Temple (34 page)

asshoies must have been the 0ties who stole that shipment of
M-22s from that truck in Balore a few years back.'
'Oh,' Race aid,
'We won't be fieedhg that rnuh firepower,' Doogie smiled, grabbing
ore of the m6re conventional L2A2 hand grenadeS. Th] h0hld be all
w6- nedd
Not a m6fnefit laer the M6iuito above them made another pas
pueiiing th waii of the Pib with bullet holes,
But this tirne a it sho by overhead Doogie pulled the p on hs
grefiad rid hte baball-sle with his good arm, up at th hpp open:i
do,
e grenade h0f chougb h air like a missile…
,,, and thn it diappat inside the Mosquito's door.
A second iatr to MosqiOS waiiblasted out as one d e iiffi¢ aack
chopp pifd wildl foard, cplg over on itsdf and bsg to ames, before
slang d0 nose-first to th spedg water beneath it.
Nice throw, Rae aid,
Van Lewen and Rende aed dowi the wide starboard side passageway of
the 4ornfil boat, their M-16s pressed firmly against their
sh0uidgi
They moved quickly, 6ing their guns from side to side until
suddenly they bia!s out into open space- out onto th@ aft helipad
deck of tl big catamaran.
Van Lewen immediately av¢ {he white Bell Jet Ranger chopp4 gittig
of the deck 6foe hem, with its pilot standing beide it,
The an saw hem instantly, eaehed for his gun. Van
Lewen df6pped him, turned rights—just in time to see a
squad of i fn0 Na,i ¢0ados come charging out
from the intefi6r of the catamaran, their G-11s up and
firing.
Supermachingtm fir aked th deck all around them,
splintered the wOode handrii behind them.
Van l-.ewen dtiekeG sa nde dive back behind the cor ner they had
¢orne from,
He; however, was too far gone.
He looked back at the Nazis coming towards him—they were abot
fifteen yards away With their futuristic machine=guns spewing forth
a Sh04king wave of bullets and in the face of their onslaught; with
absolutely nothing else 4o call on, Leo Van Lewen did the only
thing he could think to
He leap over the side.
Ftorn fh@ helm of his Rigid Raider Speeding along the river behind
the command boat, Karl Schroeder watched in horror as he saw Van
Lewen go sailing off the side of the big catamaran.
But Sehroeder didn't have time to gawk,
At that moment, a hailstorm of G-ii fire came his way as two Nazi
Rigid Raiders swooped in on him from either side, assailing his
boat's flanks with gunfire, forcing him to dive for 40ver.
He hit the deck hard, and immediately scaed the floor Of the boat
for somethg he could e to figh off Che two Nazi Rigid
Raiders.
e first thing he saw was a G-11 lying on he deck next to a kevlar
box of some sort. Good
But then, beyond the G-11, he saw something
d he frowned.
Van Lewen flew through the air, waited for the impact with
the speeding river beneath him.
It never came.
Rather he landed on something hard—something solid— something that
felt like plastic or fibreglass
He looked about himself and found that he was lying on the deck of
the Scarab speedboat that was secured to the rear right-hand rail
of the command boat.
Not a second later, three Nazi commandos snapped their G-11s over
the command boat's rail and drew a bead on the
bridge of hit nose and in that moment, as he looked up into their
eyes Van Lewen knew that his battle was over.
The three Nazis jammed down on the triggers of their
At first, Schroeder hadn't reaiised what it was.
It was an odd-looking, backpack-sized device— roughly rectangular
in shape, with a series of digital gauges on it, variously measured
in kilohertz, megahertz and gigahertz.
Frequency measurements…
And then it had dawned on him.
it was the Nazis' jag device -the device that they had used to
neutralise the Americans' communications sys tems when they had
arrived at viicafor.
Stuck to the front of the device was a strip of grey elec trician's
tape, on which was written in German the words:
WARNING!
DO NOT SET EMP LEVELS ABOVE 1.2 gHg.
Schroeder's eyes had gone wide at the sight of the word:
'EMP'.
Jesus.
A pulse generator.
The Nazis had an electromaetic pulse generator.
But why would they set a limit on the level of the pulse at 1.2
gigahertz?
And then it had hit him.
Schroeder immediately snatched up the G-1i next to him and looked
at the specifications marked on its body.
HECKLER &: KOCH DEUTSCHLAND
- 50 V.3.5 MY: 920 CPU.“ i.S gHZ
In the nanoseconds of time in which the mind operates, he quickly
recalled the theory of electrOmagnetic pulses: EMP nullified
anything with a microprOCessor in it—computers, radio transmitters,
televisionS.
