin.

  An object floated in the pool near the entrance. West recognised it instantly.

  A human body. Dead.

  The third and last Sudanese man.

  Breathless, Wizard came up alongside West. ‘Ah-ha, the First Gate. Ooh my, how clever. It’s a false-floor chamber, just like we saw beneath the volcano in Uganda. Ah, Imhotep V. He always respected the classic traps . . .’

  ‘Max . . .’ West said.

  ‘Ooh, and it’s connected to a Solomon’s Choice of spike holes: three holes, but only one is safe. This is some gate. I bet the ceiling is on rollers—’

  ‘Max. You can write a book about it later. The state of the water?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, ahem . . .’ Wizard pulled a dipstick from a water testing kit on his belt and dipped it into the algae-covered pool. Its tip quickly turned a vivid red.

  Wizard frowned. ‘Extremely high levels of the bloodworm Schistosoma mansoni. Be careful, my friend, this water is beyond septic. It’s teeming with S. mansoni.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Big Ears asked from behind them.

  ‘It’s a microscopic bloodworm that penetrates the body through the skin or any exposed orifice, and then lays eggs in the bloodstream,’ West answered.

  Wizard added, ‘Infection leads to spinal cord inflammation, lower-body paralysis and, ultimately, a cerebral aneurism and death. Ancient grave robbers went mad after entering places like this. They blamed angry gods and mystical curses, but in all likelihood it was the S. mansoni. But at these levels, gosh, this water will kill you in minutes. Whatever you do, Jack, don’t fall in.’

  ‘Okay then,’ West said, ‘the jump-stone configuration.’

  ‘Right, right . . .’ The older man hurriedly pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket, started flipping pages.

  A ‘false-floor chamber’ was a fairly common booby trap in the ancient Egyptian world—mainly because it was very simple to built and exceedingly effective. It worked by concealing a safe pathway of stepping-stones beneath a false layer of liquid—which could be anything really: quicksand, boiling mud, tar, or, most commonly, bacteria-infected water.

  You defeated a false-floor chamber by knowing the location of the stepping-stones in it.

  Wizard found the page he was after. ‘Okay. Here it is. Soter’s Mine. Nubia. First Gate. Water chamber. Ah-ha. Five by five grid: the sequence of the jump-stones is 1-3-4-1-3.’

  ‘1-3-4-1-3,’ West repeated. ‘And which spike hole? I’m going to have to choose quickly.’

  ‘Key of life,’ Wizard said, consulting his notebook.

  ‘Thanks. Horus, chest.’ On command, the falcon immediately whizzed to West’s chest and nestled in a pouch there.

  West then turned to the assembled group behind him: ‘Okay, folks, listen up. Everyone is to follow me closely. If our friend Imhotep V follows his usual modus operandi, as soon as I step on the first stepping-stone, things are gonna get frantic. Stay close because we won’t have much time.’

  West turned and contemplated the placid pool of algae-covered water. He bit his lip for a second. Then he took a deep breath.

  Then he jumped out into the chamber, out over the surface of the pool, angling his leap way out to the left.

  It was a long jump—he couldn’t have just stepped that far.

  Watching, Wizard gasped.

  But rather than plunging into the deadly water, West landed lightly on the surface of the flat green pool—looking like he was walking on water.

  His thick-soled boots stood an inch deep. He was standing on some kind of stepping-stone hidden underneath the algae-covered surface.

  Wizard exhaled the breath he’d been holding.

  Less obviously, West did, too.

  But their relief was shortlived, for at that moment the trap mechanism of the water chamber came loudly and spectacularly to life.

  The ceiling started lowering!

  The entire ceiling of the chamber—a single great block of stone—began rumbling downwards, descending toward the flat green pool!

  The intention was clear: in about 20 seconds it would reach the waterline and block all access to the three low rectangular holes at the far end of the room.

  Which left only one option: leap across the concealed stepping-stones and get to the correct rectangular hole before the lowering ceiling hit the waterline.

  ‘Everyone! Move! Follow me step for step!’ West called.

  And so, with the ceiling lowering loudly above him, he danced across the chamber with big all-or-nothing jumps, kicking up splashes with every landing. If he misjudged even one stepping-stone, he’d land in the water and it’d be game over.

