‘Long enough.’ Zoe turned to Tracy Smith. ‘We can’t wake entire cities with this serum. We’ll need to find the blue bell to do that. But this totally changes everything.’
From there they’d raced to Jerusalem and found Jack beneath the walls of the Old City just in time to inject the serum behind his ears and whisk him away from Jaeger Zwei and his bronzemen.
Once they were safe in the underground garage, Tracy woke Pooh Bear and Easton, too.
Everyone praised little Roxy and her desperate dragging of Jack. The few precious seconds the little poodle had bought him may well have saved his life.
Jack scratched Roxy behind the ear and her tail wagged with joy.
At which point, they got a call from Alby.
Alby was delighted to hear about Lily’s awakening and the effectiveness of Tracy’s serum.
‘Rufus and I are at the spaceport,’ he reported. ‘Looks like it’s still in working order. And one other thing: I did some extra research on the way here. I think I’ve found the last iron mountain.’
Airspace over Libya
25 December, 2020 hours
Alby had figured it out on the way to his peculiar destination.
While Rufus had flown the Sukhoi, Alby had sat in the rear gunner’s seat, absorbed in his research, looking for the location of the fifth and last iron mountain, all the while aware that the clock to reaching the Supreme Labyrinth was ticking relentlessly downward.
After two hours, he discovered something promising.
He found it when he glanced back at the research he’d been doing at Hades’s estate in Alsace-Lorraine—just before it had been raided by Sphinx’s bronzemen—and the information buried in Jack’s old documents relating to his mission regarding the Seven Ancient Wonders and the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Alby pulled up the translation from Khufu’s edict that had been found inside the Great Pyramid:
Oh, great and wise Overlords,
I have done as you commanded.
I have built the mighty structure that will capture and contain the awesome power of Ra’s Destroyer.
I built it near Aker, who, ever alert, watches over the impossible maze from his sacred mountaintop perch.
When death takes me, I will be laid inside this same mighty structure and use it as my tomb.
When he had first read this, Alby had been drawn to the mention of an impossible maze.
This time, he decided to delve further into the idea of mountains near the Giza necropolis.
Nothing of note came up with his standard internet and library database searches.
Although he did get one hit for a PDF document titled: city of cairo: department of civil engineering gpr report into al-qadir apartment complex in western cairo. It was dated January 2007.
It was one of those obscure things you got when you did an online search.
Alby clicked on it anyway, just to see what it was.
What he found was a very dry and very boring engineering report by some civil engineers into a new apartment complex that was being built on the western outskirts of Cairo near the pyramids.
When they had done a Ground Penetrating Radar study of the bedrock below the site of the new buildings, the engineers had struck solid granite.
The report read:
GPR soundings indicate a large sub-stratum level of granite. Seems to rise gradually in the direction of the nearby Giza plateau [ref: image attached below].
Lateral cross-sections show the outline of a conical underground mass that by our reckoning would peak near the plateau. We might have to refer this to the Antiquities Department . . .
Alby frowned.
A conical underground mass? On the western edge of Cairo, near the Giza plateau?
He thought about that.
The movement of desert sands in Egypt could be profound. Entire temples had been buried by encroaching sand. The Sphinx itself had been buried to the neck for many centuries in sand that had crept in from the desert to the west of it.
If something as big as the Sphinx could be covered in sand, it was entirely possible that, if left unchecked for thousands of years, the sands of the desert could conceal a low mountain.
Alby clicked further through the engineering document and suddenly he found a picture.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he said.
The picture leapt out at him.
It may not have meant anything to some city engineers, but there it was, as clear as day: the Sphinx sitting atop a different kind of subterranean stone, an underground mountain.
Alby hurriedly typed ‘Aker, images’ into his search engine, expecting to find some kind of bird, given that Khufu had mentioned Aker watching over the maze from his sacred mountaintop perch.
But when he saw the first image that came up, he reared back in surprise.
The image of Aker was of two recumbent lions facing in opposite directions, their bodies joined.
‘Oh, man . . . why didn’t I see it before?’ Alby breathed. ‘The uraeus in the Vatican. The photos Mae and Lynda saw there. It was right in front of us all along.’
In the pilot’s seat in front of Alby, Rufus could hear him muttering.
‘What’s got your goat, kid?’ he asked.
‘Rufus,’ Alby said, ‘someone ordered the pharaoh Khufu to build the Great Pyramid, so he did, near a thing he called Aker. Now, this Aker is very important to us right now, because not only does it look out over the labyrinth we’re searching for, I’m pretty sure it also sits on the summit of the fifth iron mountain. Rufus, I think I know what Aker is.’
‘What?’
‘Aker is the most famous statue on Earth. Aker is the Great Sphinx at Giza.’
‘If the Sphinx sits atop the last iron mountain,’ he reasoned, ‘where’s the entrance to its internal temple?’
Like a lightning bolt, it hit him.
‘Wait, I’ve seen that entrance!’ he said aloud.
