Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  Race lifted his legs up just as the caiman’s jaws came crunching together, catching nothing but water, and the big reptile, unable to keep up with the speeding Pibber, shrank prizeless into the hazy green darkness behind him.

  Race desperately needed air. His lungs burned. He felt bile crawling up the back of his throat.

  He quickened his pace down the rope until, finally, he found what he was looking for.

  The diver’s hatch.

  Yes!

  Race quickly reached up into the hatch and punched upward with his fist, knocking its interior lid off. Then he shoved his head up through it.

  His head broke the surface—inside the lower cabin of the Pibber!

  Race quickly spat his Yankees cap out of his mouth and sucked in every ounce of air that he could.

  Then, when he had got his breath back, he hauled himself up through the box-like hatch and fell in a clumsy heap onto the floor of the cabin—battered, bruised and absolutely breathless, but glad as hell to be alive.

  Doogie Kennedy ran across the open deck of the last helipad with a trail of sparks strafing the deck behind him. As soon as he had seen Race go under the bow of the Pibber, he had opened fire on the four Nazis in its wheel-house. Now they were returning his fire as he made a break for the seaplane being towed behind the big helipad barge.

  He came to the stern edge of the barge and quickly un-looped the rope that secured the Goose to it.

  Then he leapt across onto the bow of the seaplane and yanked open the small entry hatch situated on top of its nose. He dived head-first down into the hatch, rising several seconds later inside the cockpit of the plane.

  Doogie punched the ignition switch and the Goose’s two wing-mounted propellers immediately kicked into gear, at first rotating slowly, and then abruptly snapping into rapid blurring circles.

  The seaplane pulled away from the helipad barge, the Nazis’ bullets pinging against its bodywork.

  In response, Doogie rotated the Goose on the river’s surface so that it pointed at the deck of his recently abandoned Pibber.

  Then he jammed down on the trigger of his control stick.

  Instantly, a deafening burst of 20mm machine-gun fire spewed out from the Gatling gun mounted on the side of the Goose.

  Three of the Nazis on the Pibber dropped immediately—hit square in their chests by the Goose’s powerful fire.

  The fourth one fell too, but of his own accord, dropping quickly out of the line of fire.

  “God, I love these 20-millimeter guns,” Doogie said.

  On the Pibber, Race had been standing just behind the small metal doorway that led back up to the wheelhouse when Doogie’s gunfire had assailed the boat.

  When at last the gunfire stopped, Race peered out the doorway to see that only one of the original four Nazis was still alive—he was lying on the deck of the Pibber, reloading his Beretta.

  It was his chance.

  Race took a moment to steel his nerves. Then he threw open the door, leveled his SIG-Sauer at the surprised Nazi, and pulled the trigger.

  Click!

  The SIG’s slide was racked back into the empty position.

  No bullets!

  Race threw the gun down in disgust and then—seeing the Nazi jam a new magazine into the grip of his own pistol—did the only thing he could think to do.

  He took three bounding steps forward and hurled himself at the man.

  He hit him hard and both men went sliding along the deck of the speeding Pibber, toward the stern.

  They got to their feet quickly, and the Nazi swiped at Race backhanded, but Race ducked and the Nazi’s fist went sailing over his head.

  And then suddenly Race was up in the commando’s face, rushing at him with an angry right. The punch connected and the Nazi recoiled at the blow, his head flailing backward.

  Race hit him again, and again—and again—yelling with each punch as the Nazi staggered backward.

  “Get—”

  Punch.

  “—off—”

  Punch.

  “—my—”

  Punch.

  “—boat!”

  With the final blow the Nazi slammed into the stern railing of the Pibber and tumbled over it, falling off the back of the boat, splashing down into its wake.

  Race—his chest heaving, his knuckles bleeding—stared out after the fallen Nazi and swallowed hard. After a few moments, he saw a familiar pack of ripples converge on the soldier and he turned away as the Nazi began to scream.

