Temple (16 page)

assassins, a man named Heinrich Anistaze.
But Nash had never mentioned anyone named Romano.
Who was he and what was he doing down in the village?
More importantly, why was Nash running from him?
Nash looked up sharply at Race, his expression darkening.
'Professor, please…'
'Who is Romano?'
'Excuse me,' Nash said, brushing roughly past him, heading back
toward the front of the temple.
Race just shook his head and followed at a distance. He came back
around to the front of the temple and sat down on its wide stone
steps.
He was so tired, his mind was feeling like mush. It was just after
nine now, and after travelling for nearly twelve hours, he was
feeling absolutely exhausted.
He leaned back against the steps of the temple and pulled his Army
parka close around himself. A sudden, over whelming fatigue had
come over him. He rested his head on the cold stone steps and shut
his eyes.
As he did so, however, he heard a noise.
It was a strange noise. A sharp scratching sound.
It was quick, insistent—almost impatient—but oddly muffled. It
seemed to be coming from within the stone steps
beneath his head.
Race frowned.
It sounded like claws scraping against stone.
He sat up instantly and looked over at Nash and the others.
He thought about saying something to them about the scratching
noise but he didn't get the chance to, because at that moment—at
that precise moment—two hawk-like attack helicopters exploded
through the veil of rain above the rock tower with their rotors
roaring and their guns blaz ing, illuminating the tower top with
powerful beams from their spotlights.
At exactly the same instant, deafening automatic gunfire rang out
all around Race and a series of bullet holes smacked into the stone
wall inches above his head.
Race dived for cover behind the corner of the temple and looked
back just in time to see a small army of shadowy figures burst out
from the treeline at the edge of the clearing, long tongues of fire
spewing forth from the muzzles of their guns, dark wraiths in the
night.
THIRD MACHINATION
Monday, January 4, 2110 hours
VILCAFOR AND SURROUNDS
VILCAFOR t
Race covered his head as another volley of automatic gun fire
slammed into the stone wall next to him.
And then suddenly—shockingly—another source of gunfire exploded out
from somewhere right above his head.
Somewhere very, very close.
Race opened his eyes and looked up and found himself staring
directly into the spotlight of one of the choppers. He squeezed his
eyes shut, saw spots, reeled from the blinding light.
As he shielded his eyes with his forearm, slowly his vision
returned and it was then that he realised that the source of this
new gunfire was someone standing over his
own prone body, firing up at the light.
It was Van Lewen. His bodyguard.
Defending him with his M-16.
Just then, one of the attack helicopters roared by over- head—its
rotor blades thumping loudly, its white spotlight playing over the
tower's peak—and pummelled the muddy ground in front of Van Lewen
with a burst from its side- mounted cannons, the incredible noise
of the cannons drowning out the clatter of automatic gunfire on the
tower top.
Frantic voices shouted over Race's earpiece: “—Can't see where
they—”
“—too many of them!'
And then suddenly he heard Nash's voice: “Van Lewen!
Cease fire! Cease fire!”
A second later, Van Lewen's fire stopped and with it the gun
battle, and in the eerie stillness that followed—bathed as it was
in the harsh white light of the two attack choppers circling the
tower top—Race saw that he and his companions were completely
surrounded by at least twenty men, all of them dressed in black and
armed with submachine-
guns.
The two attack helicopters began to hover above the clearing in
front of the temple, illuminating it with their powerful
spotlights. They were American-made AH-64 'Apache'
assault choppers—skinny, evil-looking attack birds.
Slowly, the group of shadowy figures began to emerge from the
foliage at the edge of the clearing.
All of them were heavily armed. Some held compact German-made
MP-5s, others carried extremely high-tech Steyr-AUG assault
rifles.
Race was surprised at himself, surprised at his knowledge of the
range of weapons before him.
It was all Marty's fault, really.
Apart from being a design engineer at DARPA and the world's most
annoying Elvis Presley fan (all of his PIN numbers and computer
passwords were the same num- ber—53310761—the King's Army serial
number), Race's “brother Marty was also a walking encyclopaedia on
guns.
