Seven Ancient Wonders

by Matthew Reilly

Zaeed.

  He was at the bottom of the airstairs when the gunfire began, flanked by Pooh Bear and Stretch, his hands still flex-cuffed. But his eyes, far from being wild and crazed, were watchful and focused now.

  He’d actually just managed to extract a blade hidden in his pants and saw halfway through his flex-cuffs, and was three seconds away from stabbing Stretch between the ribs and commencing his escape when the gunfire had started. At that point, he’d slid the blade back into his pocket and clambered back up the airstairs as they were hammered with bullet impacts.

  And Judah.

  While his men hurried past Doris, he stopped right in front of her and said, ‘I told you, no warnings.’

  And then, without the slightest hesitation, he drew a Glock pistol, placed its barrel against her head and fired.

  West arrived at the forward door just in time to see Doris fall.

  ‘Oh, God, no. . . ’ he breathed. ‘No. . . ’

  He beheld the rest of the scene in the hangar.

  Pandemonium reigned.

  A massive American force had emerged from every corner of the hangar. Most of them were on foot, but then West saw three Humvees come blasting out of the grassy fields outside.

  The American troops were converging on the big black 747 like an army of ants, their collective movement focused on the two fleeing figures of Big Ears and Lily.

  West zeroed in on the running pair.

  One thing was clear: they weren’t going to make it to the airstairs.

  The Americans’ angle of fire would cut them off before they got there. And he noted that the Yanks weren’t aiming to kill them—just stop them from escaping. They knew not to harm Lily.

  But Big Ears and Lily did make it to a portable electricity generator wagon just short of the airstairs. The generator wagon was the size of a small trailer. Normally, once the Halicarnassus was fully stopped, Sky Monster would get out and attach the generator to it, providing external electrical power. But he hadn’t been able to do that yet.

  Lily and Big Ears dived behind the generator wagon, and Big Ears immediately opened fire on his closest pursuers, causing them to halt and duck for cover.

  So now West stood at the top of the airstairs, while Stretch and Pooh Bear were huddled at the base of those same stairs, ducking gunfire. Zaeed was in the middle, halfway up the steps, getting away from the action.

  And Lily and Big Ears lay crouched—cut off, pinned down by enemy fire—a tantalising five yards from the base of the airstairs.

  West keyed his radio mike. ‘Sky Monster! Fire her up again! We gotta get out of here!’

  ‘Roger that!’ A moment later the great jet turbines of the 747 roared back to life, the thunderous noise drowning out the sound of gunfire.

  ‘Big Ears!’ West called into his mike. ‘I hate to do this to you, but you’ve got to find a way to get Lily back on this plane! Now!’

  Huddled behind the generator wagon, Big Ears was thinking fast.

  Five yards. That was all it was. Five yards.

  Only those five yards looked like a mile.

  And then suddenly—with a kind of crystal clarity that was new to him—the situation became clear to Big Ears.

  No matter what the outcome of this situation, he was going to die.

  If he ran for the airstairs, he’d be shot for sure—even if they didn’t shoot Lily, they’d nail him.

  Alternatively, if he and Lily were caught by the Americans, they’d kill him then too.

  And with that realisation, he made up his mind.

  ‘Lily,’ he said, over the raging din all around them. ‘You know something. You’ve been the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. You were always way smarter than me, but you always waited for me, were always patient with me. But now I have to do something for you—and you have to let me do it. Just promise me, when the time comes, you do what you were put on this Earth to do. And remember me, the dumb grunt who was your friend. I love you, little one.’

  Then he kissed her forehead and, with his MP-5 in one hand, he picked her up with the other, and shielding her with his body. . .

  . . . he broke cover. . .

  . . . and ran for the airstairs.

  The American response was both immediate and vicious.

  They opened fire.

  Big Ears only needed six steps to make it to the airstairs.

  He made four.

  Before a crouching US trooper nailed him with a clean shot to the head.

