Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [59]
The staircase giving access to the island was indeed one great big trigger stone. And the domed roof was solid diorite—offering no purchase for drilled handholds.
The situation was clear, and typical of Imhotep VI: to get onto the raised island, you had to trigger the trap.
Which meant Judah and his men would have to be quick.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It is an Imhotep VI, Type 4 trap. Time will be short. Prepare the rollers. I want an eight-man lifting team for the Mirror Piece, and a four-man team for the Pillar Piece.’
‘Do you want us to take the Mirror and the Pillar themselves?’ one lieutenant asked.
‘I don’t give a shit about the Mirror and the Pillar. All I want are the Pieces,’ Judah snapped.
The CIEF men got into position.
They brought forward two six-wheeled ‘roller units’—to convey the heavy Pieces out.
‘Okay, here we go,’ Judah said.
And with those words, he trod on the first step of the staircase, setting off the deadly trap mechanism.
At that moment, several things happened.
The trooper who had been peering down West’s tunnel placed his night-vision goggles to his eyes—and immediately saw West, crouched in the tunnel like a trapped animal.
The trooper whipped up his Colt Commando—
Bam!
Gunshot.
From West.
The trooper dropped dead, hit right between the eyes.
In the chamber, three other CIEF men saw their comrade go down and they charged for the right-hand arched tunnel, leading with their guns.
But at the exact moment the CIEF trooper fell, Judah had stepped on the stairway, setting off its trap mechanism.
And the mighty nature of that trap meant he didn’t see the CIEF trooper behind him fall.
For as Judah stepped onto the trigger stone, the great granite dam at the far end of the chamber instantly began to lower, releasing the pool of boiling volcanic mud behind it into the chamber!
With a titanic whoosh, the foul stinking body of mud oozed over the lowering dam and began to fan out slowly into the round chamber.
Judah’s men rushed forward, clambering up onto the central island, where they pushed the Mirror and Pillar from their bases.
The spreading body of mud split into two fat fingers that oozed around both sides of the island. . .
A quick wipe to each base revealed its glittering golden surface beneath the layer of ash.
Then the CIEF teams grabbed the two bases, moving fast.
The fingers of mud were two-thirds of the way around the island now and moving quickly, ready to devour anything that lay in their paths. . .
Leaving the Pharos’s Mirror and the Mausoleum’s Pillar lying pathetically on their sides on the island, Judah’s team bounded off the raised platform, returning to the chamber’s main doorway just as the two creeping fingers of molten mud enveloped the base of the island and touched, surrounding the island completely, sealing it off.
But the mud continued to flow, spreading ever outward. . .
Judah’s eight-man A-team loaded the Mirror’s base onto one of the six-wheeled rollers—a couple of them noting that unlike the other Piece, the Pharos Piece had a human-shaped indentation carved into its underside. Curious. But they didn’t have time to examine it now.
The B-team loaded the Mausoleum Piece onto their roller.
And then they were off, led by Judah, racing back down the entry tunnel with the two large golden trapezoids in their midst.
By this time, the three CIEF men who had seen West’s victim fall arrived at the right-hand arched tunnel—but with the spreading mud closing in behind them.
Guns up, they peered down the tunnel and saw West, trapped, dead to rights. . .
. . . a moment before they were all assailed by a withering volley of gunfire from somewhere behind them.
The three CIEF men convulsed in grotesque spasms, erupting in a thousand blood-spurts, peppered by automatic gunfire.
This volley of gunfire had come from the left-hand arched tunnel, on the other side of the main entrance, where Pooh Bear and Big Ears now stood, their Steyr-AUG