Temple

by Matthew Reilly

  And then suddenly he heard a shout—someone barking orders in German.

  Doogie didn’t know much German, so nearly all of the words meant nothing to him. But then, strangely, amid all the gabble, he heard two words that he did know: “das Sprengkommando.”

  Doogie froze when he heard the words. Then he snapped around in horror as he saw four Nazi commandos hurry off in the direction of the river in response to the command.

  He didn’t know much German, but a stint at a NATO missile facility outside of Hamburg had provided him with at least a basic vocabulary of commonly used German military terms.

  “Das Sprengkommando” was one of those terms.

  It was German for “demolition team.”

  From the cover of the portal, Van Lewen fired a grenade from his M-203 launcher. A second later, an explosion blew out from the trees near the Nazi positions, showering the area with mud and leaves.

  “Sergeant!” Cochrane yelled.

  “What!”

  “We’re fucked if we keep this up! They’ve got too much firepower! They’ll just stay out of sight until we run out of ammo and then we’ll be trapped inside this fucking temple! We have to get off this rock!”

  “I’m open to suggestions!” Van Lewen yelled.

  “You’re the sarge, Sarge,” Cochrane shouted back.

  “All right, then,” Van Lewen frowned. He thought for a moment, then said, “The only way off this tower is the rope bridge, right?”

  “Right,” Reichart replied.

  “So somehow we have to get back to that bridge, right?”

  “Right.”

  Van Lewen said, “I say we skirt around the back of this temple and go down to the edge of the tower top. Then we hack our way through the foliage back to the rope bridge. We cross the bridge and then we drop it behind us, trapping these assholes on the tower.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Reichart yelled.

  “Then let’s do it,” Van Lewen said decisively.

  The Green Berets readied themselves for the dash out of the temple’s doorway. Race just tried to stay close to them—whatever the hell they did.

  “Okay . . .” Van Lewen said. “Now!”

  And with that the four of them burst out from the entrance to the temple, their guns blazing, and raced out into the rain.

  Their guns roared.

  The Nazis in the treeline ducked.

  Van Lewen and Reichart turned the corner first, headed toward the rear of the temple.

  Seconds later, they rounded the rear corner—so that they were now shaded by the temple from the Nazis’ fire—and found themselves standing on the flat stone path at the peak of the muddy slope that Race had seen earlier, the path that contained the unusual circular stone.

  The slope beneath them was completely covered in mud and it stretched steeply down and away from them for about fifteen meters, ending at a small rocky ledge that formed the very edge of the tower top—a ledge that overlooked a sheer three-hundred-foot drop. To the left of the ledge, however, was a stand of thick trees and foliage—foliage that led back to the rope bridge.

  Cochrane and Race rounded the corner behind the others. They both saw the steep muddy slope instantly.

  “I think this is gonna be harder than we expected,” Cochrane said to Van Lewen.

  Just then, like a shark rising from the depths of the ocean, the Mosquito attack helicopter burst up out of the fog beneath the ledge and hovered right in front of the four Americans, its side-mounted cannons spewing forth a devastating wave of gunfire.

  Everyone dived for the ground.

  Tex Reichart moved too slowly. The fusillade of bullets ripped into his body mercilessly—one after the other after the other—keeping him upright long after he was dead. With every shot that went into him, star-shaped explosions of blood sprayed out onto the wet stone wall behind him.

  Buzz Cochrane took two hits to the leg, shouted in agony. Race hit the mud hard—unscathed—covered his ears against the roar of the helicopter’s fire. Van Lewen just fired fearlessly back at the Mosquito with his M-16 until finally in the face of his relentless fire, the helicopter banked away and Reichart’s body—released from its grip—fell face-down into the mud with a loud splat.

  Unfortunately, Reichart had been holding the idol.

  As his body hit the ground, the idol in his hand was instantly dislodged. It bounced to the ground and immediately began to slide down the steep muddy embankment . . . toward the edge.

