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‘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 screen saw 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 it. 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?’ Renee 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?’

‘Realtime 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 Renee. ‘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 grey. Next to the wide band of dark grey was a small dark boxlike 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 rainforest 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 logbridge.

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 speakers.

‘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 infrared—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 logbridge, 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 slitlike window next to him!

The rapa snorted once, registered the foulsmelling 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 logbridge 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 Renee 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 streaking 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 monitor. But when he saw the image on the satellite screen, he suddenly stood bolt upright.

‘What the fuck?’

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 nothing 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 single one of them was carrying what appeared to be a gun.

They came out of the rainforest silently, with their machineguns 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 slitlike 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 then just then—-one of the intruders opened fire on the rapas with an assault rifle that looked to Race like something 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.

Due to the fact that it fired a caseless bullet, the G-11 was not only able to fire at the unimaginable rate of 2300 rounds per minute, it was also able to store in its body some 150 rounds—five times the number of bullets held in the clip of a regular assault rifle like the M-16. And even then it was only half the size of an M-16.

Truth be told, the only thing that had stopped the G-11 was money. In late 1989, political considerations forced the German government to rescind its deal with Heckler & Koch to use the G-11 in the Bundeswehr.

As a result, only four hundred G-11s were ever made.

Strangely, however, in an audit of the company during its takeover by Britain’s Royal Ordnance only ten of that original batch were accounted for.

The other three hundred and ninety guns had disappeared.

I think we just found them, Race thought as he watched the rapas take flight in the face of the barrage of supermachine-gun fire coming at the guns.

‘It’s the Stormtroopers,’ Schroeder said from beside him.

The hailstorm of gunfire outside continued.

Two more cats fell, squealing and shrieking, as a couple of the Stormtroopers pummelled the village with their devastating rain of supermachine-gun fire.

The remainder of the cats took refuge in the rainforest surrounding the town, and soon the main street was filled only with the heavily-armed Stormtroopers.

‘How the hell did they get here without us seeing them on the SAT-SN?’ Nash demanded.

“And why aren’t the cats attacking them?’ Race said.

Up until now, the cats had been merciless in their assaults, but for some reason they had neither sensed nor attacked these new soldiers.

It was then that the distinct smell of ammonia wafted in through the windows of the ATV. The smell of urine. Monkey urine. The Nazis had read the manuscript, too.

Suddenly Van Lewen’s voice came in over their speakers.

‘We’re coming to the rope bridge now.’

Race and Nash spun together to face the monitor that displayed the views of the three soldiers up in the crater.

On the monitor they saw Van Lewen’s point of view as he bounced across the rope bridge that led to the temple.

‘Cochrane! Van Lewen! Hurry!” Nash said into his radio.

‘We’ve got hostil—’

Just then a shrill, ear-piercing shriek warbled out from the ATV’s speakers and Nash’s radio went dead.

‘They’ve engaged electronic countermeasures,’ Schroeder said.

“What?’ Race said.

‘They’re jamming us,’ Nash said.

‘What do we do?’ Renee asked.

Nash said, ‘We’ve got to tell Van Lewen, Reichart and Cochrane that they can’t come back down here. They’ve got to get that idol and get it as far away from here as possible.

Then, somehow, they have to get in touch with the air support team and get the choppers to pick them up from somewhere in the mountains.’

‘But how are you going to do that if they’re jamming our radios?’ Race said.

‘One of us is going to have to go up to that temple and tell them,’ Nash said.

A short silence followed.

Then Schroeder said, “I’ll go.”

Good idea, Race thought. After the Green Berets, Schroeder was easily the most ‘soldierly’ of the group.

‘No,’ Nash said decisively. ‘You can handle a gun. We need you down here. You also know these Nazi guys better than any of us.’

That left Nash, Renee… or Race.

Oh, man, Race thought.

And so he said, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘But… ?’ Schroeder began.

