Temple
Page 45
Nash winced.
A long silence followed, the only sound the rhythmic whump-whump-whump of the rotors that still turned atop the two unmarked helicopters.
After nearly a full minute had passed, a lone man got out of the nearer of the two unmarked choppers.
He was dressed in full combat attire—boots, fatigues, combat webbing—and he carried in his left hand an odd-looking semiautomatic pistol.
It was a big gun, black in color, and easily bigger than the famous IMI “Desert Eagle,” the largest production-made semiautomatic pistol in the world. This gun, on the other hand, had a sturdy grip and an unusually long slide which ran for the entire length of its barrel.
Nash recognized it instantly.
It wasn’t a semiautomatic pistol at all. It was a rare—and very expensive—Calico pistol, the only truly automatic pistol in the world. You depressed the trigger and a stream of bullets blazed out from the barrel. Like an M-16, the Calico could be set to fire either short three-round bursts or full auto. But whatever mode you chose, the result was still the same. If you shot someone with a Calico, you opened them up big-time.
The man with the Calico stepped up to Nash while the men in the unmarked chopper behind trim kept their M-16s trained on the others.
The man held out his hand.
“The idol, please,” he said.
Nash appraised him for a moment. He was middle-aged but thin, gaunt, with muscly, wiry arms. He had a hollow, sanguine face that was pitted all over with scars, and a messy shock of thinning blond hair that came down to his eyes—blue eyes that brimmed over with hate.
Nash didn’t hand over the idol.
It was then that the man with the Calico calmly raised his pistol and blew the Army pilot’s skull open with a short three-round burst.
“The idol, please,” the man repeated.
Reluctantly, Nash gave it to him.
“Thank you, Colonel,” the man said.
“Who are you?” Nash demanded.
The man cocked his head slightly to one side. Then, slowly, the edge of his mouth curled into a sly smile.
“The name’s Earl Bittiker,” he said.
“And who the fuck is Earl Bittiker?” Nash snorted.
The man smiled again, that same supercilious smile.
“I’m the man who’s gonna destroy the world.”
Race, Renée, Gaby and Doogie were all peering out through the windows of the ATV, watching the drama outside unfold.
“How did they know how to get here?” Renée said. “Surely there can’t be another copy of the manuscript out there.”
“No, there isn’t,” Race said. “But I think I know how they got here.”
He began to look around the ATV, searching for some-thing. A few seconds later, he found it. The BKA team’s laptop. He turned it on. After a few seconds, he brought up a familiar screen, written in German.
COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE TRANSMISSION LOG 44-76/BKA32
NO.
DATE
TIME
SOURCE
SUMMARY.
1
4.1.99
1930
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
2
4.1.99
1950
EXT SOURCE
SIGNATURE UHF SIGNAL
3
4.1.99
2230
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
4
5.1.99
0130
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
5
5.1.99
0430
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
6
5.1.99
0716
FIELD (CHILE)
ARRIVED SANTIAGO, HEADING FOR COLONIA ALEMANIA
7
5.1.99
0730
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
8
5.1.99
0958
FIELD (CHILE)
HAVE ARRIVED COLONIA ALEMANIA; BEGINNING SURVEILLANCE
9
5.1.99
1030
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
10
5.1.99
1037
FIELD (CHILE)
CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL; CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL
11
5.1.99
1051
BKAHQ
PERU TEAM REPORT IMMEDIATELY
It was the screen they had seen yesterday, before the Nazis had arrived, the one showing every communication signal that had been received by the BKA’s Peruvian team.
Race saw the line he was looking for immediately. The second line:
“Doogie,” he said, “you said something about a UHF signal yesterday. What exactly is it?”
“It’s a standard homing signal. I sent one to our air sup-port team yesterday, so they’d know where to pick us up.”
Renée pointed at the screen. “But this UHF signal was sent out two days ago—at 7:50 P.M. on January 4. That was well before my team arrived here.”
“That’s right,” Race said. “And that time has significance.”
“How?” Doogie asked.
“Because at exactly 7:45 P.M. on the first night, Lauren did her nucleotide resonance scan of the area and determined that there was thyrium in the immediate vicinity of this village. This UHF signal was sent out exactly five minutes after that successful scan. And what were we doing at that time?”
“We were unloading the choppers,” Doogie said, shrugging. “Getting our gear ready.”
“Precisely,” Race said. “The perfect opportunity for someone to send up a UHF signal while nobody was looking, a signal that would tell his friends that the presence of thyrium had been confirmed.”
“But who did it?” Gaby asked.
Race nodded out the window. “I think we’re about to find out.”
Earl Bittiker pulled another Calico pistol from his spare holster and tossed it to Troy Copeland.
“Heya, Troy,” he said.
“Nice of you to join us,” Copeland replied, cocking the massive pistol.
Lauren’s face went ashen white. “Troy?” she said in disbelief.
