But while the pit had six doors, the circular cage had only one: which currently opened onto West's entry steps, allowing entry to the pit.
'Ah, a rotating cage . . .' Zaeed said. 'Once you enter the pit, the cage rotates, and you have to pick the correct exit door. But entering the pit will trigger the trap—hence you must survive the trap in order to cross.'
'Like that drowning cage in Tunisia,' Pooh Bear observed.
Last of all, in the exact centre of the pit, mounted on an ornate podium, stood a magnificent statue carved out of black limestone.
It was a statue of a winged lion, depicted on its hind legs in
mid-spring, both forepaws raised high, it wings flared out behind it. It stood five feet tall, and its angry eyes were made of dazzling red rubies.
'The Well of the Winged Lion . . .' Zaeed said to West. 'The Nazi knew of this, too.'
They found the applicable page in Hessler's notes:
2ND INSCRIPTION FROM THE TOMB OF IMHOTEP III:
ONLY THE BRAVEST OF SOULS
SHALL PASS THE WELLS OF THE WINGED LIONS.
BUT BEWARE THE PIT OE NINGIZZIDA,
TO THOSE WHO ENTER THE SERPENT-LORD'S PIT,
I OFFER NO ADVICE BUT THIS:
ABANDON ALL HOPE,
FOR THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM IT.
WINGED LIONS. COMMON ASSYRIAN STATUE FOUND IN
PLRSIA/MLSOPOTAMIA.
NINGIZZIDA: ASSYRIAN GOD OF SLRPENTS & SNAKES.
POSSIBLE RLF TO THE HG OF BABYLON???
'The Nazi was right,' Zaeed said, 'it was a reference to the Hanging Gardens—'
Suddenly, a burst of gunfire rang out from the Giant Stairway Cavern behind them.
"Sir! The first American squad has reached the Stairwayf the rear-guards reported. 'Holding them off but more are on the way— and we can't hold them hack forever.''
'Delay them as long as you can, Shamburg,' Avenger said. 'We still need the time.'
He turned to West. 'What is this trap?'
West hesitated. 'I think Zaeed is right. The cage moves in a rotating circle, bringing its gate into alignment with the correct exit door of the pit, which according to the map, is that one directly opposite us—'
'Find out,' Avenger said, shoving West forwards. 'Schaefer, go with him. Cover him.'
Covered at gunpoint by the Israeli trooper named Schaefer, West stepped cautiously out from his steps, through the cage's gate and onto the sunken floor of the gazebo's pit.
Imhotep's ancient warning about the well repeated over and over in his head: only the bravest of souls shall pass.
And then suddenly, four steps in, just as West and his companion stepped out into the centre of the pit beside the statue of the lion, the well's lethal mechanism sprang into action.
What happened next happened very, very fast.
Screeeeech!—with an ear-piercing shriek of metal on metal, the circular cage suddenly started turning, revolving laterally within the larger hexagonal pit, thus exposing its lone gate—for brief moments—to all six of the stone doorways surrounding the pit.
But then came the worst part.
Shhhhh!—thick gushing waterfalls of quicksand started pouring into the pit from above! Channels in the pit's rim had opened, allowing the quicksand lake above it to invade the pit. The pit began to flood, the quicksand level quickly rising to West's knees . . . and continuing to rise!
And instantly, with the turning of the cage and the influx of quicksand from every side, West lost his bearings.
Which, he realised, was precisely the intent of the trap.
You were meant to panic, you were meant to be disoriented . . . and so exit via the wrong doorway, where presumably worse things awaited—
His Israeli companion panicked.
As one of the revolving cage's gates came into alignment with one of the pit's stone doorways, the frightened Corporal Schaefer raced through it—
—into a narrow stairway similar to the one they had descended to get into the pit.
Only this narrow stairway went nowhere. It had no stairway.
It was just a tiny space, barely bigger than a coffin standing vertically.
