Seven Ancient Wonders

confinement. Hope we can spot it in the dark. Is there anything Mossad doesn't know?'

'Mossad knows what my Aunt Judy eats for breakfast.' West checked his watch. 'We're eight minutes out. Time to fly.'

Moments later, the rear ramp of the 747 rumbled open and they leapt out of it together, disappearing into the night sky.

Inside the Halicarnassus itself, every battle station was manned.

Big Ears, Fuzzy, Pooh Bear and Stretch all sat in the great black plane's four gun turrets—Big Ears and Pooh Bear on the wing-mounted turrets, Fuzzy on the underbelly, and Stretch up on the 747's domed roof.

Their six-barrelled miniguns were currently loaded with super-lethal 7.62 mm armour-piercing tracer rounds —but they had special instructions from West as to what to use later, when the battle got really hot.

Wizard, Lily and Horus had been dropped off at a safe island location nearby—it was far too dangerous to bring Lily on this mission.

The Halicarnassus thundered through the night sky.

It flew without lights, so it was little more than a dark shadow against the clouds; and it had long ago been stripped of its transponder—so it gave off no electronic signature.

And its black radar-absorbent paint, the same as that used on the B-2 Stealth Bomber, deflected any radar scans the Americans projected from Gitmo.

It was a ghost.

A ghost the American forces at Guantanamo Bay would not know existed until it was right on top of them.

In the end, it was a pair of night sentries who saw it—or, rather, heard it—first. They were posted on one of the most far-flung sentry towers on the base, on a remote headland overlooking the ocean about two klicks east of Windward Point, near the Cuzco Hills.

They saw the huge black shadow come roaring in low over their heads, zooming in from the south, from over the Caribbean Sea. They called it in immediately.

And so the alert went out, and the 3,000-strong American force at Guantanamo Bay declared war on Jack West Jr and his team.

The Halicarnassus shot low over the Cuzco Hills, bearing down on the rumpled moonlit landscape of Guantanamo Bay. It was 3:45 in the morning.

Then the big 747 banked sharply to the left and disappeared below the treeline . . .

. . . landing right on the fairway of the 16th hole of the Guantanamo Bay Golf Course, its winglights blazing to life as it did so!

The plane's massive tyres ripped up the pristine fairway, churning up great ragged chunks of grass, its glaring winglights lighting the way. It romped down the 16th hole, rumbled onto the 17th.

The stand of bushes separating the 17th from the 18th hole loomed in front of it and Sky Monster just smashed straight through them, crunching over them in an instant, and the rampaging Halicarnassus rumbled down the 18th fairway.

Klaxons and alarms wailed all over Guantanamo Bay. Flashing lights erupted everywhere.

Marines leapt out of their beds.

Guard-tower sentries scanned the perimeter down the barrels of their M-16s.

Spotlights searched the sky for more aircraft.

The word went out: they were being attacked . . . from the golf course!

Two crack teams of Recon Marines were dispatched to the golf course, while Black Hawk helicopters and a much larger force were assembled to follow up behind them.

And every single jail on the base was instantly placed into lock-down—every gate was double-locked via computer, every guard-post sentry team was doubled.

It was chaos.

Pandemonium.

And in all the chaos and confusion that had followed the Halicarnassus's spectacular landing on the golf course, no-one noticed the two black-winged figures that descended over Gitmo with graceful silent swoops, landing lightly and silently on the flat concrete roof of hut C-12 in Camp 3 of Camp Delta.

West detonated a Semtex charge on the roof of the cinder-block cabin, blasting a hole in it big enough for him to fit through. He jumped down through the hole—

—and landed in darkness on the roof of a cube-shaped wire-mesh cage. A blowtorch made short work of the cage's roof and West leapt down into it—

—to see a skeletal wraith-like figure come rushing out of the darkness at him, arms outstretched!

West pivoted quickly and sent Zaeed thudding into the wall, where he pinioned the terrorist and shone his barrel-mounted flashlight right into the man's eyes.

By the light of the flashlight, Zaeed looked positively scary.

The terrorist's beard and hair had been shaved off, leaving him with a crude stubble on both his angular chin and his scalp. He was thin, malnourished. And his eyes—those eyes—they were hollow, sunken into his skull, accentuating his overall appearance of a living skeleton. They blazed with madness.

'Mustapha Zaeed?'

'Ye-yes . . .'

'My name is West. Jack West Jr. I'm here to offer you a one-time deal. We get you out of here, and you help us find the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and from them, the Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid. What do you say?'

Any resistance Zaeed still harboured disappeared in an instant at the mention of the Wonders. In his wild eyes, West saw several things at once: recognition, comprehension and naked ravenous ambition.

'I will go with you,' Zaeed said.

'Then let's move—'

'Wait!' Zaeed shouted. 'They implanted a microchip in my neck! A locater! You have to extract it, or they'll know where you've taken me!'

'We'll do it on the plane! Come on, we've got to run!' West called above the sirens. 'Zoe! Rope!'

A rope was hurled into the hut from the hole in the roof, and together West and Mustapha Zaeed scrambled up it, out of the cell.

Over at the golf course, the two teams of Recon Marines arrived to behold the Halicarnassus standing on the ruins of the shed that had once been their clubhouse, illuminating the area for a full 500 yards with a dozen outward-pointed floodlights.

Blinded by the dazzling lights, the Marines spread out around the big black 747, raised their guns—

—just as a withering volley of gunfire erupted from the Halicarnassus's four revolving gun turrets.

The volley of bullets slammed into the Recon Marines, sent them flying backwards through the air, slamming them into trees and vehicles.

But they weren't dead.

The bullets were rubber bullets, like those West and his team had used in the quarry in Sudan.

West's instructions to his team had been simple: you only kill someone who wants to kill you. You never ever kill men who are just doing their job.

And as far as West was concerned, he had no quarrel with the Marine guards at Guantanamo Bay—only with their government and its backers.

The rubber bullets, however, had another effect on the Recon Marines—it made them think this was an exercise, an elaborate surprise in the dead of night designed by their superiors to test their response.

And so they actually became less lethal. They concentrated on surrounding and containing the plane, rather than destroying it.

But then, to their surprise, the big black 747 started moving again, rolling around in a tight circle until it was pointed back up the 18th fairway of the golf course.

Then with its guns still blazing, the big plane's engines fired up. The roar they made was absolutely deafening