He was the one man West feared more than any other on Earth. The man who had been West's last field commander in the military. The man who had once left West for dead on the plains outside Basra in Iraq.
He was a former commander of Delta Team Six, the best within Delta, but was now the commanding officer of the CIEF, the very best special forces unit in the world.
He was Colonel Marshall Judah.
In their current positions, West and his team were marginally ahead
ofJudah.
Given that the paths running on either side of the chasm were
identical, West's team was one trap ahead. Judah had yet to pass
the drowning cage on his side, and had just stepped out onto the
base of the descending stairway over there, in doing so setting off—
—three nail-studded boulders.
The three boulders tumbled down the stairway toward Judah and his men.
Judah couldn't have cared less.
He just nodded to three of his men, who quickly and competently erected a sturdy tripod-like barricade between their team and the oncoming nail-boulders.
The titanium-alloy barricade blocked the entire width of the stairway and the boulders slammed into it one after the other, each one being deflected by the sturdy barricade and bouncing harmlessly away into the water.
Judah never took his eyes off West.
'How are those dreams going, Jack? Still trapped in that volcano?' he called. 'Still haunted by the chants and the drums?'
On his side of the chasm, West was stunned. How could Judah know that. . . ?
It was exactly the response Judah had wanted. He smiled a thin, cold smile. 'I know even more than that, Jack! More than you can possibly suspect.'
West was rattled—but he tried not to show it.
It didn't work.
Judah nodded at the fireman's helmet now back on West's head. 'Still using that fireman's hat, Jack? You know I never agreed with that. Too cumbersome in tight places. It always pains a teacher to see a talented student employing foolish methods.'
West couldn't help himself—he glanced up at his helmet.
Judah followed through, driving home his edge. 'Looks like we've got something of a race on our hands here, Jack. Think you can outrun me? Do you seriously think you can outrun meV
'Everybody,' West said quietly to his people, not taking his eyes off Judah. 'We have to run. Fast. Now. Go!'
West's team bolted up the stairs, heading for the guard tower at their peak.
Judah just nodded calmly to his men, who immediately began erecting a long gangway to bypass their drowning cage and reach the ascending stairway on their side of the chasm.
The race was on.
The Guard Tower and the Gorge
West and his team ran up their stairway.
Just before the guard tower, a narrow gorge cut across their path. It was maybe fifteen feet across, with sheer vertical sides. This little gorge actually sliced all the way across the main chasm, and as such, had a twin over on the other side.
And once again, the Nazis had been helpful. It seemed that the ancient Carthaginians had built a complex chain-lowered drawbridge to span this gorge—a drawbridge that the Nazis had managed to lower into place, spanning the void.
Taking any luck they could get, West and his team sprinted across the ancient drawbridge, and arrived at the guard tower high up on the next bend in the chasm.
There was a ladder hewn into the guard tower's curved flank, a ladder that wound around the outside of the structure, meaning they had to free-climb 200 feet above nothing but the swirling waters below.
Two head-chopping blades sprang out from slits in the wall-ladder, but West neutralised them with sticky foam and his team, roped together, successfully climbed around the gravity-defying guard tower.
On the other side of the chasm, Judah's long lightweight bridge fell into place and his men ran across it, completely avoiding their drowning cage, reaching the base of their ascending staircase.
The wall-ladder on the outside of West's guard tower brought his team up onto its balcony.
A tight tunnel in the back of the balcony delved into the chasm-wall itself and emerged on the other side of the bend, where West fired off three self-hovering flares . . .
... to gloriously reveal the far end of the chasm and their goal.
'Holy shit. . .' Big Ears gasped.
'Swear jar,' Lily said instantly.
Standing there before them in all its splendour, towering above the waterway, lording over it, easily fifteen storeys tall and jutting out from the far facing rockwall, was a gigantic ancient fortress.
The steaming vents of the chasm gave the fortress a grim haunting look.
