Forty of the bronzemen arrived at the base of the rocket’s gantry tower and started to climb it, heading for Alby.
But he couldn’t leave. He had to make sure the rover didn’t replace the foil on the pedestal until Jack and the others were done.
‘Oh, this is very bad . . .’ Alby said grimly.
Released from its chains, the Falling Temple dropped with frightening speed toward the yawning mouth of the wide round shaft below it.
It fell fast, accelerating quickly.
The monk named Eli looked shocked to see Jack, Lily and Zoe land beside him and place their hands on the other three palm images just as the temple shot through the upper annulus of the fall shaft.
The three lines of the W were seared onto all their thumbs, index and middle fingers as the Falling Temple plummeted down the shaft.
‘Now, run!’ Jack called. ‘We gotta get to the lower altar before the temple passes through the second ring!’
And the race was on.
Wind whipped all around Jack, Lily, Zoe and Eli as they bounded down the slanting levels of the temple’s upper half, running as it fell, with the Omega monk, Brother Eli, always a short distance in the lead.
The walls of the shaft sped by, rushing upward.
The green glow of the beam from the moon lit up everything.
Jack, Lily and Zoe came to the waist of the temple, its widest point, and hurried down a ladder built into it, coming to its spindly lower half.
Jack glimpsed Eli a few paces ahead of them, racing across the width of this level to another ladder at its opposite end.
He gave chase, followed by Lily and Zoe.
At the same time in Libya, the forty bronzemen were now halfway up Alby’s gantry tower, closing in on him at the top of the rocket.
Alby glanced down nervously at them as he continued to operate the controls that kept the pedestal on the moon open.
‘Jack! You done yet? I’ve got a real problem here!’
‘Not yet, Alby!’ Jack called into his radio-mike as he leapt down onto the next lower level.
‘You gotta keep that light from the moon blazing for a little longer, just till we reach the lower altar!’
Down he went, back and forth across each level, sliding down ladders until he slid down a final one and found himself on the bottommost and smallest level of the entire temple—
—where he was confronted by the bulky frame of Brother Eli, blocking the way to the temple’s lower altar two paces behind him.
The walls of the drop shaft continued to whoosh by around them.
‘You have failed, Captain!’ Eli yelled above the wind. ‘In moments, we will pass through the second electromagnetic ring and you will not have your hand pressed against this altar—’
Jack didn’t have time for speeches so he just launched himself forward and tackled Eli—hard—knocking the big monk sideways while Lily and Zoe raced past the two of them and quickly pressed their palms against two of the hand-shaped images on the lower altar.
On the rocket tower in Libya, the bronzemen were now only one level away from Alby, climbing, climbing.
The first bronzeman’s head poked up onto Alby’s level.
Blam!
Alby levelled his pistol and shot the bronzeman in the head with one of his special bullets.
The bronzeman snapped back and fell.
‘Hurry, Jack . . . !’ Alby urged.
Eli and Jack fought on the lowest level of the Falling Temple.
Eli—a big man with speed and strength—quickly slithered behind Jack and wrapped one of his huge forearms around Jack’s neck.
Then he drew a long curved blade and readied to slash it across Jack’s throat when Jack twisted suddenly and lurched forward, pulling Eli with him so that the big monk’s forehead slammed with shocking violence against the hard stone edge of the altar.
It was a horrific blow.
Blood flew.
The monk recoiled, stunned but not killed.
Jack took care of that a moment later.
Freed from Eli’s grip, he kicked him square in the chest, hurling the big monk clear off the platform of the Falling Temple. Eli screamed as he toppled off the still-dropping temple.
On his knees, Jack crawled over to the altar and slammed his palm down on one of the hand images . . .
. . . just as the entire temple whizzed through a second silver ring embedded in the circular wall of the fall shaft . . .
. . . and he roared in pain—as did Lily and Zoe—as the markings were seared into their palms, creating the five-pronged mark on their fingers.
