Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  But Doogie hardly noticed the man’s camouflage.

  His eyes were locked on the silenced MP-5 submachinegun that the man held, aimed right at the bridge of Doogie’s nose.

  Slowly, the camouflaged man raised his index finger to his masked lips, miming the word “Shhh,” and as he did so, Doogie noticed a second man—identically dressed—lying in the brush alongside him, and then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.

  A whole team of black wraiths lay in the underbrush all around him.

  “What the fuck—” Reichart said as he caught sight of the commandos on the forest floor in front of them. He immediately reached for his gun, but a series of loud clicks—the sound of about twenty safeties being released in the darkness—made him think again.

  Doogie shut his eyes in disgust

  There must have been at least twenty men hidden in the brush in front of them.

  He shook his head sadly.

  He and Reichart had just lost the village.

  “Death lies within.” Nash frowned as he looked at the boulder wedged inside the temple’s portal.

  Race stood beside him, staring at the graphic images carved into the stone walls of the temple—the horrific scenes of the monstrous cats and the dying people.

  “Actually, it’s more literal than that,” he said, turning. “Asomarse literally means ‘looms,’ ‘Death looms within.’ “

  “And Santiago wrote it?” Nash said.

  “It looks that way.”

  At that moment, Captain Scott returned to Nash’s side. “Sir, we have a problem. I can’t get through to Reichart”

  Nash didn’t turn when he spoke, he just continued to gaze at the portal. “Interference from the mountains?”

  “The signal’s fine, sir. Reichart’s not picking up. Something’s wrong.”

  A frown creased Nash’s face. “They’re here . . .” he breathed.

  “Romano?” Scott said.

  “Damn it,” Nash said. “How did they get here so fast?”

  “What do we do?’

  “If they’re in the village, then they know we’re here.” Nash turned quickly to face Scott. “Call the base at Panama,” he said.

  “Tell them we had to go to Plan B and had to head into the mountains. Tell them to radio the air support team and instruct the pilots to home in on our portable beacons. Come on. We have to move fast.”

  Lauren, Copeland and a couple of the Green Berets hurriedly began to attach some wads of Composition-2 explosive to the boulder lodged in the portal.

  C-2 is a soft-detonating brand of plastique explosive used by archaeologists around the world to blast away obstructions in ancient structures without destroying the buildings themselves.

  While the others went quickly about their work, Nash decided to investigate the area behind the temple, in case it revealed another way in. With nothing else to do, Race took off after him.

  The two of them walked around behind the squat cube-like structure, sticking to a flat stone path that skirted its way around the tabernacle like a rail-less balcony.

  They came to the rear of the building and immediately saw a steep muddy embankment that sloped sharply away from them, down to the very edge of the tower top.

  As he stood at the top of the muddy hill, Race looked down at the tightly packed arrangement of rectangular blocks that made up the path beneath him.

  Amid all the sharply cornered, square-shaped blocks he saw a very odd-looking stone.

  It was a round stone.

  Nash saw it, too, and the two of them bent to examine it more closely.

  It was about two-and-a-half feet in diameter—about the width of a broad-shouldered man—and it lay flash against the surface of the path. Indeed, it looked to Race as if it had been slotted perfectly into a cylindrical hole within the path itself, a hole that had been carved into the square-shaped blocks around it.

  “I wonder what it was used for,” Nash said.

  “Who is Romano?” Race asked, catching Nash completely off guard.

  Race remembered Nash telling him earlier about the team of German assassins who had slaughtered those monks in their monastery in the Pyrenees—remembered the picture Nash had shown him of the leader of that group of assassins, a man named Heinrich Anistaze.

  But Nash had never mentioned anyone named Romano. Who was he and what was he doing down in the village? More importantly, why was Nash running from him?

  Nash looked up sharply at Race, his expression darkening.

  “Professor, please . . .”

  “Who is Romano?”

  “Excuse me,” Nash said, brushing roughly past him, heading back toward the front of the temple.

  Race just shook his head and followed at a distance. He came back around to the front of the temple and sat down on its wide stone steps.

  He was so tired, his mind was feeling like mush. It was just after nine now, and after traveling for nearly twelve hours, he was feeling absolutely exhausted.

  He leaned back against the steps of the temple and pulled his Army parka close around himself. A sudden, overwhelming fatigue had come over him. He rested his head on the cold stone steps and shut his eyes.

  As he did so, however, he heard a noise.

  It was a strange noise. A sharp scratching sound.

  It was quick, insistent—almost impatient—but oddly muffled. It seemed to be coming from within the stone steps beneath his head.

  Race frowned.

  It sounded like claws scraping against stone.

  He sat up instantly and looked over at Nash and the others.

  He thought about saying something to them about the scratching noise but he didn’t get the chance to, because at that moment—at that precise moment—two hawk-like attack helicopters exploded through the veil of rain above the rock tower with their rotors roaring and their guns blazing, illuminating the tower top with powerful beams from their spotlights.

  At exactly the same instant, deafening automatic gunfire rang out all around Race and a series of bullet holes smacked into the stone wall inches above his head.

