Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [12]
An instant later, a burst of water gushed out of the wall-hole, immediately followed by the jaws of a massive crocodile that slammed at tremendous speed into the X-bar!
The croc roared angrily but its jaws were caught against the X-bar, unable to get past. The rush of water sprayed all around Fuzzy, but didn’t knock him over.
‘Trap One! Clear!’ he called.
The others were already there with him, moving fast, and as Fuzzy kept watch over the writhing croc trapped in the wall-hole, they danced safely by.
Now Big Ears went ahead, racing forward to disable the next trap, while the rest of them followed, step-jumping past Fuzzy, heading for the ladder at the base of the giant rockface.
The Europeans could only watch in helpless amazement as the Seven raced along the opposite wall to the base of the rockface.
Alone among them, Francisco del Piero eyed West—eyed him with an ice-cold gaze—watched him running with Lily at his side, gripping her hand.
‘Well, well, well,’ del Piero said. ‘Who have you got there, Captain West . . .?’
The Seven hit the base of the rockface.
The building-sized wall towered above them, black as the night.
Big Ears had already done his work, disabling two hand-chopping traps halfway up the rock-cut ladder.
Now Princess Zoe leapfrogged ahead. She moved with great athleticism, easily the match of the men. About 30, she had shoulder-length blonde hair, freckles, and the luminous blue eyes that only Irish girls possess.
Onto the First Level she flew, raising two aerosol cans as she did so, filling two wall-holes with a dense expanding foam. Whatever evils had been in those wall-holes were caught by the foam and neutralised.
No sooner had she done this than she was leapfrogged by the seventh member of the group, the tall, thin trooper named Stretch. Once known as Archer, he had a long, sanguine, bony face. He hailed from the deadly Israeli sniper unit, the Sayaret Matkal.
Stretch arrived at the right-side arm of the Scar, where he triggered a huge trap from a safe distance: a bronze cage that fell out of a dark recess in the Scar and clattered down to the lake.
Had any of the team been walking on the foot-wide mini-ledge in front of the recess, the cage would have caught them and taken them down to the lake, to be either eaten by the crocs or drowned under the weight of the cage itself.
Now West and Lily took the lead, crossing the mini-ledge across the Scar, stepping out onto the centre section of the First Level.
Here they found the trigger stone for the Master Snare at the base of the wall-ladder leading up to Level 2. West made to step on it—
‘Captain West!’
West froze in mid-stride, turned.
Del Piero and his troops were staring up at him from the base of their half-finished crane, holding their useless guns stupidly in their hands.
‘Now, Captain West, please think about this before you do it!’ del Piero called. ‘Is it really necessary? Even if you trigger the Master Snare, you are only postponing the inevitable. If you do somehow get the Piece, we’ll kill you when you try to leave this mountain. And if you don’t, my men will just return after the Snare has run its course and we will find the head of the Colossus and the piece of the Capstone it contains. Either way, Captain, we get the Piece.’
West’s eyes narrowed.
Still he didn’t speak.
Del Piero tried Wizard. ‘Max. Max. My old colleague, my old friend. Please. Reason with your rash young protégé.’
Wizard just shook his head. ‘You and I chose different paths a long time ago, Francisco. You do it your way. We’ll do it ours. Jack. Hit the trigger.’
West just stared evenly down at del Piero.
‘With pleasure,’ he said.
And with that he stomped on the trigger stone set into the floor at his feet, activating the Master Snare.
The spectacle of Imhotep’s Master Snare going off was sensational.
Blasting streams of black crude oil shot out from the hundreds of holes that dotted the cavern: holes in the rockface and its sidewalls.
Dozens of oil waterfalls flowed down the rockface, cascading over its four levels. Black fluid flooded