  The bullet passed right through Big Ears’s skull, exploding out the other side and he fell instantly—crumpling like a marionette whose strings have been cut—falling to his knees midway between the generator wagon and the airstairs, dropping Lily from his lifeless hands.

  ‘No!’ Lily screamed in horror. ‘Noooo!’

  The Americans charged, moved in on the girl—

  —only to be stopped by a curious sight.

  At exactly the same time, in exactly the same way, two figures dived out from the base of the airstairs, each of them holding two MP-5 sub-machine guns, the weapons blazing away in opposite directions as they flew through the air toward Lily.

  Pooh Bear and Stretch.

  They couldn’t have planned the move. There simply hadn’t been time. No, they had actually both dived independently of each other.

  Yet their identical dives had been motivated by the exact same impulse:

  To save Lily.

  The Arab and the Israeli slid to simultaneous halts alongside Lily, bringing down four Americans each as they did so.

  Lily was still kneeling beside Big Ears’s body, her cheeks covered in tears.

  Still firing repeatedly, Pooh Bear and Stretch each grabbed one of her hands and crouch-ran with her back to the cover of the airstairs.

  Up the stairs they stumbled, as the steel side railings of the airstairs were riddled with a thousand dome-shaped bullet impacts.

  Off-balance and firing blindly behind them, Pooh Bear and Stretch reached the top of the stairs and flung Lily in through the door, rolling themselves in after her, while above them West jammed the door shut and yelled, ‘Sky Monster! Go! Go! Go!’

  The giant 747 pivoted on the spot, rolling around in a circle until it was re-aimed back up the runway—bullets pinging off its black armoured flanks.

  As it completed its circle, it crunched right over a US Humvee that got too close, flattening the car.

  Then Pooh Bear and Stretch took their seats in the Halicarnassus’s wing-mounted gun turrets and let fly with a barrage of tracer fire, annihilating the other two Humvees.

  Then Sky Monster punched his thrusters and the big black 747 gathered speed—thundering up the runway, its winglights blazing, chased by jeeps spewing gunfire, returning tracer bullets from its own turrets—until it hit take-off speed and lifted off into the night sky, escaping from its own supposedly secret base.

  A grim silence hung over the main cabin of the Halicarnassus.

  West held Lily in his lap. She was still sobbing, distraught over the deaths of Big Ears and Doris.

  As the jumbo soared into the night sky, heading for nowhere in particular, everyone who had survived the gunbattle in the hangar returned to the main cabin: Pooh Bear, Stretch and Zaeed. Sky Monster stayed in the cockpit, flying manually for the time being.

  With Lily in his arms, West’s mind raced.

  Big Ears was dead. Doris was dead. Their secret hideaway had been exposed. Not to mention the most frustrating fact of all— when he’d been killed, Big Ears had been carrying the Zeus Piece.

  Shit.

  Up until a few minutes ago, they’d actually succeeded on this impossible mission. Against all the odds, they had actually obtained a Piece of the Capstone.

  And now. . .

  Now they had nothing. They’d lost two of their best team-members, lost their base of operations, and lost the one and only Piece they’d ever got.

  Hell, West thought, he didn’t even know why Lily and Big Ears had suddenly turned and ru
n back to the plane. Gently, he asked Lily.

  She sniffed, wiped away her tears.

  ‘Doris gave me a warning. She said our return was like Gimli’s return to Moria. In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli the dwarf returns to the dwarf mines at Moria, only to find that the mines have been overrun by orcs. Doris was sending me a secret message. She obviously couldn’t say anything directly, so she spoke in a code I’d understand. She was saying that the farm had been taken over by our enemies and to get away.’

  West was amazed at Lily’s quick deduction—and at Doris’s selfless sacrifice.

  ‘Nice work, kiddo.’ He stroked Lily’s hair. ‘Nice work.’

  It was Pooh Bear who asked what they were all thinking. ‘Huntsman. What do we do now?’

  ‘I have to talk to Wizard,’ West said, moving to one of the communications consoles.

  But just as he reached it, the console—as if by magic—started blinking and beeping.