Then, with shocking suddenness, an eight-foot-high bronze plate, fitted with a barred grille at head-height, slid across into the doorway behind Schaefer, sealing him inside the narrow space . . . and suddenly a special waterfall of quicksand began to flood into his tight vertical coffin.
As the sand rained down on his head, Schaefer screamed. It only took seconds for his little space to fill, and West watched in horror through the little face-grille as the sand consumed Schaefer, filled his screaming mouth and swallowed him whole.
The screaming stopped.
Now completely alone, West breathed, 'Fuck me . . .'
The wider pit continued to fill with sticky quicksand—rising past his waist.
And seeing Schaefer die had made him completely lose his bearings. He didn't know which was the right exit door. He was starting to panic himself.
Only the bravest souls . . .
Only the bravest. . .
Don't panic, Jack. For God's sake, don't panic—
And then he heard Lily scream.
He spun, saw her behind the bars of the moving cage—Avenger and the others had retreated back up their entry steps, but Lily was crouched on the stairs, peering through the doorway, trying to see West.
'Daddy . . . no!' Lily yelled.
And suddenly, amid all the mayhem, all the pouring sand and the turning of the cage, time stood still for West.
Daddy?
Did she just say ' Daddy'i
And in that single flashing instant, a wave of adrenaline surged through him—a feeling that he had only ever felt once before, inside that volcano in Uganda, exactly ten years previously, when he had held her in his arms as a crying baby.
I... Am... Not. . . Going . . . To . . . Die . . .
I am not going to let her down.
Clarity returned.
Only the fucking bravest. . .
And it hit him: Brave men don't panic. They remain calm in the face of danger.
Right.
He spun, his mind now hyper-alert, thinking not panicking, no longer rattled by the elaborate deathtrap he found himself in.
No sooner had he done so than the answer came.
In fact, it was Lily's shout that provided the answer.
According to the map, the correct exit door was the one directly opposite her door.
Lily, West realised, was his advantage. Most tomb robbers would not leave someone behind in the entry doorway—they'd all walk into the pit together, go for the rubies on the winged lion, trigger the trap and lose their bearings, and then die.
'Don't give up on me, kiddo!' he called. 'I'm not dead yet!'
He started wading powerfully across the pit, past the lion statue, over toward the stone doorway opposite Lily's door. He arrived there as the swirling pool of sand reached his chest.
The cage rotated, bringing its gate into alignment with that door.
Gate and door became one.
West surged through it, pushing through the quicksand, and found himself standing in a tight coffin-sized space just like the one Schaefer had entered—and in a single horrifying instant, he knew that he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.
No, he hadn't.
It wasn't an enclosed space at all—there was just a sharp right-angled hend in the passageway here, a hend that led to a set of narrow steps which themselves led . . . upward!
West clambered up those steps, out of the deadly pool of quicksand, and emerged in open space, on a low path again, safely on the other side of the well.
As he crawled onto the path, he must have depressed a trigger stone that reset the trap, because suddenly the cage rotated back to its original position and the pit drained of quicksand.
Across the top of the well, he could see Avenger.
'You're all going to have to come across!' he called. 'It'll seem
disorienting, but I'll stand at the correct door. Just come to me.'
And so the rest of the group all crossed the well safely.
It took two trips, and each time the pit filled with quicksand and its cage revolved dizzyingly, but knowing the correct exit they all just forged across the quicksand and exited the pit before it had even risen to knee-height.
When she emerged out the other side, Lily leapt up into West's arms and hugged him tightly.
'Don't leave me,' she whispered.
He held her firmly. 'No matter how bad it gets, kiddo, I'll never leave you. Always remember that.'
Thus reunited, they pressed on and, following the submerged path on the other side of the gazebo, they arrived at the ziggurat that lay in the very centre of the supercavern.
