Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  Although the natives had returned their weapons to them, there was still a slight aura of suspicion in the air. A dozen or so Indian warriors stood ominously outside the circle of people, armed with bows and arrows, watching Nash and his people carefully—as they had been doing all night

  Race sat with the tribe’s chieftain and the anthropologist Miguel Moros Marquez.

  “Chieftain Roa would like to express his utmost gratitude to you for coming to us,” Marquez said, translating the words of the old chieftain.

  Race smiled. “We’ve gone from thieves in the night to honored guests.”

  “More than you know,” Marquez said. “More than you know. If you hadn’t survived your encounter with the caiman, your friends would have been sacrificed to the rapas. Now your friends bask in your glory.”

  “They’re not really my friends,” Race said.

  Gaby Lopez sat on the other side of the little anthropologist her excitement at being in the presence of a legend obvious. After all, as she had said to Race on their first day in Peru, nine years ago Marquez had entered the jungles to study primitive Amazonian tribes—and had never returned. “Doctor Marquez,” she said, “please, tell us about this tribe. Your experiences here must have been fascinating.”

  Marquez smiled. “They have been. These Indians are a truly remarkable people, one of the last remaining untouched tribes in the whole of South America. Although they tell me that they have lived in this village for centuries, like most of the other tribes in this region they are nomadic. Often the whole village will just up and move to another location—in search of food or a warmer clime—for six months or even a year at a time. But they always return to this village. They say that they have a connection with this area—a connection with the temple in the crater and the cat gods that dwell inside it.”

  “How did they come to possess the Spirit of the People?” Race asked, interjecting.

  “I’m sorry, I do not understand?”

  “According to the Santiago Manuscript,” Race said, “Renco Capac used the idol to seal the rapas inside the temple. Then he shut himself inside the building with them. Did these Indians at some stage enter the temple and get the idol out?”

  Marquez translated what Race had said for the Indian chieftain, Roa. The chieftain shook his head and said something quickly in Quechuan.

  “Chieftain Roa says that Prince Renco was a very clever and brave man, as one would expect of the Chosen One. The chieftain also says that the members of this tribe take a special pride in being his direct descendants.”

  “His direct descendants,” Race said. “But that would mean Renco got out of the temple . . .”

  “Yes, it would,” Marquez replied cryptically, translating the chieftain’s words.

  “But how?” Race said. “How did he manage to get out?”

  At that, the chieftain barked an order to one of his Indian warriors and the warrior scurried off into a nearby hut. He returned moments later carrying something small in his hands.

  When the warrior arrived back at his chieftain’s side, Race saw that the object in his hands was a thin leather-bound notebook. Its binding looked positively ancient but its pages appeared uncreased, untouched.

  The chieftain spoke. Marquez translated.

  “Mister Race, Roa says that the answer to your question lies in the construction of the temple itself. After Renco and Alberto’s famous battle with Hernando Pizarro, yes, Renco did enter the temple—with the idol. But he also managed to get out of it—with the idol. The full story of what happened after Renco entered the temple is contained in this note-book.”

  Race looked at the notebook in the chieftain’s hands. He craved to know what was inside it.

  The chieftain handed the little notebook to Race.

  “Roa offers it to you as a gift,” Marquez said. “After all, you are the first person in four hundred years to pass through this village who would actually be able to read it.”

  Race opened the notebook immediately, saw about a half-dozen cream-colored pages filled with Alberto Santiago’s handwriting.

  He stared at it in awe.

  It was the real ending to Santiago’s story.

  “I have a question,” Johann Krauss said suddenly, pompously, leaning forward from his place in the circle. “How have the rapas managed to survive for so long inside the temple?”

  After consulting with the chieftain, Marquez replied, “Roa says you will find the answer to that question in the note-book.”

  “But—” Krauss began.

  Roa cut him off with a sharp bark.