Rufus was still flying. ‘Kid, what are you talking about?’
Alby started tapping furiously on his laptop until he found them: the photos Mae had taken at the Vatican Secret Archives and sent to the team.
Two images of the Sphinx.
The first was the famous sketch that Vivant Denon had drawn during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798:
‘Oh, wow . . .’ Alby breathed as he looked at the sketch again.
He must have seen this image a dozen times before, but this time he focused not on the gigantic stone head sticking up from the sand but on the men standing on top of it.
‘I never saw what they were doing before.’
Now that he had a reason to look more closely at the drawing, the figures in it stood out.
The men had not just been included in the drawing to give the Sphinx scale. They were doing things.
Two things, to be precise.
Three men stood on top of the Sphinx.
One, standing at the forward edge of the massive head, held a weighted rope in front of its forehead, as if taking a measurement.
Alby said, ‘He’s trying to recreate the uraeus.’
More importantly for Alby, however, was one of the other two men.
He was climbing out of the Sphinx’s head.
‘That’s the entrance,’ Alby breathed.
To confirm it, he brought up the other photo Mae had sent from the Vatican, the aerial shot of the Great Sphinx taken some time in the 1920s:
And there it was.
On the crown of the Sphinx’s head was a round hole, no doubt the same hole Napoleon’s men had been using in Denon’s sketch.
A quick search of French museum pieces recording Napoleon’s famous visit to Egypt brought up an obscure diary entry written by Napoleon himself:
My men found a narrow shaft that delved down into th
e head of the great stone beast. Only a single man could fit inside this mysterious shaft.
But our explorations ended in disappointment. The shaft ended abruptly two fathoms down, blocked by centuries of clogged sand that had become solid stone.
Alby shook his head.
Two fathoms was about twelve feet.
If only Napoleon had dug through the stone floor at the base of the narrow shaft, he might have found something incredible.
‘Rufus, I just found what we need,’ he said.
‘Do you want to go somewhere else now?’ Rufus asked.
Alby did some quick calculations of the moon’s orbit.
It would be directly over Giza in a few hours, at 2:25 a.m. local time, and it would stay there for thirteen minutes.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We still have to get to our destination. Because while Jack goes inside the Sphinx at Giza, we have to uncover that pedestal on the moon.’
Airspace over Egypt
26 December, 0155 hours
As the massive C-5 Super Galaxy cargo plane made the short hop from Jerusalem to Cairo, Jack sat down in the hold of the plane with Lily.
After all the chaos in Jerusalem—Rastor and the blasted-open Temple Mount, Mae’s death, Jack’s brush with the Siren sleep—it was their first real chance to catch up.
Indeed, it had been almost a month since Jack had actually spoken with Lily: the last time had been back in London, before she had been kidnapped by the Knights of the Golden Eight and delivered to Sphinx.
‘I was a blubbering mess, kiddo,’ Jack said, ‘when I thought you were dead.’
Lily nodded. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘I do it all for you. Just trying to make sure there’s a world for you to live in.’
‘I know, Dad.’
‘It’s all gonna come to a head soon,’ Jack said softly. ‘At the Labyrinth. There’s no comeback after that. No catching up. No second chances. This is about to become an all or nothing scenario.’
‘Yeah,’ Lily said.
‘It might get crazy,’ Jack said. ‘Might have to do some desperate things.’
‘More desperate than usual?’
‘I’m thinking a whole new level of “drastic”,’ Jack said. ‘It’s so good to be with you again. It’s all I ever want or need.’
Lily reached over and gave him a hug. ‘You’re the best, Dad.’
As she released him, Jack pulled out his cell phone. ‘Oh, speaking of parents.’
He opened a secure file in his phone and brought up an email from his mother.
It was titled ‘MY MESSAGE FROM THE OTHER SIDE’.
Jack clicked on it.
The first line read:
Jack, please read this with Zoe and Lily.
Jack called for Zoe to come down to the hold and join them. When she arrived, they read Mae Merriweather’s last words together.
My dearest Cubby, Lily and Zoe,
I suppose it’s over, if you’re reading this.
As I think back on my life, I’m actually very proud of it. It was a good life, an interesting one. I married a brilliant man whom everyone called ‘Wolf’, so of course you, Jack, became ‘Cub’. I loved Wolf once, but brilliant as he was, he turned out not to be so nice. But then, life after him—after I left him—turned out to be wonderful. I spent those years happily delving into my one true love: history.
But of all the things I’ve accomplished, the greatest one is you, Cubby.
The quiet little boy who became a man. And the best kind of man. Not some nerveless hero or even some famous warrior of legend, just a man for others. No mother could be prouder.
Cubby, the loyalty you receive from your merry band of friends—Zoe and Lily, Zahir and Benjamin, Sky Monster (I confess I don’t know what his actual name is) and even your dogs—is merely the universe giving back to you what you gave first.
Zoe: thank you for loving my son. Like most men, he probably doesn’t say it enough, but he adores you. Thank you.
