Matthew Reilly - Temple

And then it happened.

Whatever it snagged on—a submerged tree root, or maybe just a whole goddamned submerged tree—Race never knew, but whatever it was, that anchor must have snagged on something big.

It was as if some hideously strong monster had just yanked on the speeding Pibber’s anchor, because in a single shocking instant, the Nazi Pibber went from sixty-five nautical miles an hour to zero the whole boat just snapping over on itself, ass-over-keel, as its bow was abruptly jerked down into the water.

As the bow went under, the stern shot up out of the waves and the whole boat did a complete floundering cart wheel, flipping over in mid-air and crashing down on the roof of its wheelhouse, smacking down into the water with an enormous explosive splash.

Race spun to see the overturned Nazi boat shrink into the distance behind them, sinking slowly.

Leonardo Van Lewen weaved his Jet Raider in and out of the Nazi armada zipping lightly across the river’s surface as he disappeared and reappeared from behind the various helipad barges, Pibbers and Rigid Raiders.

Angry gunfire rang out all around him as he desperately tried to outrun the Rigid Raider assault boat and the Mosquito attack chopper that were in hot pursuit behind him. Strangely, there was only one Nazi on board the Rigid Raider behind him. It was the boat that he had assailed with gunfire earlier, killing all its occupants bar one. Truth be told, though, Van Lewen didn’t really care much for the boat or the chopper astern of him. He only had eyes for the vessel looming fifty yards in front of him. The big white catamaran. The Nazi command boat.

Twenty yards behind Van Lewen, the lone helmsman of the Rigid Raider filed wildly after the American soldier’s riverbike, his bullets spraying all over the place as his longbodied assault boat bounced madly over the waves.

Then abruptly the helmsman heard a loud whump! from somewhere behind him and he turned quickly—

—just in time to see Karl Schroeder’s fist come rushing at his face.

Renee Becker rode her Jet Raider hard, flecks of spray assaulting her face like a thousand pinpricks.

To her immediate left, she saw Schroeder take the wheel of the Rigid Raider he had just jumped onto and give her the thumbs up.

Once she was sure he was in control of the Nazi boat, Renee immediately gunned the engine of her riverbike and swung in front of the Rigid Raider, using it for cover against the helicopter above them as she took off after Van Lewen, joining him in his pursuit of the command boat.

The massive Nazi command boat powered down the river at the head of the fleet.

About a halfdozen Nazis lined its aft rail—standing underneath the rotor blades of the white helicopter that sat off the helipad there-firing on Van Lewen.

But the big Green Beret deftly weaved his speeding Jet Raider left and right, ducking their fire, before suddenly— without warning—he whipped in behind a nearby helipad barge just astern of the command boat.

Under the cover of the barge, Van Lewen picked up the pace, gradually overtaking the bigger boat on his nimble Jet Raider.

In a few seconds, he came to the bow of the barge, where he took a last deep breath.

Then, when he was ready, he yanked his handlebars hard to the left.

Like a fighter jet swooping in after its prey, his Jet Raider swung in fast across the bow of the helipad barge and in behind the big twin-hulled command boat.

The Nazis on the stern of the massive catamaran immediately opened fire on him, but to Van Lewen’s surprise, they -were suddenly taken down by Renee—screaming in from the left on her own Jet Raider, firing hard with her M-16 as she skipped across the water.

With the Nazis down, the two of them zoomed in underneath the bridge-like body of the catamaran, shooting into the shadows in between its One-hundred and fifty-foot hulls!

The two jet Raiders shot forward in the darkness beneath the catamaran, quickly came to the bow of the boat.

Van Lewen pulled in close to the right-hand hull. Ren4e took the left; Then she watched as Van Lewen reached up and grabbed h0id of the bow rail above him and hauled himself up Onto the co—and boat’s bow, disappearing from he-view.

A second later, with a deep breath of her own, she reached up for the left-hand bow rail and began to climb aboard. Galeforce wind assaulted her face as she emerged from the shadows beneath the catamaran and stood up on its left-hand bow. She saw Van Lewen on the other bow, about fifty feet away from her, holding his M16 up and ready. With the command boat powering along at the head of the fleet, the Nazis obviously hadn’t expected anyone to board them from the front, so there were no commandos up here. Not yet anyway. Renee took in the catamaran around her. It was big, really big. The superstructure mounted on top of the two enormous hulls was sleek in the extreme, aerodynamic beyond belief. It was made up of two levels, both of which were hidden behind deeply tinted slanted windows. Wide side passageways ran down both of the big boat’s flanks. ‘Where to now?’ she yelled. ‘We take the boat and then we hold it until the choppers get here!’ Van Lewen called back.

‘What about the idol? If we can’t take the boat, we should at least try to get the—’

At that moment two Nazi commandos came charging out from the portside passageway, their Glls blazing. But they were shooting from the hip, firing high. Van Lewen just whipped his M16 around, drew a bead on them and took them down with two brutally accurate shots.

‘What did you say?’ he yelled to Renee.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Go now! I’ll cover you.’

And with that the two of them took off down the starboard passageway.

Race and Doogie flew across the water in their Pibber patrol boat. One of the Mosquito attack choppers shot low through the air above them, hovering over the top of their speeding boat, occasionally pivoting in midair so it flew backwards in front of them and fired on them directly. It even had one of its side doors open, out of which a Nazi commando sat, firing on them with a G11. To their right rumbled one of the helipad barges, boxing them in, cutting off any escape in that direction. As he drove, Doogie fired up at the chopper with his Gll. He was trying in vain to get up into the forward gun turret of their Pibber, but the blistering suppressing fire from the chopper was keeping him pinned down in the wheelhouse.

‘Goddam it, I can’t get to it,’ he yelled as the Mosquito whipped by overhead again, the loud roar of its rotors quickly followed by the impact of about a million armour piercing rounds banging into the roof of the wheelhouse.

‘We have to do something about that chopper!’ Race shouted.

‘I know, I know,’ Doogie yelled. ‘Professor, quickly! Go down below. See if you can find any grenades or something down there.’ Race obeyed instantly, threw open the hatch at the forward end of the wheelhouse and hurried down into the belly of the gunboat. He found himself standing in a bare, small room with grey metal walls. Netting and wooden crates lined its slanted walls. In the centre of the room he saw a grey boxlike object. It was about three feet high and three feet wide, roughly the size of a card table, and at first glance he thought it was just another crate, some kind of ammunition container or something. But it wasn’t a container at all. On closer inspection, Race saw that it was attached to the floor. Then he realized. It was a diver’s hatch. In Vietnam, Special Forces and the SEALs had preferred to use Pibbers ahead of other river boats because they alone had these special hatches concealed in their hulls. Using them, frogmen could enter the water without the bad guys knowing where they’d been let off. Race quickly began searching the various racks and shelves for weapons. The first thing he found was a small crate of British L2A2 antipersonnel hand grenades. The second thing was a Kevlar box with some words stencilled across its side in English: