Seven Ancient Wonders

With his long grey beard and stooping walk, Max Epper looked very much the part: an old and wizened priest, perhaps even an Eastern Orthodox one, making a pilgrimage to the Vatican.

With him walked Zoe and Fuzzy, and as they crossed St Peter's Square in the midst of hundreds of tourists, Zoe gazed up at the gigantic stone obelisk that stood proudly in the exact centre of the Square.

'Cult of Amun-Ra,' Wizard said flatly, striding past the towering stone needle.

Zoe turned as she walked, gazing up at this Egyptian structure taking pride of place in front of the biggest Catholic church in the world.

She shrugged. 'The Cult of Amun-Ra . . .'

They entered the Basilica.

Few man-made structures on earth can match St Peter's Basilica

for sheer scale. It is shaped like a giant crucifix—just like the centre of Paris—and its famous dome soars 300 feet above a glistening marble floor. Brilliant shafts of sunlight penetrate its impossibly high windows, as if sent by God himself.

Michelangelo's Pieta flanks one side of the main entrance. Giant statues of saints stand in alcoves lining the main hall—St Ignatius, St Francis of Assisi—looming over the faithful.

It is designed to inspire awe.

But the most spectacular section of the great cathedral is to be found at its most holy place, the junction of the cross.

Here you will find the altar of St Peter's, covered by a colossal four-pillared awning made of sturdy iron laced with gold. At the top of each tree-trunk-like pillar, you will find angels leaning outward, blowing trumpets, praising the Lord.

And beneath this awning is the altar.

'It looks so plain,' Fuzzy said, gazing up at it.

He was right. The altar of St Peter's is remarkably plain, just a large oblong block of marble mounted on a raised platform. At the moment, since it wasn't being used, it was covered by a simple red-white-and-gold cloth and some candles. A thick rope suspended from brass poles prevented the public from surmounting it.

'Yes,' Wizard said. 'Considering its importance, it is very plain.'

'It's only important if Zaeed was telling us the truth,' Zoe commented.

Before they had all split up on their separate missions, Zaeed had explained that the Artemis Piece of the Golden Capstone lay embedded in the altar at St Peter's Basilica. The trapezoid, he claimed, had been incorporated face-down in the otherwise solid marble altar— so that its base lay flush with the flat upper surface of the altar. To the uninitiated, it would just look like a square plate of gold on the flat surface, a square plate with a crystal in its centre.

To the initiated, however, it would mean much more.

Wizard stared at the altar, i imagine that only a handful of cardinals have ever been allowed to gaze upon the naked surface of this altar. Fewer still would know the true nature of the golden trapezoid

embedded in it. All would be very senior, privileged initiates into the true history of the Church.'

'So what do we do?' Zoe asked. 'We can't just pull out a crowbar and prise the trapezoid from the altar in front of all these people.'

'I only need to look at it,' Wizard said. 'To memorise the inscription if I can.'

They were surrounded by tourists and uniformed Swiss Guards—and, Wizard guessed, many plainclothed guards, ready to grab anyone who tried to step onto the altar.

Anyone except maybe a doddery old Orthodox priest.

'Run me some interference,' Wizard said. 'Here I go.'

He moved quickly, gazing adoringly up at the awning above the altar, stepping close to the rope, seemingly rapt with wonder.

Then before anyone could stop him, Wizard stepped over the rope and up the steps . . .

. . . and stood behind the altar of St Peter's, running his hands across the flat surface of the big oblong block as if it were made of some holy substance itself.

Plainclothed Swiss Guards appeared at once, emerging from the crowds, converging on the altar.

Standing behind the great oblong block in the exact heart of the Basilica, Wizard swept aside the cloth that covered the altar and beheld its bare upper surface.

What he saw was dazzling.

The flat surface of the altar was made of exquisite white marble, except in its very middle. Here Wizard saw, flush with the flat marble surface, a square-shaped section made of gold.

It was medium-sized, perhaps three feet to each side. And you couldn't tell it was a golden trapezoid, since only its base side was visible. But there in its exact centre was a small diamond-like crystal.

The Artemis Piece.

Wizard saw the inscriptions carved into the surface of the trapezoid:

His wide eyes flashed like camera lenses, attempting to memorise the inscriptions in the short window of time he had—

'Excuse me, Father, but you cannot step up here.' Wizard was yanked away from the altar.

Two Swiss Guards had grabbed him firmly by the arms and were moving him politely but forcibly away.

At the same time another guard redraped the cloth back over the altar-top, concealing the golden trapezoid—although he seemed to do it merely to restore the order of the altar, not out of any sense that a great secret had been unveiled.

'IT-I'm s-s-so sorry,' Wizard stammered, feigning senility and offering no resistance. 'I just wanted to f-f-feel the power of my Lord in all h-h-his glory . . .'

The lead guard escorting him off the raised stage assessed him more closely, saw Wizard's earnest eyes, his scraggly beard, his tattered robes, and he softened. 'All right, old man. Get out of here. Just stay behind the rope next time.'

'Th-th-thank you, my son.'

The guard escorted Wizard back to the main doors.

As he walked, Wizard tried to contain his excitement. He had the Artemis inscription burned into his brain—which was the next best thing to getting the Piece itself. Soon, he, Zoe and Fuzzy would be winging their way out of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci International Airport and heading for home.

Flanked by the guards, he stifled the smile that was beginning to spread across his face.

At that very same moment, in a darkened room elsewhere in the Vatican, someone was watching Wizard on a small security monitor.

Francisco del Piero.

'I knew you would come, Max, my old colleague,' del Piero said to the image on the screen. 'That's why I did not remove the Piece from the altar. I knew it would bring you out into the open.'

Del Piero turned to the Vatican Security Chief next to him. 'They'll head for the airport. Follow them, but do not grab them yet. Monitor their radio transmissions. The old man will send a signal soon after he leaves St Peter's to inform his team-mates that he has succeeded in his mission. Let him send his message. Then seize him and his accomplices at the airport and bring them to me.'

Minutes later, speeding through the streets of Rome in a rental car, heading for the airport, Wizard sent a short encrypted text-message to Doris in Kenya. It said:

Mission accomplished. On our way back now. Wizard.

Shortly after, his car arrived at the airport and swung into the parking lot—

—just as the air all around it was pierced by sirens and police cars appeared from every side, swooping in on Wizard's car, blocking it, surrounding it.

Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy could do nothing.

VICTORIA STATION

KENYA

18 MARCH, 2006, 9:45 P.M.

2 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

In the basement radio room at the farm in Kenya, Doris Epper spoke into her mike: 'That's great news, Huntsman. Wizard is on his way, too. He just text-messaged me a few hours ago. The mission in Rome was a success. He'll be here in the morning. See you in a couple of hours.'

With a spring in her stride, she hurried up the steps to the kitchen. She was relieved that everyone was okay and that their missions had succeeded and she wanted to prepare a nice dinner for when they got back.

She stepped up into the kitchen ... to find that someone was already there.

'That's wonderful news, Mrs Epper.'

Doris froze.

There before her, sitting casually at her kitchen table, was Marshall Judah. Standing behind him were twelve heavily camouflaged, heavily armed US special forces troops.

Judah's head was bent, his eyes low, his voice laced with menace. 'Take a seat, Doris, and let's wait for them together.'

VICTORIA STATION

KENYA

18 MARCH, 2006, 11:45 P.M.

2 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

West and his sub-team returned to Kenya.

On the way, they'd stopped in Spain to refuel, at which point Lily had had another breakthrough with the Callimachus Text. She was suddenly able to read the next entry.

'What's it say?' West asked.

'It's about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,' she said. 'It says:

The Hanging Paradise of Old Babylonia.

March towards the rising Sun,

From the point where the two life-givers become one.

In the shadow of the mountains of Zagros,

Behold the mighty falls fashioned by the Third Great Architect

To conceal the path he hewed

A path that climbs to the entry of the Paradise

That mighty Nebuchadnezzar built for his bride.'

West tousled her hair. 'Nice work, kiddo. Nice work. Wizard's going to be thrilled.'

The Halicarnassus landed with a roar on Victoria Station's airstrip just before midnight. It was a classic African night—a swollen full

moon illuminated the grassy plains like a floodlight, while the low hills loomed, dark teeth against the moonlit sky.

About a kilometre from the runway stood the farmhouse, its windows glowing orange. The emergency signal—the lights on the juniper bush in the front garden—was not on.

Sky Monster swung the plane toward the hangar dug into the hill at the end of the runway. As it taxied slowly, everyone grabbed their gear, preparing to disembark.

None of them could know that as they did so, two hundred pairs of eyes watched them closely.

Turbines whirring, the Halicarnassus came to a halt just outside the doorway of the brightly-illuminated hangar.

A flight of airstairs waited for it there, just outside the open doors. And beyond the airstairs, maybe forty yards away, stood a welcoming party of one: Doris, standing by the hangar doors themselves.

It was impossible for those on the plane to know that she was standing there at gunpoint.

The plane stopped alongside the airstairs at the entry to the hangar, its nose section poking into the actual hangar (it had to cool down outside for a few hours before it could be brought fully inside for storage).

As soon as it had stopped, its forward side door was flung open from within and Big Ears and Lily—eager to see Doris and show her the Zeus Piece—dashed out of the plane and scampered down the airstairs. Big Ears wore his backpack, containing the Piece.

Not far behind them came Pooh Bear and Stretch, escorting Zaeed—now flex-cuffed again. They emerged from the plane into the fresh night air, began stepping down the stairs.

Sky Monster and West lingered in the plane—Sky Monster to

do a post-flight check; West just to collect all his things: notes, parchments, Hessler's Nazi diary.

It was noisy outside—the Halicarnassus's four massive wing-engines still whirred loudly, winding down.

Big Ears and Lily were halfway to Doris.

'Hey, Doris! We did it!' Lily called over the din, but Doris's usually warm face was stony, cold—as though she knew something that she couldn't disclose.

Then she seemed to regather herself, smiled kindly, and called back: 'Well done, little Eowyn! What a triumphant return. This is all a bit like Gimli returning to Moria, isn't it!'

At Doris's words, Lily slowed her stride.

Then she stopped completely.

Big Ears paused, turned to her. 'What is it?'

Worried, Lily peered fearfully at the dark grassy fields that surrounded the hangar's entrance. Apart from Doris, the area was completely deserted.

'Big Ears, we're in trouble,' she said evenly. 'We have to get back to the plane. This is a trap.'

'How do you know—?'

'Just go! Now!' she said with an authority that belied her age.

And abruptly, she spun, grabbing Big Ears's hand, and together— still twenty yards from the plane—they bolted back towards the Halicarnassus.

No sooner had they moved than all hell broke loose in the hangar.

Every door on every side of the hangar burst open and disgorged dozens of black-clad American troops.

A maintenance door behind Doris was also thrown open and Marshall Judah rushed out of it, accompanied by a CIEF team led by Cal Kallis.

Kallis pushed roughly past Doris and opened fire on the fleeing pair with a god-almighty fury.

When the gunfire started, different people did different things:

West.

He raced to the forward door of the Halicarnassus, to see what was going on.

Sky Monster.

He peered out the cockpit windows—to see Lily and Big Ears running together back towards the airstairs, chased by an oncoming swarm of enemy troops.

Zaeed.

He was at the bottom of the airstairs when the gunfire began, flanked by Pooh Bear and Stretch, his hands still flex-cuffed. But his eyes, far from being wild and crazed, were watchful and focused now.

He'd actually just managed to extract a blade hidden in his pants and saw halfway through his flex-cuffs, and was three seconds away from stabbing Stretch between the ribs and commencing his escape when the gunfire had started. At that point, he'd slid the blade back into his pocket and clambered back up the airstairs as they were hammered with bullet impacts.

And Judah.

While his men hurried past Doris, he stopped right in front of her and said, 'I told you, no warnings.'

And then, without the slightest hesitation, he drew a Glock pistol, placed its barrel against her head and fired.

West arrived at the forward door just in time to see Doris fall. 'Oh, God, no . . .' he breathed. 'No . . .'

He beheld the rest of the scene in the hangar.

Pandemonium reigned.

A massive American force had emerged from every corner of the hangar. Most of them were on foot, but then West saw three Humvees come blasting out of the grassy fields outside.

The American troops were converging on the big black 747 like an army of ants, their collective movement focused on the two fleeing figures of Big Ears and Lily.

West zeroed in on the running pair.

One thing was clear: they weren't going to make it to the airstairs.

The Americans' angle of fire would cut them off before they got there. And he noted that the Yanks weren't aiming to kill them—just stop them from escaping. They knew not to harm Lily.

But Big Ears and Lily did make it to a portable electricity generator wagon just short of the airstairs. The generator wagon was the size of a small trailer. Normally, once the Halicarnassus was fully stopped, Sky Monster would get out and attach the generator to it, providing external electrical power. But he hadn't been able to do that yet.

Lily and Big Ears dived behind the generator wagon, and Big Ears immediately opened fire on his closest pursuers, causing them to halt and duck for cover.

So now West stood at the top of the airstairs, while Stretch and Pooh Bear were huddled at the base of those same stairs, ducking gunfire. Zaeed was in the middle, halfway up the steps, getting away from the action.

And Lily and Big Ears lay crouched—cut off, pinned down by enemy fire—a tantalising five yards from the base of the airstairs.

West keyed his radio mike. 'Sky Monster! Fire her up again! We gotta get out of here!'

'Roger that'.'' A moment later the great jet turbines of the 747 roared back to life, the thunderous noise drowning out the sound of gunfire.

'Big Ears!' West called into his mike. 'I hate to do this to you, but you've got to find a way to get Lily back on this plane! Now!'

Huddled behind the generator wagon, Big Ears was thinking fast.

Five yards. That was all it was. Five yards.

Only those five yards looked like a mile.

And then suddenly—with a kind of crystal clarity that was new to him—the situation became clear to Big Ears.

No matter what the outcome of this situation, he was going to die.

If he ran for the airstairs, he'd be shot for sure—even if they didn't shoot Lily, they'd nail him.

Alternatively, if he and Lily were caught by the Americans, they'd kill him then too.

And with that realisation, he made up his mind.

'Lily,' he said, over the raging din all around them. 'You know something. You've been the best friend I've ever had in my life. You were always way smarter than me, but you always waited for me, were always patient with me. But now I have to do something for you—and you have to let me do it. Just promise me, when the time comes, you do what you were put on this Earth to do. And remember me, the dumb grunt who was your friend. I love you, little one.'

Then he kissed her forehead and, with his MP-5 in one hand, he picked her up with the other, and shielding her with his body . . .

... he broke cover . . .

. . . and ran for the airstairs.

The American response was both immediate and vicious. They opened fire.

Big Ears only needed six steps to make it to the airstairs. He made four.

Before a crouching US trooper nailed him with a clean shot to the head.

The bullet passed right through Big Ears's skull, exploding out the other side and he fell instantly—crumpling like a marionette whose strings have been cut—falling to his knees midway between the generator wagon and the airstairs, dropping Lily from his lifeless hands.

'No!' Lily screamed in horror. 'Noooo!'

The Americans charged, moved in on the girl—

—only to be stopped by a curious sight.

At exactly the same time, in exactly the same way, two figures dived out from the base of the airstairs, each of them holding two MP-5 sub-machine guns, the weapons blazing away in opposite directions as they flew through the air toward Lily.

Pooh Bear and Stretch.

They couldn't have planned the move. There simply hadn't been time. No, they had actually both dived independently of each other.

Yet their identical dives had been motivated by the exact same impulse:

To save Lily.

The Arab and the Israeli slid to simultaneous halts alongside Lily, bringing down four Americans each as they did so.

Lily was still kneeling beside Big Ears's body, her cheeks covered in tears.

Still firing repeatedly, Pooh Bear and Stretch each grabbed one of her hands and crouch-ran with her back to the cover of the airstairs.

Up the stairs they stumbled, as the steel side railings of the airstairs were riddled with a thousand dome-shaped bullet impacts.

Off-balance and firing blindly behind them, Pooh Bear and Stretch reached the top of the stairs and flung Lily in through the door, rolling themselves in after her, while above them West jammed the door shut and yelled, 'Sky Monster! Go! Go! Go!'

The giant 747 pivoted on the spot, rolling around in a circle until it was re-aimed back up the runway—bullets pinging off its black armoured flanks.

As it completed its circle, it crunched right over a US Humvee that got too close, flattening the car.

Then Pooh Bear and Stretch took their seats in the Halicarnassus's wing-mounted gun turrets and let fly with a barrage of tracer fire, annihilating the other two Humvees.

Then Sky Monster punched his thrusters and the big black 747 gathered speed—thundering up the runway, its winglights blazing, chased by jeeps spewing gunfire, returning tracer bullets from its own turrets—until it hit take-off speed and lifted off into the night sky, escaping from its own supposedly secret base.

A grim silence hung over the main cabin of the Halicarnassus.

West held Lily in his lap. She was still sobbing, distraught over the deaths of Big Ears and Doris.

As the jumbo soared into the night sky, heading for nowhere in particular, everyone who had survived the gunbattle in the hangar returned to the main cabin: Pooh Bear, Stretch and Zaeed. Sky Monster stayed in the cockpit, flying manually for the time being.

With Lily in his arms, West's mind raced.

Big Ears was dead. Doris was dead. Their secret hideaway had been exposed. Not to mention the most frustrating fact of all— when he'd been killed, Big Ears had been carrying the Zeus Piece.

Shit.

Up until a few minutes ago, they'd actually succeeded on this impossible mission. Against all the odds, they had actually obtained a Piece of the Capstone.

And now . . .

Now they had nothing. They'd lost two of their best team-members, lost their base of operations, and lost the one and only Piece they'd ever got.

Hell, West thought, he didn't even know why Lily and Big Ears had suddenly turned and run back to the plane. Gently, he asked

Lily.

She sniffed, wiped away her tears.

