Temple (27 page)

Race—who had only just finished briefing the Green Berets on the
wet idol incident—was to join them in the citadel
immediately.
'SAT-SN is in,' Van Lewen said from the computer terminal.
'Satellite imagery should be coming through any minute now,
too.'
'What's it say?” Nash said.
'Take a look,' Van Lewen said, stepping aside.
Nash stared at the screen in front of him. The image on it showed
the northern half of South America:
NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE
EXPEDITED TASK NO. 040199-6754
SAT-SN PRELIMINARY SURVEY
PARAMETERS: 82.00°W-30.00°W; 15.00°N37.00°S
DATE: 5 JAN, lgg9 16:59:56 P.M. (LOCAL—PERU)
PNMA
VNZLA ',
:-.= - - . - ;,
, BRZL
Lima '
,
', : ',.!
, Rio de Janeiro
PRU ', , '.
,, BLVIAI , '
PIGGY '.,
', ;
'What the hell—?' Nash frowned.
'At least the immediate area is all clear…' Van Lewen said.
'What's it all mean?' Race asked.
Van Lewen said, 'The straight lines represent the five main
commercial air corridors in South America. Basically, Panama acts
as a gateway to the continent, with commercial flights usually
going direct from there to Lima and Rio de Janeiro and then from
those two cities down to Buenos
Aires. The grey squares represent aircraft in our quarter outside
the regular commercial air corridors.'
Race looked at the screennsaw the three clusters of grey squares
hovering over the north-western quarter of the continent.
'What do the letters and numbers mean?'
Van Lewen said, 'The grey circle just above Cuzco—the
one with “NI” written underneath itnis us. It stands for
“Nash-One”, our team here at the village. N2, N3 and N4 are our air
support choppers, en route to Vilcafor from
Panama. But it looks like they're still a good way out.'
'What about the other grey squares?'
'R1, R2 and R3 are Romano's choppers,' Nash said.
“But they're so far to the north,' Van Lewen said, turning
to Nash. 'How could they have overshot the mark so badly?'
'They're lost,' Nash said. 'They must have misread the
totems.'
Once again, Race wanted to know who this Romano person was, but he
just bit his tongue and remained silent.
'And these?' Ren6e said, indicating the three squares out
over the ocean on the extreme left of the screen.
“NY1, NY2 and NY3 are U.S. Navy signatures,' Van Lewen
said. 'The Navy must have a carrier out there somewhere.'
'No sign of the Stormtroopers?' Schroeder asked.
'No,' Nash said sombrely.
Race's watch ticked over to five o'clock. With the harsh black
storm clouds rolling in overhead, the late afternoon sky had become
unusually dark. It might as well have been night.
Nash turned to Van Lewen. 'How are we for vision?'
'Satellite imagery will be with us in about sixty seconds.'
'Delayed or realtime?'
'Real-time infrared.'
'Good,' Nash said. 'We should be able to get a clear picture of
those cats as they come out of the crater and head into the
village. You all set?'
Van Lewen stood up. Beside him, Buzz Cochrane and Tex Reichart
hefted their M-16s across their chests.
'Yes, sir,' Cochrane said, casting a sideways wink at
Ren6e. 'Cocked, locked and ready to rock.'
Race cringed.
Cochrane leered at the petite German woman with a bully's
confidence. It was as if his gun—dripping with its laser sights,
M-203 grenade/grappling hook launcher and barrel-mounted
flashlight—and his combat uniform somehow made him Mr
Irresistible.
Race hated him for it.
'Satellite imagery is coming through,' Van Lewen said.
At that moment, another computer screen on the wall of the ATV
glowed to life.
The image on it was in grainy black-and-white, and at first Race
couldn't tell what it was.
The extreme left-hand side of the screen was completely black. To
the right of that was a section of blurry grey hash, and next to
that was something that looked like an inverted horseshoe in the
centre of which was a series of small square dots and one large
round dot near the apex of the horseshoe.
At the base of the screen was a wide band of darker gre Next to the
wide band of dark grey was a small dark box-like object. Two tiny
white blobs moved away from the small box
toward the large round dot at the apex of the horseshoe.
And then it hit him.
He was looking at the village of Vilcafor.
