Seven Ancient Wonders (42 page)

At length, they came to the point where the stalactite met the ceiling of the supercavern.

Here, a rotten wooden catwalk stretched out from the stalactite across the upper surface of the great cave.

The ancient catwalk threaded itself through several U-shaped beams that hung from the ceiling, and it stretched for about fifty metres before it stopped just short of a very large recess in the ceiling.

Handrungs continued from there, heading out across the ceiling and up into the dark recess. To hang from the handrungs meant dangling by your hands high above the quicksand lake 500 feet below.

‘This is it,’ West said. ‘This is where all roads end.’

‘Then go,’ Avenger said. ‘You may even take the Arab with you—although I shall keep the girl with me as insurance.’

West and Pooh Bear ventured out across the ancient catwalk, high above the supercavern.

The wood creaked beneath their feet. Dust and debris fell off the catwalk’s underside, sailing all the way down to the sand-lake. Twice the catwalk lurched suddenly, as if the entire assembly was going to fall.

They reached the end of the catwalk.

‘I’ll go first,’ West said, eyeing the handrungs. ‘I’ll trail a return rope as I go. If the Piece is up in that recess, we’ll need a rope to send it back.’

Pooh Bear nodded. ‘I want to kill them all, Huntsman, for holding a gun to her head.’

‘Me, too. But we have to stay alive. So long as we’re breathing, we’ll still have a chance to do exactly that,’ West said. ‘The key is to stay breathing.’

‘Be careful.’

‘I’ll try, buddy.’

And with that, West grasped the first handrung, and swung out onto it, 500 feet above the world.

Against the spectacular backdrop of the mighty Hanging Gardens, the tiny figure of Jack West Jr swinging hand-over-hand across the rungs in the ceiling of the supercavern looked positively microscopic.

Fluttering near him, watching over him as always, was Horus.

Trailing a ‘return rope’ from his belt—a rope that went all the way back to Pooh Bear—he came to the large recess in the ceiling.

It was shaped like a trapezoid, with steep inwardly-slanting walls tapering upwards to a point. More handrungs ran in a line up the slanting wall—so that it was now like free-climbing up an overhang, with your legs hanging beneath you.

But it was the focal point of the recess—the highest point—that seized West’s attention.

It was a square horizontal ledge cut into the rock, about the size of a large refrigerator.

In stark contrast to the rough rocky surface of the rest of the recess, it was ornately decorated—with gold and jewels, making it look like a shrine.

From his current position, West couldn’t see inside it. He scaled the handrungs on the near side of the recess, holding his entire body up with only his arms.

He arrived at the ledge, did a strenuous chin-up to raise his head above its rim.

And his eyes widened.

Sitting there before him, mounted proudly inside this exceedingly difficult to reach altar, was a medium-sized golden trapezoid.

The Hanging Gardens Piece.

It was one of the middle Pieces, about the size of a washing basket. Too big for one man to carry by himself. He pulled out his pressure-gun, fired a piton into the rockwall, looped his rope around it.

‘Pooh Bear,’ he said into his mike. ‘Can you come over here? I need your help. Avenger: send some of your people to the other end of our rope to catch this when we send it back.’

Pooh Bear joined West—after a precarious climb—and together they managed to pull the Piece from its holy alcove and, placing it safely in a pulley-harness that hung from the return rope, they sent it whizzing back down the return rope to the catwalk.

Nestled in its harness, the Piece slid down the length of the rope, arrived back at the catwalk, where Avenger caught it with gleaming greedy eyes.

‘
Have you got it?
’ West’s voice said into his earpiece.

Avenger replied: ‘Yes, we have it. Thank you, Captain West, that will be all. Goodbye.’

And with that Avenger cut the return rope at his end and let it swing out over the void.

From his position, West saw the rope go slack, now only hanging from its piton at his end.

‘Oh, shit!
Shit!
’ he swung past Pooh Bear, moving fast down the handrungs in the slanting wall of the recess, reaching the bottom— the flat ceiling of the supercavern—just in time to see Avenger and his men run to the far end of the catwalk and toss three hand grenades behind them.

The grenades bounced along the rotten wooden catwalk.

And detonated.

The ancient catwalk never stood a chance.

The grenades exploded—and with a pained shrieking, the catwalk fell away from the ceiling. . . 

. . . and sailed in a kind of slow motion all the way down to the sand-lake, 500 feet below.

West watched it all the way, knowing exactly what this meant.

With the catwalk gone, he and Pooh Bear had no way to get back to the stalactite.

The horror of their predicament hit home.

Lily and the Piece were in the hands of the escaping Israelis, the Americans were banging on the door, and now . . . 
now
he and Pooh were stranded
on the ceiling
of the biggest cave he had ever seen with no way or hope of getting back.

After watching the destruction of the catwalk with grim satisfaction, Avenger scooped up Lily. He turned to head back down the stalactite’s spiralling path.

‘We won’t be needing Captain West or the Arab anymore. Nor—’ he drew his pistol—‘will we be needing you, Mr Zae—’

But Mustapha Zaeed, his animal instincts ever alert, had already seen what was coming.

By the time Avenger had his pistol drawn, Zaeed had already broken into a run—dashing off down the path and into one of its cross-tunnels.

‘He won’t get far. Come. Let’s get out of here.’ With Lily in his grasp, he led his men down the path.

‘Huntsman,’ Pooh Bear gasped. ‘I’m . . . er . . . in some trouble here . . .’

West rushed back—swinging with his hands across the rocky ceiling—to check on Pooh Bear in the recess.

Pooh was heavier than he was, with far less arm-strength. He wouldn’t be able to hold himself up for long.

West swung alongside him. ‘Hang in there, my friend. No pun intended.’ He quickly tied the now loose return rope around and under Pooh’s armpits—allowing Pooh Bear to hang from it without effort.

