Matthew Reilly - Temple

“Arggghhh!’ Doogie yelled as the weight of the caiman came down on his shins. The big reptile took another slow step forward, stepping onto his wounded left thigh. Doogie roared with pain as his legs sank further into the mud. The caiman’s propped open mouth yawned before his face, two feet in front of his nose, held open by his G11. Fuck it, Doogie thought as, with a quick lunge, he reached deep inside the caiman’s enormous jaws and wedged his Bowie knife in behind the G11, positioning it vertically so that the knife’s butt sat on the caiman’s tongue while its blade rested up against the roof of the big beast’s mouth.

‘Eat this,’ Doogie said as he swung his arm sideways, swiping the G11 out of the giant reptile’s mouth. The response was instantaneous. With the G11 gone, the caiman’s mighty jaws came rushing back together, the upper jaw chomping downwards, right on top of the Bowie knife in the back of its mouth, forcing it up into its brain. The bloodstained blade of the knife burst up out of the reptile’s massive head and the caiman’s body went instantly limp, the life rushing out of it. Doogie stared at it for a moment, stunned at what he had just done. The massive animal was still standing half on top of him, groaning involuntarily, expelling large amounts of air that it no longer needed.

‘Whoa…’ Doogie breathed. Then he shook his head and pulled himself out from under the enormous creature and clambered over to where Gaby was still lying in the mud, completely dumbstruck at his act of chivalry.

‘Come on,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Frank Nash raced through the dense foliage between the upper village and the crater, holding the idol under his arm like a football. Lauren and Copeland ran behind him, SIGSauer pistols in their hands. Amid all the confusion of the aerial attack on the upper village, he and Lauren and Copeland had quickly laid one of the log bridges over the moat and bolted across it into the dense underbrush. ‘This is Nash! This is Nash!’ he yelled into his throat microphone as he ran. “Aerial team, come in!’

He looked up at the sky behind him, saw the surviving Army Comanche helicopter hovering over the smoking remains of the village. Behind it, he saw another chop pr—a third helicopter that was fatter and stockier than the Comanche. It was a Black Hawk II, the third Army chopper.

‘Colonel Nash—is Captain Hank Thompson—read you,’ a static ridden voice said over his earpiece. ‘Sorry—took so long—lost your signal in—overnight electrical storm—’

‘Thompson, we have the prize. I repeat, we have the prize. I am currently about fifty metres due east of the village, heading eastward toward the crater. I need immediate extraction.’

“Negative on that, Colonel—nowhere to land up here—too many—trees.’

‘Then meet us down in the other village,’ Nash yelled. ‘the one with the citadel. Just head due east, straight over the crater, and look down. You can’t miss it. It’s got plenty of room to land.’

‘Ten four, Colonel—see you there.”

The two surviving Army choppers immediately banked in the air above the upper village and thundered over Nash’s head, heading toward Vilcafor. Not a minute later, Nash, Lauren and Copeland came to the crater and took off down its spiralling pathway. Race, Renée and Van Lewen dashed through the dense section of foliage between the upper village and the crater, chasing after Nash and the idol. The rapas were nowhere to be seen. They must have retired to the depths of the crater with the onset of dawn, Race thought. He hoped to hell that the monkey urine on his body still worked. The three of them hit the crater’s path running. As Race, Renée and Van Lewen were starting down the path, Nash, Lauren and Copeland were arriving at its base. They came to the fissure, ran down its length, their feet kicking up water with every step. They never noticed the dark feline heads pop up lazily from the shallow lake as they ran by. The three of them burst out onto the riverside path to be met by a thin morning mist, but they didn’t stop to admire it. They just kept moving forward, heading toward Vilcafor and the thumping sound of the choppers. Another couple of minutes and they reached the moat on the western side of the village. And they stopped. Stopped dead in their tracks. Before them—standing in the middle of Vilcafor, with their hands clasped behind their heads and the soft mist curling around their feet—stood a group of about a dozen men and women. They all stood motionless, oblivious to the whumpwhumpwhump of rotors that filled the morning air. A couple of them were Navy SEALs. They were dressed in full combat attire. But they weren’t holding any guns. Others wore blue Navy uniforms. Others still wore ordinary civilian clothing—the DARPA scientists. And then Nash saw their helicopter. It was standing behind the small crowd of people. A lone Super Stallion. The third Navy chopper. It sat in the centre of the village, silent, motionless, its seven rotor blades still. Nash saw the word ‘NAVY’ plastered across its side in bold white lettering. And then he looked upwards, searching for the source of the loud whumping sound that filled the air above the village. And he saw them. Saw the two Army helicopters—the Comanche and the Black Hawk II—that he had sent down from the upper village. They were hovering over Vilcafor, with their twin barrelled Gaffing guns and their fearsome looking missile pods aimed squarely at the hapless Navy DARPA team on the ground. Race and the others emerged from the riverside path a couple of minutes later. By the time they arrived at the main street of Vilcafor, the two Army choppers had landed and Nash was strutting around like a peacock in front of the Navy men, holding the gleaming idol in one hand and a silver SIGSauer pistol in the other. The crews of the Army choppers, six men in all, two from the Comanche, four from the Black Hawk—held M16s levelled at the Navy DARPA crowd.

‘Ah, Professor Race, nice of you to join us,’ Nash said as Race and the others stepped out onto the main street of the village, staring at the odd mix of Navy men and civilians standing with their hands clasped behind their heads. Race didn’t answer Nash. His eyes just swept over the dozen or so Navy people, searching for someone. He figured if they were Romano’s team, the real Supernova team, then maybe… He froze. He saw him. Saw a man, a civilian, standing among the group of Navy men, dressed in ordinary hiking clothes and boots. Despite the fact that he hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, Race recognised the dark eyebrows and the stooped shoulders instantly. He was looking at his brother.

‘Marty…’ Race breathed.

‘Professor Race—’ Nash said.

Race ignored him as he strode over to his brother. They stood before each other—no embrace—two brothers but two vastly different men. For one thing Race was a mess. While he was covered in mud and stank of monkey urine, Marty was perfectly groomed, his clothes pristine clean. He stared wide-eyed at Race—at his filthy clothes, at his battered, mudstained cap—as if he was the creature from the Black Lagoon. Marty was shorter than Race, stockier. And while Race always wore a very open, easy expression, Marty’s face was perpetually set in a deathly serious frown.

‘Will…’ Marty said.

“‘Marty, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. They tricked me into coming along. They said that they were with DARPA and that they knew you and that—’

And then, abruptly, Race cut himself off as he saw another member of the Navy team whom he recognised. He frowned. It was Ed Devereux. Devereux was a short, bespectacled black man, and at forty-one was one of the most highly regarded ancient languages professors at Harvard. Some said he was the best Latin scholar in the world. At the moment, he stood silently in the line of Navy and DARPA people, holding a large leatherbound book under his arm. Race guessed it was the Navy’s copy of the manuscript. It was then that Race remembered meeting Frank Nash in his own office two days ago, at the very beginning of all this—remembered recommending to Nash that he take Devereux on the mission instead of himself since the Harvard professor was much better at medieval Latin than he was. But now.., now Race knew why Nash had insisted on taking him and not Devereux. It was because Devereux had already been taken. By the real DARPA team.