‘I was the fastest guy in the football team back in college,’

Race said. ‘I can make it.’

‘But what about the rapas?’ Renee said.

“I can make it.”

‘All right, then, Race is elected,’ Nash said, heading for the pop-up hatch in the rear of the ATV.

‘Here, take this,’ he said, handing Race an M-16 complete w.ith all the extras. ‘Might stop you becoming cat food. Now go. Go!’

Race took a step toward the hatch, inhaled a slow, deep breath. He took a final look at Nash, Schroeder and Renee.

Then he let out the breath he was holding and pushed up through the hatch—

—and entered another world.

Supermachine-gun fire echoed out all around him, smacked into the leaves nearby, splintered their trunks. It seemed so much louder out here, so much more real. So much more lethal.

Race’s heart thumped loudly inside his head.

What the hell am I doing out here with this gun in my hand?

You’re trying to be a hero, that’s what you’re doing, you stupid schmuck!

He took another breath.

All right…

Race leapt off the back of the ATV, landed on the western logbridge and took off down the riverside path beyond it.

He was surrounded by impenetrable grey fog. It lined the path around him. Gnarled tree branches jutted out through it like daggers.

The M-16 felt heavy in his hands and he held it awkwardly across his chest as he ran, kicking up water with every step.

Then, without warning, a rapa slid out from the mist to his right and rose to its full height in front of him and— Blam!

The rapa’s head exploded and the giant cat dropped like a stone, began flopping wildly in the mud.

Race didn’t miss a beat, he just hurdled the fallen cat.

Once he was over it, he turned to see Schroeder—with an M-16 pressed against his shoulder—sticking out from the hatch at the back of the ATV.

Race ran.

A minute later, the fissure in the mountainside emerged from the fog.

Just as he caught sight of it, he heard voices behind him, shouting in German.

“Achtung!”

“Schnell! Schnell!”

Then suddenly he heard Nash’s voice shouting from somewhere in the mist behind him: “Race, hurry! They’re behind you! They’re heading for the temple!”

Race bolted into the fissure.

Its damp stone walls flashed past him on either side as he raced down its length.

Then all of a sudden he burst out into the massive canyon that housed the skyscraper-like rock tower. The fog was thick here too. The base of the rock tower was cloaked in a spooky grey mist.

Race didn’t care. He saw the spiralling path to his left, jumped up onto it, took off up its steep curving length.

Back in the village, Renee Becker stared fearfully out through the narrow windows of the ATV.

About thirty Nazi troops were massing in the village now. They were dressed in state-of-the-art combat attire ceramic body armour, lightweight kevlar tactical helmets and, of course, black ski masks—and they moved with purpose, like a well-trained, well-prepared raiding party.

Renee saw one of the Nazis step out into the middle of the main street and remove his helmet. The man then peeled off his black ski mask and surveyed the area around him.

Renee’s eyes went wide.

Although she had seen his picture a thousand times before on all manner of ‘MOST WANTED’ posters, seeing him here, now, in the flesh, made her skin crawl.

She immediately recognised the forward-brushed hair and the narrow slitlike eyes. And the left hand that was possessed of only four fingers.

She was looking at Heinrich Anistaze.

Without saying a word, Anistaze made a ‘V’ with his fingers and pointed in the direction of the ATV.

Already a dozen of his G-11-armed men had dashed past the all-terrain vehicle, heading up the riverside path toward the fissure and the temple.

Now six more hustled over to the ATV, while the remaining twelve took up defensive positions around the perimeter of the village.

Two men, however, stood off to one side, guarding the Nazis’ radio-jamming device.

It was a small backpack-sized unit-called a pulse generator that corrupted enemy radio signals by emitting a controlled electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

It was a rather unique device. Ordinarily, an electromagnetic pulse will affect anything with a CPU in it—computers, televisions, communications systems. Such a pulse is called an ‘uncontrolled’ EMP. By controlling the frequency of their pulse, however, and by ensuring that their own radios were set on frequencies above it, the Nazis were able to jam their enemies’ radio systems while still maintaining their own communications.

