Matthew Reilly: Temple

He handed the idol to one of the Freedom Fighter techs and the little man went scurrying back up into the plane, heading for the tank. ‘Gentlemen,’ Bittiker said into his radio, addressing the men in the other helicopters. ‘Thank you very much for your loyal service. We’ll take it from here. See you in the next life.’ Then he discarded his radio and pulled out his cell phone, and dialled Bluey James’ number. The phone rang in Bluey’s apartment. The FBI’s digital tracing equipment lit up like a Christmas tree. Demonaco slipped on a pair of headphones, then nodded to Bluey. Bluey picked up the telephone.

‘Yo.’

“Bluey, it’s Bittiker. We have the thyrium. Send the message out now.’

‘You got it, Earl.’

Bittiker hung up his phone and, with Copeland in tow behind him, headed up the loading ramp and into the back of the Antonov. It was 11:13 am. ‘Jesus! They took off already!’ Doogie exclaimed, pointing down at the old Antonov as it thundered along the dirt runway and lifted off into the sky. ‘Look at the size of that thing,’ Renée said. ‘I think we just found out where they’re keeping their Supernova,” Race said. The Antonov soared into the sky, its outstretched wings glinting in the morning sun. In the womblike silence of the Abrams main battle tank that sat inside its cavernous cargo bay, two Freedom Fighter technicians were working carefully at a vacuum sealed work chamber, slowly excising a small cylindrical section from the base of the thyrium idol with a laser cutter. Behind the two technicians, taking up nearly all the room inside the big tank, sat the Supernova—the Supernova that until two days previously had resided in the vault room at DARPA headquarters. After they had extracted the cylindrical section of thyrium, with the aid of two IBM supercomputers that lined the walls of the cargo bay outside, they subjected it to alpha wave augmentation, inert gas purification and proton enrichment, transforming the section of thyrium into a subcritical mass.

‘How long till it’s ready?’ a voice said suddenly from above them. The two men looked up and saw Earl Bittiker staring down at them through the tank’s circular upper hatch.

‘Fifteen more minutes,’ one of them replied. Bittiker looked at his watch. It was 11:28 am. ‘Call me as soon as you’re done,’ he said.

‘Doogie,’ Race said as he stared up at the enormous cargo plane above them. ‘How do you open up the loading ramps on those big cargo planes?’

Doogie frowned. ‘Well, there are two ways. Either you press a button on a console inside the cargo bay or you use the exterior console.’

‘What’s the exterior console?”

‘It’s just a pair of buttons, hidden inside a compartment on the outside of the plane. Usually, they’re located on the left-hand side of the loading ramp and covered by a panel to protect them against the wind.’

‘Do you need a code or anything to open the panel?’

“No, not at all,’ Doogie said. “I mean, it’s not like anyone’s going to open the loading ramp from the outside in midair, now is it?’

He turned to Race. And then suddenly his eyes opened wide. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘We have to get that idol before they put it in their Supernova,’ Race said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

“But how?’

‘Just bring us up behind that plane. Stay right underneath it so they don’t see you. Then bring us in nice and close.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Race turned, looked back at the sorry group of people in the plane around him: Doogie— gunshot wounds to the leg and shoulder; Renée—wounded shoulder; Gaby—still slightly in shock from all their recent skirmishes; Uli—out for the count. Race snuffed a laugh. ‘What am I going to do? I’m going to save the world.’ And with that, he stood up and grabbed the only submachinegun they had, the Navy MP5.

‘All right, now. Take us up.’

The two planes soared through the bright morning sky. The Antonov was cruising at about 11,000 feet—three kilometres above the Earth coasting along at an easy cruising speed of 200 knots as it rose steadily into the sky. Although the Antonov didn’t know it, rising through the air behind it, closing in quickly on its tail section, was a much smaller plane—the Goose. The little seaplane’s panels shuddered violently as it hit its maximum speed of 220 knots. Doogie gripped his steering vane as hard as he could, trying to keep her steady. This was bad. The Goose’s operational ceiling was 21,300 feet. If the Antonov kept rising, it would soon be physically out of the Goose’s reach. The little seaplane gradually closed in on the massive cargo lifter, the two aircraft acting out a bizarre kind of aerial ballet—the sparrow chasing the albatross. Slowly—very slowly—the Goose moved up behind the Antonov and edged its nose right in behind the bigger plane’s hindquarters. Then suddenly, without any warning, the hatch on the nose of the Goose popped open and the tiny figure of a man appeared out of it from the waist up. The blast of wind that assaulted Race’s face as he stuck his head out through the Goose’s forward hatch was absolutely colossal. It slammed into his body, pounded against him. If he hadn’t been wearing his kevlar breastplate it almost certainly would have knocked the wind out of him. He saw the Antonov’s sloping hindquarters looming large in front of him, about fifteen feet away. Christ, it was enormous… It was like looking at the rear end of the biggest bird in the world. And then Race caught sight of the earth below him. Ooooh…luck! The world was a long way down—a long way down. Immediately beneath him, he saw a rolling patchwork quilt of hills and fields and, away to the east—ahead of the two planes—the never ending sea of rainforest. Don’t think about the fall! a voice inside him screamed. Keep your mind on the job! Right. Okay. He had to do this quickly, before he ran out air, and before the two planes rose to a height where the combination of thin air and windchill would freeze him to death. He waved at Doogie through the Goose’s windshield, instructing him to bring the little seaplane closer to the Antonov. The Goose edged further forward.

Eight feet away. Earl Bittiker and Troy Copeland sat in the cockpit of the Antonov, oblivious to what was going on in the air behind their plane. Abruptly, the wall mounted phone next to Bittiker buzzed. ‘Yes,’ Bittiker said. ‘Sir,’ it was the tech in charge of arming the Supernova.

‘We’ve placed the thyrium in the device. It’s ready.’

‘All right, I’m coming down,’ Bittiker said. The Goose was three feet away from the Antonov—and 15,000 feet above the world and still rising. Race was standing with his entire upper body protruding from the Goose’s nose hatch. He saw the Antonov’s loading ramp in front of him. The ramp was still firmly shut, its existence betrayed only by a set of thin grooved lines that ran in a square around the rear of the massive plane. Then Race saw a small panel to the left of the ramp lying flush against the exterior wall of the plane. He waved for Doogie to bring the Goose closer still.

Bittiker emerged from the upper deck of the Antonov and looked down upon the cargo bay from a thin metal catwalk. He saw the gargantuan tank beneath him, saw the barrel of its mighty cannon pointing directly up at him. He looked at his watch. It was 11:48. The VCD would have gone out a good half hour ago. The world would be in a panic. Judgement Day had arrived. Bittiker slid down a rung ladder and then stepped up onto the turret of the tank, climbed down into it. He arrived in the belly of the Abrams and saw the Super nova—saw the two thermonuclear warheads suspended in their hourglass formation, saw the cylindrical section of thyrium lying horizontally in the vacuum sealed chamber in between them. He nodded, satisfied. ‘Start the detonation sequence,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ one of the techs said, leaping for the laptop computer on the front of the device.