Matthew Reilly - Temple

Its nickname came from its resemblance to certain members of the insect world. It had a round split-glass bubble that resembled the wide hemispherical eyes of a bee, and two long spindly landing struts that looked like the elongated legs of a mosquito.

The Mosquito above the tower top loosed a burst of gunfire from its two sidemounted cannons, chewing up a pair of long unbroken lines in the mud in front of the temple.

‘This is getting worse!’ Race yelled.

Down in the village, the explosives that the Nazis had placed underneath the ATV went off.

A billowing fireball erupted beneath the big eight-wheeled vehicle—lifting it fully ten feet off the ground, flipping it in mid-air—and the massive ATV came crashing down on its side.

Inside it, the world went crazy.

As soon as they had heard the Nazis attaching their explosives to the bottom of the vehicle, Nash, Renee and Schroeder had strapped themselves into some seats and braced themselves for the explosion.

Now they hung perpendicular to the ground, still strapped into their seats, their world turned completely sideways.

But the important thing was that the ATV had held.

For the moment.

Doogie Kennedy peered out fearfully from the roof of the citadel.

He saw the village laid out before him, shrouded in mist and fog—saw about a dozen Nazi commandos standing at regular intervals in the cloudy grey soup, their G11s pointed outwards.

He had just seen the ATV get blasted and he thanked God that the Nazis hadn’t realised that there were more members of Nash’s team inside the citadel. Its walls wouldn’t be able to survive such a ferocious blast.

And then suddenly he heard a shout—someone barking orders in German.

Doogie didn’t know much German, so nearly all of the words meant nothing to him. But then, strangely, amid all the gabble, he heard two words that he did know: ‘das Sprengkommando’.

Doogie froze when he heard the words. Then he snapped around in horror as he saw four Nazi commandos hurry off in the direction of the river in response to the command.

He didn’t know much German, but a stint at a NATO missile facility outside of Hamburg had provided him with at least a basic vocabulary of commonly used German military terms.

“Das Sprengkommando” was one of those terms.

It was German for ‘demolition team’.

From the cover of the portal, Van Lewen fired a grenade from his M-203 launcher. A second later, an explosion blew 6ut from the trees near the Nazi positions, showering the area with mud and leaves.

‘Sergeant!’ Cochrane yelled.

‘What!’

‘We’re fucked if we keep this up! They’ve got too much firepower!

They’ll just stay out of sight until we run out of ammo and then we’ll be trapped inside this fucking temple!

We have to get off this rock!’

‘I’m open to suggestions!’ Van Lewen yelled.

“You’re the sarge, Sarge,’ Cochrane shouted back.

‘All right, then,’ Van Lewen frowned. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘The only way off this tower is the rope bridge, right?’

‘Right,’ Reichart replied.

‘So somehow we have to get back to that bridge, right?’

‘Right.’

Van Lewen said, “I say we skirt round the back of this temple and go down to the edge of the tower top. Then we hack our way through the foliage back to the rope bridge.

We cross the bridge and then we drop it behind us, trapping these assholes on the tower.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Reichart yelled.

‘Then let’s do it,’ Van Lewen said decisively.

The Green Berets readied themselves for the dash out of the temple’s doorway. Race just tried to stay close to them— whatever the hell they did.

‘Okay…’ Van Lewen said. ‘Now!”

And with that the four of them burst out from the entrance to the temple, their guns blazing, and raced out into the rain.

Their guns roared.

The Nazis in the treeline ducked.

Van Lewen and Reichart turned the corner first, headed towards the rear of the temple.

Seconds later, they rounded the rear corner—so that they were now shaded by the temple from the Nazis’ fire—and found themselves standing on the flat stone path at the peak of the muddy slope that Race had seen earlier, the path that contained the unusual circular stone.

The slope beneath them was completely covered in mud and it stretched steeply down and away from them for about fifteen metres, ending at a small rocky ledge that formed the very edge of the tower top—a ledge that over looked a sheer three-hundred-foot drop.

To the left of the ledge, however, was a stand of thick trees and foliage foliage that led back to the rope bridge.

Cochrane and Race rounded the corner behind the others.

They both saw the steep muddy slope instantly.

‘I think this is gonna be harder than we expected,’

Cochrane said to Van Lewen.

Just then, like a shark rising from the depths of the ocean, the Mosquito attack helicopter burst up out of the fog beneath the ledge and hovered right in front of the four Americans, its sidemounted cannons spewing forth a devastating wave of gunfire.

Everyone dived for the ground.

Tex Reichart moved too slowly. The fusillade of bullets ripped into his body mercilessly—-one after the other after the other—keeping him upright long after he was dead.

With every shot that went into him, star-shaped explosions of blood sprayed out onto the wet stone wall behind him.

Buzz Cochrane took two hits to the leg, shouted in agony.

Race hit the mud hard—unscathed—covered his ears against the roar of the helicopter’s fire. Van Lewen just fired fearlessly back at the Mosquito with his M-16 until finally in the face of his relentless fire, the helicopter banked away and Reichart’s body—released from its grip—fell facedown into the mud with a loud splat.

Unfortunately, Reichart had been holding the idol.

As his body hit the ground, the idol in his hand was instantly dislodged. It bounced to the ground and immediately began to slide down the steep muddy embankment…toward the edge.

Race saw it first.

‘No!’ he yelled, diving forward, landing on his belly, sliding quickly down the muddy slope after it.

Van Lewen yelled, ‘Professor! Wait, no—!’

But Race was already sliding fast through the mud, M-16 and all, heading straight for the idol.

Eight feet away.

Five feet.

Three feet.

And then suddenly the Mosquito returned and let fly with another burst of machinegun fire and a line of exploding impact craters shredded the mud in between Race and the idol.

Race reacted quickly. He reeled away from the bullet impacts, shielding his eyes from the flying mud—and abandoned his dive for the idol, shifting his weight so that he was now sliding down the slope, away from the ragged line of impact craters.

He saw the ledge at the bottom of the embankment rapidly approaching him—saw the sheer drop beyond it, saw the black Mosquito hovering above it—but he was sliding too fast, too quickly, and then suddenly, before he even knew what was happening, he was shooting out over the edge of the rock tower into clear open space three hundred feet above the bottom of the canyon.

As he went over, Race shot out a hand and caught the lip of the ledge.

He came to a jarring halt as he hung one-handed from the edge of the ledge, three hundred feet above the bottom of the crater!

The roaring downdraft of the Mosquito helicopter above him blasted against the top of his Yankees cap as he threw his spare hand—the hand still holding his M-16—up onto the ledge and began to haul himself up.

Whatever you do, Will, don’t look down.

He looked down.

The sheer side of the rock tower stretched away from him into darkness. The rain just seemed to fall away into it, disappearing into the impenetrable grey mist.