Instantly, the temple’s braking system was activated and it squealed to a halt.
The monk Eli kept falling, screaming shrilly as he vanished into the darkness of the shaft.
He hit the bottom a few seconds later and the screaming stopped.
Breathless and panting, Jack looked at Lily and Zoe.
They all held up their hands.
All three of them bore the five-pointed mark on their right palms.
Jack keyed his radio. ‘Alby! We did it! Get out of there!’
Alby was now firing wildly and repeatedly at the swarm of bronzemen assailing his position.
His gantry tower was completely crawling with them.
They just kept coming. No sooner would he blast one away with a special bullet than another would appear in the first one’s place.
Alby kept firing grimly, while also manning the rover controls. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so vitally important.
He had to keep the green light beam on the moon alive until Jack and the others completed the Fall.
Another bronzeman sprang up suddenly from below him, so close that Alby could see not only its beak-like proboscis, but the many intricate markings engraved all over its shiny bronze skull.
A mixture of swirls, geometric shapes and Thoth text, the markings looked like tattoos etched into the automaton’s metal pate.
Right now, Alby didn’t care what they were.
He shot the bronzeman in the face and the back of its head blew out and it toppled off the rocket.
And then Jack’s voice exploded in his ear:
‘Alby! We did it! Get out of there!’
Alby was thrilled to hear Jack’s command but actually getting out of his predicament was another thing entirely—
Clang!
Something banged against the bridge connecting his platform to the gantry tower.
A cage hanging from a cable.
A cable that hung from the belly of the Sukhoi!
Rufus had brought the fighter-bomber into a hover directly above the rocket and unspooled the cage from the plane’s bomb bay.
‘Get in, kid!’ his voice rang in Alby’s earpiece.
Alby moved instantly.
He dived for the cage, catching it with his fingertips as the bronzemen overwhelmed his position atop the rocket. No sooner had he gone than the Russian rover on the moon once again automatically rolled forward, covering the pedestal again with the Kapton foil.
The cage swung wildly as Alby hung from it and Rufus peeled the Sukhoi away from the gantry tower now teeming with bronzemen.
Rufus and Alby flew away into the night.
They had done what they came here to do.
They’d uncovered the pedestal on the moon long enough for Jack and others to perform the Fall at Giza.
Now it was time to help Jack face the final challenge: finding and entering the Supreme Labyrinth.
Giza, Egypt
26 December, 0400 hours
5 hours till Labyrinth gates close
After Jack, Zoe and Lily emerged from the Hall of the Falling Temple beneath the Great Sphinx at Giza, they sped back with Stretch and Pooh Bear to Cairo Internat
ional Airport.
When they pulled up outside their parked C-5 Super Galaxy, they found Sister Lynda waiting for them, very excited.
‘I know where the Labyrinth is,’ she said.
‘Sixteen schoinos from my eyes,’ she explained once they were all gathered inside the Super Galaxy. ‘That’s what one of the Omega monks said in the Vatican when he was examining the uraeus from the Great Sphinx. Mae and I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but I do now. It all makes sense from here, or more precisely, from Giza.’
‘Slow down, now. We’re gonna need a little more explanation,’ Jack said.
Lynda took a breath. ‘A schoinos is an ancient Egyptian unit of measurement. It’s about ten and a half kilometres. Now, those Omega monks said: Sixteen schoinos from my eyes. Like us and Rastor, those monks were searching for the Supreme Labyrinth. They were looking for something they called the multiple: which was how far—how many schoinos—the Labyrinth is from a certain starting point. The monks knew the starting point. They just didn’t know how far the Labyrinth was from it.’
‘So what’s the starting point?’ Zoe asked.
‘The Great Sphinx,’ Lynda said. ‘That uraeus in the Vatican was once mounted on its forehead. Sixteen schoinos from my eyes means about 160 kilometres from the Great Sphinx’s eyes.’