  Race saw it first.

  “No!” he yelled, diving forward, landing on his belly, sliding quickly down the muddy slope after it.

  Van Lewen yelled, “Professor! Wait, no—?

  But Race was already sliding fast through the mud, M-16 and all, heading straight for the idol.

  Eight feet away.

  Five feet.

  Three feet.

  And then suddenly the Mosquito returned and let fly with another burst of machine-gun fire and a line of exploding impact craters shredded the mud in between Race and the idol.

  Race reacted quickly. He reeled away from the bullet impacts, shielding his eyes from the flying mud—and abandoned his dive for the idol, shifting his weight so that he was now sliding down the slope, away from the ragged line of impact craters.

  He saw the ledge at the bottom of the embankment rapidly approaching him—saw the sheer drop beyond it, saw the black Mosquito hovering above it—but he was sliding too fast, too quickly, and then suddenly, before he even knew what was happening, he was shooting out over the edge of the rock tower into clear open space three hundred feet above the bottom of the canyon.

  As he went over, Race shot out a hand and caught the lip of the ledge.

  He came to a jarring halt as he hung one-handed from the edge of the ledge, three hundred feet above the bottom of the crater!

  The roaring downdraft of the Mosquito helicopter above him blasted against the top of his Yankees cap as he threw his spare hand—the hand still holding his M-16—up onto the ledge and began to haul himself up.

  Whatever you do, Will, don’t look down.

  He looked down.

  The sheer side of the rock tower stretched away from him into darkness. The rain just seemed to fall away into it, disappearing into the impenetrable gray mist

  With a heaving grunt, Race got his elbows up onto the ledge and hauled himself onto it and looked up just in time to see Van Lewen—with Cochrane draped over his shoulder—hurrying off into the stand of trees to his right

  He also saw the Nazis—all twelve of them, all armed with G-11s—as they came swarming around the temple from both sides in perfect unison.

  They saw the idol instantly, sitting on its side halfway down the steep muddy slope.

  They fanned out quickly, taking up covering positions while a single man cautiously sidestepped his way down the embankment to retrieve the idol from its resting place.

  The Nazi arrived at the idol. Grabbed it.

  Race could have sworn.

  But he never got the chance to, because at that precise moment one of the Nazis looked up and saw him—hanging half-off the ledge, staring up at them with wide frightened eyes.

  The Nazis brought their G-11s up as one, all aimed squarely at Race’s forehead, and as they all reached for their triggers, Race did the only thing he could think to do.

  He let himself fall.

  Race fell.

  Fast.

  Down the side of the rock tower.

  He saw the uneven surface of the tower’s wall rushing past him at phenomenal speed. He looked up and saw the ledge that he had fallen off receding into the gray sky even faster.

  His mind reeled.

  I can’t believe I just did that! Stay calm, stay calm, you did it because you knew you could get out of this.

  Right.

  As he fed, Race quickly brought his M-16 around in his hands.

  You are not going to die.

  You are not going to die.

  He trie
d to recall how Van Lewen had fired his grappling hook across the chasm earlier. Now how had he done it? He had pulled a second trigger on his gun to fire the hook, a trigger that had been situated underneath his M-16’s barrel.

  Still falling.

  Race peered frantically at his weapon, searched for the second—

  There!

  He immediately raised his M-16 and aimed it at the rapidly receding tower top above him. Then he jammed his finger down on the second trigger.

  With a loud, puncture-like whump! the silver grappling hook shot out from the grenade launcher of his gun, its silver claws opening in mid-air with a sharp snick-snick!

  Race fell downward.

  The grappling hook shot upward, its nylon rope wobbling through the air behind it.

  Still falling.

  The hook flew over the edge of the tower top.

  Still falling.

  Race held his M-16 tightly. Then he just shut his eyes and waited—waited for the jolt of his rope or the impact with the lake, whichever came first.

  The jolt came first.