'Doris gave me a warning. She said our return was like Gimli's return to Moria. In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli the dwarf returns to the dwarf mines at Moria, only to find that the mines have been overrun by ores. Doris was sending me a secret message. She obviously

couldn't say anything directly, so she spoke in a code I'd understand. She was saying that the farm had been taken over by our enemies and to get away.'

West was amazed at Lily's quick deduction—and at Doris's selfless sacrifice.

'Nice work, kiddo.' He stroked Lily's hair. 'Nice work.'

It was Pooh Bear who asked what they were all thinking. 'Huntsman. What do we do now?'

'I have to talk to Wizard,' West said, moving to one of the communications consoles.

But just as he reached it, the console—as if by magic—started blinking and beeping.

'It's the video phone . . .' Stretch said. 'An incoming call.'

'It must be Wizard,' Pooh Bear said.

'No,' West said, staring at the console's readout. 'It's coming from Victoria Station.'

West clicked the 'Answer' button and the screen on the console came to life. Filling its frame was the face of. . .

Marshall Judah.

He was sitting at a console inside the hangar back in Kenya, flanked by Kallis and some of his men.

'Greetings, Jack. My, my, wasn't that a narrow escape for you all. Sorry—' he corrected himself—'not exactly all of you escaped.'

'What do you want?' West growled.

'Why, Jack. How could I want anything from you? I already have everything you can give me: the Zeus Piece, to add to the three Pieces I already possess. Oh, and I am not sure if you're aware of the fate of your friend Epper in Rome. Seems he's fallen into the hands of our European competitors. I do hope he'll be all right.'

West tried not to let his surprise show. He didn't know that the Europeans had captured Wizard's team.

'Epper's capture,' Judah said, realising with a grin. 'You weren't aware of this.'

Shit.

'Why are you calling us?' West demanded. 'To gloat?' 'To remind you of your status, Jack. Look at you. Look at what you have achieved. Your band of pissant nations shouldn't have tried playing at the grown-ups' table. At every juncture in our parallel missions, I have comprehensively beaten you. In the Sudan. In Tunisia. And now here in Kenya. Can't you see? There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow. There is nowhere on Earth you can hide from me, Jack. My scientists are at this very instant about to uncover the location of the Hanging Gardens and, unlike you, we have long been aware of the importance of the Paris Obelisk—and in two days' time, we will use those measurements to reveal the location of Alexander's Tomb in Luxor: the resting place of the final Piece.'

'Are you finished?'

'How about I finish with this: you never had a chance on this mission, Jack. Let me give you a quick lesson in the law of nations: there are big fish and there are little fish. And the big fish eat the little ones. You came up against a bigger fish, Jack, and you got eaten. Your mission is over.'

'I'm going to kill you, Judah,' West said flatly. 'For Doris.'

'As if you could, Jack. As if you could.'

With that, Judah cut the signal and West found himself staring at an empty screen.

For a long while, no-one spoke.

West just stared at the blank screen, his teeth grinding. 'Stretch, try and call Wizard,' he said. 'See if Judah was telling

the truth.'

Stretch went to the satellite radio console, tried every channel that Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy could be on. He even tried their cell phones.

He received no reply.

'Nothing,' he said, returning to the group. 'There's no answer from Wizard, Zoe or Fuzzy. They're off the air.'

There was more silence as the full weight of their predicament sank in.

In addition to their terrible losses at Victoria Station, they had now lost three more people—including the one person who had been their greatest source of knowledge on this mission, Wizard.

Stretch said, 'Every move we've made, Judah's known it and followed right behind us. In the Sudan. In Tunisia. Now Kenya.'

'Not exactly,' Pooh Bear said. 'Kenya was different: he got to Kenya before we did, not after. He was waiting for us there.' Pooh looked hard at Stretch. 'Somehow he knew about our base.'

Stretch bristled. 'What are you implying? Do you think I informed the Americans?'

Pooh Bear's glare suggested that he was seriously considering this.

Zaeed piped in: 'Unless I'm mistaken, you were never invited to join this mission, were you, Israeli? I would say Saladin is perfectly within his rights to question your loyalty.'

'This does not concern you!' Stretch said. 'Bite your tongue, murderer!'

'An Israeli calls me a murderer!' Zaeed stood up. 'Count the innocents your country has murdered, you—'

'Quiet!' West called, silencing them.

They all retreated, sat down.

West addressed them. 'The Americans now have four of the seven Pieces of the Capstone. And if they get the Artemis Piece from the Europeans—and we must assume they have a plan to do just that—they'll have five.

'As such, they need only two more Pieces to complete the Tartarus Ritual at the Great Pyramid and rule the world. Now, the two Pieces left to find are those of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Great Pyramid itself—'

Zaeed said, 'You can forget about obtaining the Great Pyramid Piece. It is the First Piece, the most highly-prized, the pyramidal peak of the Capstone itself. It was buried with Alexander the Great and the location of his tomb will only be revealed at dawn on the final day.'

'When the Sun shines through the obelisks at Luxor?' Pooh Bear said.

'Yes.'

'Which leaves us the Hanging Gardens Piece,' West said.

Zaeed said, 'Of all the Wonders, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proved to be the most elusive. All of the other Wonders, in one way or another, survived into the modern age. But not the Gardens. They have not been seen since the 5th century BC. Indeed, observers in the ancient world questioned whether they even existed at all. Finding them will be exceedingly difficult.'

West frowned.

Maybe Judah was right.

He honestly didn't know if he could do this.

Not without Wizard. And certainly not when his only companions were a known terrorist, a constantly feuding Arab and Israeli pair, a slightly crazy New Zealand pilot and one little girl.

The thought of Lily made him turn to her.

Her face was still red from crying, dried tear-marks lined her cheeks.

'What do you think?' he asked.

She returned his gaze with bloodshot eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke with a new maturity.

'Before he died, Big Ears made me promise him something. He asked that when the time came, I'd do what I was put on this Earth to do. I don't really know what that is yet, but I don't want to let him down. I want the chance to do what I was put on this Earth to do. Give me that chance, sir. Please.'

West nodded slowly.

Then he stood up.

'The way I see it, folks, we have our backs to the wall. We're down on people, on options and on luck, but we're not out of this game. We still have one option left. We find the one remaining Piece of the Capstone still available to us. The Piece hidden in the only Ancient Wonder never to have been found. People, we have to locate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.'

NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S PARADISE

Of all the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, none retains more mystery than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

There is a simple reason for this.

Of all the Wonders, only one has never been found: the Hanging Gardens. Not a single trace of them has been unearthed: no foundations, no pillars, not even an aqueduct.

In fact, so elusive have the Gardens been throughout the ages that most historians believe they never even existed at all, but were rather the product of the imaginations of Greek poets.

After all, as Alaa Ashmawy, an expert on the Seven Ancient Wonders from the University of Southern Florida, has pointed out, the Babylonians were very careful record-keepers, and yet their records make not a single mention of any Hanging Gardens.

Nor did the chroniclers of Alexander the Great's many visits to Babylon mention any kind of Gardens.

This lack of evidence, however, has not stopped writers throughout the ages from creating all manner of fabulous descriptions of the Gardens. On these facts, all agree:

1. The Gardens were constructed by the great Mesopotamian king, Nebuchadnezzar, around the year 570 BC, in order to please his homesick new wife, who, hailing from Media, was accustomed to more verdant surroundings;

2. They were built to the east of the Euphrates River; and

3. The centrepiece of the Gardens was a shrine devoted to the rare Persian White Desert Rose, a species that has not survived to the present day.

At this point, however, the descriptions vary greatly.

Some historians say the Gardens sat atop a golden ziggurat, its vines and greenery overflowing from the building's tiers. A dozen waterfalls were said to cascade over its edges.

Others say the Gardens dangled from the side of an immense rocky cliff-face—literally earning the name 'hanging'.

One lone scholar has even suggested that the Gardens hung from a gigantic stalactite-like rock formation inside a massive cave.

An interesting sidenote, however, applies to the Gardens.

In Greek, the Gardens were described as kremastos, a word which has been translated as hanging, thus the term 'Hanging Gardens' and the notion of some kind of suspended or raised paradise.

But kremastos can be translated another way. It can be translated as overhanging.

Which begs the question: is it possible that those ancient Greek poets were perhaps merely describing an ordinary stone ziggurat whose decorative foliage, left uncut and unkempt, had simply outgrown its tiers and overhung them at the edges? Could this reputed 'Wonder' have really just been very very ordinary?

AIRSPACE OVER SAUDI ARABIA

13 MARCH, 2006, 0300 HOURS

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

The Halicarnassus shoomed through the night sky.

The big black unregistered 747 zoomed out of Africa on a flight-path that would take it across Saudi Arabia to one of harshest, wildest and most lawless countries on Earth.

Iraq.

It made one stop on the way.

An important stop in a remote corner of Saudi Arabia.

Hidden among some barren rocky hills was a cluster of small man-made caves, long-abandoned, with flapping rags covering their doorways. A long-disused firing range stood nearby, ravaged by dust and time; discarded ammunition boxes lay everywhere.

It was a former terrorist camp.

Once the home of Mustapha Zaeed—and the resting place of all his notes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Covered by West, Stretch and Pooh Bear, the flex-cuffed Zaeed scrambled inside one particular cave where, behind a false wall, he located a large trunk filled with scrolls, tablets, sandstone bricks, gold and bronze ornaments, and literally dozens of notebooks.

It also contained within it a beautiful black-jade box no bigger than a shoebox. Before he passed the trunk out to the others, unseen by West's men, Zaeed grabbed the black-jade box, opened

it, and gazed for a moment at the fine-grained orange sand inside it. It lay flat, undisturbed for many years. It was so fine it was almost luminous.

He snapped the jade box shut, slipped it back into the trunk, and passed it out to the others.

Then on the way out of the hidden space in the wall, he triggered a small electronic beacon.

Zaeed emerged from behind the false wall and presented the trunk to West. 'My life's work. It will help.'

'It had better,' West said.

They grabbed the trunk, hauled it back to the Halicarnassus, and resumed their course for Iraq.

Inside the Halicarnassus, West's depleted team went about the task of finding the location of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

While West, Pooh Bear and Lily pored over Lily's most recent translation of the Callimachus Text, Zaeed—his flex-cuffs now removed—was on his knees, rummaging through his dusty old trunk.

'You know,' Pooh Bear said, 'it would be nice to have some idea what these Gardens actually looked like.'

West said, 'Most drawings of the Gardens are little more than wild interpretations of vague Greek sources, most of them variations on the classic ziggurat shape. No-one has an actual image of them—'

'Don't speak too soon, Captain West! That may not be so! Here it is!' Zaeed called, pulling a crude rectangle of very ancient cloth from his trunk.

It was about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, rough and rectangular. Its edges were worn, ragged, unsewn, like hessian cloth. Zaeed brought it over to the others.

'It's a draft cloth, a simple device used by ancient kings to keep an eye on the progress of their faraway construction sites. The cloth would be, taken by a royal messenger to the worksite, where the

messenger then drew the scene. The messenger would then bring the cloth back to the king, thus showing him the progress being made.

'I found this cloth in a pauper's tomb underneath the town of Ash Shatra, in central Iraq—the tomb of a horseman who had died near the town, having been robbed and left for dead by bandits. Although he was buried as a pauper, I believe he was actually a royal messenger returning to New Babylon with a draft cloth of the Hanging Gardens for Nebuchadnezzar. Behold, all of you, the only picture, so far as I know, of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon:

'It looks like an open cave in the mountainside,' West said. 'Only they refined the natural opening into a magnificent arch.'

'What is that upside-down triangle suspended from the ceiling of the cave?' Pooh Bear asked.

'It looks like a gigantic stalactite . . .' Stretch said.

West said, 'And that structure on the cave-floor directly beneath it appears to be a ziggurat, encased in a construction mud-mound. You used the mound to build the ziggurat and then you took the mound away after you were finished.'

Zaeed eyed West sideways. 'If that is a full-sized ziggurat,

Captain, then that stalactite must be at least fifteen storeys tall. It must be immense.'

'What are all those criss-crossing lines covering the two structures?' Lily asked.

'I have long pondered those lines, child,' Zaeed said. 'I believe that they are an ancient form of scaffolding—a multi-levelled temporary structure made of wooden poles used to build the Gardens. Remember, this cloth is a progress report—it depicts the Gardens being built. I therefore surmise that they are a building tool.'

Pooh Bear asked, 'Lily. What does the writing say?'

Zaeed said, 'My brother, this is not written in the language of Thoth. It's just standard cuneiform, written by a messenger for his king—'

'Lily can read cuneiform,' West said. 'Go on, Lily.'

Lily read the text box: 'It says: Progress report: Construction continuing as scheduled. Nineteen worker deaths. Sixty-two injuries. Losses tolerable.'

'Losses tolerable,' Stretch repeated. 'Doesn't look like the despots of this region have changed much over the ages.'

They returned to Lily's translation of the Callimachus Text's sixth entry:

The Hanging Paradise of Old Babylonia.

March towards the rising Sun,

From the point where the two life-givers become one.

In the shadow of the mountains of Zagros,

Behold the triple falls fashioned by the Third Great Architect

To conceal the path he hewed

That climbs to the Paradise

Which mighty Nebuchadnezzar built for his bride.

'Well, it begins straightforwardly enough,' West said. 'You march due east from the point where the two life-givers become

one. "The life-givers" is the name the Mesopotamians gave to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This must be a reference to the point where they meet.'

'Baghdad?' Pooh Bear asked. 'It stands at a point of convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Isn't it the site of ancient Babylon?'

'Actually, no,' West said. 'Babylon lies underneath the modern-day town of Hilla, to the south of Baghdad. And your theory doesn't strictly obey the verse. The two rivers bend very close to each other at Baghdad, but they don't become one there. They actually come together much further south, at the town of Qurna. There they become one big super-river—the Shatt al-Arab—which flows south through Basra before draining into the Persian Gulf.'

Stretch said sourly: 'I can't believe the Americans haven't found the Gardens already. They must have over 150,000 troops in Iraq right now. They could easily have sent huge forces of men to check out every waterfall in the Zagros Mountains due east of Baghdad, Hilla and Qurna by now.'

West paused, an idea forming in his mind. 'Unless . . .'

'What?'

'The modern town of Hilla does indeed stand on the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon,' he said. 'But now that I look at it closely, our verse does not refer to "Babylon" at all. It mentions the Hanging Paradise of Old Babylonia. Old Babylon.'

'Meaning?' Pooh Bear asked.

'Consider this,' West said. 'New York. New England. New Orleans. Today, many cities and regions are named in memory of older places. In some ancient texts, Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon is actually referred to as New Babylon. What if the Gardens were never in New Babylon, but were, rather, built in an older city also named "Babylon", but built far from the newer city that adopted its name. The original Babylon.'

'It would explain why Alexander the Great's biographers never mentioned the Gardens when he passed through Babylon and why no-one has found them near Hilla,' Stretch said. 'They would only have seen New Babylon, not Old Babylon.'

'Two Babylons. Two cities.' Zaeed stroked his sharply-pointed chin. 'This is a good theory . . .'

Then suddenly his eyes lit up. 'Of course! Of course! Why didn't I think of it before?'

'What?'

Zaeed dashed to his trunk and scrounged among the notebooks

there.

As he did so, he spoke quickly, excitedly. 'If I may take Captain West's theory one step further. Modern logic assumes that the Tigris and the Euphrates follow the same courses today that they followed back in 570 BC. They flow down from Turkey, through Iraq, before joining at Qurna in the southern marshlands.

'Now consider this. Mesopotamia is the birthplace of all flood myths. Why, the tale of Noah and his Ark is but a flimsy retelling of the story of Zisudra and his animal-carrying boat. Why is this so? Because Iraq's flood myths stem from very real floods: of the Persian Gulf breaking its banks and flooding far inland, ripping apart eroded land formations and, on occasion, diverting the courses of the two great rivers of the region, the Tigris and Euphrates. A Westerner named Graham Hancock has written about this very convincingly in a marvellous book called Underworld. Ah-ha! Here it is!'

He produced a battered book, opened it to a page containing a map of Iraq. Prominent on the map were the two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, that joined in a V shape in the south of the country:

Zaeed had scribbled the locations of Hilla, Qurna and Basra on the map.

He explained. 'Now. As we continue to do today, people back in ancient times built their towns on the banks of the two great rivers. But when the rivers diverted onto new courses due to flooding, it follows that those same people would have abandoned the old towns and built new ones, the ones we see on the banks of the rivers today.

'Many years ago, in my search for lost documents relating to the Hanging Gardens, I mapped the locations of abandoned towns, towns that were once situated on the banks of the rivers, but which, once the rivers diverted, were simply deserted. From these locations, I was able to reconstruct the former courses of the two rivers.'

'So where did they converge back then?' West asked.

Zaeed grinned. 'See, that was what I did not know—that their point of convergence was the all-important factor.'

With a flourish, Zaeed then flipped the page to reveal a second map of Iraq, only on this map, an additional dotted V had been drawn directly beneath the present-day one:

Zaeed pointed at this new river junction—it lay south of Qurna, roughly halfway between it and Basra.

'The rivers,' Zaeed said, 'used to meet here, at the town of Haritha.'

The Halicarnassus shot into Iraq, heading for the southern village-town of Haritha.

As it did so, everyone prepared for their arrival—prepping guns, maps, helmets and tunnel gear.

Alone in his office, with Horus perched on his chair-back, West kept one eye on a laptop computer that Wizard had set up soon after their mission in Tunisia had gone to hell.

It was the microwave communications net he had instructed Wizard to create, to scan for any signals emanating from, or coming to, the Halicarnassus.

As they crossed the border into Iraq, the laptop pinged.

Someone on board the plane had sent out a homing signal.

HARITHA, IRAQ

19 MARCH, 2006, 0900 HOURS

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

To get to Haritha, the Halicarnassus had to skirt the port-city, Basra.

