"Go left and left again!" West yelled down. "Back around the Louvre! Back to the Obelisk!"
The bus took the bends fast, and West came down to look over Stretch"s shoulder.
"When we get there, what then?" Stretch asked.
West peered forward-and saw the Obelisk appear beyond the rushing line of trees to their left, its base still shrouded by scaffolding.
"I want you to ram into the scaffolding."
The double-decker bus screamed onto the Place de la Concorde, almost tipping over with its speed.
The guards at the scaffolding surrounding the Obelisk realised just in time what it was going to do and leapt out of the way, diving clear a moment before the bus slammed into the near corner of the scaffold structure and obliterated a whole chunk of it.
The bus shuddered to a halt- -and the tiny figure of Jack West could be seen leaping from its open top deck onto onto the second level of the scaffolding with some rope looped over his shoulder and climbing gear in his hands. the second level of the scaffolding with some rope looped over his shoulder and climbing gear in his hands.
Up the scaffolding West ran, until he came to the topmost level and saw the Obelisk itself.
The size of a bell tower, it was totally covered in deeply-engraved hieroglyphics. It soared into the sky high above him.
The hieroglyphs were large and carved in horizontal lines- approximately three glyphs to a line, depicting pharaonic cartouches, images of Osiris, and animals: falcons, wasps and in the second line from the very top, owls.
Using the deeply-carved hieroglyphs as hand- and footholds, West clambered up the ancient Obelisk like a child scampering up a tall tree.
Stretch"s voice exploded through his earpiece. "West! I"ve got a visual on six police cars approaching fast along the Champs-elysees!"
"How far away?"
"About 90 seconds, if that ..." ..."
"Keep me posted. Although somehow I think we"re going to have more to worry about than the Paris cops."
West scaled the great stone needle quickly, climbing higher and higher, until even the big red bus looked tiny beneath him.
He came to the top, more than seventy feet above the ground. The Sun reflecting off the golden pyramidion at its peak was blinding.
He recalled the quote from Hessler"s notebook: THREAD THE POWER OF RA THROUGH THE EYES OF.
GREAT RAMESES"S TOWERING NEEDLES, FROM THE SECOND OWL ON THE FIRST.
TO THE THIRD ON THE SECOND ....
... WHEREBY ISKENDER"S FINAL RESTING PLACE WILL BE REVEALED.
"The third owl on the second obelisk," he said aloud.
Sure enough, on the second line of this obelisk-the second obelisk from Luxor-there were three carved owls standing side-by-side.
And near the head of the third one was a small circle depicting the Sun.
He imagined that very few people in history had actually seen this carving up close, since it was designed to sit so high above the populace-but up close, the carved image of the disc-like Sun looked odd, as if it were not a carved image but rather ...well ...a plug plug in the stone. in the stone.
West grabbed the plug and pulled it free- -to reveal a horizontal cavity roughly two fingers wide and perfectly round in shape, that bored right through right through the Obelisk. the Obelisk.
Like a kid scaling a coconut tree, West clambered around the other side of the Obelisk"s peak, where he found and extracted a second matching plug and suddenly, looking through the bore-hole, he could see right through the ancient Obelisk!
"West! Hurry! The cops are almost here..."
West ignored him, yanked from his jacket two high-tech devices: a laser altimeter, to measure the exact height of the bore-hole, and a digital surveyor"s inclinometer, to measure the exact angle of the bore-hole, both vertically and laterally.
With these measurements, he could then go to Luxor in Egypt and recreate this obelisk "virtually", and thus deduce the location of Alexander the Great"s Tomb.
His altimeter beeped. Got the height.
He aimed his inclinometer through the bore-hole. It beeped. Got the angles.
Go!
And he was away, sliding down the Obelisk with his feet splayed wide, like a fireman shooting down a ladder.
His feet hit the scaffolding just as six cop cars screeched to a halt around the perimeter of the Place de la Concorde and disgorged a dozen cap-wearing Parisian cops.
"Stretch! Fire her up! Get moving," West called as he ran across the top level of the three-storey scaffold structure. "I"ll get there the short way!"
