Matthew Reilly - Temple

At that moment, however, Race saw another Pibber gunboat swing in ominously behind them. No Nazi gunmen lined its rails, no gunfire spewed forth from its 20mm gun turret. It just kept its distance, cruising silently, hanging well back behind them, at least three hundred yards away. And then Race saw a puff of smoke burst out from the square shaped pod that hung off its side and abruptly something long and white shot out of the pod and splashed down into the water. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he said, at exactly the same moment as another Nazi Rigid Raider swung in behind their boat, in between it and the Pibber that had just launched the strange object from its sidemounted pod. Four Nazis stood on the deck of the open topped Rigid Raider, firing at Race and Doogie with Beretta pistols. And then suddenly, so suddenly that it made Race jump, the Rigid Raider in between the two Pibbers just exploded. There was no warning. No apparent cause. The longbodied aluminium assault boat just shot up into the air in a geyser of smoke, water and twisted metal. No apparent cause, Race thought, except for the object that the other Pibber had just launched into the water from its pod. The realization hit him and Doogie at the same time.

‘Torpedoes …’ they both said, exchanging a look. As they said it, another wisp of smoke puffed out from the pod on the side of the Nazi Pibber and a long white torpedo exploded out from it, splashed down into the water, and shot forward at incredible speed, heading directly for their boat.

‘Oh, man,’ Doogie breathed.

Race pushed forward on the throttle of the Pibber. The torpedo shot through the water. Race guided the speeding Pibber away from it, swinging left in the water, towards the rest of the fleet, in the hope that he could put another boat between them and the torpedo. But it was no use. The nearest boats to theirs were the two remaining helipad barges, the one with the Grumman JRF5 Goose seaplane trailing behind it immediately to their right, and another forward and to their left. Both barges’ flight decks were empty, their wide, rail-less helipads bare. Race gunned the engine. His Pibber shot forward, hit a stray wave, bounced high into the air and then with a sudden crashing lurch, came down again, hitting the water hard. The torpedo bore down on them.

‘Professor!’ Doogie yelled. ‘You got about ten seconds to do something!’

Ten seconds, Race thought. Shit. He saw the helipad barge to his left, got an idea, swung in towards it. Eight seconds. The Pibber shot across the surface about thirty yards to the right of the wide, flat barge. Race’s eyes were glued to the barge. It was little more than a landing pad on water, just a wide, flat helipad that floated about three feet above the waterline, with a small glass enclosed wheelhouse at its bow. Six seconds. Abruptly, Race yanked his steering wheel hard to port and the Pibber banked left through the water, skipping quickly across the waves, taking air every few metres as it shot at breakneck speed in towards the helipad barge.

Five seconds. The torpedo closed in. Four seconds.

‘What are you doing?’ Doogie yelled.

Three.

Race jammed the throttle forward as far as it would go.

Two.

The Pibber skimmed across the water on a collision course with the barge’s starboard flank. Then suddenly the Pibber hit a wave and like a stunt car leaping off a ramp, it shot high into the air. The speeding gunboat leapt clear out of the water, its propellers spinning in the air behind it, literally flying, and with a bone jarring whump! its hull landed right on top of the barge’s empty helipad. But the Pibber was still moving fast and with a scraping, shrieking, earsplitting screech, the patrol boat skidded across the empty helipad deck, kicking up sparks as it shot across it until shoom! the Pibber blasted off the left-hand edge of the barge and splashed down into the water on the other side where its propellers caught hold of water again and it peeled away from the helipad barge, just as the torpedo behind it hit the hapless barge and detonated. The walls of the barge blew out as one. Jagged lengths of steel, curving pieces of hull and a thousand shards of glass went blasting out into the air as the barge exploded with the impact of the torpedo.

‘Wahooooo!’ Doogie yelled from the gun turret. ‘What a goddamned ride!’

Breathless, Race peered back at the river behind them as pieces of the destroyed barge rained down on the roof of his wheelhouse. ‘Whoa,’ he said.

