compressed-air thrusters that could be used to sustain a gliding pattern when natural glide failed.
West rocketed down through the sky at a 45-degree angle, his bullet-shaped winged body slicing through the air.
The Deadly Coast came into view.
Towering yellow cliffs fronted onto the flat blue sea. Giant, immovable. Waves crashed against them relentlessly, exploding in gigantic showers of spray.
West zoomed lower, hitting 180 km/h, before at around 800 feet . . .
... he swooped upwards and entered a slower, more serene glide pattern.
Now he soared, three hundred feet above the waves of the Mediterranean, parallel to the massive coastal cliffs.
He was flying near the Tunisian-Libyan border, a particularly desolate stretch of the North African coastline. Broad flat sand-plains stretched away from the sheer cliffs of the coast. About a klick inland, those plains rammed up against a mountain range made up of a few extinct volcanoes that ran parallel to the shore.
It was a land devoid of life. Desolate. Depressing. A place where nothing grows.
As he flew, West scanned the cliffs, searching for any rock formations on them that resembled a pair of tridents.
After ten minutes of gliding, he lost his natural glide pattern, so he ignited a compressed-air thruster. With a sharp hiss-wapp, it lifted him to a higher altitude, allowing him to glide for longer.
Then after about forty minutes—and three more compressed-air assists—he saw them.
Two rock-islands positioned about fifty metres out from the coastal cliff-face, their rocky shapes each resembling a three-fingered human hand pointing toward the sky.
Or a trident.
Two tridents.
The section of cliff immediately behind the two tridents looked particularly forbidding—vertical and rough, with the upper section of the great cliff partially overhanging its base. Very difficult to scale.
'Wizard! Come in!' West called into his radio mike. 'I've found them!'
An hour later, the Halicarnassus had landed on the flat sandy plain, dropped off a Land Rover four-wheel drive from its belly, and then lifted off to take up a holding pattern a hundred miles to the south.
Bouncing along in the Land Rover, the team joined West—now standing on the windswept cliff overlooking the two tridents. The team numbered seven, since the injured Fuzzy had stayed in the Halicarnassus with Sky Monster, along with Horus. Big Ears, however, was there and still mobile, thanks to a cocktail of painkillers.
Technically, they were in Tunisia. The landscape was empty and dry. There wasn't a village or human settlement for fifty miles in any direction.
In fact, the landscape could better be described as a moonscape: the flat sandplain, the occasional meteorite crater, and of course the chain of mountains guarding the landward approach about a kilometre inland.
'You know,' Big Ears said, 'they filmed Star Wars in Tunisia. The Tatooine scenes.'
'I can see why,' West said, not turning from the view of the sea. 'It's totally alien.'
Wizard came alongside West, handed him a printout. 'This is the only reference my database has for Hamilcar's Refuge. It's a hand-drawn sketch on papyrus found in a worker's hut in Alexandria, an Egyptian worker who must have worked on Imhotep VI's reconfiguration of Hamilcar's Refuge.'
The papyrus sheet bore a carefully-crafted diagram on it:
It was hard to tell exactly what the image depicted. Cut off at the top and bottom, it didn't seem to show the entire structure.
'Aqueducts and guard towers,' West said, 'and a filled-in excavation tunnel. Jesus, this place must be huge.' He scanned the landscape all around him, but saw nothing but barren desert and the harsh coast. 'But if it's so huge, where the hell is it?'
He checked his printout of the Euclidian clue:
Follow the Deadly Coast of the Phoenicians To the inlet of the two tridents, Where you will behold the easier entrance to The sixth Great Architect's masterwork. The Seventh has lain there ever since.
'"The inlet of the two tridents",' he read aloud. 'We've found the two tridents, so there's supposed to be an inlet here. But I don't see one. It's all just one seamless coastline.'
It was true.
There was no bay or inlet in the coast anywhere nearby.
'Just hold on a moment . . .' Epper said.
He dug into his rucksack and extracted a tripod-mounted device.
'Sonic-resonance imager,' he said, erecting the tripod on the sand. He then aimed it downward and hit a switch. 'It'll show us the density of the earth beneath our feet.'
The sonic-resonance imager pinged slowly.
Piiiing-piiiing-piiiing.
'Solid sandstone. All the way to the imager's depth limit,' Wizard said. 'As you'd expect.'
Then he swivelled the imager on its tripod and aimed it at the ground a few yards to the west, the section of coastline directly in line with the two tridents—
Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping . . .
The imager's pinging went bananas.
West turned to Wizard. 'Explain?'
The old man looked at his display. It read:
TOTAL DEPTH: 8.0 m.
SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SILICON OVERLAY 5.5 m;
GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.
Wizard said, 'Depth here is eight metres. Mix of hard-packed sand and granite.'
'Eight metres?' Pooh Bear said. 'How can that be? We're 130 metres above sea level. That would mean there's 92 metres of empty air beneath that section of ground—'
'Oh, no way . . .' West said, understanding.
'Yes way . . .' Wizard said, also seeing it.
West looked back inland at the sandplain stretching to the nearest mountain a kilometre away. The sand appeared to be seamless. 'Amazing the things you can do with a workforce of 10,000 men,' he said.
'What? What?" Pooh Bear said, exasperated. 'Would you two
mind telling the rest of us mere mortals what in the blazes you're talking about?'