The bus reversed out of the scaffolding, then Stretch grinded the gears and the big red bus lurched forward, just as Jack West took a flying leap off the top level and sailed down through the air...
...landing with a thump on the top deck of the bus, a second before it sped away toward the River Seine.
From the moment of their daring heist at the Louvre, other forces had been launched into action.
As one would expect, a theft from the Louvre instantly shot across the Paris police airwaves-airwaves that were monitored by other forces of the state.
What Stretch didn"t know was that the Paris police had been outranked at the highest levels and taken off this pursuit and taken off this pursuit.
The chase would be carried out by the French Army.
Just as West had antic.i.p.ated.
And so, as the big red double-decker bus shot away from the Obelisk and its wrecked outer structure, the Parisian police didn"t follow. They just maintained their positions around the perimeter of the Place de la Concorde.
Moments later, five green-painted heavily-armed fast-attack reconnaissance vehicles whooshed whooshed past the cop cars and shot off after the great ungainly bus. past the cop cars and shot off after the great ungainly bus.
Horns honked and sirens blared as the double-decker bus roared down the Quai des Tuileries on the edge of the River Seine for the second time that day-weaving between the thin daytime traffic, blasting through red lights, causing all manner of havoc.
Behind it were the five French Army recon vehicles.
Each was a compact three-man scout car known as a Panhard VBL. Fitted with a turbo-charged four-wheel-drive diesel engine and a sleek arrow-shaped body, the Panhard was a swift and nimble all-terrain vehicle that looked like an armour-plated version of a sports 4x4.
The Panhards chasing West were fitted with every variety of gun turret: some had long-barrelled 12.7 mm machine guns, others had fearsome-looking TOW missile launchers.
Within moments of the chase beginning, they were all over the speeding bus.
They opened fire, shattering every window on the bus"s left-hand side-a second before the bus roared into a tunnel, blocking their angle of fire.
Two of the Army Panhards tried to squeeze past the bus inside the tunnel, but Stretch swerved toward them, ramming them into the wall of the tunnel, grinding them against it.
With nowhere to go, both Panhards skidded and flipped ...and rolled ...tumbling end over end until they crashed to twin halts on their roofs.
On the upper deck, Pooh Bear and West rocked with every swerve, tried to return fire. Pooh spied one of the TOW missile launchers on one Panhard.
"They"ve got missiles!" he yelled.
West called, "They won"t use them! They can"t risk destroying the Piece!"
"West!" Stretch"s voice came over their radios. "It"s only a matter of time before they barricade off this road! What do we do?"
"We drive faster!" West replied. "We have to get to the Charles de Gaulle Bridge-"
Shoom-!
-they blasted out of the tunnel, back into sunlight, just in time to see two French Army helicopters sweep into positions above them.
They were two very different types of chopper: one was a small Gazelle gunship, sleek and fast and bristling with guns and missile pods.
The other was bigger and much scarier: it was a Super Puma troop carrier, the French equivalent of the American Super Stallion. Big and tough, a Super Puma could carry twenty-five fully armed troops.
Which was exactly what this chopper was carrying.
As it flew low over the top of the speeding double-decker bus, along the rising-and-falling roadway on the north bank of the Seine, its side door slid open and drop-ropes were flung from within it-and the French plan became clear.
They were going to storm the bus-the moving moving bus! bus!
At the same moment, three of the pursuing Panhards swept up alongside the bus, surrounding it.
"I think we"re screwed already," Stretch said flatly.
But he yanked on his steering anyway-ramming hard into the Panhard to his right, forcing it clear off the roadway, right through through the low guard-rail fence ...where it shot high into the air, wheels spinning, and went crashing down into the river with a gigantic splash. the low guard-rail fence ...where it shot high into the air, wheels spinning, and went crashing down into the river with a gigantic splash.
Up on the top deck, West tried to fire at the hovering Super Puma above him, but a withering volley from the Gazelle gunship forced him to dive for the floor. Every single pa.s.senger seat on the top deck of the bus was ripped to shreds by the barrage of bullets.
"Stretch! More swerving, please!" he yelled, but it was too late.