Ever since they were kids, right up to the last time Race had seen
him nine years ago, whenever they visited a sporting goods store,
Marty would be able to identify for his younger brother every make,
model and manufacturer of the guns in the firearms section. The
strange thing was that now, thanks to Marty's incessant
observations, Race suddenly found that he, too, could identify them
all.
He blinked, came back to the present, resumed his view of the
phalanx of armed commandos gathered in front of him.
They were all dressed in black—jet-black combat fatigues, jet-black
webbing, jet-black gloves and boots.
But by far the most striking feature of their uniforms was on their
faces. Each soldier wore a charcoal-coloured porce lain hockey mask
over his face a solid black featureless mask that covered
everything but its wearer's eyes. The masks made the soldiers in
front of Race look cold, inhuman, almost robotic.
Just then one of the masked commandos hurried over to where Van
Lewen was standing and snatched his M-16 away from him, hastily
relieved him of his other weapons.
Then the black-clad man leaned down toward Race and smiled through
his menacing black mask.
'Guten abend,” he said wryly before yanking Race roughly to his
feet.
The rain continued to fall.
Nash, Copeland and Lauren stood by the portal, their hands clasped
tightly behind their heads. The Green Berets stood next to them,
disarmed.
Walter Chambers stared wide-eyed and stunned at the squad of masked
commandos surrounding them. Gaby Lopez just eyed them all
coolly.
Van Lewen and Race were shoved alongside the others.
Race gazed fearfully at the black-clad soldiers, stared at their
cold black hockey masks. He had seen masks like that before. South
American riot police wore them during extremely violent protests,
to protect their faces against rocks and other hurled
objects.
He counted about twenty soldiers in total.
Standing in the darkness behind the circle of comman dos, however,
was another group of people—men and women. This new group of people
were not dressed in uni forms or masks. They wore civilian clothes,
hiking clothes not unlike Lauren's.
Scientists, Race thought. German scientists who had come here in
search of the thyrium idol.
He glanced over at the portal, at the huge boulder wedged inside
its doorway. Wires protruded from every side of it—the
soft-detonating C-2 explosives.
Just then, one of the commandos stepped forward and reached up to
remove his black hockey mask.
Race tensed with anticipation—waited to see the cold
hard features of Heinrich Anistaze, the former Stasi agent who had
led the squad of German assassins in the bloody slaughter at that
monastery.
The commando removed his mask.
Race frowned. He didn't recognise him.
It wasn't Anistaze.
Rather, he was a stout, older man, with a round, creased face and a
bushy grey moustache.
Race wasn't sure whether to be relieved or terrified.
The German leader didn't say a word as he brushed roughly past Race
and crouched down in front of the portal.
He examined the assorted wires leading out from the boulder and
snorted. Then he dropped the cables and walked over to Frank
Nash.
He stared imperiously down his nose at the retired Army colonel,
evaluating him, appraising him.
And then suddenly he spun around and barked an order to his troops.
“Feldwebel Dietrich, bringen She she in das Dorf und sperren She
she ein! Hauptmann von Dirksen, bereiten She alles vor um den
Tempel zu offnen.'
Race translated the words in his head: 'Sergeant Dietrich, take
them to the village and lock them up. Captain Von Dirksen, prepare
to open the temple.'
Led by a German sergeant named Dietrich and surrounded by six of
the masked German commandos, the ten Americans were marched
unceremoniously back across the rope bridge and down the spiralling
pathway.
When they came to the bottom of the path, they were directed
through the narrow fissure in the plateau that led back to the
riverside path. After about twenty minutes of
walking, they arrived back at the village.
But the village had changed.
Two enormous halogen floodlights illuminated the main street,
bathing it in artificial light. The two Apache helicopters that
Race had seen up on the tower top now
sat at rest in the middle of the street. About a dozen German
troops stood at the river's edge, staring out at the river.
Race followed their gaze and saw his team's battered Hueys resting
up against the edge of the riverbank. When seen alongside the two
sleek Apaches, Frank Nash's Hueys seemed old and clunky.
It was then that Race saw what the German commandos were really
looking at.
It lay beyond the two Hueys, resting on the river's surface,
cloaked in the steadily falling night rain.
A seaplane.