As they were doing right now.

The six Nazis arrived at the ATV’s side to find every window shutter closed and every hatch bolted.

Inside the big vehicle, Nash, Schroeder and Renee sat huddled in its various corners, holding their collective breaths.

The Stormtroopers didn’t waste any time.

They immediately crouched underneath the big armoured vehicle and began planting the explosives.

Race ran.

Up and up, round and round, following the long, curving bend of the spiralling path.

Legs pumping. Heart pounding.

He came to the rope bridge. Bounced across it. Hurried up the stone steps that led to the temple.

Race burst through the encroaching fern leaves and abruptly found himself standing in the clearing in front of the portal.

The clearing was completely deserted.

No animal—neither man nor cat—was in sight.

The temple’s portal yawned open before him, looming out of the fog.

The downward-leading steps inside it were cloaked in shadow.

Do not enter at any cost.

Death looms within.

Race held his M-16 out in front of him, flicked on its barrel-mounted flashlight, cautiously stepped toward the portal. He stood inside the great stone doorway—surrounded by the horrific carvings of the rapas and the screaming humans— and peered down into the blackness.

‘Van Lewen!’ he hissed. ‘Van Lewen! Are you in there?’

No reply.

He took a step down into the temple, holding his gun awkwardly out in front of him.

It was then that he heard the reply.

A long, slow growl from somewhere deep inside the temple.

Uh-oh.

Race gripped his gun a little more tightly, held his breath, took another step down into the temple.

Ten more steps and he was standing in a dark stone passageway that spiralled down and around to his right in a wide gentle curve.

He saw a small alcove sunk into its wall, turned the beam of his flashlight into it.

A horribly mangled skeleton stared back at him.

Its skull had been smashed inwards at the back and one of its arms was missing and its mouth was in an open horrified frozen scream. It was also wearing an ancient leather vest.

Race took a horrified step back from the filthy skeletal figure.

And then he noticed the object looped around its neck.

He only just saw it, hidden as it was in the folds of the dirty old skeleton’s vertebrae. He leaned forward to get a better look at whatever it was.

It was a leather necklace of some sort.

Race touched the thin leather strap, worked it round the filthy skeleton’s neck. A few seconds later, a dazzling green emerald appeared from behind the skeleton’s bony neck, attached to the leather necklace.

Race’s heart skipped a beat. He knew of this emerald pendant. Indeed, he had read about it only recently.

It was Renco’s necklace.

The necklace that the high priestess in the Coricancha had given to him the night he had spirited the idol out of Cuzco.

Race looked at the skeleton again in horror.

Renco.

Race lifted the necklace off the skeleton’s head and held it in his hands.

He thought of Renco for a moment—and then suddenly he recalled something that he himself had said to Frank Nash not long ago.

Somehow Renco and Santiago managed to lure the cats back inside the temple, and at the same time put the idol inside it.

Race swallowed hard. Had Renco—-while carrying the wet idol with him—led the cats back inside the temple?

He stared down at the mangled skeleton in horror.

So this was what had become of Renco.

This was what happened to heroes.

He placed the emerald necklace solemnly around his own neck. “Take care, Renco,’ he said aloud.

Just then harsh white light illuminated Race’s face and he turned eyes wide, like an animal caught in the headlights of a car—and found himself staring at the faces of Cochrane, Van Lewen and Reichart as they emerged from the darkness of the temple’s inner depths.

Reichart was holding something wrapped inside a tattered purple cloth.

Cochrane brushed roughly past Race, pushing his M-16 aside as he did so. ‘Why don’t you put that fucking thing down before you kill somebody.’

Tex Reichart stopped in front of Race and smiled as he held up the object in his hands, the object wrapped inside the purple cloth.

‘We got it,’ he said.

