Wizard was waiting for them outside on Level 4.
“Hurry! Del Piero’s men have almost finished their crane—they’ll be on Level 2 any second now!”
LEVEL 4
The other members of the team—Big Ears, Stretch, and Princess Zoe—were waiting on Level 4, covering the first three traps on the way back down.
When he reached them, West handed Big Ears the priceless golden trapezoid, which the big man placed inside a sturdy backpack.
Down the giant rock wall they went, again in leapfrog formation, sliding down ladders, dancing across booby-trapped ledges, all the while dodging flaming waterfalls and fire-rain. Giant drop stones now fell constantly from the upper regions of the cave, tumbling dangerously down the rock face, blasting through the smoke.
LEVEL 3
West scooped up Fuzzy as they came to the third level. “Come on, old friend,” he said, hoisting the big Jamaican onto his shoulder.
They ran down the sloping ledgeway, across the face of the third level, covering their mouths to avoid inhaling the smoke.
The Europeans had almost finished their crane by now. It was lined with armed men, all waiting for the last piece of the crane to be screwed into place, thus giving them access to the second level—where they would cut off West and his team.
The last piece of the crane fell into place.
The Europeans moved.
LEVEL 2
West led the way now, leaping down onto Level 2 ahead of Fuzzy, where he landed like a cat—
—and was confronted by a crossbow-wielding French paratrooper, the first member of the European force to step off the now-finished crane.
Quick as a gunslinger, West drew a Glock pistol from one of his thigh holsters, raised it and fired it at the French trooper at point-blank range.
And for some reason his bullet defied Wizard’s Warblers and slammed into the Frenchman’s chest, dropping him where he stood.
No blood sprayed.
In fact, the man didn’t die.
Rubber bullet.
West fired another rubber round—similar to those used by police in riot situations—at the next French paratrooper on the nearby crane, just as the Frenchman pulled the trigger on his crossbow.
West ducked and the arrow bolt missed high, while his own shot hit its mark, sending the French commando sailing off the crane and into the lake below, still crowded with panicking crocodiles.
Screams. Splashing. Crunching. Blood.
“Move!” West called to his crew. “Before they switch to rubber rounds, too.”
Now everyone in his team had their guns drawn and as they passed the crane’s arm, they traded shots with the two dozen French paratroopers on it.
But they got past the crane just as fifteen French paratroopers came streaming off it, and headed down to Level 1—
LEVEL 1
—where they saw the Europeans’ second effort to cut them off.
Down on the ground level, a team of German Army engineers had almost finished building a temporary floating bridge across the croc lake—in an attempt to get to West’s manhole entrance on the southern side of the cavern before West and his team did.
They had two segments of the bridge to put in place, segments that were being brought across the half-finished bridge at that very moment.
“Go! Go! Go!” West called.
The flaming cavern—already alive with smoke and flames and falling boulders—was now zinging with crossbow bolts and rubber bullets.
The aluminum crossbow bolts were only mildly affected by the Warblers—they flew wildly, but their first few meters of flight were still deadly.
West’s team were running across Level 1, racing the bridge-builders on the ground level.
Big Ears carried Lily. West helped Fuzzy. Princess Zoe and Stretch fired at the paratroopers behind them, while Wizard—coughing against the smoke—led the way, nullifying the traps ahead of them. Above them, Horus soared through the hazy black air.
They had just reached the ladder at the far right-hand end of Level 1 when suddenly a stray French crossbow bolt hit Big Ears in the shoulderblade, knocking him off his feet—causing him to stumble forward onto his face and…
… fall off the edge of the ledge, dropping Lily over it!
Lily fell.
Thirty feet.
Into the oily water near the base of the ladder, not far from the walkway that hugged the right-hand wall of the cavern.
By chance she landed in both a croc-free and a fire-free space.
But not for long. The crocs weren’t far away, and no sooner had her splash subsided than a large one saw her and charged straight for her.
Big Ears was dangling over the edge of Level 1 directly above her, helpless. “I can’t get to her!”
“I can!” another voice called.
West.
He never missed a step.
Running full tilt, he just leaped off the edge of Level 1 and sailed in a high, curving arc through the air toward the croc lake below.
The big bull croc that was charging at Lily never saw him coming. West landed square on its back, a mere foot away from Lily, and the two of them—man and croc—went under the black water’s surface with a great splash.
They surfaced a second later, with the frenzied croc bucking like a bronco and West on its back, gripping it in a fierce headlock.
The croc growled and roared, before—crrrrack—West brutally twisted its neck, breaking it. The croc went limp. West jumped clear, whisking Lily out of the water and onto the walkway flanking the lake not a moment before six more crocs attacked the carcass of the dead one.
“Th … thanks,” Lily gasped, wiping oil from her face and still shaking.
“Anytime, kiddo. Anytime.”
GROUND LEVEL
The rest of the team joined them on the walkway.
Now Fuzzy and Big Ears were injured. But they were still mobile, helped along by Zoe and Wizard, while West and Lily were covered by Stretch.
They all hopscotched over the stepping-stone and its wall hole—inside which the trapped croc still writhed behind Fuzzy’s X-bar—and dashed for their manhole, just as the German engineers brought the final piece of their temporary bridge into place.
