Seven Ancient Wonders Part 16

He swam to the left, across the swirling tide, to a small stone ledge. Once he was out of the water and on the ledge, he fired a flare into the air.

The dazzling incandescent flare shot high into the air, higher and higher and higher, until it hovered nearly 250 feet above him and illuminated the great s.p.a.ce.

'Mother of G.o.d ...' he breathed.

At that very same moment, the others were peering down the cliff-face outside, waiting for word from West.

Suddenly, his crackly voice came in over their radios: 'Guys. I'm in. Come on down and prepare to be amazed.'

'Copy that, Huntsman,' Zoe said. 'We're on our way.'

Lily stood a short distance from the group, staring inland, out across the plain.

As the others started shouldering into their scuba gear, she said, 'What's that?'

They all turned- -in time to see a C-130 Hercules cargo plane bank lazily around in the sky high above them, and release about a dozen small objects from its rear.

The objects sailed down through the air in co-ordinated spiralling motions.

Parachutes. Soldiers on parachutes.

Heading straight for their position on the cliff-top!

The Hercules continued on, touching down on the plain several klicks to the east, stopping near one of the larger meteorite craters.

Wizard whipped a pair of high-powered binoculars to his eyes- zoomed in on the plane.

'American markings. Oh, Christ! It's Judah!'

Then he tilted his binoculars upward to see the incoming strike team directly above him.

He didn't need much zoom to see the Colt Commando a.s.sault rifles held across their chests, and the black hockey helmets they wore on their heads.

'It's Kallis and his CIEF team! I can't imagine how, but the Americans have found us! Everybody, move! Down the cable! Into the cave! Now!'

Exactly six minutes later, a pair of American combat boots stomped onto the spot where Wizard had just been standing.

Cal Kallis.

In front of him stood the abandoned Land Rover with its winch cable stretched out over the edge of the cliff-face and down to the waves 400 feet below.

Kallis looked out over the edge just in time to see the last two members of West's team vanish under the waves with scuba gear on.

He keyed his radio mike. 'Colonel Judah, this is Kallis. We've just missed them at the sea entrance. Immediate pursuit is a viable option. Repeat, immediate pursuit is viable. Instructions?'

'Engage in pursuit,' the cold voice at the other end said. 'Instructions are as before: you may kill any of the others, but not West or the girl. Go. We'll enter via the second entrance.'

West's team surfaced inside the dark cave behind the false cliff.

As soon as his head broke the surface, Wizard called, 'Jack! We've got trouble! The Americans are right behind us!'

One by one, West hauled the others out of the water and onto the small stone ledge to the left.

'How?' he said to Wizard.

'I don't know. I just don't know.'

West scowled. 'We'll figure it out later. Come on. I hate hate having to rush through uncharted trap systems and now we've got to. Get a look at this place.' having to rush through uncharted trap systems and now we've got to. Get a look at this place.'

Wizard looked up at the cavern around them.

'Oh my ...' he gasped.

Wizard stared in wonder at the sight. So did the others.

Through sheer force of will, Imhotep VI had indeed constructed a ceiling ceiling over the natural inlet-turning it into a most unique cavern. over the natural inlet-turning it into a most unique cavern.

It wasn't wide, maybe twenty metres on average, fifty at the widest. But it was long, superlong. Now lit by many flares, it was revealed to be a narrow twisting chasm that stretched away into darkness for several hundred metres.

Its side walls were sheer and vertical, plunging into the water. Spanning the upper heights of these walls, however, were ma.s.sive beams of granite-each the size of a California Redwood-laid horizontally side-by-side across the width of the inlet, resting in perfectly fitted notches dug just below ground level.

At some time in the distant past, this granite ceiling had been covered over with sand, concealing the entire inlet.

Behind West's team stood the great wall that sealed the inlet off from the sea. Four hundred feet tall, it was a colossal structure, strong and proud, and on this side its giant granite bricks had not been camouflaged to match the coastline. It looked like a ma.s.sive brick wall.

Of immediate importance to West and his team, however, was what lay behind this wall.

The roofed chasm.

Cut into the sheer cliffs on either side of the chasm's central waterway were a pair of narrow ledge-like paths.

The two paths ran in identical manner on either side of the twisting, bending chasm-perfect mirror images of each other. They variously rose to dizzying heights as long bending stairways or descended below the waterline; they even delved momentarily into the walls themselves before emerging again further on. At many points along the way, the paths and staircases had crumbled, leaving voids to be jumped.

The waterway itself was also deadly. Fed by the surging tide outside, small whirlpools dotted its length, ready to suck down the unwary adventurer who fell in, while two lines of tooth-like boulders blocked the way for any kind of boat.

