Matthew Reilly - Temple

Race heard the gunshot too, and a second later, he caught sight of Weber’s body as it went sailing down into the crater. ‘Good God…’ He started moving more quickly toward the control booth, started running…

Back on the northern side of the control booth, Odilo Ehrhardt wasn’t finished. Having tossed Weber’s body off the bridge, he now hurriedly began uncoupling the pressure hoses that connected the cable bridge to the control booth.

“No!” Renée yelled, gripping the handrail on either side of her. With a sharp snaphiss! one of the pressure couplings came free, and the handrail to Renée’s left just dropped away. Renée did the calculations in her head. There was no way she could get to the control booth before Ehrhardt released the other three couplings. She turned around and ran, ran for all she was worth, back up the cable bridge.

Snaphiss! Another coupling broke free, and the other handrail dropped away. Two couplings to go. Renée was running hard—now on a rail less bridge— seven hundred feet above the ground. A few seconds later, the third coupling went and the boards beneath her started to sag to the left. Then, with a final grin of satisfaction, Ehrhardt snapped open the last coupling and the massive suspension bridge— connected to the northern rim of the crater, but now no longer connected to the cabin in its centre—fell into the abyss, with Renée Becker on it. Renée was only about fifty feet from the rim when the bridge dropped away beneath her. As soon as she felt it give way, she dived forward, clutching onto the steel floorboards with her fingers, holding onto them for dear life. The cable bridge fell flat against the slanted wall of the crater. Renée slammed into the mine’s earthen wall, bounced off it, but—somehow—managed to hold on.

Race reached the door at the end of his cable bridge just as Renée’s voice came blasting in over his headset.

‘Professor, this is Renée. My bridge is down. I’m out of the equation. It’s up to you now.’

Great, Race thought wryly. Just what I needed to hear. He took a deep breath and gripped his gun tightly. Then he grabbed the doorknob and turned it, and pushed open the door with the barrel of his G11… Beep! Race saw Ehrhardt before he saw the source of the high-pitched beep. The big Nazi general was standing on the other side of the control room, over by the northern door, with his Glock hanging lazily by his side. He was smiling at Race. To Ehrhardt’s left, Race saw the Supernova—its silver and glass surfaces gleaming, the cylindrical section of thyrium situated in its core, suspended inside its vacuum sealed chamber in between the two thermonuclear warheads. Two Cray YMP supercomputers sat against the wall to the side of the Supernova. The two warhead capsules that had been used to transport the nukes sat on the floor beside the big device, and the idol—now with a hollowed out section in its base—sat on a nearby bench, discarded. On the laptop computer attached to the front of the Supernova—the source of the beep— Race saw the countdown timer ticking down toward zero: 00:05:00 00:04:59 00:04:58 Underneath the countdown, he saw the words: ‘ALTERNATE DETONATION SEQUENCE INITIALIZED’ Alternate detonation sequence?

‘Thank you, Little Man Trying Desperately To Be Brave,’ Ehrhardt sneered. ‘By entering this cabin, you have just condemned yourself to death.’

Race frowned. Ehrhardt’s eyes flicked left. Race followed them, and saw—situated along the eastern wall of the control booth eight yellow 200gallon drums. The words ‘CAUTION!’ and ‘DANGER: HYPERGOLIC FLUIDS’ screamed out from their sides. Other words were stencilled across the front sections of the huge yellow drums: ‘NITROGEN TETROXIDE.’ There were four drums of hydrazine. Four of nitrogen tetroxide. A complex web of cables and hoses connected each plastic barrel to the next. Hypergolic fluids, Race recalled from his chemistry days, were fluids that exploded on contact with one another. A second countdown timer sat on top of one of the hydrazine drums. This timer, however, sat motionless, frozen at five seconds.

00:00:05 And then—just then—Race saw that the eight yellow drums were connected to the Supernova’s arming computer by a thick black cord that snaked its way across the floor of the cabin.

00:04:00 00:03:59 00:03:58

‘How?’ Race demanded, his G11 pressed against his shoulder, trained on Ehrhardt’s chest. ‘How have I condemned myself to death?’

‘By opening that door, you just triggered a mechanism that will, in one way or another, end your life.’

‘How goddamnit!“ Ehrhardt smiled. ‘There are two incendiary devices in this room, Professor: the Supernova and the hypergolic fuels. One will blow up the entire planet, the other will only blow up this cabin. I know you wish to disarm the Supernova, but if you succeed in doing that you will do so at a price.’

‘What price?’

‘Your life in exchange for the world’s. By opening that door, Professor, you set off a mechanism that linked the Supernova’s arming computer to the hypergolic fluids. Now, if for any reason the Supernova’s countdown is terminated, the timer on the hypergolic fuels will be started. In five seconds, the fuels will mix and when they do they will detonate, destroying this cabin, destroying you. ‘So now you have a choice, Professor, a singular choice, unique in the history of mankind. You can die with the rest of the planet in exactly three and a half minutes—or you can save the world. But in doing so, you must sacrifice your own life.’ Race couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A singular choice… You can save the world… But to do so, you must sacrifice your own life… The two men stood on either side of the control booth, Race standing in the southern doorway with his G11 pressed against his shoulder, Ehrhardt over by the northern door, with his Glock by his side.

00:03:21 00:03:20 00:03:19

‘The President has agreed to pay your ransom—’ Race said quickly trying a last ditch ploy.

‘No he hasn’t,’ Ehrhardt snapped, snatching a sheet of paper from the bench beside him and flinging it at Race. The sheet fluttered to the floor. It was a copy of the same fax Race had seen in the mine’s office earlier. Ehrhardt must have had a fax machine in here too.

‘And even if he had said that he would pay,’ the Nazi spat, ‘I still wouldn’t be able to disarm the device. Only Weber knew the disarming code and he, my friend, is dead. No. Now, it is you or it is nothing. Now, whatever happens, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that you will not be leaving this cabin alive.’

‘But what about you?’ Race said defiantly. ‘You’ll die too.’

‘I am old, Professor Race. Old and decayed. Death means nothing to me. The fact that I can take the rest of the world with me, however, means everything…” And at that moment, quick as a rattlesnake, Ehrhardt whipped his Glock up, aimed it at Race and pulled the—

Blam!.

Race’s G11 bucked against his shoulder as he fired a single round. The caseless bullet smacked into Ehrhardt’s enormous chest, causing a gout of blood to explode out from it, the impact hurling the big man into the wall behind him. Ehrhardt slammed into the wall and—bablam!—his Glock went off, firing into the ceiling, smashing a smoke alarm to pieces, and suddenly a series of fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the cabin burst forth with showers of water. Ehrhardt sank to the floor in the teeming indoor rain—a dribbling, ugly mess—his mouth open, his eyes wide with shock.

Race just stood there in his doorway, frozen in the firing position, water hammering against his face, stunned. He had never shot a man before. Not even during the river chase earlier. He felt ill. He swallowed back the bile welling in his throat. And then he saw the Supernova’s timer: 00:03:00 00:02:59 00:02:58