The first two daredevil French paratroopers from the Super Puma landed with twin thumps on the open top deck of the moving double-decker bus only a few feet in front of him.
They saw West instantly, lying in the aisle between the seats: exposed, done for. They whipped up their guns and pulled the trigg- -just as the floor beneath them erupted with holes, bullet holes from a shocking burst of fire from somewhere underneath underneath them. them.
The two French troopers fell, dead, and a moment later, Pooh Bear"s head popped up from the stairwell.
"Did I get them? Did I get them? Are you okay?" he said to West.
"I"m all right," West said, hurrying down the stairs to the lower deck. "Come on, we"ve gotta get to the Charles de Gaulle Bridge before this bus falls apart!"
The rising-and-falling riverside drive that they were speeding along would normally have been a tourist"s delight: after leaving the Louvre behind, the roadway swooped by the first of the two islands that lie in the middle of the Seine, the Ile de la Cite. Numerous bridges spanning the river rushed by on the right, giving access to the island.
If West"s team continued along the riverside road, they would soon arrive at the a.r.s.enal precinct-the area where the Bastille once stood.
After that came two bridges: the Pont d"Austerlitz and the Pont Charles de Gaulle, the latter of which sat beside the very modern headquarters of the Ministry of Economics, Finances and Industry, which itself sat next-door to the Gare de Lyon, the large train station that serviced south-eastern France with high-speed trains.
The big red tourist bus whipped along the riverside road, weaving through traffic, ramming the pursuing Army cars with wild abandon.
It shot underneath several overpa.s.ses and over some raised intersections. At one stage the spectacular Notre Dame Cathedral whizzed by on the right, but this was perhaps the only tourist bus in the world that didn"t care for the sight.
As soon as West had abandoned the upper deck of the bus, the French troops on the Super Puma above him went for it in earnest-despite Stretch"s best efforts at evasive weaving.
And within a minute, they took it.
First, two troopers landed on the open top deck, whizzing down the drop-ropes suspended from the chopper. They were quickly followed by two more, two more and two more.
The eight French troopers now moved to the rear stairwell of the bus, guns up, preparing to storm the lower deck...
...just as, downstairs, West called: "Stretch! They"re crawling all over the roof! See that exit ramp up ahead! Roll us over it!"
Immediately ahead of them was another overpa.s.s, with an exit ramp rising to meet it on the right-hand side of the riverside drive. A low concrete guard-rail fence separated this ramp from the roadway which continued on underneath the overpa.s.s as a tunnel.
"What?" Stretch shouted back.
"Just do it!" West yelled. "Everybody, grab onto something! Hang on!"
They hit the exit ramp at speed, and rose up it briefly- -at which moment Stretch yanked left left on the steering wheel, and the bus lurched leftward, hitting the concrete guard-rail and... on the steering wheel, and the bus lurched leftward, hitting the concrete guard-rail and...
...tipped over it!
The double-decker bus overbalanced shockingly and rolled over over the concrete fence, using the fence as a fulcrum. As such, the entire double-decker bus the concrete fence, using the fence as a fulcrum. As such, the entire double-decker bus rolled rolled, going fully upside-down-off the exit ramp, back down back down onto the roadway proper-where it onto the roadway proper-where it slammed slammed down onto its open-topped roof... down onto its open-topped roof...
...crushing all eight of the French troops on it!
But it wasn"t done yet.
Since it had tipped over the dividing rail from a considerable height, it still had a lot of sideways momentum.
So the big bus continued continued to roll, bouncing off its now-crushed roof and coming upright once again, commencing on a second roll-only to bang hard against the far wall of the sunken roadway, which had the incredible effect of to roll, bouncing off its now-crushed roof and coming upright once again, commencing on a second roll-only to bang hard against the far wall of the sunken roadway, which had the incredible effect of righting the bus righting the bus and plonking it back on its own wheels, so that now it was travelling once again on the riverside drive and heading into the tunnel having just performed a full 360-degree roll! and plonking it back on its own wheels, so that now it was travelling once again on the riverside drive and heading into the tunnel having just performed a full 360-degree roll!