The horseshoe shape was the gigantic moat that encircled the
village, the dots inside it the huts and the citadel. The large
section of blackness on the left was the rocky plateau that housed
the temple. The blurry grey hash—the rainfor- est between the
plateau and the village. And the band of dark grey at the base of
the screen—the river itself.
The small dark box beside the river, Race realised, was the ATV in
which he now sat, parked alongside the western log-bridge.
He looked at the two blobs on the screen hurrying from
the ATV to the citadel. Then he spun around and looked out through
the door and saw Lauren and Krauss trotting
quickly through the fog toward the citadel.
Oh—my—God, he thought.
This was a picture of Vilcafor taken from a satellite hundreds of
miles above the earth—in realtime.
This was now.
Nash spoke into his throat mike. 'Lauren, we're all set over here.
You in yet?'
'Just a second,' Lauren's voice replied over their intercoms.
On the viewscreen, Race saw the two white blobs that were Lauren
and Krauss disappear inside the round dot that was the
citadel.
“All right. We're in,” Lauren said. “You sending Will over?'
'Right now,' Nash said. 'Professor Race, you better get on
over to the citadel, before it gets fully dark.'
'Right,' Race said, moving for the door.
'Hold it a second…” Van Lewen said suddenly.
Everybody froze.
'What is it?' Nash said.
'We got company.'
Van Lewen nodded at the viewscreen.
Race turned, and on the harsh black-and-white viewscreen saw the
dark blob that was the mountain-
plateau and the horseshoe-shaped village.
And then he saw them.
They were in the section of blurry grey hash to the left of the
horseshoe—the rainforest in between the village and the
plateau.
About sixteen of them.
All coming from the direction of the plateau.
Sixteen ominous white blurs each one possessed of a long slinking
tail—stealthily making their way through the foliage toward the
village.
The rapas.
The thick steel door of the ATV slid along its rail and slammed
with a loud thud.
'They're early,' Nash said.
“It's the storm clouds,” Krauss's voice said over the speak ers.
'Nocturnal animals don't use clocks, Doctor Nash, only the level of
ambient light around them. If it's dark enough, they emerge from
their hiding holes—“
'Whatever,' Nash said. 'So long as they're out, that's all that
matters.' He turned to face Race. 'Sorry, Professor. Looks like
you're staying with us. Lauren, seal up the citadel.”
Over at the citadel, Lauren and Copeland grabbed hold of the
fortress's big six-foot doorstone and rolled it into a groove that
had been cut into the floor of the structure's doorway.
The doorstone was roughly rectangular in shape, but with a curving
rounded base that allowed it to be rocked easily in and out of its
groove inside the doorframe. The fact that it was set in a groove
on the inside of the fortress's walls meant that any external
enemies couldn't hope to budge the great stone from the
outside.
The stone rolled into place—although Lauren and Copeland
deliberately left a small crack of air between it and the
doorframe. It was important to the plan that the cats be able to
detect them inside the citadel.
After all, they were the bait.
Inside the ATV, everyone stared intently at the live satellite
image on the viewscreen.
The cats came in two distinct 'teams'—one team coming directly from
the plateau to the west, the other swinging up and around from the
north.
Race felt a chill as he watched their bodies—glowing white on the
irrfra-red—their tails curling and uncurling slowly behind
them.
It was disturbing, he thought. Disturbingly coordinated behaviour
for a pack of animals.
The cats crossed the moat at various locations. Some went over the
western log-bridge, others just leapt softly onto the fallen tree
trunks that littered the dry moat-bed and
then hopped effortlessly up onto the other side.
They entered the village.
Most of the rapas, Race saw, headed straight for the citadel and
the scent of the people inside it.
Just then, however, he saw a lone, white blob on the screen appear
alongside the stationary ATV.
Race spun instantly to his right—and saw the enormous black
whiskers of one of the cats right outside the slit-like window next
to him!
The rapa snorted once, registered the foul-smelling monkey
excrement that had been smeared on the sill of the slit.
Then it ambled off to join the others at the citadel.
'Okay,' Nash said. 'All of the cats appear to be converging on the
citadel. Lauren, what's happening over there?'
'They're all over here. They want to get in, but the citadel's
sealed tight. We're safe in here for the moment. You can send the
boys out now.'
Nash turned to the three Green Berets beside him. 'You
ready?'
The three soldiers nodded.
'Then get to it.'
