No sooner had she done this than she was leapfrogged by the seventh member of the group, the tall, thin trooper named Stretch. Once known as Archer, he had a long, sanguine, bony face. He hailed from the deadly Israeli sniper unit, the Sayeret Matkal.
Stretch arrived at the right-side arm of the Scar, where he triggered a huge trap from a safe distance: a bronze cage that fell out of a dark recess in the Scar and clattered down to the lake.
Had any of the team been walking on the foot-wide miniledge in front of the recess, the cage would have caught them and taken them down to the lake, either to be eaten by the crocs or drowned under the weight of the cage itself.
Now West and Lily took the lead, crossing the mini-ledge across the Scar, stepping out onto the center section of the first level.
Here they found the trigger stone for the Master Snare at the base of the wall ladder leading up to Level 2. West made to step on it—
“Captain West!”
West froze in midstride, turned.
Del Piero and his troops were staring up at him from the base of their half-finished crane, holding their useless guns stupidly in their hands.
“Now, Captain West, please think about this before you do it!” Del Piero called. “Is it really necessary? Even if you trigger the Master Snare, you are only postponing the inevitable. If you do somehow get the Piece, we’ll kill you when you try to leave this mountain. And if you don’t, my men will just return after the Snare has run its course and we will find the head of the Colossus and the Piece of the Capstone it contains. Either way, Captain, we get the Piece.”
West’s eyes narrowed.
Still he didn’t speak.
Del Piero tried Wizard. “Max. Max. My old colleague, my old friend. Please. Reason with your rash young protégé.”
Wizard just shook his head. “You and I chose different paths a long time ago, Francisco. You do it your way. We’ll do it ours. Jack. Hit the trigger.”
West just stared evenly down at del Piero.
“With pleasure,” he said.
And with that he stomped on the trigger stone set into the floor at his feet, activating the Master Snare.
The spectacle of Imhotep’s Master Snare going off was sensational.
Blasting streams of black crude oil shot out from the hundreds of holes that dotted the cavern: holes in the rock face and its sidewalls.
Dozens of oil waterfalls flowed down the rock face, cascading over its four levels. Black fluid flooded out from the sidewalls, falling a clear two hundred feet down them into the croc lake.
The crocs went nuts, scrambling over each other to get away from it—disappearing into some little holes in the walls or massing on the far side of the lake.
In some places on the great tiered rock face, oil came spurting out of the wall, forced out of small openings by enormous internal pressure.
Worst of all, a river of the thick black stuff came pouring down the main course of the Scar, a cascade that tumbled down the vertical riverbed, overwhelming the trickle of water that had been running down it.
And then the clicking started.
The clicking of many stone-striking mechanisms mounted above the wall holes.
Striking mechanisms made of flint.
Striking mechanisms that were designed to create sparks and…
Just then, a spark from one of the flints high up on the left sidewall touched the crude oil flowing out from the wall hole an inch beneath it.
The result was stunning.
The superthin waterfall of oil became a superthin waterfall of fire …
…then this flaming waterfall hit the oil-stained lake at the base of the cavern and set it alight.
The lake blazed with flames.
The entire cavern was illuminated bright yellow. The crocs screamed, clawing over each other to get to safety.
Then more oilfalls caught alight—some on the sidewalls, others on the rock face, and finally, the great sludge waterfall coming down the Scar—until the entire Grand Cavern looked like Hell itself, lit by a multitude of blazing waterfalls.
Thick black smoke billowed everywhere—smoke that had no escape.
This was Imhotep’s final masterstroke.
If the fire and the traps didn’t kill you, smoke inhalation would, especially in the highly prized upper regions of the cavern.
“Fools!” Del Piero raged. Then to his men: “What are you standing there for! Finish the crane! You have until they get back to the second level to do so!”
West’s team was now moving faster than ever, leapfrogging each other beautifully amid the subterranean inferno.
Up the rock face they went, first to the left along the second level, crossing the left arm of the Scar before the thick fire-waterfall got there, dodging wall holes, jumping gaps in the ledge, nullifying the traps inside the arched forts that straddled the narrow walkway.
Droplets of fire were now raining down all around them—spray from the oilfalls—but the fiery orange drops just hit their firemen’s helmets and rolled off their backs.
Then suddenly West’s team ran past the unfinished arm of the Europeans’ crane and for the first time that day, they were in front.
In the lead in this race.
Up the wall ladder at the end of Level 2, on to Level 3, where they ran to the right, avoiding some chute traps on the way and coming to the fiery body of the Scar. Here West fired an extendable aluminum awning into the Scar’s flame-covered surface with his pressure gun.
The awning opened lengthways like a fan, causing the fire-waterfall to flow over it, sheltering the mini-ledge. The team bolted across the superthin ledge.
Then it was up another ladder to the fourth level—the second-highest level—and suddenly six ten-ton block boulders started raining down on them from way up in the darkness above the giant rock face.
The great blocks boomed as they landed on the diorite ledge of Level 4 and tumbled down the rest of the massive tiered wall.
“Get off the ladder!” West yelled to the others. “You can’t dodge the boulders if you’re on it—”
Too late.
