Seven Ancient Wonders Read online

  The voice at the other end was cold and hard, and the instructions it gave were exceedingly odd: ‘You may do whatever you want with the others, sergeant, but Jack West and the girl must be allowed to escape.’

  ‘Escape?’ Kallis frowned.

  ‘Yes, sergeant. Escape. Is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal clear, sir. Whatever you say,’ Kallis replied.

  His boats roared into action.

  West’s two swamprunners skimmed across the swamp at phenomenal speed, banking and weaving, propelled by their huge turbofans.

  West drove the lead one; Stretch drove the second one.

  Behind them raced Kallis’s four swampboats, bigger and heavier, but tougher—the men on their bows firing hard.

  West was making for the far southern end of the swamp, 20 kilometres away, where a crumbling old road had been built along the shore of the vast waterfield.

  It wasn’t a big road, just two lanes, but it was made of asphalt, which was crucial.

  ‘Sky Monster!’ West shouted into his radio mike. ‘Where are you!’

  ‘Still in a holding pattern behind the mountains, Huntsman. What can I do for you?’ came the reply.

  ‘We need exfil, Sky Monster! Now!’

  ‘Hot?’

  ‘As always. You know that paved road we pinpointed earlier as a possible extraction point?’

  ‘The really tiny potholed piece-of-shit road? Big enough to fit two Mini Coopers side-by-side?’

  ‘Yeah, that one. We’re also going to need the pick-up hook. What do you say, Sky Monster?’

  ‘Give me something hard next time, Huntsman. How long till you get there?’

  ‘Give us ten minutes.’

  ‘Done. The Halicarnassus is on its way.’

  The two swamprunners blasted across the waterfield, ducking the constant fire from the four pursuing CIEF swampboats.

  Then suddenly, geyser-explosions of water began erupting all around West’s boats.

  Kallis and his team had started using mortars.

  Bending and banking, West’s swamprunners weaved away from the explosions—which actually all fell a fraction short—until suddenly the road came into view.

  It ran in an east-to-west direction across the southern edge of the swamp, an old blacktop that led inland to Khartoum. Like many of the roads in eastern Sudan, it actually wasn’t that bad, having been built by the Saudi terrorists who had once called these mountains home, among them a civil engineer named Bin Laden.

  West saw the road, and risked a smile. They were going to make it . . .

  At which moment, three more American Apache helicopters arrived, roaring across his path, shredding the water all around his boats with blazing minigun fire.

  The Apaches rained hell on West’s two boats.

  Bullets ripped up the water all round them as the boats sped through the swamp.

  ‘Keep going! Keep going!’ West yelled to his people. ‘Sky Monster is on the way!’

  But then fire from one of the Apaches hit Stretch’s turbofan. Smoke billowed, the fan clattered, and the second swamprunner slowed.

  West saw it instantly—and knew what he had to do.

  He pulled in alongside Stretch’s boat and called: ‘Jump over!’

  A quick transfer took place, with Stretch, Pooh Bear, Fuzzy and Wizard all leaping over onto West’s swamprunner—the last of them, Wizard, leaping across a split second before one of the Apaches let fly with a Hellfire missile and the second swamprunner was blown out of the water, disappearing in a towering geyser of spray.

  Amid all this mayhem, West kept scanning the sky above the mountains—and suddenly he saw it.

  Saw the black dot descending toward the little road.

  A black dot that morphed into a bird-like shape, then a plane-like shape, then finally it came into focus and was revealed to be a huge black plane.

  It was a Boeing 747, but the most bizarre 747 you would ever see.

  Once upon a time, it had been a cargo plane of some sort, with a rear loading ramp and no side windows.

  Now, it was painted entirely in black, dull black, and it bristled with irregular protrusions that had been added to it: radar domes, missile pods, and most irregularly of all: revolving gun turrets.

  There were four of them—one on its domed roof, one on its underbelly, and two nestled on its flanks, where the plane’s wings met its fuselage—each turret armed with a fearsome six-barrelled Gatling minigun.

