The Six Sacred Stones jw-2

by Matthew Reilly

  “Thanks, Monster,” Jack said, standing. “Take us in.”

  ABU SIMBEL

  SOUTHERN EGYPT

  DECEMBER 10, 2007, 0400 HOURS

  IN THE PREDAWN light, the enormous statues of Rameses the Great loomed like giants frozen forever in stone.

  They towered above West’s team and their vehicles, dwarfing them.

  Whereas Zoe had used silent nonlethal force to subdue the guards at Stonehenge, here Jack had not been so subtle. The two Egyptian Department of Antiquities guards who had been on patrol at the popular tourist site had quickly surrendered when they found themselves staring down the barrels of four submachine guns. Now they lay bound and gagged in their guardhouse.

  Jack stood before the four statues of Rameses, while Wizard stood a hundred yards away in front of the smaller temple of Nefertari. The whole team was here except for Sky Monster and Stretch—they’d remained on The Halicarnassus and now circled high overhead, keeping watch over the landscape and waiting for the extraction call.

  “Range finders,” Jack commanded, and two laser range finders were brought out, one for each set of statues.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Zoe asked, nodding at the second of the four statues of Rameses II. Sometime in the distant past, its head had fallen off.

  “No,” West said. “In ancient Egypt, they counted from right to left. The ‘third eye’ will be on that one.” He pointed at the statue second from the right.

  Helped by Pooh Bear, Astro abseiled down from the rocky overhang above the statue in question, clutching one of the range finders in his free hand.

  Over at the Nefertari temple, Scimitar did the same, aided by Vulture: there the “third eye” was also on the second statue from the right, a statue of Nefertari.

  As they roped into position, West turned and gazed out over Lake Nasser.

  The great lake stretched away to the horizon, dark and silent, possessed of that unnatural calm found only in man-made lakes. A low fog hovered over it.

  The opposite shore swung around in a long curve, and, rising up out of the lake in front of this shoreline, Jack could just make out a series of pyramid-shaped islands.

  At the base of many of those islands and all along the old shoreline, Jack knew, were all manner of hieroglyphic carvings that UNESCO had not been able to save from the rising waters. Just like the Three Gorges Dam in China.

  Astro and Scimitar were in position.

  The great stone head in front of Astro was simply huge, even larger than he was.

  “Mount the range finders in the eye sockets,” West instructed. “Make sure they’re precisely aligned with the statues’ sight lines.”

  Astro did so—likewise, Scimitar at his statue—using clamps to secure his range finder to the eye socket of his statue.

  Once they were done, West got them to adjust the devices slightly, two degrees to southward—to account for the slight repositioning of Abu Simbel by UNESCO.

  “OK, turn them on.”

  The range finders were switched on—

  —and suddenly two dead-straight red laser lines lanced out from the third eye sockets, shooting out over the lake, slicing through the fog, disappearing into the near distance—

  —only to converge at a point about one and a quarter miles away, at one of the small pyramidal rock islands jutting up out of the waters of Lake Nasser not far from the opposite shore.

  “Oh my goodness,” Wizard breathed. “We found it.”

  Two Zodiac speedboats were immediately inflated and launched into the water.

  Vulture and Scimitar were left on the shore as a rear guard while Jack and the others shoomed off in the two speedboats.

  Within ten minutes, the two Zodiacs arrived at the pyramidal island, shrouded by fog.

  The semisubmerged snouts of dozens of Nile crocodiles could be seen nearby, forming a wide circle around the two boats, their eyes glinting in the team’s flashlights, staring at the intruders.

  As it drew near, Zoe peered up at the rocky island. At the waterline, its flanks were sheer, almost vertical, while farther up they tapered to a more gentle slope.

  “The surface looks almost hand-carved,” she said. “Like someone chiseled the rock island into the shape of a pyramid.”

  Wizard said, “Archaeologists have long pondered the shape of these islands, back when they were just hills, before the lake rose. But, no, tests have proved that they were not carved in any way. This is just their natural shape.”

  “Weird,” Lily said.

  “Hey! I’ve got a sonar reading…” Astro called from his Zodiac, on which was all manner of depth-sounding and ground-penetrating radar devices.

  “No, wait,” he sighed. “It’s nothing. Living signature. Something down on the bottom. Probably just a croc—hold on, this is better, GPR has found a void in the base of the island directly beneath us. Sonic resonance confirms it. Looks like a horizontal tunnel of some kind, delving into the island.”

  “Bring the boats together,” Jack ordered, “and anchor us to the base of the island. Then bring out the air-chute and the docking door. Astro, Pooh Bear—get your tanks on. You’ve got the job of sealing the entrance.”

  Twenty minutes later, a strange contraption sat in between the two anchored Zodiacs: a hollow inflatable rubber tube that dived down into the water like an open-topped vertical pipe.

  Astro and Pooh Bear—in full scuba gear and bearing harpoon guns for the crocs—splashed backward into the inky water, flashlights on.

  Ninety feet underneath the boats, they arrived at the lake bed, at the point where it met the base of the rock pyramid.

  They panned their flashlights over the surface of the island pyramid, to reveal hundreds of images cut into the rocky surface. They were mainly standard Egyptian carvings: hieroglyphics and images of pharaohs shaking hands with gods.

  “Jack,” Astro said into his face-mask mike, “we’ve got carvings. Lots of them.”

  Pooh Bear waved a portable GPR—ground-penetrating radar—device over the image-riddled wall. Kind of like an X-ray, it could detect hollows and voids behind the surface of the wall. “Here! Got a void behind this carving!”

  Astro shone his flashlight onto the suspect section of wall, and found himself illuminating a carving he’d seen before:

  The symbol for the Machine. “We should’ve known,” he said. “Found it.”

  ASTRO AND POOH BEAR then quickly set about affixing a peculiar tentlike device over the point where the lake floor met the wall of the pyramid island, covering the carving of the Machine.

  Shaped like a cube, the tentlike device was a portable variable-aperture United States Navy submarine docking door—a gift to West from the Sea Ranger.

  Normally used to join submersibles to submarines, it was a rubber-walled docking unit that operated like an air lock: once you affixed it in place, sealing the edges, you filled it with air—inflating it like a balloon and expelling any water from it—thus providing a dry “docking environment” between two submerged points.

  There were removable entry holes in each of the cube’s six sides, and at the moment one of these—on the upper side of the docking unit—was connected to the tube that snaked back up to the Zodiacs.

  Once the unit was in place, its corner points bolted to the lake floor and to the pyramid island itself, Jack started an air pump, filling the tube and the docking unit with air.

  The docking door inflated quickly and suddenly the way was clear to climb down its tube—perfectly dry—and access the wall of the ancient pyramid island.

  Jack climbed down the rubber tube, gripping its inbuilt ladder holds, slowly descending into Lake Nasser.

  He carried a full-face scuba mask but did not wear it. It was a precaution, just in case the docking door collapsed or otherwise unexpectedly filled with water. He also held the cleansed First Pillar in a chest pack. On his head he wore his trademark fireman’s helmet.

  He came to the bottom of the entry tube and stood—
thanks to the air-filled docking unit—on the floor of Lake Nasser. His boots stepped down into an inch of water, water that formed a suction layer against the bottom of the tentlike docking unit.

  The exposed flank of the pyramid island stood before him, rocky and uneven and glistening wet.

  Carved symbols covered it, a kaleidoscope of images in which the carving of the Machine was easily lost.

  But there was no discernible door in the wall. Nothing but carving after carving after carving.

  Jack gazed at the symbol for the Machine.

  It was a fairly large carving, about the size of a manhole. And the six rectangles in it depicting the six Pillars seemed to be lifesized, the same size as the Pillar in Jack’s chest pack.

  Unlike all the others, however, the uppermost rectangle in the carving was indented, recessed into the image.

  “A keyhole,” Jack said aloud.

  He removed the Pillar from his chest pack, held it against the recessed rectangle.

  It was an exact match for size.

  “You’ll never know if you don’t try…”

  And so he reached forward with the Pillar and pressed it into the rectangle—

  —and immediately the entire circular carving turned on its axis, rotating like a wheel, and retreated into the wall, revealing a dark round tunnel beyond it.

  Jack stepped back in surprise, still gripping the Pillar.

  “Jack? You OK down there?”Zoe’s voice asked in his ear.

  “Am I ever,” he said. “Come on down. We’re in.”

  THE TUNNEL OF SOBEK

  THE TIGHT TUNNEL beyond the round entry hole was slick with wetness. A dripping noise echoed from somewhere within it.

  Gripping an amber glowstick in his teeth and guided by the light on his fireman’s helmet, Jack belly-crawled for about five yards down the claustrophobic tunnel before he came to its first obstacle: a huge Nile crocodile, easily an eighteen-footer, blocking the way and grinning at him from a distance of three feet.

  Jack froze.

  The thing was enormous. A great fat prehistoric beast. Its fearsome teeth protruded from the edges of its snout. It snorted loudly.

  Jack shone his helmet flashlight down the tunnel past the big croc, and saw others beyond it, maybe four more lined up in single file down the length of the tight little tunnel.

  There must be some other entrance,Jack thought.A crevice somewhere above the waterline that the crocodiles have slithered in through.

  “Hey, Jack?” Zoe said, arriving in the tunnel behind him. “What’s the holdup?”

  “A large animal with a whole lot of teeth.”

  “Oh.”

  Jack pursed his lips, thinking.

  As he did so, Zoe came up behind him and shone her flashlight past him. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

  Then abruptly Jack said, “It’s too cold.”

