Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [127]
They had got it just right when the orange rim of the Sun peeked over the eastern horizon and dawn came on the Day of Tartarus.
The power of the rising Sun was instantly noticed by all.
On this day, the Day of Tartarus, it was hotter, fiercer. It practically burned through the hazy low-hanging mist in dazzling horizontal shafts creating mini-rainbows in the air.
Then it struck the uppermost tip of the obelisk—and the high needle of rock seemed to shine majestically—before the beam of sunlight slowly began to move down the obelisk.
The American force watched it in awe.
From his basket, Judah watched it in triumph.
From his position down in one of the Humvees, Wizard watched it in grim silence.
Then the sunlight struck the bore-hole on the existing obelisk and shone directly through it. . .
. . . whence it continued on, shooting right into the pipe on Judah’s crane. . .
. . . and suddenly the great shaft of sunlight combined with the unnatural mist to become a tiny laser-like beam of multi-coloured sunlight.
The rainbow-coloured laser beam lanced out from the Temple, shooting in a dead-straight horizontal line westward, out across the Nile, out over the fields on the West Bank, out towards. . .
. . . the great bay of brown cliffs that protected and defended the Valley of the Kings.
No.
It was more precise than that.
The beam of light came to rest on the structure built into that bay of cliffs—a structure unique in all of Egyptian architecture, featuring two great rampways and three glorious colonnaded tiers.
Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple.
INSIDE HATSHEPSUT’S MORTUARY TEMPLE
LUXOR, EGYPT
20 MARCH, 2006, 0630 HOURS
THE DAY OF TARTARUS
The Americans made swift progress.
The dazzling beam of sunlight had illuminated a lone archway at the far left of the lowest tier of the great structure.
There a door was found, so well-concealed that it appeared to be part of the wall itself. But above it was a familiar symbol that until today had been attributed little significance:
At the sight of the carving, Marshall Judah’s eyes shone with delight.
The Americans were through the door in no time.
Traps awaited them.
A passageway filled with vicious swing-traps—long swing-blades that swooped out of slits in the ceiling and chopped one man’s head off.
Then a partially-submerged chamber, the knee-deep water of which concealed leg-chopping blades. Fortunately, from his research, Koenig knew the safe route.
Until Marshall Judah emerged from a stone doorway and stood on a platform that overlooked a gigantic subterranean cavern.
It wasn’t as big as the supercavern that contained the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but what it lost in size, it made up for in artistry.
Every stone wall had been fashioned by human hands. There was not a single rough surface in the place.
It looked like an underground cathedral, with soaring high walls, a curved ceiling, and four immense sacred lakes arrayed in such a fashion that they created a wide raised path in the shape of a giant †. Great pillars of stone held up the superhigh ceiling.
At the junction of the †—the focal point of the great underground hall—was a raised square platform, flanked on all four corners by obelisks. On this high platform lay an ornate glass sarcophagus.
‘Ornate’ was barely sufficient to describe it.
It was crafted of gold and glass, and it lay underneath a high canopy crafted entirely of gold. The pillars of the canopy were not straight, but rather they rose in a bending, spiralling way, as if they were solidified vines.
‘The coffin of Alexander the Great. . . ’ Koenig breathed.
‘It was said to be made of glass,’ Wizard confirmed.
‘Wait a second. This looks familiar to me. . . ’ Judah breathed.
Beside him, Francisco del Piero—like the others, his hands were cuffed—bowed his head in silence, tried to be invisible.
Judah turned to Koenig.
‘Take some measurements with the laser