Authors: Matthew Reilly
The charge of the natives was nothing short of terrifying.
Their fury was intense, their anger almost tangible. Frank
Nash had stolen their idol and now they wanted it back.
Abruptly the crack of M-16 gunfire rang out from somewhere close
behind Race.
A couple of the helicopter crewmen had opened fire on the Indians.
Almost instantly, four of the natives at the front of the rushing
horde were hit. They stumbled and fell, crashing face-first in the
mud.
But the others just kept on coming.
Nash—now with an arrow lodged in his right forearm, complete with a
ragged piece of his own flesh dangling from its point—turned
instantly and, with his people behind him, abandoned the village
and made for the two Army choppers.
Race hadn't even moved. He just stood there in the centre of the
street, rooted to the spot, staring dumbstruck at the horde of
charging natives.
Then suddenly someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulder.
It was Ren6e.
'Professor, come on!' she yelled as she dragged him toward the
empty Super Stallion on the other side of the village.
The Army people reached their choppers.
Nash, Lauren, Marty and Copeland leapt up into the rear compartment
of the Black Hawk II at the same time as the chopper's two crewmen
threw themselves into the pilot's and gunner's seats.
The Black Hawk II's rotors began to turn instantly.
Nash looked out from the rear compartment, saw Race and Ren6e
running for the Super Stallion.
He yelled to the crewman manning the chopper's rear- mounted Vulcan
minigun. 'Take out that chopper!'
As the Black Hawk II's rotors whipped into overdrive and the big
helicopter slowly began to lift off, the copilot jammed down on his
trigger and a blazing barrage of gunfire blasted out from the
Vulcan.
The hail of gunfire that assailed the Super Stallion was shocking
in its intensity. It pummelled the reinforced walls
of the helicopter with thousands of bullet holes, each the size of
a man's fist.
And then—just as Race and Ren6e were coming toward it—the Super
Stallion exploded into a billowing ball of flames.
The two of them dived to the ground a split second before a storm
of burning-hot metal whizzed over their heads, shooting out in
every direction. Two stray shards of red-hot metal, however,
slammed into Ren6e's shoulder, sizzling on contact. She roared with
pain.
'Now take them out!' Nash yelled, pointing down at Race and the
injured Ren6e.
The Black Hawk II was about fifteen feet off the ground now, rising
quickly into the sky. The gunner immediately whirled the massive
Vulcan around and drew a bead on
Race's skull.
Blare!
The crewman's head snapped violently backwards, shot right between
the eyes.
Nash spun around in surprise, searching the ground
below for the source of the shot that had killed his gunner.
And he saw him.
It was Doogie.
Crouched on one knee over by the moat with a stolen lqavy MP-5
pressed against his shoulder, aimed directly up at the Black Hawk
II! Behind him stood Gaby Lopez.
Just then Doogie loosed another shot and it pinged off the steel
roof above Nash's head.
Nash yelled at his pilot, 'Get us the fuck out of here!”
With his arm looped underneath Ren6e's good shoulder, Race
scrambled for the ATV.
The crowd of natives was now standing underneath the two Army
helicopters, shouting angrily at them, waving their sticks, firing
their arrows in vain at the armoured underbellies of the flying
steel beasts.
Race leapt up onto the back of the ATV, yanked open the
small circular hatch set inside it and helped Ren6e in
through it.
Just as he was about to follow her, however, he saw Doogie and Gaby
hurrying across the main street toward him, waving their arms
wildly. Gaby was helping Doogie as he limped along as fast as he
could.
They arrived at the ATV, clambered up onto it.
'What the fuck is going on here?' Doogie said in between
breaths. Race saw his bloodied left leg. It had a makeshift
tourniquet tied around it. 'We got here just in time to see the
colonel shoot Leo in the fucking head!' Doogie's face was contorted
with a mixture of rage and helpless confusion.
'The colonel had other priorities,“ Race said bitterly. 'Priorities
that didn't include us.'
'What are we going to do?' Doogie said.
Race bit his lip in thought.
'Come on,' he said. 'Get inside. We're not out of this yet.'
The two Army helicopters—the Comanche and the Black Hawk II—rose
into the sky above the main street of Vilcafor.
Nash looked out the side door of his chopper at the crowd of angry
natives beneath him, yelling and screaming and waving their fists
at the helicopters. He snorted a laugh as he turned away from them
and looked out through the forward windshield of the chopper.
