Part 38 (2/2)

Now completely alone, West breathed, 'f.u.c.k me ...' me ...'

The wider pit continued to fill with sticky quicksand-rising past his waist.

And seeing Schaefer die had made him completely lose his bearings. He didn't know which was the right exit door. He was starting to panic himself.

Only the bravest souls ... ...

Only the bravest ... ...

Don't panic, Jack. For G.o.d's sake, don't panic- And then he heard Lily scream.

He spun, saw her behind the bars of the moving cage-Avenger and the others had retreated back up their entry steps, but Lily was crouched on the stairs, peering through the doorway, trying to see West.

'Daddy ...no!' Lily yelled.

And suddenly, amid all the mayhem, all the pouring sand and the turning of the cage, time stood still for West.

Daddy?

Did she just say 'Daddy'?

And in that single flas.h.i.+ng instant, a wave of adrenaline surged through him-a feeling that he had only ever felt once before, inside that volcano in Uganda, exactly ten years previously, when he had held her in his arms as a crying baby.

I ...Am ...Not ...Going ...To ...Die...

I am not going to let her down.

Clarity returned.

Only the f.u.c.king bravest ... ...

And it hit him: Brave men don't panic. They remain calm in the face of danger. Brave men don't panic. They remain calm in the face of danger.

Right.

He spun, his mind now hyper-alert, thinking not panicking, no longer rattled by the elaborate deathtrap he found himself in.

No sooner had he done so than the answer came.

In fact, it was Lily's shout that provided the answer.

According to the map, the correct exit door was the one directly opposite her her door. door.

Lily, West realised, was his advantage. Most tomb robbers would not leave someone behind in the entry doorway-they'd all walk into the pit together, go for the rubies on the winged lion, trigger the trap and lose their bearings, and then die.

'Don't give up on me, kiddo!' he called. 'I'm not dead yet!'

He started wading powerfully across the pit, past the lion statue, over toward the stone doorway opposite Lily's door. He arrived there as the swirling pool of sand reached his chest.

The cage rotated, bringing its gate into alignment with that door.

Gate and door became one.

West surged through it, pus.h.i.+ng through the quicksand, and found himself standing in a tight coffin-sized s.p.a.ce just like the one Schaefer had entered-and in a single horrifying instant, he knew that he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

No, he hadn't.

It wasn't an enclosed s.p.a.ce at all-there was just a sharp right-angled bend in the pa.s.sageway here, a bend that led to a set of narrow steps which themselves led ...upward!

West clambered up those steps, out of the deadly pool of quicksand, and emerged in open s.p.a.ce, on a low path again, safely on the other side of the well. safely on the other side of the well.

As he crawled onto the path, he must have depressed a trigger stone that reset the trap, because suddenly the cage rotated back to its original position and the pit drained of quicksand.

Across the top of the well, he could see Avenger.

'You're all going to have to come across!' he called. 'It'll seem disorienting, but I'll stand at the correct door. Just come to me.'

And so the rest of the group all crossed the well safely.

It took two trips, and each time the pit filled with quicksand and its cage revolved dizzyingly, but knowing the correct exit they all just forged across the quicksand and exited the pit before it had even risen to knee-height.

When she emerged out the other side, Lily leapt up into West's arms and hugged him tightly.

'Don't leave me,' she whispered.

He held her firmly. 'No matter how bad it gets, kiddo, I'll never leave you. Always remember that.'

Thus reunited, they pressed on and, following the submerged path on the other side of the gazebo, they arrived at the ziggurat that lay in the very centre of the supercavern.

And there, looming above the ziggurat like some kind of otherworldly s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, suspended from the cave's ceiling, impossibly huge, was the great stalact.i.te that was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

They climbed the ziggurat quickly.

Very quickly. In fact, there was not a single trap on the structure's ceremonial stairway.

At first, West was surprised by this, but then he realised that this was the first Ancient Wonder they had actually entered entered on this mission. on this mission.

All of the other Pieces they had encountered so far-those of the Colossus, the Pharos, the Mausoleum, the Statue of Zeus and the Temple of Artemis-had been removed removed from their original structures. They had all been guarded by trap systems built from their original structures. They had all been guarded by trap systems built after after the original structures had been lost or destroyed. the original structures had been lost or destroyed.

Not so the Gardens.

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