Reichart quickly unwrapped the cloth parcel and for the first time, Race saw it.

The Incan idol.

The Spirit of the People.

Like the stone totem he had seen in the rainforest earlier, the Spirit of the People looked infinitely more sinister in real life than it had in his imagination.

It was about a foot tall, and roughly the size and shape of a shoebox.

The front section of the rectangular stone, however, had been carved into the shape of a rapa’s head—the angriest, fiercest rapa Race had ever seen.

It was snarling ferociously, its jaws bared wide, its sharp pointed teeth ready to slash and maim and kill.

What struck Race most about the carving, though, was how alive it looked. Through a combination of skilled craftsmanship and the unusual nature of the stone itself, it seemed as if the rapa had somehow been imprisoned inside the lustrous blackand-purple stone and was now trying— maniacally, ferociously, rabidly—to force its way out of it.

The stone, Race thought as he gazed at the thin veins of purple that snaked their way down the snarling rapa’s face, giving it an extra level of anger and malevolence.

Thyrium.

If only the Incas had known what they were starting when they carved this idol, he thought.

Reichart quickly replaced the cloth over the idol and the four of them hurried back up to the temple’s entrance.

‘What the fuck are you doing up here?’ Cochrane growled as they came to the open portal.

‘Nash sent me to tell you guys that the Nazis are down in the village.

They jammed our radios so we lost contact with you. They’re sending men up here now. Nash said to tell you not to come back down to the village, but rather to get out of here some other way and get in contact with the air support team and get them to pick you up from somewhere in the mountains—’

At that moment, a burst of supermachine-gun fire raked the stone walls of the portal all around them. The four of them ducked quickly as a devastating line of bullets strafed the portal’s frame, shredding its solid stone walls as if they were made of plaster.

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 Tshaped 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 sidemounted 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, Renee 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 sidemounted 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 facedown 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 machinegun 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 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.

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 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 centre 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 neutralised 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 doth-enwrapped object.

‘Herr Obergruppenfuhrer,’ 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 sidemounted 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 lefthand 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.

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 spiralling 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 logbridge.

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

‘Three more minutes, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer,’ 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, Obergruppenfuhrer.’

Anistaze keyed his radio. ‘Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer? Do you read me?’ Oberstgruppenfuhrer was the highest of all the SS ranks—-General.

“Yes,’ came the reply.

‘We have it.’

‘Bring it to me.’

‘Yes, Oberstgruppenfuhrer. At once,’ Anistaze said as he strode across the eastern logbridge and plunged into the rainforest.

Race and Van Lewen ran down the spiralling 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.

As Race ran down the path, his radio earpiece suddenly burst to life:

‘Cochrane, Lewen, report. Repeat. Cochrane, Reichart, Van Lewen, report—’

It was Nash. Their radios were working again. The Nazis must have turned off their jamming system, or at least taken it out of range.

Van Lewen spoke as he ran. ‘Colonel, this is Van Lewen.

We’ve lost Reichart and Cochrane is wounded. But the Nazis have the idol. Repeat. The Nazis have the idol. I have Professor Race with me now. We’re on our way back to the village.’

“You lost the idol?”

‘Yes.’

“Get it back,” was all Nash said.

Race and Van Lewen came to the western logbridge. They stepped cautiously over it, guns up.

The village was deserted, cloaked in fog. No Nazis in sight. No rapas either.

Immediately in front of them, they saw the dark shape of the ATV turned up on its side. To their left, they could see the shadows of the various buildings of Vilcafor rising out of the fog.

Van Lewen took a step toward the ATV.

‘Colonel… ?’ he said.

He was answered by gunfireG-11 gunfire from the three-man Nazi demolition squad who had been left behind in the village to plant Anistaze’s chlorine charges.

Race dived left, Van Lewen dived right, both of them raising their M16s, but it was no use. They couldn’t see a thing in this mist.