  In an instant, the grappling hook’s rope went taut and Race came to a sudden, jarring halt.

  It felt as if his arms had just been wrenched out of their sockets, but somehow he managed to keep hold of the M-16.

  Race opened his eyes.

  And found himself hanging from the rope about a hundred feet below the edge of the tower top.

  He hung there in silence for a full thirty seconds, breathing hard, shaking his head. No Nazis appeared on the ledge high above him. They must have left the embankment as soon as they had seen him fall.

  Race sighed deeply with relief. Then he set about the task of hauling himself back up to the tower’s peak.

  Up on the tower top, Van Lewen was hacking his way through the foliage, using his Bowie knife as a machete.

  Moments earlier, he had also seen the Nazis get the idol, and now he was trying desperately to get back to the rope bridge before they did.

  It was at the extreme southern edge of the tower’s peak, and now he and the wounded Cochrane were making their way toward it, forging a path through the brush on the tower’s southwestern flank.

  The Nazis were taking the more direct route, heading back to the bridge via the clearing and the stone stairway.

  Van Lewen hacked away a final branch and abruptly he and Cochrane were met by the sight of the rope bridge, majestically spanning the chasm between the tower top and the outer path.

  The great swooping bridge was about fifteen yards away from them—and right now, the dozen or so Nazi troops who had assailed them at the portal were crossing it, arriving at the path on the other side.

  Damn it, Van Lewen thought, they’d beaten him to the bridge!

  Van Lewen stared at one of the Nazis as he stepped up onto solid ground on the other side of the ravine. He was holding something cradled in his arms—something covered in a ragged purple cloth.

  The idol.

  Shit.

  It was then that the Nazis on the other side of the ravine did the one thing that Van Lewen feared the most—the one thing he had intended to do himself if he had reached the rope bridge first.

  They unlooped the bridge from its foundations and they let it fall.

  The great bridge fell down into the ravine. It was still attached to its foundations on the tower side of the chasm, so it didn’t fall all the way down to the bottom, rather it just ended up falling flat against the side of the rock tower, its retrieval rope trailing down into the impenetrable fog beneath it.

  Van Lewen stared in a kind of helpless frustration at the squad of Nazis hustling down the path on the other side of the chasm, carrying the idol in their midst.

  They had the idol.

  While he was now stranded on the rock tower.

  Heinrich Anistaze stood in the center of Vilcafor with his hands on his hips. He was pleased with the way the assault on the village had gone.

  The pulse generator had worked perfectly, cutting off any radio communication between the enemy. The Americans in the ATV had been neutralized with ease. And now he had just heard that his assault squad had successfully retrieved the idol from the Americans up at the temple.

  Things were going very well indeed.

  There came a shout and Anistaze turned to see the tower squad come charging out from the riverside path.

  The leader of the squad immediately came up to him and presented him with a cloth-enwrapped object.

  “Herr Obergruppenführer,” the man said formally.

  “The idol.”

  Anistaze smiled.

  Once he had managed to climb back up his grappling hook’s rope, Race dashed across the now-deserted clearing in front of the temple, searching for the Green Berets, if any of them were still alive.

  He found Van Lewen and Cochrane at the ledge which had once held up the rope bridge.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said as he saw the yawning chasm in front of them. “They cut the bridge.”

  “There’s no way off this thing,” Van Lewen said. “We’re stuck here.”

  Just then the black Mosquito helicopter came roaring past them again, its side-mounted cannons blazing. The Nazis must have left it behind to finish the job.

  Race and the others immediately dived for cover in the brush. Leaves exploded above their heads, tree trunks shattered into splinters.

  “Fuck a duck!” Cochrane yelled over the roar of the gunfire.

  Race peered out at the Mosquito chopper as it hovered above the chasm, long tongues of fire spewing out from its guns, its long spindly landing skids dangling beneath its body.

  The landing skids . . . he thought.