Forty armed German troops waited for the bridge to be completed. Some fired wayward crossbow shots at the Seven, while others jammed newly found rubber-bullet magazines into their MP7 submachine guns and started firing.
West and Lily came to the manhole. In they went. The others followed, while Stretch covered them all. Big Ears went in … then Fuzzy … Wizard … Zoe and…
… the final piece of the bridge fell into place…
… as Stretch jumped into the manhole and the army of Germans charged over the bridge and the chase through the slipway system began.
THE ANTECHAMBER (OUTWARD BOUND)
Being the last person in a retreating formation sucks. You’re covering the rear, the bad guys are right on your ass, and no matter how loyal your team is, there’s always the risk of being left behind.
By the time the tall and lanky Stretch had landed in the long antechamber beneath the manhole, the others were already entering the slipway at the far end.
“Stretch! Move it!” West called from the slanted doorway. “Zoe’s gone ahead to trigger another sliding stone to run interference for us!”
As if to confirm that, a familiar whump echoed out from the upper regions of the slipway, followed by the rumble of a new sliding stone grinding down the slope.
Stretch bolted toward the slipway—as a dozen wraithlike figures rained down the manhole behind him, entering the antechamber.
Gunfire.
Rapid-fire.
Freed from the effects of the Warblers, the Europeans were now gladly employing live ammunition.
Stretch was done for.
He was still five steps away from the safety of the slipway when the first few Germans behind him went down in a hail of withering fire.
; For just as they had fired, so too had someone else, someone standing guard in the doorway to the slipway.
Pooh Bear.
Holding a Steyr AUG assault rifle.
The heavy-bearded Arab—who had last been seen getting cut off behind the previous sliding stone—waved Stretch on.
“Come on, Israeli!” Pooh Bear growled. “Or I’ll gladly leave you behind!”
Stretch staggered the last few steps into the slipway and past Pooh Bear just as a dozen bullet sparks exploded out all around the stone doorway.
“I thought you were dead,” Stretch said, panting.
“Please! It’ll take more than a rock to kill Zahir al Anzar al Abbas,” Pooh Bear said in his deep gruff voice. “My legs may be stout, but they can still run with some speed. I simply outran the rock and took cover in that spiked pit, and let it pass over me. Now move!”
THE SLIPWAY
Down the slipway the Eight ran, dancing around the edge of the small spiked pit—the air filled with the rumble of the new sliding stone—then over the diorite pit that was the Second Gate. The cracked and broken remains of the first sliding stone from before lay strewn about its base.
The Eight swung over the diorite pit, hanging from the steel handholds they’d drilled into the rock ceiling earlier.
“Noddy!” West called into his radio mike when he landed safely on the other side. “Do you copy?”
There was no answer from Noddy, their man guarding the swamp entrance.
“It’s not the Warblers!” Wizard called. “There must be someone jamming us—”
He was cut off by six Germans who raced into the slipway and opened fire—
—not a moment before the large spike-riddled sliding stone loomed up behind them, rumbling over the doorway to the antechamber!
The six Germans ran down the slipway, chased by the sliding stone.
When they came to the spiked pit, one panicked and lost his balance and fell in, chest first—impaling himself on the vicious spikes sticking up from the stone pit.
The others got to the larger diorite pit of the Second Gate too late.
Two managed to grip West’s steel handholds for a couple of swings before all five of the remaining German troops were either impaled on the spikes on the leading edge of the sliding stone or jumped into the diorite pit to avoid those spikes just as—whoosh!—a blast of churning white water shot across the pit, sweeping them away, screaming.
West’s team raced ahead now. The sliding stone had given them the lead they needed.
Having been blocked off momentarily behind it, and having not experienced the slipway before, the remainder of the German troops were more cautious.
West’s team increased their lead.
They swept down the tight vertical shaft to the spike hole where West had correctly chosen the Key of Life, the ceiling of the Water Chamber having reset itself…
Still no radio contact with Noddy.
Across the Water Chamber, its stepping-stones still submerged beneath the algae-covered pool…
Still no radio contact.
Crouch-running down the length of the low tunnel, leaping over its cross shafts…
And finally they came to the croc-filled atrium with its hand rungs in the ceiling and the vertical entry shaft at its far end.
“Noddy! Are you out there?” West called into his radio. “I repeat, Noddy, can you hear me—”
Finally, he got a reply.
“Huntsman! Hurry!” Noddy’s Spanish-accented voice replied suddenly in his earpiece, loud and hard. “Get out! Get out now! The Americans are here!”
Two minutes later, West emerged from the vertical entry shaft and found himself once again standing in the mud of the mountain swamp.
Noddy was waiting for him, visibly agitated, looking anxiously westward. “Hurry, hurry!” he said. “They’re coming—”
Shlat!
Noddy’s head exploded, bursting like a smashed pumpkin, hit by a high-speed .50 caliber sniper round. His body froze for a brief moment before it dropped to the ground with a dull smack.
West snapped to look westward.
And he saw them.