As it soared over the outskirts of Basra, Sky Monster's voice came over the PA. ''Hey, Captain West, you better come up here and see this.'

West went up to the cockpit and peered out the windows.

A long column of heavy-duty vehicles was rumbling out of Basra, heading north toward Haritha.

It was a gigantic convoy. Of American military vehicles.

Troop trucks, engineering vehicles, Humvees, jeeps, motorbikes, plus no fewer than ten Abrams battle tanks and several Black Hawk helicopters, prowling overhead.

In all, it amounted to maybe 5,000 troops.

'How can this be?' Zaeed asked, appearing behind West with Pooh Bear.

'How can they be onto us again?' Pooh Bear asked.

West just stared at the convoy, trying not to betray his thoughts: Who gave us away?

'Oh, shit!' Sky Monster exclaimed, hearing something through his headphones. 'The Yanks just scrambled fighters from Nasiryah. F-15s. We better find this place fast, Huntsman.'

A few minutes later, they arrived above the dusty town of Haritha, situated on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab River about fifty kilometres north of Basra.

'Okay, Sky Monster, swing us due east,' West said.

Sky Monster banked the Halicarnassus above the town, but as he did so, he and West glimpsed the highway coming from the north, from Qurna—

—and on that highway, they saw another column of American

vehicles.

It was almost identical to the first—lots of troop trucks, Humvees and tanks; and another 5,000 men, at the very least.

West's mind raced.

'Judah must have had people at Qurna, searching for the waterfalls,' he said. 'But Qurna is the wrong junction of the rivers. He was searching too far to the north.'

'And now—suddenly—he knows to come south,' Sky Monster said pointedly. 'How about that . . .'

West just tapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. 'East and low, my friend.'

But their position was clear—with a rat in their ranks, they were now caught between two converging convoys of overwhelming American firepower.

If they found the Hanging Gardens—which wasn't guaranteed— they'd have to be in and out fast.

Within minutes, the jagged peaks of the Zagros Mountains rose up before them, the boundary line between Iraq and Iran.

Numerous small rivers snaked their way through the range's maze-like system of peaks and valleys—descending to the Shatt al-Arab. Waterfalls could be seen everywhere: tall thin string-like falls, short squat ones, even horseshoe-shaped ones.

There were many double-tiered waterfalls, and several quadruple-tiered falls, but as far as West could tell, there was only one set of triple-tiered falls in the area due east of Haritha: an absolutely stunning cascade easily 300 feet from top to bottom, that bounced over two wide rocky ledges, before flowing into a stream that wound down to the mighty al-Arab. These falls lay right at the edge

of the mountain range, looking out over the flat marshy plain of southern Iraq.

'That's it,' West said. 'That's them. Sky Monster, bring us down anywhere you can. We drive from here. You take the Halt to these co-ordinates and wait for me to call.' He handed Sky Monster a slip of paper.

'Roger that, Huntsman.'

The Halicarnassus landed on the flat cracked surface of a lakebed that hadn't seen water in 1,000 years.

No sooner had its wheels touched down than its rear loading ramp dropped open, banging onto the ground, and—shoom!—a second four-wheel drive Land Rover came rushing out of the big plane's belly, bouncing down onto the mudplain and speeding off to the east, kicking up a cloud of sand behind it.

For its part, the Halicarnassus just powered up again and took off, heading for the secret hangar where Jack West had originally found her fifteen years before.

The Land Rover skidded to a halt before the towering triple-tiered falls. The roar of falling water filled the air.

'Allah have mercy,' Pooh Bear said, gazing up at the falls. At 300 feet, they were the size of a thirty-storey building.

'There!' West called.

A narrow stone path in the rockface led behind the lowest tier of the waterfall.

West hurried along it. The others followed. But when they arrived behind the curtain of falling water, they were confronted by something they hadn't expected.

On every tier of the falls, the water was thrown quite a way out from the cliff-wall, propelled by its rapid speed. This meant that the actual face of each tier was largely water-free—except for a layer of moss and a constant trickle of dribbling water. It also

meant that each cliff-face was concealed by the falls themselves. And behind the curtains of water was a most curious feature. Cut into the face of each rockwall was a dizzying network of ultra-narrow paths that criss-crossed up them. There were maybe six paths in total, but they wound and intersected in so many ways that the number of permutations they created was huge.

Gazing at the twisting array of pathways on the first cliff-face, West saw with dismay the alarming number of wall-holes and blade-holes that opened onto the paths. Booby traps.

Zaeed was awed. 'Imhotep III. A genius, he was, but a sinister genius. This is a very rare type of trap system but typical of his flair. There are many paths with deadly snares, but only one of the pathways is safe.'

'How do we know which route is the safe one?' Stretch asked. 'They all seem to intertwine.'

Beside West, Lily was gazing intently at the path system behind the waterfall.

As she looked at it, something clicked in her mind. 'I've seen this before . . .' she said.

She reached into West's backpack and extracted a printout. It was titled: 'Waterfall Entrance—Refortification by Imhotep III in the time of Ptolemy Sotef.

'Well, would you look at that. . .' Stretch said.

The lines on the printed image exactly matched the layout of the pathways on the waterfall.

'But which path is the safe route?' Pooh Bear asked anxiously.

'That I don't know,' Lily said, deflating.

'Wait a second,' West said. 'Maybe you do . . .'

Now he rifled through his pack for a few moments, before he said, 'Got it!'

He pulled from the backpack a tattered brown leatherbound notebook.

The diary of the Nazi archaeologist, Hessler.

'Hessler knew the safe path,' West said, flicking the pages of the diary until he found what he was looking for.

'Here!' He held the diary open, revealing a page they had seen before:

Its title was 'Safe Routes'. West smiled.

He brought the right-hand image from this page alongside the picture of the waterfall's paths, and everyone else saw it—the

right-hand 'Safe Route' matched one of the twisting paths on the waterfall diagram perfectly:

'You know, Captain West,' Zaeed said, 'you're a lot cleverer than I give you credit for. I shall have to watch you.'

'Thanks,' West said dryly.

As he spoke, he stole a glance at the plain behind them. In the far distance, a high dustcloud stretched across the sandplain, from horizon to horizon—a sandstorm, or perhaps something else . . .

The dustcloud of two massive convoys.

'Come on,' he said. 'We don't have much time.'

Up the vertical cliff-wall they went, following the safe path, with the roaring curtain of water falling behind their backs. Diffused sunlight lanced in through falling water, lighting the way.

West climbed in the lead, with Horus in his chest pouch.

Their path twisted and turned, doubling back and forth as it rose

up the cliff-face. It was so narrow that the team could only climb it in single-file, and it was covered in slippery moss, so their progress was slow. That said, without the map, they could never have figured out the safe route up the falls.

At both of the middle ledges in the waterfall, the path burrowed into the rockface as a tunnel—a tunnel that emerged above the ledge, giving access to the next level.

And so after twenty minutes of careful climbing, they reached the top of the third rockface. There, just below the lip of the uppermost ledge of the falls, immediately beneath a stunning translucent veil of fast-flowing water, the path ended . . .

. . . right in front of a third low tunnel—a passageway that bored directly into the cliff-face, disappearing into darkness.

The entrance to this tunnel, however, was different from the lower ones.

It was more ornate, despite the fact it was covered in overgrown green moss.

The tunnel's entry frame—every side covered with hieroglyphs—was beautifully cut into the rockface, in a perfectly square shape. Its smooth walls retained this shape as they receded into blackness.

And on the lintel above the door, partly obscured by trickling water and moss, was a familiar carving:

West smiled at the carved image. 'We're here.'

As West and the others evaluated the tunnel entrance, Pooh Bear followed a short horizontal section of the path that led to the edge of the waterfall.

Leaning out, he peered around the edge of the flowing body of water, looking out at the vast sandplain behind them.

What he saw made his eyes boggle.

He saw the two American convoys—now merged to become one mega-convoy—thundering across the plain, kicking up an immense dustcloud behind them. Choppers hovered above the great column of vehicles, with one dark-painted Black Hawk out in front.

Ten thousand men, coming right for them.

'By Allah,' he breathed. 'Er, Huntsman . . .'

West joined him, saw the immense American force, and particularly eyed the dark Black Hawk leading the way.

He frowned.

That chopper actually didn't look . . .

He pursed his lips in thought.

The world was closing in on him, and he was fast running out of options.

'Come on, Pooh,' he said. 'We can't stop now.'

They rejoined the others at the tunnel entrance, where Stretch said, 'If this trap system is anything like the others, there's no way we can get in and out before the Americans arrive.'

'If I may be so bold,' Zaeed said slyly from behind them. 'There might in fact be a way . . .'

'What way?' Stretch said suspiciously.

'The Priests' Entrance. The Nazi's diary mentions it, and I have come across this phrase in my own research. Such an entrance is usually a small one, unadorned, used by the priests of a temple to tend to its shrines even after that temple has been closed off. As a royal retreat, the Gardens almost certainly contained temples in need of tending.'

'A back door,' West said.

'Yes. Which means we can enter through this door and exit out the other end, via the Priests' Entrance.'

'If we can find it,' Stretch said.

'If we don't get this Piece,' West said, 'Doris and Big Ears and Noddy will have died for nothing. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm getting this Piece or I'm going to die trying.'

And with that he turned, and gripping Lily's hand, he started for the tunnel behind the waterfall.

Pooh Bear fell into step close beside him, and stole a whisper: 'Huntsman. That lead chopper, the dark Black Hawk out in front of the convoy, did you see it?'

'Yes,' West's eyes remained fixed forward.

'That wasn't an American chopper.'

'I know.'

'Did you recognise the markings? It was—'

'Yes,' West whispered, glancing back at Stretch. 'It was an Israeli chopper. Somehow the Israelis knew our location, and I think I know how. Thing is, it looks like they're trying to get here ahead of the Americans.' He threw another deadly look at Stretch. 'Israel always looks after Israel. Come on.'

And with those words, they entered the trap system that guarded the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

(335)

The flashlight on West's fireman's helmet carved a sabre-like beam through the darkness of the tunnel.

His team followed him, silhouetted by the daylight that penetrated the waterfall behind them. They also wore helmet-lights. Horus flew out in front.

The tunnel was perfectly square in shape, its walls hard, carved from solid rock. And it sloped steadily downward, away from the daylight. Shadowy square recesses were cut into its ceiling, concealing God-only-knew-what. The waterfall behind them roared loudly, a constant shhh—

The first trap struck.

With a heart-stopping boom, an enormous five-ton dropstone fell out of a recess in the ceiling—just inside the entrance—blocking out the sunlight, filling the entire tunnel!

Then, to their horror, the gradient of the tunnel gave the massive block life.

It immediately started sliding down the slope—toward them— forcing West's team forwards and downward. 'Move!' West called.

They all started running down the tunnel, away from the great sliding stone, side-stepping warily around all the ceiling holes they had to pass under.

The great stone slid quickly forwards, chasing after them, an unstoppable pursuer, driving them toward—

A cliff edge.

Thirty metres down the slope, the tunnel simply ended at a gaping black abyss. The tunnel did not seem to continue in any way beyond this dark void. This, it appeared, was the absolute end of the tunnel.

The stone kept rumbling down the tunnel behind them.

West fired a flare into the dark void—

—to reveal that they were standing at one end of a gigantic subterranean cavern shaped like a giant cube, easily fifty metres long and at least ten storeys high.

Their problem: their tunnel opened onto this cavern right up near the ceiling.

The sliding stone kept coming.

Then, by the glow of the hovering flare, West saw the floor of the great cavern thirty metres below him.

It was flat and bare, made of sand.

But there was something wrong about it—it was too flat, too bare.

West kicked a nearby stone off the edge and watched it sail down to the floor of the cavern.

The stone hit the floor.

It didn't bounce.

It just landed with a splonk, embedding itself in the goopy sandlike surface. And then it went under, seemingly swallowed by the semi-liquid surface.

'Ah-ha, quicksand,' Zaeed said, impressed. 'The entire floor is quicksand . . .'

'God, you're just like Max,' West said, snapping round to check

on the fast-moving stone behind them—ten metres away and about to force them into the quicksand-filled chamber.

'This trap system doesn't waste any time, does it?'

But then, turning back to the massive square cavern, he saw the answer—a long line of handbars had been dug into its ceiling; a line that ended at a matching tunnel at the opposite end of the cavern, fifty metres away.

Of course, more dark and deadly trap-holes were interspersed between and above the handbars.

'Lily, here. Jump onto my chest, put your hands around my neck,' West said. 'Zaeed. You got any intel on these handbars?'

Zaeed peered back at the sliding stone: 'I found a reference once to something called the High Ceiling of the Sand Cavern. It said, "Walk with your hands but in deference to he who built it, avoid those of its Creator." Imhotep III built this system, so I'd avoid every third handgrip.'

'Good theory,' West said, 'but since I don't trust you, why don't you go first and test it out. Now move.'

Zaeed leapt out onto the handrungs, swinging himself along them, avoiding every third one.

Once he'd survived the first few metres, West scooped up Lily. 'Everybody, follow us.'

And so with Lily gripping him around the neck, West reached up and grabbed the first handbar . . .

. . . and swung out over the ten-storey drop to the quicksand floor.

It was an incredible sight: five tiny figures, moving in single-file, all hanging from their hands, swinging fist-over-fist across the ceiling of the immense cube-shaped cavern, their feet dangling ten storeys above the floor.

The last in the line was Pooh Bear, who leapt off the doorway-ledge a bare moment before the five-ton sliding stone came bursting out of the tunnel, filling the entire passage before falling clear out of it!

The huge square stone thundered off the edge . . . and tipped . . . and went sailing down the sheer wall of the cavern before it splashed into the quicksand with a great goopy splat.

Then the stone settled in the quagmire and sank below the surface—grimly, slowly—never to be seen again.

West gripped each handbar firmly, swinging himself and Lily down the length of the cavern. Horus flew alongside them, hovering nearby—seemingly amused at their difficult method of travel.

Following Zaeed, West avoided every third handbar, which was just as well. Zaeed had been right. West tested the ninth handbar and it just fell from its recess, dropping all the way to the deadly floor.

He was halfway across when he heard the voices. Shouts. Coming from the entry tunnel.

The first chopper—the Israeli Black Hawk—must have dropped its men directly onto the path at the top of the falls.

West reasoned that they were probably commandos from the Sayaret Matkal, the very best of Israel's elite 'Sayaret' or 'reconnaissance' units. The Matkal were crack assassins—ruthlessly efficient killers who, among other things, were widely acknowledged as the best snipers in the world. Stretch's old unit.

Now they were coming in.

Fast.

'Everybody!' West called. 'Get a move on! We're about to have some really nasty company!'

He started double-timing it across the handbars—swinging like a monkey hand-over-hand—high above the deadly floor.

Then suddenly from the entry tunnel there came the familiar heavy whump of a sliding stone dropping from the ceiling— followed by shouts and the sound of rapidly running feet.

The Israelis had set off a second sliding stone.

West kept moving across the high cavern, swinging with his hands.

Out in front, Zaeed reached the mouth of the opposite tunnel, swung into it. West followed seconds later, swinging his feet onto solid ground. He turned to help the others—

—only to see a red laser dot appear on his nose ... a dot that belonged to a sniper rifle in the opposite tunnel, a sniper rifle held by one of the Israeli commandos, bent on one knee.

A voice came over West's radio frequency: 'Stay right where you are, Captain West. Don't move a muscle.'

West was hardly going to obey—but then, as if it could read his thoughts, the dot shifted slightly . . .

... so that it now rested on the back of Lily's head.

'1 know what you're thinking, Captain. Don't. Or she dies. Cohen! These handrungs. The safe sequence.''

Right then Stretch landed on the ground beside West. Pooh Bear was still huffing and puffing behind him, crossing the handrungs with difficulty.

Stretch glanced sideways at West as he spoke into his mike: 'Avoid every third rung, Major.'

The Israelis moved quickly, leaping out from the entry tunnel, grasping the handbars, moving across the high ceiling of the cavern.

There were six of them, and they all emerged from the entry tunnel ahead of the sliding stone—it just rumbled out of the tunnel harmlessly behind them, dropping into the quicksand pool.

But they also moved in a brilliantly co-ordinated fashion—so that at any moment, one of them hung one-handed and always had his gun aimed at Lily.

Within a few minutes, they were across the cavern and surrounding West's little team.

The Israeli leader eyed West menacingly.

Stretch made the introductions. 'Captain Jack West Jr . . . this is Major Itzak Meir of the Sayaret Matkal, call-sign: Avenger.'

Avenger was a tall man, broadchested, with hard green eyes that were entirely lacking in nuance. For him, black was black, white was white, and Israel always came first.

'The famous Captain West.' Avenger stepped forwards, relieving West of his holstered pistol. 'I've never heard of a soldier enduring so much failure, and yet still you keep picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and coming back for more.'

'It's never over till it's over,' West said.

Avenger turned to Stretch. 'Captain Cohen, congratulations. You have done a fine job on an unusually long mission. Your work has been noted at the highest levels. I apologise for surprising you in this way.'

Stretch said nothing, just bowed his head.

Pooh Bear, however, was livid.

He glared at Stretch. 'Accept my congratulations, too, Israeli. You performed your mission to the letter. You led them to us and you sold us out just in time to hand them the last available Piece. I hope you're satisfied.'

Stretch still said nothing.

Lily looked up at him. 'Stretch? Why . . . ?'

Stretch said softly, 'Lily, you have to understand. I didn't—'

Avenger grinned. 'What is this? "Stretch"? Have you been renamed, Cohen? How positively sweet.'

He turned to Pooh Bear. 'Alas, everything you say is true, Arab.

The last available Piece is to be ours, one Piece of the Capstone that will give Israel all the leverage it needs over the United States of America. Now, Captain West, if you would be so kind. Lead the way. Take us to this Piece. You work for Israel now.'

