Authors: Matthew Reilly
Race snapped round instantly and saw about twelve Nazi commandos in
the trees at the edge of the clearing, firing hard with their
G11s.
Cochrane returned fire from the cover of the portal. Van Lewen did
the same. The crack of their M-16s sounded almost pathetic
alongside the relentless droning whirrrrrr of the ultra-high-tech
G11s.
Race also tried to return the Nazis' fire, but when he pulled the
trigger of his M-16, nothing happened.
Cochrane saw him, reached out and yanked back on a T-shaped handle
on Race's rifle.
'Christ, you're about as useless as a priest in a
whorehouse,'
Cochrane barked.
Race pulled the trigger again and, this time, a stream of bullets
erupted from his M-16, almost dislocating his shoulder with the
force of the recoil.
'What the hell are we gonna do!' Reichart yelled above their
gunfire.
'We can't stay here!' Van Lewen yelled. 'We have to get back to the
rope'
At that moment there came a sudden, resounding voooom! from
somewhere above their heads.
Race looked up just in time to see a black MD-500 'Mosquito'
light-attack helicopter explode out from the fog above
roar over the tower top.
The Mosquito was a nimble little attack chopper—much
smaller than any Apache or Comanche—but what it lacked in grunt and
firepower, it more than made up for in speed and
manoeuvrability.
Its nickname came from its resemblance to certain members of the
insect world. It had a round split-glass bubble that resembled the
wide hemispherical eyes of a bee, and two long spindly landing
struts that looked like the elongated legs of a mosquito.
The Mosquito above the tower top loosed a burst of gunfire from its
two side-mounted cannons, chewing up a pair
of long unbroken lines in the mud in front of the temple.
'This is getting worse!' Race yelled.
Down in the village, the explosives that the Nazis had placed
underneath the ATV went off.
A billowing fireball erupted beneath the big eight-wheeled
vehicle—lifting it fully ten feet off the ground, flipping it in
mid-air—and the massive ATV came crashing down on its side.
Inside it, the world went crazy.
As soon as they had heard the Nazis attaching their explosives to
the bottom of the vehicle, Nash, Ren6e and Schroeder had strapped
themselves into some seats and braced themselves for the
explosion.
Now they hung perpendicular to the ground, still strapped into
their seats, their world turned completely sideways.
But the important thing was that the ATV had held.
For the moment.
Doogie Kennedy peered out fearfully from the roof of the
citadel.
He saw the village laid out before him, shrouded in mist and
fog—saw about a dozen Nazi commandos standing at
regular intervals in the cloudy grey soup, their G11s pointed
outwards.
He had just seen the ATV get blasted and he thanked God that the
Nazis hadn't realised that there were more members of Nash's team
inside the citadel. Its walls wouldn't be able to survive such a
ferocious blast.
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 6ut 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 round 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
towards 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
metres, ending at a small rocky ledge that formed the very edge of
the tower top—a ledge that over looked 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, slidin.g
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 slid ing 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 grey 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 grey 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 fell, Race quickly brought his M-16 round in his hands.
You are not going to die.
“ You are not going to die.
He tried 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 downwards.
The grappling hook shot upwards, 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 south-western 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, arriv ing 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 aftached
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