As for himself, West could hang from his mechanical arm longer—but not forever.

‘The Israelis?’ Pooh Bear asked.

‘They destroyed the catwalk. Took the Piece and Lily. We’re stranded.’

‘If I ever catch him, I’ll throttle Stretch,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘You know, for a moment there I actually thought he might have become one of us. But I was wrong. Dirty betrayer.’

‘Pooh, right now, I’d just be happy to get out of here alive.’

The Israeli team charged back down the stalactite, with Lily and the Piece in their possession.

As they reached the tip of the great stalactite, they saw their two rear-guards come running into the supercavern.

‘
Sir! The Americans have breached the Giant Stairway! Repeat: the Americans have breached the Giant Stairway! We couldn’t hold them off any longer!
’

‘You held them off long enough! We have the girl and we have the Piece,’ Avenger replied, grinning. ‘Meet us at the ziggurat and proceed to the other side. We’re going out that way!’

Stretch ran behind Avenger, saying nothing, his teeth clenched, his eyes vacant and distant, lost in thought.

The Israeli team reached the bottom of the stalactite—just in time to see Zaeed disappear down the square shaft in the top of the ziggurat: the Priests’ Entrance.

Avenger didn’t care.

Although killing the terrorist would have brought him much kudos back home, Zaeed wasn’t his concern here.

He had to get out.

Only then, as he clambered down the A-frame ladder at the base of the stalactite and stepped down onto the ziggurat, he saw the Americans enter the supercavern.

They came rushing in from the Giant Stairway entrance. But it wasn’t the superlarge force of men he was expecting, it was just ten men.

And oddly, they
didn’t
venture out across the quicksand lake.

No.

Rather, this small group started free-climbing up the sheer wall
above
that entrance, the wall that had filled in the old Grand Archway.

And there they—

‘Oh, no. . . ’ Avenger breathed.

—started planting explosives, heavy-duty Tritonal 80/20 demolition charges.

The Americans worked fast, laying their charges and then getting the hell out of the way.

The result when it came was as spectacular as it was destructive.

With a colossal series of
booms
, the demolition charges went off.

The rockwall filling up the Grand Archway of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was ripped apart by twenty simultaneous blasts. Great starbursts of rock sprayed out from it.

But the charges had been directional, forcing the bulk of the debris to be flung toward the outside world. Only a few smaller boulders landed in the quicksand lake.

Giant holes were opened in the rockwall.

Shafts of sunshine blazed in through them.

And daylight flooded into the supercavern for the first time in 2,000 years, illuminating it gloriously—and in the brilliant light of day, the Gardens took on a whole new level of splendour.

Then these many holes collapsed, forming one great 50-metrewide hole and through this opening, following hard on the heels of the sunlight, came the American helicopters, roaring into the supercavern with a fury.

West couldn’t believe what was happening.

First, he’d been left for dead up in the recess by Avenger.

And now he could only watch in stunned awe as the entire cavern beneath him was flooded with light.

Six, then seven, then eight American choppers—Black Hawks and Apaches—banked and buzzed around the immense cavern, hovering above the ancient ziggurat, rising alongside the great stalactite, searching for the enemy, searching for the Piece.

The roar of their rotors in the cavern was deafening, the wind that they generated, swirling.

Then West saw one of the Black Hawks rise up directly beneath him, saw the circular speed-blur of its rotors, and he thought,
If I fell now, at least death would be quick.

But the Black Hawk hadn’t seen him and Pooh Bear—it was peering
at the stalactite
, searching. . . 

It moved closer to the stalactite, for a better look, and suddenly it wasn’t directly beneath West anymore.

And West saw a way out of his predicament. It was totally crazy, but it might work. . . 

He sprang into action.

‘Pooh Bear, get a handhold. I need that rope and piton.’

Pooh Bear obliged, grabbed a handrung, while—one-handed— West disengaged the piton and wound in the rope. It was about fifty feet in length.

Then he said, ‘Okay, Pooh, now let go of the handrung and grab my waist.’

‘What!’

‘Just do it.’

Pooh Bear did. Now he hung from West . . . as West hung from his superstrong mechanical hand, gripping a handrung.

And then West let go.

They dropped from the ceiling.

Straight
down.

They shot like a bullet past the tail of the Black Hawk. . . 

. . . and as they did so, West hurled his piton—still attached to the rope—
at
the Black Hawk’s landing wheels!

Like a grappling hook, the steel piton looped around the rear landing wheels of the helicopter . . . and caught.

The rope played out before—
snap!
—it went taut and suddenly West and Pooh Bear were
swinging
, suspended from the helicopter’s landing gear, swooping in toward the giant stalactite!

The helicopter lurched slightly with their added weight, but it held its hovering position, anchoring their swing.

They swung in a long swooping arc right over to the path on the flank of the stalactite, where West and Pooh Bear dismounted deftly and released the rope, now back in the game.

‘Never thought I’d be happy to see Judah arrive,’ West said. ‘Come on! We’ve got to save Lily.’

They charged down the path at breakneck speed.

Chaos. Mayhem.

Blazing sunlight.

The roar of helicopters, and now. . . 

. . . hundreds of American regular troops flooded in through the newly-opened Grand Arch.

Avenger’s Israeli team danced down the far side of the ziggurat and raced out over the quicksand lake on that side. As West had seen before, this side was the mirror image of the entry side: it also featured a concealed path just below the surface with a hexagonal well in its centre.

Avenger’s team reached the well, raced down into it in two subgroups, beheld another statue of a proud winged lion.

Avenger and the two Israelis carrying the Piece went first. The trap sprang into action. Quicksand flooded in. The one-gate cage revolved. But they sloshed through the inky sand and emerged from the other side with little difficulty.