Leaving the Sukhoi parked on the peak of the hill, the two of them raced into its catacombs.
There are hundreds of tombs inside Siwa’s Hill of the Dead, but—as Alby had discovered on the way here—only four were of a size that would be regarded as worthy of a high priest of the Cult of Amon-Ra, and only one of those was named the Tomb of Niperpathoth: the tomb of ‘he who belongs to the House of Thoth’.
Alby recalled Imhotep’s words:
Then seal me in stone in my tomb dedicated to Thoth within the great hill of the Oracle under the sea, with the secrets of the maze buried with me.
They found the tomb quickly. It was a minor tourist attraction for the few hardy tourists who ventured this far into the desert. A bare square room, it stank of centuries-old musk.
Alby and Rufus trained their flashlights over it. It was extraordinary in its plainness, with only a couple of crude paintings of the beaked god of wisdom, Thoth, on its walls.
Rufus sighed. ‘Kid, there’s nothing here.’
The tomb was indeed glaringly empty.
Grave robbers and archaeologists had long ago seized anything of value that wasn’t nailed down.
‘That’s okay,’ Alby said. ‘What we’re looking for won’t be in plain sight.’
He moved his flashlight beam over the tomb’s floorstones, his eyes searching.
He was looking for something he had seen before in the ancient royal world—
‘There!’ he exclaimed, pointing at one long floorstone.
It was slightly darker than the others.
It was made of a different kind of stone.
‘Greystone . . .’ Alby said aloud. ‘Seal me in stone, Imhotep commanded. After they mummified him, he got his followers to seal his mummy in greystone. Let’s do this.’
And so Alby and Rufus started assaulting the floor of the ancient tomb with their hammer and chisel, chipping away at the stone until, after a few minutes . . .
. . . they struck something . . .
. . . something wrapped in linen.
‘Careful now,’ Alby said as they cleared away the broken greystone and revealed . . .
. . . the mummy of Imhotep the Great.
‘Whoa, mama,’ Rufus whispered.
Alby unwrapped the mummy’s headcloth, revealing for the first time in almost five thousand years the face of Imhotep the Great.
As with other mummies, the skin was dry, desiccated and black. The eye sockets were sunken and the mouth hung open, its ghastly teeth bared in an eternal scream.
‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Rufus asked.
‘It’s him,’ Alby said. ‘He’s wearing his skullcap.’
And what a thing it was.
The old statues of Imhotep hadn’t done justice to his signature domed cap.
For it wasn’t made of just any metal.
It was made of glorious polished silver that gleamed in the light of their flashlights. Etched Thoth markings ringed it.
Alby gazed at the silver metal cap in awe. It was a strange silver, dull, non-reflective, like that of the—
‘The silvermen . . .’ Alby breathed. ‘Imhotep’s skullcap was taken from the head of a silverman. Silvermen are the guards of ancient places like the Labyrinth. I wonder if Imhotep took his cap from a dormant silverman during his venture into the Labyrinth.’
Slowly, carefully, Alby reached into the broken-open floor and removed the silver cap from the mummy, revealing the black skin of its scalp.
That was the main reason he was here.
It had struck him as they had flown here.
An image he’d seen at the spaceport.
He recalled seeing the tattoo-like markings etched into the metal heads of the bronzemen—much like he was seeing now on the silver cap—swirls and Thoth symbols engraved into the crowns of their shiny skulls.
I imparted the secrets of that maze to my body in the manner of the ancients.
To my body.
In the manner of the ancients.
Like the ancients had done with the heads of the bronzemen and silvermen.
‘That was why he always wore that skullcap,’ Alby said. ‘To cover the markings on his scalp.’
Alby shone his flashlight at the blackened skin of Imhotep the Great’s mummified skull. Being sealed in airtight greystone had kept it in very good condition.
The markings on it were dim, but they were there, drawn in grey ink on the age-blackened skin.
Swirls.
Geometric shapes.