But this was no ordinary seaplane. It must have had a wingspan of
at least two hundred feet. And its under° belly—that part of it
that rested majestically in the water—was absolutely enormous,
easily larger than the main body of the Hercules that had flown
Race and the others into Peru. Four turbojet engines were slung
underneath its massive wings, while two bulbous pontoons stretched
down from each wing, touching the water's surface, stabilising the
aircraft.
It was an Antonov An-111 Albatross, the largest air-capable
seaplane in the world.
The big plane was rotating slowly on the river's surface
as Race and the others emerged from the riverside path led by the
German sergeant, Dietrich. It was reversing in
toward the riverbank.
No sooner had it run aground in the soft mud than a loading ramp
began to lower from its hindquarters.
As soon as the ramp touched dry land, two vehicles rumbled out from
within the giant plane—-one eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle that
looked like a tank on wheels, and one hard-topped Humvee.
The two armoured vehicles skidded to a stop in the middle of the
main street. Race and the others were led toward them. As they
arrived at the two cars, Race saw two more German commandos shoving
Tex Reichart and Doogie Kennedy down the street toward them.
'Gentlemen,' Dietrich said to the other commandos in German. 'Put
the soldiers and the government men in the ATV under restraints.
Throw the others in the Humvee.
Lock them inside, and then disable both vehicles.'
Nash, Copeland and the six Green Berets were all put inside the big
tank-like all-terrain vehicle. Race, Lauren, Lopez and Chambers
were shoved inside the Humvee.
The Humvee was kind of like an oversized jeep, only a lot wider and
with a solid reinforced metal roof. It also had Lexan glass windows
which, at the moment, were rolled up.
After they were put inside the Humvee, one of the German commandos
lifted up the bonnet and leaned over the big vehicle's engine. He
flicked a switch underneath the radiator and
irnrnediately—thwack!—all the doors and windows of
the Humvee were instantly locked into place.
A portable prison, Race thought.
Wonderful.
Meanwhile, the tower top was a hive of activity.
The German soldiers up there were all from the Fallschirmjiger—the
crack rapid-response unit of the German Army—and they moved as
such, quickly and efficiently.
The leader of their squad, General Gunther C. Kolb— the
grey-mustachioed man who had coldly appraised Frank Nash
earlier—was barking orders at them in German: “Move! Move! Move!
Come on! We do not have much time!'
As his men dashed about in every direction, Kolb sur - veyed the
scene around him.
The C-2 explosives around the boulder in the temple's doorway had
been removed and were now being replaced by ropes, the entry team
was ready to go, and a digital video camera had been set up in
front of the portal to document the opening of the temple.
Kolb nodded to himself, satisfied.
They were ready.
It was time to go in.
Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Humvee.
Race sat slumped in the driver's seat. Walter Chambers sat beside
him in the passenger seat. Lauren and Gaby Lopez were in the
back.
Through the car's rain-spattered windshield, Race saw that the
German soldiers in the village were crowded
around a single monitor, watching it intently.
Race frowned.
Then he saw that there was a small television screen on the central
console of his Humvee's dashboard—in the place where the radio
would be in a regular car. He wondered if the shutdown of the
Humvee's engine affected its electrical systems. He pressed the
power on the little television to find out.
Slowly, a picture came to life on the screen.
On it, he saw the Germans up at the temple, gathered around the
portal. He heard their voices come in over the television's
speakers:
'Ich kann Night glauben, class she Sprengstoff verwenden woll- ten.
Es konnte das gesammte Gebaude zum Einsturz gebracht haben. Machen
She die Seile fest—'
'What are they saying?' Lauren asked.
'They're removing the explosives you set around the boulder,' Race
said. 'They think the C-2'11 bring down the whole structure.
They're going to use ropes instead.'
A woman's voice came over the speakers, speaking rapidly in
German.
Race translated for the others: 'See if you can get in touch
with headquarters. Tell them we've arrived at the temple, and that
we have encountered and subdued members of the United States Army.
Awaiting instructionsN'
Then the woman on the speakers said something else.
'—Was ist mit dem anderen amerikanischen Team? We sind
die jetzt ?”
What the hell? Race thought.
Das anderen amerikanischen Team ?