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.
'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
No.
Rather, this small group started free-climbing up the sheer wall
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
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,
But the Black Hawk hadn't seen him and Pooh Bear—it was peering
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.
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—
Like a grappling hook, the steel piton looped around the rear landing wheels of the helicopter . . . and caught.
The rope played out before—
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.