And lines of text in the Word of Thoth.
As he scanned the tattooed text and images, Alby recalled another line from Imhotep’s message:
When I die, let the next head-priest of Amon-Ra replicate those markings in the same manner.
‘The next head-priest of Amon-Ra,’ Alby said. ‘I’m guessing someone high up in the Catholic Church has these same secrets tattooed onto his scalp. My first guess would be Cardinal Mendoza.’
Rufus nodded at the mummy with its head exposed but its body still sealed in the greystone. ‘So, are we gonna take him with us? If so, how?’
Alby said, ‘Don’t tell any archaeologists I did this, okay.’
Without any ceremony or reverence, and with a sharp cracking sound, Alby roughly yanked Imhotep’s head off his body. Then he tossed it into his backpack.
‘We’re taking the head with us?’ Rufus gaped.
‘Sure are.’ Alby slung the backpack over his shoulder. ‘Let’s move. We gotta get this to Jack before he reaches the Labyrinth.’
The two of them raced out of the tomb.
By the time they reached the surface, they could hear a police siren cutting through the night. Someone had called the local cops.
But by the time the lone Siwan police car arrived at the Hill of the Dead, the Sukhoi had flown off, heading east, in the direction of greater Egypt and the Supreme Labyrinth.
THE FIVE GATES
OF THE SUPREME LABYRINTH
The Gates of the Supreme Labyrinth
Sinai Desert, Egypt
26 December, 0830 hours
30 minutes till gates close
Jack’s Super Galaxy raced toward the newly risen sun, soaring over the mouth of the Suez Canal at the northern tip of the Red Sea.
The rugged desert landscape of the Sinai Peninsula lay spread out before it.
It was brutal terrain, stark and brown, rugged and mountainous, dry, arid and hotter than Hell. A land of rubble and rock, sand and dust.
Nothing lived here. Not trees, not even weeds.
And somewhere in there, Jack thought as he gazed out the cockpit windshield of the Super Galaxy, is a semicircle of five ancient gates that give access to a gigantic subterranean labyrinth.
Having plotted a course on their sat-nav system that led due east from the Great Sphinx at Giza—or more specifically, from the eyes of the cobra-shaped uraeus that had once adorned its forehead—they hoped to come across the site approximately 160 kilometres from their start point.
It turned out not to be that difficult to spot, for three reasons.
First, the four thousand–strong army of bronzemen standing in defensive formations around the gate complex, accompanied by Sphinx’s hovering Russian quadcopter plus men on the ground in anti-aircraft jeeps.
Second, because of the remnants of a plane crash that had clearly already occurred at one of the gates.
And third, because of the gigantic and explosive battle raging there.
Rastor’s immense hovering aeroplane was raining hell on Sphinx’s defensive forces.
The huge V-88 Condor was even larger than Sphinx’s Mi-4000 quadcopter. It hovered to the right of a low mountain, launching missiles at the quadcopter at the same time as it spewed tracer fire at the ground, blowing anti-aircraft jeeps to pieces a
nd mowing down the ranks of bronzemen.
Explosions rang out.
Bronzemen were thrown everywhere.
Parts of the mountain blew off in geysers of dust and sand.
Then—shockingly—Sphinx’s Mi-4000 was struck by a missile and the huge quadcopter wheeled wildly through the air before it slammed hard against the side of the mountain and blew apart in a colossal spray of fire and dirt.
The low tan-coloured mountain jutted out from a larger mass of rugged peaks as if it were aimed back toward the Great Sphinx so many miles distant. It was shaped like a rough hemisphere flanked by a pair of narrow valleys.
From the air, Jack could make out some tiny square structures on the edges of the hemisphere: brown stone cubes that were the same tawny colour as the mountain.
The gates to the Labyrinth.
They were spaced about five hundred metres apart from each other and would have been hard to spot were it not for the objects in front of some of them. There was, for instance, a private jet crashed in front of one gate. (Jack guessed that it had brought Ezekiel and some of his Omega monks here the previous day after they had successfully performed their Fall.)
