The ceiling kept descending.
Five feet.
West was very worried now.
Four feet.
The pythons cut and run-fleeing for their wall-holes, knowing what was about to happen.
Three feet...
"Horus ...!" West yelled.
In the bucket-shaft, Horus searched patiently, just as she had been taught.
And she found the reset catch: a little hinged hook that, when released, righted the empty bucket.
Horus bit into the hook with her tiny beak...
Two feet...
West called: "Horus! Come on! on! You can do this! Just like we practised at home!" You can do this! Just like we practised at home!"
One foot...
He and Pooh Bear now had only their upturned faces above the surface of the quicksand.
Six inches...
"Take a deep breath, Pooh," West said.
They both sucked in as much oxygen as they could hold.
In the bucket-shaft, Horus continued to bite at the reset hook. It wouldn"t budge.
In the Pit, the lowering ceiling met the surface of the quicksand ...and touched it, pushing West and Pooh Bear under- -just as Horus got a good grip on the hook with her beak ...and lifted it!
The response was instantaneous.
With a silent lurch, the great empty bucket rolled upwards on its hinges, offering its open mouth to the cascade of water pouring down above it.
The bucket immediately began to fill with water.
And with the added weight, the great clay bucket now began to lower lower on its chains... on its chains...
...which by virtue of the pulley now pulled the ceiling of the Pit upward...
...raising it off the quicksand pool!
West and Pooh Bear burst up from underneath the quicksand, gasping for air.
As the ceiling above them rose, they grabbed the two handrungs nearest the exit-end, and allowed the ceiling to hoist them all the way up the Pit.
Hauled up by its water mechanism, the ceiling slab returned to its original position, and West and Pooh suddenly found themselves hanging in front of the exit tunnel-where Horus now sat proudly, staring triumphantly up at West.
He swung into the tunnel, crouched before her, gave her a much-loved rat treat.
Horus gobbled it up whole.
"Thank you, my friend, nice work," he said. "You saved our bacon. Imhotep didn"t count on grave-robbers having friends like you. Now let"s get the h.e.l.l out of here."
Through the Priests" Entrance they bolted-West, Pooh Bear and Horus.
Ten minutes later, they emerged from an inconspicuous cleft in a rocky hillside, a barren desolate hillside that faced onto a barren desolate valley that appeared to have no natural exits. The valley was on the Iranian side of the Hanging Gardens, far from the waterfall entrance on the Iraqi side.
But it was so inhospitable, so bleak, that no human being had had any reason to come here for 2,000 years.
West froze as a thought struck him.
There was no sign of Mustapha Zaeed.
He wondered where Zaeed had got to. Had he at some point on this journey called his terrorist pals and told them to pick him up here?
West thought about that: perhaps Zaeed had triggered a locater signal when they"d stopped by at his old hideout cave in Saudi Arabia. West knew Zaeed had grabbed other things while they were there, including the beautiful black-jade box filled with fine sand.
He considered the rogue signal that he"d picked up on the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus on the way to Iraq. He"d first believed it had been sent out by Stretch, alerting the Israelis to their location. on the way to Iraq. He"d first believed it had been sent out by Stretch, alerting the Israelis to their location.
But something Avenger had said to Stretch inside the Gardens now made West revise that belief. When he had first appeared, Avenger had said to Stretch: "I apologise for surprising you in this way."
Stretch hadn"t known of the impending arrival of Avenger"s team.
The Israelis had been tracking him and he hadn"t known and he hadn"t known. Now West believed that the Israelis had been tracking Stretch from the very start via some other kind of bug-probably a surgically-implanted locater chip that Stretch never knew he"d been carrying.
Granted, the signal from the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus could also have been sent by Zaeed-alerting his allies to his whereabouts-but West doubted that. could also have been sent by Zaeed-alerting his allies to his whereabouts-but West doubted that.
He actually had another theory about that rogue signal, a theory that made him sick to his stomach.
But now, right now, he worried if by breaking Zaeed out of Guantanamo Bay he had unleashed an unspeakable terror on the world.
Zaeed wasn"t going to abandon his quest for the Capstone, not when he knew where the final Piece could be found, not when it was this close. The terrorist wasn"t out of this race. He would reappear before the end.
West radioed Sky Monster and arranged to rendezvous with the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus on some flat ground at the far end of the valley, then he and Pooh Bear headed out across the valley on foot. on some flat ground at the far end of the valley, then he and Pooh Bear headed out across the valley on foot.