As West called his warning, a boulder smacked horribly into the last man on the ladder, Fuzzy. The big Jamaican was hurled back down the rock face.
He landed heavily on the third level—setting off a trap of spraying flaming oil (it looked like a flame-thrower) but he snap-rolled away from the tongue of fire—in the same motion avoiding a second boulder as it slammed down on the ledge an inch away from his eyes!
His roll took him off the ledge, but Fuzzy managed to clasp onto the edge with his fingertips, avoiding the thirty-foot drop down to Level 2.
The final wall ladder was embedded in the center of the Scar itself, flanked by two fiery waterfalls.
Wizard erected another awning over the miniledge leading to the ladder, then allowed West and Lily to rush past him.
“Remember,” Wizard said, “if you can’t get the Piece itself, you must at least note the inscription carved into it. OK?”
“Got it.” West turned to Lily. “It’s just us from here.” They crossed the miniledge, came to the rough stone-carved ladder.
Drops of fire rained down it, bouncing off their firemen’s helmets.
Every second or third rung of the ladder featured a dark gaping wall hole of some kind, which West nullified with “expand-and-harden” foam.
“Jack! Look out! More drop stones!” Wizard called.
West looked up. “Whoa shit …!”
A giant drop boulder slicked with oil and blazing with flames roared out of a recess in the ceiling directly above the ladder and came free-falling toward him and Lily.
“Swear jar …” Lily said.
“I’ll have to owe you.”
West quickly yanked an odd-looking pistol from his belt—it looked like a flare gun, with a grossly oversize barrel. An M225 handheld grenade launcher.
Without panic, he fired it up at the giant boulder free-falling toward them.
The gre
nade shot upward.
The boulder fell downward.
Then they hit and—BOOM!—the falling boulder exploded in a star-shaped shower of shards and stones, spraying outward like a firecracker, its pieces sailing out and around West and Lily on the ladder!
West and Lily scaled the rest of the ladder, flanked by flames, until finally they were standing at the top of the Scar, at the top of the giant rock face, past all the traps.
They stood before the trapezoidal door at the peak of the fire-filled cavern.
“OK, kiddo,” he said. “Now it’s just you and me. You remember everything we practiced?”
She loved it when he called her kiddo.
“I remember, sir,” she said.
And so with a final nod to each other, they entered the holy inner sanctum of Imhotep V’s deadly labyrinth.
THE INNERMOST CAVE
And still the traps didn’t stop!
A wide low-ceilinged chamber met them: its ceiling was maybe two yards off the floor … and getting lower.
The chamber was about thirty meters wide and its entire ceiling was lowering! It must have been one single piece of stone and right now it was descending on the dark chamber like a giant hydraulic press.
If they’d had time to browse, West and Lily would have seen that the chamber’s walls were covered with images of the Great Pyramid—most of them depicting the famous pyramid being pierced by a ray of light shooting down from the Sun.
But it was what lay beyond the entry chamber that seized West’s and Lily’s attention.
At the far end of the wide entry chamber, in a higher-ceilinged space, stood a giant mud-covered head.
The head was absolutely enormous, at least sixteen feet high, almost three times as tall as West.
Despite the layer of mud all over it, its features were stunning: the handsome Greek face, the imperious eyes, and the glorious golden crown fitted above the forehead.
It was the head of a colossal bronze statue.
The most famous bronze statue in history.
It was the head of the Colossus of Rhodes.
Right in front of it, however, separating the great bronze head from the low-ceilinged entry hall, was a moat of perfectly calm crude oil that completely surrounded the Colossus’s head.
The great god-sized head rose up from this oil pool like a creature arising from primordial slime. It sat on no holy pedestal, no ceremonial island, no nothing.
Suspended above the pool was an extra problem: several flaming torches now blazed above it, lit by ancient flint-striking mechanisms. They hung from brackets attached to the end of the entry hall’s lowering ceiling—meaning that very soon they would touch the oil pool … and ignite it … cutting off all access to the Colossus’s head.
“Time to run,” West said.
“You bet, sir,” Lily replied.
They ran.
Down the length of the entry hall, beneath its wide lowering ceiling.
Smoke now began to enter the chamber from outside, creating a choking haze.
They came to the oil moat.
“If Callimachus is correct, it won’t be too deep,” West said.
Without missing a step, he strode into the pool—plunging to his waist in the thick, goopy oil.
“Jump,” he said to Lily, who obliged by leaping into his arms.
They waded across the moat of oil—West striding with Lily on his shoulders—while above them the fiery torches continued their descent toward the pool, the entry hall’s ceiling coming ever lower.
With his exit fast diminishing, Jack West Jr. stopped a few yards short of the head of the Colossus of Rhodes.
It towered over him, impassive, covered in centuries of mud.
Each of its eyes was as big as Lily was.
Its nose was as big as he was.
Its golden crown glimmered, while three trapezoidal golden pendants hung from a chain around its neck.
The pendants.
Each was about the size of a fat encyclopedia and trapezoidal in shape. Embedded in the exact center of each pendant’s upper surface was a round diamondlike crystal.