  Race dived for cover behind the corner of the temple and looked back just in time to see a small army of shadowy figures burst out from the treeline at the edge of the clearing, long tongues of fire spewing forth from the muzzles of their guns, dark wraiths in the night

  THIRD MACHINATION

  Monday, January 4, 2110 hours

  Race covered his head as another volley of automatic gunfire slammed into the stone wall next to him.

  And then suddenly—shockingly—another source of gunfire exploded out from somewhere right above his head. Somewhere very, very close.

  Race opened his eyes and looked up and found himself staring directly into the spotlight of one of the choppers. He squeezed his eyes shut, saw spots, reeled from the blinding light

  As he shielded his eyes with his forearm, slowly his vision returned and it was then that he realized that the source of this new gunfire was someone standing over his own prone body, firing up at the light.

  It was Van Lewen. His bodyguard.

  Defending him with his M-16.

  Just then, one of the attack helicopters roared by overhead—its rotor blades thumping loudly, its white spotlight playing over the tower’s peak—and pummeled the muddy ground in front of Van Lewen with a burst from its side-mounted cannons, the incredible noise of the cannons drowning out the clatter of automatic gunfire on the tower top.

  Frantic voices shouted over Race’s earpiece:

  “—Can’t see where they—”

  “—too many of them!”

  And then suddenly he heard Nash’s voice: “Van Lewen! Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  A second later, Van Lewen’s fire stopped and with it the gun battle, and in the eerie stillness that followed—bathed as it was in the harsh white light of the two attack choppers circling the tower top—Race saw that he and his companions were completely surrounded by at least twenty men, all of them dressed in blac
k and armed with submachine-guns.

  The two attack helicopters began to hover above the clearing in front of the temple, illuminating it with their powerful spotlights. They were American-made AH-64 “Apache” assault choppers—skinny, evil-looking attack birds.

  Slowly, the group of shadowy figures began to emerge from the foliage at the edge of the clearing.

  All of them were heavily armed. Some held compact German-made MP-Ss, others carried extremely high-tech Steyr-AUG assault rifles.

  Race was surprised at himself, surprised at his knowledge of the range of weapons before him.

  It was all Marty’s fault, really.

  Apart from being a design engineer at DARPA and the world’s most annoying Elvis Presley fan (all of his PIN numbers and computer passwords were the same number—53310761—the King’s Army serial number), Race’s brother Marty was also a walking encyclopedia on guns.

  Ever since they were kids, right up to the last time Race had seen him nine years ago, whenever they visited a sporting goods store, Marty would be able to identify for his younger brother every make, model and manufacturer of the guns in the firearms section. The strange thing was that now, thanks to Marty’s incessant observations, Race suddenly found that he, too, could identify them all.

  He blinked, came back to the present, resumed his view of the phalanx of armed commandos gathered in front of him.

  They were all dressed in black—jet-black combat fatigues, jet-black webbing, jet-black gloves and boots.

  But by far the most striking feature of their uniforms was on their faces. Each soldier wore a charcoal-colored porcelain hockey mask over his face—a solid black featureless mask that covered everything but its wearer’s eyes. The masks made the soldiers in front of Race look cold, inhuman, almost robotic.

  Just then one of the masked commandos hurried over to where Van Lewen was standing and snatched his M-16 away from him, hastily relieved him of his other weapons.

  Then the black-clad man leaned down toward Race and smiled through his menacing black mask.

  “Guten abend,” he said wryly before yanking Race roughly to his feet.

  The rain continued to fall.

  Nash, Copeland and Lauren stood by the portal, their hands clasped tightly behind their heads. The Green Berets stood next to them, disarmed.

  Walter Chambers stared wide-eyed and stunned at the squad of masked commandos surrounding them. Gaby Lopez just eyed them all coolly.

  Van Lewen and Race were shoved alongside the others.

  Race gazed fearfully at the black-clad soldiers, stared at their cold black hockey masks. He had seen masks like that before. South American riot police wore them during extremely violent protests, to protect their faces against rocks and other hurled objects.

  He counted about twenty soldiers in total.

  Standing in the darkness behind the circle of commandos, however, was another group of people—men and women. This new group of people were not dressed in uniforms or masks. They wore civilian clothes, hiking clothes not unlike Lauren’s.

  Scientists, Race thought. German scientists who had come here in search of the thyrium idol.

  He glanced over at the portal, at the huge boulder wedged inside its doorway. Wires protruded from every side of it—the soft-detonating C-2 explosives.

  Just then, one of the commandos stepped forward and reached up to remove his black hockey mask.

  Race tensed with anticipation—waited to see the cold hard features of Heinrich Anistaze, the former Stasi agent who had led the squad of German assassins in the bloody slaughter at that monastery.

  The commando removed his mask.

  Race frowned. He didn’t recognize him.

  It wasn’t Anistaze.

  Rather, he was a stout, older man, with a round, creased face and a bushy gray mustache.

  Race wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

  The German leader didn’t say a word as he brushed roughly past Race and crouched down in front of the portal.

  He examined the assorted wires leading out from the boulder and snorted. Then he dropped the cables and walked over to Rank Nash.

