Kallis looked out over the edge just in time to see the last two members of West’s team vanish under the waves with scuba gear on.
He keyed his radio mike. “Colonel Judah, this is Kallis. We’ve just missed them at the sea entrance. Immediate pursuit is a viable option. Repeat, immediate pursuit is viable. Instructions?”
“Engage in pursuit,” the cold voice at the other end said. “Instructions are as before: you may kill any of the others, but not West or the girl. Go. We’ll enter via the second entrance.”
West’s team surfaced inside the dark cave behind the false cliff.
As soon as his head broke the surface, Wizard called, “Jack! We’ve got trouble! The Americans are right behind us!”
One by one, West hauled the others out of the water and onto the small stone ledge to the left.
“How?” he said to Wizard.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
West scowled. “We’ll figure it out later. Come on. I hate having to rush through uncharted trap systems and now we’ve got to. Get a look at this place.”
Wizard looked up at the cavern around them.
“Oh my …” he gasped.
Wizard stared in wonder at the sight. So did the others.
Through sheer force of will, Imhotep VI had indeed constructed a ceiling over the natural inlet—turning it into a most unique cavern.
It wasn’t wide, maybe twenty meters on average, fifty at the widest. But it was long, superlong. Now lit by many flares, it was revealed to be a narrow twisting chasm that stretched away into darkness for several hundred meters.
Its sidewalls were sheer and vertical, plunging into the water. Spanning the upper heights of these walls, however, were massive beams of granite—each the size of a California redwood—laid horizontally side by side across the width of the inlet, resting in perfectly fitted notches dug just below ground level.
At some time in the distant past, this granite ceiling had been covered over with sand, concealing the entire inlet.
Behind West’s team stood the great wall that sealed the inlet off from the sea. Four hundred feet tall, it was a colossal structure, strong and proud, and on this side its giant granite bricks had not been camouflaged to match the coastline. It looked like a massive brick wall.
Of immediate importance to West and his team, however, was what lay behind this wall.
The roofed chasm.
Cut into the sheer cliffs on either side of the chasm’s central waterway were a pair of narrow ledgelike paths.
The two paths ran in identical manner on either side of the twisting, bending chasm—perfect mirror images of each other. They variously rose to dizzying heights as long bending stairways or descended below the waterline; they even delved momentarily into the walls themselves before emerging again farther on. At many points along the way, the paths and staircases had crumbled, leaving voids to be jumped.
The waterway itself was also deadly. Fed by the surging tide outside, small whirlpools dotted its length, ready to suck down the unwary adventurer who fell in, while two lines of toothlike boulders blocked the way for any kind of boat.
Spanning the watercourse was a beautiful multi-arched aqueduct bridge built in the Carthaginian style, but sadly it was horribly broken in the middle.
As a final touch, vents in the walls spewed forth plumes of steam, casting an ominous haze over the entire scene.
Wizard raised a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes and peered down the length of the great chasm.
The world went luminescent green.
In deep shadow at the far end of the cavern, only partially visible beyond its twists and turns, he saw a structure. It was clearly huge, a fortress of some kind, with two high-spired towers and a great arched entrance, but because of the bends in the chasm and the haze, he couldn’t see it in its entirety.
“Hamilcar’s Refuge,” he breathed. “Untouched for over two thousand years.”
“Maybe not,” West said. “Look over there.” Wizard did, and his jaw dropped.
“My goodness …”
There, wrecked against some rocks in the middle of the waterway, lying half-in, half-out of the water, was the great rusted hulk of a World War II–era submarine.
Emblazoned on its conning tower, corroded by time and salt, was the Nazi swastika and the gigantic number: “U-342.”
“It’s a Nazi U-boat …” Big Ears breathed.
Zoe said, “Hessler and Koenig …”
“Probably,” Wizard agreed.
“Who?” Big Ears asked.