But no sooner had these words come out of his mouth than there was a great explosion from somewhere outside.

Everyone spun.

West swapped a glance with Pooh Bear.

They all listened for a moment.

Nothing.

Silence.

And then West realised: silence was the problem. He could no longer hear the constant shhh of the waterfall up at the entrance to the tunnel system.

The shooshing had stopped.

And the realisation hit.

Judah had just used explosives to divert the waterfall—the entire waterfaW. He was opening up the entrance for a mass forced entry.

In fact, even in his wildest dreams, West still hadn't fully imagined the scene outside.

The waterfall had indeed been diverted, by a series of expertly-laid demolition charges in the river above it. Now its triple-tiered rockface, criss-crossed with paths, lay bare and dry, in full view of the world.

But it was the immense military force massing around the base of the dry waterfall that defied imagining.

A multitude of platoons converged on the now tranquil pool at the base of the triple-tiered cliff-face. Tanks and Humvees circled behind them, while Apache and Super Stallion choppers buzzed overhead.

And commanding it all from a mobile command vehicle was Marshall Judah.

He sent his first team in from the air—they went in fast, ziplining down drop-ropes suspended from a hovering Super Stallion direct to the top tier of the dry falls, by-passing the paths.

Guns up and pumped up, they charged inside.

From their position at the far end of the quicksand cavern, West and his new group saw the Americans' red laser-sighting beams lancing out from the entry tunnel, accompanied by fast footsteps.

'American pigs,' Zaeed hissed.

But then suddenly—whump—the Americans' footfalls were drowned out by a much louder sound: the deep ominous grinding of a third sliding stone!

Gunfire. The Americans were firing their guns at the sliding stone!

Shouts.

Then running—frantic running.

Seconds later, the first desperate American trooper appeared on the ledge on his side of the cube-shaped cavern.

He peered around desperately—looking left and right, up and down—and he saw the quicksand floor far below; then he saw the handrungs in the ceiling. He leapt for them—swung from the first one to the second, grabbed the third—

—which fell out of its recess and sent the hapless commando plummeting ten storeys straight down.

The man screamed all the way until—splat!—he landed in the gelatinous floor ... at which point he starting screaming in a whole new way.

The screams of a man caught in the grip of a force he cannot resist, a man who knows he is going to die.

His five team-mates arrived at the tunnel's edge just in time to see him get sucked under, his mouth filling with liquid sand. Now trapped on the ledge, they glanced from the deadly handrungs back to the sliding stone, then down to the quicksand.

Two tried the handrungs.

The first man reached the sixth rung—which felled him. The second man just slipped and fell all on his own.

The other three were beaten by the sliding stone.

It burst out of the tunnel behind them like a runaway train and collected them on the way—hurling them all out into the air, sending them sailing in a high curving arc ten storeys down before they all landed together with simultaneous sandy splashes.

As the massive stone itself landed, it smacked one of the American soldiers straight under the surface. The other two bobbed on the gluggy surface for a few seconds before they too were sucked under by the hungry liquid floor.

West and his group saw it all happen.

'That won't happen again,' West said to Avenger. 'Judah sent that team in to die—a junior team without instructions, without warnings. He was just testing the trap system. When he comes in, he won't be so foolish.'

The Israeli major nodded, turned to two of his men. 'Shamburg. Riel. Make a rear-guard post here. Hold them off for as long as you can, then catch up.'

'Sir!'

'Yes, sir!'

Avenger then grabbed Lily from West, held her roughly by the collar. 'Lead the way, Captain.'

They hadn't taken ten steps down the next tunnel before they heard gunfire from the two rear-guards.

Sustained gunfire.

More Americans had arrived at the sand cavern—having probably completely disabled the sliding stone mechanism by now.

Two men wouldn't hold them off for long.

The Giant Stairway

After passing through the short tunnel, West led his now-larger group into another cube-shaped chamber—about fifty feet high, wide and long—only this time, his tunnel opened onto the chamber from the base, not up near the ceiling.

Before him was a rail-less stone path which hugged the chamber's left-hand wall. A quicksand pool lay to the right, filling the rest of the floor.

The low stone path, however, led to something quite astonishing.

Seven giant stone steps that rose magnificently upward to a doorway cut into the ceiling of this chamber. Each step must have been at least seven feet high, and they all bristled with holes and recesses of various shapes and sizes, some of them door-sized, others basketball-sized, every one of them no doubt fitted with deadly snares just waiting to be triggered.

To the left of the giant stairway, flush against it, was the same stone wall that flanked the path. It was also dotted with variously-sized trap-holes. To the right of the stairs, there was nothing but empty air.

The intent was clear: if you were thrown off the stairs, you fell all the way down to the floor, made entirely of quicksand.

'It's the levels,' Zaeed realised.

'What?' West said.

'Remember the progress report I found, the sketch of the Gardens under construction. These steps weren't originally steps at all. They were the step-like levels that led up to the main archway of the cave. Imhotep III converted them into this ascending stairway trap.'

'Clever.'

Zaeed said, 'If I'm right, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon lie beyond that doorway in the ceiling.'

Avenger pushed West forwards—while maintaining his grip on Lily. 'Captain West, please. Time is of the essence. Lead the way.'

West did so, taking on the giant steps.

He encountered traps on nearly every one.

Blasts of quicksand, trapdoors, upward-springing spikes designed to lance through his grasping hands, even a one-ton boulder that rolled suddenly across the fifth step.

But through skill and speed and quick thinking, he got past them all, until finally he stepped up into the opening in the ceiling, emerging on a dark platform which he sensed opened onto a wider, infinitely more vast space. And so he lit a flare and held it aloft and for one brief moment in time, standing alone in the darkness, Jack West Jr beheld a sight no-one had seen for over 2,500 years.

Standing there before him, in all their incredible glory, were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

He needed eight more flares to illuminate the gargantuan cavern fully.

It was hetter described as a supercavern, for it was the size of twenty football fields laid out in a grid. It was perfectly square in shape, and its floor was made up entirely of quicksand—giving it the appearance of a vast flat lake of yellow sand.

And rising up from this sand-lake, in the exact centre of the supercavern, was a fifteen-storey ziggurat—the variety of stepped pyramid common in ancient Mesopotamia.

But it was the natural feature that lay above the ziggurat that inspired sheer wonder.

An absolutely immense limestone stalactite hung from the ceiling of the cave directly above the ziggurat. It was so huge, its mass so great, it dwarfed the ziggurat. Perhaps 25 storeys tall, it looked like an inverted mountain suspended from the ceiling of the super-cavern, its pointed tip reaching down to meet the upwardly-pointed peak of the ziggurat on the ground.

But this incredible natural feature had been modified by the hand of man—thus lifting it out of 'incredible' and into the category of 'wondrous'.

A pathway had been hewn into its outer flank—in some sections it was flat and curving, while in others it took the form of short flights of steps. This path spiralled up and around the exterior of the great stalactite, rising ever higher, heading for the ceiling of the cavern.

Dotting this path were nearly a hundred semi-circular archways, each archway containing vines and shrubs and trees and flowers—

all of them overgrown to excess, all hanging out and over the edge of the stalactite, dangling precariously 300 feet above the world.

It defied belief.

It was stupendous.

A truly hanging garden.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

As the others joined him, West noticed the wall soaring into the upper reaches of the supercavern immediately above and behind them.

While it was made of densely-packed bricks, West could make out at its edges the traces of another earlier structure, a structure that had been trapezoidal in shape and huge—300 feet high—like a giant doorway of some sort that had been filled in with these bricks.

West grabbed Zaeed's sketch from his pocket—the drawing of the great stalactite (shrouded in scaffolding) visible from outside the mountain through a window-like trapezoidal archway:

At that moment, he remembered a reference from the Nazi Hessler's diary. He pulled the diary from his jacket pocket and found the page:

1ST INSCRIPTION FROM THE TOMB OF IMHOTEP III:

WHAT AN INCREDIBLE STRUCTURE IT WAS,

CONSTRUCTED AS A MIRROR IMAGE,

WHERE BOTH ENTRANCE AND EXIT WERE ALIKE.

IT PAINED ME THAT MY TASK—WHAT WOULD BE MY LIFE'S

MASTERWORK—WAS TO CONCEAL SO MAGNIFICENT A STRUCTURE.

BUT I DID MY DUTY.

WE SEALED THE GREAT ARCHWAY WITH A LANDSLIDE.

AS INSTRUCTED, THE PRIESTS' ENTRANCE REMAINS OPEN SO THEY

MAY TEND THE SHRINES INSIDE—THE PRIESTS HAVE BEEN

INFORMED OF THE ORDER OF THE SNARES.

'"We sealed the great archway with a landslide'",'' West read aloud. 'Imhotep bricked up the archway and then triggered a landslide to cover it. But he wasn't done. Then he diverts a river outside to cover the whole thing. My God, he was good . . .'

'The Third Great Architect was indeed a master,' Zaeed said, coming alongside West.

Beside them, the others were arriving and taking in the awesome sight.

Lily's mouth hung open.

Stretch's eyes were wide.

Even Avenger was impressed enough to fall silent.

It was Pooh Bear who summed up their mood: 'So this is why they call them Wonders.''

But they weren't there yet.

The wide lake of quicksand still lay between them and the zig-gurat—the only means of getting up to the Hanging Gardens.

Halfway between them and the ziggurat, seemingly floating on the surface of the sand-lake, there stood a small roofed structure that looked like a gazebo. Made of stone, it was hexagonal in shape and roughly the size of a single-car garage, but it had no walls, just six pillars holding up a heavy-looking stone roof.

A dead-straight path barely an inch above the surface of the lake stretched out from their position directly toward this hexagonal gazebo—only to end abruptly thirty metres short of the structure.

The path re-emerged nearer to the gazebo, its submerged centre section presumably consumed by the quicksand sometime in the distant past.

As West looked more closely, he saw more paths.

Radiating out from the hexagonal sides of the gazebo, creating a star-shaped pattern, were six stone paths that were also virtually level with the surface of the lake.

Each of these paths also ended abruptly about fifteen metres out from the gazebo.

'How do we get across?' Pooh Bear asked. 'The paths have long been swallowed by the quicksand lake.'

'Can't we just follow the straight path?' Avenger said. 'Surely it continues just beneath the surface.'

'Yes. Let's do exactly that and why don't you lead the way, you stupid fool Israeli,' Zaeed said.

Avenger frowned.

'He means, walk that way if you want to die,' West said. 'It's a trap for the unwary and uninformed. This looks to me like a false-floor trap—the biggest false-floor trap I've ever seen. There must be a safe route just underneath the surface of the lake, but you have to know the route to use it and we don't.'

'I think we do,' a quiet voice said from behind him.

Lily.

Everybody turned to face her.

'We do?' Pooh Bear said.

'Yes,' Lily said. 'It's the second "safe route" that the German man wrote down. The first was the safe pathway up the waterfall. This is the second. That's why he put them together.'

She took Hessler's diary from West and flipped back a couple of pages, to reveal the page they had looked at only half an hour before, entitled 'Safe Routes':

But whereas before they had been looking at the right-hand image, now it was the left-hand one that concerned them.

Sure enough, it matched the view before them exactly.

Only it revealed a path hidden beneath the quicksand lake—a circuitous path that skirted the walls of the cavern, crossed through the hexagonal gazebo, and ended at the top of the page, at the base of the ziggurat.

West nodded at Lily, very impressed.

'Nice work, kiddo. Glad we've got someone here who's got their head screwed on right.'

Lily beamed.

Suddenly Avenger's earpiece burst to life and he spun around to see his two rear-guards enter the Giant Stairway cave behind and below them.

'Sir!' one of them said over the radio. 'The Americans are crossing the first cavern! There are just too many of them! Under cover of sniper fire, they brought in pontoons and extendable ladders to cross the cavern at its base! They just had too much firepower for

us! We had to retreat! Now they're coming!'

Avenger said, 'Okay. I'll send Weitz back to guide you up the Stairway. Once you're up, set up another rear-guard position at the top. We still need every second we can get.'

Avenger turned to West. 'It's time for you to test your little girl's theory, Captain. I hope for your sake she's right. Move.'

And so following the map, West took a hesitant step off the main path, heading left, out over what appeared to be pure quicksand

and ...

... his boot landed on solid ground, on an unseen pathway hidden a couple of inches below the oozing surface of the lake.

Lily exhaled in relief.

West tested the lake on either side of the path—and found only inky quicksand of uncertain depth.

'Looks like we found the pathway,' he said.

After a quickly-sketched copy of the safe route was made and left for the rear-guards, the group ventured gingerly out across the sand-lake, led by West.

They followed the map, seemingly walking on water, on nothing but the flat surface of the wide quicksand lake, heading way out to the left, then stepping along the left-hand wall, before cutting back toward the centre of the lake and arriving at the central gazebo.

The Gazebo

The 'gazebo' structure surprised them all.

For, unlike the hidden path, its floor was not level with the surface of the lake. It was sunken twelve feet below the level of the lake, a stone rim holding back the sea of quicksand around it.

It was also solid as hell—thick-walled and sturdy.

A short and narrow flight of stone steps led down into this pit— which like the gazebo itself was also six-sided, with doors cut into every one of its sides. The structure's thick stone roof loomed over it all, a few feet above the rim, resting on its pillars, like a dark thundercloud just waiting to do its worst.

Curiously, just inside the walls of the hexagonal pit, forming a kind of inner wall to the structure, was a cylindrical bronze cage— also twelve feet high, made of imposing vertical bars, and criss-crossing bars across its top.

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 said. '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.

He arrived at the ledge, did a strenuous chin-up to raise his head above its rim.

And his eyes widened.

Sitting there before him, mounted proudly inside this exceedingly difficult to reach altar, was a medium-sized golden trapezoid.

The Hanging Gardens Piece.

* * *

It was one of the middle Pieces, about the size of a washing basket. Too big for one man to carry by himself. He pulled out his pressure-gun, fired a piton into the rockwall, looped his rope around it.

'Pooh Bear,' he said into his mike. 'Can you come over here? I need your help. Avenger: send some of your people to the other end of our rope to catch this when we send it back.'

Pooh Bear joined West—after a precarious climb—and together they managed to pull the Piece from its holy alcove and, placing it safely in a pulley-harness that hung from the return rope, they sent it whizzing back down the return rope to the catwalk.

Nestled in its harness, the Piece slid down the length of the rope, arrived back at the catwalk, where Avenger caught it with gleaming greedy eyes.

'Have you got it?' West's voice said into his earpiece.

Avenger replied: 'Yes, we have it. Thank you, Captain West, that will be all. Goodbye.'

And with that Avenger cut the return rope at his end and let it swing out over the void.

From his position, West saw the rope go slack, now only hanging from its piton at his end.

'Oh, shit! Shit!' he swung past Pooh Bear, moving fast down the handrungs in the slanting wall of the recess, reaching the bottom— the flat ceiling of the supercavern—just in time to see Avenger and his men run to the far end of the catwalk and toss three hand grenades behind them.

The grenades bounced along the rotten wooden catwalk.

And detonated.

The ancient catwalk never stood a chance.

The grenades exploded—and with a pained shrieking, the catwalk fell away from the ceiling . . .

. . . and sailed in a kind of slow motion all the way down to the sand-lake, 500 feet below.

West watched it all the way, knowing exactly what this meant.

With the catwalk gone, he and Pooh Bear had no way to get back to the stalactite.

The horror of their predicament hit home.

Lily and the Piece were in the hands of the escaping Israelis, the Americans were banging on the door, and now . . . now he and Pooh were stranded on the ceiling of the biggest cave he had ever seen with no way or hope of getting back.

After watching the destruction of the catwalk with grim satisfaction, Avenger scooped up Lily. He turned to head back down the stalactite's spiralling path.

'We won't be needing Captain West or the Arab anymore. Nor—' he drew his pistol—'will we be needing you, Mr Zae—'

But Mustapha Zaeed, his animal instincts ever alert, had already seen what was coming.

By the time Avenger had his pistol drawn, Zaeed had already broken into a run—dashing off down the path and into one of its cross-tunnels.

'He won't get far. Come. Let's get out of here.' With Lily in his grasp, he led his men down the path.

'Huntsman,' Pooh Bear gasped. 'I'm ... er ... in some trouble here . . .'

West rushed back—swinging with his hands across the rocky ceiling—to check on Pooh Bear in the recess.

Pooh was heavier than he was, with far less arm-strength. He wouldn't be able to hold himself up for long.

West swung alongside him. 'Hang in there, my friend. No pun intended.' He quickly tied the now loose return rope around and under Pooh's armpits—allowing Pooh Bear to hang from it without effort.

As for himself, West could hang from his mechanical arm longer—but not forever.

'The Israelis?' Pooh Bear asked.

'They destroyed the catwalk. Took the Piece and Lily. We're stranded.'

'If I ever catch him, I'll throttle Stretch,' Pooh Bear said. 'You know, for a moment there I actually thought he might have become one of us. But I was wrong. Dirty betrayer.'

'Pooh, right now, I'd just be happy to get out of here alive.'

The Israeli team charged back down the stalactite, with Lily and the Piece in their possession.

As they reached the tip of the great stalactite, they saw their two rear-guards come running into the supercavern.

'Sir! The Americans have breached the Giant Stairway! Repeat: the Americans have breached the Giant Stairway! We couldn't hold them off any longerV

'You held them off long enough! We have the girl and we have the Piece,' Avenger replied, grinning. 'Meet us at the ziggurat and proceed to the other side. We're going out that way!'

Stretch ran behind Avenger, saying nothing, his teeth clenched, his eyes vacant and distant, lost in thought.

The Israeli team reached the bottom of the stalactite—just in time to see Zaeed disappear down the square shaft in the top of the ziggurat: the Priests' Entrance.

Avenger didn't care.

Although killing the terrorist would have brought him much kudos back home, Zaeed wasn't his concern here.

He had to get out.

