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 hand rungs in the ceiling. He leaped 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 stories straight down.
The man screamed all the way until—splat!—he landed in the gelatinous floor … at which point he started 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 teammates 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 hand rungs back to the sliding stone, then down to the quicksand.
Two tried the hand rungs.
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 stories 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 rearguard 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 expanded 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.
Its doorway opened onto a railless stone path that 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 various-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 said.
“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 steplike 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 forward—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, trap doors, 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 he finally stepped up into the opening in the ceiling, emerging on a dark platform that 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 two thousand five hundred years.
Standing there before him, in all their incredible glory, were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON
He needed eight more flares to illuminate the gargantuan cavern fully.
It was better 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 center of the supercavern, was a fifteen-story 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 twenty-five stories tall, it looked like an inverted mountain suspended from the ceiling of the supercavern, 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 spiraled up and around the exterior of the great stalactite, rising ever higher, heading for the ceiling of the cavern.
Dotting this path were nearly one 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 three hundred 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—three hundred 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.
<
br /> 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 ziggurat—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 a hundred feet short of the structure.
The path reemerged nearer to the gazebo, its submerged center section presumably having been 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 fifty feet 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, “OK. 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 a solid surface, 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 goopy 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 center 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 crisscrossing 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 center 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 midspring, both forepaws raised high; its 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 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.
Winged Lions. Common Assyrian Statue Found in Persia/Mesopotamia.
Ningizzida: Assyrian God of Serpents & Snakes.
Possible Ref 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.
r /> “Sir! The first American squad has reached the Stairway!” the rear guards reported. “Holding them off but more are on the way—and we can’t hold them back 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 forward. “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 out 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 center 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 completely.
Which, he realized, was precisely the intent of the trap.
You were meant to panic, you were meant to be dis-oriented … and so exit via the wrong doorway, where presumably worse things awaited—