Temple (22 page)

VOICE 2: —-about the device?—-ready?
VOICE 1: —-have adopted hourglass formation based on the American
model—-two thermonuclear detonators mounted above ad below a
titanium-alloy inner chamber. Field tests indicate
that—-device—-operational.
All we need now—-the thyriurn,
VOICE 2: —-don't worry, Anistaze's taking care of that-°-VOICE 1:
What about the message?
VOICE 2: —-will go out as soon as we get the idol—-to every Prime
Minister and President in the EU-°-plus the President of the United
States via internal emergency hotline-o-ransom will be one hundred
billion dollars U.S.—°or else we detonate the device…
Nash stared at the transcript in shock.
Everyone else was silent.
Race gazed at the words: one hundred billion dollars U.S., or
else we detonate the device.
Jesus H. Christ.
Nash turned to Schroeder. 'So what have you done about all
this?'
'We have executed a two-pronged plan,' the German said. “Two
separate missions, each designed to reinforce the other should
either of them fail.
'Mission One was to get the thyrium idol before the Nazis did. To
do that, we obtained a copy of the Santiago Manuscript and used it
to find our way here. And as it hap pened, we beat the
Stormtroopers—but we never expected to find those things inside the
temple.'
As he listened to Schroeder speak, something twigged in the back of
Race's mind, something about what the German
agent had just said. Something that wasn't quite right.
He shook it off, put it to the back of his mind.
'And the second part of the mission?' Nash said.
'Take out Colonia Alemania,' Schroeder said. 'After we intercepted
that telephone conversation three days ago, we opened entreaties
with the new Chilean government for a warrant that would allow BKA
agents to search Colonia
Alemania in co-ordination with Chilean authorities.'
'And?'
'We got it. If everything has gone according to plan, BKA agents
and the Chilean National Guard are right this minute storming the
grounds of Colonia Alemania and seizing the Stormtroopers'
Supernova. I'm hoping to receive a radio update from them any
minute now.'
At that very same moment six hundred miles away, a ten- ton truck
owned by the Chilean National Guard exploded through the gates of
Colonia Alemania.
A stream of olive-skinned Chilean soldiers rushed through the gates
behind the rampaging truck. A dozen German agents dressed in blue
assault helmets and SWAT gear hurried into the compound after
them.
Colonia Alemania was a large estate, easily twenty hectares in
size. Its grassy green pastures contrasted sharply with Chile's
barren brown hills. Its Bavarian-style cottages and idyllic blue
lakes were an oddly peaceful sight in what was an otherwise harsh
and dry land.
Doors were smashed open and windows exploded .inwards as the
National Guardsmen entered every building in the estate. Their main
target was the Barracks Hall—a large, hangar-like building in the
centre of the compound.
Minutes later, the doors to the Barracks Hall were blasted open and
a horde of National Guardsmen and BKA agents rushed into the
building.
And then they stopped.
Row upon row of empty bunk beds stretched away from them for the
length of the enormous hall. Each bed was crisply made and
perfectly aligned with the bunk next to it.
It looked like an army barracks.
The only problem was, it was empty.
Reports came in quickly from the rest of the compound.
The whole compound was empty.
Colonia Alemania was completely deserted.
In one of the laboratory buildings adjoining the Barracks Hall, two
German tech agents waved small Geiger counter wands in front of
them, measuring the radioactivity in the air. Their small detection
units clattered loudly.
The two agents entered the compound's main laboratory and their
Geiger counters instantly went into the red.
'All units, this is Lab Team, we are detecting high trace
quantities of uranium and plutonium in the primary
laboratoryh'
The first agent came to a door that opened onto a glass- walled
office of some kind.
He pointed his wand at the closed door—
—and his Geiger counter went off the charts.
He exchanged a quick look with his partner. Then he pushed open the
door, tripping the wire.
The explosion that ripped through Colonia Alemania was
absolutely devastating.
It rocked the world.
A pulse of blinding white light shot out laterally in every
direction, obliterating everything in its path—whole barns blew out
instantly into a billion matchsticks, con crete silos were
shattered in a millisecond, everything within a five-hundred-yard
radius of the Barracks Hall was vaporised—including the one hundred
and fifty Chilean National Guardsmen and the twelve BKA
agents.
When they were interviewed about it in the days to come, the
inhabitants of the surrounding villages would say that it had
looked like a sudden flare of lightning on the horizon, followed by
an enormous plume of black smoke that rose
high into the sky in the shape of a gigantic mushroom.
But they were simple folk, peasants.
They didn't know that they were describing a thermonu clear
explosion.
