Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  The cats stormed the village from every side, catching Dietrich and his men—gathered foolishly around the monitor in the center of the town—completely by surprise.

  The cats bounded into the main street like bats out of hell—crash-tackling the German commandos where they stood, bowling them off their feet before they could grab their guns, slamming them to the ground, biting into their throats.

  Race wasn’t sure how many of the cats there were. At first he counted ten, then twelve, then fifteen.

  Jesus.

  Then suddenly he heard gunfire and he snapped around to see the two German soldiers Dietrich had sent to raise the western log-bridge—Hasseldorf and Krieger—firing desperately at the onslaught of charging cats.

  The two commandos managed to hit a couple of the fearsome animals—they pitched wildly forward, crashed down into the mud—before the other cats simply leapt over their bodies and overwhelmed the two humans with their numbers.

  One cat leapt onto Hasseldorf’s back and immediately ripped out his spine. Another just clamped its massive jaws around Krieger’s throat, breaking his neck with a nauseating crrrrunch!

  The rest of the village looked like a riot zone, with German soldiers running in every direction—toward the two Apache helicopters, toward the huts, toward the river—in a desperate bid to escape the rampaging cats.

  “Get to the choppers!” someone yelled. “Get to the—”

  Just then, Race heard an engine turn over and he spun in his seat to see the rotor blades of both of the Apache attack helicopters slowly begin to rotate.

  German soldiers ran desperately for the two choppers, but they were small and skinny—each only had room for a single pilot and a gunner.

  The first Apache began to lift off just as a terrified trooper leapt up onto its landing strut and yanked open the cockpit door. But before he could even try to climb inside, one of the cats bounded up onto the strut after him, shoving him roughly out of the way before it slithered in through the cockpit door, its long slashing tail whipping over the side as it did so.

  A second later, the interior of the cockpit windows was splattered with blood and the chopper—hovering ten feet off the ground—went wild.

  It yawed sharply to the right, its rotor blades a speeding blur of movement, toward the other Apache, just as the six barreled rotary cannon under its nose blasted wildly to life, assaulting the entire village with supermachine-gun fire.

  Tracer bullets sprayed everywhere.

  The windshield of Race’s Humvee exploded into a spiderweb of cracks as the storm of bullets slammed into it.

  Race ducked away from the impacts instinctively. As he did so, however, he saw a series of orange impact sparks flare out all over the tail section of one of the Hueys moored on the riverbank nearby.

  Then suddenly, like fireworks shooting into the sky on the fourth of July, two Hellfire missiles shot out from the flailing Apache’s missile pods.

  One of the missiles slammed into a nearby stone hut, blasted it to rubble, while the other just shot straight down the main street of Vilcafor, heading directly for the massive Antonov seaplane parked at the riverbank, before—shoom!—it whizzed in through the open loading ramp of the plane and disappeared inside its cargo bay.

  There was about a second’s delay.

  And then the giant seaplane exploded. It was a monstrous explosion, momentous in its force. The Antonov’s walls just blew out in an instant and the whole plane immediately listed dramatically to the left and began to sink into the river and drift slowly downstream.

  In the meantime, the Apache that was causing all this damage was still lurching wildly toward its twin. The second helicopter tried desperately to get out of its way, but it was too late. The rotor blades of the first Apache struck the rapidly spinning blades of the second helicopter and a shrill metal-on-metal shriek filled the air.

  Then suddenly, shockingly, the blades of the first chopper ruptured the fuel tanks of the second and the two Apaches exploded in a massive orange fireball that fanned out along the main street of Vilcafor.

  Race turned away from the fiery scene, glanced at Walter Chambers in the front seat beside him.

  “Jesus Christ, Walter,” he said. “Did you see that?”

  Chambers didn’t answer him.

  Race frowned. “Walter? What’s the—

  Purrrrrrr.

  Race froze at the sound.