  ‘It’s the video phone. . . ’ Stretch said. ‘An incoming call.’

  ‘It must be Wizard,’ Pooh Bear said.

  ‘No,’ West said, staring at the console’s readout. ‘It’s coming from Victoria Station.’

  West clicked the ‘Answer’ button and the screen on the console came to life. Filling its frame was the face of. . .

  Marshall Judah.

  He was sitting at a console inside the hangar back in Kenya, flanked by Kallis and some of his men.

  ‘Greetings, Jack. My, my, wasn’t that a narrow escape for you all. Sorry—’ he corrected himself—‘not exactly all of you escaped.’

  ‘What do you want?’ West growled.

  ‘Why, Jack. How could I want anything from you? I already have everything you can give me: the Zeus Piece, to add to the three Pieces I already possess. Oh, and I am not sure if you’re aware of the fate of your friend Epper in Rome. Seems he’s fallen into the hands of our European competitors. I do hope he’ll be all right.’

  West tried not to let his surprise show. He didn’t know that the Europeans had captured Wizard’s team.

  ‘Epper’s capture,’ Judah said, realising with a grin. ‘You weren’t aware of this.’

  Shit.

  ‘Why are you calling us?’ West demanded. ‘To gloat?’

  ‘To remind you of your status, Jack. Look at you. Look at what you have achieved. Your band of pissant nations shouldn’t have tried playing at the grown-ups’ table. At every juncture in our parallel missions, I have comprehensively beaten you. In the Sudan. In Tunisia. And now here in Kenya. Can’t you see? There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow. There is nowhere on Earth you can hide from me, Jack. My scientists are at this very instant about to uncover the location of the Hanging Gardens and, unlike you, we have long been aware of the importance of the Paris Obelisk—and in two days’ time, we will use those measurements to reveal the location of Alexander’s Tomb in Luxor: the resting place of the final Piece.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘How about I finish with this: you never had a chance on this mission, Jack. Let me give you a quick lesson in the law of nations: there are big fish and there are little fish. And the big fish eat the little ones. You came up against a bigger fish, Jack, and you got eaten. Your mission is over.’

  ‘I’m going to kill you, Judah,’ West said flatly. ‘For Doris.’

  ‘As if you could, Jack. As if you could.’

  With that, Judah cut the signal and West found himself staring at an empty screen.

  For a long while, no-one spoke.

  West just stared at the blank screen, his teeth grinding.

  ‘Stretch, try and call Wizard,’ he said. ‘See if Judah was telling the truth.’

  Stretch went to the satellite radio console, tried every channel that Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy could be on. He even tried their cell phones.

  He received no reply.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, returning to the group. ‘There’s no answer from Wizard, Zoe or Fuzzy. They’re off the air.’

  There was more silence as the full weight of their predicament sank in.

  In addition to their terrible losses at Victoria Station, they had now lost three more people—including the one person who had been their greatest source of knowledge on this mission, Wizard.

  Stretch said, ‘Every move we’ve made, Judah’s known it and followed right behind us. In the Sudan. In Tunisia. Now Kenya.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘Kenya was different: he got to Kenya before we did, not after. He was waiting for us there.’ Pooh looked hard at Stretch. ‘Somehow he knew about our base.’

  Stretch bristled. ‘What are you implying? Do you think I informed the Americans?’

  Pooh Bear’s glare suggested that he was seriously considering this.

  Zaeed piped in: ‘Unless I’m mistaken, you were never invited to join this mission, were you, Israeli? I would say Saladin is perfectly within his rights to question your loyalty.’

  ‘This does not concern you!’ Stretch said. ‘Bite your tongue, murderer!’

  ‘An Israeli calls me a murderer!’ Zaeed stood up. ‘Count the innocents your country has murdered, you—’

  ‘Quiet!’ West called, silencing them.

  They all retreated, sat down.

  West addressed them. ‘The Americans now have four of the seven Pieces of the Capstone. And if they get the Artemis Piece from the Europeans—and we must assume they have a plan to do just that—they’ll have five.

