Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [61]
West remembered Wizard’s newsflash from before.
‘Check the sketch. . . ’ he’d said.
With a glance back at the oncoming mud, he snatched his printout of the ancient sketch:
Okay, I’m here, he saw the right-hand aqueduct, labelled Aqueduct 2.
Max was right. This aqueduct bridge linked up with the excavation tunnel—the same tunnel that Judah had reopened with his tunnel-borer and which he was now using to get the Pieces out.
West looked up.
If he hurried, he might be able to. . .
He bolted, raced out across the high aqueduct bridge—while far below him, Judah’s CIEF team loaded their tunnel-boring vehicle with the two golden trapezoids.
On the other side of the Y-junction, Pooh Bear emerged from his aqueduct tunnel—just in time to see the aqueduct bridge in front of him get hit, spectacularly, by a rocket-propelled grenade . . . right in the middle!
One of Judah’s men had been waiting for them, keeping an eye on the bridge through the crosshairs of an RPG launcher.
The RPG hit the multi-arched bridge in the exact centre. A huge explosion billowed outwards, hurling bricks and blasted rock in every direction. When the cloud dissipated it revealed that the aqueduct bridge was now in two pieces, with a gaping void in its middle.
Pooh Bear spun—saw the long finger of dark mud stretching down the tunnel behind him, coming inexorably closer.
And now he and his team had nowhere to go, no bridge to escape across!
‘This is terrible,’ he breathed.
West dashed across his aqueduct bridge unseen, but still pursued by the elongated finger of mud behind him.
He reached the little tunnel on the other side of the chasm and disappeared into it at speed—just as Judah’s people clamped shut the folding front section of their M-113 tunnel-borer and withdrew the temporary bridge.
Judah shouted, ‘CIEF units, fall in! We’re leaving!’
The tunnel-boring vehicle was like a tank, with great tracked wheels and a box-shaped armoured body. The main hold of this body was hollow and it usually held troops. When used as a tunnel-borer, however, it conveyed crushed rock through its body and disposed of it out the rear, laying it against the walls of the tunnel as hard-packed dirt.
Now that the tunnel had been bored, the hold of the M-113 was being used to house the two Pieces of the Capstone.
Four armed CIEF men sat in there with them, guarding them.
The rest of Judah’s force leapt into four cage-framed Light Strike Vehicles—dune buggies essentially—to escort their prize out of the excavation tunnel.
By this time, Cal Kallis and his team, who had been on West’s side of the main chasm, had crossed the main chasm via the broken aqueduct and joined Judah.
‘Mr Kallis,’ Judah said, pointing up at Pooh Bear’s team, trapped up on the partially-destroyed left-hand aqueduct. ‘West’s people do not leave this place alive. I want snipers taking them down one at a time if necessary. Join us when you’re done.’
Then Judah turned and jumped into one of the chase cars.
The CIEF convoy fired up their engines and moved off into the tunnel—two of the small LSVs in front, followed by the big M-113 tunnel-borer, then the other two LSVs behind.
They left Cal Kallis and his men at the mouth of the tunnel, standing at the waterline—eyeing Pooh Bear’s trapped team.
Pooh Bear spun to check the mud behind him. It was close now— only ten metres away and approaching fast.
The aqueduct bridge before him now offered no escape.
But about twenty metres across the cliff-face from him was one of the Refuge’s high-spired towers—and it was connected to Pooh Bear’s bridge by an inch-thin ledge.
‘This way!’ he ordered the others.
And so they edged out across the ledge, standing on their tiptoes, Wizard, Zoe and Lily,