Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [19]
West’s team raced ahead now. The sliding stone had given them the lead they needed.
Having been blocked off momentarily behind it, and not having experienced the slipway before, the remainder of the German troops were more cautious.
West’s team increased their lead.
They swept down the tight vertical shaft to the spike-hole where West had correctly chosen the key of life, the ceiling of the water chamber having reset itself . . .
Still no radio contact with Noddy.
Across the water chamber, its stepping-stones still submerged beneath the algae-covered pool . . .
Still no radio contact.
Crouch-running down the length of the low tunnel, leaping over its cross-shafts . . .
And finally they came to the croc-filled atrium with its handrungs in the ceiling and the vertical entry shaft at its far end.
‘Noddy! Are you out there?’ West called into his radio. ‘I repeat, Noddy, can you hear me—’
Finally he got a reply.
‘Huntsman! Hurry!’ Noddy’s Spanish-accented voice replied suddenly in his earpiece, loud and hard. ‘Get out! Get out now! The Americans are here!’
Two minutes later, West emerged from the vertical entry shaft and found himself once again standing in the mud of the mountain swamp.
Noddy was waiting for him, visibly agitated, looking anxiously westward. ‘Hurry, hurry!’ he said. ‘They’re coming—’
Shlat!
Noddy’s head exploded, bursting like a smashed pumpkin, hit by a high-speed .50 calibre sniper round. His body froze for a brief moment before it dropped to the ground with a dull smack.
West snapped to look westward.
And he saw them.
Saw two-dozen high-speed swampboats sweeping out of the reeds some three hundred metres away, covered by two Apache helicopters. Each swampboat held maybe ten special forces troops, members of the CIEF.
Then suddenly on one of them the muzzle of a Barrett sniper rifle flashed—
—West ducked—
—and a split second later the bullet sizzled past his ears.
‘Get Stretch up here!’ he yelled as his team emerged from the hole in the mud.
Stretch was pushed up.
‘Give me some sniping, Stretch,’ West said. ‘Enough to get us out of here.’
Stretch pulled a vicious-looking Barrett M82A1A sniper rifle off his back, took a crouching pose and fired back at the American hovercrafts.
Crack. Sizzle.
And two hundred metres away, the American sniper was hurled clear off his speeding swampboat, his head snapping backwards in a puff of red.
Everybody was now up and out of the hole.
‘Right,’ West said. ‘We make for our swamprunners. Triple time.’
The Eight raced across the swamp, once again running on foot through the world of mud.
They came to their swampboats, hidden in a small glade, covered by camouflage netting.
Their two boats were known as ‘swamprunners’, shallow-draft flat-bottomed steel-hulled boats with giant fans at their sterns, capable of swift speeds across swamps of unpredictable depth.
West led the way.
He jumped onto the first swamprunner, and helped the others on after him.
When everyone was on board the two boats, he turned to grab the engine cord—
‘Hold it right there, partner,’ an ice-cold voice commanded.
West froze.
They came out of the reeds like silent shadows, guns up.
Eighteen mud-camouflaged CIEF specialists, all with Colt Commando assault rifles—the lighter, more compact version of the M-16—and dark-painted faces.
West scowled inwardly.
Of course the Americans had sent in a second squad from the south, just in case—hell, they’d probably found his boats by doing a satellite scan of the swamp, then sent this squad who’d just come out and waited.
‘Damn it . . .’ he breathed.
The leader of the CIEF team stepped forward.
‘Well, would you look at that. If it isn’t Jack West . . .’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you since Iraq in’91. You know, West, my superiors still don’t know how you got away from that SCUD base outside Basra. There musta been three hundred Republican Guards at that facility