Seven Deadly Wonders Read online

  “Oh my God, we’re too late,” he breathes.

  West stands quickly.

  “It was del Piero,” he says. “With French paratroopers.”

  “The Vatican and the French have joined forces …” Wizard gasps.

  But West has already raised a pressure gun and fires it into the lowering ceiling of the chamber. The piton drives into the stone. A rope hangs from it.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” Wizard asks, alarmed.

  “I’m going over there,” West says. “I said I’d be there for her and I failed. But I’m not going to let her get crushed to nothing.”

  And with that, he swings across the gaping chasm.

  The ceiling keeps lowering.

  The lava keeps spreading across the floor from either side, approaching the altar.

  But with his quick swing, West beats it, and he rushes to the middle of the chamber, where he stands over the body of the woman.

  A quick pulse check reveals that she is dead.

  West squeezes his eyes shut.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Malena …” he whispers, “… so sorry.”

  “Jack! Hurry!” Wizard calls from the balcony. “The lava!”

  The lava is thirty feet away … and closing on him from both sides.

  Over at the main entrance, a waterfall of oozing lava pours out of a rectangular hole above the doorway, forming a curtain across the exit.

  West places his hand on the woman’s face, closes her eyes. She is still warm. His gaze sweeps down her body, over the sagging skin of her abdomen, the skin over her pregnant belly now rumpled with the removal of the child formerly there.

  Then for some reason, West touches her belly.

  And feels a tiny little kick.

  He leaps back, startled.

  “Max!” he calls. “Get over here! Now!”

  A gruesome yet urgent image: flanked by the encroaching lava and the steadily lowering ceiling, the two men perform a Caesarian delivery on the dead woman’s body using West’s Leatherman knife.

  Thirty seconds later, Wizard lifts a second child from the woman’s slit-open womb.

  It is a girl.

  Her hair is pressed against her scalp, her body covered in blood and uterine fluid, her eyes squeezed shut.

  West and Wizard, battered and dirty, two adventurers at the end of a long journey, gaze at her like two proud fathers.

  West in particular gazes at the little infant, entranced.

  “Jack!” Wizard says. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”

  He turns to grab their loosely hanging rope—just as the spreading lava reaches it and ignites it with a whoosh!

  No escape that way.

  Holding the baby, West spins to face the main entrance.

  Fifty feet of inch-deep lava blocks the way.

  And then there’s the curtain of falling lava blocking the doorway itself.

  But then he sees it, cut into the left side of the stone doorframe: a small round hole maybe a handspan wide, veiled by the same waterfall of superheated lava.

  West says, “How thick are your soles?”

  “Thick enough for a few seconds,” Wizard replies. “But there’s no way to switch off that lavafall.”

  “Yes, there is.” West nods over at the small hole. “See that hole. There’s a stone dial inside it, hidden behind that curtain of lava. A cease mechanism that switches off the lavafall.”

  “But Jack, anyone who reaches in there will lose their—”

  Wizard sees that West isn’t listening. The younger man is just staring intently at the wall hole.

  West bites his lip, thinking the unthinkable.

  He swallows, then turns to Wizard: “Can you build me a new arm, Max?”

  Wizard freezes.

  He knows it’s the only way out of this place.

  “Jack. If you get us out of here, I promise you I’ll build you a better arm than the one you were born with.”

  “Then you carry her and let’s go.” West hands the baby to Wizard.

  And so they run, West in the lead, Wizard and the baby behind him, across the inch-deep pool of slowly spreading lava, crouching beneath the descending ceiling, the thick soles of their boots melting slightly with every stride.

  Then they arrive at the lava-veiled doorway, and with no time to waste, West goes straight to the small hole next to the doorframe, takes a deep breath and—

  —thrusts his left arm into the hole, up to the elbow, through the waterfall of lava!

  “Ahhhh!”

  The pain is like nothing he has ever known. It is excruciating.