Saw two dozen high-speed swampboats sweeping out of the reeds some 300 yards away, covered by two Apache helicopters. Each swampboat held maybe ten special forces troops, members of the CIEF.
Then suddenly on one of them the muzzle of a Barrett sniper rifle flashed—
—West ducked—
—and a split second later the bullet sizzled past his ears.
“Get Stretch up here!” he yelled, as his team emerged from the hole in the mud.
Stretch was pushed up.
“Give me some sniping, Stretch,” West said. “Enough to get us out of here.”
Stretch pulled a vicious-looking Barrett M82A1A sniper rifle off his back, took a crouching pose, and fired back at the American hovercraft.
Crack. Sizzle.
And 200 yards away, the American sniper was hurled clear off his speeding swampboat, his head snapping backward in a puff of red.
Everybody was now up and out of the hole.
“Right,” West said. “We make for our swamprunners. Triple time.”
The Eight raced across the swamp, once again running on foot through the world of mud.
They came to their swampboats, hidden in a small glade, covered by camouflage netting.
Their two boats were known as “swamprunners,” shallow-draft, flat-bottomed, steel-hulled boats with giant fans at their sterns, capable of swift speeds across swamps of unpredictable depth.
West led the way.
He jumped onto the first swamprunner and helped the others on after him.
When everyone was on board the two boats, he turned to grab the engine cord—
“Hold it right there, partner,” an ice-cold voice commanded.
West froze.
They came out of the reeds like silent shadows, guns up.
Eighteen mud-camouflaged CIEF specialists, all with Colt Commando assault rifles—the lighter, more compact version of the M16—and dark-painted faces.
West scowled inwardly.
Of course the Americans had sent in a second squad from the south, just in case—hell, they’d probably found his boats by doing a satellite scan of the swamp, then just sent this squad, which had just come out and waited.
“Damn it …” he breathed.
The leader of the CIEF team stepped forward.
“Well would you look at that. If it isn’t Jack West …” he said. “I haven’t seen you since Iraq in ’91. You know, West, I still don’t know how you got away from that Scud base outside Basra. There musta been three hundred Republican Guards at that facility and yet you got away—and managed to destroy all those mobile launchers.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess, Cal,” West said evenly.
The CIEF leader’s name was Sergeant Cal Kallis and he was the worst kind of CIEF operative: an assassin who liked his job. Formerly from Delta, Kallis was a grade-A psycho. Still, he wasn’t Judah, which meant West still held out a hope of getting out of there alive.
At first Kallis completely ignored West’s comment. He just whispered into a throat mike: “CIEF Command. This is Sweeper 2-6. We’re a klick due south of the mountain. We got ’em. Sending you our position now.”
Then he turned to West, and spoke as if their conversation had never been interrupted:
“You ain’t lucky anymore,” he said slowly. Kallis had cold black eyes—eyes that were devoid of pity or emotion. “I got orders that amount to a hunting license, West. Leave no bodies. Leave no witnesses. Something about a piece of gold, a very valuable piece of gold. Hand it over.”
“You know, Cal, when we worked together, I always thought you were a reasonable guy—”
Kallis cocked his gun next to Princess Zoe’s head. “No you didn’t and no I wasn’t. You thought I was ‘a cold-blooded psychopath’—they showed me the report you wrote. The Piece, West, or her brains learn how to
fly.”
“Big Ears,” West said, “give it to him.”
Big Ears unslung his backpack, threw it into the mud at Kallis’s feet.
The CIEF assassin opened it with his foot, saw the glistening golden trapezoid inside.
And he smiled.
Into his throat mike, he said: “Command. This is Sweeper 2-6. We have the prize. Repeat, we have the prize.”
As if on cue, at that moment two U.S. Apache helicopters boomed into identical hovers in the air above West and his team.
The air shook. The surrounding reeds were blown flat.
One chopper lowered a harness, while the other stood guard, facing outward.
Kallis attached the pack holding the Piece to the harness. It was winched up, and that helicopter quickly zoomed off.
Once it was gone, Kallis touched his earpiece, getting some new instructions. He turned to West … and grinned an evil grin.
“Colonel Judah sends his regards, West. Seems he’d like to have a word with you. I’ve been instructed to bring you in. Sadly, everybody else dies.”
Quick as a rattlesnake, Kallis then reasserted his aim at Princess Zoe and squeezed the trigger—just as the remaining Apache helicopter above him exploded in a fireball and dropped out of the sky, hit by a Hellfire missile from…
… the Europeans’ Tiger attack helicopter.
The charred remains of the Apache smashed to the ground right behind the ring of CIEF troops—crashing in a heap, creating a giant splash of swampwater—in the process scattering the CIEF men as they dived out of the way.
The Tiger didn’t hang around—it shot off after the other Apache, the one with the Piece of the Capstone in it.
But its missile shot had done enough for West.
Principally, it allowed Princess Zoe to leap clear of Kallis and dive onto the nearest swamprunner just as West started it up and yelled: “Everybody out! Now!”
His team didn’t need to be told twice.
While the Delta men around them clambered back to their feet and fired vainly after them, West’s two swamprunners burst off the mark and disappeared at speed into the high reeds of the swamp.