Lynda pointed due east. ‘The Supreme Labyrinth is approximately 160 kilometres that way. Napoleon himself once asked, “What is the Sphinx looking at?” That’s what it’s been looking at for thousands of years: the Supreme Labyrinth.’
A map was brought up on a computer.
Jack overlaid a line on it stretching due east of Giza and scaling it to 160 kilometres.
They all scanned it closely.
‘Looks like it’s in the Sinai Desert,’ Zoe said.
‘Literally the middle of nowhere,’ Lynda agreed.
Jack frowned.
He’d seen something like this before.
Then he remembered.
He quickly brought up a photo on his smartphone, one he had taken while he and Lily had been inside the innermost vault of the Order of the Omega in Venice, something that seemed a lifetime ago.
It was the shot of a very old sheet of papyrus titled in Latin: magnum viam portae qvinqve. The Five Gates to the Great Labyrinth.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,’ he said. ‘It looks like a star map, but it’s not. It’s a map of Egypt.
‘Those three bright stars on the left that look like Orion’s Belt are the three pyramids at Giza. The bending vertical line of stars in the middle is the Nile. And that wagon-wheel thing on the right—the one with five spokes leading to a central hub—that must be the Labyrinth with its five entrances. The monks knew the starting point all right. They just needed to know the distance using the multiple.’
‘It’s not that far away,’ Lily said. ‘Maybe an hour by plane.’
Jack frowned. ‘Sphinx got there a full day ago and entered the Labyrinth. We have to assume that Dion has arrived there by now as well. It’s also likely that Sphinx has stationed some guards at the other gates, to stop competitors like us, the monks and General Rastor from getting inside.’
He keyed his radio. ‘Alby? Rufus? You guys still alive out there?’
‘We’re here, Jack,’ Alby’s voice replied. ‘Leaving the spaceport now.’
‘How far from Cairo are you?’
‘Maybe forty minutes,’ Rufus replied.
‘We can’t wait for you,’ Jack said. ‘We have to get to the Labyrinth right away. Meet us there. Hurry. I’ll send you the coordinates.’
Jack bit his lip, thinking about what he had to work with: people, planes, vehicles, guns. ‘We need a plan . . .’
And he blinked as it struck him.
Zoe saw it happen. ‘Just what kind of plan are you thinking of, Jack?’
Jack turned to face her.
‘I’m gonna call it the Russian Doll Plan. Let me explain.’
Airspace over Libya
26 December, 0405 hours
4 hours 55 minutes till gates close
As Rufus flew the Sukhoi at full speed toward Egypt, Alby sat in the gunner’s seat, exhausted.
He gazed dumbly at the plane’s interactive digital map of the landscape below them: the barren Sahara Desert, Libya and Egypt.
Like all aeroplane maps, this one crept along in real time, moving with the plane’s movement, and included on it were the names of various towns and topographical land formations.
As he gazed at the map, Alby abruptly saw the name of one town that he recognised.
There it was, tucked near the Libyan–Egyptian border, just on the Egyptian side. They were going to fly almost directly over it.
The designation read: SIWA OASIS (-19)
The Siwa Oasis, Alby thought.
It was, in a way, where this whole adventure had begun: Lily was, after all, the last in a long line of Oracles from that very place.
As he looked at the digital map, Alby saw the notation beside the name: (-19).
For a moment, he wondered what that meant and then, seeing similar numbers beside other towns and landforms, he realised.
It was that place’s height above sea level.
But in the case of Siwa, it was a negative number: minus 19.
‘The Siwa Oasis is below sea level,’ Alby said, realising.
‘What are you mumbling about this time, kid?’ Rufus said.
‘The Siwa Oasis lies just off the western tip of the Qattara Depression, a vast hollow in the floor of the Sahara, one of the lowest points in all of Africa. According to this map, it lies nineteen metres below sea level—’
He cut himself off.
