Seven Ancient Wonders

Again the trap initiated. Quicksand poured into the hexagonal well. The cage rotated. They sloshed across it, knee-deep.

And suddenly Lily tripped and fell.

The rising quicksand had caught her feet and she stumbled to all fours with a squeal.

The sand grabbed her, sticky and foul.

She screamed in terror.

Stretch and the other two Israelis spun, saw her struggling. They were almost at the exit doorway and the cage's rotating gate was about to let them out.

Avenger called from the doorway, 'Leave her! We have the Piece! She was only a bonus! It's the Piece that matters, and if we don't get it out, this will all have been for nothing! Move!'

The two commandos with Stretch didn't need to be told twice. They sloshed toward the gate and slipped through it.

Stretch, however, paused.

With quicksand flooding in from every side and the cage turning dizzyingly around him, he looked back at Lily.

The little girl was struggling against the rising quicksand pool, whimpering vainly with the effort. The sand had wrapped itself around her like a constricting snake, it was up to her neck now, consuming her, dragging her under.

'Cohen!' Avenger called. 'Leave her! That's an order!'

And with a final look at Lily, Stretch made his fateful decision.

Flanked by the flying Horus, West and Pooh Bear were bolting down the spiralling path on the stalactite when suddenly the foliage beside them was ripped apart by helicopter gunfire.

One of the American Apache choppers had swung into a hover right next to them and was now lining them up in its minigun sights!

They dived into a nearby cross-tunnel just as the Apache's six-barrelled minigun whirred to life—and came to the vertical bore-hole that ran up the centre of the rock formation.

'They're firing at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!' Pooh Bear exclaimed. 'Have Americans no respect for history!'

Moments later, they emerged from the same bore-hole at the lowermost tip of the stalactite, having slid all the way down it with their hands and feet braced against its walls.

West jumped down onto the peak of the ziggurat, snapped round to check on the progress of Avenger's fleeing Israeli team.

'Jesus, no . . .' he breathed.

He spied Avenger and four of his men just as they disappeared through an exit tunnel at the far end of the supercavern, having navigated the quicksand lake and the well on that side.

Stretch wasn't with them.

Nor was Lily.

And then West saw the well.

Peering under its canopied stone roof, he could see that the hexagonal well was just then overflowing with quicksand— completely filled.

'Oh, no. No . . .' West stared at the scene in horror. Worse still, at that very moment, two American Black Hawk helicopters were landing on the star-shaped paths surrounding the

well.

Troops charged out from the choppers, converging on the well

from opposite sides.

Marshall Judah himself stepped out of one of the choppers, directing the operation.

'Oh, Lily . . .' West breathed, frozen, stunned.

At the hexagonal well, a CIEF trooper called to Judah: 'Sir, you better come and see this.'

Judah strode to the edge of the well.

And he was surprised by what he saw.

There, pressed right up against the roof-bars of the cage inside the well—her face upturned, with only her mouth and nose and eyes protruding above the surface of the quicksand pool that now filled the well, breathing shallowly and desperately, her lips puckered, was Lily.

Judah wondered how on God's Earth she had got into this life-saving position.

The cage—and the well—must have been at least twelve feet deep. Caught in the grip of the sand, she could never have reached up and grabbed the cage's roof-bars and lifted herself out—

There must be someone else in there, he figured. Holding her up.

Then Judah saw it.

But only barely, it was so small.

He saw the tip of a gunbarrel protruding a centimetre above the surface of the quicksand pool right next to Lily's upturned face. It was the tip of a sniper rifle's gunbarrel—an ultralong Barrett M82A1A sniper rifle.

Only this gunbarrel was not being used for its original purpose.

It was being used as a snorkel by whoever was holding Lily up from below!

It wasn't until he had the well-trap reset and drained of quicksand that Judah fully appreciated the scene underneath Lily.

As the quicksand drained away, he beheld Stretch, standing on top of the statue of the winged lion that itself stood in the centre of the well, his own face upturned, breathing through the barrel of his disassembled Barrett sniper rifle, with Lily balancing on his shoulders in a perfect ballet toe-pose!

Stretch had indeed made his decision.

It would turn out to be a very good one, but for another reason entirely: for Judah would take him and Lily away alive.

Avenger and his team of Israeli commandos would not be so lucky.

For at the secret rear entrance to the Hanging Gardens, an American CIEF squad led by Cal Kallis was waiting for them.

And Kallis had strict orders not to be merciful.

Avenger and his Israelis—thinking they had got away with the Piece—emerged from the underground tunnel system to see their extraction helicopter lying nearby, charred and smoking, destroyed, its pilots shot dead.

They also found themselves surrounded by Kallis's team.

The Israelis were quickly disarmed. Then, slowly and deliberately, Cal Kallis executed them all himself—one by one, shooting each man in the head, killing Avenger last of all, smiling meanly the whole time. This was the kind of thing Kallis enjoyed.

Then he took the Piece from their dead hands and flew away, leaving the corpses for the desert birds to feast upon.

And so West watched, helpless, as Lily and Stretch were bundled into Judah's helicopter—

—at which moment, a wave of gunfire smacked down all around him, from two Apache attack choppers that appeared suddenly from behind the stalactite.

Horus squawked.

West moved too late.

But Pooh Bear didn't.

And he saved West's life—yanking him out of the line of fire and down into the square-shaped well-shaft of the ziggurat.

Down on the floor of the supercavern, Judah snapped round to see the cause of the commotion.

He glimpsed the two tiny figures of Pooh Bear and West up on the peak of the ziggurat—saw Pooh pull West down into the well-shaft that descended into the ziggurat, the shaft known as the Priests' Entrance.

'Jack . . .' Judah whispered. 'Alas, you've served your purpose. You're no longer a protected species. Time for you to die.'

Judah returned to his heavily-armed Black Hawk, with Stretch and Lily as his captives. The chopper lifted off