Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [138]
Then he saw the future, saw what would happen next and his one good eye boggled with fear.
He screamed, but his scream was cut short as the enormous turbine swallowed the rope . . . and sucked the rest of the safety rope in after it.
Judah was yanked off his feet, doubling over as he was sucked backward through the air. Then he entered the engine and— thwack-thwack-CHUNK!—was chewed alive by its hyper-rotating blades.
And suddenly the summit of the Great Pyramid was still.
Seeing the awesome blast of light from the Sun and the deaths of their summit team, the American force at the base of the Pyramid fled, leaving West and Wizard up on the platform, alone.
Moments later, Zoe’s Black Hawk landed on the platform and Zoe, Fuzzy and Stretch came rushing out of it—at the same time as Pooh Bear leapt onto the platform from the Halicarnassus’s wing.
They all arrived on the platform to find West—watched by Wizard—crawling underneath the Capstone to check on Lily.
West bellycrawled through the tight channel carved into the stone beneath the Capstone.
He came to Lily, found her lying motionless inside the human-shaped cavity in the Capstone’s lowest Piece. Her eyes were closed. She seemed calm, at peace . . . and not breathing.
‘Oh, Lily . . .’ West scrambled forward on his elbows, desperate to get to her.
His head came alongside hers. He scanned her face for any movement, any sign of life.
Nothing. She didn’t move at all.
He deflated completely, his entire body going limp, his eyes closing in anguish. ‘Oh, Lily. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry’
He bowed his head, tears rolled from the corners of his eyes, and he said, ‘I loved you, kiddo.’
And there in the cavity, in the golden glow of the Capstone, lying before the body of the happy little girl he had guarded and raised for ten whole years, Jack West Jr wept.
‘I love you, too, Daddy. . . ’ a soft voice whispered weakly from nearby.
West snapped up, his eyes darting open, to see Lily staring back at him, her head rolled onto its side. Her eyes were milky, dazed.
But she was alive, and smiling at him.
‘You’re alive. . . ’ West said, amazed. ‘You’re alive!’
He scooped her up in his arms and hugged her firmly.
‘But how . . . ?’ West asked aloud.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘Can we please get out of here?’
‘You bet,’ he breathed. ‘You bet.’
Minutes later, the Halicarnassus powered up and lifted vertically into the sky, rising on its eight massive retro thrusters.
Once it was high enough, it pivoted in mid-air and allowed itself to drop, nose-down. It fell briefly, plummeting towards the ground, before it engaged its regular engines, using the short vertical fall to get up to flight speed. Its main engines firing, it swung up at the last moment and soared away from the Pyramids on the Giza Plateau.
The Great Pyramid was left standing there behind it, with the half-destroyed platform shrouding its summit, and the American helicopters and cranes lying smoking and broken on its flanks. The Egyptian Government that had aided and abetted the American ritual would have to clean it all up.
Importantly, however, the peak of the Pyramid was also once again nine feet shorter than it should have been.
West and his team had taken the Capstone—the entire Capstone—with them.
Inside the main cabin of the Halicarnassus, West and the others gathered around Lily, hugging her, kissing her, clapping her on the shoulders.
Pooh Bear embraced her: ‘Well done, young one! Well done!
‘Thanks for coming back for me, Pooh Bear,‘ she said.
‘I was never going to leave you, young one,’ he said.
‘Nor was I,’ said Stretch, stepping forward.
‘Thanks, Stretch. For saving me at the Gardens, for staying with me when you could have gone.’
Stretch nodded silently, to Lily and also to all the others, especially Pooh Bear. ‘They don’t come often,’ he said, ‘but every now and then, there come times in your life when you have to choose a side; choose who you are fighting for. I made my choice, Lily, to fight with you. It was a hard choice, but I have no doubt that it was