  “Roa says that you will find the answer to your question in the notebook,” Marquez said firmly. Clearly, while Roa’s hospitality to Race was limitless, his grace toward his companions extended only so far.

  The rain began to fall more heavily. After a few minutes, Race heard the rumble of distant thunder over the horizon. Doogie and Van Lewen also turned at the sound.

  “Storm’s coming,” Race said.

  Doogie shook his head as he looked up into the sky. The rumbling of thunder grew louder.

  “No it isn’t,” he said, grabbing his G-11 out of the dirt.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That ain’t thunder, Professor.”

  “Then what is it?”

  At that moment before Doogie could answer him, a massive Super Stallion helicopter roared by overhead.

  It was closely followed by another, identical helicopter, swooping in low over the village, its rotors thumping loudly, shaking the trees with its powerful downdraft.

  Race, Doogie and Van Lewen leapt to their feet, while at the same time all of the Indians reached for their bows.

  The roar of the two Super Stallions hovering above the little village was deafening, all-consuming. And then suddenly eight zip-lines were hurled out from within each helicopter. In a second, sixteen men dressed in full combat attire began to slide quickly down the ropes, guns in their hands, ominous shadows against the pre-dawn sky.

  Bullets spewed out from the guns of the men rappelling down from the helicopters.

  People ran every which way. The Indians dashed for cover in the foliage surrounding the village, snatching up their bows and arrows as they did so. Van Lewen and Doogie fired their G-11s as gunfire from above raked the mud all around them.

  Race snapped about where he stood—saw Doogie take two brutal hits to his left leg—then he spun again just in time to see the German zoologist Krauss, convulse violently as the whole front of his body—his face, his arms, his chest—became an indistinguishable mass of ragged bloody flesh, torn open by about a million rounds of devastating supermachine-gun fire.

  The two Super Stallions hovered about twenty feet above the village, razing it with their cannons. As he leapt to his feet, Race saw a single word emblazoned across their sides: “NAVY.”

  It was Romano’s team.

  They had arrived at last.

  And then—just then—as he ran for cover from the two enormous choppers hovering menacingly over the village, Race had an unusual thought.

  Wasn’t Romano supposed to be flying three Super Stallions . . . ?

  Abruptly, a spattering of gunfire strafed the ground all around him and Race scampered for the treeline, turning as he ran just in time to see Frank Nash hurry away from the shrine and dash off into the foliage beyond it with Lauren and Copeland right behind him.

  Race’s eyes zeroed in on the shrine. The idol was still there, sitting proudly in its alcove.

  Or was it?

  As the ground all around him exploded with bullet holes, Race hustled over to the shrine and grabbed the idol from its alcove, flipped it over in his hand.

  A cylindrical section had been cut out of the base of this idol.

  It was the fake.

  “No . . .” Race breathed.

  Gunfire rang out from the choppers above him. The gale-force wind created by their downdrafts whipped around him like a tornado.

 
Race ran through the powerful wind, charging into the foliage after Nash and the other two.

  “Where are you going?” Renée called to him from her position behind a nearby tree.

  “Nash has got the idol!” Race yelled back. “The real one—”

  At that moment—completely without warning—one of the big Super Stallion helicopters above them just exploded in mid-air. It was a staggering explosion, monstrous in its force. All the more so because it had been so unexpected.

  Race looked up instantly and saw the mighty helicopter fall to the earth in a kind of horrific slow motion, right on top of the men hanging underneath it.

  The men—they were Navy SEALs—hit the ground first followed a split second later by the massive helicopter as it came crashing down on top of them, crushing them in an instant, its awesome bulk slamming down against the ground with a resounding whump!

  Race looked above the fallen, flaming wreck of the Super Stallion and saw a horizontal smoke-trail dissipating in the air above it.

  It was the smoke-trail of an air-to-air missile. Race traced it back to its source.

  And saw another helicopter!

