Seven Ancient Wonders

by Matthew Reilly

  Judah poured exactly 93 grams of the soil into the crucible. One deben.

  Eyeing it proudly, he called to his men, ‘Gentlemen! Erect the Capstone!’

  One Piece after the other, Judah’s people began erecting the Golden Capstone.

  The largest Piece—the Pharos Piece—went on the bottom and the human-shaped indentation in its golden underside perfectly matched up with the Anubis indentation on the summit of the Pyramid.

  The Pyramid’s summit was also fitted with a low channel cut into it from one side—since the Capstone lay flat on its peak, this channel provided a tight crawlway that would allow the ‘Sacrificial One’—one of the children—to crawl into the indentation when the time came.

  As each new Piece was laid on it, the Capstone began to take shape.

  It was truly magnificent—glittering and powerful—a golden crown to an already stupendous structure.

  And of course, the line of crystals running down through the centre of the Capstone pointed directly at the heart of Anubis.

  Judah co-ordinated the operation, his eyes wide with delight.

  And then the final Piece, the pyramidal top Piece, the Piece he had obtained from Alexander’s tomb only that morning went on. . .

  . . . and the Capstone was complete for the first time in nearly five millennia.

  The Great Pyramid at Giza stood whole once more, as it had originally appeared in 2,566 BC.

  It was 11:50 a.m.

  Ten minutes till the Tartarus Rotation occurred.

  Judah turned to face the two children.

  ‘And so it falls to me to make a historic choice,’ he said. ‘Which child to sacrifice to the power of the Sun. . . ’

  ‘Sacrifice?’ Alexander said, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It is what you were born for, young man,’ Judah said. ‘It is what you were put on this Earth to do.’

  ‘I was put here to rule—’ Alexander threw a confused look at del Piero.

  ‘I fear you have been misinformed,’ Judah said. ‘You were put here to decode the Word of Thoth and then to die for the eternal benefit of Father del Piero and his friends. Although I’m sure they would have worshipped you fervently after your death, if that is any consolation. I’m assuming Father del Piero must have failed to mention this.’

  Alexander’s eyes flashed to del Piero, blazing with fury.

  Lily just remained silent, her head bowed.

  ‘So. Who to choose?’ Judah mused.

  ‘Her,’ Alexander said quickly. ‘She didn’t even know of her own importance. At least I did.’

  Judah grinned at this. ‘Is that so?’ Then he said, ‘No, boy. I like her, because she’s quiet. You’re not. Which means you’re elected.’

  And with that, Judah scooped up the boy and thrust him into the tight channel underneath the Capstone, forcing him at gunpoint to crawl through it and lie down inside the arms of Anubis, beneath the fully-built Capstone, his heart directly underneath the Capstone’s crystal array while also directly above the dish-shaped crucible containing the soil of America.

  The boy sobbed all the way.

  At 11:55, Judah stepped into position.

  He held in his hands the ritual of power—which he had taken line-by-line from the surface of each of the Capstone’s seven Pieces.

  ‘Everyone, prepare for the ceremony! Five minutes!’

  It was then that one of the CIEF spotters in the northern crane spied a tiny black dot high in the eastern sky . . .

  It looked like a plane of some sort, approaching fast, descending.

  A 747 . . . a black one.

  The Halicarnassus.

  The Halicarnassus zoomed out of the sky at near-supersonic speed, nose down, wings pinned back, all its guns pointed forward.

  Sky Monster was at the helm, yelling, ‘Yee-ha! Come and get it, you Yankee motherfuckers! Pooh Bear—you ready to rock’n’roll?’

  In the revolving gun turret on top of the plane’s left wing, Pooh Bear replied, ‘Let’s do some damage.’

  Sky Monster said, ‘Let’s hope Wizard’s retro system is up to the challenge or else this could be a disaster of gargantuan propor— shit! Incoming!’

  The Americans had launched two Stinger missiles at the incoming 747.

