Matthew Reilly - Temple

The cats, he saw, were also gone.

He saw Nash, Lauren and Copeland standing off to his left, over by the citadel. With them stood the six Green Berets and Gaby Lopez.

Before them, however, stood five other people.

Four men and one woman.

The surviving Germans, he guessed.

Race also noticed that only two of the Germans wore military fatigues—soldiers. All the others wore civilian clothing, including two—a man and a woman—who looked like undercover cops. All of them had been disarmed.

Sergeant Van Lewen caught sight of Race, came over ‘How’s the head?’ he said.

‘Awful,’ Race said. ‘What’s happening here?’

Van Lewen indicated the five Germans. ‘They’re the only ones who survived the night. Two of them jumped inside the ATV during the battle and uncuffed us. We managed to pick up the other three just before we got you at the jetty.’

Race nodded.

Then he turned suddenly to face his bodyguard. ‘Say, I have a question for you.’

‘Yes?’

‘How did you know about that rubber button inside the Humvee. The one that started it after the Germans had shut it down?’

Van Lewen smiled at him. ‘If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.’

‘Fine, go ahead.’

Van Lewen grinned at that. Then he said, ‘It’s fairly standard practice in armed forces around the world to use field vehicles like Humvees and ATVs as portable prisons. You lock the prisoners in the car and then you disable it.

‘The United States, however, is the leading supplier of field vehicles worldwide. Humvees, for example, are made by the AM General Company in South Bend, Indiana.

‘The thing is—and this is something that not everyone knows—all American-made field vehicles are fitted with a safety release button, a button that allows the vehicle to be restarted in the event that it is shut down. The theory is that no U.S. vehicle will ever be used as a prison to hold U.S. personnel. Hence, only U.S. military personnel are informed of the whereabouts of those safety buttons. It’s a trapdoor, known only to American soldiers.’

With that, Van Lewen smiled and headed off to join the others over by the citadel. Race hurried after him.

He and Van Lewen joined the others at the citadel.

They arrived there to find Frank Nash interrogating one of the disarmed German commandos—the man Race had heard identify himself as Marc Graf, a lieutenant in the Fallschirmjiger.

‘So are you here for the idol too?’ Nash demanded.

Graf shook his head.

“I do not know the details,’ he said in English. ‘I am only a lieutenant, I do not have clearance to know the full extent of the mission.’

He nodded with his chin at one of the other Germans, the burly-looking man wearing jeans and a holster. ‘I think it would be better if you asked my associate here, Mr. Karl Schroeder. Mr. Schroeder is a special agent with the Bundes Kriminal Amt. The Bundeswehr is working in conjunction with the BKA on this mission.’

‘The BKA?’ Nash said, perplexed.

Race knew what he was thinking.

The Bundes Kriminal Amt was the German equivalent of the FBI. Its reputation was legendary. It was often said to be the finest federal investigative bureau in the world. But still, it” was essentially a police force, which was why Nash was confused. It had no reason to be in Peru looking for an idol.

‘What does the BKA want with a lost Incan idol?’ he asked.

Schroeder paused a moment, as if he were contemplating just how much he should reveal to Nash. And then he sighed—like it would matter now after the previous night’s slaughter.

‘It is not what you think,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We do not want the idol to make a weapon,’ Schroeder said simply. ‘In fact, contrary to what you probably believe, my country does not even possess a Supernova.’

‘Then what do you want the idol for?’

‘What we want it for is simple,’ Schroeder said. ‘We want to get it before somebody else does.’

‘Who?’ Nash said.

‘The same people who were responsible for the massacre of those monks in the Pyrenees,’ Schroeder said. ‘The same people who were responsible for the kidnap and murder of the academic Albert Mueller after he published that article about the meteor crater in Peru late last year.’

‘So who are they?’

‘A terrorist organisation who call themselves the Schutz Staffel Totenkopfverbnde—the Death’s Head Detachment of the SS. They are named after the most brutal unit of Hitler’s SS, the soldiers who ran the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. They call themselves the “Stormtroopers’.’

‘The Stormtroopers?’ Lauren said.

‘They are an elite paramilitary force of expatriate Germans, based in a heavily fortified Nazi retreat in Chile called Colonia Alemania. They were formed at the end of the Second World War by an ex-Auschwitz lieutenant named Odilo Ehrhardt.

‘According to Auschwitz survivors, Ehrhardt was a psychopath-an ox of a man who relished the sheer act of killing.

Apparently, Rudolph H6ss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, took a liking to him, and during the latter years of the war groomed him as his prot6g6. At twenty-two, Ehrhardt was elevated to the SS rank of Obersturmfiihrer, or lieutenant. After that, if H6ss pointed at you, a second later you would find yourself looking down the barrel of Ehrhardt’s P-38.’

Race swallowed.

Schroeder went on. ‘According to our records, Ehrhardt would now be seventy-five years of age. But within the Stormtrooper organisation, his word is law. He goes by the supreme SS rank of Oberstgruppenfidhrer, General.

‘The Stormtroopers are a singularly repulsive organisation,’

Schroeder said. ‘They advocate the forcible incarceration and execution of all Negroes and Jews, the destruction of democratic government worldwide and, most importantly, the restoration of a Nazi government to the unified Germany and the establishment of the Herrenvolk—the “master race”— as the ruling elite on earth.’

“The restoration of a Nazi government in Germany? The establishment of the master race as the ruling elite on earth?’

Copeland said in disbelief.

“Wait a second,’ Race said. ‘You’re talking about Nazis. In the nineties.”

‘Yes,’ Schroeder said. ‘Nazis. Modern-day Nazis.’

Frank Nash said, ‘Colonia Alemania has long been believed to be a safe haven for former Nazi officers. Eisler stayed there for a short time in the sixties. Eichmann, too.’

Schroeder nodded. ‘Colonia Alemania consists of pastures and lakes and Bavarian-style houses, all of which are surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers that are patrolled by armed guards and Doberman Pinschers twentyfour hours a day.

‘It was said that during the Pinochet regime, in exchange for protection from the government, Ehrhardt allowed Colonia Alemania to be used by the dictatorship as an unofficial torture centre. It was a place where people were sent to “disappear”. And with the protection of the military regime, Ehrhardt and his Nazi colony remained immune from search by foreign agencies like the BKA.’

‘All right, then,’ Nash said, ‘so how do they come into this equation?’

‘You see, Herr Nash, that is the problem,’ Schroeder said.

‘It is the Stormtroopers who have a Supernova.’

‘The Stormtroopers have a Supernova?’ Nash said flatly.

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus…’

‘Herr Nash, please. You must understand. In twenty years of counter-terrorist work, I have never encountered a group like the Stormtroopers.

It is well financed, well organised, strictly hierarchical, and totally and utterly ruthless.

‘It is made up of two types of person—soldiers and scientists. The Stormtroopers recruit mainly experienced soldiers, often men who have been dishonourably discharged from the former East German Army or the Bundeswehr for their predilections for using excessive force. Men like Heinrich Anistaze, men trained in the arts of terror, torture and assassination.’