Race clambered back to his feet just as he saw a Nazi commando burst around the side of the ATV, his G-11 raised and ready.

Then suddenly—bam!—a loud, single gunshot rang out from somewhere behind Race and the Nazi’s head just snapped backwards in a spray of blood and all Race could do was stare in stunned awe as his assailant fell to the ground, dead.

‘What the..’ he turned in the direction of the gunshot.

Suddenly a rapa burst out of the fog right in front of him, bared its teeth and leapt at his throat.

Bam!

The rapa jolted sideways in mid-flight as it was hit in the side of the head by another speeding bullet—killed instantly. The big animal’s carcass slid to a halt inches away from Race’s feet.

What the hell was going on!

‘Professor!’ Doogie’s voice cut through the mist. “Over here! Come on! I’ve got you covered!’

Squinting through the fog, Race caught a glimpse of the roof of the citadel, and there—perched on top of it with a sniper rifle pressed against his shoulder—he saw the silhouette of Doogie Kennedy.

From his position on the roof of the great stone fortress, Doogie had a great view of the village.

Through the thermal sights of his M-82AIA sniper rifle, he could see everyone in the town as if it were daytime.

Each figure appeared on his scope as a multicoloured blob—from the Each figure appeared on his scope as a multicoloured blob—from the vaguely human-shaped blobs of Race, Van Lewen and the two remaining members of the German demolition team, to the trapezoidal but heatless shape of the ATV; to the ominous, four-legged shapes of the cats.

The cats.

With the disappearance of the Nazi troops and their weaponry, the cats were now free to move throughout the village again.

They were back. And they were looking for blood.

Race spun where he stood, saw Van Lewen standing over by the upturned ATV.

“Professor, get out of here!’ the Green Beret sergeant yelled.

‘Doogie’ll cover you! I’ve got to get this thing upright again!’

Race didn’t have to be told twice. He immediately hurried off through the village, surrounded by fog. As soon as he did so, however, he heard quick muddy footsteps splashing through the greyness behind him.

Getting closer, gaining on him.

And then suddenly—bamsmacksplat.

It was the sound of another of Doogie’s gunshots—barn— followed by the sound of the bullet smacking into one of the Nazis—smack—followed by the sound of the Nazi hitting the ground—splat.

Another rapa slid out in front of him, prepared to pounce—bam!—its head just exploded, nailed by Doogie.

The rapa’s body began to convulse. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Bam! The body went still.

Race couldn’t believe it.

It was like navigating your way through a fog-enshrouded maze while being protected by a guardian angel. All he could do was just keep running—keep moving forward—while Doogie took care of the dangers all around him, dangers which he himself couldn’t see.

He heard more muddy footsteps—heavier this time—the four-legged variety.

Bam.

Smack.

Splat.

Up on the citadel, Doogie swore.

That last hit had run him dry. He was out of ammo. He ducked behind the parapet and frantically began to reload.

Over by the river, Van Lewen hung from the underside of the upturned ATV, heaving on it with all his weight, conscious of the fact that there were rapas out there in the mist behind him.

‘Get your weight up higher!” he called to Nash and the others inside the vehicle. ‘We’ve got to tip it over!’

They moved instantly and almost immediately the ATV— already precariously balanced on its side—began to tip over.

Van Lewen quickly scurried out of its way, just as— whump—the big eight-wheeler landed on its tyres and he hurried for the door on its side.

Race was still running hard through the mist when suddenly, like a curtain being drawn to reveal a stage, the veil of fog before him parted and he beheld the citadel.

It was then that he heard the clack-clack of a safety being released on a G-11 somewhere nearby and he froze and slowly turned—and saw the last Nazi commando standing in the fog behind him, his G-11 aimed squarely at Race’s head.

Race waited for the now-familiar report of Doogie’s sniper rifle. But it never came.

Why wasn’t he firing anymore?

And then abruptly there came an almighty roar, which Race translated as the roar of one of the cats.