And also, Schroeder realised, G-ii assault rifles, since the G-11
was the only gun in the world to Use a microprocessor-the only gun
complex enough to require one.
The Nazis didn't want their men to Set the levels on their EMP
generator too high, because if they did, the electromagnetic pulse
would knock out their Galls.
Schroeder smiled.
And then—at exactly the same moment as Van Lewen looked up into the
barrels of the Nazis' G-11 assault rifles from his position on the
deck of the Scarab—Karl Schroeder had flicked on the pulse
generator and turned the gigahertz dial to '1.3'.
Click. Click. Click.
Van Lewen's look of resignation turned to one of complete
bewilderment as each of the three G-11s above him failed to
fire.
The Nazis seemed even moe bewildered. They didn't
know what the hell was going on
Van Lewen didn't miss a beat,
In a second, he had his M-i6 raised in one hand and his SIG-Sauer
in the other. He pulled both triggers at the same time.
Both guns blazed to life.
All three Nazis were hit instantly and they flopped back behind the
rail, their heads exploding in identical fountains of blood.
Bullets pinged off the rail itself, ri4ocheting in every direction,
one of them slicing through the rope that held the Scarab to the
command boat.
The speedboat irnrnediately fell away from the big catamaran and
all the Nais on the command boat could do was hold their useless
G-11S in their hands and stare at the Scarab as it receded into the
,,,,,ash behind them.
On the other side of the river, Doogie Kennedy sat in the swivel
chair of his Pibber's forward gun turret, creating all manner of
hell with the patrol boat's double-barrelled 20ram cannon.
He spun the turret around and let fly with a hailstorm of fire
turning one of the Rigid Raiders speeding across the river to his
left into Swiss cheese.
Then he turned his sights onto one of the helipad barges in front
of him—the one with a Mosquito helicopter still on it—-and
pummelled it with 20rnm gunfire, rupturing its fuel tanks, causing,
the entie boat:and-chopper combination to erupt into a billowing
bail of fire.
'That's right! Take [hat, you Nazi sunzabitches!'
Three yards behind him, in the wheelhouse of the Pibber, Race drove
harG scaftning the river as he did so.
just then the third—and last—Mosquito attack chopper made another
low pass, its Side-mounted cannons blazing.
Race ducked quickly On the forward deck in front of him, D0ogie
swung the fev0iving gun turret around and loosed d deafening burst
of 0mm gunfire at the chopper, but the Mosquito just bariked away
sharply as his red-hot tracers hit only air around it.
At that moment, however, Race saw another Pibber gun boat swing in
ominously behind them,
No Nazi gen lined its rails, no gunfire spewed forth from its 20ram
gun turret,
It just kept its distance cruising silently, hanging well back
behind them, at least three hundred yards away.
And then suddenly Race saw a puff of smoke burst out from the
square-shaped pod that hung off its side and abruptly something
long and white shot out of the pod and splashed down into the
water.
33
'Is that what i think it is?” he said, at exactly the same moment
as another Nazi Rigid Raider swung in behind their boat, in between
it and the Pibber that had just launched the strange object from
its side-mounted pod. Four Nazis stood on the deck of the
open-topped Rigid Raider, firing at Race and Doogie with Beretta
pistolS.
And then suddenly—-so suddenly that it made Race jump—
the Rigid Raider in between the two Pibbers just exploded.
There Was no warning.
No apparent cause.
The long-bodied aluminium assault boat jus.t shot up into the air
in a geyser of smoke, water and twisted metal.
No apparent causej Race thought, except for the object that the
other Pibber had just launched into the water from its pod.
The realisation hit him and Doogie at the same time.
“Torpedoes…' they both said, exchanging a look.
As they said it, another wisp of smoke ptiffed out from the pod on
the side of the Nazi Pibber and a long white torpedo exploded out
from it, splashed down into the Waterj and shot
forward at incredible speed, heading directly for their boat.
'Oh, man,' Doogie breathed.
Race pushed forward on the throttle of the Pibber,
The torpedo shot through the water.
Race guided the speeding Pibber away from it, swinging left in the
water, toward the rest of fleet, in the hope that he
could put another boat between them and the torpedo, But it was no
use.
The nearest boats to theirs were the two remag helipad bargesmthe
one with the Grumman JRF-5 Goose seaplane trailing behind it
immediately to their right, and another for ward and to their
left.
Both barges” flight decks were empty—their wide, fail- less
helipads bare.
Race gunned the engine.
