Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [52]
At their head stood a man of about 50, with steely black eyes and, gruesomely, no nose. It had been cut off sometime in the distant past, leaving this fellow with a grotesque misshapen stump where his nose should have been.
Yet even with this glaring facial disfigurement, it was the man’s clothing that was his most striking feature right now.
He wore steel-soled boots just like West did.
He wore a canvas jacket just like West did.
He wore a belt equipped with pony bottles, pitons and X-bars, just like West did.
The only difference was his helmet—he wore a lightweight caver’s helmet, as opposed to West’s fireman’s helmet.
He was also older than West, calmer, more confident. His small black eyes radiated experience.
He was the one man West feared more than any other on Earth. The man who had been West’s last field commander in the military. The man who had once left West for dead on the plains outside Basra in Iraq.
He was a former commander of Delta Team Six, the best within Delta, but was now the commanding officer of the CIEF, the very best special forces unit in the world.
He was Colonel Marshall Judah.
In their current positions, West and his team were marginally ahead of Judah.
Given that the paths running on either side of the chasm were identical, West’s team was one trap ahead. Judah had yet to pass the drowning cage on his side, and had just stepped out onto the base of the descending stairway over there, in doing so setting off—
—three nail-studded boulders.
The three boulders tumbled down the stairway toward Judah and his men.
Judah couldn’t have cared less.
He just nodded to three of his men, who quickly and competently erected a sturdy tripod-like barricade between their team and the oncoming nail-boulders.
The titanium-alloy barricade blocked the entire width of the stairway and the boulders slammed into it one after the other, each one being deflected by the sturdy barricade and bouncing harmlessly away into the water.
Judah never took his eyes off West.
‘How are those dreams going, Jack? Still trapped in that volcano?’ he called. ‘Still haunted by the chants and the drums?’
On his side of the chasm, West was stunned. How could Judah know that . . . ?
It was exactly the response Judah had wanted. He smiled a thin, cold smile. ‘I know even more than that, Jack! More than you can possibly suspect.’
West was rattled—but he tried not to show it.
It didn’t work.
Judah nodded at the fireman’s helmet now back on West’s head. ‘Still using that fireman’s hat, Jack? You know I never agreed with that. Too cumbersome in tight places. It always pains a teacher to see a talented student employing foolish methods.’
West couldn’t help himself—he glanced up at his helmet.
Judah followed through, driving home his edge. ‘Looks like we’ve got something of a race on our hands here, Jack. Think you can outrun me? Do you seriously think you can outrun me?’
‘Everybody,’ West said quietly to his people, not taking his eyes off Judah. ‘We have to run. Fast. Now. Go!’
West’s team bolted up the stairs, heading for the guard tower at their peak.
Judah just nodded calmly to his men, who immediately began erecting a long gangway to bypass their drowning cage and reach the ascending stairway on their side of the chasm.
The race was on.
The Guard Tower and the Gorge
West and his team ran up their stairway.
Just before the guard tower, a narrow gorge cut across their path. It was maybe fifteen feet across, with sheer vertical sides. This little gorge actually sliced all the way across the main chasm, and as such, had a twin over on the other side.
And once again, the Nazis had been helpful. It seemed that the ancient Carthaginians had built a complex chain-lowered drawbridge to span this gorge—a drawbridge that the Nazis had managed to lower into place, spanning the void.
Taking any luck they could get, West and his team sprinted across the ancient drawbridge, and arrived at the guard tower high up on the next bend in the chasm.