Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [49]
The Sinkhole Cave
It was probably the first time in history someone could claim to have been helped by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, but it was largely the Nazis’ bridge-building efforts from 60 years previously that kept West and his team ahead of Kallis’s men.
At the next bend in the chasm, halfway up the high vertical wall, the ledge-path bored into the cliff-face, cutting the corner.
The short tunnel there took them to a square diorite-walled sinkhole cave, 20 feet across and 30 feet deep. Steaming, bubbling volcanic mud—heated by a subterranean thermal source—filled the entire base of the sinkhole. The tunnel continued on the opposite side of the cave.
But the Nazis had once again bridged this gap—so West’s crew ran across the bridge, then promptly kicked it into the sinkhole behind them.
The Second Staircase (Descending)
They emerged on the other side of the bend—where they fired some new flares—and beheld a steep staircase that plunged down the curving wall of the chasm before them, hugging it all the way down to the water at its base.
Indeed, the staircase seemed to continue into the water . . . right into the mouth of a swirling whirlpool.
But yet again, the Nazis had bridged this peril with a gangway.
West flew down the stairs—running beneath a large and rather ominous wall-hole mounted above the tunnel’s doorway.
‘Jack!’ Wizard called. ‘Trigger stones! Find them and point them out for the rest of us, will you!’
West did so, avoiding any step that was askew or suspicious, and identifying it for the next person in their line.
Their progress was slowed at two places along the staircase— where the stairs had decayed and fallen away, meaning they had to make precarious jumps over the voids.
It was just as the last man in their line—Pooh Bear—was leaping over the second void that another CIEF trooper appeared at the top of the staircase!
Pooh Bear jumped.
The CIEF man charged.
And in his hurry, Pooh Bear landed awkwardly . . . and slipped . . . and fell, dropping clumsily onto his butt, and landing squarely on a trigger stone.
‘Blast!’ Pooh Bear swore.
Everyone froze, and turned.
‘You stupid, stupid Arab. . . ’ Stretch muttered.
‘Stretch . . . not now,’ West snapped.
An ominous rumbling came from the wall-hole at the top of the long curving staircase.
‘Let me guess,’ Stretch said. ‘A big round boulder is going to roll out of that hole and chase us down the stairs, just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.’
Not exactly.
Three wooden boulders, all a metre in diameter and clearly heavy, came rushing out of the hole in quick succession—and each was fitted with hundreds of outward-pointing bronze nails.
They must have weighed 100 kilograms each and they bounded down the stairway, booming with every impact, bearing down on the team.
West scooped up Lily. ‘Go! Go! Go!’
The team bolted down the stairs, chased by the nail-ridden boulders.
So did the lone CIEF trooper.
West came to the base of the stairs, to the Nazi gangway balanced across the whirlpool there at an odd angle.
He sprang across it, leading Lily by the hand, followed by Zoe and Big Ears, then Wizard and Stretch.
But the CIEF man was also fleet-footed and, chased by the nail-boulders, he hurdled the two voids easily and almost caught up with Pooh Bear, running last of all, red-faced and breathless.
But at the final moment, Pooh dived forward, leaping full-stretch onto the gangway. The CIEF man did the same, but in the instant he leapt into the air, the first of the nail-boulders slammed into him, piercing his body with at least twenty jagged nails, and swept him into the whirlpool at the base of the stairs, closely followed by the other two boulders, which bounced off the gangway’s handrails and away into the water.
‘Ouch. . . ’ said Pooh Bear, lying on the gangway.
‘Come on, Pooh!’ West called. ‘No time for resting now.’
‘Resting? Resting! Pity those of us who don’t have your energy, Captain West.’ And so with a groan, Pooh Bear hauled himself up and took off after the others.
The Drowning Cage
Crossing the