The two Army helicopters cleared the treetops.
And Nash's smile went flat.
There were eight of them—Black Hawk I helicopters— similar to his
own but older; superseded models that the Army had discarded years
ago. They were all painted black, with no markings on them
whatsoever, and they hovered menacingly in a wide, 500-yard circle
around Vilcafor like a pack of hungry jackals waiting on the
periphery of the battle, waiting to pick up the scraps.
There came a sudden puff of smoke from one of the unmarked Black
Hawks as, without warning, a missile shot out from one of its
stub-like wings.
A long finger-like trail of smoke extended through the air in front
of the helicopter as the speeding missile cut a bee-line for the
Army Comanche. The Comanche exploded in an instant and dropped
clumsily out of the sky. It smashed down onto one of the stone huts
on the main street of Vilcafor, flames spilling out from its
charred, twisted shell.
Race and the others were inside the citadel and about to climb down
into the quenko when they heard the sudden “explosion
outside.
They hurried back into the ATV and peered out through its narrow
slit-like windows to see what had happened.
They saw the blazing wreck of the Comanche lying awkwardly on its
side on top of one of the small huts of Vilcafor.
They also saw Nash's Black Hawk II hovering above the village, not
daring to move.
The rotors of the Army Black Hawk thumped rhythmically as the big
helicopter hovered over Vilcafor, in the centre of the circle of
ominous black helicopters.
Suddenly, two of the unmarked choppers banked out of their
formation and flew in toward the village.
Black-clad soldiers sitting in their doorways opened fire on the
natives on the ground and the Indians scattered immediately,
hurrying over the log-bridges, darting into the dense foliage
around the town.
A voice came over a loudspeaker from one of the chop pers. A man's
voice, speaking in English.
“Army Black Hawk. Be advised, missile lock has been estab lished on
your aircraft. You are to land immediately. I repeat, you are to
land immediately and prepare to hand over the idol. If you do not
land immediately, we will blast you out of the sky and pick it out
of the wreckage later.”
Nash and Marty exchanged a look.
Lauren and Copeland did the same.
'They're not lying about the missile lock, sir,' the pilot said,
turning to Nash.
'Take us down,' Nash said.
Flanked by the two unmarked Black Hawks, Nash's Black Hawk II
slowly descended back to earth.
The three choppers hit the ground together. The moment the Army
chopper's wheels touched the mud the voice on the loudspeaker came
again.
“Now exit the helicopter with your hands up.'
Nash, Lauren, Copeland and Marty did so, accompanied by the
chopper's pilot.
From the safety of the ATV, Race and the others stared out at the
scene before them in awe.
Race couldn't believe what was happening. It was like one of those
fables where a big fish eats a smaller fish, only to be eaten
itself by an even bigger fish moments later.
Frank Nash, it seemed, had just come across a bigger fish.
'Who the hell are these guys?' Doogie asked.
'I would guess,' Ren6e said, a strip of gauze pressed firmly
against her bloody shoulder,'ht at they are the people who were
responsible for the break-in at DARPA headquart ers two days ago.
The break-in that involved the theft of the Navy's
Supernova.'
Half a world away, Special Agent John-Paul Demonaco and Commander
Tom Mitchell were sitting inside Bluey James'
filthy Baltimore apartment, waiting for the phone to ring.
They were waiting for the call that would instruct Bluey to send
out the V-CD of Bittiker's message to all the TV net works.
Naturally, Bluey's phone had been hooked up to a bank of FBI
tracing equipment.
There was a knock at the door.
Mitchell opened it to reveal two agents from Demonaco's Domestic
Terrorist Unit—a man and a woman, both young, clean-cut
thirtysomethings.
'What have you got?” Demonaco said.
'We checked out Henry Norton,' the female agent said.
'The guy whose cardkeys and codes were used in the break- in. Our
own investigations have confirmed that he had no known paramilitary
contacts.'
'So who did he work with, then? Who could have seen him enter his
codes and then pass them on to somebody?'
'Apparently he worked closely with a guy named Martin Race-Martin
Eric Race. He was one of the DARPA people working on the project,
the ignition system design engineer.“
'But we checked him out too,' the male agent said.
'And he's clean. No militia links, not even a history of contact
with any extremist groups. He's even married to a high-ranking Army
scientist named Lauren O'Connor.
