Due to the fact that it fired a caseless bullet, the G-11 was not only able to fire at the unimaginable rate of 2300 rounds per minute, it was also able to store in its body some ISO rounds—five times the number of bullets held in the clip of a regular assault rifle like the M-16. And even then it was only half the size of an M-16.
Truth be told, the only thing that had stopped the G-11 was money. In late 1989, political considerations forced the German government to rescind its deal with Heckler & Koch to use the G-11 in the Bundeswehr.
As a result, only four hundred G-11s were ever made. Strangely, however, in an audit of the company during its takeover by Britain’s Royal Ordnance, only ten of that original batch were accounted for.
The other three hundred and ninety guns had disappeared.
I think we just found them, Race thought as he watched the rapas take flight in the face of the barrage of supermachine-gun fire coming at the guns.
“It’s the Stormtroopers,” Schroeder said from beside him.
The hailstorm of gunfire outside continued.
Two more cats fell, squealing and shrieking, as a couple of the Stormtroopers pummeled the village with their devastating rain of supermachine-gun fire.
The remainder of the cats took refuge in the rainforest surrounding the town, and soon the main street was filled only with the heavily armed Stormtroopers.
“How the hell did they get here without us seeing them on the SAT-SN?” Nash demanded.
“And why aren’t the cats attacking them?” Race said.
Up until now, the cats had been merciless in their assaults, but for some reason they had neither sensed nor attacked these new soldiers.
It was then that the distinct smell of ammonia wafted in through the windows of the ATV. The smell of urine. Monkey urine. The Nazis had read the manuscript too.
Suddenly Van Lewen’s voice came in over their speakers. “We’re coming to the rope bridge now.”
Race and Nash spun together to face the monitor that displayed the views of the three soldiers up in the crater.
On the monitor they saw Van Lewen’s point of view as he bounced across the rope bridge that led to the temple.
“Cochrane! Van Lewen! Hurry!” Nash said into his radio. “We’ve got hostil—”
Just then a shrill, ear-piercing shriek warbled out from the ATV’s speakers and Nash’s radio went dead.
“They’ve engaged electronic countermeasures,” Schroeder said.
“What?” Race said.
“They’re jamming us,” Nash said.
“What do we do?” Renée asked.
Nash said, “We’ve got to tell Van Lewen, Reichart and Cochrane that they can’t come back down here. They’ve got to get that idol and get it as far away from here as possible. Then, somehow, they have to get in touch with the air support team and get the choppers to pick them up from somewhere in the mountains.”
“But how are you going to do that if they’re jamming our radios?” Race said.
“One of us is going to have to go up to that temple and tell them,” Nash said.
A short silence followed.
Then Schroeder said, “I’ll go.”
Good idea, Race thought. After the Green Berets, Schroeder was easily the most “soldierly” of the group.
“No,” Nash said decisively. “You can handle a gun. We need you down here. You also know these Nazi guys better than any of us.”
That left Nash, Renée . . . or Race.
Oh, man, Race thought.
And so he said, “I’ll do it.”
“But . . . ?” Schroeder began.
“I was the fastest guy in the football team back in college,” Race said. “I can make it.”
“But what about the rapas?” Renée said.
“I can make it”
“All right, then, Race is elected,” Nash said, heading for the pop-up hatch in the rear of the ATV.
“Here, take this,” he said, handing Race an M-16 complete with all the extras. “Might stop you becoming cat food. Now go. Go!”
Race took a step toward the hatch, inhaled a slow, deep breath. He took a final look at Nash, Schroeder and Renée.
Then he let out the breath he was holding and pushed up through the hatch—
—and entered another world.
Supermachine-gun fire echoed out all around him, smacked into the leaves nearby, splintered their trunks. It seemed so much louder out here, so much more real. So much more lethal.
Race’s heart thumped loudly inside his head.
What the hell am I doing out here with this gun in my hand?
You’re trying to be a hero, that’s what you’re doing, you stupid schmuck!
He took another breath.
All right . . .
Race leapt off the back of the ATV, landed on the western log-bridge and took off down the riverside path beyond it. He was surrounded by impenetrable gray fog. It lined the path around him. Gnarled tree branches jutted out through it like daggers.
The M-16 felt heavy in his hands and he held it awkwardly across his chest as he ran, kicking up water with every step.
Then, without warning, a rapa slid out from the mist to his right and rose to its full height in front of him and—
Blam!
The rapa’s head exploded and the giant cat dropped like a stone, began flopping wildly in the mud.
Race didn’t miss a beat, he just hurdled the fallen cat. Once he was over it, he turned to see Schroeder—with an M-16 pressed against his shoulder—sticking out from the hatch at the back of the ATV.
Race ran.
A minute later, the fissure in the mountainside emerged from the fog. Just as he caught sight of it, he heard voices behind him, shouting in German.
“Achtung!”
“Schnell! Schnell!”
Then suddenly he heard Nash’s voice shouting from somewhere in the mist behind him: “Race, hurry! They’re behind you! They’re heading for the temple!”
Race bolted into the fissure.