But it wasn’t the roar of a cat.

It was the roar of an engine.

The next instant, the ATV came exploding out of the mist and slammed into the Nazi commando’s back.

The Nazi fell, crushed beneath the big all-terrain vehicle, and even Race himself had to dive out of the way as the ATV rumbled past him and skidded to a halt in front of the citadel—stopping right in front of the fortress’s entrance, aligning itself so that its sliding lefthand door opened flush onto the citadel’s doorway.

A second later, Race saw the rear hatch of the ATV pop open and Van Lewen’s head appear.

‘Hey, Professor, you coming or what?’

Race leapt up onto the back of the vehicle and dived headfirst into its hatch. No sooner was he inside than Van Lewen slammed the steel hatch shut behind him with a loud resounding thud.

‘They got the idol,’ Van Lewen said, sitting on the floor of the citadel, surrounded by the others, in the half-light of their flashlights. The open door of the ATV was behind him, completely filling the wide stone doorway of the citadel.

‘Fuck,’ Lauren said. ‘If they get that thyrium to a workable Supernova we’re screwed..’

“What are we going to do?’ Johann Krauss said.

“We’re going to get it back,’ Nash said flatly.

‘But how?’ Troy Copeland said.

‘We have to go after them now,” Van Lewen said. ‘They’re at their most vulnerable right now. They came here to grab the idol and then, presumably, take it back to wherever it is they’re keeping their Supernova. But on a snatch-and-grab mission like the one they just pulled, you’re at your most vulnerable when you’re in transit from the target objective.’

‘So where is their home base?’

‘It has to be close,’ Race said firmly surprising everyone with his conviction, including himself. ‘Judging by the way they got here.’

‘And how exactly did they get here, Professor?’

Copeland said disbelievingly.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Race said, ‘but I think I can make a pretty good guess. One, they got here using a method of transport that avoided detection by your fancy SAT-SN network, so they didn’t fly. Two, aside from flying and travelling on foot, what’s the quickest and easiest way to get a force of about thirty men through the rainforest?’

‘Oh, damn, why didn’t I think of that…’ Lauren said.

‘What?’ Copeland said irritably.

‘The rivers,’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ Race said. ‘They came here by boat. Which means their base of operations can’t be too far aw—’ He cut himself off.

‘So where is it?’ Nash said. ‘Where is their base of operations?’

But Race wasn’t listening. Something had just clicked in the back of his mind.

Base of operations…

Where had he heard those words before?

‘Professor Race?’ Nash said.

No, wait. He hadn’t heard them at all.

He had seen them.

And then suddenly it hit him.

‘Lauren, do we still have that telephone transcript here?

The one with the Nazis’ ransom demand on it. The telephone conversation that the BKA intercepted between a cellular phone somewhere in Peru and Colonia Alemania.”

Lauren spun and .immediately began rummaging

through the equipment in the darkened citadel.

‘Got it.’ She handed a sheet of paper to him.

Race looked at the transcript that he’d seen earlier.

VOICE 1: —-base of operations has been established—-rest of the—-will be—-mine—-

VOICE 2: —-about the device?—-ready?

VOICE 1: —-have adopted hourglass formation based on the American model—-two thermonuclear detonators mounted above and below a titanium-alloy inner chamber. Field tests indicate that—-device—-operational.

All we need now—-the thyrium. 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-ransom will be one hundred billion dollars U.S.—- or else we detonate the device…

Race’s eyes zeroed in on the first two lines of the transcript.

VOICE 1: —-base of operations has been established—-rest of the—-will be—-mine—-

‘Will be mine…’ Race said aloud. ‘Mine… the mine.’

He turned to Lauren. ‘What was the name of that abandoned goldmine we saw from the Huey on our way here?

The one that was all lit up? The one that didn’t look all that abandoned anymore.’

‘The Madre de Dios goldmine,’ Lauren said.

