Seven Ancient Wonders (37 page)

As they crossed the border into Iraq, the laptop pinged.

Someone on board the plane had sent out a homing signal.

HARITHA, IRAQ 19 MARCH, 2006, 0900 HOURS 1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

To get to Haritha, the
Halicarnassus
had to skirt the port-city, Basra.

As it soared over the outskirts of Basra, Sky Monster’s voice came over the PA. ‘
Hey, Captain West, you better come up here and see this
.’

West went up to the cockpit and peered out the windows.

A long column of heavy-duty vehicles was rumbling out of Basra, heading north toward Haritha.

It was a gigantic convoy. Of American military vehicles.

Troop trucks, engineering vehicles, Humvees, jeeps, motorbikes, plus no fewer than ten Abrams battle tanks and several Black Hawk helicopters, prowling overhead.

In all, it amounted to maybe 5,000 troops.

‘How can this be?’ Zaeed asked, appearing behind West with Pooh Bear.

‘How can they be onto us
again
?’ Pooh Bear asked.

West just stared at the convoy, trying not to betray his thoughts:
Who gave us away?

‘Oh, shit!’ Sky Monster exclaimed, hearing something through his headphones. ‘The Yanks just scrambled fighters from Nasiryah. F-15s. We better find this place fast, Huntsman.’

A few minutes later, they arrived above the dusty town of Haritha, situated on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab River about fifty kilometres north of Basra.

‘Okay, Sky Monster, swing us due east,’ West said.

Sky Monster banked the
Halicarnassus
above the town, but as he did so, he and West glimpsed the highway coming from the north, from Qurna—

—and on that highway, they saw
another
column of American vehicles.

It was almost identical to the first—lots of troop trucks, Humvees and tanks; and another 5,000 men, at the very least.

West’s mind raced.

‘Judah must have had people at Qurna, searching for the waterfalls,’ he said. ‘But Qurna is the wrong junction of the rivers. He was searching too far to the north.’

‘And now—
suddenly
—he knows to come south,’ Sky Monster said pointedly. ‘How about that. . . ’

West just tapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘East and low, my friend.’

But their position was clear—with a rat in their ranks, they were now caught between
two
converging convoys of overwhelming American firepower.

If they found the Hanging Gardens—which wasn’t guaranteed— they’d have to be in and out
fast
.

Within minutes, the jagged peaks of the Zagros Mountains rose up before them, the boundary line between Iraq and Iran.

Numerous small rivers snaked their way through the range’s maze-like system of peaks and valleys—descending to the Shatt al-Arab. Waterfalls could be seen everywhere: tall thin string-like falls, short squat ones, even horseshoe-shaped ones.

There were many double-tiered waterfalls, and several quadruple-tiered falls, but as far as West could tell, there was only one set of
triple
-tiered falls in the area due east of Haritha: an absolutely stunning cascade easily 300 feet from top to bottom, that bounced over two wide rocky ledges, before flowing into a stream that wound down to the mighty al-Arab. These falls lay right at the edge
of the mountain range, looking out over the flat marshy plain of southern Iraq.

‘That’s it,’ West said. ‘That’s them. Sky Monster, bring us down anywhere you can. We drive from here. You take the
Hali
to these co-ordinates and wait for me to call.’ He handed Sky Monster a slip of paper.

‘Roger that, Huntsman.’

The
Halicarnassus
landed on the flat cracked surface of a lakebed that hadn’t seen water in 1,000 years.

No sooner had its wheels touched down than its rear loading ramp dropped open, banging onto the ground, and—
shoom!
—a second four-wheel drive Land Rover came rushing out of the big plane’s belly, bouncing down onto the mudplain and speeding off to the east, kicking up a cloud of sand behind it.

For its part, the
Halicarnassus
just powered up again and took off, heading for the secret hangar where Jack West had originally found her fifteen years before.

The Land Rover skidded to a halt before the towering triple-tiered falls. The roar of falling water filled the air.

‘Allah have mercy,’ Pooh Bear said, gazing up at the falls. At 300 feet, they were the size of a thirty-storey building.

‘There!’ West called.