Its damp stone walls flashed past him on either side as he raced down its length.
Then all of a sudden he burst out into the massive canyon that housed the skyscraper-like rock tower. The fog was thick here too. The base of the rock tower was cloaked in a spooky gray mist.
Race didn’t care. He saw the spiraling path to his left, jumped up onto it, took off up its steep curving length.
Back in the village, Renée Becker stared fearfully out through the narrow windows of the ATV.
About thirty Nazi troops were massing in the village now. They were dressed in state-of-the-art combat attire—ceramic body armor, lightweight kevlar tactical helmets and, of course, black ski masks—and they moved with purpose, like a well-trained, well-prepared raiding party.
Renée saw one of the Nazis step out into the middle of the main street and remove his helmet. The man then peeled off his black ski mask and surveyed the area around him.
Renée’s eyes went wide.
Although she had seen his picture a thousand times before on all manner of- MOST WANTED posters, seeing him here, now, in the flesh, made her skin crawl.
She immediately recognized the forward-brushed hair and the narrow slit-like eyes. And the left hand that was possessed of only four fingers.
She was looking at Heinrich Anistaze.
Without saying a word, Anistaze made a “V” with his fingers and pointed in the direction of the ATV.
Already a dozen of his G-11-armed men had dashed past the all-terrain vehicle, heading up the riverside path toward the fissure and the temple.
Now six more hustled over to the ATV, while the remaining twelve took up defensive positions around the perimeter of the village.
Two men, however, stood off to one side, guarding the Nazis’ radio-jamming device.
It was a small backpack-sized unit—called a pulse generator that corrupted enemy radio signals by emitting a controlled electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.
&nb
sp; It was a rather unique device. Ordinarily, an electromagnetic pulse will affect anything with a CPU in it—computers, televisions, communications systems. Such a pulse is called an “uncontrolled” EMP. By controlling the frequency of their pulse, however, and by ensuring that their own radios were set on frequencies above it, the Nazis were able to jam their enemies’ radio systems while still maintaining their own communications.
As they were doing right now.
The six Nazis arrived at the ATV’s side to find every window shutter closed and every hatch bolted.
Inside the big vehicle, Nash, Schroeder and Renée sat huddled in its various corners, holding their collective breaths.
The Stormtroopers didn’t waste any time.
They immediately crouched underneath the big armored vehicle and began planting the explosives.
Race ran.
Up and up, around and around, following the long, curving bend of the spiraling path.
Legs pumping. Heart pounding.
He came to the rope bridge. Bounced across it. Hurried up the stone steps that led to the temple.
Race burst through the encroaching fern leaves and abruptly found himself standing in the clearing in front of the portal.
The clearing was completely deserted.
No animal—neither man nor cat—was in sight.
The temple’s portal yawned open before him, looming out of the fog. The downward-leading steps inside it were cloaked in shadow.
Do not enter at any cost.
Death looms within.
Race held his M-16 out in front of him, flicked on its barrel-mounted flashlight, cautiously stepped toward the portal. He stood inside the great stone doorway—surrounded by the horrific carvings of the rapas and the screaming humans—and peered down into the blackness.
“Van Lewen!” he hissed. “Van Lewen! Are you in there?”
No reply.
He took a step down into the temple, holding his gun awkwardly out in front of him.
It was then that he heard the reply.
A long, slow growl from somewhere deep inside the temple.
Uh-oh.
Race gripped his gun a little more tightly, held his breath, took another step down into the temple.
Ten more steps and he was standing in a dark stone passageway that spiraled down and around to his right in a wide gentle curve.
He saw a small alcove sunk into its wall, turned the beam of his flashlight into it.
A horribly mangled skeleton stared back at him.
Its skull had been smashed inward at the back and one of its arms was missing, and its mouth was open in a horrified frozen scream. It was also wearing an ancient leather vest.
Race took a horrified step back from the filthy skeletal figure.
And then he noticed the object looped around its neck. He only just saw it, hidden as it was in the folds of the dirty old skeleton’s vertebrae. He leaned forward to get a better look at whatever it was.
It was a leather necklace of some sort.
Race touched the thin leather strap, worked it around the filthy skeleton’s neck. A few seconds later, a dazzling green emerald appeared from behind the skeleton’s bony neck, attached to the leather necklace.
Race’s heart skipped a beat. He knew of this emerald pendant. Indeed, he had read about it only recently.
It was Renco’s necklace.
The necklace that the high priestess in the Coricancha had given to him the night he had spirited the idol out of Cuzco.
Race looked at the skeleton again in horror.
Renco.
Race lifted the necklace off the skeleton’s head and held it in his hands.
He thought of Renco for a moment—and then suddenly he recalled something that he himself had said to Frank Nash not long ago.
Somehow Renco and Santiago managed to lure the cats back inside the temple, and at the same time put the idol inside it.
Race swallowed hard. Had Renco—while carrying the wet idol with him—led the cats back inside the temple?
He stared down at the mangled skeleton in horror.
So this was what had become of Renco.
This was what happened to heroes.