A super-solid square-shaped keep formed the core of the structure, with a giant gaping archway in its exact centre. This central section was flanked by two soaring defensive towers, high-spired pinnacles in the darkness. The style of these towers matched that of the guard tower that West had just passed through—only these were taller, stretching all the way up from the water.
Stretching downward from the Great Arch in the centre of the keep was a wide guttered rampway that lanced all the way down to the waterway, ending at a flat stone jetty. At least forty metres in length, with stairs nestled in its centre, the rampway resembled the step-ramps on Hatshepsut's mortuary temple near the Valley of the Kings.
Never finished and never used for its intended purpose—and long since concealed by an ingenious Egyptian architect—this was Hamilcar's Refuge.
West snatched his printout from his pouch, examined it:
Just like on the ancient drawing, the chasm before him ended at a Y-junction, splitting into two diverging channels. The Refuge sat nestled in the V at the top of the Y, facing the long upright 'stem'.
Two more spire-like 'sentry towers' sat on either side of the stem, facing the two towers of the Refuge itself.
As if all this weren't colossal enough, the Refuge featured two more soaring aqueduct bridges to add to the broken one in the main chasm—200 feet high and made of many bricked arches.
These two new bridges spanned the Y-channels of the waterway, but unlike the one crossing the main chasm, they were whole and intact.
It was Zoe who noticed the rockwall behind the Refuge. 'It slopes backward,' she said. 'Like the cone of a—' 'Come on, we don't have time,' West urged them on. The final stretch of the chasm featured a descending stairway
followed by an ascending ramp. The ramp slithered up the left-hand wall of the chasm, bending with every curve. Curiously, it bore a low upraised gutter on its outer edge, the purpose of which was not readily apparent.
Of course, this stairway-ramp combination was mirrored on Judah's side of the chasm.
West and his team charged down their descending stairway, avoiding a couple of blasting steam vents on the way.
In the meantime, Judah's team had just crossed their little gorge and arrived at their guard tower.
They started climbing around it.
The Ascending Ramp
An unusually high stepping-stone separated the base of the descending stairway from the base of the ascending ramp. It jutted out from the wall about thirty feet above the waterway.
The guttered ascending ramp rose above West and his team, stretching upward for maybe 100 metres, ending at the left-hand sentry tower. It was maybe four feet wide, enough for single-file only, and a sheer drop to the right of it fell away to the swirling waters below.
The ramp featured two openings along its length: one two-thirds of the way up that looked like a doorway; the second all the way at the very top of the ramp, that looked more like a pipe.
Ominously, a wispy thread of steam issued out from the pipe, dissipating as it spread into the chasm.
Wizard was enthralled. 'Ooh, it's a single-exit convergence trap . . .'
'A what?' Pooh Bear said.
West said, 'He means it's a race between us and whatever l
iquid comes out of that pipe. We have to get to the doorway before the liquid does. I assume the high stepping-stone triggers the contest.'
'What kind of liquid?' Big Ears asked.
Wizard said, 'I've seen crude-oil versions. Heated quicksand. Liquid tar . . .'
As Wizard spoke, West stole a glance back at Judah's men.
They were climbing around the outside of their guard tower,
high above the waterway, moving in a highly co-ordinated way— far faster than his team had.
The first CIEF man climbed over the balcony and disappeared
inside the tower.
'No time to ponder the issue,' he said. 'Let's take the challenge.' And with that he jumped onto the stepping-stone and bounced
over onto the ascending ramp.
No sooner had his foot hit the stepping-stone than a blast of super-hot volcanic mud vomited out from the pipe at the top of the ramp. Black and thick, the mud was so hot it bore thin streaks of golden-red magma in its oozing mass.
The ramp's gutter instantly came into effect.
It funnelled the fast-oozing body of superheated mud down the ramp, towards West's team!
'This is why we train every day,' West said. 'Run!'
Up the ramp the seven of them ran.
Down the ramp the red-hot mud flowed.
It was going to be close—the ramp was obviously constructed in
favour of the mud.