  “What?”

  “It’s too early in the day for them, their blood’s still too cold to be a threat.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zoe asked.

  “Crocodiles are cold-blooded. For a croc, especially a big one, to perform any kind of athletic act, it needs its blood to be warmed up, usually by the Sun. These guys are scary, sure, but it’s too early in the morning for them, too cold, so they’re not gonna be capable of big aggressive movements. We can crawl past them.”

  “Now you really are kidding.”

  At that moment, Pooh Bear and Wizard arrived behind them.

  “What’s the problem?” Pooh Bear asked.

  “Them.” Zoe jerked her chin at the line of large crocodiles before them. “But don’t worry, Captain Courageous here thinks we can crawl by them.”

  Pooh Bear’s face went instantly white. “Cr-crawl by them…?”

  Wizard gazed at the crocs, nodding. “At this time of day, their blood will still be very cold. The only thing they could really do right now is bite.”

  “Biting is what worries me,” Zoe said.

  Jack checked his watch. It was 5:47 A.M.

  “We’ve got no choice,” he said. “We’ve got twenty-five minutes to get to the Vertex, and that means getting past these guys. I’m going in.”

  “Er, Huntsman,” Pooh Bear said. “You know…well…you know I’d follow you anywhere. But I’m…not good with crocs at the best of times and this is—”

  Jack nodded. “It’s okay, Zahir. No one’s completely fearless, not even you. You sit this one out. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thank you, Huntsman.”

  “Zoe? Wizard?”

  He could see that they were thinking similar thoughts.

  Zoe eyed the tunnel determinedly. “You can’t do this alone. I’ll be right behind you.”

  And Wizard said, “I’ve worked my whole life to see what lies beyond those crocs. I’ll be damned if they’ll stop me.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Jack said.

  Crawling through the darkness, he came to the first croc.

  The great reptile made him look tiny, puny.

  As Jack’s face came level with it, the croc opened its massive jaws, revealing every single one of its teeth, and emitted a harsh belching grunt in warning.

  Jack paused, drew in a deep breath, and took the plunge, crawling past the thing’s jaws and shimmying around the side of the animal, sliding up against the curved wall of the tunnel.

  His eyes came level with the croc’s—and Jack saw that those eyes, cold and hard, were watching him every inch of the way.

  But the creature did not attack. It did nothing but shuffle on its claws.

  Jack wriggled past it, his cargo pants brushing up against the bulging belly of the beast, and he could feel the flabby give of its abdomen, and then suddenly he was alongside its spiky tail, past it.

  Jack let out the breath he’d been holding.

  “I’m past the first one,” he said into his headset mike. “Zoe, Wizard. Come on through.”

  THE STAIRS OF ATUM

  IN THIS MANNER, Jack, Zoe, and Wizard slithered down the long tight tunnel, squeezing on their bellies past the five gigantic Nile crocodiles.

  At the end of the tunnel, they emerged at the top of a square stone well equipped with a staircase that delved down into darkness.

  The stairs bent back and forth as they dived down the well shaft. On the walls of each landing were thousands of hieroglyphs, including more large carvings of the Machine’s wheel-like symbol.

  Jack descended the first flight of steps and came to the first landing……where the Machine symbol in the wall retreated inward by some unseen mechanism and revealed a wide gaping hole behind it, a hole that could contain any kind of deadly liquid…

  …but then the Pillar in Jack’s hands glowed slightly and the hole instantly resealed itself.

  Jack exchanged a look with Wizard.

  “Doesn’t look like you get past these traps without the Pillar in your possession.”

  “Not without great difficulty,” Wizard agreed.

  Down the stairs they climbed, winding back and forth.

  At every landing, the wheel-like symbol for the Machine opened but then closed again when it sensed the Pillar in West’s hand.

  Down and down.

  Wizard counted the stairs as they went, until at last they came to the bottom, where the stairs stopped at a great stone archway—tall and imposing, twenty feet high. It opened onto dense blackness.

  Wizard finished his count—“267.”

  Jack stepped into the archway, staring out into the blackness beyond it. A light breeze struck his face, cool and crisp.

  He sensed a large space before him, so he pulled out his flare gun and fired it into the black.

  Fifteen flares later, he just stood there in the archway, his mouth open in wonderment.

  “Now that’s a sight you’ll remember for a long time,” he breathed.

  THE HALL OF THE MACHINE

  The twenty-foot-high archway in which Jack stood looked microscopic compared to
the space that opened up below it.

  The archway stood at the summit of an immense mountain of stone steps—five hundred of them, maybe more—steps that descended to a flat-floored hall that was easily four hundred feet tall and five hundred wide. The colossal collection of stairs stretched for the entire width of the hall, from wall to wall, an enormous mountainside of perfectly square-cut steps.