  Renée was creeping cautiously down a narrow corridor of the command boat, leading with her gun, when all of a sudden she heard voices coming from a room to her right.

  She stepped forward, peered around the doorframe.

  And saw a man she recognized standing in the center of an ultra-high-tech laboratory. He was an older man, but huge, obese, with a fat bull-like neck and an enormous girth—his white wash-and-wear shirt was stretched tight across his enormous belly.

  Renée held her breath as she stared at the old man.

  It was Odilo Ehrhardt.

  The leader of the Stormtroopers.

  One of the most feared Nazis of World War II.

  He must have been—what?—seventy-five years old now, but he didn’t look a day over fifty. His classically Aryan features were still apparent, if worn with age. His white-blond hair was thinning on top, revealing a series of ugly brown lesions. And his blue eyes sparkled, glistened with madness as he barked orders to his men.

  “—then find that generator and turn it off, you imbecile!” he bellowed into a radio. He jabbed a pudgy finger at one of his commandos. “You! Hauptsturmführer! Get Anistaze in here right now!”

  The laboratory around the Nazi general was a mix of glass and chrome. Cray YMP supercomputers lined its walls, vacuum-sealed chambers sat on workbenches. Lab technicians in white coats ran about in every direction, commandos with pistols hustled out through the main glass doors that led out onto the boat’s rear helipad deck.

  But Renée only had eyes for the object that Ehrhardt held in his left hand.

  An object wrapped inside a ragged purple cloth.

  The idol.

  At that moment, Heinrich Anistaze charged in from the helipad deck and stood to attention before Ehrhardt.

  “You sent for me, sir.”

  “What’s going on?” Ehrhardt said.

  “They’re everywhere, Herr Oberstgruppenführer. There must be dozens of them, maybe more. They appear to have split up, taking out different sections of the fleet and causing significant damage.”

  “Then we leave,” Ehrhardt said, handing the idol to Anistaze and guiding him back toward the helipad deck. “Quickly. We will take the idol in the helicopter and get it to the mine that way. Then, if the heads of government haven’t responded to our demands by the time we insert the thyrium into the Supernova, we will detonate it.”

  From the wheelhouse of his newly recovered Pibber, Race surveyed the aquatic battlefield around him.

  What was left of the fleet still surged forward along the river, but it was a shadow of its former self.

  Three Pibbers were still afloat, but one of them belonged to Race. Only one helipad barge remained, along with three of the original five Rigid Raiders—and one of those belonged to Schroeder.

  Van Lewen’s Scarab sped along in front of the fleet, and of course, there was the last Mosquito chopper—still wreaking havoc from above.

  About forty yards behind him, Race saw Doogie’s Goose seaplane wheel out of the wash of the helipad barge in front of it. It surged out into the river proper in search of a clear stretch of water from which it could take off.

  Race spun to look forward.

  About thirty yards ahead and to the left of his Pibber, he saw the massive Nazi command boat powering along the river.

  At that moment, however, as he watched the command boat, Race suddenly saw two men burst out onto its rear deck and dash for the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter sitting on its ste
rn.

  He recognized one of them instantly—Anistaze.

  The other man was considerably older than Anistaze—fat, with a thick muscular neck and a semi-bald head. Race didn’t know who he was, but he guessed that he was the man Schroeder had spoken about earlier—the Stormtroopers’ leader, Otto Ehrhardt or something like that.

  Anistaze and Ehrhardt leapt into the rear compartment of the Bell Jet Ranger and immediately the rotor blades on top of the chopper began to rotate.

  And then it hit Race.

  They were taking the idol away . . .

  Just then, as he was gazing at the activity on the stern of the command boat, Race saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye—the glint of a small shadowy figure hustling down the starboard passageway of the command boat.

  His eyes went wide.

  It was Renée.

  She was running swiftly down the side passageway, heading aft, holding her M-16 firmly across her chest

  She was going after the idol . . .

  By herself!