Copeland smiled at her. It was a cruel, nasty smile. “You should be careful about who you fuck, Lauren, ‘cause they might just be fucking you over. Although I imagine it’s not often that you’re the one who gets fucked over.”
Lauren’s face darkened.
Beside her, Marty blanched. “Lauren?”
Copeland started to chuckle. “Marty, Marty, Marty. Little fucking Marty who sold out DARPA so he could get himself some goddamn respect—you oughta be more careful about who you give your information to, my friend. But then, you didn’t even know that your own wife was screwing another man.”
Race watched the scene outside, his entire body tense, still.
He could hear what Copeland was saying to Marty, humiliating him.
“She liked it too,” Copeland said. “In fact, I can’t think of many things I liked better on this earth than hearing your wife scream as she orgasmed.”
Marty’s face reddened, both in anger and humiliation.
“I’ll kill you,” he growled.
“Not likely,” Copeland said, pulling the trigger on his Calico, sending a rapid-fire burst of bullets into Marty’s abdomen.
Race almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the gun go off.
Marty’s shirt was ripped open by the sudden three-round burst, his stomach raked into a ragged mass of red. Race saw him fall to the ground hard.
“Marty . . .” he breathed.
Out on the main street, Copeland turned his gun on Lauren, while Bittiker turned his on Frank Nash.
“What did you call it, Frank?” Copeland said to Nash. “The law of unintended consequences—terrorist groups getting their hands on a Supernova. Face it, you only saw t
his weapon as a bluffing tool—a weapon that you possess, but which you will never have the courage to use. Maybe you should have thought about it another way: don’t build it if you don’t intend id use it.”
Copeland and Bittiker fired at the same time.
Nash and Lauren fell together, splashing into the mud. Lauren was killed instantly, shot clean through the heart. Nash, on the other hand, was hit in the stomach and he fell to the ground screaming with pain.
Then, with the idol in their possession, Bittiker and Cope-land hurried back to one of the unmarked Black Hawks and leapt aboard.
No sooner were they on board than the two big black choppers rose quickly into the sky. Once they had cleared the treetops, they both tilted sharply forward and powered off, heading south, away from Vilcafor.
As soon as the Texan choppers were gone, Race threw open the rear hatch of the ATV and charged out onto the main street. He slid to his knees beside the fallen figure of Marty.
When he arrived at his brother’s side, Marty was feebly trying to put his intestines back in his stomach. Blood gurgled from his mouth, and as Race looked down into his brother’s eyes, he saw only fear and shock.
“Oh, Will . . . Will” Marty said, his lip quivering. He grabbed Race’s arm with one blood-smeared hand.
“Marty, why? Why did you do this?”
“Will . . .” he said. “Ignition . . .”
Race held him in his arms. “What? What are you trying to say?”
“I’m . . . so sorry . . . ignition . . . system . . . please, stop . . . them.”
And then slowly Marty’s eyes glazed over, settling into a frozen vacant stare. His bloodied body went limp in Race’s arms.
It was then that Race heard the soft gurgling sound from somewhere behind him.
He turned and saw Frank Nash lying on his back a few yards away. Nash’s mid-section was also torn to pieces. He was coughing up blood, gagging on it.
And then suddenly, beyond Nash, Race saw movement.
Saw the first curious native emerge slowly from the trees.
“Professor,” Doogie called softly from the ATV, “I, ah, think it might be a good idea to step away from there.”
The other natives emerged from the forest. They still carried their primitive weapons—their clubs and sticks and axes—and they looked angry as hell.
Slowly, Race lowered Marty’s body gently to the ground. Then he stood and slowly—very slowly—walked back to the ATV.
The natives hardly even noticed him.
They only had eyes for one person—Nash—lying in the middle of the street, gurgling blood.
And then with a savage, high-pitched shriek, the Indians rushed forward as one and converged on Nash like a swarming school of piranha. In a moment Race lost sight of the murderous Army colonel and soon all he could see was a roiling mass of olive-skinned natives crowding around Nash, hacking violently with their clubs and their sticks and their axes, and then suddenly, horrifically, above it all he heard a single ear-piercing scream—a scream of such pure terror that it could only have come from one man.
Frank Nash.
Race slammed the rear hatch of the ATV behind him and looked at the three faces before him.
“All right,” he said. “Looks like we’re gonna have to do this all over again. We have to stop these assholes before they get that idol to a Supernova.”
“But how?” Doogie asked.
“The first thing we have to do,” Race said, “is find out where they’re taking it.”
Race and the others flew through the narrow tunnels of the quenko, running as fast as their injured bodies would carry them.
They had practically no firepower—just a couple of SIG-Sauers and the single MP-5 that Doogie had found in the upper village. As far as armor was concerned, Doogie still wore his combat fatigues and Race still wore his unusual Kevlar breastplate. That was it.
But they knew where they were going and that was all that mattered.
They were heading for the waterfall.
And the Goose that lay hidden on the riverbank there.