A narrow stone path in the rockface led behind the lowest tier of the waterfall.

West hurried along it. The others followed. But when they arrived behind the curtain of falling water, they were confronted by something they hadn’t expected.

On every tier of the falls, the water was thrown quite a way out from the cliff-wall, propelled by its rapid speed. This meant that the actual
face
of each tier was largely water-free—except for a layer of moss and a constant trickle of dribbling water. It
also
meant that each cliff-face was
concealed
by the falls themselves.

And behind the curtains of water was a most curious feature.

Cut into the face of each rockwall was a dizzying network of ultra-narrow paths that criss-crossed up them. There were maybe six paths in total, but they wound and intersected in so many ways that the number of permutations they created was huge.

Gazing at the twisting array of pathways on the first cliff-face, West saw with dismay the alarming number of wall-holes and blade-holes that opened onto the paths.

Booby traps.

Zaeed was awed. ‘Imhotep III. A genius, he was, but a sinister genius. This is a very rare type of trap system but typical of his flair. There are many paths with deadly snares, but only one of the pathways is safe.’

‘How do we know which route is the safe one?’ Stretch asked. ‘They all seem to intertwine.’

Beside West, Lily was gazing intently at the path system behind the waterfall.

As she looked at it, something clicked in her mind.

‘I’ve seen this before . . .’ she said.

She reached into West’s backpack and extracted a printout.

It was titled: ‘
Waterfall Entrance—Refortification by Imhotep III in the time of Ptolemy Soter
’.

‘Well, would you look at that. . . ’ Stretch said.

The lines on the printed image exactly matched the layout of the pathways on the waterfall.

‘But which path is the safe route?’ Pooh Bear asked anxiously.

‘That I don’t know,’ Lily said, deflating.

‘Wait a second,’ West said. ‘Maybe you do. . . ’

Now he rifled through his pack for a few moments, before he said, ‘Got it!’

He pulled from the backpack a tattered brown leatherbound notebook.

The diary of the Nazi archaeologist, Hessler.

‘Hessler knew the safe path,’ West said, flicking the pages of the diary until he found what he was looking for.

‘Here!’ He held the diary open, revealing a page they had seen before:

Its title was ‘Safe Routes’.

West smiled.

He brought the right-hand image from this page alongside the picture of the waterfall’s paths, and everyone else saw it—the
right-hand ‘Safe Route’ matched one of the twisting paths on the waterfall diagram perfectly:

‘You know, Captain West,’ Zaeed said, ‘you’re a lot cleverer than I give you credit for. I shall have to watch you.’

‘Thanks,’ West said dryly.

As he spoke, he stole a glance at the plain behind them. In the far distance, a high dustcloud stretched across the sandplain, from horizon to horizon—a sandstorm, or perhaps something else. . . 

The dustcloud of two massive convoys.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

Up the vertical cliff-wall they went, following the safe path, with the roaring curtain of water falling behind their backs. Diffused sunlight lanced in through falling water, lighting the way.

West climbed in the lead, with Horus in his chest pouch.

Their path twisted and turned, doubling back and forth as it rose
up the cliff-face. It was so narrow that the team could only climb it in single-file, and it was covered in slippery moss, so their progress was slow. That said, without the map, they could never have figured out the safe route up the falls.

At both of the middle ledges in the waterfall, the path burrowed into the rockface as a tunnel—a tunnel that emerged above the ledge, giving access to the next level.

And so after twenty minutes of careful climbing, they reached the top of the third rockface. There, just below the lip of the uppermost ledge of the falls, immediately beneath a stunning translucent veil of fast-flowing water, the path ended. . . 

. . . right in front of a third low tunnel—a passageway that bored directly into the cliff-face, disappearing into darkness.

The entrance to this tunnel, however, was different from the lower ones.

It was more ornate, despite the fact it was covered in overgrown green moss.

The tunnel’s entry frame—every side covered with hieroglyphs—was beautifully cut into the rockface, in a perfectly square shape. Its smooth walls retained this shape as they receded into blackness.

And on the lintel above the door, partly obscured by trickling water and moss, was a familiar carving: