Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [43]
Wizard was on his computer: ‘I’m checking my database for any references to “Hamilcar’s Refuge”. But I’ve already found this: the “Deadly Coast” was a name used by Alexandrian sailors to describe the coast of modern-day Tunisia. For 100 miles the shore is all cliffs—400 feet high and plunging vertically into the sea. Major shipwreck area even in the 20th century. Oh dear. If your ship goes down close to the shore, you can’t climb out of the water because of the cliffs. People have been known to die within an arm’s length of dry land. No wonder the ancient sailors feared it.’
West added, ‘And the sixth Great Architect is Imhotep VI. He lived about 100 years after Imhotep V. Clever trap-builder—fortified the island-temple of Philae near Aswan. Known for his predilection for concealed underwater entrances. There are six at Philae alone.’
Stretch said, ‘Wait a moment. I thought the Egyptian civilisation was finished by the time of the Punic Wars.’
‘A common misconception,’ Wizard said. ‘People tend to think that the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations existed separately, one after the other, but that’s not true, not at all. They coexisted. While Rome was fighting Carthage in the Punic Wars, Egypt was still flourishing under the Ptolemies. In fact, an independent Egypt would continue to exist right up until Cleopatra VII, the famous one, was defeated by the Romans in 30 BC.’
‘So what are these two tridents?’ Pooh Bear asked.
‘My guess is they are rock formations just out from the coastal cliffs,’ Wizard said. ‘Markers. Triple-pointed rock formations that look like tridents, marking the location of the Refuge.’
‘One hundred miles of sheer-cliffed coast,’ Pooh Bear groaned. ‘It could take days to patrol that kind of terrain by boat. And we don’t have days.’
‘No,’ West said. ‘We don’t. But I’m not planning on using a boat to scan that coastline.’
An hour later, the Halicarnassus was soaring high above the Tunisian coast, travelling parallel to it, heading westward, when suddenly its rear loading ramp opened and a tiny winged figure leapt out of the plane and plummeted down through the sky.
It was a man.
West.
Shooming head-first down through the air, his face covered by a wickedly aerodynamic oxygen-supplying full-face helmet.
But it was the object on his back that demanded attention.
A pair of lightweight carbon composite wings.
They had a span of 2.6 metres, upturned wingtips, and in their bulky centre (which covered a parachute), they possessed six compressed-air thrusters that could be used to sustain a gliding pattern when natural glide failed.
West rocketed down through the sky at a 45-degree angle, his bullet-shaped winged body slicing through the air.
The Deadly Coast came into view.
Towering yellow cliffs fronted onto the flat blue sea. Giant, immovable. Waves crashed against them relentlessly, exploding in gigantic showers of spray.
West zoomed lower, hitting 180 km/h, before at around 800 feet . . .
. . . he swooped upwards and entered a slower, more serene glide pattern.
Now he soared, three hundred feet above the waves of the Mediterranean, parallel to the massive coastal cliffs.
He was flying near the Tunisian–Libyan border, a particularly desolate stretch of the North African coastline. Broad flat sand-plains stretched away from the sheer cliffs of the coast. About a klick inland, those plains rammed up against a mountain range made up of a few extinct volcanoes that ran parallel to the shore.
It was a land devoid of life. Desolate. Depressing. A place where nothing grows.
As he flew, West scanned the cliffs, searching for any rock formations on them that resembled a pair of tridents.
After ten minutes of gliding, he lost his natural glide pattern, so he ignited a compressed-air thruster. With a sharp hiss-wapp, it lifted him to a higher altitude, allowing him to glide for longer.
Then after about forty minutes—and three more compressed-air assists—he saw them.
Two rock-islands positioned about fifty metres out from