In front of two of the gates—the two at either extremity of the low mountain—were line upon line of bronzemen, a thousand of them for each gate, arrayed in sweeping defensive arcs to protect the landward approach to them.
Closer still to the two gates were smaller phalanxes of silvermen, perhaps forty silvermen each. They were clustered right in front of the gates themselves, in case someone got through the outer force of bronzemen.
Clearly, Sphinx had left orders to prevent anyone from entering the Labyrinth after him and those two gates must have still been unused.
Jack stared at the giant V-88 raining fire on the right-most gate. He’d seen it on a TV screen in Jerusalem, but seeing it up close reinforced just how huge it was. It was the ultimate flying fortress.
‘I’m guessing Rastor used that plane to blast open the Temple Mount,’ he said.
Zoe nodded. ‘He also used it to blow the dome off St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.’
‘And now he’s using it here,’ Lily said.
As she said this, Jack saw the giant plane land in front of the right-most gate, blowing the silvermen in front of it to pieces, and a group of small figures with Rastor at their head raced inside it.
Jack turned to the members of his team.
He’d already outlined the Russian Doll Plan. It was very high-risk. At any of three different times, it could fail and they’d be dead before they knew it.
‘All right, folks,’ he said, ‘our target is that last gate, the one over on the far left-hand side. This is what it all comes down to. Thank you for your friendship and your help over the years. I hope I see you later, if and when it’s all over. Sky Monster, my old friend, bring us in. Bring us in hard.’
With those words, the mighty Super Galaxy, flown by Sky Monster, began its descent toward the gate complex of the Supreme Labyrinth.
Anti-aircraft fire came at them, but the Super Galaxy was a tough bird with thick skin and some of the best countermeasures in the world, and the incoming missiles whizzed wildly by it while the uprushing rounds bounced off its armoured fuselage.
And then, without warning, a second plane sprang out from behind the Super Galaxy! It had flown in behind the bigger C-5, out of view.
It was an Egyptian Air Force Hercules, purloined from Cairo International Airport by Aloysius Knight—his special task—and it swooped in front of the descending Super Galaxy and landed right in front of it!
In most scenarios, a Hercules would have been the biggest plane in attendance, but here it was dwarfed by the enormous Super Galaxy.
Flown by Aloysius, the Hercules touched down on the flat desert plain in front of the gate complex—closely followed by the Super Galaxy.
It kicked up a billowing cloud of dust and sand as it landed and then it was rushing headlong toward the low mountain, straight at the legions of bronzemen.
It didn’t slow down.
The Hercules ploughed right into the ranks of bronzemen, crushing fifty of them in a single instant . . .
. . . creating a path through them . . .
. . . which the Super Galaxy, touching down a moment later, used as its taxiway.
It was an astonishing sight.
The two massive planes, travelling one after the other across the desert floor, mowing down the ranks of bronzemen.
‘Take that, you bronze motherfuckers!’ Aloysius yelled as he swung his Hercules to port, toward the left-most gate of the complex, watching bronzemen go under his bow by the dozen.
But the sheer number of bronzemen on the ground was always going to stop him eventually.
The metal automatons—twisted and crushed like rag dolls—got caught up in the plane’s wheels, jamming them, and just as the Hercules got about two-thirds of the way through their ranks, the big plane began to slow.
At this point, Aloysius yanked his plane hard to the right and the cargo plane came to a lurching halt . . .
. . . as the Super Galaxy behind it, spared from hitting all the first ranks of bronzemen, swept by, continuing on toward the left-most gate.
Now the Super Galaxy ploughed over many bronzemen, crushing them beneath its nose, getting closer to the left gate of the Labyrinth.
Then its wheels also began to jam with the crumpled bodies of bronzemen—despite the damage to them, the bronzemen were still ‘alive’, clawing and grasping like metal zombies, even as the wheels crushed them en masse—and the Super Galaxy came to a rending halt on the desert floor . . .