Renee Becker slid in through a side door of the command boat, cautiously made her way down a narrow white-lit corridor. She slipped into an alcove as a door in front of her opened suddenly. Two Nazis emerged and hurried past her, carrying pistols in their hands, one of them saying, ‘They’re using our own EMP against us!’

They ran off down the corridor, unaware of her presence. Renee pressed on. The interior of the catamaran was plush beyond belief white walls with dark wooden panelling and lush blue carpet. But she didn’t care. She was only after one thing. The idol. After leaping out of the water and dry-skiing across the landing pad of the helipad barge, Race and Doogie’s Pibber was now whipping across the river’s surface again, with Doogie firing from his turret up at the last Mosquito helicopter as it buzzed wildly about above them. But the Mosquito was too quick, too nimble. It evaded his fire easily until finally his 20mm cannon ran out of ammo and just started clicking repeatedly.

Doogie frowned. ‘Aw, shit.’ He quickly slid out of the turret, snatched up his G11, and joined Race in the wheelhouse. ‘We gotta nail that chopper,’ he said. ‘While it’s still up there, we got no chance of beating these guys.’

‘What do you suggest?’

Doogie nodded at the last remaining helipad barge ploughing along the river about fifty yards to their right, the one with the Grumman Goose seaplane being towed along behind it. ‘I suggest we get up in the air with it,’ he said. Seconds later, their Pibber swung in alongside the wide, flat helipad barge.

The two boats touched for a moment and Doogie leapt across onto the landing deck of the barge. ‘Okay, Professor,’ he yelled, ‘your turn!’

Race nodded, left the wheel of the Pibber just as the entire patrol boat jolted wildly under the weight of a stunning impact. Race fell to the deck, looked up in time to see one of the two remaining Nazi Pibbers ram the left-hand side of his boat again. On the helipad barge to the right of the two Pibbers, Doogie whipped up his Gll and pulled the trigger but for some reason, it wouldn’t fire. ‘Damn it! Shit!’ he yelled as he watched Race and the other Pibber drift away from his barge. Race was in hell. Gunfire rang out all around him as the Nazis on the other Pibber opened fire on his wheelhouse with pistols from close range. The forward windshield of his Pib shattered and a storm of shards rained down all over him. Then suddenly he felt another lurching thump as the second Pibber rubbed up against his portside rail. He snapped around and saw the Nazi Pibber looming large alongside his boat, saw four commandos on its stern deck holding Berettas, readying themselves to board his Pib and kill him. He spun, looked the other way, and saw that the gap between his own boat and the helipad barge with Doogie was now at least thirty feet wide. Too far away. He was on his own now. He drew his SIG. What are your options, Will? Can’t see many. The first Nazi leaped over onto his Pibber. Race whirled around instantly and dived forward through his boat’s shattered windshield and up onto the Pibber’s elevated foredeck just as the Nazi opened fire with his pistol, his bullets pinging off the windshield’s frame inches above Race’s head. Race went sprawling on the foredeck of the Pibber, out of the line of fire, at least for the moment. He heard the sounds of the other Nazis landing on the aft deck of his boat. Shit. He looked aft and saw the heads of the four Nazi commandos coming forward. He instinctively rolled away from them and abruptly something sharp hit his back. Race turned. It was the Pibber’s anchor. The Nazis were still coming forward. Do something! All right… Race aimed his SIGSauer at the anchor’s rope and fired. The bullet cut the rope just above the anchor and the stainless steel weight instantly dropped free from it, clattered down onto the deck. Race then yanked off his cap and wedged it firmly between his teeth. The first Nazi appeared in the wheelhouse, raised his Beretta and fired. Race dived clear of the bullet, scooping up the anchor rope in his hand as he did so, and then, without so much as a second thought, he rolled quickly across the foredeck towards the bow of the boat. The steel foredeck around him erupted with bulletholes as he rolled but the bullets missed their mark. For at the exact moment that the four Nazis appeared in the wheelhouse of the Pibber, William Race rolled his body off the bow of the patrol boat and fell down into the speeding water below.