Matthew Reilly - Temple

00:00:16 MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE. ENTER DISARM CODE HERE Sixteen seconds… The tank screamed through the sky. Race looked forlornly at the timer as it counted inexorably downwards. And then suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He snapped to look up—and saw Earl Bittiker crawling in through the driver’s hatch up at the top of the falling tank, his Calico pistol in his hand! Oh fuck!

00:00:15 Forget about him! Just think! Think? Christ, how the hell is a guy supposed to think inside an Abrams tank that’s plummeting to earth at about a hundred miles an hour, with a guy climbing in through the driver’s hatch carrying a gun?

00:00:14 Race tried to clear his mind. All right, last time he had known that Weber had set the disarm code. But this time, he didn’t have the first clue who had set the code, principally because he didn’t know who had designed the device’s ignition system.

00:00:13 Ignition system… Those were Marty’s last words, the words he had spoken as he lay dying in Race’s arms.

00:00:12 The Abrams hit terminal velocity, began to emit a shrill screaming sound like that of a falling bomb. Bittiker was halfway through the driver’s hatch now. He saw Race, fired his pistol at him. Race dived out of the way, ducked behind the Supernova, grabbed the cellular phone from his pocket as more bullets slammed into the steel wall of the tank beside him.

‘Demonaco!’ he yelled over the din of the falling tank.

“What is it, Professor?’

‘Tell me quickly! Who designed the ignition system on the Navy’s Supernova?’

Three thousand miles away, John Paul Demonaco snatched up a nearby sheet of paper. It was the list of the members of the Navy DARPA Supernova team. His eyes zeroed in on one line. RACE, Martin E. Ignition system DARPA D’327997A design engineer ‘A guy named Race. Martin Race!’ Demonaco shouted into the phone.

Marty, Race thought.

00:00:11 Marty had designed the ignition system. That’s what he’d been trying to tell him before he died. Therefore Marty had set the disarm code.

00:00:10 Eightdigit numerical code. Bittiker was fully inside the tank now. What code would Marty use?

00:00:09 The tank was still falling, screaming through the air at a thousand feet per second. Bittiker saw him, raised his Calico again. What code did Marry always use?

00:00:08 Birthday? Significant date? No. Not for Marty. If he had something that required a numerical code, an ATM card or a PIN number, he always used the same number. Elvis Presley’s Army serial number.

00:00:07 Bittiker levelled the Calico at Race. Christ, what was it! It was on the tip of his brain…

00:00:06 Race ducked behind the Supernova—Bittiker wouldn’t dare shoot him through it—found himself standing in front of the device’s arming computer. God, what was the number? 533… Think, Will! Think!

00:00:05 5331… ..0 07… … 61… 53310761! That was it! Race started punching the keys on the arming computer, typed: 53310761 and then he slammed his finger down on the ‘ENTER’ key. The screen beeped.

DISARM CODE ENTERED. DETONATION COUNTDOWN TERMINATED AT:

00:00:04 MINUTES.

But Race didn’t bother to stay and look at the screen. Rather, he just clambered quickly away from Bittiker— shielded by the now disarmed Supernova—and headed along the short ladder that led to the tank’s turret hatch. He didn’t know why he headed that way. It was just a completely illogical notion that if he was on the outside of the tank when it hit the ground, he might have a better chance of surviving the impact. They must be close to impact now. On his way across the horizontal ladder, he came across the idol—now with a hole in its base—and scooped it up as he crawled. He came to the hatch, pushed it open. Speeding wind assaulted his face instantly—wind that moved so fast it blinded him.

Clutching onto the now vertical roof of the Abrams, he quickly kicked the hatch shut behind him, shutting Bittiker inside, just as the steel hatch itself was assailed by a barrage of automatic fire from inside. Race looked down, into the face of the onrushing wind, as it pounded against his glasses—and saw the green rainforest rushing up at him at about a million miles per hour! The tank screamed towards the earth. Two seconds to impact. This was it. One second. The earth rushed up toward him. And in that last second before the Abrams tank slammed into the earth at incredible speed, William Race shut his eyes and offered up a single, final prayer. And then it happened. Impact.

The tank’s impact with the earth was absolutely stunning in its force. The world seemed to shudder as the 67ton tank slammed into it at terminal velocity. The tank imploded on contact with the ground, flattening in a millisecond, sending whole sections of it shooting out in every direction. Earl Bittiker had been inside the Abrams when it hit the ground. As the giant steel tank slammed into the earth, its walls came rushing in toward him at shocking speed, sending a thousand jagged corners of metal shooting into his body—penetrating him from every side in the nanosecond before he was crushed into nothing. One thing was for sure, Earl Bittiker had been screaming when he died. William Race, on the other hand, hadn’t been anywhere near the tank when it hit the ground. In that second before the tank smashed into the earth when it was about eighty feet above it—Race had experienced the strangest sensation. He had heard a sound not unlike a sonic boom come from somewhere very close behind him and then suddenly, out of nowhere shoom!—he had felt himself get yanked up into the sky by some powerful unseen force. But the yank had not been rough or whiplike—rather it had been abrupt but smooth, as if he had been connected to the heavens by some invisible bungee cord. So as the tank and Bittiker—hit the ground in a smashing, blazing heap, Race had hovered thirty feet above the explosion, safe and sound. And then he looked over his shoulder and saw what had happened. He saw two plumes of white gas shooting out from the bottom of the A shaped unit that was attached to the back of his unusual kevlar breastplate. In fact, the twin puffs of propellant shot out from two small exhaust ports situated at the base of the ‘A’. Although Race didn’t know it, the black kevlar breast plate that Uli had given him at the refuse pit was in fact a J7 jet pack, the cutting edge aerial insertion unit created by DARPA in conjunction with the United States Army and the 82nd Airborne Division. Unlike the Army’s current MCIIB parachutes, which allowed their wearers to be suspended in full view of the enemy for at least several minutes before landing, jet packs allowed their wearers to freefall to within eighty feet of the ground before swooping to a sudden stop just above the landing zone, in much the same fashion as a bird landing. Like parachutes, however, all J7 jet packs were equipped with altimeter switches— altitude triggered safety mechanisms that engaged the pack’s propulsion systems in the event that the wearer failed to engage them himself before he fell below eighty feet. As Race had just failed to do. There was no way he could have known that on December 25, 1997, at the same time as forty eight chlorinebased isotopic charges had been stolen from a DARPA truck travelling along the Baltimore beltway by agents of the Stormtroopers, also stolen were sixteen J7 jet packs. Slowly, gently, the jet pack lowered Race down to earth. He sighed, breathless, and allowed his body to go limp as he descended into the canopy of lush rainforest trees. Seconds later, his feet touched the ground and he just fell to his knees, exhausted. He looked at the rainforest around him and in a distant corner of his mind wondered how the hell he was going to get out of here. Then he decided that he didn’t care anymore. He had just disarmed a Supernova while falling from a height of 19,000 feet inside a 67ton main battle tank. No, he didn’t care in the slightest. And then suddenly the solution to his problem revealed itself in the form of a small seaplane swooping in low over the trees above him. A man’s hand waved happily from the pilot’s window. It was Doogie and the Goose. Beautiful.