Only then, as he clambered down the A-frame ladder at the base of the stalactite and stepped down onto the ziggurat, he saw the Americans enter the supercavern.

They came rushing in from the Giant Stairway entrance. But it wasn't the superlarge force of men he was expecting, it was just ten men.

And oddly, they didn't venture out across the quicksand lake.

No.

Rather, this small group started free-climbing up the sheer wall above that entrance, the wall that had filled in the old Grand Archway.

And there they—

'Oh, no . . .' Avenger breathed.

—started planting explosives, heavy-duty Tritonal 80/20 demolition charges.

The Americans worked fast, laying their charges and then getting the hell out of the way.

The result when it came was as spectacular as it was destructive.

With a colossal series of booms, the demolition charges went off.

The rockwall filling up the Grand Archway of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was ripped apart by twenty simultaneous blasts. Great starbursts of rock sprayed out from it.

But the charges had been directional, forcing the bulk of the debris to be flung toward the outside world. Only a few smaller boulders landed in the quicksand lake.

Giant holes were opened in the rockwall.

Shafts of sunshine blazed in through them.

And daylight flooded into the supercavern for the first time in 2,000 years, illuminating it gloriously—and in the brilliant light of day, the Gardens took on a whole new level of splendour.

Then these many holes collapsed, forming one great 50-metre-wide hole and through this opening, following hard on the heels of the sunlight, came the American helicopters, roaring into the super-cavern with a fury.

West couldn't believe what was happening.

First, he'd been left for dead up in the recess by Avenger.

And now he could only watch in stunned awe as the entire cavern beneath him was flooded with light.

Six, then seven, then eight American choppers—Black Hawks and Apaches—banked and buzzed around the immense cavern, hovering above the ancient ziggurat, rising alongside the great stalactite, searching for the enemy, searching for the Piece.

The roar of their rotors in the cavern was deafening, the wind that they generated, swirling.

Then West saw one of the Black Hawks rise up directly beneath him, saw the circular speed-blur of its rotors, and he thought, If I fell now, at least death would be quick.

But the Black Hawk hadn't seen him and Pooh Bear—it was peering at the stalactite, searching . . .

It moved closer to the stalactite, for a better look, and suddenly it wasn't directly beneath West anymore.

And West saw a way out of his predicament. It was totally crazy, but it might work . . .

He sprang into action.

'Pooh Bear, get a handhold. I need that rope and piton.'

Pooh Bear obliged, grabbed a handrung, while—one-handed— West disengaged the piton and wound in the rope. It was about fifty feet in length.

Then he said, 'Okay, Pooh, now let go of the handrung and grab my waist.'

'What!'

'Just do it.'

Pooh Bear did. Now he hung from West... as West hung from his superstrong mechanical hand, gripping a handrung. And then West let go.

They dropped from the ceiling.

Straight down.

They shot like a bullet past the tail of the Black Hawk . . .

. . . and as they did so, West hurled his piton—still attached to the rope—at the Black Hawk's landing wheels!

Like a grappling hook, the steel piton looped around the rear landing wheels of the helicopter . . . and caught.

The rope played out before—snap!—it went taut and suddenly West and Pooh Bear were swinging, suspended from the helicopter's landing gear, swooping in toward the giant stalactite!

The helicopter lurched slightly with their added weight, but it held its hovering position, anchoring their swing.

They swung in a long swooping arc right over to the path on the flank of the stalactite, where West and Pooh Bear dismounted deftly and released the rope, now back in the game.

'Never thought I'd be happy to see Judah arrive,' West said. 'Come on! We've got to save Lily.'

They charged down the path at breakneck speed.

Chaos. Mayhem.

Blazing sunlight.

The roar of helicopters, and now . . .

. . . hundreds of American regular troops flooded in through the newly-opened Grand Arch.

Avenger's Israeli team danced down the far side of the ziggurat and raced out over the quicksand lake on that side. As West had seen before, this side was the mirror image of the entry side: it also featured a concealed path just below the surface with a hexagonal well in its centre.

Avenger's team reached the well, raced down into it in two subgroups, beheld another statue of a proud winged lion.

Avenger and the two Israelis carrying the Piece went first. The trap sprang into action. Quicksand flooded in. The one-gate cage revolved. But they sloshed through the inky sand and emerged from the other side with little difficulty.

Stretch, the other two Israeli commandos, and Lily went next.

Again the trap initiated. Quicksand poured into the hexagonal well. The cage rotated. They sloshed across it, knee-deep.

And suddenly Lily tripped and fell.

The rising quicksand had caught her feet and she stumbled to all fours with a squeal.

The sand grabbed her, sticky and foul.

She screamed in terror.

Stretch and the other two Israelis spun, saw her struggling. They were almost at the exit doorway and the cage's rotating gate was about to let them out.

Avenger called from the doorway, 'Leave her! We have the Piece! She was only a bonus! It's the Piece that matters, and if we don't get it out, this will all have been for nothing! Move!'

The two commandos with Stretch didn't need to be told twice. They sloshed toward the gate and slipped through it.

Stretch, however, paused.

With quicksand flooding in from every side and the cage turning dizzyingly around him, he looked back at Lily.

The little girl was struggling against the rising quicksand pool, whimpering vainly with the effort. The sand had wrapped itself around her like a constricting snake, it was up to her neck now, consuming her, dragging her under.

'Cohen!' Avenger called. 'Leave her! That's an order!'

And with a final look at Lily, Stretch made his fateful decision.

Flanked by the flying Horus, West and Pooh Bear were bolting down the spiralling path on the stalactite when suddenly the foliage beside them was ripped apart by helicopter gunfire.

One of the American Apache choppers had swung into a hover right next to them and was now lining them up in its minigun sights!

They dived into a nearby cross-tunnel just as the Apache's six-barrelled minigun whirred to life—and came to the vertical bore-hole that ran up the centre of the rock formation.

'They're firing at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!' Pooh Bear exclaimed. 'Have Americans no respect for history!'

Moments later, they emerged from the same bore-hole at the lowermost tip of the stalactite, having slid all the way down it with their hands and feet braced against its walls.

West jumped down onto the peak of the ziggurat, snapped round to check on the progress of Avenger's fleeing Israeli team.

'Jesus, no . . .' he breathed.

He spied Avenger and four of his men just as they disappeared through an exit tunnel at the far end of the supercavern, having navigated the quicksand lake and the well on that side.

Stretch wasn't with them.

Nor was Lily.

And then West saw the well.

Peering under its canopied stone roof, he could see that the hexagonal well was just then overflowing with quicksand— completely filled.

'Oh, no. No . . .' West stared at the scene in horror. Worse still, at that very moment, two American Black Hawk helicopters were landing on the star-shaped paths surrounding the

well.

Troops charged out from the choppers, converging on the well

from opposite sides.

Marshall Judah himself stepped out of one of the choppers, directing the operation.

'Oh, Lily . . .' West breathed, frozen, stunned.

At the hexagonal well, a CIEF trooper called to Judah: 'Sir, you better come and see this.'

Judah strode to the edge of the well.

And he was surprised by what he saw.

There, pressed right up against the roof-bars of the cage inside the well—her face upturned, with only her mouth and nose and eyes protruding above the surface of the quicksand pool that now filled the well, breathing shallowly and desperately, her lips puckered, was Lily.

Judah wondered how on God's Earth she had got into this life-saving position.

The cage—and the well—must have been at least twelve feet deep. Caught in the grip of the sand, she could never have reached up and grabbed the cage's roof-bars and lifted herself out—

There must be someone else in there, he figured. Holding her up.

Then Judah saw it.

But only barely, it was so small.

He saw the tip of a gunbarrel protruding a centimetre above the surface of the quicksand pool right next to Lily's upturned face. It was the tip of a sniper rifle's gunbarrel—an ultralong Barrett M82A1A sniper rifle.

Only this gunbarrel was not being used for its original purpose.

It was being used as a snorkel by whoever was holding Lily up from below!

It wasn't until he had the well-trap reset and drained of quicksand that Judah fully appreciated the scene underneath Lily.

As the quicksand drained away, he beheld Stretch, standing on top of the statue of the winged lion that itself stood in the centre of the well, his own face upturned, breathing through the barrel of his disassembled Barrett sniper rifle, with Lily balancing on his shoulders in a perfect ballet toe-pose!

Stretch had indeed made his decision.

It would turn out to be a very good one, but for another reason entirely: for Judah would take him and Lily away alive.

Avenger and his team of Israeli commandos would not be so lucky.

For at the secret rear entrance to the Hanging Gardens, an American CIEF squad led by Cal Kallis was waiting for them.

And Kallis had strict orders not to be merciful.

Avenger and his Israelis—thinking they had got away with the Piece—emerged from the underground tunnel system to see their extraction helicopter lying nearby, charred and smoking, destroyed, its pilots shot dead.

They also found themselves surrounded by Kallis's team.

The Israelis were quickly disarmed. Then, slowly and deliberately, Cal Kallis executed them all himself—one by one, shooting each man in the head, killing Avenger last of all, smiling meanly the whole time. This was the kind of thing Kallis enjoyed.

Then he took the Piece from their dead hands and flew away, leaving the corpses for the desert birds to feast upon.

And so West watched, helpless, as Lily and Stretch were bundled into Judah's helicopter—

—at which moment, a wave of gunfire smacked down all around him, from two Apache attack choppers that appeared suddenly from behind the stalactite.

Horus squawked.

West moved too late.

But Pooh Bear didn't.

And he saved West's life—yanking him out of the line of fire and down into the square-shaped well-shaft of the ziggurat.

Down on the floor of the supercavern, Judah snapped round to see the cause of the commotion.

He glimpsed the two tiny figures of Pooh Bear and West up on the peak of the ziggurat—saw Pooh pull West down into the well-shaft that descended into the ziggurat, the shaft known as the Priests' Entrance.

'Jack . . .' Judah whispered. 'Alas, you've served your purpose. You're no longer a protected species. Time for you to die.'

Judah returned to his heavily-armed Black Hawk, with Stretch and Lily as his captives. The chopper lifted off and zoomed out of the cavern.

It was quickly followed by the other choppers: the Apaches and the Black Hawks. The American troops covering the liquid floor of the cavern also pulled out, exiting through the blasted-open Great Arch.

Once all his people were out, Judah—still eyeing the top of the ziggurat, the last place he had seen West alive—gave his final order. 'Fire into the stalactite. Bring it down on that ziggurat.' His pilot hesitated. 'But sir . . . this place is histori—' 'Fire into the stalactite now or I will have you thrown out of this helicopter.'

The pilot complied.

Moments later, three Hellfire missiles lanced out from the missile pod of the Black Hawk, their three matching smoketrails spiralling in toward the giant rock formation . . .

. . . and they hit.

Shuddering explosions. Starbursts of rock and foliage.

And then, a momentous groaning sound as—

—the great stalactite slowly peeled off the ceiling of the super-cavern, tilting precariously before ... it fell away from the ceiling.

It sounded like the end of humanity. The sound was deafening.

Great chunks of rock were ripped away from the ceiling as the upside-down mountain fell away from it and crashed down onto the ziggurat.

The tip of the stalactite slammed down against the peak of the ziggurat and the ziggurat—itself the size of a fifteen-storey building —was just crushed like an aluminium can, compressed horribly downwards, totally destroyed.

Then the great rock formation tipped sideways like a slow-falling tree and splashed down into the quicksand lake on the inner side of the supercavern.

The stalactite hitting the lake had the impact of an aircraft carrier being dropped from a great height into the ocean. An enormous wave of rolling quicksand fanned out from the impact zone, slapping hard against every wall of the supercavern.

Then slowly, very slowly, the stalactite—the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon—came to rest, on its side, half-submerged in

the wide quicksand lake, just another broken rock formation in a world of broken things.

Thus, the American force left the foothills of the Zagros Mountains with everything they had come for in their grasp: Lily and the Piece. And somewhere underneath all the wreckage and destruction they left behind—with no possible chance of survival—were Jack West Jr and Pooh Bear.

MESSE TOWER

FRANKFURT, GERMANY

19 MARCH, 2006, 1500 HOURS

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

At the same time as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were crashing into oblivion, Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy were being transported via limousine—under armed guard—from the airfield at Frankfurt Military Base into the city of Frankfurt.

After they'd been captured in Rome, Wizard and his team had been taken by Lear jet to Germany. Having been held overnight at the base on the outskirts of Frankfurt, they were now being taken to the headquarters of the European coalition: the Messe Tower in central Frankfurt.

The Messe Tower is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe. It stands fifty storeys high and is known for one singular feature: its peak is a magnificent glass pyramid. More importantly—but far less well-known—this pyramid has been 'sectioned' horizontally just like the Golden Capstone.

But when a pyramid surmounts a shaft-like column like a tower, it becomes something more again: it becomes an obelisk.

The ultimate symbol of Sun-worship.

Conspiracy theories abound that the Messe Tower, the Canary Wharf Tower in London, and the old World Financial Center in New York—all built in the shape of giant glass obelisks—formed a modern triumvirate of 'super-obelisks' built by the two Sun-worshipping cults: the Catholic Church and the Freemasons.

Wizard thought about these theories as he, Zoe and Fuzzy were brought, handcuffed, to the uppermost floor of the Messe Tower.

They stood inside its spectacular pyramid-shaped pinnacle. Its slanting floor-to-ceiling glass walls revealed a 360-degree view of Frankfurt and its surrounding rivers and forests.

Francisco del Piero was waiting for them.

'Maximilian Epper! My old seminary classmate. Oh, how the Church lost a great mind when it lost you. It's good to see you again, my old friend.'

'I'm not your friend, Francisco. What is this about?'

"What is this about? What it's always been about, Max: power. The eternal struggle for one man to rule over another. Call it Europe v America. Call it the Church v the Freemasons. It doesn't matter. It is all one and the same. A ceaseless battle for power that has lasted generations, all of it coming to a head tomorrow, at a once-in-5,000-years event, an event which can grant absolute power: the arrival of the Tartarus Sunspot.'

Wizard glanced at Zoe, 'Now you can see why I never went through with becoming a priest.' To del Piero: 'But the Americans have four of the Pieces. You have one, and the last two remain unaccounted for.'

'Max. It is not who holds the Pieces now that matters, but who holds them when Tartarus arrives,' del Piero said. 'And we will have all the Pieces soon enough. Thanks to your courageous Captain West, we now know that the Tomb of Alexander lies in Luxor—its location to be revealed by the focused rays of the rising Sun shining through the obelisks at the Luxor Temple. The Americans know this, too.

'But when they arrive at Luxor, we shall be waiting for them. As I say, it is not who holds the Pieces now that matters, but who holds them when Tartarus arrives. We shall hold them when Tartarus arrives.'

'We?' Wizard said.

'Oh yes, I don't believe you've met my young friend and greatest ally . . .'

Del Piero stepped aside to reveal a small boy, with dark hair,

darker eyes and really dark frowning eyebrows. Just in the way he stood and glared at Wizard, the boy had a disconcerting air of superiority about him.

'Max Epper, meet Alexander, son of the Oracle of Siwa, expert in the Language of Thoth and the vessel of Tartarus.'

'Hello there,' Wizard said.

The boy said nothing.

Del Piero said, 'He has been groomed since the day he was born—'

'The day you stole him from his mother's arms . . .'

'He has been groomed since the day he was born for tomorrow's event. His command of Thoth is unrivalled. His understanding of the ceremony unmatched. This boy was born to rule, and I have personally inculcated in him the mindset of the perfect ruler. He is strong, he is firm, he is wise . . . and he is uncompromising, intolerant of the weak and the foolish.'

'I thought all the greatest rulers governed for the weak,' Wizard said, 'not over them.'

'Oh, Max, I love your idealism! So noble yet so fundamentally flawed. How about this theory: the strong rule, the weak get ruled over. Some are born to rule; most are ruled over. After tomorrow, you will be in the latter group.'

Zoe looked at the boy, Alexander. He returned her gaze coldly, without emotion.

'Hey kid,' she said. 'You ever played Splinter Cell in dual-player mode?'

Del Piero frowned, not understanding. But the boy knew what Splinter Cell was.

'It is a game. Games are tools by which we the rulers keep the masses entertained and amused,' the boy replied. 'Games are for fools. I do not play games."

'Is that right? Some games teach us lessons that we can use in our everyday lives,' Zoe said. 'Have you ever thought about that?'

i do not have an everyday life.'

'You want to know what I learned from playing Splinter Cell in dual-player mode?'

'Enthral me.'

'It's always nice to know someone's watching your back,' Zoe said. 'My question for you, Alexander, is this: when the going gets tough, who's gonna be watching your back?' A dismissive nod at del Piero: 'Him?' A disdainful glance at the guards arrayed around the room: 'Them?'

'And who, may I ask, watches your backs?' del Piero shot back.

'Jack West Jr,' Wizard said firmly.

'Hmm, the famous Captain West,' del Piero nodded. 'Although following his exploits in Paris yesterday, I fear you might be a little behind on current events. Your friend, Mr West, turned up in southern Iraq today, where he uncovered no less than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.'

'Go Jack . . .' Zoe said.

But Wizard frowned. He didn't know about West's last-gasp mission to Iraq—nor was he aware of its origins in the American ambush in Kenya and the loss of the Zeus Piece, Big Ears and Doris.

'I hate to dampen your celebrations, Ms Kissane,' del Piero said, 'but I fear Captain West encountered an American force of nearly 10,000 men in Iraq. What actually happened, I do not know. All I know from our intercepts is that they clashed.'

'And . . .' Wizard couldn't hide his concern.

Del Piero threw Wizard a transcript of a communications intercept—an intercept that was only fifteen minutes old. It read:

TRANS INTERCEPT

SAT BT-1009/03.19.06-1445

A44-TEXT TRANSMISSION

FROM: UNKNOWN SOURCE/AIRBORNE ORIGIN (IRAQ)

TO: UNKNOWN DESTINATION, MARYLAND (USA)

VOICE 1 (JTJDAH) : Haritha mission is a success. We have the H-G piece in our possession, and the qirl. En route to Egypt now. Will arrive Luxor

0200 hours local time, 20 March. Imperative that we be there at dawn to take measurements through the remaining obelisk at Luxor Temple.

