Matthew Reilly - Temple

Just in time to see one of the two remaining Nazi Pibbers swing in behind him and launch a torpedo from its sidemounted pod. The torpedo splashed into the water, shot forward under the surface. Doogie gunned it. The two Rigid Raiders were now speeding along on either side of him, off the tips of his wings, boxing him in. ‘Shit,’ Doogie said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ The torpedo closed in. He pushed the Goose’s throttle forward. The little seaplane shot across the water, surrounded by enemy vessels on no fewer than four sides: by the two Rigid Raiders on both of its flanks, by the Pibber a hundred yards astern of it, and by the black Mosquito attack chopper shooting through the air above it. Doogie looked about himself desperately. While his little plane struggled to maintain its pace, the two Rigid Raiders sped alongside him easily, their supercharged engines roaring, their crews seeming to take a perverse kind of pleasure in watching him struggle.

‘Don’t smile too soon, you fascist assholes,’ Doogie said aloud. ‘It’s not over yet.’

The torpedo was within twenty yards of his tail now. Doogie pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go Fifteen yards, and he hit eighty knots. Ten ninety. Five a hundred. Doogie could see the Nazis on the Rigid Raiders laughing at him as he desperately attempted to outrun the torpedo in his hopelessly outdated Goose. Two yards a hundred and ten. Top speed. The torpedo slid underneath the Goose. ‘No!’ Doogie yelled. ‘Come on, baby! Do it for me!’

The Goose shot across the river’s surface. The Nazis laughed. Doogie swore. And then suddenly, gloriously, the little Goose did what no one except Doogie thought it was still capable of doing. It lifted off the surface. It only lifted slightly off the river’s rushing surface, maybe a foot or two at the most, but it was enough. With its initial target lost, the torpedo in the water immediately began searching for another. It found it in the Rigid Raider to Doogie’s right. No sooner had the Goose lifted off the surface than that Rigid Raider was blasted out of the water by the shocking detonation of the torpedo. The Goose touched back down again, kicking up a shower of spray behind it.

The Mosquito above it saw what had happened and powered forward, ahead of the Goose, turning laterally in the air as it did so, so that it now flew backwards in front of the speeding seaplane, unleashing a savage burst of gunfire at it. Doogie ducked under the dashboard. ‘Damn choppers,’ he yelled. ‘Let’s see how you like this!’ And with that he hauled his steering yoke hard to the left. The Goose banked sharply, the tip of its pontoonless left wing touching the surface again, cutting across the path of the surviving Rigid Raider. The skipper of the Rigid Raider didn’t react fast enough. Like a missile shooting up into the sky, the Rigid Raider lifted completely out of the water as it rushed up the steeply slanted wings of the seaplane. The assault boat raced up the reinforced wings of the Goose, its exposed silver hull screeching loudly as it shot along the seaplane’s heavily banked wings, using them as a launching ramp, and then shoom! the Rigid Raider launched itself off the end of the right-hand wing and out into the air beyond it where it smashed into the canopy of the Mosquito helicopter that was hovering in front of the sharply turned Goose. The Mosquito lurched backwards, reeling like a boxer punched square in the nose, as the Rigid Raider ploughed into its bubble at incredible speed. Its canopy shattered in an instant and a split second later, the whole helicopter exploded into an enormous billowing fireball. Doogie stared back at the carnage behind him; saw the blackened shell of the torpedoed Rigid Raider sinking slowly into the water; saw the charred remains of the Mosquito and the other Rigid Raider crash down into the river with an enormous splash.

‘Eat that, you Nazi bastards,’ he said softly.

Dazed, confused and possessed of one hell of a headache, William Race was marched at gunpoint out onto the rear deck of the Nazi command boat. Renee walked along beside him, shoved forward by the extraordinarily ugly Nazi Race now thought of as ‘Craterface’. No sooner had he and Renee been subdued by Craterface up on the bow than the big Nazi had called upon his comrades at the other end of the starboard passageway to cease their fire. Then he had marched his two captives down the passageway and out onto the rear helipad, where the pristine white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was on the verge of taking off.

Anistaze saw them instantly, kicked open the side door of the helicopter. ‘Bring them to me,’ he shouted. Van Lewen was racing across the river’s surface out in front of the fleet. He sat at the helm of the Scarab, shooting across the river with only the rear third of the boat’s bulletshaped hull touching the water, the sound of its twin 450horsepower engines thundering in his ears. He turned in his seat to see the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter lift off from the stern deck of the command boat. ‘Damn it,’ he breathed.

Karl Schroeder was in a world of trouble. His Rigid Raider was near the back of the fleet, shooting across the river’s surface in between the last two Nazi Pibbers, being pummelled by their relentless fire. He tried desperately to duck their bullets, but they were too close, too fast. And then suddenly smack, smack, smack a line of bullet holes raked his Rigid Raider, cutting across his right leg, opening up three jagged red holes in his thigh. He fell, clenching his teeth, stifling a scream. Somehow he managed to get up on one knee and keep driving the boat, but it was no use. The Nazi Pibbers were all over him. He looked forward, caught sight of what was left of the fleet the command boat, the Scarab, the Goose seaplane and one of the helipad barges speeding off into the distance a good hundred yards ahead of him. He also saw the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter as it flew away from the command boat. Only minutes earlier, he had seen Race and Renee get thrown into it— At that moment, another wave of gunfire assailed Schroeder’s boat, strafing a line of holes across his back, puncturing his bulletproof vest as if it were made of tissue paper. Schroeder roared in agony, fell to the deck. And in that instant he knew he was going to die. His wounds burning, his nerve ends screaming, his entire body on the verge of going into shock, Karl Schroeder looked desperately about himself for anything he could use to take as many of the Nazis down with him as he could. His gaze fell upon the kevlar box that he had seen earlier on the floor of the Rigid Raider. It was only now, however, that he saw that it had words stencilled on its side in English.

Slowly, Schroeder read the markings on the side of the Kevlar box. When he had finished reading them, his eyes went wide. Schroeder’s Rigid Raider drifted further and further behind what was left of the fleet, with the two Nazi Pibbers crowding in on either side of it. Karl Schroeder now lay on his back on the deck of his assault boat, gazing up at the storm clouds that rolled by overhead, darkening the late afternoon sky, the life slowly draining from his body. Abruptly, the face of a rather sinister looking Nazi cut across his view of the sky and Schroeder realized that one of the Pibbers had come alongside him. But he didn’t care. Indeed, as the Nazi calmly raised his AK47 to his shoulder, Schroeder just looked up into the barrel of the man’s gun, uninterested, resigned to his fate. And then, strangely, he smiled. The Nazi hesitated. Then he looked slightly to the side, at the Kevlar box that lay to Schroeder’s left. The box’s lid was open. Inside it, he saw five small chrome and plastic vials, each filled with a small amount of shiny amber liquid. Each vial sat snugly inside a foamlined pocket. The Nazi knew what they were instantly. M22 isotopic charges. But there was a sixth foamlined pocket in the box. It lay empty. The Nazi’s eyes snapped left to see the last vial sitting in Schroeder’s blood smeared hand. Schroeder had already broken the rubber seal on top of the charge, had already uncocked the red safety latch that covered its release mechanism. Now he had his thumb pressed down on the release button. He held it down as he gazed calmly into space. The Nazi’s eyes went wide with horror.