  Only this one wasn’t a troop transport like the two Super Stallions. It was a two-man chopper—an attack bird—thin but not skinny, with a prism-shaped cockpit and an enclosed tail rotor. It looked like a mechanical praying mantis.

  Although Race didn’t know it, he was looking at an AH-66 “Comanche”—the U.S. Army’s next-generation attack helicopter.

  Nash’s air support.

  It too, had finally arrived.

  Race saw a second Comanche attack chopper materialize in the morning sky behind the first one, saw it open fire on the surviving Super Stallion with its twin-barreled Gatling gun.

  The second Super Stallion responded with its own burst of machine-gun fire, covering the eight SEALs still dangling from its zip-lines.

  The first SEAL touched the ground—just as an arrow smacked squarely in his forehead, dropping him instantly.

  The seven remaining SEALs continued down their ziplines. Two more were taken out by arrows on their way down. The others hit the ground running.

  In the air above them, their Super Stallion was in all sorts of trouble. It swiveled laterally in the air, turning to face the two Army Comanches firing on it.

  Then suddenly—shoom!—a single Sidewinder missile shot out from the Super Stallion’s side-mounted missile pod. The missile traced a perfectly horizontal smoke-trail through the air behind it before it slammed at tremendous speed into the canopy of one of the Comanches, blasting the attack chopper out of the sky with a momentous explosion.

  But it was a consolation goal. In fact, if it did anything at all, it only succeeded in sealing the Super Stallion’s fate. Because there was still one Comanche left.

  No sooner had the first Army chopper been hit, than the second one quickly pivoted in mid-air and released a Hellfire missile of its own.

  The Hellfire rocketed through the air at phenomenal speed, zeroing in on the Super Stallion. It found its mark in seconds, plowing at full speed into the side of the big Navy helicopter.

  The Super Stallion’s walls shattered in an instant, blasting out in every direction, showering the ground beneath it with fire trails of flaming debris. Then the massive Navy helicopter crashed down into the trees above the village, a billowing, flaming wreck.

  Wet fern branches slapped hard against Race’s face as he and Renée ran eastward through the dense section of low foliage to the south of the village square, chasing after Frank Nash.

  They passed Van Lewen on their way. He was standing behind one of the huts, firing with his G-11 at three of the five Navy SEALs who had survived their dispersal from the second Super Stallion.

  He fired low—trying to wound, not to kill. After all, they were his own countrymen, and after what he had heard from Renée on the plane earlier about Frank Nash and the Army’s mission to undercut the Navy, he had started to question his allegiances. He didn’t want to kill men just like himself—line animals who were just following orders—unless he really, really had to.

  The three SEALs had hunkered down behind some trees near the shrine and their MP-Ss, when used in co-ordination, were proving a good match against his lone G-11. Then abruptly the SEALs’ fire stopped as they were overwhelmed from behind by a horde of Indians bearing axes, arrows, sticks and clubs.

  Van Lewen winced.

  “Where are you going?” he yelled when he saw Race and Renée run past him.

  “We’re going after Nash! He stole the real idol!”

  “He what—?”

  But Race and Renée were already hurrying off into the trees. Van Lewen took off after them.

  Gaby Lopez was running too. Only she was running for her life.

  As soon as the Navy Super Stallions had appeared, she had hurried off behind the nearest set of trees. But she had gone the wrong way. Everyone else had gone south wlrile she had gone north and now she was racing through the chest-high foliage to the northeast of the upper village—alone—ducking as she ran, trying desperately to avoid the bullets that smacked against the branches around her head.

  The two remaining Navy SEALs were somewhere behind her, firing hard with their MP-5s as they crashed through the undergrowth.

  Gaby looked behind herself as she ran, searching fearfully for her pursuers. Then, as she turned to look behind her one more time, she abruptly felt the ground beneath her feet just fall away.

  She dropped like a stone.

  A second later, she hit water.

  Muddy liquid flew everywhere. When it settled, Gaby opened her eyes and found that she was sitting on her butt in the moat that encircled the upper village! She leapt quickly to her feet and found that she was standing in a section of ankle-deep water.

