Seven Ancient Wonders (4 page)

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 the 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.

The lower reaches of the pit, however, had no
side
walls: it just had two wide yawning 8-foot-high passageways that hit the pit at right angles to the slipway. And who knew what came out of them . . .

‘Diorite pit,’ West said. ‘Nothing cuts diorite except an even harder stone called
diolite
. Can’t use a pick-axe to get yourself out.’

‘Be careful,’ Wizard said. ‘The Callimachus Text says this Gate is connected to the next one. By crossing this one, we trigger the Third Gate’s trap-mechanism. We’re going to have to move fast.’

‘That’s okay,’ West said. ‘We’re really quite good at
that
.’

They ended up crossing the pit by drilling steel rock-screws into the stone ceiling with pneumatic pressure-guns. Each rock-screw had a handgrip on it.

But as West landed on the ledge on the other side of the pit, he discovered that the first step on that side was one large trigger stone. As soon as he touched it, the wide step immediately sunk a few inches
into
the floor—

—and
boom!
Suddenly the ground shook and everyone spun. Something large had dropped into the darkened tunnel up ahead of them. Then an ominous
rumbling
sound came from somewhere up there.

‘
Shit!
The next Gate!’ West called.

‘Swear jar . . .’ Lily said.

‘Later,’ West said. ‘Now we
run
! Big Ears, grab her and follow me!’

The Third Gate

Up the steep slipway they ran, keeping to the stairs inside the rails.

The ominous rumbling continued to echo out from the darkness above them.

They kept running, straining up the slope, pausing only once to cross a five-foot-long spiked pit that blocked their way. But strangely, the stone railway tracks of the slipway still flanked this pit, so they all crossed it rather easily by taking a light dancing step on one of the side rails.

As he ran, West fired a flare into the darkness ahead of them—

—and thus revealed their menace.

‘It’s a sliding stone!’ Wizard called. ‘Guarding the Third Gate!’

A giant square-shaped block of granite—its shape filling the slipway perfectly and its leading face covered in vicious spikes—was sliding down the slipway, coming directly towards them!

Its method of death was clear: if it didn’t push you into the spiked pit, it would slide over that pit on the stone runners and push you into the lower diorite pit . . .where it would fall in after you, crushing you, before whatever came out of the side passages made its big entrance.

Jesus.

Halfway between the sliding stone and the Eight, sunken into the angled floor of the slipway, was a doorway that opened onto a horizontal passage.

The Third and last Gate.

The Eight bolted up the slope.

The block gained speed—heading down the slope, propelled only by gravity and its immense bulk.

It was a race to the Gate.

West and Big Ears and the girl came to the doorway cut into the sloping floor, ducked inside it.

Wizard came next, followed by Fuzzy and Princess Zoe.

The sliding granite block slid across the top of the doorway just as the last two members of the team were approaching it.

‘Stretch! Pooh! Hurry!’ West called.

The first man—a tall thin fellow known as Stretch—dived, slithering in under the sliding stone a nanosecond before it completely covered the doorway.

The last man was too late.

He was easily the pudgiest and heaviest in the group. He had the olive skin and deep lush beard of a well-fed Arab sheik. His call-sign in his own country was the rather mighty
Saladin
, but here it was—

‘Pooh Bear! No!
Nooo!
’ the little girl screamed.

The stone slid over the doorway, and despite a final desperate lunge, Pooh Bear was cut off, left in the slipway, at the mercy of the great block.

‘No . . .!’ West called, hitting the underside of the sliding stone as it went by, sweeping the helpless Pooh away with it.

‘Oh dear, poor Zahir . . .’ Wizard said.

For a moment, no-one spoke.

The seven remaining members of the group stood in stunned silence. Lily started to sob quietly.

Then West blinked—something inside him clicking into action.

‘Come on, everyone. We’ve got a job to do and to do it we have to keep moving. We knew this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Hell, this is only the beginning—’

He turned then, gazing at the horizontal corridor awaiting them. At its far end was a ladder cut into the end-wall, a ladder that led up to a circular manhole cut into the ceiling.