Back in Vilcafor, Nash ordered the Green Berets to bring the German
team's radio satellite equipment out onto the main street.
'Let's see what your people in Chile have got to sa' he said to
Schroeder.
Schroeder popped the lid on the portable radio console and began
typing something quickly on its all-weather key board. Nash, Scott
and the Green Berets crowded around him, watching the console's
screen intently.
Race stood outside the circle, excluded yet again.
'How are you feeling?' a woman's voice said suddenly from behind
him.
He turned, half-expecting to see Lauren, but instead found himself
looking into the dazzling blue eyes of the German woman.
She was small, petite—and seriously cute. She stood with her hands
resting lazily on her hips and a smile that dis armed Race
completely. .
She had a small button nose and short blonde hair, and lib eral
doses of mud splotched all over her face, T-shirt and jeans. She
wore a bulletproof vest over her white T-shirt and a black Gore-Tex
holster on her hip—identical to the one Schroeder wore. Like
Schroeder's, her holster was now empty.
'How is your head feeling?' she asked. She had a slight
German accent. Race liked it.
'It hurts,' he said.
'It should,' she said, coming over and touching his brow.
'I think you suffered a minor concussion when your Humvee crashed
into that helicopter. All of your subse quent acts of derring-do on
top of the chopper must have been the work of pure
adrenalin.'
'You mean I'm not a hero?' Race said. 'You're saying it was just
the adrenalin talking?'
She smiled at him, a beautiful smile. 'Wait here,' she said, 'I
have some codeine in my medicine pack. It'll help your
headache.'
She moved off toward the ATV.
'Hey…' Race said. 'What's your name?'
She smiled at him again. That cute, nymph-like smile.
'My name is Ren6e Becker. I am a special agent with the BKA/
'I've got it,' Schroeder said suddenly from over by the portable
radio.
Race went over to the small group gathered around the radio
console.
Looking over Nash's shoulder, he saw a list printed on the screen
in German. He translated it in his head. It read:
COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE TRANSMISSION LOG 44-76/BKA32
NO.
DATE TIME SOURCE SUMMARY
1 4.1.99 1930 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
2 4.1.99 1950 EXT SOURCE SIGNATURE UHF SIGNAL
3 4.1.99 2230 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
4 5.1.99 0130 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
5 5.1.99 0430 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
6 5.1.99 0716 FIELD (CHILE) ARRIVED SANTIAGO, HEADING
FOR COLONIA ALEMANIA
7 5.1.99 0730 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
8 5.1.99 0958 FIELD (CHILE) HAVE ARRIVED COLONIA
ALEMANIA; BEGINNING
SURVEILLANCE
9 5.1.99 1030 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT STATUS
10 5.1.99 1037 FIELD (CHILE) CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL;
CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL
11 5.1.99 1051 BKAHQ PERU TEAM REPORT
IMMEDIATELY
Race frowned.
It was a list of every communication signal that had been picked up
by the BKA's Peruvian field team.
By the looks of it, they had received 'status update'
requests from BKA headquarters every three hours from 7:30 last
night, plus a few intermittent messages from the other BKA team in
Chile.
The tenth message, however—one of the messages from the other team
in Chile—seized Race's attention. It
screamed with the German word dringendes—'urgent'.
Schroeder saw it, too.
He quickly tabbed down to the tenth message and hit
'ENTER'.
A full-screen message came up. Race saw the words in German,
translated them:
MESSAGE NO: 050199010
DATED: 5 JANUARY 1999
RECEIVED AT: 1037 (LOCAL TIMEmPERU)
RECEIVED FROM: FIELD TEAM (CHILE)
SUBJECT: CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL;
CHILE TEAM URGENT SIGNAL
MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:
ATTENTION PERU TEAM. AENTION PERU TEAM.
THIS IS CHILE SECOND UNIT. REPEAT.THIS IS CHILE SECOND UNIT,
FIRST UNIT IS DOWN, REPEAT, FIRST UNIT IS DOWN.
15 MINUTES AGO FIRST UNIT ENTERED COLONIA ALEMANIA IN
CONCERT WITH CHILEAN NATIONAL GUARD, REPORTED ENTIRE
COMPOUND DESERTED. REPEAT. FIRST UNIT REPORTED ENTIRE
COMPOUND DESERTED.
PRELIMINARY TESTING REVEALED HIGH TRACE LEVELS OF URANIUM ANO
PLUTONIUM ORE, BUT BEFORE FURTHER DATA COULO BE OBTAINED A
DETONATION OCCURRED INSIOE THE COMPOUND.