  It was the Halicarnassus. West’s very own plane.

  With a colossal roar, the great black jumbo jet swooped downwards, angling for the tiny road that bordered the swamp.

  Now with all eight of his people on one swamprunner, West needed help and the Halicarnassus was about to provide it.

  Two missiles lanced out from its belly-pods, missing one Apache by inches, but hitting the one behind it.

  Boom. Fireball.

  Then the great plane’s underside minigun blazed to life, sending a thousand tracer rounds sizzling through the air all around the third Apache, giving it the choice of either bugging out or dying. It bugged out.

  West’s lone swamprunner swept alongside the straight roadway, raced parallel to it. The road was elevated a couple of feet above the water, up a low gently-sloping bank.

  At the same moment, above and behind West’s boat, the big 747 landed on the little country road!

  Its wheels hit the road, squealing briefly before rolling forward with its outer tyres half off the road’s edges. The big jet then taxied down the roadway—coming alongside West’s skimming swamprunner, its wings stretching out over the waters of the swamp.

  The Halicarnassus was coasting, rolling.

  West’s boat was speeding as fast as it could to keep up.

  Then with a bang, the loading ramp at the back of the 747 dropped open, slammed down against the roadway behind the speeding plane.

  A second later, a long cable bearing a large hook at its end came snaking out of the now-open cargo hold. It was a retrieval cable, normally used to snag weather balloons.

  ‘What are you going to do now, my friend!’ Pooh Bear yelled to West above the wind.

  ‘This!’

  As West spoke, he jammed his steering levers hard left, and the swamprunner swept leftward, bouncing up the riverbank and out of the water, dry-sliding on its flat-bottomed hull onto the bitumen road close behind the rolling 747!

  It was an incredible sight: a big black 747 rolling along a country road, with a boat skidding and sliding along the road right behind it.

  West saw the loading ramp of the plane, very close now, just a few yards in front of his sliding boat. He also saw the slithering retrieval cable bumping and bouncing on the road right in front of him.

  ‘Stretch! The cable! Snag it!’

  At the bow of the dry-sliding swamprunner, Stretch used a long snagging pole to reach out and snag the retrieval cable’s hook. He got it.

  ‘Hook us up!’ West yelled.

  Stretch did so, latching the cable’s hook around the boat’s bow.

  And suddenly—whap!—the swamprunner was yanked forward, pulled along by the giant 747!

  Dragged now by the Halicarnassus, the swamprunner looked like a waterskier being pulled by a speedboat.

  West yelled into his radio, ‘Sky Monster! Reel us in!’

  Sky Monster initiated the plane’s internal cable spooler, and now the swamprunner began to move gradually forward, hauled in by the cable, pulled closer and closer to the loading ramp.

  While this was going on, the 747’s belly-mounted gun turret continued to swing left and right, raining hell on Kallis’s pursuing swampboats and the two remaining Apaches, keeping them at bay.

  At last, West’s swamprunner came to the loading ramp. West and Pooh Bear grabbed the ramp’s struts, held the boat steady.

  ‘Okay, everyone! All aboard!’ West yelled.

  One after the other, his team leapt from the swamprunner onto the lowered loading ramp—Wizard with Lil
y, then Zoe helping Fuzzy, Stretch helping Big Ears, and finally Pooh Bear and West himself.

  Once West had landed on the loading ramp, he unhooked the swamprunner and the boat fell away behind the speeding 747, tumbling end over end down the little black road.

  Then the loading ramp lifted and closed, and the 747 powered up and pulled away from the American Apaches and swampboats. It hit take-off speed and rose smoothly into the air.

  Safe.

  Clear.

  Away.

  The Halicarnassus flew south over the vast Ethiopian highlands.

  While the others collapsed in the plane’s large main cabin, West went straight up to the cockpit where he found the plane’s pilot: a great big hairy-bearded New Zealand Air Force pilot known as Sky Monster. Unlike the others in the group, this had actually been his call-sign before he’d joined the team.