  The missiles streaked upwards from the Great Pyramid, shooming toward the inbound jumbo jet, but Pooh Bear nullified them both—he got one missile to lock onto a chaff bomb, and the other he destroyed with an interceptor missile of his own, a French-made FV-5X Hummingbird, designed by the French in the 1990s for the Iraqi Army, specifically to nullify American Stinger missiles. When West had found the Halicarnassus, it had been fitted with ten brand-new Hummingbirds.

  The Americans then started firing their anti-aircraft guns from their cranes.

  Tracer bullets raced up into the sky—there were so many they filled the sky—but Sky Monster banked the Halicarnassus brilliantly, avoiding the laser-like streaks while at the same time Pooh Bear returned fire and unleashed a Hellfire air-to-ground missile of his own.

  The Hellfire shoomed out from a pod on the Hali’s underbelly and spiralled down towards one of the American cranes and—

  —smashed into it and detonated.

  The crane’s basket was blasted into a million pieces, its occupants and their weapons vaporised.

  Judah and all the others on the platform spun at the nearby explosion.

  The other crane continued to fire up at the incoming Halicarnassus, unleashing a thousand rounds of AA ammunition and another Stinger missile—which Pooh Bear just blasted out of the sky a moment later.

  Then Sky Monster yelled, ‘Pooh! Hang on, buddy! Here we go!’ Then to himself he whispered, ‘Please God, Wizard, tell me you got this right. . . ’

  It was then that, roaring down toward the Giza Plateau like an out-of-control missile, Sky Monster lifted the Hali’s nose up slightly and jammed all his thrusters back . . . throwing the Halicarnassus into a deliberate stall . . . so that now it looked like a stallion rearing up on its hind legs, its nose up, its tail down. . .

  . . . at which point, Sky Monster held his breath and punched the second collective on his console, a thruster-collective marked: RETROGRADE THRUST SYSTEM.

  What happened next startled everyone on the Pyramid’s summit— everyone except Wizard.

  The Halicarnassus—dropping through the sky in a graceful flat stall, nose up, tail down—emitted a noise deeper and louder than a thousand thunderbooms.

  BOOOOOOOOM!

  The colossal noise came from the eight Mark 3 Harrier retrograde thrust engines that had been incorporated into its armoured fuselage.

  By Wizard.

  The result was sensational: the massive all-black Halicarnassus stopped in mid-fall, as if it were suspended from giant descender cables, and to the sound of its deafening retrograde thrusters, it swung into a perfect hover, 200 metres off the ground and only a few hundred yards from the Great Pyramid!

  Sky Monster brought her closer, bringing the big hovering plane’s left forward door alongside the platform on the summit of the Pyramid.

  It was an absolutely astonishing sight—the massive black jumbo jet, bristling with guns and missile pods, hovering with its nose close to the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

  From the platform itself, the Halicarnassus loomed large, super-huge, like an angry bird-god descended from Heaven itself to wreak its fury.

  The initial spell broken, the surviving American crane swung around to unleash a new burst of AA fire, now from point-blank range.

  But Pooh Bear, on the Hali’s left wing, was quicker on the draw and also at point-blank range.

  He loosed a withering burst of fire—a hyper-fast barrage of gunfire—that shook, shattered and blasted apart the crane, turning its occupants into fountains of spraying blood and the crane into Swiss cheese.

  On the platform, Judah’s eyes boggled.

  He checked the Sun, checked his watch: 11:59:29.

  Thir
ty seconds.

  ‘Hold them off!’ he called to his men. ‘Hold them off! We only need thirty seconds!’

  Consumed with the spectacular arrival of the Halicarnassus, Judah never noticed a second airborne craft zeroing in on the Pyramid, a very small craft that came zooming in low and fast from the Western Desert.

  It was a man, possessed of carbon-fibre wings.

  The tiny man-shaped figure soared low over the desert, before at the last second, he rose up swiftly—up the slanting side of the Pyramid as if it were an aerial ramp—and landed with a graceful plonk on the far side of the Capstone, on the side opposite the attention-grabbing Halicarnassus.

  It was Jack West Jr.

  Back from the dead, and pissed as hell.

  West landed with his wings outstretched and with two big .45 calibre Desert Eagle pistols in his hands. The instant his feet touched the platform, his guns started blazing, taking down four CIEF troopers with four shots.