And there, looming above the ziggurat like some kind of otherworldly spaceship, suspended from the cave's ceiling, impossibly huge, was the great stalactite that was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
They climbed the ziggurat quickly.
Very quickly. In fact, there was not a single trap on the structure's ceremonial stairway.
At first, West was surprised by this, but then he realised that this was the first Ancient Wonder they had actually entered on this mission.
All of the other Pieces they had encountered so far—those of the Colossus, the Pharos, the Mausoleum, the Statue of Zeus and the Temple of Artemis—had been removed from their original structures. They had all been guarded by trap systems built after the original structures had been lost or destroyed.
Not so the Gardens.
They alone remained in their original condition. And therefore the Piece they contained also remained in its original resting place.
But what West also realised as he climbed the ziggurat was that Imhotep III had shown respect for the Wonder he was defending: sure, he had surrounded it with booby traps, but out of deference to its original architect, he hadn't laid any traps on the Wonder itself.
Gunfire continued to ring out from the two Israeli rear-guards stationed on the Giant Stairway, still holding off the American force.
West and his group arrived at the peak of the ziggurat, and found themselves standing seven feet below the jagged point of the stalactite.
It was truly mind-bending to stand beneath such an enormous natural formation. It was just too big, too immense to comprehend. It was like standing underneath an ocean liner hanging from its stern, its bow pointed right at your nose.
Directly above them, a tight circular shaft bored up into the tip of the stalactite, driving up into its core.
But there was also a notable feature below them.
The peak of the ziggurat was flat and square—about five by five metres—but taking up nearly all of its floorspace was a wide square hole that disappeared down into the ziggurat, into inky darkness.
Ladder handholds ran down into this square well-like shaft, and, of course, the square shaft was perfectly aligned with the round one in the stalactite directly above it.
Zaeed bent to read an inscription on the rim of the ziggurat's square well-shaft.
'It is the Priests' Entrance,' he said to West. They both glanced at Avenger.
The Israeli commander did not seem to recognise the term—or its importance—and by some unspoken agreement neither Zaeed nor West felt the need to enlighten him.
West, Pooh Bear and Stretch unloaded their caving equipment from their packs and started constructing a large tripod-like ladder over the square shaft.
Within minutes, they had an A-shaped ladder standing astride the square shaft and reaching up to the tip of the stalactite above it.
'Move,' Avenger nudged West forwards.
West climbed the ladder, and disappeared up into the bore-hole carved into the great stalactite.
This tight vertical shaft had ladder-like handholds, too, making progress quite easy.
But it wasn't for the claustrophobic. Glistening wetness trickled down its close, tight walls.
Guided by the flashlight on his fireman's helmet, West climbed cautiously upwards until he emerged in a flat man-sized tunnel that led out to the exterior of the stalactite.
There he stepped out onto the path that spiralled up the outside of the Gardens.
By the light of his previously fired flares, he beheld the super-cavern from above. The view was breathtaking. He saw the ziggurat far below him, its steps fanning outward, with the quicksand lake all around it, and—in the middle of the lake—the Well of the Winged Lion, with its star-like series of paths radiating out from it.
Interestingly, he saw that the Well had a twin on the other side of the ziggurat—complete with an identical semi-submerged path.
He recalled Imhotep Ill's words: the Gardens had been constructed as a mirror image, where both entrance and exit were alike.
There must be another exit out that way, he thought. And now that he thought about it, he realised that Avenger and the Israelis knew of this exit: that was how they intended to leave all along, without being caught by the Americans.
So Avenger wasn't entirely ignorant about this place—
'Come on, Captain,' Avenger said, arriving at West's side, rousing him from his thoughts. The rest of his team came up behind him, guiding Lily and Pooh Bear with them. 'You're not done yet.'
• • •
West led the group up the path that spiralled around the stalactite.
Everything was moist, all the overgrown foliage was like that found in a rainforest: plants and mosses that needed moisture rather than sunlight to live.