She's technically a major, but she's had no combat experi ence. The
rank is purely honorary. Race and O'Connor
were married late in 1997. No kids, No apparent discord.
But…”
'But what?“
'But exactly three weeks ago, her FBI file was flagged when she was
spotted leaving a motel in Gainesville with this man'—the agent
handed Demonaco an 8 x 10 black- and-white photo of a man leaving a
motel room—'Troy Copeland. Also a major with the Army's Special
Projects Unit. Seems Ms O'Connor has been having an affair with Mr
Copeland for the last month.'
'So… ?' Demonaco said expectantly.
'So. Copeland has been under periodic surveillance for the past
year, under suspicion of passing Army security codes to certain
militia groups, one of which is—wait for it—the Republican Army of
Texas.'
'But since the affair is only a month old,' the female agent said,
'DARPA probably hasn't picked up on it with any follow-up
checks.'
Demonaco sighed. 'And the Army and the Navy aren't exactly the best
of bedfellows. They've been pulling the rug out from under each
other for years.' He turned. 'Commander Mitchell?'
'Yes.'
'Does the Army have a Supernova?'
'They're not supposed to.'
'Answer the question.'
'We think they are working on one, yes.'
'Is it possible, then,' Demonaco said, 'that this O'Connor woman
was getting her husband to pass secret DARPA codes to her and the
Arm36 and then she was passing them on to her lover Copeland, not
knowing that he was giving them to the Texans?'
'That's what we figure,' the male agent said.
“Damn it['
With the Spirit of the People in his hands, Frank Nash stepped out
of his grounded Black Hawk II. Lauren, Marty, Copeland and the
pilot did the same.
The two unmarked Black Hawks that had landed on either side of the
Army chopper kept their rotor blades turn ing swiftly.
“Step away from the helicopter!' the voice on the loud speaker
demanded.
Nash and the others did so.
An instant later another finger-like trail of smoke raced down from
the sky at incredible speed—from one of the other Black Hawks
hovering above the village. The missile slammed
into the Army Black Hawk II, blasting it to smithereens.
Nash winced.
A long silence followed, the only sound the rhythmic
whump-whump-whump of the rotors that still turned atop the two
unmarked helicopters.
After nearly a full minute had passed, a lone man got out of the
nearer of the two unmarked choppers.
He was dressed in full combat attire—boots, fatigues, combat
webbing—and he carried in his left hand an odd- looking
semi-automatic pistol.
It was a big gun, black in colour, and easily bigger than the
famous IMI 'Desert Eagle', the largest production-made
semi-automatic pistol in the world. This gun, on the other hand,
had a sturdy grip and an unusually long slide which ran for the
entire length of its barrel.
Nash recognised it instantly.
It wasn't a semi-automatic pistol at all. It was a rare and very
expensive Calico pistol, the only truly automatic pistol in the
world. You depressed the trigger and a stream of bullets blazed out
from the barrel. Like an M-16, the Calico could be set to fire
either short three-round bursts or full auto. But whatever mode you
chose, the result was still the same. If you shot someone with a
Calico, you opened them up big-time.
The man with the Calico stepped up to Nash while the men in the
unmarked chopper behind him kept their M16s trained on the
others.
The man held out his hand.
'The idol, please,' he said.
Nash appraised him for a moment. He was middle-aged but thin,
gaunt, with muscly, wiry arms. He had a hollow, sanguine face that
was pitted all over with scars, and a messy shock of thinning blond
hair that came down to his
eyes—blue eyes that brimmed over with hate.
Nash didn't hand over the idol.
It was then that the man with the Calico calmly raised his pistol
and blew the Army pilot's skull open with a short three-round
burst.
'The idol, please,' the man repeated.
Reluctantly, Nash gave it to him.
'Thank you, Colonel,' the man said.
'Who are you?' Nash demanded.
The man cocked his head slightly to one side. Then,
slowly, the edge of his mouth curled into a sly smile.
'The name's Earl Bittiker,' he said.
'And who the fuck is Earl Bittiker?' Nash snorted.
The man smiled again, that same supercilious smile.
'I'm the man who's gonna destroy the world.'
Race, Ren6e, Gaby and Doogie were all peering out through the
windows of the ATV, watching the drama outside unfold.
'How did they know how to get here?' Ren6e said.
'Surely there can't be another copy of the manuscript out
there.'