  Then he punched a release clip on his wing-harness and the carbon-fibre wings fell off his back, freeing him, making him even more deadly.

  He ran out onto the platform, guns up.

  At the same time, in response to the spectacular arrival of the Halicarnassus, four American helicopters lifted off from their positions at the base of the Great Pyramid: three Apache attack birds and the mighty Super Stallion that Judah had used to bring the Pieces to Giza.

  A fifth chopper—a Black Hawk—made to follow them, but it seemed to hesitate on the ground as a scuffle occurred inside it.

  Then, a few seconds behind the others, it lifted off and headed for the battle going on at the top of the Pyramid.

  Pandemonium reigned on the platform.

  With the Halicarnassus looming alongside it like a ship from outer space, and Pooh Bear blazing away from the plane’s powerful left-side gun turret, all the American troops on the platform were either getting shot or diving for cover behind Samsonite crates or the Capstone itself or retreating to the lower levels of the open-sided structure.

  In the chaos, Wizard hurled himself on top of Lily to protect her.

  Del Piero charged across the platform and slid to the ground beside the little channel, to reach for Alexander, still inside the Capstone.

  ‘Not so fast, Father!’ a voice said from behind him. Del Piero turned—

  —to find himself staring into the barrel of a Glock pistol held by Marshall Judah.

  Bam!

  The pistol went off and the priest’s brains splattered the golden flank of the Capstone.

  With a core group of CIEF men surrounding him, Judah stood before the Capstone—cleverly putting it between him and Pooh Bear’s guns—and with a glance at his watch, looked to the sky.

  At that moment, the clock struck noon and it happened.

  It looked like a laser beam from Heaven.

  A dead-straight beam of dazzling white light lanced down from the sky, from the surface of the Sun, and accompanied by a tremendous boom, it slammed into the Capstone atop the Great Pyramid.

  The Capstone, in reply, caught this ray of hyper-intense energy within its crystal array—so that the beam remained in place, giving the impression that the Pyramid was now connected to the Sun by this superlong and perfectly straight ray of glowing white energy.

  It was a stunning image: the Pyramid—surmounted by the great wooden platform, with the Halicarnassus hovering alongside it and with helicopters now buzzing and banking around it—absorbing the blazing white beam of pure energy that was shooting down from the sky.

  It was incredible, impossible, otherworldly.

  But it was also oddly right. It was as if this was what the Great Pyramid at Giza, dormant and mysterious for so many centuries, had been designed to do.

  The platform was ablaze with light and sound.

  Here at the epicentre of the great Sun-ray, the glow was almost blinding. And the noise—it was all-consuming: the colossal boom of the great Sun-ray combined with the roar of the Halicarnassus’s retro-thrusters and the turning of its regular engines (which were level with the platform) drowned out all other sound.

  And in the midst of all this stood Marshall Judah, before the Capstone. He raised one arm toward the Golden Capstone, palm up, and then in an ancient language not heard in thousands of years, he began to recite an incantation.

  The power ritual.

  The power ritual was seven lines long.

  As Judah began to recite it, several things were happening:

  Pooh Bear.

  He was waging his own private war with the four American helicopters. He had knocked out one Apache helicopter with gunfire and had just fired a Hellfire missile at the rising Super Stallion. The missile slammed into the front windshield of the Super Stallion just as the big chopper came level with the platform.

  The CH-53E exploded in a giant ball of flames—and lurched in mid-air, before it fell, dropping alongside the platform, its swirling rotor blades missing the lower levels of the platform by inches before the whole chopper smashed down in a crumpled heap on the sloping southern flank of the Great Pyramid itself.

  It now lay at a 52-degree angle—the slope of the Pyramid—at the spot where the platform’s struts met the Pyramid, its body crumpled and broken but its rotors still buzzing in blurring circles of motion.

  Judah had recited two lines by this time. . .

  Pooh Bear swung around in his gun turret and had just zeroed in on the American Black Hawk chopper when—to his surprise—he saw the Black Hawk fire a missile into the back of one of its own Apache attack birds.