“The famous Nazi archaeological team: Herman Hessler and Hans Koenig. They were experts on the Capstone, and also founding members of the Nazi Party, so they were buddies of Hitler himself. In fact, with Hitler’s blessing, they commanded a top secret scientific expedition to North Africa in 1941, accompanied by Rommel’s Afrika Korps.”
Big Ears said, “Let me guess, they were after the Capstone, they disappeared and were never heard from again?”
“Yes and no,” Zoe answered. “Yes, they were after the Capstone; and yes, Hessler never returned, but Koenig did, only to be caught by the British when he arrived, on foot, in Tobruk, staggering out of the desert, starving and almost dead from thirst. I believe he was handed over to the Americans, who asked to interrogate him. Koenig would ultimately be taken back to the States with a bunch of other German scientists, where I believe he still lives.”
West turned to Wizard. “How far behind us is Kallis?”
“Five minutes at the most,” Wizard said. “Probably less.”
“Then we have to get cracking. Sorry, Zoe, but you’ll have to continue the history lesson on the way. Come on, people. Dump your bigger scuba tanks, but keep your pony bottles and your masks—we might need them.” A pony bottle was a small handheld scuba tank with a mouthpiece. “Wizard, fire up a Warbler or two.”
THE FIRST STAIRCASE (ASCENDING)
West and his team took the left-hand cliff path.
It quickly became a staircase that rose and twisted up the left-hand wall like a slithering snake. After a minute of climbing, West was eighty feet above the swirling waterway below.
At two points along the ascending stone staircase there were four-foot gaps that preceded stepping-stone-like ledges.
And facing onto those ledges were wall holes just like the one that Fuzzy had neutralized at the base of the quarry in Sudan.
West didn’t know what deadly fluid these wall holes spewed forth, for the Nazis had—very conveniently—neutralized them long ago, riveting sheets of plate steel over the holes, then laying steel catwalkgangways over the gaps in the stairs.
West danced across the first catwalk-bridge and past the sealed wall hole.
Whump!
A great weight of some unseen liquid banged against the other side of the steel plate, trying to burst its way through. But the plate held, and West and his team ran by it.
No sooner were they past the second plugged-up wall hole than—
Zing-smack!
A bullet sizzled past their heads and ricocheted off the wall above them.
Everyone spun.
To see a member of Kallis’s CIEF team hovering in the water at the base of the great wall, his Colt rifle raised and aimed.
The CIEF man let fly with a spray on full auto.
But Wizard had initiated a Warbler in Big Ears’s backpack and the bullets fanned outward, away from the fleeing group.
More CIEF men surfaced at the base of the false wall—until there were three, six, ten, twelve of them gathered there.
West saw them.
And once all his people were past the two gaps in the rising staircase, he jimmied the two Nazi gangways free, sending them free-falling into the water eighty feet below. Then he used his X-bar like a crowbar to lever off the Nazi plate covering the second wall hole. The plate came free, exposing the wall hole.
Then West took off after the others.
THE CRUCIFIXES
Up they ran, following the narrow winding staircase that hugged the left-hand cliff.
About 150 feet up, they came to a wider void in the stairs, about twenty feet across.
Some handholds had been gouged out of the cliff face, allowing one to climb sideways across the void, resting one’s feet on a two-inch-wide miniledge.
Strange X-shaped hollows—each the size of a man—lined the wall of the void, curiously in synch with the handholds.
“Crucifixes,” Wizard said as West caught up. “Nasty. Another of Imhotep VI’s favorites.”
“No choice then. I’ll go up and over,” West said.
Within seconds, he was free-climbing up the cliff face, gripping cracks in its surface with only his fingertips, crossing it sideways above the trap-laden void.
As he climbed, Wizard peered anxiously at the pursuing CIEF team. They were themselves trying to negotiate the two stepping-stone ledges fifty yards below.
West landed on the other side, and quickly strung a rope—with a flying fox attached to it—across the void.