West smiled. 'Pooh. There was once an inlet here. I imagine it was a narrow crevice in the coastal cliffs that cut inland.'
'But it's not here now,' Pooh said. 'How does an entire inlet disappear?'
'Simple,' West said. 'It doesn't. It's still here. It's just been hidden. Concealed by the labour of 10,000 workers. The keepers of the Capstone put a roof over the inlet, bricked in the entrance and then covered it all over with sand.'
Five minutes later, Jack West Jr hung from the Land Rover's winch cable fifteen metres down the face of the coastal cliff, suspended high above the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.
He probably could have blasted through the eight metres of sand and granite with conventional explosives, but using explosives was risky when you did not know what lay beneath you—it could close off tunnels or passageways in the system below; it could even bring down the entire structure, and West's team didn't have the time or the manpower to sift through thousands of tons of rubble for months.
West now aimed Wizard's sonic-resonance imager at the vertical cliff-face in front of him.
Ping-ping-ping-pitig-ping-ping . . .
Once again the imager's pinging went wild.
The display read:
TOTAL THICKNESS: 4.1 m.
SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS: SANDSTONE OVERLAY 1.6 m;
GRANITE UNDERLAY 2.5 m.
West gazed at the cliff-face in wonder. It looked exactly like the rest of the coastline: same colour, same texture; rough and weatherworn.
But it was a hoax, a ruse, an entirely artificial cliff.
A false wall.
West smiled, called up. it's a false wall! Only four metres thick. Granite, with a sandstone outer layer.'
'So where is the entranced Zoe asked over his radio.
West gazed straight down the sheer cliff-face—at the waves crashing at its base.
'Imhotep VI reconfigured this one. Remember what I said before: he was known for his concealed underwater entrances. Haul me up and prep the scuba gear.
'
Minutes later, West again hung suspended from the Land Rover's superlong winch cable, only now he had been lowered all the way down the false cliff-face. He dangled just a few metres above the waves crashing at its base.
He was wearing a wetsuit, full face-mask, and a lightweight scuba tank on his back. His caving gear—fireman's helmet, X-bars, flares, ropes, rockscrew drill and guns—hung from his belt.
'Okay! Lower me in, and do it fast!' he called into his throat-mike.
The others obeyed and released the cable's spooler, lowering West into the churning sea at the base of the cliff.
West plunged underwater—
—and he saw it immediately.
The vertical cliff continued under the surface, but about 6 metres below the surface it stopped at a distinctly man-made opening: an enormous square doorway. It was huge. With its bricked frame, the doorway looked like a great aeroplane hangar door carved into the submerged rockface.
And engraved in its upper lintel was a familiar symbol:
West spoke into his face-mask's radio. 'Folks. I've found an opening. I'm going in to see what's on the other side.'
Guided by his Princeton-Tec underwater flashlight, West swam through the doorway and into an underwater passage that was bounded by walls of granite bricks.
It was a short swim.
About ten metres in, he emerged into a much wider area—and instantly felt the tug of unusually strong tidal motion.
He surfaced in darkness.
While he couldn't see beyond the range of his flashlight, he sensed that he was at one end of a vast internal space.
He swam to the left, across the swirling tide, to a small stone ledge. Once he was out of the water and on the ledge, he fired a flare into the air.
The dazzling incandescent flare shot high into the air, higher and higher and higher, until it hovered nearly 250 feet above him and illuminated the great space.
'Mother of God . . .' he breathed.
At that very same moment, the others were peering down the cliff-face outside, waiting for word from West.
Suddenly, his crackly voice came in over their radios: 'Guys. I'm in. Come on down and prepare to be amazed.'
'Copy that, Huntsman,' Zoe said. 'We're on our way'
Lily stood a short distance from the group, staring inland, out across the plain.
As the others started shouldering into their scuba gear, she said, 'What's that?'
They all turned—
—in time to see a C-130 Hercules cargo plane bank lazily around in the sky high above them, and release about a dozen small objects from its rear.
The objects sailed down through the air in co-ordinated spiralling motions.
Parachutes. Soldiers on parachutes.
Heading straight for their position on the cliff-top!
The Hercules continued on, touching down on the plain several klicks to the east, stopping near one of the larger meteorite craters.
Wizard whipped a pair of high-powered binoculars to his eyes— zoomed in on the plane.
'American markings. Oh, Christ! It's Judah!'
Then he tilted his binoculars upward to see the incoming strike team directly above him.
He didn't need much zoom to see the Colt Commando assault rifles held across their chests, and the black hockey helmets they wore on their heads.
'It's Kallis and his CIEF team! I can't imagine how, but the Americans have found us! Everybody, move! Down the cable! Into the cave! Now!'
Exactly six minutes later, a pair of American combat boots stomped onto the spot where Wizard had just been standing.
Cal Kallis.
In front of him stood the abandoned Land Rover with its winch cable stretched out over the edge of the cliff-face and down to the waves 400 feet below.
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 metres 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 metres.
Its side walls 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 ledge-like 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 further 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 tooth-like 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 2,000 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 submarin
e.
Emblazoned on its conning tower, corroded by time and salt, were the Nazi swastika and the gigantic number: iU-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 ultimately 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 80 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 neutralised 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—neutralised them long ago, riveting sheets of plate steel over the holes, then laying steel catwalk-gangways over the gaps in the stairs.
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