Matthew Reilly - Temple

‘Out! Now!’ he yelled, pointing his MP5 at their noses. The two techs hurried up the ladder and out through the hatch in the turret, banging it shut behind them. Race bolted it behind them, locking it, and suddenly he found himself alone in the command centre of the tank. Alone with the Supernova. He was beginning to get a terrible sense of deja vu. He felt the bulge of the cellular phone in his back pocket, grabbed it.

‘FBI man, are you still out there?’ he said.

John Paul Demonaco leapt for his microphone.

‘I’m here, Mister Race,’ he said quickly.

‘What did you say your name was?’ Race’s voice said.

One of the other agents said, ‘Trace is coming through. What the hell? It says they’re somewhere in Peru … and that they’re 20,000 feet off the ground.’

‘My name is Demonaco,’ Demonaco said. ‘Special Agent John Paul Demonaco. Now, listen to me very carefully, Mister Race. Wherever you are, you have to get out of there. The people with you are very dangerous individuals.”

No shit, Sherlock.

‘Uh—’ Race’s voice said.

‘—I’m afraid that getting out of here isn’t an option,’ Race said into the phone. As he spoke, however, he saw the Supernova’s timer counting down.

00:02:01 00:02:00 00:01:59

‘Oh, you gotta be kidding me,’ he said. ‘This just isn’t fair.’

‘PROFESSOR RACE, GET OUT OF THE TANK!’ a hideously loud voice boomed from a loudspeaker outside the Abrams. It was Copeland’s voice. Race looked out through the gunner’s sights of the massive vehicle and saw Copeland standing up on the catwalk at the forward end of the cargo bay holding onto a microphone. Wind whipped wildly around the hold. The loading ramp behind the tank was still open. Race looked about the interior of the enormous tank. The Supernova took up the entire central section of the command centre. Above him, he saw the entry hatch in the turret. Forward were the firing controls for the tank’s 105mm cannon and beyond those— beneath them, half buried in the floor in the very centre of the forward section of the tank—he saw a padded seat and a steering vane, the tank’s drive controls. There was something very odd about the drive controls, though. The top of the driver’s seat practically touched the low section of roof above it. And then it hit Race. In a tank like this, the driver drove with his head sticking out from a small hatch above his seat. Race felt a sliver of ice shoot up his spine. There was another hatch up front! He dived forward—sliding into the driver’s seat—and looked up instantly to see that it was true. There was another hatch up here. And at the moment it was open. And standing astride it at that very instant, pointing his Calico pistol directly down at Race’s head, was Earl Bittiker.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Bittiker asked slowly.

‘My name is William Race,’ Race said, looking up through the hatch at Bittiker. His mind was racing now, searching for an escape route. Wait a second, there was one possibility… ‘I’m a professor of languages at New York University,’ he added quickly, trying to keep Bittiker talking.

“A professor?’ Bittiker spat. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.”

Race figured that from where he was standing, Bittiker couldn’t see his hands— concealed as they were beneath the hatch—couldn’t see that right now Race was feeling around underneath the steering controls of the tank.

‘Tell me, Poindexter, what did you think you could achieve by coming here?’

‘I thought I could disarm the Supernova. You know, save the world.’ Still feeling. Damn it, it had to be down here somewhere…

‘You seriously thought you could disarm that bomb?’

Found it. Race looked up at Bittiker with hard eyes. ‘While I’ve still got one second left, I’m going to try to disarm that bomb.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Race said. ‘Because I’ve done it before.’

At that moment, unseen by Bittiker, Race jammed his thumb down hard on the rubber sealed button that he’d found on the underside of the steering controls of the Abrams. The same rubbersealed button that was fitted on every American made field vehicle. VROOOOM! Immediately, the tank’s monstrous Avco Lycoming engine roared to life, the throb of its powerful engine reverberating throughout the enormous cargo bay. Bittiker was jolted off balance by the sudden roar of the tank’s engine. Up on the catwalk in front of the tank, Troy Copeland also looked up in surprise. Inside the driver’s hatch, Race looked around for anything he could— Oh yeah. That’s nice. He found a control stick, complete with trigger, on which was written the words: MA GUN. Race grabbed the stick and squeezed the trigger and hoped to God that there was a round inside the Abrams’ main cannon. There was. The boom of the tank’s 105mm cannon going off inside the cargo bay of the Antonov was perhaps the loudest thing Race had ever heard in his life. The entire cargo plane shuddered violently as the Abrams’ mighty cannon went off in all its glory. The 105mm shell blasted through the plane like a run away asteroid. First, it sheared Troy Copeland’s head off—cleanly, quickly—removing it in an instant, like a bullet taking off the head of a Barbie doll, decapitating Copeland in a nanosecond, leaving his body standing for a full second after his head had been removed. But the shell just kept on going. It shot like a missile through the steel wall behind Copeland’s body, rocketing up into the passenger deck of the Antonov, ploughing at colossal speed into the cockpit walls, exploding right through the pilot’s chest before it blasted out through the plane’s windshield in a spectacular shower of glass. With its pilot now well and truly dead, the Antonov banked wildly, entering the first stages of a nosedive. In the cargo bay, the world tilted crazily. Race saw the damage that he’d done, saw where this plane was going. While I’ve still got one second left, I’m going to tryto disarm that bomb. Bittiker was still standing on the skirt of the tank, still holding his Calico pistol, but he’d been thrown wildly off balance by the discharge of the cannon. Race crunched the tank’s gears, found the one he wanted. Then he jammed his foot down on the accelerator, slamming it against the floor. The tank responded immediately—its tracked wheels leaping into motion and the massive steel beast shot off the mark like a racing car. The only thing was, it shot backwards out along the loading ramp, shooting off its edge, tipping over it and falling out into the clear open sky. The Abrams tank fell. Fast. Really, really fast. Indeed, no sooner had it dropped off the loading ramp of the Antonov than the cargo plane—gutted by the blast of the tank’s cannon—just banked away into a nosedive and exploded in a gigantic, billowing ball of flames. The Abrams fell through the sky—rear end first—at phenomenal speed. It was so big, so heavy, it just cut through the air like an anvil, a screaming 67ton anvil. Inside the tank, Race was in a world of trouble. Everything was tilted on its side and the whole tank shook violently as it was buffeted by the friction it created with the air outside. For his part, Race lay awkwardly in the middle of the command centre, having been thrown there when he had reversed the tank off the loading ramp. Next to him was the Supernova. It now sat horizontally, wedged firmly in between the ceiling and floor. Race saw the timer on its display screen counting down: 00:00:21 00:00:20 00:00:19 Nineteen seconds. About the same time he had before the tank smashed into the ground from a height of about 20,000 feet. Aw, luck it. Either the Supernova went off and he died along with the rest of the world—or he disarmed it and died alone when the tank slammed into the earth in about seventeen seconds’ time. In other words, he could sacrifice his own life to save the world’s. Again. Goddamn it! Race thought. How could the same thing happen to him twice in two days? He looked at the computer screen: YOU NOW HAVE