Seven Ancient Wonders Read Online Free

cylindrical passage opened up in the darkness beyond this hole, bending vertically upward.
    ‘It’s this one!’ He called back as he started ferrying his team into it, pulling them through.
    Big Ears and Lily went first, then Wizard—
    The ceiling was four feet off the water’s surface.
    Fuzzy and Zoe clambered up next.
    The final two troopers in West’s team rolled into the hole and last of all went West himself, disappearing into the rectangular hole just as the lowering stone ceiling rumbled past him and hit the surface of the water chamber with a resounding
boom.

     
     
    The Slipway and the Second Gate
     
    The tight vertical passage from the spike-hole rose for about 50 feet before opening onto a long tunnel that sloped upward at a steep angle, boring up into the heart of the mountain.
    West fired a new amber flare up into the tunnel.
    It was the ancient slipway.
    About the width of a car, the slipway was effectively a long straight stairway flanked by two flat stone trackways that abutted the walls of the tunnel. These trackways had once acted like primitive railway tracks: the ancient miners had slid giant containers filled with waste up and down them, aided by the hundreds of stone steps that lay in between them.
    ‘Fuzz,’ West said, peering up the tunnel. ‘Distance?’
    Fuzzy aimed a PAQ-40 laser rangefinder up into the darkness.
    As he did so, West keyed his radio: ‘Noddy, report.’
    ‘
The Americans aren’t here yet, Huntsman
,’ Noddy’s voice replied, ‘
but they’re closing fast. Satellite image puts their advance choppers 50 klicks out. Hurry.
’
    ‘Doing the best we can,’ West said.
    Wizard interrupted: ‘Don’t forget to tell Noddy that we’ll be out of radio contact for the time the Warblers are initiated.’
    ‘You hear that?’
    ‘
I heard. Noddy, out.
’
    Fuzzy’s rangefinder beeped. ‘I got empty space for . . .150 metres.’
    West grimaced. ‘Why do I get the feeling it isn’t empty at all.’

    He was right.
    The ascending slipway featured several traps: blasting waterfall-shafts and some ankle-breaking trap-holes.
    But the Eight just kept running, avoiding the traps, until halfway up the inclined tunnel they came to the Second Gate.
    The Second Gate was simple: a ten-foot-deep diorite pit that just fell away in front of them, with the ascending slipway continuing beyond it five yards away.
    The lower reaches of the pit, however, had no
side
walls: it just had two wide yawning 8-foot-high passageways that hit the pit at right angles to the slipway. And who knew what came out of them . . .
    ‘Diorite pit,’ West said. ‘Nothing cuts diorite except an even harder stone called
diolite
. Can’t use a pick-axe to get yourself out.’
    ‘Be careful,’ Wizard said. ‘The Callimachus Text says this Gate is connected to the next one. By crossing this one, we trigger the Third Gate’s trap-mechanism. We’re going to have to move fast.’
    ‘That’s okay,’ West said. ‘We’re really quite good at
that
.’
    They ended up crossing the pit by drilling steel rock-screws into the stone ceiling with pneumatic pressure-guns. Each rock-screw had a handgrip on it.
    But as West landed on the ledge on the other side of the pit, he discovered that the first step on that side was one large trigger stone. As soon as he touched it, the wide step immediately sunk a few inches
into
the floor—
    —and
boom!
Suddenly the ground shook and everyone spun. Something large had dropped into the darkened tunnel up ahead of them. Then an ominous
rumbling
sound came from somewhere up there.
    ‘
Shit!
The next Gate!’ West called.
    ‘Swear jar . . .’ Lily said.
    ‘Later,’ West said. ‘Now we
run
! Big Ears, grab her and follow me!’
    The Third Gate
     
    Up the steep slipway they ran, keeping to the stairs inside the rails.
    The ominous rumbling continued to echo out from the darkness above them.
    They kept running, straining up the slope, pausing only once to cross a