His Pibber shot forward, hit a stray wave, bounced high into the
air and then with a sudden crashing lurch, came down again, hitting
the water hard.
The torpedo bore do on them,
; 'Pfofessori Doogie yelled. You got about ten seconds to do
somethingi
Ten seconds, Race thought.
He saw the heiipad barge to his left, got an idea, swung in toward
it.
Eight Seconds.
The Pibbef Shot across the surface about thirty yards to the tight
of the Wide, flat barge.
Race's eyes were glued to the barge, it was little mote than a
landing pad on water—just a wide, flat helipad that floated about
three feet above the wateriine with a small
glass=ehCiosed wheelhouse at its bow,
Six Seconds.
Abruptly, Race yanked his steering wheel hard to pot and the Pibber
banked left through the water, skipping quickly across the waves
taking air every few metres as it
shot at breakneck speed in toward the helipad barge.
Five seconds,
The torpedo closed in
Four seconds
'What are you doing!' Doogie yelled
Three,
Race jammed the throttle forward as fat as it would go.
Two
The Pibber skimmed across the water on a collision course with the
bge's Starboard fiank
Then suddeni the Pibber hit a wve ahd like a stunt car leaping off
a rnp it Shot high iht the all
The speeding unbOat leapt iea out b the water, its pro- pellets
Spinnihg ih the air behind it—literally flying—and with a
bohe-jarrihg whump! its hull landed ight on top of the barge's
empty heiipadi
But the Pibber was still moving—faSt—and with a scraping shrieking,
ear-splitting screech, the patrol boat skidded across the empty
helipad deck, kicking up sparks as it shot across it htii—shoom!the
Pibber blasted off the left-hand
edge of the barge and splashed down into the water on the other
side where its propellers caught hold of water again and it Peeled
away from the helipad barge, just as the tor pedo behind it hit the
hapless barge and detonated.
The walls of the barge blew out as one. Jagged lengths of steel,
curving pieces of hull and a thousand shards of glass went blasting
out into the air as the barge exploded with the impact of the
torpedo.
Wa-hooooo!' Doogie yelled from the gun turret. 'What a goddamn
ride!“
Breathless, Race peered back at the river behind them as pieces of
the destroyed barge rained down on the roof of his
wheelhouse.
'Whoa,' he said.
Ren6e Becker slid in through a side door of the command boat,
cautiously made her way down a narrow white-lit corridor.
She slipped into an alcove as a door in front of her opened
suddenly. Two Nazis emerged and hurried past her, carrying pistols
in their hands, one of them saying, 'They're using our own EMP
against us!' The two Nazis ran off down the corridor, unaware of
her presence.
Ren6e pressed on. The interior of the catamaran was plush beyond
belief—white walls with dark wooden panelling and lush blue
carpet.
But she didn't care.
She was only after one thing.
The idol.
After leaping out of the water and dry-skiing across the landing
pad of the helipad barge, Race and Doogie's Pibber was now whipping
across the river's surface again, with Doogie firing from his
turret up at the last Mosquito helicopter as it buzzed wildly about
above them.
But the Mosquito was too quick, too nimble. It evaded his fire
easily until finally his 20mm cannon ran out of ammo and just
started clicking repeatedly.
Doogie frowned. 'Aw, shit.”
He quickly slid out of the turret, snatched up his G-11, and joined
Race in the wheelhouse.
'We gotta nail that chopper,' he said, 'While it's still UP
there, we got n0 chance of beating these ys.
'What do you suggest?'
Doogie nodded at the last remag hiipad barg ploughing along the
river about fifty yard to their igh the one with the Grumman Goose
seaplafi bing tOd along behind it;
'i suggest we get up in the air with it/h6 aid:
Seconds later, their Pibber swung in ai0ngsid6 th widoi heiipad
barge;
The two boats touched for a moment arcl a th d so, Doogie iapt
across onto the landing deck of he barge.
'Okay, Pf0fssor!' he yelled. 'Your turni
Race nodd@d, left the wheel of the Pibber—just a th4 entire patrol
boat jolted wildly under the weight of a stuna ning impact.
Race fell to the deck, looked up in time to gee one of fh two
remaining Nazi Pibbers tam the ief-hand side of hi boat
again.
On the heiipad barge to the fight of th 6 Pibbers; DOOgie whipped
up his G-11 and pulled th fbigger—but for some reason, it wouldn't
fire.
'Damn iti hit!' he yelled as he wheci Rae an the other Pibber drift
away from his
Race was in Hell.
Gunfir ang out all around him a the 1Nlai On the Pibber opened fire
on his wheelloue ifh pisol fr0