‘Is it situated on a river?’

‘Yes, on the Alto Purus. Nearly all the open-cut mines in the Amazon are situated on rivers, because seaplanes and boats are the only way to get the gold out of here.’

‘How far away is it from here?’

‘I don’t know. Sixty, seventy miles.’

Race turned to Nash. ‘That’s where they’re going, Colonel. The Madre de Dios goldmine. By boat.’

Heinrich Anistaze crashed through the undergrowth, forging his way eastward until at last he pushed aside the final branch and was confronted by a truly spectacular sight.

The Amazon rainforest spread out before him like a lush green carpet running all the way to the horizon.

Anistaze was standing at the edge of the tableland—at the top of a sheer, foliage-covered cliff that overlooked the rainforest. To his immediate right was a magnificent two hundred-foot waterfall that flowed out over the tableland, the end product of the caiman-infested river that ran alongside Vilcafor.

Anistaze ignored the waterfall.

Of more importance to him was what lay at its base, in the wide section of river down there.

He smiled at the sight.

Yes…

Then, with the idol under his arm, he quickly began to climb down the set of ropes that snaked their way up the cliff-face, heading down to the river.

‘All right, then,’ Copeland said, ‘so how are we going to catch these bastards? They’ve got a fifteen-minute head-start on us and just in case anyone has forgotten, there are rapas out there—’

‘If their boats are where I think they are, then there’s another way to get to them,’ Race said. ‘A route that avoids having to go past the cats.’

‘What route?’ Nash asked.

Race immediately dropped to his knees and began sweeping his hands across the earthen floor of the citadel.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m looking for something.

‘What?’

Race searched the floor for it. According to the manuscript, it should be here somewhere. The only question was whether or not the Incas had used the same symbol to mark

“This,” he said suddenly, as he swept his hand across the earthen floor and revealed a stone slab beneath the thin layer of mud and dirt.

Inscribed in the corner of the slab was a symbol—a circle with a double ‘V’ in it.

‘Here, help me,’ he said.

Van Lewen and Doogie came over, got a hold of the slab and heaved on it.

The slab rumbled against its neighbours as it slowly slid out of its resting place—revealing an inky black hole beneath it.

‘It’s the quenko,’ Race said.

‘The what?’ Nash said.

‘I read about it in the manuscript. It was a maze dug into the rock beneath the village, an escape route, a tunnel system that leads to the waterfall at the edge of the tableland—if you know the key to the maze.’

‘And you know that key?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘How?’ Troy Copeland asked mockingly.

‘Because I’ve read the manuscript,’ Race said.

‘So who goes?’ Lauren said.

“Van Lewen and Kennedy,’ Nash said. ‘And anyone else who can carry a gun,’ he added, looking at the two BKA agents and the German paratrooper, Molke. Renee, Schroeder and Molke all nodded.

Nash turned to Copeland. ‘What about you, Troy?’

‘I’ve never held a gun in my life,’ Copeland said.

‘All right, then. Looks like it’s just you five—’

‘I can handle a gun,” Race said.

‘What?’ Lauren said.

“You?” Copeland said.

‘Well,’ Race shrugged, ‘some guns. My brother used to bring them home all the time. I’m not all that good at it, but—’

‘Professor Race can run with me any time,’ Van Lewen said, stepping forward exchanging a look with Race—and handing him a spare SIGSauer pistol. ‘Judging from what he did up on the rock tower.’

He turned to Nash. ‘Is that it then, sir?’

Nash nodded. “Do whatever you have to do, just get that idol. Our air support should be here any minute now. As soon as they get here, I’ll send them after you. If you can somehow get your hands on that idol and keep those Nazi bastards at bay for a while, the air support team should be able to get you out of there. You got that?’

‘Got it,’ Van Lewen said, grabbing his M-16. ‘Then let’s go.’

Van Lewen led the way, charging through one of the narrow stone passageways of the quenko beneath Vilcafor.