But West and his team were fit, prepared. They bounded up the slope, heaving with every stride, and they came to the doorway set into the wall just as the mud did and they charged in through it one after the other, West shepherding them through, diving in himself just as the volcanic mud slid by him, pouring down the ramp, where it ultimately tipped into the waterway at the bottom, sending up a great hissing plume of steam.
Judah's team, close behind West's, handled their ramp in a different
way.
They sent only one man up it: a specialist wearing a large silver canister on his back and holding a device that looked like a big-barrelled leafblower.
The specialist raced up the ramp and beat the flowing mud to his doorway, where, instead of disappearing inside, he fired his big 'leafblower' at the ramp.
Only instead of hot air, the device he held spewed forth a billowing cloud of supercooled liquid nitrogen, which instantly turned the leading edge of the mudflow into a solid crust that acted like a dam of sorts, funnelling the rest of the oncoming mud off and over the outer edge of the ramp!
This allowed Judah and his team to just stride up their ramp in complete safety, heading for the sentry tower on their side—moving ever forwards.
In stark contrast, West and his team arrived in their sentry tower breathless and on the run.
'Even if we get this Piece of the Capstone,' Stretch said, 'how can we possibly get it out? How can we get it past the Americans? And if it's a large Piece, it'll be nine feet square of near-solid gold-'
Pooh Bear scowled. 'Always argue the negative, don't you, Israeli. Sometimes I wonder why you even bothered to come on this mission.'
'I came to keep an eye on all of you,' Stretch retorted.
Wizard said, 'If we can't get the Piece, we at least need to see the Piece. Lily has to see the positive incantation carved into its upper side.'
West ignored them all.
He just peered out from the balcony of the sentry tower, down at the Great Arch of the Refuge.
He eyed the jetty at the bottom end of the guttered rampway stretching down from the Great Arch. The jetty stood at a point exactly halfway between the two sentry towers and it was covered by a small four-pillared marble gazebo. The vertical distance from West's balcony to the little gazebo: maybe 50 metres.
'Big Ears. I need a flying fox to that gazebo.'
'Got it.'
Big Ears whipped out his M-16, loaded a grappling hook into its underslung grenade launcher, aimed and fired.
The hook whizzed out across the chasm, arcing high through the air, its rope wobbling behind it. Then it shot downward,
toward the marble gazebo on the jetty, until—thwack!—the hook whiplashed around one of the gazebo's pillars and took hold.
'Nice shot, brother,' Zoe said, genuinely impressed.
Big Ears looped his end of the hook's rope around a pillar in the sentry tower's window and the rope went taut—creating a long steep zipline that stretched down and across the chasm, from the high sentry tower down to the low jetty.
'Lily,' West said, 'you're with me from here. Grab on. We go first.'
Lily leapt into West's arms, wrapped her hands around his neck. West then slung a compact handlebar-like flying fox over the rope and pushed off—
—and the two of them sailed out over the immense chasm, across the face of Hamilcar's Refuge, tiny dots against the great ancient fortress—
—before they slid to a perfect halt on the surface of the little jetty that lay before the dark looming structure.
'Okay, Zoe, come on down,' West said into his radio.
Zoe whizzed down the rope on her own flying fox, landing deftly next to West and Lily.
'Wizard, you're nex—' West said.
Bam!
Gunshot.
It echoed loudly across the great chasm.
West spun, saw one of Judah's snipers aiming a long-barrelled Barrett rifle out from their sentry tower's balcony . . . and suddenly realised that he was no longer within the protective range of the Warbler.
But strangely no bullet-impact hit near him, Zoe or Lily.
And then the realisation hit West.
The sniper wasn't aiming for them.
He was aiming at the—
'Damn it, no . . .'
Bam!
Another shot.
Ping! Shwack!
The flying fox's rope was severed right in its middle and went instantly slack, cut clean in two. It dropped, limp, into the water.
And suddenly West, Zoe and Lily were out on the jetty, all on their own, completely separated from the rest of their team.