He placed the emerald necklace solemnly around his own neck.
“Take care, Renco,” he said aloud.
Just then harsh white light illuminated Race’s face and he turned—eyes wide, like an animal caught in the headlights of a car—and found himself staring at the faces of Cochrane, Van Lewen and Reichart as they emerged from the darkness of the temple’s inner depths.
Reichart was holding something wrapped inside a tattered purple cloth.
Cochrane brushed roughly past Race, pushing his M-16 aside as he did so. “Why don’t you put that fucking thing down before you kill somebody.”
Tex Reichart stopped in front of Race and smiled as he held up the object in his hands, the object wrapped inside the purple cloth.
“We got it,” he said.
Reichart quickly unwrapped the cloth parcel and for the first time, Race saw it.
The Incan idol.
The Spirit of the People.
Like the stone totem he had seen in the rainforest earlier, the Spirit of the People looked infinitely more sinister in real life than it had in his imagination.
It was about a foot tall, and roughly the size and shape of a shoebox. The front section of the rectangular stone, however, had been carved into the shape of a rapa’s head—the angriest, fiercest rapa Race had ever seen.
It was snarling ferociously, its jaws bared wide, its sharp pointed teeth ready to slash and maim and kill.
What struck Race most about the carving, though, was how alive it looked. Through a combination of skilled craftsmanship and the unusual nature of the stone itself, it seemed as if the rapa had somehow been imprisoned inside the lustrous black-and-purple stone and was now trying—maniacally, ferociously, rabidly—to force its way out of it.
The stone, Race thought as he gazed at the thin veins of purple that snaked their way down the snarling rapa’s face, giving it an extra level of anger and malevolence.
Thyrium.
If only the Incas had known what they were starting when they carved this idol, he thought
Reichart quickly replaced the cloth over the idol and the four of them hurried back up to the temple’s entrance.
“What the fuck are you doing up here?” Cochrane growled as they came to the open portal.
“Nash sent me to tell you guys that the Nazis are down in the village. They jammed our radios so we lost contact with you. They’re sending men up here now. Nash said to tell you not to come back down to the village, but rather to get out of here some other way and get in contact with the air support team and get them to pick you up from somewhere in the mountains—”
At that moment, a burst of supermachine-gun fire raked the stone walls of the portal all around them. The four of them ducked quickly as a devastating line of bullets strafed the portal’s frame, shredding its solid stone walls as if they were made of plaster.
Race snapped around instantly and saw about twelve Nazi commandos in the trees at the edge of the clearing, firing hard with their G-11s.
Cochrane returned fire from the cover of the portal. Van Lewen did the same. The crack of their M-16s sounded almost pathetic alongside the relentless droning whirrrrrr of the ultra-high-tech G-11s.
Race also tried to return the Nazis’ fire, but when he pulled the trigger of his M-16, nothing happened.
Cochrane saw him, reached out and yanked back on a T-shaped handle on Race’s rifle.
“Christ, you’re about as useless as a priest in a whorehouse,” Cochrane barked.
Race pulled the trigger again and, this time, a stream of bullets erupted from his M-16, firing mainly into the air.
“What the hell are we gonna do!” Reichart yelled above their gunfire.
“We can’t stay here!” Van Lewen yelled. “We have to get back to the rope—”
At that moment there came a sudden, resounding voooom! from somewhere above their heads.
Race looked up just in time to see a black MD-500 “Cayuse,” or, as some called it, “Mosquito,” light-attack helicopter explode out from the fog above them and roar over the tower top.
The Mosquito was a nimble little attack chopper—much smaller than any Apache or Comanche—but what it lacked in grunt and firepower, it more than made up for in speed and maneuverability.
Its nickname came from its resemblance to certain members of the insect world. It had a round split-glass bubble that resembled the wide hemispherical eyes of a bee, and two long spindly landing struts that looked like the elongated legs of a mosquito.
The Mosquito above the tower top loosed a burst of gunfire from its two side-mounted cannons, chewing up a pair of long unbroken lines in the mud in front of the temple.
“This is getting worse!” Race yelled.
Down in the village, the explosives that the Nazis had placed underneath the ATV went off.
A billowing fireball erupted beneath the big eight-wheeled vehicle—lifting it fully ten feet off the ground, flipping it in mid-air—and the massive ATV came crashing down on its side.
Inside it, the world went crazy.
As soon as they had heard the Nazis attaching their explosives to the bottom of the vehicle, Nash, Renée and Schroeder had strapped themselves into some seats and braced themselves for the explosion.
Now they hung perpendicular to the ground, still strapped into their seats, their world turned completely sideways.
But the important thing was that the ATV had held.
For the moment.
Doogie Kennedy peered out fearfully from the roof of the citadel.
He saw the village laid out before him, shrouded in mist and fog—saw about a dozen Nazi commandos standing at regular intervals in the cloudy gray soup, their G-11s pointed outward.
He had just seen the ATV get blasted and he thanked God that the Nazis hadn’t realized that there were more members of Nash’s team inside the citadel. Its walls wouldn’t be able to survive such a ferocious blast.
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