Seven Ancient Wonders (17 page)

Technically, they were in Tunisia. The landscape was empty and dry. There wasn’t a village or human settlement for fifty miles in any direction.

In fact, the landscape could better be described as a moonscape: the flat sandplain, the occasional meteorite crater, and of course the chain of mountains guarding the landward approach about a kilometre inland.

‘You know,’ Big Ears said, ‘they filmed
Star Wars
in Tunisia. The Tatooine scenes.’

‘I can see why,’ West said, not turning from the view of the sea. ‘It’s totally alien.’

Wizard came alongside West, handed him a printout. ‘This is the only reference my database has for Hamilcar’s Refuge. It’s a hand-drawn sketch on papyrus found in a worker’s hut in Alexandria, an Egyptian worker who must have worked on Imhotep VI’s reconfiguration of Hamilcar’s Refuge.’

The papyrus sheet bore a carefully-crafted diagram on it:

It was hard to tell exactly what the image depicted. Cut off at the top and bottom, it didn’t seem to show the entire structure.

‘Aqueducts and guard towers,’ West said, ‘and a filled-in excavation tunnel. Jesus, this place must be huge.’ He scanned the landscape all around him, but saw nothing but barren desert and the harsh coast. ‘But if it’s so huge, where the hell is it?’

He checked his printout of the Euclidian clue:

Follow the Deadly Coast of the Phoenicians
To the inlet of the two tridents,
Where you will behold the easier entrance to
The sixth Great Architect’s masterwork.
The Seventh has lain there ever since
.

‘“The inlet of the two tridents”,’ he read aloud. ‘We’ve found the two tridents, so there’s supposed to be an inlet here. But I don’t see one. It’s all just one seamless coastline.’

It was true.

There was no bay or inlet in the coast anywhere nearby.

‘Just hold on a moment . . .’ Epper said.

He dug into his rucksack and extracted a tripod-mounted device.

‘Sonic-resonance imager,’ he said, erecting the tripod on the sand. He then aimed it
downward
and hit a switch. ‘It’ll show us the density of the earth beneath our feet.’

The sonic-resonance imager pinged slowly.

Piiiing-piiiing-piiiing
.

‘Solid sandstone. All the way to the imager’s depth limit,’ Wizard said. ‘As you’d expect.’

Then he swivelled the imager on its tripod and aimed it at the ground a few yards to the west, the section of coastline directly in line with the two tridents—

Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping
. . .

The imager’s pinging went bananas.

West turned to Wizard. ‘Explain?’

The old man looked at his display. It read:

TOTAL DEPTH: 8.0 m.
SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SILICON OVERLAY 5.5 m;
GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.

Wizard said, ‘Depth here is eight metres. Mix of hard-packed sand and granite.’

‘
Eight
metres?’ Pooh Bear said. ‘How can that be? We’re
130
metres above sea level. That would mean there’s 92 metres of empty air beneath that section of ground—’

‘Oh, no way . . .’ West said, understanding.

‘Yes way . . .’ Wizard said, also seeing it.

West looked back inland at the sandplain stretching to the nearest mountain a kilometre away. The sand
appeared
to be seamless. ‘Amazing the things you can do with a workforce of 10,000 men,’ he said.

‘What?
What?
’ Pooh Bear said, exasperated. ‘Would you two
mind telling the rest of us mere mortals what in the blazes you’re talking about?’

West smiled. ‘Pooh. There
was
once an inlet here. I imagine it was a narrow crevice in the coastal cliffs that cut inland.’

‘But it’s not here now,’ Pooh said. ‘How does
an entire inlet
disappear?’

‘Simple,’ West said. ‘It doesn’t. It’s still here. It’s just been hidden. Concealed by the labour of 10,000 workers. The keepers of the Capstone put a roof over the inlet, bricked in the entrance and then covered it all over with sand.’

Five minutes later, Jack West Jr hung from the Land Rover’s winch cable fifteen metres down the face of the coastal cliff, suspended high above the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

He probably could have blasted through the eight metres of sand and granite with conventional explosives, but using explosives was risky when you did not know what lay beneath you—it could close off tunnels or passageways in the system below; it could even bring down the entire structure, and West’s team didn’t have the time or the manpower to sift through thousands of tons of rubble for months.

West now aimed Wizard’s sonic-resonance imager at the vertical cliff-face in front of him.

Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping
. . .

Once again the imager’s pinging went wild.

The display read:

TOTAL THICKNESS: 4.1 m.
SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SANDSTONE OVERLAY 1.6 m;
GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.

West gazed at the cliff-face in wonder. It looked exactly like the rest of the coastline: same colour, same texture; rough and weatherworn.

But it was a hoax, a ruse, an entirely
artificial
cliff.

A false wall.

West smiled, called up. ‘It’s a false wall! Only four metres thick. Granite, with a sandstone outer layer.’

‘
So where is the entrance?
’ Zoe asked over his radio.

West gazed straight down the sheer cliff-face—at the waves crashing at its base.

‘Imhotep VI reconfigured this one. Remember what I said before: he was known for his concealed underwater entrances. Haul me up and prep the scuba gear.’

Minutes later, West again hung suspended from the Land Rover’s superlong winch cable, only now he had been lowered all the way down the false cliff-face. He dangled just a few metres above the waves crashing at its base.

He was wearing a wetsuit, full face-mask, and a lightweight scuba tank on his back. His caving gear—fireman’s helmet, X-bars, flares, ropes, rockscrew drill and guns—hung from his belt.

‘Okay! Lower me in, and do it fast!’ he called into his throat-mike.

The others obeyed and released the cable’s spooler, lowering West
into
the churning sea at the base of the cliff.

West plunged underwater—

—and he saw it immediately.

The vertical cliff continued under the surface, but about 6 metres below the surface it stopped at a distinctly man-made opening: an enormous square doorway. It was huge. With its bricked frame, the doorway looked like a great aeroplane hangar door carved into the submerged rockface.

And engraved in its upper lintel was a familiar symbol:

West spoke into his face-mask’s radio. ‘Folks. I’ve found an opening. I’m going in to see what’s on the other side.’

Guided by his Princeton-Tec underwater flashlight, West swam through the doorway and into an underwater passage that was bounded by walls of granite bricks.

It was a short swim.

About ten metres in, he emerged into a much wider area—and instantly felt the tug of unusually strong tidal motion.

He surfaced in darkness.

While he couldn’t see beyond the range of his flashlight, he sensed that he was at one end of a vast internal space.

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 space.

‘Mother of God . . .’ 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 assault 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
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.