  His path was dictated by the grid-reference Wizard had given him: 1-3-4-1-3, on a five-by-five grid. It looked like this:

  West came to the far wall of the chamber, while his team crossed it behind him. The wide ceiling of the water chamber kept lowering above them all.

  He eyed the three rectangular holes cut into the end-wall. He’d seen these kinds of holes before: they were spike-holes.

  But only one hole was safe, it led to the next level of the labyrinth. The other two would be fitted with sharp spikes that lanced down from the upper sides of the rectangular holes as soon as someone entered them.

  Each of the spike-holes before him had a symbol carved above it:

  Pick the right hole. While the ceiling lowered behind him, about to push his team into the water.

  ‘No pressure, Jack,’ he said to himself. ‘Okay. Key of life, key of life . . .’

  He saw the symbol above the left-hand hole:

  Close, but no. It was the hieroglyph for magic. Imhotep V was trying to confuse the flustered, panicking explorer who found himself in this pressure-filled situation and didn’t look closely enough.

  ‘How’s it coming, Jack?’ Big Ears and the girl appeared beside him, joining him on the last stepping-stone.

  The ceiling was low now, past halfway and still descending. There was no going back now. He had to pick the right hole.

  ‘West . . .’ someone urged from behind him.

  Keeping his cool, West saw the symbol above the centre hole . . .

  . . . and recognised it as the hieroglyph for ankh, or long life, otherwise known to the ancient Egyptians as ‘the key of life’.

  ‘It’s this one!’ he called.

  But there was only one way to prove it.

  He pulled his falcon from his pouch and handed it to the little girl. ‘Hey, kiddo. Take care of Horus for me, just in case I’m wrong.’

  Then he turned and crouch-dived forward, rolling into the centre hole, shutting his eyes momentarily, waiting for a half-dozen rusty spikes to spring down from its upper side and punch through his body—

  —nothing happened.

  He’d picked the right hole. Indeed, a tight cylindrical passage opened up in the darkness beyond this hole, bending vertically upward.

  ‘It’s this one!’ He called back as he started ferrying his team into it, pulling them through.

  Big Ears and Lily went first, then Wizard—

  The ceiling was four feet off the water’s surface.

  Fuzzy and Zoe clambered up next.

  The final two troopers in West’s team rolled into the hole and last of all went West himself, disappearing into the rectangular hole just as t
he lowering stone ceiling rumbled past him and hit the surface of the water chamber with a resounding boom.

  The Slipway and the Second Gate

  The tight vertical passage from the spike-hole rose for about 50 feet before opening onto a long tunnel that sloped upward at a steep angle, boring up into the heart of the mountain.

  West fired a new amber flare up into the tunnel.

  It was the ancient slipway.

  About the width of a car, the slipway was effectively a long straight stairway flanked by two flat stone trackways that abutted the walls of the tunnel. These trackways had once acted like primitive railway tracks: the ancient miners had slid giant containers filled with waste up and down them, aided by the hundreds of stone steps that lay in between them.

  ‘Fuzz,’ West said, peering up the tunnel. ‘Distance?’

  Fuzzy aimed a PAQ-40 laser rangefinder up into the darkness.

  As he did so, West keyed his radio: ‘Noddy, report.’

  ‘The Americans aren’t here yet, Huntsman,’ Noddy’s voice replied, ‘but they’re closing fast. Satellite image puts their advance choppers 50 klicks out. Hurry.’

  ‘Doing the best we can,’ West said.

  Wizard interrupted: ‘Don’t forget to tell Noddy that we’ll be out of radio contact for the time the Warblers are initiated.’

  ‘You hear that?’

  ‘I heard. Noddy, out.’

  Fuzzy’s rangefinder beeped. ‘I got empty space for . . .150 metres.’

  West grimaced. ‘Why do I get the feeling it isn’t empty at all.’

  He was right.

  The ascending slipway featured several traps: blasting waterfall-shafts and some ankle-breaking trap-holes.

  But the Eight just kept running, avoiding the traps, until halfway up the inclined tunnel they came to the Second Gate.

  The Second Gate was simple: a ten-foot-deep diorite pit that just fell away in front of them, with the ascending slipway continuing beyond it five yards away.