The CIEF team got past the first stepping-stone ledge.
West pulled the others across the void on the flying fox. First Lily, then Zoe, Big Ears, and Wizard.
One of the Delta men leaped onto the second stepping-stone ledge—and a gush of superheated mud came blasting out of the now-exposed wall hole there and enveloped him.
The mud was a deep dark brown; thick, viscous, and heavy. It was volcanic mud. It seared the skin from the man’s body in an instant before its immense weight hurled him down to the water eighty feet below.
Wizard’s eyes goggled. “Oh my …”
The remaining CIEF men were more cautious, and they skirted the wall hole carefully.
In the meantime, Stretch and—last of all—Pooh Bear were hauled across the wider void on the flying fox.
No sooner had Pooh Bear’s feet touched solid ground than the first member of the pursuing CIEF team arrived at the other side of the void, only twenty feet away!
West immediately cut his team’s rope, letting it fall into the abyss, and took off around the next bend.
The first CIEF man, energized by how close he was to his enemy, immediately set about using the hand-holds gouged into the wall of the void.
It happened when his hands hit the second and third handholds.
Like slithering tentacles, two bronze manacles came springing out of the wall and clasped tightly around his wrists.
Then, a great man-sized bronze cross fell out of the X-shaped recess in the wall, right in front of the hapless CIEF man.
And the operation of the crucifix trap suddenly became apparent to the CIEF trooper: the manacles were attached to the big heavy cross and he was now held tight by them.
He shrieked as the cross tipped out of its recess and fell 150 feet straight down the sheer cliff face, plunging into the water at the bottom with a gigantic splash…
… where it sank, taking the CIEF man with it.
He screamed the whole time, right up to the point where the weight of the cross took him under.
West and his team ran.
THE SINKHOLE CAVE
It was probably the first time in history someone could claim to have been helped by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, but it was largely the Nazis’ bridge-building efforts from sixty years previously that kept West and his team ahead of Kallis’s men.
At the next bend in the chasm, halfway up the high vertical wall, the ledge path bored into the cliff face, cutting the corner.
The short tunnel there took them to a square, diorite-walled sinkhole cave, twenty feet across and thirty feet deep. Steaming, bubbling volcanic mud—heated by a subterranean thermal source—filled the entire base of the sinkhole. The tunnel continued on the opposite side of the cave.
But the Nazis had once again bridged this gap—so West’s crew ran across the bridge, then promptly kicked it into the sinkhole behind them.
THE SECOND STAIRCASE (DESCENDING)
They emerged on the other side of the bend—where they fired some new flares—and beheld a steep staircase that plunged down the curving wall of the chasm before them, hugging it all the way down to the water at its base.
Indeed, the staircase seemed to continue into the water … right into the mouth of a swirling whirlpool.
But yet again, the Nazis had bridged this peril with a gangway.
West flew down the stairs—running beneath a large and rather ominous wall hole mounted above the tunnel’s doorway.
“Jack!” Wizard called. “Trigger stones! Find them and point them out for the rest of us, will you!”
West did so, avoiding any step that was askew or suspicious, and identifying it for the next person in their line.
Their progress was slowed at two places along the staircase—where the stairs had decayed and fallen away, meaning they had to make precarious jumps over the voids.
It was just as the last man in their line—Pooh Bear—was leaping over the second void that another CIEF trooper appeared at the top of the staircase!
Pooh Bear jumped.
The CIEF man charged.
And in his hurry, Pooh Bear landed awkwardly … and slipped … and fell, dropping clumsily onto his butt, and landing squarely on a trigger stone.
“Blast!” Pooh Bear swore.
Everyone froze, and turned.
“You stupid, stupid Arab …” Stretch muttered.
“Stretch … not now,” West snapped.
An ominous rumbling came from the wall hole at the top of the long, curving staircase.
