Matthew Reilly - Temple

‘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 immediately— 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 surveyed 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 rainspattered 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’ll 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 instructions.’

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?

At first he thought he mustn’t have heard her right.

But he had. He was sure of it.

But that just didn’t make—

Race frowned inwardly and didn’t translate the sentence for the others.

On the screen, ropes were being looped around the boulder in the portal.

‘Alles klar, macht Euch fertig—’

‘All right. Get ready.’

The men on the screen lifted the ropes.

‘Zieht an!’

‘And… heave!’

Up on the tower top, the ropes went taut and the boulder lodged in the portal slowly began to move, grinding loudly against the stone floor of the doorway.

Eight German commandos were pulling on the ropes, hauling the giant boulder from its four-hundred year-old resting place.

Slowly—very slowly—the boulder came away from the portal, revealing an inky black interior.

Once it was clear, Gunther Kolb stepped forward, peered down into the darkened interior of the temple.

He saw a set of wide stone stairs descending into the darkness beneath him, into the belly of the great subterranean structure.

‘All right,’ he said in German. ‘Entry team. Your turn.’

In the Humvee, Race turned to Lauren.

‘They’re going in.’

Up on the tower top, five fully-loaded German commandos stepped forward. The entry team.

Led by a wiry young captain named Kurt von Dirksen, they met Kolb at the entrance to the temple, guns in hand.

‘Keep it simple,’ Kolb said to the young captain. ‘Find that idol and then get the hell—’

At that moment, without warning, a series of sharp whistling noises cut through the air all around them.

Thwatthwatthwatthwatthwatthwat!

And then—srnack!—something long and sharp lodged itself in a clump of moss on the wall of the temple right next to Kolb’s head!

Kolb stared at the object in amazement.

It was an arrow.

Voices began to shout out from the Humvee’s little television screen as a hailstorm of arrows rained down on the

German troops gathered around the temple.

‘Was zum Teufel!”

‘Duckt Euch! Duckt Euch!“

‘What’s going on?’ Lauren said, leaning forward from the back seat.

Race turned to her, amazed. ‘It looks like they’re being attacked.’

The deafening roar of submachinegun fire engulfed the tower top once again as the German commandos raised their MP-5s and Steyr-AUGs and fired hard.

They all stood around the temple’s open portal, facing outwards, aiming up at the source of the lethal arrows—the rim of the massive crater.

From the cover of the portal’s walls, Gunther Kolb peered up into the darkness, searching for his enemy.

And he saw them.

Saw a collection of shadowy figures gathered up on the rim of the canyon.

There were maybe fifty of them in total—thin human shapes loosing a barrage of primitive wooden arrows at the German commandos on the tower top.

What the hell—? Kolb thought.

Race listened in stunned amazement to the German voices coming in over the little television’s speakers.

‘Temple team! What’s going on up there?’

‘We’re under attack! I repeat, we are under attack!”

“Who is attacking you?”

‘They look like Indians! Repeat. Indians. Natives. They’re firing down on us from the upper rim of the crater! But we seem to be pushing them back—wait. No, wait a minute. They’re pulling back. They’re pulling back.”

A moment later, the roar of automatic gunfire ceased and there was a long silence.

Nothing.

More silence.

The Germans on the screen looked cautiously around themselves, their guns smoking.

In the Humvee, Race exchanged a look with Chambers.

‘A tribe of natives in the area,’ Race said.

Gunther Kolb was shouting orders.

‘Horgen! Take a squad up there and form a perimeter around the rim of the crater!’ He turned to face yon Dirksen and his entry team.

‘All right, Captain. You may enter the temple.’

The five members of the entry team gathered in front of the open portal.

It yawned before them, dark and menacing.

Captain yon Dirksen stepped cautiously forward—gun in hand—and stood at the threshold of the portal, at the top of the set of wide stone steps that led down into the bowels of the temple.