  Then he looked at Chambers’s face more closely. The bookish anthropologist’s eyes were as wide as saucers and he seemed to be holding his breath.

  He was also looking directly over Race’s shoulder.

  Slowly—very, very slowly—William Race turned around.

  One of the cats was standing at the window.

  Right at the window!

  Its black head was absolutely massive. It took up the entire window. The gigantic creature just stared in at Race with narrow yellowed eyes.

  It purred again. A deep, resonating growl.

  Purrrrrrr.

  Race saw its chest rising and falling, saw its long white fangs protruding over its lower lip. Then abruptly the animal snorted and he almost jumped out of his skin and then—whump!—all of a sudden, the whole Humvee jolted beneath him.

  He spun to look forward.

  Another cat had just leapt onto the hood of the Humvee!

  It stood with its muscular forelimbs splayed wide on the hood of the car, its angry yellow eyes staring down at Race and Chambers, boring into their very souls.

  Race touched his throat mike. “Ah, Van Lewen. You out there?”

  No response.

  Screeeeeeeeeech!

  The black cat on the hood took a slow, ominous step forward, its claws scraping against the steel hood as it did so. At the same time, the cat to Race’s left nudged the Humvee’s door roughly with its nose, testing it.

  Race began tapping his throat mike repeatedly. “Van Lewen!”

  Van Lewen’s voice came in over his earpiece. “I see you, Professor. I see you.”

  Race looked over and saw the all-terrain vehicle sitting motionless on the muddy street not far from the Humvee.

  “Now would be a good time to do some of that bodyguard stuff,” Race said.

  “Take it easy, Professor. You’re safe while you’re inside the Humvee”

  It was at that precise moment that the black cat on the hood slammed its left forepaw right through the cracked forward windshield of the vehicle!

  Glass showered everywhere as the cat’s huge fistlike claw exploded through the windscreen and came to a jolting halt two inches away from the brim of Race’s Yankees cap.

  “Van Lewen!”

  “All right! All right! Quickly! Look under the dashboard!” Van Lewen said. “Down near the gas pedal. Look for a black rubber button on the underside of the steering column!”

  Race looked there.

  Found it.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Just press it!”

  Race pressed the rubber button and the Humvee’s engine immediately roared to life.

  It wasn’t disabled anymore! Race didn’t know why, didn’t care. So long as it was working.

  He quickly came back up from under the steering wheel—and found himself staring into the wide-open jaws of the black cat.

  The cat snarled at him—a wild, angry hiss. It was so close, Race could feel its hot rancid breath washing all over his face. The big cat writhed and squirmed as it tried desperately to squeeze in through the hole it had punched in the windshield and get to the human flesh inside.

  Race leaned back in his seat, away from the frenzied animal’s teeth, pushing himself up against the driver’s side window—where he turned and saw the other cat’s enormous jaws come rushing toward him at frightening speed!

  The second cat slammed into the window. The Humvee rocked on its suspension, bounced under the weight of the cat’s stunning impact. A series of lightning-shaped cracks spontaneously appeared all over the driver’s side wi
ndow.

  But the car’s engine was still running, and that was all that mattered. Jolted into action by the ramming, Race grabbed hold of the shift lever, found a gear—didn’t care which one—and slammed the gas pedal to the floor.

  The Humvee shot backward through the muddy main street of Vilcafor.

  Jesus! He’d put it in reverse!

  The cat on the hood seemed oblivious to the Humvee’s momentum as the oversized jeeplike vehicle bounced wildly over the uneven ground of the village. The demonic animal just yanked its head out of the windshield and began reaching in through the shattered glass with its foreclaw, trying to get at Race.

  For his part, Race just leaned back as far as he could, keeping his body clear of the slashing claw, pressing his foot down harder on the gas pedal.

  The Humvee hit a pothole, shot into the air for a moment, thumped back down to earth. The cat was still on the hood, still clutching maniacally at Race as the armored vehicle careered down the rain-soaked street in reverse, totally out of control.