  He can see the lava eating through his own arm like a blowtorch burning through metal. Soon it will eat all the way through, but for a short time he still has feeling in his fingers and that’s what he needs, because suddenly he touches something.

  A stone dial inside the wall hole.

  He grips the dial, and a moment before his entire lower arm is severed from his body, Jack West Jr. turns it and abruptly all the lavafalls flowing into the chamber stop.

  The ceiling freezes in mid descent.

  The lavafall barring the doorway dries up.

  And West staggers away from the wall hole…

  … to reveal that his left arm has indeed been severed at the elbow. It ends at a foul stump of melted bone, flesh, and skin.

  West sways unsteadily.

  But Wizard catches him and the two of them—plus the child—stumble out through the doorway where they fall to the floor of a stone tunnel.

  West collapses, gripping his half arm, going into shock.

  Wizard puts the baby down and hurriedly removes West’s melting shoes—before also removing his own a bare second before their soles melt all the way through.

  Then he dresses West’s arm with his shirt. The red-hot lava has seared the wound, which helps.

  Then it is over.

  And the final image of West’s dream is of Wizard and himself, sitting in that dark stone tunnel, spent and exhausted, with a little baby girl between them, in the belly of an African volcano.

  And Wizard speaks:

  “This … this is unprecedented. Totally unheard of in all recorded history. Two oracles. Twin oracles. And del Piero doesn’t know …”

  He turns to West. “My young friend. My brave young friend. This complicates matters in a whole new way. And it might just give us a chance in the epic struggle to come. We must alert the member states and call a meeting, perhaps the most important meeting of the modern age.”

  O’SHEA FARM

  COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND

  OCTOBER 28, 1996, 5:30 P.M.

  To the untrained eye, it seemed like just another lonely old farmhouse on a hilltop overlooking the Atlantic. To the trained eye, however, it was something else entirely. The experienced professional would have noticed no less than twenty heavily armed Irish commandos standing guard around the estate, scanning the horizon.

  To be sure, this was an unusual setting for an international meeting, but then again this was not a meeting that the participants wanted widely known.

  The state of the world at that time was grim. Iraq had been chased out of Kuwait, but now it played catand-mouse games with UN weapons inspectors. Europe was furious with the United States over steel tariffs. India and Pakistan, already engaged in a phony war, were both on the verge of entering the Nuclear Weapons Club.

  But all these were big ticket issues, and the small group of nations gathered together today were not big ticket players in world affairs. They were small countries; mice, not lions; relative minnows of world affairs.

  Not for long.

  The mice were about to roar.

  Six delegations now sat in the main sitting room of the farmhouse, waiting. Each national delegation consisted of two or three people—one senior diplomat, and one or two military personnel.

  The view out through the windows was breathtaking—a splendid vista of the wild waves of the Atlantic smashing against the coast—but
no one at this gathering cared much for the view.

  The Arabs checked their watches impatiently, frowning. Their leader, a wily old sheik from the United Arab Emirates named Anzar al Abbas, said: “There’s been no word from Professor Epper for over six months. What makes you think he’ll even come?”

  The Canadians, typically, sat there calmly and patiently, their leader simply saying, “He’ll be here.”

  Abbas scowled.

  While he waited, he flipped through his briefing kit and started rereading the mysterious book extract that had been provided for all the participants at the meeting.

  It was headed “The Golden Capstone”…

  THE GOLDEN CAPSTONE

  From: When Men Built Mountains: The Pyramids by Chris M. Cameron (Macmillan, London, 1989)

  Perhaps the greatest mystery of the pyramids is the most obvious one: the Great Pyramid at Giza stands nine feet shorter than it should.

  For once upon a time at its peak sat the most revered object in all of history.

  The Golden Capstone.

  Or as the Egyptians called it, the Benben.

  Shaped like a small pyramid, the Capstone stood nine feet tall and was made almost entirely of gold. It was inscribed with hieroglyphics and other more mysterious carvings in an unknown language, and on one side—the south side—it featured the Eye of Horus.