‘Imhotep’s tomb,’ he said suddenly. ‘Imhotep wrote that his tomb was located within the great hill of the Oracle under the sea. I thought he meant under an ocean so I discounted Siwa, but I was wrong. He was referring to Siwa being below sea level.’
Alby scooped up his laptop and started typing furiously.
‘What are you doing?’ Rufus asked, swivelling in his seat.
Alby didn’t look up as he typed.
‘I might be finding something that Jack’s gonna need: some ancient clues that can guide him safely through the Supreme Labyrinth.’
Cairo, Egypt
At Cairo International Airport, Jack’s team was making hurried preparations.
Jack had given everyone instructions—including assigning Aloysius and Easton a particularly important task—and they’d scattered to get their jobs done.
While all this was going on, Jack took Stretch and Pooh Bear aside.
‘You two aren’t going to the Labyrinth,’ he said seriously. ‘I have another mission for you.’
‘Yes?’ Pooh said cautiously.
Jack said, ‘Assuming somebody succeeds inside the Labyrinth, the world is going to be pretty crazy afterwards. A whole bunch of major cities will still be asleep. And everyone associated with the four kingdoms knows this. Whether they support Sphinx or not, the royal assholes of the world will have a plan for what comes after the Omega Event. I don’t know how, but I want you guys to find these royal assholes and figure out their plan. Take Sister Lynda and Tracy Smith with you. They might be able to help. Oh, and, guys, if I should die, at least make things hard for these bastards.’
Stretch nodded. ‘You got it, Jack.’
‘While we’re on the subject of my death . . .’ Jack pulled a sealed envelope from his pocket and handed it to Pooh Bear.
‘I’ve sent this to Zoe and Lily in an email, but I want you guys to have it, too,’ he said softly.
‘What is it?’ Pooh Bear said, although he had an idea.
Jack said, ‘It’s my letter. My Message from the Other Side. To be opened in the event that I don’t get out of this alive.’
‘Jack, don’t think like that—’ Stretch began.
‘If everything goes well, I’ll be going into the maze with Lily and Zoe,’ Jack said. ‘We each have the mark on our hands, so any one of the three of us can save the world if we can get to the throne at the centre. I just . . . well . . . I just don’t know about this one. There are no guarantees here. Hades and my mum were both murdered and I don’t know how long my luck will last. I just, well, I just have a feeling I might not . . . Listen, if I don’t make it out of there, I want you guys to have my letter and to read it, okay?’
Pooh Bear nodded grimly. ‘You got it, Jack. We’ll take care of it.’
Stretch—a stoic guy at the best of times and not a man given to emotional gestures—leaned forward and hugged Jack fiercely.
‘You’ll get out, buddy. You always do. You always do.’
‘I don’t know this time,’ Jack said, his eyes downcast.
Then he walked away to get to work.
A short time later, they all took off, heading eastward for the Sinai Peninsula and the five fortified entrances to the Supreme Labyrinth, knowing that they were flying into the fight of their lives.
The Siwa Oasis
Western Egypt
26 December, 0655 hours
2 hours 05 minutes till gates close
While Jack was preparing to take off from Cairo, Alby and Rufus were diverting from their original flight path and swooping down toward Lily’s ancestral home, the Siwa Oasis.
With its wide spring-fed lakes and thousands of date palms, the Siwa Oasis is simply remarkable, a true wonder of nature: a vibrant burst of lush greenery amid an otherwise endless sea of sand.
In any other circumstances, Alby would have loved to take his time and absorb the history of the place, but not now.
Now he was in a hurry.
Roaring out of the moonlit sky, the Sukhoi boomed into a hover above the main landform of the remote oasis: the Hill of the Dead.
It was a high cone-shaped sandstone formation that towered over Siwa’s vast main lake and which was named for the many tombs and burial niches within its catacombs.
Alby sprang out of the fighter-bomber, calling, ‘Come on, Rufus! If I’m right, I’m gonna need you in here. Bring the hammer and chisel.’
The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 28