And Lily. Kid. You are unique. And not because you can translate some ancient language. It’s because you are you. With your blazingly inquisitive mind and your delightful personality. You have a light. Shine it. Don’t let anyone dim it.
(Oh, and look after your dad. He worries about you. And date that Alby kid. I like him. Girls throughout history have always learned this lesson way too late: it’s not the guys in motorcycle jackets who you want to be with; it’s the ones with glasses and smarts and kind hearts. And Alby’s got all of those and more. Sorry, nosy grandma moment there.)
Well, I guess I’d better sign off. I imagine you still have work to do.
Thanks for letting me join you on your adventures. History was never more fun.
I had the time of my life.
Mae
Lily sniffed back sobs.
Zoe put her arm around Jack.
None of them said anything.
Jack thought about his mother. Small in stature but big in brains, she’d been tough and strong, unbending and formidable. She’d been a gifted teacher, an inspirational historian and a great mum.
‘We’ll miss you, Mum,’ Jack whispered.
Then Sky Monster’s voice squawked over the intercom: ‘Jack, we’ve started our descent into Cairo. The city looks asleep—from the ringing of a bell, it seems—but I can see some floodlights over by the pyramids. Someone got here ahead of us.’
Cairo International Airport
Cairo, Egypt
26 December, 0200 hours
7 hours till Labyrinth gates close
Cairo International Airport lay completely still.
Nothing stirred.
Even though it was two in the morning, normally there would be some movement at the airport—the odd maintenance truck or catering van; the usual night-time comings and goings of an international airport.
But tonight, thanks to a Siren bell, all of Cairo, including its airport, lay silent and empty.
The various vans, trucks and police cars at the airport all sat motionless, some of them with drivers slumped over their steering wheels.
Even the military vehicles in one corner of the airport—a Hercules cargo plane, two attack choppers and some jeeps mounted with 50-millimetre cannons—sat on the tarmac, completely still, with soldiers, pilots and maintenance crews lying on the ground beside them.
This was how Jack’s massive C-5 Super Galaxy landed unimpeded at Cairo Airport, without so much as a challenge from the tower.
As it touched down, Jack turned to the two most important people in his life.
‘Zoe. Lily. I want you both to do this Fall with me. Only a person with the mark on their hand can sit on the throne at the centre of the Supreme Labyrinth at the end of all this. I hate to say it, but we may not all make it that far, so having three of us with the mark gives us a better chance. You good with that?’
‘Yes,’ Lily said solemnly.
‘Sure,’ Zoe said.
No sooner had the big Super Galaxy rumbled to a halt than the three of them ran out of it, flanked by Pooh and Stretch.
They leapt into a nearby abandoned police car, fired it up and sped away into Cairo.
Aloysius, still groggy from his Siren sleep, stayed with Easton to guard the plane alongside Easton’s mini-legion of palemen in the hold. Sister Lynda and Tracy Smith remained on board as well, to do more research and to look into ways of making larger batches of Tracy’s serum.
Jack’s police car sped toward the pyramids that towered over the western edge of the city.
It was 2:01 a.m.
The moon would be directly over Giza at 2:25.
They had twenty-four minutes.
ZAPADNY COSMODROME
LIBYA
Zapadny Cosmodrome
Libyan Desert
&nb
sp; 26 December, 0200 hours
At the same time as Jack and his team were arriving in Cairo, Alby and Rufus were arriving at their destination . . . in Libya.
It was a spaceport.
A working satellite launch facility located in the middle of the vast Libyan desert about a hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast.
Alby’s jaw dropped at the sight of it.
Its scale was incredible. It was, quite simply, enormous in every way.
There was a reason for this.
While modern privately-owned satellite launch facilities are rather compact affairs, with slender rockets and minimal footprints, this spaceport had been built in the 1970s by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
The Soviets had built the facility in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya—of course after paying Gaddafi a giant bribe—to perform equatorial launches of satellites destined for geosynchronous orbits.
It was much more difficult to attain such orbits from the USSR’s other main launch sites, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Vostochny—or ‘eastern’—Cosmodrome in Siberia. Indeed this facility’s original name was the Zapadny—or western—Cosmodrome.
Since it had been built by Soviet engineers, it was very grey, very ugly and very, very big.
The three towering sheds that had once housed multi-stage Russian rockets were twenty storeys tall. The tracks that led from them to the launchpad were as wide as four trucks parked side by side.
And then there was the launchpad itself, the centrepiece of the spaceport.
It was built in the same brutish Soviet style as the one at Baikonur, which was to say that the launchpad was a gigantic iron platform that, thanks to two colossal concrete pillars, jutted out from a cliff edge over a vast cement spillway two hundred feet deep.
During a launch, when the rocket blasted off from the elevated pad, it sent a downblast of fire and smoke into the spillway below, safely away from the command buildings atop the cliff.
After many superhot launches over the last forty years, the concrete surface of the spillway was charred black, like the walls of an old fireplace.
The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 26