After about ten minutes of running, they came to the water-fall at the end of the quenko. Another four and they arrived at the Goose—parked exactly where Race, Doogie and Van Lewen had left it—underneath the overhanging branches of the riverside trees. Uli, Race was pleased to see, was still sleeping safely inside it.
Four more minutes and the little seaplane was back in the water, skipping across the waves, shooting across the wide brown surface of the river. It accelerated to take-off speed quickly before suddenly, gloriously, it lifted off the surface and soared into the sky.
Once it was airborne, Doogie banked the plane sharply around so that it was pointing directly south, in the direction that the Texan Black Hawks had gone.
After about ten minutes of flying, Doogie caught sight of them—eight black specks on the horizon. They were veering right, heading southwest over the mountains.
“They’re going for Cuzco,” Doogie said.
“Stay on them,” Race said.
An hour later, the eight Black Hawk helicopters landed at a private airfield just outside Cuzco.
Sitting majestically on the dusty dirt runway waiting for them was a massive Antonov An-22 heavy-lift cargo plane.
With its powerful quadruple propeller system and a wide rear loading ramp, the An-22 had long been one of the Soviet Union’s most dependable tank-lifters. It was also a valuable export commodity, having been sold regularly to countries who couldn’t afford—or who weren’t allowed to buy—American cargo-lifters.
With the end of the Cold War and the crumbling of the Russian economy, however, many An-22s had found their way onto the black market. While movie stars and professional golfers bought Lear Jets for $30 million, paramilitary organizations could buy a second-hand An-22 for little more than $12 million.
Earl Bittiker and Troy Copeland leapt out of their chopper and strode over to the rear loading ramp of the massive cargo plane.
When he arrived at the back of the plane, Bittiker looked up into its cavernous cargo bay and beheld his pride and joy.
An M-1A1 Abrams main battle tank.
It looked awesome. The picture of brutal, untamable strength. Its black-painted composite armor didn’t shine, its monstrously wide tracks stood planted on the cargo deck, splayed wide.
Bittiker gazed at its imposing trapezoidal gun turret. It faced resolutely forward, toward the front of the plane, its long-bodied 105mm cannon pointing upward at a 30-degree angle.
Bittiker stared at the Abrams with cool satisfaction. It was the perfect place to keep the stolen Supernova. It was impregnable.
He handed the idol to one of the Freedom Fighter techs and the little man went scurrying back up into the plane, heading for the tank.
“Gentlemen,” Bittiker said into his radio, addressing the men in the other helicopters. “Thank you very much for your loyal service. We’ll take it from here. See you in the next life.”
Then he discarded his radio and pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Bluey James’s number.
The phone rang in Bluey’s apartment. The FBI’s digital tracing equipment lit up like a Christmas tree,
Demonaco slipped on a pair of headphones, then nodded to Bluey.
Bluey picked up the telephone. “Yo.”
“Bluey, it’s Bittiker. We have the thyrium. Send the message out now.”
“You got it, Earl.”
Bittiker hung up his phone and, with Copeland in tow behind him, headed up the loading ramp and into the back of the Antonov.
It was 11:13 A.M.
“Jesus! They took off already!” Doogie exclaimed, pointing down at the old Antonov as it thundered along the dirt runway and lifted off into the sky.
“Look at the size of that thing,” Renée said.
“I think we just found out where they’re keeping their Supernova,” Race said.
The Antonov soared into the sky, its outstretched wings glin
ting in the morning sun.
In the womblike silence of the Abrams main battle tank that sat inside its cavernous cargo bay, two Freedom Fighter technicians were working carefully at a vacuum-sealed work chamber, slowly excising a small cylindrical section from the base of the thyrium idol with a laser cutter.
Behind the two technicians, taking up nearly all the room inside the big tank, sat the Supernova—the Supernova that until two days previously had resided in the vault room at DARPA headquarters.
After they had extracted the cylindrical section of thyrium, with the aid of two IBM supercomputers that lined the walls of the cargo bay outside, they subjected it to alpha-wave augmentation, inert gas purification and proton enrichment, transforming the section of thyrium into a subcritical mass.
“How long till it’s ready?” a voice said suddenly from above them.
The two men looked up and saw Earl Bittiker staring down at them through the tank’s circular upper hatch.
“Fifteen more minutes,” one of them replied.
Bittiker looked at his watch.
It was 11:28 A.M.
“Call me as soon as you’re done,” he said.
“Doogie,” Race said as he stared up at the enormous cargo plane above them. “How do you open up the loading ramps on those big cargo planes?”
Doogie frowned. “Well, there are two ways. Either you press a button on a console inside the cargo bay, or you use the exterior console.”
“What’s the exterior console?”
“It’s just a pair of buttons, hidden inside a compartment on the outside of the plane. Usually, they’re located on the left-hand side of the loading ramp and covered by a panel to protect them against the wind.”
“Do you need a code or anything to open the panel?”
“No, not at all,” Doogie said. “I mean, it’s not like anyone’s going to open the loading ramp from the outside in mid-air, now is it?”