Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [11]
‘Okay, kids. This is what we’ve trained for. Leapfrog formation, remember your places. Lily, you’re with me in the middle. Fuzzy, you’re the point for the first disable. Then Big Ears, Zoe and Stretch. Wizard, you’ll have to cover for Pooh Bear, who was going to cover the fifth. I’ll trigger the Master Snare.’
Everyone nodded, game faces on.
West turned to Wizard. ‘Okay, Professor. You got those Warblers ready? Because as soon as we break cover, those Europeans are going to open fire.’
‘Ready to go, Huntsman,’ Wizard said, holding up a large gun-like object that looked like an M-203 grenade launcher. ‘I’ll need maybe four seconds before you can make a break for it.’
‘I’ll give you three.’
Then they all put their hands into the middle, team-style, and called ‘Kamaté!’, after which they broke, with Wizard leading the way up the ladder, venturing into the fray . . .
Wizard popped up out of the manhole, his grenade launcher raised. He fired it three times, each shot emitting a loud puncture-like phump.
Phump!-Phump!-Phump!
The rounds that burst out of the grenade launcher looked like grenades, but they weren’t grenades—fat and round and silver, they fanned out to three corners of the giant cavern, little red pilot lights on them blinking.
The Europeans heard the first shot and by the third had located Wizard.
A French sniper on the cabin of the crane swung his rifle round, drew a bead on Wizard’s forehead, and fired.
His bullet went haywire.
It peeled downwards almost as soon as it left the barrel of the Frenchman’s rifle—where it struck an unfortunate croc square in the head, killing it.
The ‘Warblers’ at work.
The three odd-looking silver rounds that Wizard had fired were more formally known as Closed Atmospheric Field Destabilisers (Electromagnetic), but everyone just called them ‘Warblers’.
One of Wizard’s rare military inventions, the Warblers created a magnetic field that disrupted the flight of high-subsonic metal objects—specifically bullets—creating a gunfire-free zone.
Wizard, one of the leading experts in electromagnetic applications, had sold the revolutionary technology to Raytheon in 1988 for $25 million, most of which went to the New York venture capital company that had bankrolled his research. Walking away with only $2 million, Wizard had sworn to never work again with venture capitalists.
Ironically, the US Army—as always, thinking it knew better— ordered Raytheon to rework the Warbler system, creating huge problems that had stalled the program for over fifteen years. It had yet to enter active service.
Naturally, Wizard—a Canadian, not an American—had kept a few working prototypes for himself, three of which he was now using.
The Seven burst out from their manhole, one after the other, moving fast, heading for the nearest embedded ladder that led up to the first level.
As he ran in the middle of the group, West set Horus free and the little peregrine falcon soared above the forward-moving group.
The Jamaican, Fuzzy, led the way—dancing along a narrow stone walkway that lay flush against the right-hand wall of the cavern. Pushed up against the walkway’s low edge was a crush of crocodiles.
Fuzzy held in his hands a lightweight titanium bar welded in the shape of an X.
Halfway along its length, the walkway ended briefly at a small void. In the centre of this void was a raised square stepping-stone that also stood flush against the wall and an inch above the crocfilled water.
Cut into the stone wall immediately above this stepping-stone was a dark hole about a metre in diameter.
Fuzzy didn’t miss a beat.
He leapt from the walkway onto the stepping-stone—
—and immediately heard a rush of water from up inside the wall-hole, accompanied by a low crocodilian growl—
—at which point he jammed his titanium X-bar into the wall-hole and hit a switch on the bar.
Thwack!
The X-shaped bar expanded with a powerful springloaded motion, so that suddenly it was wedged tightly in the mouth of the circular wall-hole.
Not a second too