  Every morning it shone like a jewel as it received the first rays of the rising sun—the first earthly object in Egypt to receive those sacred rays.

  The Great Capstone was actually made up of seven pieces, its pyramidal form cut into horizontal strips, creating six pieces that were trapezoidal in shape and one, the topmost piece, that was itself pyramidal (small pyramids such as this were called pyramidions).

  We say that the Capstone was made almost entirely of gold, because while its body was indeed crafted from solid gold, it featured a thin borehole that ran vertically down through its core, in the exact center of the Capstone.

  This hollow was about two inches wide and it cut downward through each of the seven pieces, punching holes in all of them. Embedded in each of those circular holes could be found a crystal, not unlike the lens of a magnifying glass. When placed in sequence those seven crystals served to concentrate the Sun’s rays on those days when it passed directly overhead.

  This is a crucial point.

  Many scholars have noted that the construction of the Great Pyramid by the pharaoh Khufu curiously coincides with the solar event known as the Tartarus Rotation. This phenomenon involves the rotation of the Sun and the subsequent appearance of a powerful sunspot that comes into alignment with the Earth.

  Accomplished Sunwatchers that they were, the

  Egyptians certainly knew of the Sun’s rotation, sunspots, and indeed of the sunspot that we call “Tartarus.” Aware of its intense heat, they called it “Ra’s Destroyer.” (They also knew of the smaller sunspot that precedes Tartarus by seven days, and so labeled it “the Destroyer’s Prophet.”)

  The last Tartarus Rotation occurred in 2570 B.C., just a few years after the Great Pyramid was completed. Interestingly, the next Rotation will occur in 2006, on March 20, the day of the vernal equinox, the time when the Sun is perfectly perpendicular to the Earth.

  Those theorists who link the construction of the pyramid to Tartarus also claim that the Capstone’s unique “crystal array” has the ability to capture and harness solar energy, while the more outrageous authors claim it possesses fabulous paranormal powers.

  Having said this, however, it should be noted that the Golden Capstone only sat atop the Great Pyramid for a very short time.

  The day after the Tartarus Rotation of 2570 B.C., the

  Capstone was removed and taken to a secret location where it rested for over two thousand years.

  It has since disappeared from history altogether, so that now all that remains of it is an ominous inscription found on the empty summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza itself.

  Cower in fear, cry in despair,

  You wretched mortals

  For that which giveth great power

  Also takes it away.

  For lest the Benben be placed at sacred site

  On sacred ground, at sacred height,

  Within seven sunsets of the arrival of Ra’s prophet,

  At the high point of the seventh day,

  The fires of Ra’s implacable Destroyer will

  devour us all.

  A door slammed somewhere. Abbas looked up from his reading.

  Footsteps.

  Then the sitting room door opened, and through it stepped—

  Professor Max T. Epper and Captain Jack West Jr. Epper wore a classic academic’s tweed coat. His beard back then was just as white and long as it would be ten years later.

  West wore his miner’s jacket and some brand-new steel-soled boots. His ice-blue eyes scanned the room, sharp as lasers, ever watchful.

  And his left arm ended at the elbow.

  Everyone noticed it.

  Whispers rippled across the room. “The ones who found the Scrolls of the Museion …” one of the Arabs whispered.

  “Epper is Professor of Archaeology at Trinity College in Dublin, a brilliant fellow, but he also has doctorates in physics and electromagnetics …”

  “And Huntsman?” “He was military, but not anymore. Worked alongside the Americans in Iraq in ’91.”

  “What on earth has happened to his arm?”

  Abbas stood up. “Where is the girl, Maximilian? I thought you were bringing her.”

  “We left her at a secure location,” Epper said. “Her safety at this juncture is of paramount importance. Her actual presence at this meeting, my old friend, Anzar, is not.”

  Epper and West sat down at the table, joining the six delegations.

