Seven Ancient Wonders Part 21

Led by the frumpy but determined Pooh Bear they looked like a team of tightrope walkers. But they made it across and disappeared into the small metre-high arched tunnel on the far side.

Marshall Judah stepped into the domed chamber and gazed up at the Mirror and the Pillar.

He grinned, satisfied.

His eyes searched the area for West-scanning the many alcoves, nooks and crannies.

No sign of him. Yet.

He called: 'I know you're in here, Jack! My, my, twice in two days. Looks like you've failed again...'

His men fanned out, searching the chamber, guns up.

West backed down his little arched tunnel, praying that the darkness concealed him.

As he moved, he drew his H&K pistol from his thigh holster and aimed it up the tunnel-when with startling suddenness, a CIEF trooper appeared at the top of the tunnel, gun up!

West's finger balanced on his trigger-firing might save him momentarily, but it would also give away his position...

But the trooper didn't fire.

He just peered down the tunnel, squinting, searching.

He couldn't see West ... ...

But then the CIEF trooper reached for the pair of night-vision goggles hanging from his belt.

At the same time, in the domed chamber itself, Marshall Judah was evaluating the podium-island in the middle of the room with a portable X-ray scanner.

The staircase giving access to the island was indeed one great big trigger stone. And the domed roof was solid diorite-offering no purchase for drilled handholds.

The situation was clear, and typical of Imhotep VI: to get onto the raised island, you had to trigger the trap.

Which meant Judah and his men would have to be quick.

'Gentlemen,' he said. 'It is an Imhotep VI, Type 4 trap. Time will be short. Prepare the rollers. I want an eight-man lifting team for the Mirror Piece, and a four-man team for the Pillar Piece.'

'Do you want us to take the Mirror and the Pillar themselves?' one lieutenant asked.

'I don't give a s.h.i.+t about the Mirror and the Pillar. All I want are the Pieces,' Judah snapped.

The CIEF men got into position.

They brought forward two six-wheeled 'roller units'-to convey the heavy Pieces out.

'Okay, here we go,' Judah said.

And with those words, he trod on the first step of the staircase, setting off the deadly trap mechanism.

At that moment, several things happened.

The trooper who had been peering down West's tunnel placed his night-vision goggles to his eyes-and immediately saw West, crouched in the tunnel like a trapped animal.

The trooper whipped up his Colt Commando- Bam!

Gunshot.

From West.

The trooper dropped dead, hit right between the eyes.

In the chamber, three other CIEF men saw their comrade go down and they charged for the right-hand arched tunnel, leading with their guns.

But at the exact moment the CIEF trooper fell, Judah had stepped on the stairway, setting off its trap mechanism.

And the mighty nature of that trap meant he didn't see the CIEF trooper behind him fall.

For as Judah stepped onto the trigger stone, the great granite dam at the far end of the chamber instantly began to lower, releasing the pool of boiling volcanic mud behind it into the chamber! releasing the pool of boiling volcanic mud behind it into the chamber!

With a t.i.tanic whoosh, the foul stinking body of mud oozed over the lowering dam and began to fan out slowly into the round chamber.

Judah's men rushed forward, clambering up onto the central island, where they pushed the Mirror and Pillar from their bases.

The spreading body of mud split into two fat fingers that oozed around both sides of the island...

A quick wipe to each base revealed its glittering golden surface beneath the layer of ash.

Then the CIEF teams grabbed the two bases, moving fast.

The fingers of mud were two-thirds of the way around the island now and moving quickly, ready to devour anything that lay in their paths...

Leaving the Pharos's Mirror and the Mausoleum's Pillar lying pathetically on their sides on the island, Judah's team bounded off the raised platform, returning to the chamber's main doorway just as the two creeping fingers of molten mud enveloped the base of the island and touched, surrounding the island completely, sealing it off.

But the mud continued to flow, spreading ever outward... outward...

Judah's eight-man A-team loaded the Mirror's base onto one of the six-wheeled rollers-a couple of them noting that unlike the other Piece, the Pharos Piece had a human-shaped indentation carved into its underside. Curious. But they didn't have time to examine it now.

The B-team loaded the Mausoleum Piece onto their roller.

And then they were off, led by Judah, racing back down the entry tunnel with the two large golden trapezoids in their midst.

By this time, the three CIEF men who had seen West's victim fall arrived at the right-hand arched tunnel-but with the spreading mud closing in behind them.

Guns up, they peered down the tunnel and saw West, trapped, dead to rights...

...a moment before they were all a.s.sailed by a withering volley of gunfire from somewhere behind them.

The three CIEF men convulsed in grotesque spasms, erupting in a thousand blood-spurts, peppered by automatic gunfire.

This volley of gunfire had come from the left left-hand arched tunnel, on the other side of the main entrance, where Pooh Bear and Big Ears now stood, their Steyr-AUG and MP-7 sub-machine guns still smoking!

Guided only by Wizard's incomplete sketch of the Refuge, they had guessed-correctly-that their aqueduct's tunnel led to the same place as the fortress's main ascending tunnel.

West ran to the top of his tunnel, peered out, saw his lifesaving team-mates on the other side of the lava-filled chamber-saw Lily and Zoe safely in their midst.