  The thought suddenly occurred to her: caimans.

  She looked about herself desperately. She saw that the moat was roughly circular in shape, saw that it bent away from her in both directions like a road disappearing around a curve. Its sheer muddy walls towered above her, their rims a good ten feet above her head.

  Suddenly submachine-gun fire raked the water all around her and on an instinct Gaby dived forward and the bullets shot over her head, smacking into the earthen walls of the moat.

  Then abruptly she heard more gunfire—different gunfire this time, G-11 gunfire—and in an instant the first set of bullets stopped firing and there was silence. Gaby was still lying on her chest in the shallow water of the moat. A long silence followed. After a few seconds, she cautiously raised her head.

  And found herself staring into the smiling face of a caiman.

  Gaby froze.

  It was just sitting there in the mud in front of her, watching her, its tail slinking slowly back and forth behind it. It had her. Had her dead to rights.

  Then with a loud grunting roar, the giant reptile charged, baring its jaws savagely, lunging at her—

  Splat!—something landed right on top of the caiman from above. Gaby didn’t know what it was. It had looked like an animal of some sort and now it and the caiman were rolling around together in front of her in a splashing heap of mud and water.

  Her jaw dropped when she realized what the animal was.

  It was a man. A man in combat uniform. He had jumped down from the rim of the moat, tackling the caiman at the exact moment that it had lunged at her.

  The caiman and the man rolled as they wrestled, the rep-tile bucking and snapping, the man gasping for air whenever he could.

  And then Gaby saw who it was.

  It was Doogie.

  Doogie and the caiman fought rolling and wrestling, grunting and thrashing. The caiman snapped wildly at Doogie while the injured Green Beret grappled desperately with its snout trying to keep it closed as he had seen alligator wrestlers do when he was a child.

  He still had his G-11, but it was useless now, empty. He’d reluctantly used his last few rounds to drop the two Navy SEALs who had been firing on
Gaby. Then when he had seen the caiman appear in front of her and lunge, he had done the only thing he could think to do—he had leapt down on top of it.

  Just then the caiman jerked its snout free from Doogie’s grasp, bared its jaws and launched itself at his head. Out of sheer desperation, Doogie swung his G-11 around and without even thinking, wedged it inside the big crocodilian’s mouth, propping it open, right in front of his own face!

  The caiman grunted in surprise.

  Its jaws were now propped wide open, like the hood of a car. The big creature couldn’t close its mouth!

  Doogie seized the opportunity and quickly unsheathed his Bowie knife.

  The caiman stood stupidly in front of him, its long snout held open by the vertical G-11.

  Doogie tried to get around the big reptile—behind it—so that he could drive his knife into its skull and kill it, but the caiman saw him move and it swung quickly sideways, bowling into him, knocking him off his feet, sending him splashing into the muddy water.

  The caiman then stomped quickly forward, stepping on top of Doogie’s legs with its stubby forelimbs, causing them to sink down into the mud.

  “Arggghhh!” Doogie yelled as the weight of the caiman came down on his shins. The big reptile took another slow step forward, stepping onto his wounded left thigh. Doogie roared with pain as his legs sank further into the mud.

  The caiman’s propped-open mouth hovered above his chest two feet in front of his face, held open by the G-11.

  Doogie patted his chest pockets for something he could use—anything.

  And then he found something.

  A small wad of C-2 soft-detonating explosive, the small-radius plastique explosive that archaeologists used to blast obstructions from ancient buildings without hurting the structures themselves.

  Fuck it, he thought.

  “Eat this!” he said, and with a quick lunge, he mashed the tiny wad of C-2 and depressed its thumb detonator, then tossed it into the propped-open mouth of the caiman.

  The caiman seemed momentarily surprised at the sensation of something landing in its gullet and it gulped comically . . . and swallowed the C-2!