  “Will! Look out!” Lauren yelled.

  “What?” Race called.

  “Behind us!”

  But Race wasn’t looking behind them.

  He was looking at the vision from Hell that was reaching in through the forward windshield of the car trying to rip open his chest.

  “Will! Stop! We’re heading for the river!”

  Race’s head snapped up.

  Did she just say “river”?

  He shot a look at the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the black river behind them—approaching quickly—caught a glimpse of one of the American Hueys resting in the shallows, directly in their path!

  Race grappled with the steering wheel, but it was no use. In his panic to get away from the cat on the hood, he’d long since lost control of the backward-speeding Humvee.

  He yanked hard on the wheel, slammed his foot down on the brakes, but the wheels just locked and in an instant the big Humvee lost all its traction. It just skidded in the mud, aquaplaning wildly out of control. And then suddenly, sickeningly, before Race even knew what was happening, the big vehicle launched itself off the edge of the bank, out into the air, out over the river.

  The Humvee flew through the air, soaring out over the riverbank, flying in a high graceful arc. And then it smashed—hard, tail-first—into the glass bubble of the Huey sitting in the shallows.

  The inertia of the crash was so great that it sent both car and helicopter floating out into the river proper. It also sent the cat on the hood shooting off and completely over the Huey too! The big cat landed way out in the middle of the river, hitting the water with a great ungainly splash.

  Within seconds, the crocodilelike caimans were all over it.

  Shrieking wildly, the cat put up a hell of a fight, until finally it succumbed to their numbers and went under.

  What remained near the shore was a bizarre-looking Humvee-Huey hybrid that sat half-submerged in the water about twenty feet out from the riverbank.

  The whole forward bubble of the Huey had been crushed inward by the Humvee, and now the wide jeeplike vehicle stuck out awkwardly from the chopper’s crushed front section. The Huey’s rotor housing and tail section, however, had not been damaged by the impact. Its two rotor blades just sat high above the whole ghastly contraption, immobile but intact

  Inside the Humvee, Race tried desperately to stay calm.

  Slimy green water lapped against the window to his left while powerful mini-jets of spray shot in through the network of cracks in it. Looking out through the window itself was like looking into one of those aquariums where you can see both above and below the waterline.

  Only this was the aquarium from Hell.

  Through the window, Race saw the underbellies of no less than five gigantic caimans, all of them making a beeline right for him, their tails slinking back and forth behind them, driving their bodies toward the Humvee.

  To make matters worse, a torrent of water was gushing in through the large hole in the windshield in front of him, splashing all over his jeans, creating a deep sloshing puddle at his feet.

  Walter Chambers began to hyperventilate. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Behind Chambers, Race saw that Gaby Lopez now had a deep bloody gash above her left eye. She must have hit her head when the Humvee had impacted against the chopper.

  “We have to get out of here!” Lauren yelled.

  “You think?!” Race shouted, as a large silver fish with big teeth was carried in through the windshield in front of him and landed in his lap.

  Just then there came a loud whump! from somewhere to his left and Race was almost jolted out of his seat as the whole Humvee rocked wildly sideways.

  He turned and saw the enormous shape of a black caiman hovering at the window beside him, staring in through the cracked glass, gazing hungrily at him!

  “Oh, man,” he said.

  Then he saw the massive reptile draw back from the glass.

  “Oh, man . . .”

  “What? What?” Walter Chambers said from beside him.

  “It’s going to ram us!” Race yelled as he hastily began climbing over into the backseat. “Move, Walter! Move now.!”

  Chambers immediately started to scramble over into the backseat, too, just as the caiman outside surged forward. A split second later, the driver’s side window of the Humvee exploded inward in a spectacular shower of glass.

  The sudden rain of glass was quickly followed by the massive scaly body of the caiman as it slithered in through the window into the front section of the Humvee, riding a wave of water as it cascaded into the car.