  ‘As such, they need only two more Pieces to complete the Tartarus Ritual at the Great Pyramid and rule the world. Now, the two Pieces left to find are those of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Great Pyramid itself—’

  Zaeed said, ‘You can forget about obtaining the Great Pyramid Piece. It is the First Piece, the most highly-prized, the pyramidal peak of the Capstone itself. It was buried with Alexander the Great and the location of his tomb will only be revealed at dawn on the final day.’

  ‘When the Sun shines through the obelisks at Luxor?’ Pooh Bear said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which leaves us the Hanging Gardens Piece,’ West said.

  Zaeed said, ‘Of all the Wonders, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proved to be the most elusive. All of the other Wonders, in one way or another, survived into the modern age. But not the Gardens. They have not been seen since the 5th century BC. Indeed, observers in the ancient world questioned whether they even existed at all. Finding them will be exceedingly difficult.’

  West frowned.

  Maybe Judah was right.

  He honestly didn’t know if he could do this.

  Not without Wizard. And certainly not when his only companions were a known terrorist, a constantly feuding Arab and Israeli pair, a slightly crazy New Zealand pilot and one little girl.

  The thought of Lily made him turn to her.

  Her face was still red from crying, dried tear-marks lined her cheeks.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  She returned his gaze with bloodshot eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke with a new maturity.

  ‘Before he died, Big Ears made me promise him something. He asked that when the time came, I’d do what I was put on this Earth to do. I don’t really know what that is yet, but I don’t want to let him down. I want the chance to do what I was put on this Earth to do. Give me that chance, sir. Please.’

  West nodded slowly.

  Then he stood up.

  ‘The way I see it, folks, we have our backs to the wall. We’re down on people, on options and on luck, but we’re not out of this game. We still have one option left. We find the one remaining Piece of the Capstone still available to us. The Piece hidden in the only Ancient Wonder never to have been found. People, we have to locate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.’

  IRAQ

  19 MARCH, 2006

  THE DAY BEFORE TARTARUS

  NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S PARADISE

  Of all the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, none retains
more mystery than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  There is a simple reason for this.

  Of all the Wonders, only one has never been found: the Hanging Gardens. Not a single trace of them has been unearthed: no foundations, no pillars, not even an aqueduct.

  In fact, so elusive have the Gardens been throughout the ages that most historians believe they never even existed at all, but were rather the product of the imaginations of Greek poets.

  After all, as Alaa Ashmawy, an expert on the Seven Ancient Wonders from the University of Southern Florida, has pointed out, the Babylonians were very careful record-keepers, and yet their records make not a single mention of any Hanging Gardens.

  Nor did the chroniclers of Alexander the Great’s many visits to Babylon mention any kind of Gardens.

  This lack of evidence, however, has not stopped writers throughout the ages from creating all manner of fabulous descriptions of the Gardens. On these facts, all agree:

  1. The Gardens were constructed by the great Mesopotamian king, Nebuchadnezzar, around the year 570 BC, in order to please his homesick new wife, who, hailing from Media, was accustomed to more verdant surroundings;

  2. They were built to the east of the Euphrates River; and

  3. The centrepiece of the Gardens was a shrine devoted to the rare Persian White Desert Rose, a species that has not survived to the present day.

  At this point, however, the descriptions vary greatly.

  Some historians say the Gardens sat atop a golden ziggurat, its vines and greenery overflowing from the building’s tiers. A dozen waterfalls were said to cascade over its edges.

  Others say the Gardens dangled from the side of an immense rocky cliff-face—literally earning the name ‘hanging’.

  One lone scholar has even suggested that the Gardens hung from a gigantic stalactite-like rock formation inside a massive cave.

  An interesting sidenote, however, applies to the Gardens.

  In Greek, the Gardens were described as kremastos, a word which has been translated as hanging, thus the term ‘Hanging Gardens’ and the notion of some kind of suspended or raised paradise.

  But kremastos can be translated another way. It can be translated as overhanging.