VOICE 2 (USA): What of this coalition of small nations? What news of them?

VOICE 1 (JUDAH): Encountered them at the H-G. Met with minimal resistance. West dead. Data from biometric tracer chip in his cerebellum confirms this. Is the next stage ready?

VOICE 2 (USA): It is. The Egyptian Government has been informed of your impending arrival in Luxor. They are being most co-operative, albeit for a price. The platform at Giza has been erected to your specifications and the entire plateau has been closed to the public under the guise of repair work.

VOICE 1 (JUDAH): Thank you. Recommend operation continue from here in utmost secrecy. Have only a small force meet me in Luxor to carry out the mission there: 100 men, no more. We do not want to attract too much attention.

VOICE 2 (USA): It will be done.

Wizard's face fell as he gazed at the terrible words: 'West dead'.

'The Americans have too much confidence,' del Piero said, stepping forwards. 'When they arrive in Luxor, their 100-man force will encounter a European force three times that size. You can mourn the loss of Captain West another time, Max, for your part in this drama is not yet done—I still have another use for you.

'It is time for you to join me on the final leg of this journey, a journey that will end with Alexander fulfilling his destiny. It is time for us to meet this American force in Egypt and steal its Pieces. It is time to go to Luxor.'

THE PRIESTS' ENTRANCE,

HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON

EAST OF HARITHA, IRAQ

13 MARCH, 2006, 1800 HOURS LOCAL TIME

(1400 HOURS IN FRANKFURT)

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

An hour earlier.

As the stalactite containing the Hanging Gardens of Babylon crashed down onto the ziggurat underneath it, down in the tunnels of the Priests' Entrance, Jack West and Pooh Bear were running headlong down a long stone passageway whose roof was caving-in close behind them! The collapsing roof seemed to be chasing after them like the chomping jaws of an ever-gaining monster.

As soon as he'd heard the impacts of Judah's missiles hitting the Gardens, West had realised Judah's intention.

'He's trying to crash the Gardens onto us!' he said to Pooh Bear. 'Run! Run':

And so they'd bolted. Fast, with Horus fluttering above them.

Down the vertical shaft of the Priests' Entrance—avoiding some traps along the way—until it had opened onto this horizontal passageway.

Then the stalactite had landed on the ziggurat and the structure had started collapsing behind them—which was how West, Pooh Bear and Horus came to be here now, hurdling traps, running in total desperation from the collapsing ceiling and crushing death.

It was also why they almost ran right into the next trap.

It came upon them with startling suddenness—a narrow but exceedingly deep pit with hard blackstone walls and a quicksand floor. In fact, though much smaller, it was very similar to the first quicksand pit they had traversed earlier: their entrance was right up near the ceiling, opposite a matching exit on the far side; a set of about thirty handrungs joined the two openings.

One big difference, however, was the intricate engravings on the walls of this pit. They were covered with images of snakes—and in the very centre of the main wall, one supersized image of a serpent wrapped around a tree.

'Ningizzida, the serpent-god . . .' West said, seeing the serpent image. 'The Pit of Ningizzida . . .'

But then movement caught West's eye and he saw a figure standing in the far exit doorway having just traversed the pit.

The figure turned, saw West, and grinned meanly.

It was Mustapha Zaeed.

West glanced from the collapsing tunnel behind him to Zaeed.

'Zaeed! What's the sequence of the handrungs!'

Zaeed eyed West slyly. 'I fear I have run out of advice for you, Captain! But I thank you for breaking me out of Guantanamo Bay. You have enabled me to continue on my quest for the Capstone. Although I will give you one piece of knowledge that I imagine the good Professor Epper neglected to tell you: for Tartarus to be tamed, your girl must be sacrificed. Thank you and goodbye. You are on your own now!'

And with that, the terrorist vanished, disappearing down his passageway, leaving West and Pooh Bear stuck on their ledge, with their collapsing tunnel rushing forwards fast!

'Huntsman!' Pooh Bear urged. 'What do we do?'

West spun, saw the collapsing tunnel behind them.

It was certain death to stay here.

He turned to see the wide deep pit before him, the Pit of

Ningizzida, and a flashing memory raced across his mind, a page from the Nazi diary:

BUT BEWARE THE PIT OF 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.

So it was also certain death to enter the Pit.

Certain death v certain death.

Some choice.

'Screw it,' West said. 'Grab the rungs . . . Go!'

And out they swung, over the deep quicksand pit, just as a billowing blast of dust exploded out from the collapsing tunnel behind them.

The eighth handrung broke in West's grasp . . . and he fell.

Pooh Bear avoided it—but the tenth one got him, and he also dropped, down into the quicksand, joining West in the Pit from which there was no escape.

West and Pooh Bear landed in the quicksand with twin goopy splashes.

West made to lie on his back, to spread his body-weight and thus avoid sinking . . . when abruptly, four feet below the surface of the quicksand, his feet struck the bottom.

They could stand in here . . .

So he and Pooh Bear stood, chest-deep in the deep pit.

The walls around them were slick and sheer, made of diorite.

'This isn't so bad . . .' Pooh Bear said. 'I don't see why Imhotep said this was escape-proof—'

It was precisely then that the ceiling of the pit—the flat section of stone containing the handrungs—began to lower. Its great square bulk fitted the pit's four walls perfectly.

The intention was clear: the lowering ceiling—itself a two-ton slab of stone—pushed you down into the quicksand, drowning you.

It was only a lightning-quick swoop from Horus that saved her from the descending ceiling. As the trap sprang into action, she darted like a rocket for the exit tunnel and zoomed into it just as the lowering ceiling rumbled past the tunnel, closing it off.

From her position here, she could see the ceiling's operating mechanism on the top side of the descending slab—the ceiling was suspended from a pair of thick chains which themselves hung out from a wide shaft in the roof. They clanked loudly as they lowered the deadly ceiling.

Just then in the Pit, Pooh Bear spotted movement.

Saw the spotted body of an outrageously enormous python come slirhering out of a wall-hole and dive into the quicksand pool!

'Huntsman!'

'I know, there are three more on this side!' He called up at the ceiling: 'Horus! Reset the bucket! Reset the bucket!'

There were three more wall-holes arrayed around the Pit. . . and they too were spewing forth the long speckled bodies of pythons.

'Ningizzida . . .' West said, staring at the snakes. 'The Assyrian serpent-god, also known as the God of the Tree of Life: Christianity basically stole him and placed him in the Garden of Eden as the snake who tempts Eve to eat the apple from the tree.'

The ceiling was halfway down and closing fast.

The snakes slithered across the surface of the quicksand pool, moving with intent.

One wrapped itself around West's right leg and reared up around him, jaws bared wide. West, since he had no gun to shoot it with, just jammed an X-bar into its wide-open mouth. The snake froze in confusion, its mouth now held bizarrely open, hyper-extended, with no way of dislodging the X-bar in it. It slithered off West's body, shaking its head violently, disappearing into the sand.

'Horus!' West yelled. 'What are you doing up there?'

Horus zoomed up the chain-shaft, following the ceiling's mighty chains as they stretched upward, bent over a large bronze pulley, and then descended back down another wider shaft.

Folding over the pulley, the chains shot down this new shaft, where at their other end they upheld ... a gigantic clay bucket. It was easily ten feet wide: the world's biggest bucket. And next to it flowed a healthy little waterfall, pouring out of a man-made drain.

Right now, the bucket hung askew, at right-angles, tipped over on some hinges, its open top facing sideways. If it had been sitting in the upright position, it would have received the flowing water from the waterfall . . . and filled up . . . and hence via the chains, hauled up the movable ceiling in Ningizzida's Pit.

Known as a 'water-based mechanism', this was the standard operating system behind all Egyptian moving-wall traps.

It was an ingenious system devised by the first Imhotep, and was remarkable for its simplicity. All it needed to work were three things: gravity, water . . . and a pulley.

When West had grabbed the wrong handrung, he had triggered a catch which had tipped the (full) bucket.

Now, when filled with water, the great bucket perfectly counterbalanced the ceiling slab. But when upturned, the bucket emptied, and thus the ceiling—now outweighing it—lowered.

There was a second trigger stone on the floor of the Pit—the 'reset' switch—which, when eventually hit by the lowering ceiling stone, would right the giant bucket, and allow it to fill again, thus raising the ceiling back to its resting position, ready to strike once again.

As such, there truly was no escape from Ningizzida's Pit. It offered no tricks, no riddles, no secret exits. Once you were in it, you did not leave.

Unless you had a companion like Horus.

Flying fast, Horus swooped up the chain-shaft, past the pulley, and down toward the big clay bucket.

There she landed and hopping around, searched for the reset catch that righted the giant tub.

In the Pit, the ceiling was still lowering fast. It was only seven feet above the surface now and closing quickly.

The pythons circled, moving in on West and Pooh Bear.

Without warning, one dived under the surface—and reappeared slithering up Pooh's body with frightening speed! It constricted violently, trying to crack his spine—just as Pooh Bear swiped hard with his K-Bar knife and the python froze in mid-action. Then its head fell from its body.

The ceiling kept descending.

Five feet.

West was very worried now.

Four feet.

The pythons cut and run—fleeing for their wall-holes, knowing what was about to happen. Three feet. . . 'Horus ...!' West yelled.

In the bucket-shaft, Horus searched patiently, just as she had been taught.

And she found the reset catch: a little hinged hook that, when released, righted the empty bucket.

Horus bit into the hook with her tiny beak . . .

Two feet. . .

West called: 'Horus! Come on! You can do this! Just like we practised at home!'

One foot. . .

He and Pooh Bear now had only their upturned faces above the surface of the quicksand.

Six inches . . .

'Take a deep breath, Pooh,' West said.

They both sucked in as much oxygen as they could hold.

In the bucket-shaft, Horus continued to bite at the reset hook. It wouldn't budge.

In the Pit, the lowering ceiling met the surface of the quicksand . . . and touched it, pushing West and Pooh Bear under—

—just as Horus got a good grip on the hook with her beak . . . and lifted it!

The response was instantaneous.

With a silent lurch, the great empty bucket rolled upwards on its hinges, offering its open mouth to the cascade of water pouring down above it.

The bucket immediately began to fill with water.

And with the added weight, the great clay bucket now began to lower on its chains . . .

. . . which by virtue of the pulley now pulled the ceiling of the Pit upward . . .

. . . raising it off the quicksand pool!

West and Pooh Bear burst up from underneath the quicksand, gasping for air.

As the ceiling above them rose, they grabbed the two handrungs nearest the exit-end, and allowed the ceiling to hoist them all the way up the Pit.

Hauled up by its water mechanism, the ceiling slab returned to its original position, and West and Pooh suddenly found themselves hanging in front of the exit tunnel—where Horus now sat proudly, staring triumphantly up at West.

He swung into the tunnel, crouched before her, gave her a much-loved rat treat.

Horus gobbled it up whole.

'Thank you, my friend, nice work,' he said. 'You saved our bacon. Imhotep didn't count on grave-robbers having friends like you. Now let's get the hell out of here.'

Through the Priests' Entrance they bolted—West, Pooh Bear and Horus.

Ten minutes later, they emerged from an inconspicuous cleft in a rocky hillside, a barren desolate hillside that faced onto a barren desolate valley that appeared to have no natural exits. The valley was on the Iranian side of the Hanging Gardens, far from

the waterfall entrance on the Iraqi side.

But it was so inhospitable, so bleak, that no human being had had any reason to come here for 2,000 years.

West froze as a thought struck him.

There was no sign of Mustapha Zaeed.

He wondered where Zaeed had got to. Had he at some point on this journey called his terrorist pals and told them to pick him up here?

West thought about that: perhaps Zaeed had triggered a locater signal when they'd stopped by at his old hideout cave in Saudi Arabia. West knew Zaeed had grabbed other things while they were there, including the beautiful black-jade box filled with fine sand.

He considered the rogue signal that he'd picked up on the Halicarnassus on the way to Iraq. He'd first believed it had been sent out by Stretch, alerting the Israelis to their location.

But something Avenger had said to Stretch inside the Gardens now made West revise that belief. When he had first appeared, Avenger had said to Stretch: 'I apologise for surprising you in this way.'

Stretch hadn't known of the impending arrival of Avenger's team.

The Israelis had been tracking him and he hadn't known. Now West believed that the Israelis had been tracking Stretch from the very start via some other kind of bug—probably a surgically-implanted locater chip that Stretch never knew he'd been carrying.

Granted, the signal from the Halicarnassus could also have been sent by Zaeed—alerting his allies to his whereabouts—but West doubted that.

He actually had another theory about that rogue signal, a theory that made him sick to his stomach.

But now, right now, he worried if by breaking Zaeed out of Guantanamo Bay he had unleashed an unspeakable terror on the world.

Zaeed wasn't going to abandon his quest for the Capstone, not when he knew where the final Piece could be found, not when it was this close. The terrorist wasn't out of this race. He would reappear before the end.

West radioed Sky Monster and arranged to rendezvous with the Halicarnassus on some flat ground at the far end of the valley, then he and Pooh Bear headed out across the valley on foot.

They never saw the lone figure crouched on the rocky hill high above them watching them as they did so.

Never saw the figure pursue them from a careful distance.

Twenty-five minutes later, West and Pooh Bear, with Horus, strode up the rear loading ramp of the Halicarnassus, dirty, bruised and beaten.

Inside the main cabin, West paced, thinking aloud. Pooh Bear and Sky Monster just watched him.

'Every move we've made, Judah's known it ahead of time,' he said. 'We arrived in the Sudan, and he showed up soon after. Tunisia, the same. And in Kenya, hell, he got there before we did. He was waiting for us. And now Iraq.'

'It's like he's had a beacon on us all along,' Pooh Bear said. 'A tracing signal.'

West pursed his lips, repeated Judah's taunt from before: '"There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow. There is nowhere on this Earth you can hide from me." I think he's had a tracking beacon on us all along.'

'What? How? Who?

West looked hard at Pooh Bear.

'Four missing days, Pooh. Four missing days from my life.'

'What are you talking about, Huntsman?' Sky Monster asked.

'Zaeed had a chip in the neck, implanted while he was imprisoned in Cuba, making him forever traceable by the Americans. I can't account for four days of my life, Pooh, four days when I was exclusively in American hands.''

West stood up abruptly and grabbed the AXS-9 digital spectrum analyser—the same bug detector that he had used before to test for the locater chip in Zaeed's neck.

He flicked it on, and fanned it over Pooh's entire body. Nothing. No bugs.

Sky Monster was next. Also nothing. As expected.

West looked at them both . . .

. . . before he turned the wand on himself, running it up his entire body.

Legs: nothing.

Waist: nothing.

Chest: nothing.

Then the spectrum analyser came level with his head, and it started beeping off the charts.

Pooh Bear and Sky Monster gasped, speechless.

West just closed his eyes, cursing himself.

All the time he'd thought there had been a traitor in their midst—in particular, Stretch or Zaeed—but there had been no such traitor.

It had been him.

He had been the one leading the Americans to their location every single time.

Four days of his life: those four days he had spent in that American military hospital after his accident in the wargame exercises at Coronado.

Four days during which the Americans had tagged him with a microchip, so that they could keep track of him over the ensuing years.

Why? Who knew—because he had talent, because they wanted to keep track of everyone, friend and foe alike.

West couldn't believe it. Australia was a close ally of America's. And this was how the US treated it. America, it seemed, treated its allies no differently than its enemies. No, it was simpler than that: America treated everyone outside the US as a potential enemy.

He thought about Judah. Somewhere amid Judah's equipment there was a GPS-equipped computer with a map of the world on it and a little blinking blip that represented Jack West Jr—a blip that had represented him for nearly 15 years.

The Americans had known about the safehouse in Kenya since Day One.

Likewise they had known about the mine in the Sudan from the

moment he'd got there; it was the same for the Tunisian coast— which only West and Wizard knew about. It also meant that Judah and the Americans would know it was West who had busted Zaeed out of Guantanamo Bay. They wouldn't have liked that.

West strode across the cabin, watched in stunned silence by Pooh and Sky Monster. Over by the rearmost console, he picked up the EMP gun that he had used before to neutralise the locater chip inside Zaeed's neck.

He pointed it at his head like a man about to shoot himself—

—and he pressed the trigger.

At that very moment, inside a US Black Hawk helicopter landing in Basra, a technician at a portable GPS-equipped computer snapped up.

'Colonel Judah, sir! Jack West's locater signal just dropped out.'

'Where was he when the signal disappeared?'

'Judging by the GPS, still in the vicinity of the Hanging Gardens,' the tech said.

Judah smiled. 'That tracer's biometric, grafted onto the living tissue of his brain. If West dies, the tracer chip dies with him. He must have been wounded by the collapse of the ziggurat and held on this long before he died. Rest in peace, Jack . . . never knowing that you led us every step of the fucking way. Fortunately, we don't need you anymore. Kallis. Feed the men, replenish their arms, and set a course for Luxor.'

LUXOR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT LUXOR, SOUTHERN EGYPT 20 MARCH, 2006, 0200 HOURS THE DAY OF TARTARUS

In the early hours of the morning on the day the Tartarus Sunspot would turn to face the Earth, three hundred European troops lay in wait around Luxor International Airport, ready to ambush the American force arriving in the southern Egyptian city that night.

Bisected by the River Nile, Luxor is a fairly large town. Heavily dependent on tourism, on its East Bank one will find the Karnak and Luxor temples, two of the most impressive sites in Egypt. The Luxor Temple sits right on the bank of the river, separated from it by a splendid riverside drive called the Corniche.