At times the going was difficult, since some of the bushes had grown out and over the path and hung off the edge, out over the drop.
Although it pained him to do it, West hacked through the fabled plants with a machete, to carve the way.
Higher and higher they went, into the upper reaches of the supercavern.
The great quicksand lake and the ziggurat fell further and further away from them. The drop down to the lake was now a clear 400 feet, dizzyingly high.
At one point along the path, they came across a surprising splash of colour: a beautiful cluster of roses. White roses.
'How can they survive here without sunlight?' Pooh Bear asked.
West was thinking the same thing, when he saw the answer: a series of tiny bore-holes cut into the rocky ceiling of the cavern. They were barely a few inches wide, but they seemed to emit light—natural light. The little bore-holes must have reached all the way to the surface of the mountain.
West noticed that the roses would catch daylight from some of the holes for a few moments every day—enough to keep them alive and regenerating.
'The Persian White Desert Rose,' he breathed. 'Extinct. Till now.'
'Come on,' Avenger shoved him on, oblivious to the monumental discovery. 'I'll put some of them on your grave.'
They pressed on.
On a couple of occasions the path delved into the stalactite— crossing through its core. Whenever it did this, the path met and crossed the claustrophobic vertical bore shaft that West had climbed into at the bottom. The shaft, it seemed, bored all the way up through the great stalactite. On these occasions, the group would just jump across the narrow shaft.
• • •
The Catwalk and the Most Holy Shrine
At length, they came to the point where the stalactite met the ceiling of the supercavern.
Here, a rotten wooden catwalk stretched out from the stalactite across the upper surface of the great cave.
The ancient catwalk threaded itself through several U-shaped beams that hung from the ceiling, and it stretched for about fifty metres before it stopped just short of a very large recess in the ceiling.
Handrungs continued from there, heading out across the ceiling and up into the dark recess. To hang from the handrungs meant dangling by your hands high above the quicksand lake 500 feet below.
'This is it,' West said. 'This is where all roads end.'
'Then go,' Avenger sai
d. 'You may even take the Arab with you—although I shall keep the girl with me as insurance.'
West and Pooh Bear ventured out across the ancient catwalk, high above the supercavern.
The wood creaked beneath their feet. Dust and debris fell off the catwalk's underside, sailing all the way down to the sand-lake. Twice the catwalk lurched suddenly, as if the entire assembly was going to fall.
They reached the end of the catwalk.
Til go first,' West said, eyeing the handrungs. 'I'll trail a return rope as I go. If the Piece is up in that recess, we'll need a rope to send it back.'
Pooh Bear nodded. 'I want to kill them all, Huntsman, for holding a gun to her head.'
'Me, too. But we have to stay alive. So long as we're breathing, we'll still have a chance to do exactly that,' West said. 'The key is to stay breathing.'
'Be careful.'
'I'll try, buddy.'
And with that, West grasped the first handrung, and swung out onto it, 500 feet above the world.
Against the spectacular backdrop of the mighty Hanging Gardens, the tiny figure of Jack West Jr swinging hand-over-hand across the rungs in the ceiling of the supercavern looked positively microscopic.
Fluttering near him, watching over him as always, was Horus.
Trailing a 'return rope' from his belt—a rope that went all the way back to Pooh Bear—he came to the large recess in the ceiling.
It was shaped like a trapezoid, with steep inwardly-slanting walls tapering upwards to a point. More handrungs ran in a line up the slanting wall—so that it was now like free-climbing up an overhang, with your legs hanging beneath you.
But it was the focal point of the recess—the highest point—that seized West's attention.
It was a square horizontal ledge cut into the rock, about the size of a large refrigerator.
In stark contrast to the rough rocky surface of the rest of the recess, it was ornately decorated—with gold and jewels, making it look like a shrine.
From his current position, West couldn't see inside it. He scaled the handrungs on the near side of the recess, holding his entire body up with only his arms.
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