He would have yelled his thanks, but he arrived there just in time to see the spreading body of mud reach his tunnel's raised entrance and swallow swallow the corpses of the four CIEF men as it went by. the corpses of the four CIEF men as it went by.

The molten mud just seared right through their bodies, liquefying them in an instant, before oozing over them, absorbing them absorbing them into its ma.s.s. into its ma.s.s.

It was the same on the other side of the chamber-the creeping body of mud had just flowed across the entrance to Pooh Bear's little tunnel and was now heading quickly towards the main doorway of the domed chamber.

The effect was simple.

West was now cut off from both his comrades on the far side of the chamber and and from the main entrance. from the main entrance.

And the level of the flowing mud river was rising rising.

Any second now, it would rise up over the lips of the two arched aqueduct tunnels ...and flow down them!

From the look on his face, Pooh Bear had seen this, too.

'Pooh Bear! Get out of here!' West called.

'What about you!' Pooh yelled back.

West nodded back down his aqueduct tunnel. 'No other option! I have to go this way!'

'Jack!' Wizard called.

'What!'

'Judah used a tunnel-boring vehicle to drill through through the old filled-in excavation tunnel! They must be planning to take the Pieces out that way! Check your sketch! You may still be able to get a look at the Pieces! All may not be lost!' the old filled-in excavation tunnel! They must be planning to take the Pieces out that way! Check your sketch! You may still be able to get a look at the Pieces! All may not be lost!'

'I'll do my best!' West nodded at the expanding mud pool. 'Now get out of here! Call Sky Monster! Get to the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus! I'll catch up somehow!'

And with that, West's team split, went their separate ways, disappearing into the two arched tunnels on either side of the domed chamber-the chamber whose perfectly round floor was now little more than a lake of stinking dark mud, a lake that surrounded a raised island containing the only existing remains of two Ancient Wonders, now lying discarded and broken on their sides.

West bolted down his aqueduct tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him. It was long and tight and dead-straight.

In the main tunnel of the fortress, Marshall Judah and his two teams were also hustling, pus.h.i.+ng their six-wheeled rollers-bearing the two Pieces of the Capstone-down the slope.

They rushed through the many-pillared hall of the fortress before they emerged in the chasm and raced down the guttered rampway that stretched down from the front of the Refuge.

While in the left-hand aqueduct tunnel, Pooh Bear, Big Ears, Stretch, Wizard, Zoe and Lily also rushed headlong through their own tight dark pa.s.sageway.

All three groups ran for good reason-for in the domed chamber high behind them, the radially-expanding mud lake finally reached the edge of the round room and began to rise up and over the lips of the three tunnels...

...at which point it flooded rapidly down each of them!

Three surging fingers of mud roared down the three sloping tunnels.

Since they were tight and small, the two rivers of mud flowing down the aqueduct tunnels moved faster than the one flowing down the wider main tunnel.

As he ran, West turned to see the boiling hot liquid pouring down the tunnel behind him. It moved powerfully, relentlessly, as if it had a will of its own, a will bent on destroying any living thing in its path.

Then, abruptly, West burst out into open s.p.a.ce-and found himself standing on the high aqueduct bridge that spanned the right-hand arm of the Y-junction.

The bridge was very high-at least 200 feet-long, and very narrow, barely wide enough for one person to stand on. For it was not made for human crossing. Its surface wasn't even flat; rather, it contained a sunken 2-foot-wide channel for mud to flow across.

'Oh man...' he breathed.

He stepped out onto the high aqueduct bridge, and suddenly saw Judah's men appear on the jetty far below him, pus.h.i.+ng their pair of six-wheeled rollers across their fold-out metal bridge. In the recently-bored tunnel on the other side of their bridge, the big tunnel-boring vehicle's front screw was now folded open, waiting to be loaded. Judah was going to use the tunnel-boring vehicle to carry the Pieces out of here.

West remembered Wizard's newsflash from before.

'Check the sketch...' he'd said.

With a glance back at the oncoming mud, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his printout of the ancient sketch: Okay, I'm here, he saw the right-hand aqueduct, labelled Aqueduct 2 Aqueduct 2.

Max was right. This aqueduct bridge linked up with the excavation tunnel-the same tunnel that Judah had reopened with his tunnel-borer and which he was now using to get the Pieces out.

West looked up.

If he hurried, he might be able to...

He bolted, raced out across the high aqueduct bridge-while far below him, Judah's CIEF team loaded their tunnel-boring vehicle with the two golden trapezoids.

On the other side of the Y-junction, Pooh Bear emerged from his aqueduct tunnel-just in time to see the aqueduct bridge in front of him get hit, spectacularly, by a rocket-propelled grenade ...right in the middle!

One of Judah's men had been waiting for them, keeping an eye on the bridge through the crosshairs of an RPG launcher.

The RPG hit the multi-arched bridge in the exact centre. A huge explosion billowed outwards, hurling bricks and blasted rock in every direction. When the cloud dissipated it revealed that the aqueduct bridge was now in two pieces, with a gaping void in its middle.

Pooh Bear spun-saw the long finger of dark mud stretching down the tunnel behind him, coming inexorably closer.

And now he and his team had nowhere to go, no bridge to escape across!

'This is terrible,' he breathed.

West dashed across his aqueduct bridge unseen, but still pursued by the elongated finger of mud behind him.