Spanning the watercourse was a beautiful multi-arched aqueduct bridge built in the Carthaginian style, but sadly it was horribly broken in the middle.

As a final touch, vents in the walls spewed forth plumes of steam, casting an ominous haze over the entire scene.

Wizard raised a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes and peered down the length of the great chasm.

The world went luminescent green.

In deep shadow at the far end of the cavern, only partially visible beyond its twists and turns, he saw a structure. It was clearly huge, a fortress of some kind, with two high-spired towers and a great arched entrance, but because of the bends in the chasm and the haze, he couldn't see it in its entirety.

'Hamilcar's Refuge,' he breathed. 'Untouched for over 2,000 years.'

'Maybe not,' West said. 'Look over there.'

Wizard did, and his jaw dropped.

'My goodness ...'

There, wrecked against some rocks in the middle of the waterway, lying half-in half-out of the water, was the great rusted hulk of a World War IIera submarine.

Emblazoned on its conning tower, corroded by time and salt, were the n.a.z.i swastika and the gigantic number: 'U-342'.

'It's a n.a.z.i U-boat ...' Big Ears breathed.

Zoe said, 'Hessler and Koenig...'

'Probably,' Wizard agreed.

'Who?' Big Ears asked.

'The famous n.a.z.i archaeological team: Herman Hessler and Hans Koenig. They were experts on the Capstone, and also founding members of the n.a.z.i Party, so they were buddies of Hitler himself. In fact, with Hitler's blessing, they commanded a top secret scientific expedition to North Africa in 1941, accompanied by Rommel's Afrika Korps.'

Big Ears said, 'Let me guess, they were after the Capstone, they disappeared and were never heard from again?'

'Yes and no,' Zoe answered. 'Yes, they were after the Capstone, and yes, Hessler never returned, but Koenig did, only to be caught by the British when he arrived, on foot, in Tobruk, staggering out of the desert, starving and almost dead from thirst. I believe he was ultimately handed over to the Americans, who asked to interrogate him. Koenig would ultimately be taken back to the States with a bunch of other German scientists, where I believe he still lives.'

West turned to Wizard. 'How far behind us is Kallis?'

'Five minutes at the most,' Wizard said. 'Probably less.'

'Then we have to get cracking. Sorry, Zoe, but you'll have to continue the history lesson on the way. Come on, people. Dump your bigger scuba tanks, but keep your pony bottles and your masks-we might need them.' A pony bottle was a small handheld scuba tank with a mouthpiece. 'Wizard, fire up a Warbler or two.'

The First Staircase (Ascending) West and his team took the left-hand cliff-path.

It quickly became a staircase that rose and twisted up the left-hand wall like a slithering snake. After a minute of climbing, West was 80 feet above the swirling waterway below.

At two points along the ascending stone staircase there were four-foot gaps that preceded stepping-stone-like ledges.

And facing onto those ledges were wall-holes just like the one that Fuzzy had neutralised at the base of the quarry in Sudan.

West didn't know what deadly fluid these wall-holes spewed forth, for the n.a.z.is had-very conveniently-neutralised them long ago, riveting sheets of plate steel over the holes, then laying steel catwalk-gangways over the gaps in the stairs.

West danced across the first catwalk-bridge and past the sealed wall-hole.

Whump!

A great weight of some unseen liquid banged against the other side of the steel plate, trying to burst its way through. But the plate held and West and his team ran by it.

No sooner were they past the second plugged-up wall-hole than- Zing-smack!

A bullet sizzled past their heads and ricocheted off the wall above them.

Everyone spun.

To see a member of Kallis's CIEF team hovering in the water at the base of the great wall, his Colt rifle raised and aimed.

The CIEF man let fly with a spray on full auto.

But Wizard had initiated a Warbler in Big Ears's backpack and the bullets fanned outward, away from the fleeing group.

More CIEF men surfaced at the base of the false wall-until there were three, six, ten, twelve of them gathered there.

West saw them.

And once all his people were past the two gaps in the rising staircase, he jimmied the two n.a.z.i gangways free, sending them free-falling into the water 80 feet below. Then he used his X-bar like a crowbar to prise off the n.a.z.i plate covering the second wall-hole. The plate came free, exposing the hole.

Then West took off after the others.

The Crucifixes

Up they ran, following the narrow winding staircase that hugged the left-hand cliff.

About 150 feet up, they came to a wider void in the stairs, about twenty feet across.

Some handholds had been gouged out of the cliff-face, allowing one to climb sideways across the void, resting one's feet on a two-inch-wide mini-ledge.

Strange X-shaped hollows-each the size of a man-lined the wall of the void, curiously in sync with the handholds.

'Crucifixes,' Wizard said as West caught up. 'Nasty. Another of Imhotep VI's favourites.'