On the West Bank of Luxor, one will find a cluster of high brown mountains and jagged dry hills that rise up from the desert floor. The very first valley of these dusty hills is the famous Valley of the Kings—the extraordinary collection of deliberately plain tombs that were once filled with all the riches of the pharaohs. It is the home of Tutankhamen's tomb, Rameses the Great's tomb, and hundreds of others. Even today, every few years a new tomb is unearthed.

On this western bank, you will also find one of the most mysterious sites of ancient Egypt: Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple, constructed by the brilliant woman pharaoh, Hatshepsut.

Built into a great rocky bay in the mountainside, Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple is composed of three gigantic colonnaded terraces, all stretching backwards—like three god-sized steps—each flat tier

connected to the next by a colossal rampway.

From its dominant position at the base of the cliffs, it stares proudly back at Luxor, facing the rising Sun. The size of three football fields, it is unique in all of Egypt.

It is also notorious.

In November 1997, six Islamist terrorists armed with machine guns massacred 62 tourists in rank cold blood at the site. The terrorists hunted down the unarmed tourists over the course of a terrifying hour, pursuing them through the Temple's colonnades, before committing group suicide themselves.

Luxor is steeped in history, both ancient and recent.

Luxor's airport, however, is on the eastern bank, and the American planes landed in the darkness, one after the other, their lights blinking—two C-130 Hercules cargo planes, and landing lightly after them, one sleek Lear jet.

It was a small force—just big enough to safely convey the Pieces in its possession but small enough not to attract too much attention—as Marshall Judah had stated in his intercepted transmission.

As usual, the Egyptian Government, desperate for American approval and money, had allowed their entry into the country with not a single question asked.

But the Egyptian Government did not know of the 300-strong European force that was at that moment surrounding Luxor's airstrip, aiming their weapons at the arriving Americans.

Father Francisco del Piero sat in a big Toyota Land Cruiser parked just outside the airport, waiting for his French and German troops to make their move. With him were Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy—handcuffed and immobile, also waiting tensely.

In the Land Cruiser with them was the boy, Alexander, and safely in a large steel trunk, one Piece of the Golden Capstone: the Artemis Piece, recently removed from the main altar of St Peter's Basilica.

• • •

On the runway, two desert-camouflaged Humvees sped out from the cargo hold of the first Hercules and skidded to twin halts beside the Lear jet—the jet that held the Pieces.

A line of troopers emerged from the Lear, guarding a smaller group of men who carried among them five Samsonite cases of varying sizes. These men started loading the Samsonite cases onto the rear tray of a third Humvee—a black one—that had just arrived.

The Pieces.

The Europeans sprang their trap—in a kind of surreal unearthly silence.

They leapt from the shadows—French and German commandos—black-clad ghosts wearing night-vision goggles and running with sub-machine guns pressed to their shoulders, the muzzles of those guns spitting forth silenced tongues of deadly fire.

The American troops at the Lear never stood a chance.

They fell in a hail of blood and bullets, dropping to the tarmac. Likewise all the drivers of the Humvees: they were ripped to shreds by the charging French and German commandos.

It was over in minutes.

As various 'Clear!' signals were given, del Piero drove out onto the runway.

He joined the European troops gathered around the black Humvee parked beside the Lear.

With a smile of supreme satisfaction, he strode over to the Humvee's rear tray, opened it, and unclasped the lock on the nearest Samsonite case—

—to discover that it was filled with worthless bricks and a single Post-it note:

Careful, Father del Piero.

Don't let any blood get on you.

Judab.

Del Piero's eyes went wide.

He whirled around—

—just as an absolutely devastating burst of co-ordinated sniper fire whistled all around him—sizzling and popping past his ears— and in a single terrifying instant, every one of the ten troopers standing around him was hit by separate sniper rounds, their heads all exploding in simultaneous bursts of red, their bodies crumpling like rag dolls.

Only del Piero was unhit. Only he remained standing. The burst of fire had been so well-aimed, so well-co-ordinated that this was clearly deliberate.

Blood, bone and brain matter had sprayed everywhere, splattering all over del Piero's face.

At which moment, the 1,000-strong American force that had been lying in wait in the mudbrick houses and sewers of Luxor behind the European ambush force moved in.

They were merciless, ruthless—as ruthless as the Europeans had been to the Americans. Even those European troops who surrendered were executed where they stood.

None were left alive—except for del Piero and the four other people who were inside his Land Cruiser:

Wizard, Zoe, Fuzzy and the boy, Alexander.

It was at this time that the real American air convoy arrived at Luxor.

The first one had been a decoy, its men expendable: live bait to draw out the waiting European force.

Now with the airport secured, Judah arrived in a second Lear jet, flanked by a couple of F-15s and tailed by no less than six massive Hercules cargo planes.

The air convoy landed, one plane after the other, their landing lights blazing through the clear night air.

Judah's Lear swung to a halt beside the first 'decoy' Lear . . .

. . . where del Piero still stood like a thief caught with his hands in the till, covered now by American CIEF troops and surrounded by the bloodied corpses of his own men.

Judah just strolled casually out of his private jet, appraised del Piero coldly, before nodding at the blood on the priest's face.

'Father del Piero. My old teacher. It's good to see you again. You didn't heed my warning. I told you to be careful about the flying blood.'

Del Piero said nothing.

Just then, a figure appeared behind Judah: an old, old man, gnarled and hunched. He had a bare blotch-speckled scalp and wore a leather coat and thick Coke-bottle glasses that obscured his evil little eyes.

Judah said, 'Father, I don't believe you've met Hans Koenig. He's been a guest of the United States since 1945 and has been searching for the Capstone for a very long time.'

Del Piero gasped, 'Koenig and Hessler. The two Nazi explorers . ..'

'Colonel Judah!' Cal Kallis called from the rear of the Land Cruiser. He stood by the boot of the big four-wheel drive, having opened the steel case there, revealing the Artemis Piece. 'We have the Europeans' Piece. We also have the boy . . . and a couple of West's people.'

Kallis held Alexander out in front of him. His men covered the handcuffed Wizard, Zoe and Fuzzy.

Judah grinned. 'Why, Father del Piero, what possible reason could you have for bringing these good people along on your mission? I imagine it will be exactly the same reason I will keep you with me.'

Del Piero's eyes went wide with fear.

Judah enjoyed it. 'What does the Bible say? Do unto others as you would have them do to you. How ironic'

He beheld the boy. So did the Nazi, Koenig.

'So this is him. The son of the Oracle. Alexander, I believe,' Judah bowed respectfully. 'My name is Marshall Judah, from the United States of America. It's my honour to make your acquaintance.'

The boy—completely fearlessly—returned his gaze evenly, but said nothing.

Judah said, 'It's also my honour to present to you, for the first time, your sister.'

With that, Judah stepped aside, to reveal, standing shyly behind him, with her legs nervously crossed and her head bowed: Lily.

In the pre-dawn, a dense low mist hung over Luxor.

Through this unnatural haze moved a convoy of heavy vehicles, their headlights casting beams of light.

It was the American force, rushing toward the Luxor Temple.

The Temple sat beside the Nile—with its immense pylon gateway guarded by two colossal statues of Rameses II, seated on identical thrones, and its obelisk standing proudly but alone out in front, its twin long since removed to Paris.

The convoy of US vehicles included Humvees, jeeps, motorcycles, a single Apache helicopter overhead, and in the middle of it all, a long lumbering flat-bed semi-trailer, on which sat a large folded-up crane.

At the Temple, under the glare of floodlights, the Americans raised the mobile crane alongside the still-standing obelisk, in the exact spot where the obelisk's identical twin had once stood.

The crane was a cherry-picker, not unlike those used by electricity workers to fix power lines, with a basket at its summit big enough for three or four men. Judah, Kallis and Koenig were raised up in it.

'Herr Koenig,' Judah said. 'You have your copy of your colleague's diary?'

The old hunched-over Koenig held up his own secretly-made copy of Hessler's diary. 'As always, Herr Judah,' he hissed.

As they rose up the flank of the existing obelisk, analysing the many hieroglyphs on its sides, Koenig flipped to the relevant page in the diary:

FROM THE SECRET GOSPEL OF ST MARK

AT DAWN ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT,

THAT FINAL HORRIBLE DAY,

AT THE ONLY TEMPLE THAT BEARS BOTH THEIR NAMES,

THREAD THE POWER OF RA THROUGH THE EYES OF

GREAT RAMESES'S TOWERING NEEDLES,

FROM THE SECOND OWL ON THE FIRST

TO THE THIRD ON THE SECOND . . .

. . . WHEREBY THE TOMB OF ISKENDER WILL BE REVEALED.

THERE YOU WILL FIND THE FIRST PIECE.

At the summit of the lone obelisk they found three carved owls, seated side-by-side. There, just as West had done on the Paris Obelisk, Judah extracted a little plug-stone from a carving of the Sun above the second owl. He found a second plug on the other side, and removed it too—

—to reveal a bore-hole running horizontally through the obelisk, from east to west. . . again, just as West had found in Paris.

Judah then had his crane-basket brought over to where the summit of the other obelisk—the one now in Paris—would have stood.

'You have the measurements, Herr Koenig?'

'To the millimetre, Herr Judah.'

And so, using a caesium altimeter and a digital inclinometer to get the angles and the height absolutely correct, they erected a pipe-like cylinder on a tripod in their basket. They erected it horizontally, angling it according to their measurements, in effect, recreating the bore-hole of the missing obelisk, the bore-hole that would have sat above the third owl on that obelisk.

They had got it just right when the orange rim of the Sun peeked over the eastern horizon and dawn came on the Day of Tartarus.

The power of the rising Sun was instantly noticed by all.

On this day, the Day of Tartarus, it was hotter, fiercer. It practically

burned through the hazy low-hanging mist in dazzling horizontal shafts creating mini-rainbows in the air.

Then it struck the uppermost tip of the obelisk—and the high needle of rock seemed to shine majestically—before the beam of sunlight slowly began to move down the obelisk.

The American force watched it in awe.

From his basket, Judah watched it in triumph.

From his position down in one of the Humvees, Wizard watched it in grim silence.

Then the sunlight struck the bore-hole on the existing obelisk and shone directly through it. . .

. . . whence it continued on, shooting right into the pipe on Judah's crane . . .

. . . and suddenly the great shaft of sunlight combined with the unnatural mist to become a tiny laser-like beam of multi-coloured sunlight.

The rainbow-coloured laser beam lanced out from the Temple, shooting in a dead-straight horizontal line westward, out across the Nile, out over the fields on the West Bank, out towards . . .

. . . the great bay of brown cliffs that protected and defended the Valley of the Kings.

No.

It was more precise than that.

The beam of light came to rest on the structure built into that bay of cliffs—a structure unique in all of Egyptian architecture, featuring two great rampways and three glorious colonnaded tiers.

Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple.

INSIDE HATSHEPSUT'S MORTUARY TEMPLE

LUXOR, EGYPT

20 MARCH, 2006, 0630 HOURS

THE DAY OF TARTARUS

The Americans made swift progress.

The dazzling beam of sunlight had illuminated a lone archway at the far left of the lowest tier of the great structure.

There a door was found, so well-concealed that it appeared to be part of the wall itself. But above it was a familiar symbol that until today had been attributed little significance:

At the sight of the carving, Marshall Judah's eyes shone with delight.

The Americans were through the door in no time. Traps awaited them. A passageway filled with vicious swing-traps—long swing-blades

that swooped out of slits in the ceiling and chopped one man's head off.

Then a partially-submerged chamber, the knee-deep water of which concealed leg-chopping blades. Fortunately, from his research, Koenig knew the safe route.

Until Marshall Judah emerged from a stone doorway and stood on a platform that overlooked a gigantic subterranean cavern.

It wasn't as big as the supercavern that contained the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but what it lost in size, it made up for in artistry.

Every stone wall had been fashioned by human hands. There was not a single rough surface in the place.

It looked like an underground cathedral, with soaring high walls, a curved ceiling, and four immense sacred lakes arrayed in such a fashion that they created a wide raised path in the shape of a giant f. Great pillars of stone held up the superhigh ceiling.

At the junction of the f—the focal point of the great underground hall—was a raised square platform, flanked on all four corners by obelisks. On this high platform lay an ornate glass sarcophagus.

'Ornate' was barely sufficient to describe it.

It was crafted of gold and glass, and it lay underneath a high canopy crafted entirely of gold. The pillars of the canopy were not straight, but rather they rose in a bending, spiralling way, as if they were solidified vines.

'The coffin of Alexander the Great. . .' Koenig breathed.

'It was said to be made of glass,' Wizard confirmed.

'Wait a second. This looks familiar to me . . .' Judah breathed.

Beside him, Francisco del Piero—like the others, his hands were cuffed—bowed his head in silence, tried to be invisible.

Judah turned to Koenig.

'Take some measurements with the laser surveying equipment. I want to know the length, height and breadth of this hall.'

Koenig did so.

After a minute, he reported: 'It is 192 metres long, and 160

metres wide at the widest point of the tee. Height of the cavern above the central junction is ... 135 metres.'

Wizard snuffed a laugh.

Koenig turned. 'What is so funny?'

'Let me guess,' Wizard said. 'That canopy over the sarcophagus, the one with the twisted columns, it's 29 metres high.'

Koenig did the computations with his laser surveying gear . . . and turned to Wizard in surprise. 'It is 29 metres in height exactly. How could you know this?'

Wizard said, 'Because this cavern has the exact same dimensions as St Peter's Basilica in Rome.'

Judah swung to face del Piero, who shrank even lower, if that was at all possible.

Wizard went on, 'If everything in the Roman Catholic Church is a reinvention of Egyptian Sun-worship, then why should St Peter's be any different? Its dimensions are simply a replication of this sacred place: the resting place of the most prized Piece of the Capstone, the top Piece.'

They proceeded to the great altar at the focal point of the f-shaped hall, where they beheld the gold-and-glass coffin.

Through the glass, they saw only white powdery dust—the remains of the greatest warrior ever known, the man who had ordered the Pieces of the Capstone to be separated and scattered around the then-known world.

Alexander the Great.

A bronze Macedonian helmet and a lustrous silver sword rested upon the layer of white dust.

And sticking up from the middle of the dust-layer—as if it had once been laid upon the dead man's chest, only to see that chest erode over the course of two millennia—was a tiny apex of gold.

A tip of a small golden pyramid.

The top Piece.

Without preamble, Judah ordered the coffin opened, and four of his men stepped forwards, grabbed a corner each.

Del Piero started forwards, 'For pity's sake, do take care!'

The men ignored him, removed the glass lid of the coffin roughly.

Judah stepped forwards, and with everyone watching tensely, reached in, dipped his fingers into the remains of Alexander the Great, and pulled from them . . .

... the top Piece of the Golden Capstone.

Pyramidal in shape, with a base the size of a square paperback book, it radiated power.

More than that.

It radiated a power and an artistry and a knowledge beyond anything mankind had ever devised.

It was beyond man, beyond the limits of human knowledge.

The crystal in its peak glittered like a diamond. This crystal array bored down the spine of the gold mini-pyramid, reappearing at the base.

Judah gazed at it adoringly.

He now held in his possession all seven Pieces of the Golden Capstone, something no man had done since Alexander the Great.

He grinned.

'It's time to capture the power of Ra. Tartarus will arrive over Giza at noon. To Giza, and a thousand years of power.'

said that flowers planted inside it grow with unusual vibrancy. It is claimed to heal sufferers of arthritis and cancer.

Whatever one's beliefs, there is something about this man-made mountain that draws people to it, that entrances them. It defies time, it defies imagination. To this day, it is still not known exactly how it was built.

It is the only man-made structure in history to defy the ravages of Nature and Time, and indeed the only one of the Seven Ancient Wonders known to have survived to the present day.

It is a building without equal in all of the world.

THE GREAT PYRAMID

GIZA (ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF CAIRO), EGYPT

20 MARCH, 2006, 1100 HOURS

THE DAY OF TARTARUS

The Great Pyramid of Khufu lorded over outer Cairo, absolutely dominating the landscape around it.

Apartment buildings constructed by men 4,500 years after it had been built looked puny beside it. It stood at the point where the lush river valley of Cairo met the edge of the Western Desert, on a raised section of cliffs called the Giza Plateau.

Beside it stood the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure—also magnificent, but forever inferior—and before it, crouching, eternally at rest, lay the mysterious Sphinx.

It was almost midday and the Sun was rising to the high-point of its daily arc. It was hot—very, very hot—even for Cairo: 49 degrees Celsius and rising rapidly.

Reports from around the world had told of oppressively warm weather across the globe: China, India, even Russia—all had recorded unusually high temperatures on this day. Many reported instances of people collapsing in the streets.

Something was wrong.

Something to do with the Sun, the TV commentators said. A sunspot, the meteorologists said.

In the United States, all the morning news shows had made it

their story of the day and were looking to the White House, waiting for an address from the President.

But no such address came.

The White House remained mysteriously silent.

In Cairo, the Egyptian Government had been most accommodating to the American force.

The entire Giza Plateau had been closed to civilians and tourists for the day—all its entrances were now guarded by Egyptian troops—and an advance team sent by Judah overnight had been given free rein on the ancient site.

Indeed, while Judah had been at Luxor that morning, his advance team had been working diligently, preparing for his arrival. Their work: an enormous scaffold structure that now shrouded the summit of the Great Pyramid.

It was a huge flat-topped platform, made entirely of wood, three storeys high, and completely enveloping the peak of the pyramid. It looked like a big helicopter landing pad, square in shape, thirty metres long on each side, and its flat open-air roof lay level with the bare summit of the Pyramid. Indeed, the platform had a hole in its exact centre that allowed the peak of the Pyramid to protrude up through it. . . and thus allow Judah to perform his preferred Capstone ritual.

The platform's vertical support struts rested upon the step-like sides of the Pyramid, as did two cranes that rose high into the sky above the platform. Inside the baskets of these cranes were CIEF troops armed with Stinger missiles and anti-aircraft guns. No-one was going to interrupt this ceremony.