. . . three hundred metres from the left gate and with at least five hundred bronzemen still blocking the way.
A cloud of dust and sand veiled the whole sorry scene: the broken-down planes, the bronzemen scattered around them.
The many bronzemen still standing began to advance on the motionless Super Galaxy.
At which moment the front section of the Super Galaxy—its entire massive nose cone—rose up on a hinge, exposing its enormous hold, and suddenly a truck came blasting out of the hold, bouncing down the plane’s forward ramp into the throng of still-standing bronzemen, mowing them down in the same manner that the two planes had, aiming for the left-most gate!
Jack was at the wheel, with Lily and Zoe beside him. He drove hard, bending and swerving, trying to reach the gate in the low mountain.
The truck bounced wildly as bronzemen disappeared under its bonnet.
Some bronzemen managed to jump onto the sides of the truck, clamping their razor-sharp claws into its metal flanks.
‘Jesus!’ Zoe shouted as the claws of one bronzeman smashed the window of her door.
Blam!
She blew the bronzeman’s head off with a specially tipped bullet fired from point-blank range.
Thus they rampaged through the many ranks of bronzemen, with Jack driving and Lily and Zoe firing guns left and right, edging ever closer to the gate.
But like the plane before it, the truck was eventually overwhelmed by the sheer number of bronzemen.
It got to within a hundred metres of the gate by the time it was stopped . . .
. . . when the third element of Jack’s Russian Doll plan—a vehicle within a vehicle within a vehicle—leapt out of the rear bed of the truck: a motorcycle with a sidecar, with Jack driving and Lily and Zoe in the sidecar!
Jack’s eyes were focused and hard as the motorbike bounced down to the ground and skidded around. Jack aimed it for the gate—
—and his face fell.
The remaining bronzemen closed ranks quickly.
Three hundred of them.
Blocking the way.
And still with the silvermen behind them.
‘Fuck,’ Jack said. ‘We got so close.’
No sooner had Jack said this than two lines of heavy-bore 50-millimetre rounds strafed the ground on either side of him, knocking down the bronzemen in front of him, carving a clear path to the gate for his motorcycle.
‘We’re here, Jack!’ Alby’s voice called in his ear as the Black Raven swooped in low overhead and pulled up into a hover, the guns on its wings blazing, tearing open a path in the bronzemen’s ranks.
Jack gunned the motorbike’s engine and rushed into the now-open pathway, bronzemen whooshing by him on either side.
It was chaos, absolute chaos.
The Sukhoi blazing away above him, opening the way; and Zoe and Lily firing left and right from the sidecar with specially tipped bullets from their guns.
Jack kept his eyes forward, focusing on the gate as they got closer and closer to it.
And as they got nearer, he saw a thick stone slab lowering into the gateway: the outer door, closing slowly, designed to seal it, and now almost completely shut.
It only had about two more feet to go before it shut fully and was closed forever.
They were only sixty metres away now—
—when a shoulder-launched missile fired by one of Sphinx’s human defenders hit the Black Raven and it peeled away in the sky, wounded, trailing black smoke, and slammed down onto the dusty ground forty metres from the left-most gate, turned sideways to the gate, one of its wings almost completely snapped in half and—
—the final group of silvermen closed ranks in front of Jack’s motorbike and sidecar, blocking the way.
Jack wanted to scream in frustration.
He spun to check on the Sukhoi, to see if Alby and Rufus were all right, just as the Sukhoi’s canopy popped open and Rufus and Alby sprang out of it, guns up and firing more special-tipped rounds at the remaining silvermen guarding the gate.
They were okay, and still desperately helping, giving Jack the opening he needed . . .
. . . a clear path to the gate.
He gunned the bike for it, going all out . . .
. . . when, without warning, another enemy troop truck swept in from the side and stopped right in his path, blocking the gate!
The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 29