  Race watched in astonishment as Renée rounded the rear corner of the passageway and opened fire on the Nazi chopper with her M-16.

  A couple of the Nazi troops standing near the chopper were hit instantly and dropped where they stood, but the others just turned and fired back at Renée with AK-47s.

  Renée ducked in the face of their gunfire and fell back behind the corner as the Nazis on the helicopter deck took off after her.

  Race could only watch in horror as she stumbled backward up the starboard-side passageway of the command boat, heading toward the bow.

  She fired wildly with her M-16 as she moved—determinedly—keeping the Nazis at the aft end of the passageway pinned down, until at last she was able to hunker down at the forward end of the passageway, holding her attackers at bay at the other end.

  It was at that moment that Race saw him.

  A lone Nazi commando. Moving slowly across the wide roof of the command boat, toward Renée’s position!

  The man held his gun high, and moved with slow deliberate steps, out of Renée’s field of vision, sneaking up on her from above.

  Renée had no chance of seeing him. No way of knowing he was there.

  “Shit,” Race said, looking around himself for an option.

  His eyes fell upon Doogie’s seaplane skipping quickly over the waves behind his boat, coming alongside it—in between his Pibber and the command boat—as it dashed forward through the fleet in search of a clear stretch of water.

  Race saw the chance instantly, and without so much as a blink, he quickly leapt out through the shattered forward windshield of the wheelhouse and climbed up onto its roof.

  Then, just as Doogie’s Goose swept past his Pibber, Race leapt across onto the wing of the moving seaplane and danced across its length!

  It was an amazing sight. The Goose seaplane, speeding along in between the Nazi command boat and the Pibber, with the tiny figure of William Race—in his saturated jeans and T-shirt and his New York Yankees baseball cap—running across its wings, his body bent forward, braced against the battering wind.

  Race ran hard, his feet moving quickly but surely across the fifty-foot wingspan of the Goose.

  He saw the command boat looming in front of him; saw the world streaking laterally beyond it; saw Renée up near its bow holding off the three Nazis at the other end of the passageway; saw the lone Nazi up on the big catamaran’s roof, closing in on her position.

  And then, like a racing car overtaking its rival, the Goose came alongside the command boat and Race hit the edge of the left wing at full stride and leapt off it—

  —and flew through the air—

  —and landed, catlike, on both feet, on the roof of the command boat, right next to the Nazi who had been sneaking up on Renée!

  Race didn’t miss a beat. Gunless, he just hurled himself at the man, slammed into him, sending both of them flying forward, off the roof of the command boat.

  They landed in a heap on the foredeck of the catamaran not far from where Renée was hunkered down at the forward end of the starboard passageway.

  Disoriented, Race rolled clear of where they had fallen, and looked up in horror to see that the Nazi was already on his feet.

  In a fleeting instant, Race saw the man’s face. It was without a doubt one of the ugliest faces he had ever seen—long and lopsided and heavily cratered with pockmarks. It was also the picture of anger—the picture of pure unadulterated fury.

  But it was only to be a fleeting glimpse, for in the next flashing instant, his view of the Nazi’s hideously ugly face was replaced by the sight of the butt of the man’s AK-47 assault rifle rushing toward his face and then—smack!—he saw nothing but black.

  Renée whirled around just in time to see Race’s head snap violently backward with the blow. His body dropped to the deck, hitting it hard, out cold.

  Renée saw the ugly Nazi standing over Race’s body—saw him suddenly snap to look up at her.

  Then she saw him raise his gun and smile.

  The Goose seaplane shot out in front of the command boat, into the open water ahead of the fleet.

  Doogie was pushing forward on the throttle, trying to get the little seaplane up to take-off speed, when suddenly there came a loud bang! from somewhere to his left. Abruptly he felt the whole plane lurch dramatically and he looked out to see that there was now nothing in the place where his left-hand stabilizing pontoon should have been.

  Not a second later, a pair of Nazi Rigid Raiders zoomed across his bow from either side, criss-crossing in front of him, the commandos on their decks spattering his windshield with heavy machine-gun fire.