  It was then that Pooh saw the pilots of the Black Hawk: Zoe and Fuzzy. In the confusion earlier, they’d escaped their bonds, stolen the Black Hawk and leapt into the fray.

  But then suddenly a CIEF trooper leapt up onto the Halicarnassus’s wing, trying to take out Pooh Bear’s turret guerrilla-style. Pooh couldn’t turn the turret in time. The man had him, raised his Colt rifle—

  Bam!

  The CIEF trooper was hit in the back of the head by a long-distance sniper shot, a shot that had been fired by—

  —Stretch, sitting in the side door of the stolen Black Hawk, holding a sniper rifle.

  Pooh saw the Israeli, alive and with the good guys, and he smiled for the briefest of moments.

  Judah had recited four lines. . .

  West.

  He was waging his own private war against the eight men guarding Judah at the Capstone: six CIEF troopers, Koenig and Kallis.

  He strode forward, eyes fixed, face set, both of his guns held outstretched in front of him.

  The old warrior in Jack West—a warrior Judah had helped create—had returned . . . and he was a mean motherfucker.

  West shot four of the troopers—all right between the eyeballs. One shot, one kill.

  Another he grabbed from behind, snapping his neck, before using the dead man’s body as a shield to receive fire from Cal Kallis while emptying the dead man’s M-4 into two others. Then the wily old Nazi, Koenig, lunged at him from the side with a knife, but he received two rounds to the nose for his trouble, the force of the shots sending him flying clear off the platform.

  Judah finished the sixth line. . .

  ‘Hold him off!’ he called to Kallis as he began the last line.

  That left West facing Cal Kallis—who now stood between West and Judah—in the midst of the maelstrom of light, wind and sound.

  It was a stand-off from which there could be only one winner.

  But there was also one more figure at work in all this.

  Beyond the mayhem happening on the platform, unseen by anyone,the exit door above the left wing of the Halicarnassus opened and a figure emerged from it, skulking low, moving swiftly, holding something small in his hands.

  He scurried out from the doorway and onto the wing. Then he leapt down from the front of the wing onto the wooden platform, heading—again unseen—in the direction of Wizard and Lily.

  West and Kallis faced each other.


  Then they moved, at exactly the same time, lifting and firing their guns simultaneously, like a pair of wild west gunslingers—

  Click! Click!

  They were both dry.

  ‘Fuck!’ Kallis yelled.

  ‘No . . .’ West breathed.

  For he knew that it didn’t matter now.

  Judah also knew. Their eyes met, and West’s face fell.

  He was too late.

  By a bare few seconds—no a bare few metres—he was too late.

  With a smile of insane delight, by the light of the Tartarus Sunspot on the Day of the Rotation, Marshall Judah uttered the final words of the ritual of power and looked triumphantly to the heavens.

  Nothing happened.

  Granted, West wasn’t sure what should have happened. Should the sky darken? Should the Earth shake? Should Judah turn into some giant all-powerful dragon? Should West’s gun turn to dust?

  Whatever was supposed to happen to show that the United States of America had just earned itself a thousand years of undisputed worldly power, it didn’t manifest itself in any visible way.

  And then West saw that, indeed, nothing had happened.

  For there, scuttling on all fours away from the Capstone on the other side of the platform, having crawled over the corpse of the CIEF trooper who was supposed to be guarding the channel that led under the Capstone, was the boy, Alexander.

  He hadn’t been in the sacrificial spot when Judah had completed the ritual. . .

  So the ritual hadn’t taken effect.

  Judah saw it too and he shouted, ‘No! No!’

  The boy clambered to the edge of the platform, turned back— and seeing del Piero’s dead body, he leaned out over the side of the platform, lowering himself down to the level below.

  West’s view of Alexander disappearing over the edge was cut off by the flash of Cal Kallis’s K-Bar knife rushing toward his eyes.

  West ducked and the blade went high. He then rose quickly and punched the knife from Kallis’s hand before nailing the CIEF trooper square in the nose with the best punch he’d ever thrown with his all-metal left hand—