  Epper sat with the Canadians.

  West sat alone, attaching himself to none of the six countries at the table. He was the seventh delegation. His home nation had sent no other representative, having decided that his presence at this meeting was sufficient.

  That nation: Australia.

  The host, the leader of the Irish delegation, General Colin O’Hara, formally opened the meeting.

  “My friends, welcome to Ireland, and to a meeting of tremendous significance. I will get directly to the point. Six months ago, members of a European military-archaeological team found the pregnant wife of the Oracle of Siwa in her hideaway in Uganda. It is not known how they found her, but we do know that the leader of the European expedition was the eminent Vatican historian Father Francisco del Piero. Del Piero’s specialty is ancient Egyptian religious practices, particularly Sun worship.

  “In accordance with the dictates of an ancient Egyptian Sun cult, del Piero and his team took the pregnant woman to a remote volcano in Uganda on the day of the vernal equinox, March 20.

  “At noon on the day of the equinox, by the so-called pure light of the Sun, in a chamber cut into the flank of the volcano, the Oracle’s wife gave birth to a son, whom del Piero immediately abducted.

  “Del Piero and his military escorts then left, leaving the mother to die inside the chamber.

  “But then something most unexpected occurred. “After Dr. del Piero’s team had departed, the Oracle’s wife gave birth to another child, a girl. Through the extraordinary efforts of Professor Epper and Captain West, this baby girl was recovered, alive and well …”

  There was, of course, more to it than that, West thought as he listened.

  He and Epper had actually found the Oracle’s wife a day before the Europeans. Her name was Malena Okombo and she had been living in hiding, in fear of her abusive husband, the present-day Oracle of Siwa. Pregnant with the Oracle’s heir (or heirs), she had fled from his fists and rages, the petulant rages of a spoiled man. West had sympathized with Malena immediately, promised to look after her. But then the Europeans had arrived the following day in great numbers and abducted her—leading to the incident at the volcano.

  O’Hara was sti
ll talking: “It is this extremely fortunate occurrence—the birth of a second Oracle—that brings us together today. Professor Epper, if you will…”

  Epper stood up. “Thank you, Colin.” He addressed the assembled delegates. “Ms. Kissane, gentlemen. Our seven small nations come together today at a pivotal moment in history.

  “The actions of Father del Piero and his men in Uganda can mean only one thing, a most dangerous thing. The Europeans are making their move. After two thousand years of searching, they have just secured the key to discovering the greatest, most sought-after treasure in human history: the Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid.”

  “Allow me to elaborate,” Epper said.

  “As you will have read in your briefing materials, there was once a magnificent Golden Capstone that sat atop the Great Pyramid. It, however, was removed from the apex of the structure soon after the Great Pyramid was completed, staying there for less than a year.

  “It is not mentioned in any Egyptian records after that time nor is its final resting place known.

  “Over the ages since then, the Golden Capstone has been the subject of countless myths and legends. The Persian King, Cambyses, tried to find it at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert, only to lose fifty thousand men in the attempt, consumed in a sandstorm of unusual ferocity.

  “Julius Caesar tried to locate it, but failed. Napoleon brought an entire army to Egypt to find it, and failed. The tale of Jason and the Argonauts and their attempt to acquire a mystical, all-powerful ‘Golden Fleece’—written by Appollonius of Rhodes—is widely believed to be a thinly veiled allegory for the search for the Golden Capstone.

  “But all the legends have one thing in common. In all of them the Capstone is said to possess unusual properties. It is said to be a source of immense power; it is said to contain the secret to perpetual motion; it is said to be a solar polarizer, capable of absorbing the rays of the Sun.

  “And then, of course, there are the occult myths: that the Capstone is a talisman of evil, forged in a bloody ceremony by occultist priests; that the nation that claims it as its own and keeps it in its lands will be unconquerable in battle; that it is a piece of alien technology brought to Earth thousands of years ago as a gift from a higher civilization.”