On the slanting front side of each pendant was a series of intricately carved symbols: an unknown language that looked kind of like cuneiform.
It was an ancient language, a dangerous language, a language known only to a chosen few.
West gazed at the three golden pendants.
One of them was the Second Piece of the Golden Capstone, the minipyramid that had once sat atop the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Comprised of seven horizontal pieces, the Golden Capstone was perhaps the greatest archaeological artifact in history—and in the last month, it had become the subject of the greatest worldwide treasure hunt of all time. This piece, the Second, was the segment of the Golden Capstone that sat one place below the fabled First Piece, the small pyramid-shaped pinnacle of the Capstone.
Three pendants.
But only one was the correct one.
And choosing the correct one, West knew, was a do-or-die proposition that all depended on Lily.
He had to take one more step forward to reach them and that meant triggering the final trap.
“OK, kiddo. You ready to do your thing? For my sake, I hope you are.”
“I’m ready,” Lily said grimly.
And with that, West stepped forward and—
—chunk!—
—an unseen mechanism beneath the surface of the oil pool clamped tightly around his legs, pinning them in an ancient pair of submerged stone stocks.
West was now immobile … within easy reach of the three pendants.
“OK, Lily,” he said. “Go. Make your choice. And stay off me, just in case you’re wrong.”
She leaped from his arms, onto the half-submerged collarbone of the great statue just as—
Whoosh!
A huge ten-ton drop stone directly above West came alight with flames and… lurched on its chains!
Imhotep V’s final trap in the quarry mine was what is known as a “reward trap.” It allowed the rightful claimant to the Second Piece to have it, if they could identify the correct one.
Choose the right “pendant” and the flaming drop stone remained in place and the submerged leg clamps opened. Choose the wrong one, and the drop stone fell, crushing you and igniting the oil pool.
Lily stared at the strange text on each pendant. It looked extremely odd, this little girl evaluating the incredibly ancient symbols.
West watched her, tense, expectant … and suddenly worried.
“Can you read it?” he asked.
“It’s different from the other inscriptions I’ve read …” she said distractedly.
“What—?” West blanched.
Abruptly Lily’s eyes lit up in understanding. “Ahh, I get it. Some of the words are written vertically.”
Then her eyes narrowed … and focused. They blazed in the firelight, scanning the ancient symbols closely now.
To West, it seemed as if she had just entered a trancelike state.
Then the flaming drop stone above him creaked again. He snapped to look up.
The torch-riddled ceiling above the moat kept lowering.
Smoke was now billowing into this area from the main cavern.
West swiveled to see the entry chamber behind him getting smaller and smaller…
Lily was still in her trance, reading the runes intently.
“Lily …”
“Just a second …”
“We don’t have a second, honey.” He eyed the hazy smoke-filled chamber closing behind them. The smoke was getting denser.
Then, abruptly, one of the flaming torches attached to the descending ceiling dislodged from its bracket…
… and fell.
Down toward the oil moat where West stood helpless!
“Oh, God no—” was all he had time to breathe. The flaming torch dropped through the air, into the oil moat—
—before, six inches off the surface, it wa
s plucked from the air by the swooping shape of Horus, his falcon.
The little bird gripped the flaming torch in its talons, before it dropped it safely in the closing entry hall.
“Why don’t you leave it to the last second next time, bird,” West said.
Sitting now, Horus just returned his gaze, as if to say: Why don’t you stop getting into stupid predicaments like this, human.
In the meantime, Lily’s eyes glinted, staring now at the symbols on the rightmost of the three pendants:
She read in a low voice:
Rama Rath
“Beware. Atone.
Ra’s implacable Destroyer cometh,
And all will cry out in despair,
Unless sacred words be uttered.”
Then Lily blinked and returned to the present. “It’s this one!” she said, reaching down for the pendant she had just read.
West said, “Wait, are you sure—”
But she moved too quickly and lifted the golden pendant from its shallow recess on the Colossus’s neck.
The flaming drop stone lurched.
West snapped up and winced, waiting for the end.
But the drop stone didn’t fall and—chunk!—suddenly his legs were released from their submerged bonds.
Lily had picked the right one.
She jumped happily back into his arms, holding the heavy golden trapezoid like a newborn baby. She threw him a winning smile.
“That felt really weird.”
“It looked really weird,” West said. “Well done, kiddo. Now, let’s blow this joint.”
THE OUTWARD CHARGE
Back they ran.
West charged through the waist-deep oil pool, pushing hard with every stride, the torch-edged ceiling lowering above him.
They hit the floor of the entry hall as the lowering ceiling hit three feet in height.
The smoke coming in from outside was now choking, dense.
Lily crouch-ran across the wide low-ceilinged space, while Horus swooped through the haze.
West was the slowest, scrambling on all fours, slipping every which way in his oil-slicked boots, until at the very end of the chamber, as the ceiling became unbearably low, he dived onto his belly, sliding headfirst for the entire last four meters, emerging just as the ceiling hit the floor with a resounding boom and closed off the Colossus’s chamber.