The Great Pyramid on the day of Tartarus

At 11:00 a.m. exactly, Marshall Judah arrived on a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter, surrounded by twelve CIEF troops led by Cal Kallis, and carrying with him in the back of the chopper all seven pieces of the Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid, ready to be restored to their rightful place.

The Super Stallion swung into a low hover above the platform and in the swirling hurricane of wind it created, the Pieces were unloaded on wheeled trolleys.

Flanked by the heavily armed CIEF commandos, Judah stepped out of the helicopter, leading the two children, Alexander and Lily.

Wizard and del Piero came after them, handcuffed and guarded—brought along by Judah for no other reason, it seemed, than to observe his triumph over them.

Zoe, Fuzzy and Stretch (who had also been reunited with the team when Judah had revealed Lily) were being held in a second helicopter travelling behind the Super Stallion—a Black Hawk—that landed at the base of the Great Pyramid. They were being held for another reason: to control Lily. Judah had told her that if she disobeyed him at any time, Zoe, Stretch and Fuzzy would be killed.

On the short helicopter flight from Cairo Airport to the pyramids, Lily had found herself seated beside Alexander. A brief conversation had ensued:

'Hi, I'm Lily,' she said.

Alexander gazed at her airily, as if he was deciding whether or not to bother replying. 'Alexander is my name . . . my young

sister.'

'Young? Come off it. You're only older than me by twenty

minutes,' Lily said, laughing.

'Nevertheless, I am still the first-born,' Alexander said. 'To the first go certain privileges. Such as respect.'

'I bet you probably get out of doing your chores sometimes, too,'

Lily said.

'What are chores?' the boy asked seriously. 'Chores,' Lily said in disbelief. 'You know, things like cleaning out the horse-pooh in the barn. Washing up the dishes after dinner.' 'I have never cleaned a dish in my life. Or a barn. Such activities are beneath my station.'

'You've never done any chores!' Lily exclaimed. 'Man, you're lucky! Wow, no chores . . .'

The boy frowned, genuinely curious. 'Why do you do such things? You are high-born. Why would you even allow yourself to be dragooned into performing such tasks?'

Lily shrugged. She'd never actually thought about that. 'I guess . . . well . . . while I don't really like doing them, I do my chores to contribute to my family. To be a part of the family. To help out.'

'But you are better than they are. Why would you want to help such ordinary people?'

'I like helping them. I ... I love them.'

'My sister, my sister. We were born to rule these people, not to help them. They are beneath you, they are your inferiors.' 'They're my family,' Lily said firmly.

'To rule is lonely,' Alexander said, as if this was a phrase he had been told a lot and learned by rote. 'I expected you to be stronger, sister.'

Lily said nothing after that, and minutes later, they arrived at the Great Pyramid.

And so it was that at 11:30 a.m. on the Day of Tartarus, thirty minutes before the blazing sunspot rotated in direct alignment with the Pyramid, a ceremony began on the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza, an ancient ceremony that had not been performed in over 4,500 years.

Standing on the platform, Judah clipped himself to a long safety rope, to take care of his fear of heights.

He gazed at the bare summit of the Great Pyramid, saw the ancient verse carved into it:

Cower in fear, cry in despair,

You wretched mortals

For that which giveth great power

Also takes it away.

For lest the Benben be placed at sacred site

On sacred ground, at sacred height,

Within seven sunsets of the arrival of Ra s Prophet,

At the high-point of the seventh day,

The fires of Ra's implacable Destroyer will devour us all.

Beside this carving, in the exact centre of the bare stone summit, there was a shallow indentation carved in the shape of a person. The 'head' of this person-sized indentation was weathered and worn, but it was clearly that of Anubis, the jackal-headed and much-feared god of the Underworld.

And in the heart of this Anubis indentation—in the exact centre of the summit and thus the centre of the entire pyramid—there was a small dish-shaped hole the size of a tennis ball. It looked like a stone crucible.

Judah knew the purpose of the crucible. The Nazi archaeologist, Hessler, had too:

THE RITUAL OF POWER

AT THE HIGH ALTAR OF RA,

UNDER THE HEART OF THE SACRIFICIAL ONE

WHO LIES IN THE ARMS OF VENGEFUL ANUBIS,

POUR INTO THE DEATH GOD'S HEART

ONE DEBEN OF YOUR HOMELAND

UTTER THOSE ANCIENT EVIL WORDS

AND ALL EARTHLY POWER SHALL BE YOURS

FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.

Pour into the Death God's heart

One dehen of your homeland . . .

A 'deben' was the ancient Egyptian measure of weight. It equalled 93 grams.

Judah pulled a glass vial from inside his jacket. In it was some amber-coloured soil, soil that had been taken from the Utah desert, deep inside the United States—soil that was unique to the United States of America.

Judah poured exactly 93 grams of the soil into the crucible. One

deben.

Eyeing it proudly, he called to his men, 'Gentlemen! Erect the

Capstone!'

One Piece after the other, Judah's people began erecting the Golden Capstone.

The largest Piece—the Pharos Piece—went on the bottom and the human-shaped indentation in its golden underside perfectly matched up with the Anubis indentation on the summit of the Pyramid.

The Pyramid's summit was also fitted with a low channel cut into it from one side—since the Capstone lay flat on its peak, this channel provided a tight crawlway that would allow the 'Sacrificial One'—one of the children—to crawl into the indentation when the time came.

As each new Piece was laid on it, the Capstone began to take shape.

It was truly magnificent—glittering and powerful—a golden crown to an already stupendous structure.

And of course, the line of crystals running down through the centre of the Capstone pointed directly at the heart of Anubis.

Judah co-ordinated the operation, his eyes wide with delight.

And then the final Piece, the pyramidal top Piece, the Piece he had obtained from Alexander's tomb only that morning went on . . .

. . . and the Capstone was complete for the first time in nearly five millennia.

The Great Pyramid at Giza stood whole once more, as it had originally appeared in 2,566 BC.

It was 11:50 a.m.

Ten minutes till the Tartarus Rotation occurred.

• • •

Judah turned to face the two children.

'And so it falls to me to make a historic choice,' he said. 'Which child to sacrifice to the power of the Sun . . .'

'Sacrifice?' Alexander said, frowning. 'What are you talking about?'

'It is what you were born for, young man,' Judah said. 'It is what you were put on this Earth to do.'

'I was put here to rule—' Alexander threw a confused look at del Piero.

'I fear you have been misinformed,' Judah said. 'You were put here to decode the Word of Thoth and then to die for the eternal benefit of Father del Piero and his friends. Although I'm sure they would have worshipped you fervently after your death, if that is any consolation. I'm assuming Father del Piero must have failed to mention this.'

Alexander's eyes flashed to del Piero, blazing with fury.

Lily just remained silent, her head bowed.

'So. Who to choose?' Judah mused.

'Her,' Alexander said quickly. 'She didn't even know of her own importance. At least I did.'

Judah grinned at this. 'Is that so?' Then he said, 'No, boy. I like her, because she's quiet. You're not. Which means you're elected.'

And with that, Judah scooped up the boy and thrust him into the tight channel underneath the Capstone, forcing him at gunpoint to crawl through it and lie down inside the arms of Anubis, beneath the fully-built Capstone, his heart directly underneath the Capstone's crystal array while also directly above the dish-shaped crucible containing the soil of America.

The boy sobbed all the way.

At 11:55, Judah stepped into position.

He held in his hands the ritual of power—which he had taken line-by-line from the surface of each of the Capstone's seven Pieces.

'Everyone, prepare for the ceremony! Five minutes!'

It was then that one of the CIEF spotters in the northern crane spied a tiny black dot high in the eastern sky . . .

It looked like a plane of some sort, approaching fast, descending. A 747 ... a black one. The Halicarnassus.

The Halicarnassus zoomed out of the sky at near-supersonic speed, nose down, wings pinned back, all its guns pointed forward.

Sky Monster was at the helm, yelling, 'Yee-ha! Come and get it, you Yankee motherfuckers! Pooh Bear—you ready to rock'n'roll?'

In the revolving gun turret on top of the plane's left wing, Pooh Bear replied, 'Let's do some damage.'

Sky Monster said, 'Let's hope Wizard's retro system is up to the challenge or else this could be a disaster of gargantuan propor— shit! Incoming!'¹

The Americans had launched two Stinger missiles at the incoming

747.

The missiles streaked upwards from the Great Pyramid, shoom-ing toward the inbound jumbo jet, but Pooh Bear nullified them both—he got one missile to lock onto a chaff bomb, and the other he destroyed with an interceptor missile of his own, a French-made FV-5X Hummingbird, designed by the French in the 1990s for the Iraqi Army, specifically to nullify American Stinger missiles. When West had found the Halicarnassus, it had been fitted with ten brand-new Hummingbirds.

The Americans then started firing their anti-aircraft guns from

their cranes.

Tracer bullets raced up into the sky—there were so many they filled the sky—but Sky Monster banked the Halicarnassus brilliantly, avoiding the laser-like streaks while at the same time Pooh Bear returned fire and unleashed a Hellfire air-to-ground missile of his own.

The Hellfire shoomed out from a pod on the Halt's underbelly and spiralled down towards one of the American cranes and—

—smashed into it and detonated.

The crane's basket was blasted into a million pieces, its occupants and their weapons vaporised.

Judah and all the others on the platform spun at the nearby explosion.

The other crane continued to fire up at the incoming Halicarnassus, unleashing a thousand rounds of AA ammunition and another Stinger missile—which Pooh Bear just blasted out of the sky a moment later.

Then Sky Monster yelled, 'Pooh! Hang on, buddy! Here we go!' Then to himself he whispered, 'Please God, Wizard, tell me you got this right . . .'

It was then that, roaring down toward the Giza Plateau like an out-of-control missile, Sky Monster lifted the HalPs nose up slightly and jammed all his thrusters back . . . throwing the Halicarnassus into a deliberate stall ... so that now it looked like a stallion rearing up on its hind legs, its nose up, its tail down . . .

... at which point, Sky Monster held his breath and punched the second collective on his console, a thruster-collective marked:

RETROGRADE THRUST SYSTEM.

What happened next startled everyone on the Pyramid's summit— everyone except Wizard.

The Halicarnassus—dropping through the sky in a graceful flat stall, nose up, tail down—emitted a noise deeper and louder than a thousand thunderbooms.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The colossal noise came from the eight Mark 3 Harrier retrograde thrust engines that had been incorporated into its armoured fuselage.

By Wizard.

The result was sensational: the massive all-black Halicarnassus

stopped in mid-fall, as if it were suspended from giant descender cables, and to the sound of its deafening retrograde thrusters, it swung into a perfect hover, 200 metres off the ground and only a few hundred yards from the Great Pyramid!

Sky Monster brought her closer, bringing the big hovering plane's left forward door alongside the platform on the summit of the Pyramid.

It was an absolutely astonishing sight—the massive black jumbo jet, bristling with guns and missile pods, hovering with its nose close to the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

From the platform itself, the Halicarnassus loomed large, super-huge, like an angry bird-god descended from Heaven itself to wreak its fury.

The initial spell broken, the surviving American crane swung around to unleash a new burst of AA fire, now from point-blank range.

But Pooh Bear, on the Halt's left wing, was quicker on the draw and also at point-blank range.

He loosed a withering burst of fire—a hyper-fast barrage of gunfire—that shook, shattered and blasted apart the crane, turning its occupants into fountains of spraying blood and the crane into Swiss cheese.

On the platform, Judah's eyes boggled.

He checked the Sun, checked his watch: 11:59:29.

Thirty seconds.

'Hold them off!' he called to his men. 'Hold them off! We only need thirty seconds'.'

Consumed with the spectacular arrival of the Halicarnassus, Judah never noticed a second airborne craft zeroing in on the Pyramid, a

very small craft that came zooming in low and fast from the Western Desert.

It was a man, possessed of carbon-fibre wings.

The tiny man-shaped figure soared low over the desert, before at the last second, he rose up swiftly—up the slanting side of the Pyramid as if it were an aerial ramp—and landed with a graceful plonk on the far side of the Capstone, on the side opposite the attention-grabbing Halicarnassus.

It was Jack West Jr.

Back from the dead, and pissed as hell.

West landed with his wings outstretched and with two big .45 calibre Desert Eagle pistols in his hands. The instant his feet touched the platform, his guns started blazing, taking down four CIEF troopers with four shots.

Then he punched a release clip on his wing-harness and the carbon-fibre wings fell off his back, freeing him, making him even more deadly.

He ran out onto the platform, guns up.

At the same time, in response to the spectacular arrival of the Halicarnassus, four American helicopters lifted off from their positions at the base of the Great Pyramid: three Apache attack birds and the mighty Super Stallion that Judah had used to bring the Pieces to Giza.

A fifth chopper—a Black Hawk—made to follow them, but it seemed to hesitate on the ground as a scuffle occurred inside it.

Then, a few seconds behind the others, it lifted off and headed for the battle going on at the top of the Pyramid.

Pandemonium reigned on the platform.

With the Halicarnassus looming alongside it like a ship from outer space, and Pooh Bear blazing away from the plane's powerful left-side gun turret, all the American troops on the platform were either getting shot or diving for cover behind Samsonite crates or the Capstone itself or retreating to the lower levels of the open-sided

structure.

In the chaos, Wizard hurled himself on top of Lily to protect her.

Del Piero charged across the platform and slid to the ground beside the little channel, to reach for Alexander, still inside the Capstone.

'Not so fast, Father!' a voice said from behind him. Del Piero turned—

—to find himself staring into the barrel of a Glock pistol held by Marshall Judah.

Bam!

The pistol went off and the priest's brains splattered the golden flank of the Capstone.

With a core group of CIEF men surrounding him, Judah stood before the Capstone—cleverly putting it between him and Pooh Bear's guns—and with a glance at his watch, looked to the sky.

At that moment, the clock struck noon and it happened.

It looked like a laser beam from Heaven.

A dead-straight beam of dazzling white light lanced down from the sky, from the surface of the Sun, and accompanied by a tremendous boom, it slammed into the Capstone atop the Great Pyramid.

The Capstone, in reply, caught this ray of hyper-intense energy within its crystal array—so that the beam remained in place, giving the impression that the Pyramid was now connected to the Sun by this superlong and perfectly straight ray of glowing white energy.

It was a stunning image: the Pyramid—surmounted by the great wooden platform, with the Halicarnassus hovering alongside it and with helicopters now buzzing and banking around it—absorbing the blazing white beam of pure energy that was shooting down from the sky.

It was incredible, impossible, otherworldly.

But it was also oddly right. It was as if this was what the Great Pyramid at Giza, dormant and mysterious for so many centuries, had been designed to do.

• * *

The platform was ablaze with light and sound.

Here at the epicentre of the great Sun-ray, the glow was almost blinding. And the noise—it was all-consuming: the colossal boom of the great Sun-ray combined with the roar of the Halicarnassus's retro-thrusters and the turning of its regular engines (which were level with the platform) drowned out all other sound.

And in the midst of all this stood Marshall Judah, before the Capstone. He raised one arm toward the Golden Capstone, palm up, and then in an ancient language not heard in thousands of years, he began to recite an incantation.

The power ritual.

The power ritual was seven lines long.

As Judah began to recite it, several things were happening:

Pooh Bear.

He was waging his own private war with the four American helicopters. He had knocked out one Apache helicopter with gunfire and had just fired a Hellfire missile at the rising Super Stallion. The missile slammed into the front windshield of the Super Stallion just as the big chopper came level with the platform.

The CH-53E exploded in a giant ball of flames—and lurched in mid-air, before it fell, dropping alongside the platform, its swirling rotor blades missing the lower levels of the platform by inches before the whole chopper smashed down in a crumpled heap on the sloping southern flank of the Great Pyramid itself.

It now lay at a 52-degree angle—the slope of the Pyramid—at the spot where the platform's struts met the Pyramid, its body crumpled and broken but its rotors still buzzing in blurring circles of motion.

Judah had recited two lines by this time . . .

Pooh Bear swung around in his gun turret and had just zeroed in on the American Black Hawk chopper when—to his surprise—he saw the Black Hawk fire a missile into the back of one of its own Apache attack birds.

It was then that Pooh saw the pilots of the Black Hawk: Zoe and Fuzzy. In the confusion earlier, they'd escaped their bonds, stolen the Black Hawk and leapt into the fray.

But then suddenly a CIEF trooper leapt up onto the Halicarnassus's wing, trying to take out Pooh Bear's turret guerrilla-style. Pooh

couldn't turn the turret in time. The man had him, raised his Colt rifle—

Bam!

The CIEF trooper was hit in the back of the head by a longdistance sniper shot, a shot that had been fired by—

—Stretch, sitting in the side door of the stolen Black Hawk, holding a sniper rifle.

Pooh saw the Israeli, alive and with the good guys, and he smiled for the briefest of moments.

Judah had recited four lines . . .

West.

He was waging his own private war against the eight men guarding Judah at the Capstone: six CIEF troopers, Koenig and Kallis.

He strode forwards, eyes fixed, face set, both of his guns held outstretched in front of him.

The old warrior in Jack West—a warrior Judah had helped create—had returned . . . and he was a mean motherfucker.

West shot four of the troopers—all right between the eyeballs. One shot, one kill.

Another he grabbed from behind, snapping his neck, before using the dead man's body as a shield to receive fire from Cal Kallis while emptying the dead man's M-4 into two others. Then the wily old Nazi, Koenig, lunged at him from the side with a knife, but he received two rounds to the nose for his trouble, the force of the shots sending him flying clear off the platform.

Judah finished the sixth line . . .

'Hold him off!' he called to Kallis as he began the last line.

That left West facing Cal Kallis—who now stood between West and Judah—in the midst of the maelstrom of light, wind and sound.

It was a stand-off from which there could be only one winner.

But there was also one more figure at work in all this.