Matthew Reilly - Temple

‘Arrggghhhh’

One foot. At that precise moment, Renée ducked another blow from the technician and swung in swiftly behind him, then she grabbed him roughly by the hair and banged his head hard against the control panel on the wall. The conveyor belt stopped on a dime.

Race stopped, too—the nape of his neck jolting to a halt an inch from the speeding blur of the helicopter’s rotating blades. Anistaze’s face went blank in surprise. What the fuck? Race took the opportunity and kneed the Nazi hard in the crotch.

Anistaze roared. Just as Race grabbed him by the lapels!

‘Smile, motherfucker,’ Race said. And then he dropped down onto the conveyor belt and rolled quickly backwards, underneath the chopper’s blur ring blades, using his newfound leverage to yank Anistaze forward, neck first, right into the buzz saw like blades of the helicopter! The rotor blades of the chopper sliced through Anistaze’s neck like a chainsaw through butter, removing his head from his body in a smooth, frictionless cut. An explosion of blood splattered all over Race’s face as he lay on the conveyor belt, still holding onto Anistaze’s lapels. Race quickly discarded the body—yecch!—and rolled himself off the conveyor belt. He shook his head. He couldn’t quite believe what he had just done. He had just decapitated a man. Whoa.

He looked up and saw Renée standing over by the control panel, standing astride the unconscious body of the Nazi technician. The tech had been knocked out cold by the blow she’d given him against the control panel. Renée smiled at Race, gave him the thumbs up. For his part, Race just fell limp against the floor, exhausted. No sooner had his head hit the ground, however, than Renée was at his side. ‘Not yet, Professor,’ she said, pulling him to his feet. ‘No resting yet. Come on, we have to stop Ehrhardt from detonating the Supernova.’

In the control booth high above the mine, the timer on the Supernova’s laptop screen continued to tick downwards.

00:15:01 00:15:00 00:14:59 Ehrhardt keyed his radio. ‘Obergruppenfuihrer?’

No response.

‘Anistaze, where are you?’ Still nothing. Ehrhardt turned to Fritz Weber. ‘Something’s wrong. Anistaze’s not answering. Initiate protective counter measures around the device. Seal the control booth.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Renée and Race dragged Uli into the glasswalled office overlooking the mine and laid him down on the floor. A large digital timer on the wall ticked downwards: 00:14:55 00:14:54 00:14:53

‘Damn it,’ Race said, ‘they started the countdown!’

Renée immediately went to work on the gunshot wound to Uli’s stomach. As she did so, however, a fax machine on the far side of the office began to clatter loudly.

Race, now carrying a G11 assault rifle, went over to it as a fax began to scroll out. It read:

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SECURE FACSIM V,F, TRANSMISSION ORIGINATING FAX NO: 12025556122 DESTINATION FAX NO: 5134549775 DATE: 5

JAN, 1999

TIME: 18:55:45 (LOCAL) SENDER CODE: 004 (NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR)

MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:

Having consulted with his advisors, and in keeping with his well-known views on terrorism, the President has instructed me to inform you that he WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES pay to you any sum of money to restrain you from detonating any device you may have in your possession.

W. PHH, VP LIPANSKI

National Security Advisor to the President of the United States

‘Jesus,’ Race breathed. ‘They’re not going to pay…’

Renée came over, looked at the fax. ‘God, look how forceful the wording is. They’re trying to call his bluff. They don’t think he’ll blow the Supernova.’

‘Will he blow the Supernova?’

‘Absolutely,’ Uli said from the floor, causing Race and Renée to spin around. Uli spoke through clenched teeth. ‘He talks constantly of it. He’s insane. He only wants one thing—his new world. And if he can’t have that, then he will simply destroy the existing one.’

‘But why?” Race said.

‘Because that is the currency he trades in. It is the currency he has always traded in—life and death. Ehrhardt is an old man, old and evil. He has no further use for the world. If he doesn’t get his money—and hence his new world order—he will just destroy the old one without even thinking twice.’

‘Wonderful,’ Race said. ‘And we’re the only ones who can stop him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then how do we do it?’ Renée said, turning to Uli. ‘How do we stop the countdown?’

“You have to enter the disarm code into the device’s arming computer,’ Uli said. ‘But as I said before, only Weber knows the code.’

‘Then somehow,’ Race said, ‘we’re going to have to get that code out of him.’

Moments later, Race was running around the rim of the immense crater, heading for the southern cable bridge. The plan was simple. Renée would wait at the start of the northern bridge while Race ran around the crater to the southern bridge. Then, when he arrived there, they would both make a run for the control booth at the same time, from opposite ends. The logic of their plan was based on the fact that the two cable bridges that stretched out to the control booth were quite advanced and very sturdy each bridge was constructed of high tensile steel threads and to drop either of them would require someone to uncouple four separate pressure couplings. If Race and Renée bolted down the two bridges at the same time, one of them might make it to the booth before Ehrhardt and/or Weber managed to uncouple both bridges. After six and a half minutes of running, Race arrived at the southern cable bridge. It stretched away from him, out over the mine. It was so monstrously long—a feature which was accentuated by its narrowness. While it was only wide enough for one person to travel down at a time, it was easily as long as four football fields stretched end on end. Oh God, Race thought.

‘Professor, are you ready?’ Renée’s voice said suddenly in his earpiece. It had been so long since he’d used his radio gear, Race had almost forgotten he was wearing it.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.

‘Then let’s go.’ Race stepped out onto the rope bridge. He saw the white box shaped cabin at the far end of it, suspended high above the floor of the mine saw the door sunk into its wall at the point where the bridge met it. At the moment, that door was closed. There was no movement inside the control booth’s long rectangular windows, either. No. The booth just sat there—silent—hovering perfectly in the air, seven hundred feet above the world. Race moved down the bridge. At that very same moment, Renée was moving quickly down the northern cable bridge. She moved with her eyes locked on the closed door at the end of her bridge—watched it with tense anticipation, waiting for it to burst open at any moment. But the door remained resolutely closed. Odilo Ehrhardt peered out from behind one of the windows of the control booth, saw Renée coming down the northern bridge. Out the opposite window, he saw Race mirroring her movement, coming down the southern cable bridge. Now Ehrhardt had to make a choice. He chose Race. The tiny figures of Race and Renée made their way down the two swooping suspension bridges, converging on the control booth. Renée was moving a little faster than Race, running quickly, her gun up. When she was about halfway down her walkway, however, the door at the end of it burst open and Odilo Ehrhardt stepped out onto the bridge. Renée stopped dead in her tracks, froze.

Ehrhardt was holding the tiny figure of Dr Fritz Weber in front of him, shielding himself with the little scientist’s struggling body. Ehrhardt had one pudgy arm wrapped around Weber’s throat. In his other hand, he held a Glock 20 semiautomatic pistol levelled at the scientist’s head. Don’t do it, Renée’s mind pleaded, willing Ehrhardt not to kill the only man who knew the code to disarm the Supernova. She obviously wasn’t wishing hard enough. For at that moment—that singular, chilling moment—Odilo Ehrhardt gave Renée a final sinister smile and pulled the trigger. The gun in Ehrhardt’s hand went off loud and hard, echoing throughout the crater. It sent a geyser of blood exploding out the side of Weber’s head, sent his brains spraying out over the handrail and down into the crater. Weber’s body went completely limp as Ehrhardt tipped it over the railing and Renée could do nothing but stare in stunned horror as the corpse dropped—dropped and dropped and dropped—seven hundred horrible feet before it hit the bottom of the mine with a muted distant thud.