  He stared imperiously down his nose at the retired Army colonel, evaluating him, appraising him.

  And then suddenly he spun around and barked an order to his troops. “Feldwebel Dietrich, bringen Sie sie in das Dorf und sperren Sie sie ein! Hauptmann von Dirksen, bereiten Sie alles vor um den Tempel zu offnen.”

  Race translated the words in his head: “Sergeant Dietrich, bring them to the village and lock them up. Captain von Dirksen, prepare to open the temple.”

  Led by a German sergeant named Dietrich and surrounded by six of the masked German commandos, the ten Americans were marched unceremoniously back across the rope bridge and down the spiraling pathway.

  When they came to the bottom of the path, they were directed through the narrow fissure in the plateau that led back to the riverside path. After about twenty minutes of walking, they arrived back at the village.

  But the village had changed.

  Two enormous halogen floodlights illuminated the main street, bathing it in artificial light. The two Apache helicopters that Race had seen up on the tower top now sat at rest in the middle of the street About a dozen German troops stood at the river’s edge, staring out at the river.

  Race followed their gaze and saw his team’s battered Hueys resting up against the edge of the riverbank. When seen alongside the two sleek Apaches, Frank Nash’s Hueys seemed old and clunky.

  It was then that Race saw what the German commandos were really looking at.

  It lay beyond the two Hueys, resting on the river’s surface, cloaked in the steadily falling night rain.

  A seaplane.

  But this was no ordinary seaplane. It must have had a wingspan of at least two hundred feet. And its underbelly—that part of it that rested majestically in the water—was absolutely enormous, easily larger than the main body of the Galaxy that had flown Race and the others into Peru. Four turbojet engines were slung underneath its massive wings, while two bulbous pontoons stretched down from each wing, touching the water’s surface, stabilizing the aircraft.

  It was an Antonov An-111 Albatross, the largest air-capable seaplane in the world.

  The big plane was rotating slowly on the river’s surface as Race and the others emerged from the riverside path led by the German sergeant, Dietrich. It was reversing in toward the riverbank.

  No sooner had it run aground in the soft mud than a loading ramp began to lower from its hindquarters.

  As soon as the ramp touched dry land, two vehicles rumbled out from within the giant plane—one eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle that looked like a tank on wheels, and one hard-topped Humvee.

  The two armored vehicles skidded to a stop in the middle of the main street Race and the others were led toward them. As they arrived at the two cars, Race saw two more German commandos shoving Tex Reichart and Doogie Kennedy down the street toward them.

  “Gentlemen,” Dietrich said to the other commandos in German. “Put the soldiers and the government men in the ATV under restraints. Throw the others in the Humvee. Lock them inside, and then disable both vehicles.”

  Nash, Copeland and the six Green Berets were all put inside the big tank-like all-terrain vehicle. Race, Lauren, Lopez and Chambers were shoved inside the Humvee.

  The Humvee was kind of like an oversized jeep, only a lot wider and with a solid reinforced metal roof. It also had Lexan glass windows which, at the moment, were rolled up.

  After they were put inside the Humvee, one of the German commandos lifted up the hood and leaned over the big vehicle’s engine. He flicked a switch underneath the radiator and immediately—thwack!—all the doors and windows of the Humvee were instantly locked into place.

  A portable prison, Race thought.

  Wonderful.

  Meanwhile, the tower top was a hive of activity.

  The German soldiers up there were all from
the Fall-schirmjäger—the crack rapid-response unit of the German Army—and they moved as such, quickly and efficiently.

  The leader of their squad, General Gunther C. Kolb—the gray-mustachioed man who had coldly appraised Frank Nash earlier—was barking orders at them in German: “Move! Move! Move! Come on! We do not have much time!”

  As his men dashed about in every direction, Kolb surveyed the scene around him.

  The C-2 explosives around the boulder in the temple’s doorway had been removed and were now being replaced by ropes, the entry team was ready to go, and a digital video camera had been set up in front of the portal to document the opening of the temple.

  Kolb nodded to himself, satisfied.

  They were ready.

  It was time to go in.

  Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Humvee.

  Race sat slumped in the driver’s seat. Walter Chambers sat beside him in the passenger seat. Lauren and Gaby Lopez were in the back.

  Through the car’s rain-spattered windshield, Race saw that the German soldiers in the village were crowded around a single monitor, watching it intently.

  Race frowned.

  Then he saw that there was a small television screen on the central console of his Humvee’s dashboard—in the place where the radio would be in a regular car. He wondered if the shutdown of the Humvee’s engine affected its electrical systems. He pressed the power on the little television to find out.

  Slowly, a picture came to life on the screen.

  On it, he saw the Germans up at the temple, gathered around the portal. He heard their voices come in over the television’s speakers:

  “Ich kann nicht glauben, dass sie Sprengstoff verwenden wollten. Es konnte das gesammte Gebaude zum Einsturz gebracht haben. Machen Sie the Seile fest—”

  “What are they saying?” Lauren asked.

  “They’re removing the explosives you set around the boulder,” Race said. “They think the C-2’U bring down the whole structure. They’re going to use ropes instead.”