Part 43 (1/2)

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, pus.h.i.+ng 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.