“Let me guess,” Stretch said, “a big round boulder is going to roll out of that hole and chase us down the stairs, just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Not exactly.
Three wooden boulders, each three feet in diameter and clearly heavy, came rushing out of the hole in quick succession—and each was fitted with hundreds of outward-pointed bronze nails.
They must have weighed 200 pounds each and they bounded down the stairway, booming with every impact, bearing down on the team.
West scooped up Lily. “Go! Go! Go!”
The team bolted down the stairs, chased by the nail-ridden boulders.
So did the lone CIEF trooper.
West came to the base of the stairs, to the Nazi gangway balanced across the whirlpool there at an odd angle.
He sprang across it, leading Lily by the hand, followed by Zoe and Big Ears, then Wizard and Stretch.
But the CIEF man was also fleet-footed and, chased by the nail boulders, he hurdled the two voids easily and almost caught up with Pooh Bear, running last of all, red-faced and breathless.
But at the final moment, Pooh dived forward, leaping full stretch onto the gangway. The CIEF man did the same, but in the instant he leaped into the air, the first of the nail boulders slammed into him, piercing his body with at least twenty jagged nails, and swept him into the whirlpool at the base of the stairs, closely followed by the other two boulders, which bounced off the gangway’s handrails and away into the water.
“Ouch …” said Pooh Bear, lying on the gangway. “Come on, Pooh!” West called. “No time for resting now.”
“Resting? Resting! Pity those of us who don’t have your energy, Captain West.” And so with a groan, Pooh Bear hauled himself up and took off after the others.
THE DROWNING CAGE
Crossing the Nazi gangway, they arrived at a sizable stone platform separated from the next large stepping-stone by a five-foot-wide gap of water.
A further five feet beyond that stepping-stone was another staircase, going upward. However, this staircase was difficult to access—its first step lay seven feet above the swirling water, an impossible leap.
The biggest problem, however, lay above the stepping-stone itself.
A great cube-shaped cage was suspended above it, ready to drop the moment someone landed on it.
“It’s a drowning cage,” Wizard said. “We jump onto the stepping-st
one and the cage traps us. Then the whole platform lowers into the water, cage and all, drowning us.”
“But it’s the only way across …” Zoe said.
Stretch was covering the rear. “Figure something out, people. Because Kallis is here!”
West spun—
—to see Kallis emerge from the sinkhole cave at the top of the staircase behind them.
“What do you think, Jack?” Wizard asked.
West bit his lip. “Hmmm. Can’t swim around it because of the whirlpools. And we can’t climb up and around it: the wall here is polished smooth. There just doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid it …”
Then West looked over at the ascending staircase beyond the drowning cage’s stepping-stone. Three Nazi skeletons lay on it—all headless. But beyond them, he saw something else:
A square doorway sunk into the wall, covered in cobwebs.
“There is no way to avoid it,” he said aloud, “so don’t avoid it. Wizard. The Templar Pit in Malta. Where we found the Museion scrolls. It’s just like that. You have to enter the trap in order to pass it.”
Stretch urged, “Some action, people. Kallis is halfway down the stairs …”
Zoe said to West: “Enter the trap in order to pass it? What do you mean?”
“Hurry up, people …” Stretch said. “Warblers don’t work at point-blank range.”
West spun to see Kallis gaining on them, still with nine more men, only thirty yards away and closing.
“OK everyone,” he said, “you have to trust me on this one. No time to go in groups, we have to do this together.”
“A bit all or nothing, isn’t it, Jack?” Zoe said.
“No other choice. People, get your pony bottles ready. Then we all jump onto that stepping-stone. Ready … go!”
And they all jumped together.
The eight of them landed as one on the wide stepping-stone—
—and immediately, the great cage above it dropped, clanging down around them like a giant mousetrap, trapping them under its immense weight—
—and the entire ten-foot-wide stepping-stone began to sink into the swirling depths of the waterway!
Seven Deadly Wonders Page 12