Seven Ancient Wonders

by—

—Stretch, sitting in the side door of the stolen Black Hawk, holding a sniper rifle.

Pooh saw the Israeli, alive and with the good guys, and he smiled for the briefest of moments.

Judah had recited four lines . . .

West.

He was waging his own private war against the eight men guarding Judah at the Capstone: six CIEF troopers, Koenig and Kallis.

He strode forwards, eyes fixed, face set, both of his guns held outstretched in front of him.

The old warrior in Jack West—a warrior Judah had helped create—had returned . . . and he was a mean motherfucker.

West shot four of the troopers—all right between the eyeballs. One shot, one kill.

Another he grabbed from behind, snapping his neck, before using the dead man's body as a shield to receive fire from Cal Kallis while emptying the dead man's M-4 into two others. Then the wily old Nazi, Koenig, lunged at him from the side with a knife, but he received two rounds to the nose for his trouble, the force of the shots sending him flying clear off the platform.

Judah finished the sixth line . . .

'Hold him off!' he called to Kallis as he began the last line.

That left West facing Cal Kallis—who now stood between West and Judah—in the midst of the maelstrom of light, wind and sound.

It was a stand-off from which there could be only one winner.

But there was also one more figure at work in all this.

Beyond the mayhem happening on the platform, unseen by anyone,

the exit door above the left wing of the Halicarnassus opened and a figure emerged from it, skulking low, moving swiftly, holding something small in his hands.

He scurried out from the doorway and onto the wing. Then he leapt down from the front of the wing onto the wooden platform, heading—again unseen—in the direction of Wizard and Lily.

West and Kallis faced each other.

Then they moved, at exactly the same time, lifting and firing their guns simultaneously, like a pair of wild west gunslingers—

Click! Click!

They were both dry.

'Fuck!' Kallis yelled.

'No . . .' West breathed.

For he knew that it didn't matter now.

Judah also knew. Their eyes met, and West's face fell.

He was too late.

By a bare few seconds—no a bare few metres—he was too late.

With a smile of insane delight, by the light of the Tartarus Sunspot on the Day of the Rotation, Marshall Judah uttered the final words of the ritual of power and looked triumphantly to the heavens.

Nothing happened.

Granted, West wasn't sure what should have happened. Should the sky darken? Should the Earth shake? Should Judah turn into some giant all-powerful dragon? Should West's gun turn to dust?

Whatever was supposed to happen to show that the United States of America had just earned itself a thousand years of undisputed worldly power, it didn't manifest itself in any visible way.

And then West saw that, indeed, nothing had happened.

For there, scuttling on all fours away from the Capstone on the other side of the platform, having crawled over the corpse of the CIEF trooper who was supposed to be guarding the channel that led under the Capstone, was the boy, Alexander.

He hadn't been in the sacrificial spot when judah had completed the ritual. . .

So the ritual hadn't taken effect.

Judah saw it too and he shouted, 'No! No?

The boy clambered to the edge of the platform, turned back— and seeing del Piero's dead body, he leaned out over the side of the platform, lowering himself down to the level below.

West's view of Alexander disappearing over the edge was cut off by the flash of Cal Kallis's K-Bar knife rushing toward his eyes.

West ducked and the blade went high. He then rose quickly and punched the knife from Kallis's hand before nailing the CIEF trooper square in the nose with the best punch he'd ever thrown with his all-metal left hand—

The blow connected . . .

. . . and had no effect on Kallis at all.

The big CIEF trooper just grinned back at West through bloody teeth.

Then he replied with three awesome punches of his own—all vicious, all hard, all to West's face.

Once, twice, three times, each blow sent West staggering backwards.

'You feel that, West! You feel that!' Kallis roared. 'I've been waiting all fucking week for this! But I had to keep you alive, to let you lead us to each site. But not anymore. My boys got your Spanish friend in the Sudan! But I was the one who offed your dumb Irish lad in Kenya! He was still alive after you left, you know—a gurgling bloody mess. I was the one who put a bullet in his brain to finish him off.'

A fourth blow, then a fifth.

On the fifth punch, West's nose broke, exploded with blood, and his boots came to the edge of the platform and he teetered there for a moment, glanced quickly behind him.

Immediately below him, thirty feet down, was the crashed Super Stallion—its still-spinning buzzsaw-like blades directly beneath him!

Kallis saw them too. 'But while I enjoyed snuffing out the Irish kid, I'm glad I'm the one who gets to kill you. See you in Hell, West!'

And with that, Kallis unleashed the final crushing blow.

Just as West himself lunged desperately forwards, his left arm lashing out, extending fast—a final last-gasp all-or-nothing strike.

His blow struck Kallis a nanosecond before Kallis's blow struck him.

Phwack!

Kallis froze in mid-action—

—with West's artificial left fist, his metal fist, lodged deep in the centre of his face, having thundered right through his nose. The blow had been so powerful, it had dented Kallis's nose three inches inward, breaking it in several places. Blood had sprayed everywhere.

Incredibly, Kallis was still conscious, his eyes bulging, his entire

body twitching, but his limbs were no longer responding to his brain.

He wouldn't be alive for long.

'This is for Big Ears,' West said, yanking Kallis around and hurling him off the edge of the platform.

Kallis fell—thirty feet, straight down—and in his very last moment of consciousness, he saw, to his horror, the spinning rotor blades of the Super Stallion rush up to meet him . . .

He made to scream, but the shout never came. In a single split second, Cal Kallis was diced into a million bloody pieces.

On the other side of the platform, Wizard had watched in horror as West had fought Kallis.

He wanted to help, but he also didn't want to leave Lily.

But then he saw Jack nail Kallis with his brutal punch, saw the foul explosion of blood from Kallis's face and he suddenly felt like they might just have a chance—

Wizard was struck viciously from behind ... by the figure who had emerged from the Halicarnassus.