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 80 feet below. Then he used his X-bar like a crowbar to prise off the Nazi plate covering the second wall-hole. The plate came free, exposing the 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 mini-ledge.
Strange X-shaped hollows—each the size of a man—lined the wall of the void, curiously in sync with the handholds.
'Crucifixes,' Wizard said as West caught up. 'Nasty. Another of Imhotep VI's favourites.'
'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 force. 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 leapt 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 80 feet below.
Wizard's eyes boggled. '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, energised by how close he was to his enemy, immediately set about using the handholds 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 60 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, 20 feet across and 30 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, all a metre in diameter and clearly heavy, came rushing out of the hole in quick succession—and each was fitted with hundreds of outward-pointing bronze nails.
They must have weighed 100 kilograms 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 f
orwards, leaping full-stretch onto the gangway. The CIEF man did the same, but in the instant he leapt 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 sizeable 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 upwards. 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-stone 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.
'Okay, 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 seven 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!
'I hope you're right, Jack!' Zoe yelled. She grabbed her pony bottle from her belt, put its mouthpiece to her mouth. You breathe from a pony bottle just like you do from a regular scuba tank, but it only has enough air for about three minutes.
The cage went knee-deep in water.
West didn't answer her, just waded over to the wall-side of the cage and checked its great bronze bars.
And there he found it—a small archway cut into the cage's wall-side bars, maybe three feet high, large enough for a man to crawl through.
But the stone wall abutting that side of the cage was solid rock. The little arch led nowhere . . .
The cage sank further into the swirling water and the little arch went under.
Waist-deep.
Big Ears lifted Lily into his arms, above the swirling waterline.
On the stairway behind them, Cal Kallis paused, grinned at their predicament.
'Jack . . .' Zoe called, concerned.
'Jack . . .' Wizard called, concerned.
'It has to come,' West whispered to himself, it has to—'
The cage went two-thirds under, and as it did so, West cracked a glowstick, put his pony bottle to his mouth, and ducked under the choppy surface.
Underwater.
By the light of his glowstick, West watched the cage's bars slide past the stone wall . . .
Solid rock.
Nothing but solid rock flanked the cage on that side.
It can't be, his mind screamed. There has to be something down here!
But there wasn't.
There wasn't anything down there.
West's heart began to beat faster. He had just made the biggest mistake of his life, a mistake that would kill them all.
He resurfaced inside the swirling cage.
The water was chest-deep now, the cage three-quarters under.
'Anything down there!' Zoe called.
West frowned, stumped. 'No . . . but there should be.'
Stretch shouted, 'You've killed us all!'
Neck-deep.
'Just grab your pony bottles,' West said grimly. He looked to Lily, held high in Big Ears's arms. 'Hey, kiddo. You still with me?'
She nodded vigorously—scared out of her wits. 'Uh-huh.'
'Just breathe through your pony bottle like we practised at home,' he said gently, 'and you'll be all right.'
'Did you mess up?' she whispered.
i might have,' he said.
As he did so, he locked eyes with Wizard. The old man just nodded: 'Hold your nerve, Jack. I trust you.'
'Good, because right now I don't,' West said.
And with that, the great bronze cage, with its seven trapped occupants, went completely under.
With a muffled clunk, the cage came to a halt, its barred ceiling stopping exactly three feet below the surface.
The underwater currents were extremely strong. On the cage's outermost side, the silhouette of a whirlpool could be seen: a huge inverted cone of downward-spiralling liquid.
Pony bottle to his mouth, West swam down to check the little arch one final time . . .
. . . where he found something startling.
The little arch had stopped perfectly in line with a small dark opening in the stone wall.
Shape for shape, the arch matched the opening exactly, so that if you crawled through the arch, you escaped into the submerged wall.
West's eyes came alive.
He spun to face the others, all trapped in the submerged cage with pony bottles held to their mouths, even Lily.
He signalled with his hands:
Wizard would go first.
Then Big Ears with Lily. Zoe, Stretch, Pooh Bear, and West last
of all.
Wizard swam through the arch, holding a glowstick in front of him, and disappeared into the dark opening in the wall.
West signalled for Big Ears to wait—wait for Wizard to give
them the all-clear.
A moment later, Wizard reappeared and gave an enthusiastic
'OK' sign.
So through the little arch they went, out of the cage and into the wall, until finally only Jack West Jr remained in the cage.
No-one saw the relief on his face. He'd made the call, and almost killed them all. But he'd been right.
Kicking hard, he swam out of the cage, his boots disappearing into the tiny opening.
The opening in the wall quickly turned upwards, becoming a vertical shaft, complete with ladder handholds.
This shaft rose up and out of the sloshing water before opening onto a horizontal passage that led back to the mai
n chasm, emerging—unsurprisingly—at the cobweb-covered doorway a few steps up the ascending staircase, the same doorway West had observed earlier.
As they stepped out from the passage, West saw Kallis and his men arriving at the base of the previous staircase, stopped there by the now-resetting cage.
Lying on the steps in front of West were the three headless Nazi skeletons he had spied before.
Wizard said, 'Headless bodies at the bottom of a stairway mean only one thing: blades at the top somewhere. Be careful.'
Retaking the lead, West gazed up this new stairway. 'Whoa. Would you look at that. . .'
At the top of the stairs was a truly impressive structure: a great fortified guard tower, leaning out from the vertical cliff 200 feet above the watery chasm.
The ancient guard tower was strategically positioned on the main bend of the chasm. Directly opposite it, on the other side of the roofed chasm, was its identical twin, another guard tower, also jutting out from its wall, and also possessing a stairway rising up from a drowning cage down at water-level.
West had taken one step up this stairway when—
'Is that you, Jack!' a voice called.
West spun.
It hadn't come from Kallis.
It had come from further away.
From the other side of the chasm.
West snapped round.
And saw a second American special forces team standing on the path on the other side of the chasm, on the platform preceding the drowning cage on that side.
They had emerged from a side doorway in the rockwall over there, twenty-four men in total.
At their head stood a man of about 50, with steely black eyes and, gruesomely, no nose. It had been cut off sometime in the distant past, leaving this fellow with a grotesque misshapen stump where his nose should have been.
Yet even with this glaring facial disfigurement, it was the man's clothing that was his most striking feature right now.
He wore steel-soled boots just like West did.
He wore a canvas jacket just like West did.
He wore a belt equipped with pony bottles, pitons and X-bars, just like West did.
The only difference was his helmet—he wore a lightweight caver's helmet, as opposed to West's fireman's helmet.
He was also older than West, calmer, more confident. His small black eyes radiated experience.
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