'No choice now,' West said grimly. Then, into his radio: 'Big Ears, Pooh Bear, Stretch. Give us some cover fire. Because in four seconds we're gonna need it!'
Exactly four seconds later, right on cue, a withering barrage of gunfire blazed out from Judah's sentry tower.
A wave of bullets hammered the marble gazebo where West, Zoe and Lily were taking cover.
Impact-sparks exploded all around them.
But then the reply came from West's team, on their tower: roaring fire, aimed at the opposite sentry tower.
Bullets zinged back and forth across the main chasm, between the two towers.
The cover fire had its intended effect: it forced Judah's men to cease firing briefly and thus gave West the opening he needed.
'Okay, now!' he yelled to Zoe and Lily.
Out of the gazebo they ran, up the wide guttered rampway that gave access to the fortress, tiny figures before the enormous ancient citadel.
They flew up the stairs and, to the sound of gunfire outside, disappeared inside the dark yawning entrance to Hamilcar Barca's long-abandoned Refuge.
They entered a high-ceilinged many-pillared hall. The pillars ran in long sideways lines, so that the hall was exceedingly wide but not very deep.
It was absolutely beautiful—every column was ornately decorated, every ghost-like statue perfectly cut. It was also curiously Roman in its styling—the heavy-trading Carthaginians had been incredibly similar to their Roman rivals. Perhaps that was why they had been such bitter enemies over three bloody Punic Wars.
But this hall was long-deserted. Its floor lay bare, covered in a layer of grey ash.
It had also been modified by the Ptolemaic Egyptian engineers.
A wide ascending tunnel bored into the earth behind the fortress, continuing in a straight line from the Great Arch's entry rampway. Indeed, this tunnel and the rampway were connected by a flat path that crossed the pillared hall and also f
eatured raised gutters on its edges.
Zoe said, 'Looks like these gutters are designed to funnel some kind of liquid that flows out from the tunnel's core, through this hall, and down the front ramp.'
'No time to stop and stare,' West said. 'Keep moving.'
They ran across the stupendous hall, dwarfed by its immense pillars, and entered the gently-sloping tunnel sunk into its innermost wall.
At the same time, outside in the chasm, Big Ears, Stretch, Wizard and Pooh Bear were engaged in their fierce gunbattle with the CIEF force over in the other sentry tower.
'Keep firing!' Wizard yelled above the din. 'Every moment we keep Judah pinned down is another moment Huntsman has inside the Refuge—'
He was abruptly cut off as, all of a sudden, the entire chasm shook and shuddered.
For a moment, he and the others stopped firing.
So did Judah's men—in fact, they suddenly started to abandon their position on their sentry tower.
'What is this . . . ?' Big Ears eyed the cavern around him.
'It feels like an earthquake . . .' Pooh Bear said.
'It's not an earthquake,' Wizard said, realising.
The next instant, the source of the great rumbling burst out of the wall at the base of Judah's sentry tower, just above the water-line of the main chasm itself.
It was an M-113 TBV-MV (Tunnel-Boring Vehicle, Medium Volume). The military equivalent of a commercial tunnel-boring engine, it was in truth an M-113A2 bridge-laying vehicle that had been adapted for tunnel-making.
The size of a tank, it had a huge pointed nose that whizzed around and around, screw-like, obliterating everything in its path. Chewed-up rock and dirt were 'digested' through the centre of the vehicle and disposed out the rear. It also bore on its roof a foldable mechanical bridge.
The tunnel-boring vehicle poked out through the wall at the base of the sentry tower and stopped, its drill-bit still spinning, only twenty horizontal metres from the jetty that West had ziplined down to.
'They drilled through the filled-in excavation tunnel . . .' Wizard breathed in awe. 'How clever. It wouldn't have given a modern tunnel-borer much resistance.'
'It helps if you have the logistics,' Stretch said.
'Which they do,' Pooh Bear said.
At that moment, the tunnel-boring vehicle engaged its internal engines to fold forwards the steel bridge on its roof. The mechanical bridge unfolded slowly, stretching out in front of the tunnel-borer
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