  The caiman rushed across the front seat of the Humvee, its giant body taking up all of the tiny space. Race yanked his feet into the backseat a nanosecond before its slashing jaws shot past them.

  Walter Chambers wasn’t so lucky. He didn’t get his legs out of the way in time and the caiman smashed into them, driving them into the passenger side door, pinning them there.

  Chambers screamed. The caiman bucked and snorted as it tried to get a better grip on him.

  From the backseat, all Race could see was the creature’s enormous armored back and its long plated tail, slashing viciously back and forth.

  Then, abruptly, violently—and so quickly that it made Race gasp in horror—the giant caiman wrenched Chambers out through the window through which it had come.

  “Nooooo!” Chambers screamed as he disappeared out the window and was taken under the surface outside.

  Race exchanged a horrified look with Lauren.

  “What are we going to do now!” she yelled.

  How the hell should I know? he thought as he looked at the situation around him.

  The front seat of the vehicle was filling up with water fast, causing the Humvee to tilt sharply to the left and drop lower in the water.

  “We’ve got to get out of here before this car sinks!” he yelled. “Quickly! Open your window! We should be able to open them now!”

  Water began to flow over the front seat and into the back as Lauren began to unwind her window. The car was higher over on her side, and when at last she opened the window fully, she revealed only the cold night air.

  Then suddenly another giant caiman came surging in through the driver’s side window of the Humvee and splashed down into the pool of water in the front half of the vehicle.

  “Go!” Race yelled. “Get onto the roof!”

  Lauren moved fast. In a second she was out of the Humvee, climbing up onto its roof. The dazed Gaby went next—she shuffled quickly across the backseat and reached out through the window. Lauren immediately began to pull her out from up on the roof, while Race pushed her from below.

  The caiman in the driver’s seat bucked and snorted, searching for its prey.

  Water was now rushing over the front seat in a thick steady stream. It was almost waist-deep in the back.

  Just then another caiman rammed into the rear-left window of the Humvee, causing the entire vehi
cle to jolt. Race spun at the impact and saw that the whole left-hand side of the Humvee was now completely underwater.

  Gaby Lopez was halfway out the right-side window. Race was the last one left.

  It was then, however, as he pushed on Gaby’s feet, that he heard a sickening metallic groan from somewhere within the Humvee.

  Abruptly the whole car lurched dramatically to the right.

  At first he thought it was another ramming from one of the caimans. But it wasn’t. No, this time the whole car had shifted laterally. It was moving. Moving . . .

  Downstream.

  Oh, God, Race thought.

  They were being carried downstream by the current of the river!

  “This is not happening,” he said.

  At that moment there came another, more familiar jolt as one of the caimans rammed the left-hand window again.

  “Come on, Gaby!” he yelled at Lopez’s feet as they dangled inside the right-hand window in front of him.

  By this time, the caiman in the front seat seemed to have realized where Race and the others were and it began to shuffle clumsily backward so that it could leap over into the backseat

  Race saw it move.

  “Gaby!”

  “Almost there . . .” Lopez called back.

  “Hurry up!

  Then suddenly, Gaby’s feet disappeared out the window and Lauren yelled, “She’s clear, Will!” and Race leapt for the window, poked his head out through it and saw Lauren and Gaby standing on the roof above him.

  The two women quickly reached down and grabbed his hands and hauled him out of the car not a second before the caiman in the front seat clambered over into the back and snapped angrily at his outward-moving feet, missing them by millimeters.

  Back in the village, Nash, Copeland and the six American soldiers were all sitting—handcuffed—in the safety of the all-terrain vehicle, watching the nightmare outside unfold, when suddenly the sliding side door of their armored vehicle was wrenched open from the outside and a blast of rain and wind swirled into the interior of the ATV.

  Two soaking Germans hurried in through the door, their mudsoaked feet clanging on the floor of the vehicle. They shut the great steel door behind them and abruptly there was silence inside the ATV once again.