DETONATION APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN NUCLEAR. REPEAT. DETONATION
APPEARSTO HAVE BEEN NUCLEAR.
ENTIRE FIRST UNIT HAS BEEN LOST. REPEAT. ENTIRE FIRST UNIT HAS BEEN
LOST.
MUST ASSUME STORMTROOPERS ARE ALREADY EN ROUTE TO PERU.
Race looked up from the message in horror.
Colonia Alemania had been empty at the time the BKA team had
arrived. It had also been booby-trapped, set to explode as soon as
someone set foot on it.
A sliver of ice ran down Race's spine as he looked at the final
line of the message again:
MUST ASSUME STORMTROOPERS ARE ALREADY EN ROUTE TO PERU.
Race looked at his watch.
It was 11:05 am.
'How long till they get here?' Nash asked Schroeder.
'It's impossible to say,' Schroeder said. 'There's no know ing how
long ago they left the compound. They could have left it two hours
ago or two days ago. Either way, the trip from Chile to here is not
a long one. We must assume that they are very close.'
Nash turned to Scott. 'Captain, I want you to get on the horn to
Panama and find out when that damned extraction team is going to
get here. We need firepower and we need it
now.'
'Got it.' Scott nodded to Doogie who dashed off toward the radio
unit.
'Cochrane,' Nash said. 'How's the situation with the sur viving
Huey?'
Buzz Cochrane shook his head. 'It's shot. It took a ham mering when
that Apache went wild during the cats' attack.
Stray gunfire damaged both the tail rotor and the ignition
ports.'
'How long will it take to fix?'
'With the tools we've got here, we can fix the ignition ports, but
it'll take time. As for the tail rotor, well, you can't fly without
it, and it's a bitch to repair. I guess we could strip some of the
secondary systems and use them, but what we really need are
brand-new axles and rotary switches, and we ain't gonna find them
here.'
'Sergeant. Get that Huey ready to fly again. Whatever it
takes,' Nash said.
'Yes, sir.,'
Cochrane left the circle, taking Tex Reichart with him.
There was a long silence.
'So we're stuck here…' Lauren said.
'With a group of terrorists on their way…' Gaby Lopez added.
'Unless we decide to trek out of here on foot,' Race
suggested.
Captain Scott turned to Nash. 'If we stay, we die.'
'And if we leave, the Nazis get the idol,' Copeland said.
'And a workable Supernova,' Lauren said.
'Not an option,' Nash said firmly. 'No, there's only one
thing we can do.'
'What's that?'
'We get the idol before the Nazis get here.'
The three soldiers made their way cautiously up the river side path
in the pounding subtropical rain.
Captain Scott and Corporal Chucky Wilson led the way, their M-16s
trained warily on the dense foliage to their right. The lone German
paratrooper, Graf, now armed with an American M-16, walked along
the path behind them, bringing up the rear.
Each man wore a tiny fibre-optic camera attached to the side of his
helmet which sent images back to the others in the village.
After a while, the three soldiers came to the fissure in the
mountainsid the fissure that led to the rock tower and the
temple.
Scott nodded to Wilson and the young corporal entered the narrow
stone passageway, gun-first.
Back in the village, Race and the others watched on a moni tor as
Scott, Wilson and Graf made their way through the fissure. The
images being sent back from the three com mandos were depicted in
separate rectangles on the screen,
in ghostly black-and-white.
The plan was simple.
While Scott, Wilson and Graf entered the temple and seized the idol
inside it, the remaining Green Berets and the other German
paratrooperma private named Molke— would get to work repairing the
remaining Huey. Once the
idol was obtained, they would all fly out of Vilcafor before the
Nazi terrorists arrived.
'Ah, aren't we forgetting something?” Race said.
'Like what?' Nash said.
'Like the cats. Aren't they the reason we're in this mess in the
first place? Where are they?'
'The cats retreated from the village with the onset of daylight,' a
voice said from behind Race in perfect clipped English.
Race turned to see the fourth and last German man standing behind
him, smiling.
He couldn't have been more different from the other three German
males—Schroeder, Graf and Molke. While they were all visibly strong
and fit, this man was older— much older, at least in his
fifties—and quite obviously unathletic. His most dominant feature
was a long grey beard. Race disliked him on sight. His whole stance
and posture reeked of pomposity and arrogance.
'At dawn, the cats departed in the direction of the plateau,' the
man said uppishly. 'I presume that they returned to their nest
inside the temple.' He smiled wryly. 'I imagine that since the last
few generations of their species have spent almost four hundred
years in pitch darkness, their kind are not very comfortable in
daylight.'