  West gazed out at the landscape receding into the distance behind them—the swamp, the mountain, the vast plains beyond it—and thought about del Piero’s Europeans engaging the superior American force. Del Piero would have little luck.

  The Americans, as always the last to arrive but the greatest in brute force, had allowed West and the Europeans to squabble over the Piece, to lose men finding it, and then, like opportunistic lions, they’d muscled in on the hyenas and taken the prize.

  And as the Halicarnassus soared into the sky away from the danger, West gazed at the large American force now gathered at the western edge of the swamp.

  A disquieting thought lingered in his mind.

  How had the Americans even known about this place?

  The Europeans very probably had a copy of the Callimachus Text and, of course, they had the boy. But the Americans, so far as West knew, had neither.

  Which meant there was no way they could have known that this was the resting place of the Colossus of Rhodes.

  West frowned.

  Was his team’s cover blown? Had the Americans discovered their base and followed them here? Or worse: was there a traitor in his team who had given their position away with a tracing beacon?

  In any case, Judah now knew that West was involved in this treasure hunt. He might not know exactly who West was working for, but he knew West was involved.

  Which meant that things were about to get very intense.

  Safe at last, but without their prize, West’s plane sped away to the south, disappearing over the mountains.

  Exhausted and dirty, West trudged back down into the main cabin. Head down in thought, he almost walked straight past Lily, curled up in the darkness under the stairs, sobbing quietly.

  West crouched down beside her and with a gentleness that defied his battered state, brushed away her tears. ‘Hey, kiddo.’

  ‘They . . . they just killed him,’ she swallowed. ‘Killed Noddy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why’d they have to do that? He never hurt any of them.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ West said. ‘But what we’re doing here has made some big countries very angry—because they’re afraid of losing their power. That’s why they killed Noddy.’ He tousled her hair as he stood to go. ‘Hey. I’ll miss him, too.’

  Tired, sore and himself saddened by the loss of Noddy, West retired to his small bunkroom in the aft section of the plane.

  He collapsed into his bunk and no sooner had his head hit the pillow than he was asleep.

  He slept deeply, his dreams filled with vivid visions—of booby-trapped chambers, stone altars, chants and screams, waterfalls of lava, and of himself running frantically through it all.

  The interesting thing was, these dreams weren’t the product of West’s imagination.

  They had actually happened, ten years previously . . .

  NORTH-EASTERN UGANDA

  20 MARCH, 1996

  10 YEARS EARLIER

  INSIDE THE KANYAMANAGA VOLCANO

  UGANDA, AFRICA

  20 MARCH, 1996, 11:47 A.M.

  The images of West’s dreams:

  West running desperately down an ancient stone passageway with Wizard at his side, toward the sounds of booming drums, chanting and a woman’s terrified screams.

  It’s hot.

  Hot as Hell.

  And since it’s inside a volcano, it even looks like Hell.

  It is just the two of them—plus Horus, of course. The team does not even exist at this time.

  Their clothes are covered in mud and tar—they’ve survived a long and arduous path to get here. West wears his fireman’s helmet and thick-soled army boots. Ten years younger, at age 27 he is more idealistic but no less intense. His eyes are narrow, focused. And his left arm is his own.

  Boom-boom-boom! go the drums.

  The chanting increases.

  The woman’s screams cut the air.

  ‘We must hurry!’ Wizard urges. ‘They’ve started the ritual!’

  They pass through several booby-trapped passageways—each of which West neutralises.

  Ten disease-carrying molossid bats burst forth from a dark ceiling recess, fangs bared—only to have Horus launch herself off West’s shoulder and plunge into their midst, talons raised. A thudding mid-air collision. Squeals and shrieks. Two bats smack down against the floor, brought down by the little falcon.

  That splits the bats and the two men dash through them, Horus catching up moments later.

  West is confronted by a long downward-sloping shaft. It’s like a 100-metre-long stone pipe, steeply slanted, big enough for him to fit if he sits down.

  Boom go the drums.

  The evil chanting is close now.

  The woman’s frenzied screams are like nothing he has ever heard: pained, desperate, primal.