  And at that moment, something inside Race clicked—a kind of fierce determination that he had never known he possessed.

  “Van Lewen!” he called suddenly.

  “What!”

  “Give me some cover fire!”

  “What for?”

  “Just get that chopper to hover a little higher, will you! But don’t scare it off!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m getting us off this rock!”

  That was good enough for Van Lewen. A second later, he snapped out from behind the foliage and loosed a volley of fire at the hovering black chopper.

  The Mosquito responded by rising a little higher in the air and firing back.

  Meanwhile, Race was working feverishly with his grappling hook, unspooling its rope. He looked out at the chopper.

  “Get it higher!” he yelled. “Higher! It’s too low!”

  Race gauged the distance between him and the chopper.

  It was too close to fire the grappling hook from its launcher. He was going to have to throw it

  He unspooled the rope a little more, keeping it loose so that when he did throw it, it wouldn’t get all tangled up.

  “Cochrane!” he shouted. “Can you swing with that busted leg of yours?”

  “What do you think, Einstein?”

  “Then you’re no good to me!” Race said fiercely. “You’re staying here. Van Lewen! Give me cover!”

  Then, as Van Lewen loosed another burst at the chopper, Race quickly leapt out of the foliage with the grappling hook hanging from his hand, and in one fluid motion he threw it, underhanded, out at the Mosquito’s left-hand landing skid.

  He knew as soon as he did it that he’d weighted the throw perfectly.

  The grappling hook sailed through the air toward the hovering helicopter, reaching the zenith of its arc just as it arrived at the Mosquito’s left landing skid, and then—with a sharp clink-clink—the hook swung over the landing strut and looped itself around it twice, clinging to it.

  “All right, Van Lewen! Let’s go!”

  Van Lewen let off a final burst of fire at the chopper before he ran over and joined Race at the edge of the ledge.

  “Grab on.” Race offered Van Lewen his M-16. The gun was tied to the end of the grappling hook’s rope.

&nb
sp; Van Lewen took it and gave Race a look. “You know, you’re a lot braver than most people would give you credit for.”

  “Thanks.”

  And with that, Race and Van Lewen pushed themselves off the ledge and swung—together—across the wide one hundred-foot chasm, in a wonderful graceful arc, suspended from the landing skid of the hovering attack helicopter!

  “Motherfucker . . .” Buzz Cochrane said as he watched the two of them swing away from him across the bottomless ravine.

  Race and Van Lewen swung up onto the path on the other side of the chasm, onto their feet. Once they were up, Race quickly disengaged the grappling hook’s rope from his M-16 and let it go.

  The chopper above them didn’t seem to know where they had gone—it just wheeled around wildly above the gorge, firing its guns in frustration, shooting at anything and nothing, while Race and Van Lewen took off down the spiraling path, heading back toward the village.

  Heinrich Anistaze held the cloth-enclosed package in his hands, held his breath as he unwrapped it.

  “Yes,” he said as he revealed the glistening black idol beneath the cloth. “Yes . . .”

  Then abruptly he spun on his heel and began walking toward the eastern log-bridge.

  “Demolition team,” he called in German as he walked, “are those chlorine charges set yet?”

  “Three more minutes, Herr Obergruppenführer,” a man called from over near the battered ATV.

  “Then you’ve taken three minutes too long,” Anistaze barked. “Finish laying them and then meet us at the river.”

  “Yes, Obergruppenführer.”

  Anistaze keyed his radio. “Herr Oberstgruppenführer? Do you read me?” Oberstgruppenführer was the highest of all the SS ranks—General.

  “Yes,” came the reply.

  “We have it.”

  “Bring it to me”

  “Yes, Oberstgruppenführer. At once,” Anistaze said as he strode across the eastern log-bridge and plunged into the rainforest

  Race and Van Lewen ran down the spiraling path.

  They came to the bottom of the crater, hit the fissure, bolted down its length. Then along the riverside path, guns up. Mist everywhere.