And with that, Nash pushed opened a pop-up hatch in the rear of the
ATV and Cochrane, Van Lewen and Reichart—their helmets and clothes
smeared all over with the putrid brown monkey shit—climbed up and
out
through it. As soon as they were out, Nash quickly shut the hatch
behind them.
'Kennedy,“ he said into his mike. “Anything on the SAT- SN?”
“There's nothing within a hundred miles of here, sir,” Doogie's
voice came in from the citadel.
As Nash talked, Race stared intently at the satellite image of the
village.
He saw the pack of cats gathered around the citadel. Saw their
slithering tails, their cautious, inquisitive movements.
At the same time, however, on the bottom of the screen, he saw
three new blobs sneak out from the ATV and race westward, across
the western log-bridge and away from the
village, toward the dark mountain-plateau.
Cochrane, Van Lewen and Reichart.
Going after the idol.
The three Green Berets burst through the veil of mist that covered
the riverside path and raced toward the fissure.
They were running fast, breathing hard. All three of them
wore helmet-mounted cameras.
They came to the fissure.
It too was cloaked in a thick grey mist. The three soldiers didn't
miss a step. They dashed into it at full speed.
In the ATV, Nash, Schroeder and Ren6e were all watching the video
monitors intently, watching the feed coming in from the three
soldiers.
On the monitors, they saw the walls of the fissure streak ing by at
phenomenal speed. On the wall-mounted speakers, they heard the
three soldiers' heavy panting breaths.
Race stood a few paces away from the video monitors.
He didn't want to get in the way.
It was then, however, that he noticed that Nash and the two Germans
were now watching only the pictures coming from the three helmet
cameras. Their interest in the soldiers'
mission was paramount, and as such, they were completely ignoring
the satellite image screen.
Race turned to look at the satellite picture.
And then he frowned.
'Hey' he said. 'What the hell is that?'
Nash glanced around idly at Race and the satellite moni tor. But
when he saw the image on the satellite screen, he
suddenly stood bolt upright.
'What the fucks?'
On the far right-hand side of the satellite image on the eastern
side of the village—-was another cluster of blurry grey hash that
represented more rainforest, the forest that led to the edge of the
tableland and the greater Amazon Basin.
Nobody had paid it much attention before because noth ing had been
in it.
But there was something in it now.
The section of blurry grey hash of the right-hand side of the
village was now littered with tiny white blobs easily thirty of
them in total—all of them converging quickly on the village.
Race felt his blood run cold.
Each blob was distinctly human in shape, and every sin gle one of
them was carrying what appeared to be a gun.
They came out of the rainforest silently, with their machine- guns
pressed firmly against their shoulders, ready to fire but not
firing yet.
Race and the others were now watching them intently through the
ATV's slitqike windows.
The intruders were all dressed in black ceramic body armour, and
they moved with precision and speed, covering each other smoothly
as they leapfrogged forward in perfect, silent unison.
The rapas gathered around the citadel turned as one as they caught
sight of their new enemy. They tensed to attack
and then they—
Didn't move.
For some reason, the rapas didn't attack these new intruders.
Rather, they just stopped where they stood and stared at
them.
And thenujust then—-one of the intruders opened fire on the rapas
with an assault rifle that looked to Race like some thing out of a
Star Wars movie.
An unbelievable amount of bullets flared out from the gun's
rectangular muzzle and ripped one of the cats' heads to shreds. One
second the cat's head was there, the next it just erupted in an
ugly splash of exploding flesh and blood.
The cats scattered in an instant just as another one of their
number was torn to pieces by the savage hail of gunfire.
Race peered out through his window, tried to get a better
look at the gun in the intruder's hands.
It looked remarkable, space-age even.
It was completely rectangular in shape, with no apparent gunbarrel.
Indeed, the barrel must have been concealed somewhere within the
gun's long rectangular body.
Race had seen these guns before, but only in pictures, never in
real life.
They were Heckler & Koch G11s.
According to Race's brother Marty, the Heckler & Koch G-11 was
the most advanced assault rifle ever built.
Designed and built in 1989, even now—ten years on—it was still
twenty years ahead of its time. It was the Holy Grail of firearms
as far as Marty had been concerned.
It was the only production weapon in history to fire a caseless
cartridge. Indeed, it was the only hand-held firearm in the world
known to contain a microprocessor—principally because it was the
only firearm in the world complex enough to require one.