  West shoots a look to Wizard.

  The older man waves him on. ‘Go! Jack! Go! Get to her! I’ll catch up!’

  West leaps feet-first into the pipe-shaft and slides fast.

  Five traps later, he emerges from the bottom of the long stone pipe on . . .

  . . . a balcony of some kind.

  A balcony which overlooks a large ceremonial cavern.

  He peers out from the balcony’s railing and beholds the horrifying sight.

  The woman lies spreadeagled on a rough stone altar, tied down, legs spread wide, writhing and struggling, terrified.

  She is surrounded by about twenty priest-like figures all wearing hooded black robes and fearsome jackal masks of the Egyptian god Anubis.

  Six of the priests pound on huge lion-skin drums.

  The rest chant in a strange language.

  Incongruously, surrounding the circle of robed priests, all facing outward, are sixteen paratroopers in full battle-dress uniforms. They are French, all brandishing ugly FN-MAG assault rifles, and their eyes are deadly.

  Beyond all this, the chamber itself catches West’s attention.

  Cut into the very flesh of the volcano, it branches off the volcano’s glowing-red core and is octagonal in shape.

  It is also ancient—very ancient.

  Every surface is flat. The stone walls are so perfectly cut they look almost alien. Sharp-edged rectangular pipe-holes protrude from the sidewalls.

  Hieroglyphics cover the walls. In giant letters above the main door, the biggest carving reads:

  ‘Enter the embrace of Anubis willingly, and you shall live beyond the coming of Ra. Enter against your will, and your people shall rule for but one eon, but you shall live no more. Enter not at all, and the world shall be no more.’

  Interestingly, the raised pattern on the high ceiling exactly matches the indentations on the floor fifty feet below.

  The ceiling also features a tiny vertical shaft bored into it—in the exact centre, directly above the altar.

  This ultra-narrow vertical shaft must reach all the way to the surface because right now, a beam of noonday sunlight—perfectly vertical, laser-thin and dazzlingly bright—shines down through the tiny hole, hitting . . .

  . . . the altar on which the woman lies.

  And one other
thing:

  The woman is pregnant.

  More than that.

  She is in the process of giving birth . . .

  It is obviously painful, but it’s not the only reason for her screams.

  ‘Don’t take my child!’ she cries. ‘Don’t . . . you . . . take . . . my . . . baby!’

  The priests ignore her pleas, keep chanting, keep drumming.

  Separated from the ceremonial chamber by a chasm fifty feet wide and God-only-knows how deep, West can only stare helplessly at the scene.

  And then, suddenly, a new cry joins the wild cacophony of sounds.

  The cry of a baby.

  The woman has given birth . . .

  The priests cheer.

  And then the chief priest—he alone is dressed in red robes and wears no mask—pulls the child from the woman’s body and holds it aloft, illuminated by the vertical laser beam of sunlight.

  ‘A boy!’ he cries.

  The priests cheer again.

  And in that moment, as the chief priest holds the child high, West sees his face.

  ‘Del Piero . . .’ he breathes.

  The woman wails, ‘Please God, no! Don’t take him! No! Noooo!’

  But take him they do.

  The priests sweep out the main entrance on the far side of the chamber, crossing a short bridge, their cloaks billowing, the boy held tightly in their midst, flanked by the armed paratroopers.

  As they do, the noonday Sun moves on and the dazzling vertical laser beam of light vanishes.

  The chief priest—Francisco del Piero—is the last to leave. With a final look, he stomps on a trigger stone in the main doorway and then disappears.

  The response is instantaneous.

  Spectacular streams of lava come blurting out of the rectangular holes in the walls of the cavern. The lava oozes across the floor of the chamber, heading toward the central stone altar.

  At the same time, the ceiling of the chamber starts lowering—its irregular form moving towards the matching configuration on the floor. It even has a special indentation in it to accommodate the altar.

  The woman on the altar doesn’t notice.

  Either from emotional torment or loss of blood, she just slumps back onto the altar and goes still, silent.