They never saw the lone figure crouched on the rocky hill high above them watching them as they did so.
Never saw the figure pursue them from a careful distance.
Twenty-five minutes later, West and Pooh Bear, with Horus, strode up the rear loading ramp of the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus, dirty, bruised and beaten.
Inside the main cabin, West paced, thinking aloud. Pooh Bear and Sky Monster just watched him.
"Every move we"ve made, Judah"s known it ahead of time," he said. "We arrived in the Sudan, and he showed up soon after. Tunisia, the same. And in Kenya, h.e.l.l, he got there before before we did. He was waiting for us. And now Iraq." we did. He was waiting for us. And now Iraq."
"It"s like he"s had a beacon on us all along," Pooh Bear said. "A tracing signal."
West pursed his lips, repeated Judah"s taunt from before: ""There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow. There is nowhere on this Earth you can hide from me." I think he"s had a tracking beacon on us all along."
"What? How? Who? Who?"
West looked hard at Pooh Bear.
"Four missing days, Pooh. Four missing days from my life."
"What are you talking about, Huntsman?" Sky Monster asked.
"Zaeed had a chip in the neck, implanted while he was imprisoned in Cuba, making him forever traceable by the Americans. I can"t account for four days of my life, Pooh, four days when I was exclusively in American hands when I was exclusively in American hands."
West stood up abruptly and grabbed the AXS-9 digital spectrum a.n.a.lyser-the same bug detector that he had used before to test for the locater chip in Zaeed"s neck.
He flicked it on, and fanned it over Pooh"s entire body. Nothing. No bugs.
Sky Monster was next. Also nothing. As expected.
West looked at them both...
...before he turned the wand on himself, running it up his entire body.
Legs: nothing.
Waist: nothing.
Chest: nothing.
Then the spectrum a.n.a.lyser came level with his head, and it started beeping off the charts.
Pooh Bear and Sky Monster gasped, speechless.
West just closed his eyes, cursing himself.
All the time he"d thought there had been a traitor in their midst-in particular, Stretch or Zaeed-but there had been no such traitor.
It had been him him.
He had been the one leading the Americans to their location every single time. had been the one leading the Americans to their location every single time.
Four days of his life: those four days he had spent in that American military hospital after his accident in the wargame exercises at Coronado.
Four days during which the Americans had tagged him with a microchip, so that they could keep track of him over the ensuing years.
Why? Who knew-because he had talent, because they wanted to keep track of everyone everyone, friend and foe alike.
West couldn"t believe it. Australia was a close ally of America"s. And this was how the US treated it. America, it seemed, treated its allies no differently than its enemies. No, it was simpler than that: America treated everyone everyone outside the US as a potential enemy. outside the US as a potential enemy.
He thought about Judah. Somewhere amid Judah"s equipment there was a GPS-equipped computer with a map of the world on it and a little blinking blip that represented Jack West Jr-a blip that had represented him for nearly 15 years for nearly 15 years.
The Americans had known about the safehouse in Kenya since Day One.
Likewise they had known about the mine in the Sudan from the moment he"d got there; it was the same for the Tunisian coast- which only West and Wizard knew about. It also meant that Judah and the Americans would know it was West who had busted Zaeed out of Guantanamo Bay. They wouldn"t have liked that.
West strode across the cabin, watched in stunned silence by Pooh and Sky Monster. Over by the rearmost console, he picked up the EMP gun that he had used before to neutralise the locater chip inside Zaeed"s neck.
He pointed it at his head like a man about to shoot himself- -and he pressed the trigger.
At that very moment, inside a US Black Hawk helicopter landing in Basra, a technician at a portable GPS-equipped computer snapped up.
"Colonel Judah, sir! Jack West"s locater signal just dropped out."
"Where was he when the signal disappeared?"
"Judging by the GPS, still in the vicinity of the Hanging Gardens," the tech said.
Judah smiled. "That tracer"s biometric, grafted onto the living tissue of his brain. If West dies, the tracer chip dies with him. He must have been wounded by the collapse of the ziggurat and held on this long before he died. Rest in peace, Jack ...never knowing that you led us every step of the f.u.c.king way. Fortunately, we don"t need you anymore. Kallis. Feed the men, replenish their arms, and set a course for Luxor."
LUXOR TEMPLE.
EAST BANK, LUXOR.
HATSHEPSUT"S MORTUARY TEMPLE WEST BANK, LUXOR.