  Doogie ducked. His windshield cracked into spiderwebs.

  Then he looked up to see one of the Nazis on the right-hand Rigid Raider heft an M-72A2 man-portable rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aim it right at the Goose!

  “Oh, man . . .” Doogie breathed.

  The Nazi fired.

  A puff of smoke issued from the barrel of the rocket launcher at exactly the same moment as Doogie yanked his steering yoke hard to the left.

  The Goose banked wildly—so wildly in fact that the tip of its pontoonless left wing actually touched the water, kicking up a spectacular shower of spray!

  As a result, the missile from the rocket launcher shot right underneath Doogie’s elevated right wing, missing it by inches before shooting off into the treeline and blasting an unfortunate tree trunk to hell.

  Doogie’s little Goose continued to careen across the river’s surface—racing along on its belly and its one remaining pontoon.

  Just then the last Mosquito attack chopper roared in from out of nowhere, loosing a devastating burst of cannonfire that raked the water all around the little seaplane.

  “God damn it!” Doogie yelled as he ducked beneath the dashboard again. “Could this situation get any worse?”

  It was then that he heard an ominous, but very familiar, sound.

  Poof!

  He spun in his seat.

  Just in time to see one of the two remaining Nazi Pibbers swing in behind him and launch a torpedo from its side-mounted pod.

  The torpedo splashed into the water, shot forward under the surface.

  Doogie gunned it.

  The two Rigid Raiders were now speeding along on either side of him, off the tips of his wings, boxing him in.

  “Shit,” Doogie said. “Shit-shit-shit”

  The torpedo closed in.

  He pushed the Goose’s throttle forward.

  The little seaplane shot across the water, surrounded by enemy vessels on no less than four sides: by the two Rigid Raiders on both of its flanks, by the Pibber a hundred yards astern of it, and by the black Mosquito attack chopper shooting through the air above it.

  Doogie looked about himself desperately. While his little plane struggled to maintain its pace, the two Rigid Raiders sped alongside him easily, their supercharged engines roaring, their crews seeming to take
a perverse kind of pleasure in watching him struggle.

  “Don’t smile too soon, you fascist assholes,” Doogie said aloud. “It’s not over yet.”

  The torpedo was within twenty yards of his tail now. Doogie pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go.

  Fifteen yards, and he hit eighty knots.

  Ten—ninety.

  Five—a hundred.

  Doogie could see the Nazis on the Rigid Raiders laughing at him as he desperately attempted to outrun the torpedo in his hopelessly outdated Goose.

  Two yards—a hundred and ten. Top speed.

  The torpedo slid underneath the Goose.

  “No!” Doogie yelled. “Come on, baby! Do it for me!”

  The Goose shot across the river’s surface.

  The Nazis laughed.

  Doogie swore.

  And then suddenly, gloriously, the little Goose did what no one except Doogie thought it was still capable of doing.

  It lifted off the surface.

  It only lifted slightly off the river’s rushing surface—maybe a foot or two at the most—but it was enough.

  With its initial target lost, the torpedo in the water immediately began searching for another.

  It found it in the Rigid Raider to Doogie’s right.

  No sooner had the Goose lifted off the surface than that Rigid Raider was blasted out of the water by the shocking detonation of the torpedo.

  The Goose touched back down again, kicking up a shower of spray behind it.

  The Mosquito above it saw what had happened and it powered forward, ahead of the Goose—turning laterally in the air as it did so—so that it now flew backward in front of the speeding seaplane, unleashing a savage burst of gunfire at it.

  Doogie ducked under the dashboard. “Damn choppers!” he yelled. “Let’s see how you like this!”

  And with that he yanked his steering yoke hard to the left.

  The Goose banked sharply—the tip of its pontoonless left wing touching the surface again—cutting across the path of the surviving Rigid Raider!

  The skipper of the Rigid Raider didn’t react fast enough.