He held his M-16 pressed against his shoulder, illuminating the cramped tunnel in front of them with the tiny flash light that was attached to its barrel.

Race, Doogie, Molke and the two BKA agents hurried along the dark stone passageway behind him. Doogie and the three Germans held M16s in their hands. Race just carried the silver SIGSauer.

Although he didn’t want to say it, Race was scared out of his mind.

But he was where he wanted to be with Van Lewen and Doogie and the Germans, going after the idol, going after the Nazis. Doing something.

The quenko, however, didn’t help ease his mind.

It was like some horrific kind of dungeon—a nightmarish subterranean maze with close stone walls and slippery muddy floors.

Enormous hairy spiders scuttled away into dark crevices as the six of them hustled past, while obscenely fat snakes slithered through the stagnant mud on the tunnel floor, almost tripping them over. And it was claustrophobic— claustrophobic as hell each slimy passageway that he saw was barely three feet wide.

Van Lewen ran quickly in the lead.

‘Take the third tunnel on the right,’ Race said from behind him. ‘And then zigzag, starting with the left.’

At exactly the same time as Race and the others were dashing through the underground maze, Heinrich Anistaze was reaching the bottom of the tableland’s cliff-face.

He strode over to the riverbank where he stepped straight into a rubber Zodiac speedboat.

He keyed his radio mike. ‘Demolition team. Report.’

He received no reply.

Through the quenko they ran.

Running hard, running fast, ducking left, cutting right, bursting through spiderwebs, tripping over forty-foot snakes, stumbling through the slick moss-covered tunnels of the ghastly subterranean maze.

‘Hey, Van Lewen,’ Race said in between breaths as they jogged down a long section of tunnel.

‘Yeah?’ Van Lewen replied.

‘What’s the 80s Club?’

‘The 80s Club?’

‘Cochrane mentioned it last night while you guys were unpacking the choppers, but he wouldn’t say what it was.

I’d like to know what it is before I die.’

Van Lewen snorted as he ran. ‘I can tell you, but it’s pretty, uh, unrefined.’

‘Try me.’

‘Okay…’ Van Lewen said. ‘It goes like this. To become a member of the 80s Club, you must have had sex with a girl who was born in the 1980s.’

‘Oh, man!” Race said, cringing.

‘I told you it was unrefined,’ Van Lewen said.

They ran on.

The six of them had been running for about seven minutes through the quenko when—abruptly—Van Lewen turned a corner and slammed into a solid stone wall.

Only it wasn’t a wall at all.

It was a doorstone.

In fact, it was a doorstone not unlike the one in the door way of the citadel itself—a squareshaped boulder with a rounded base that could be easily rolled open from the inside, but which was impregnable from without.

Race and Van Lewen rolled the boulder aside—

—and they were instantly assailed by the roar of a mighty waterfall.

A light spray of water hit their faces as they were con fronted by the sight of a curtain of falling water not ten feet in front of them.

Race scanned the area around them.

They were standing on a path—an Incan path—-carved into the rockwall behind the waterfall.

They were at the edge of the tableland already.

The roar of the surging waterfall above them was incredible. It drowned out all other sound. Van Lewen had to shout over it to be heard.

‘This way!’ he yelled, hurrying left.

The rocky path was wet and slippery, but Race and the others managed to keep their footing as they hustled along its length behind the falling curtain of water.

Even though they moved quickly, it still took them a full minute to reach the edge of the curtain—the waterfall above them was wide, and they had emerged from the quenko at its very centre.

Van Lewen came out onto solid ground first, skidded to a halt on the muddy riverbank. ‘Holy shit,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Race asked as he came alongside him and looked out at the river.

The first thing he saw was Heinrich Anistaze’s little Zodiac speedboat, cutting a ribbon of wash as it sped away from them into the wider waters of the river proper.

‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

And then he saw the other boats.

‘Holy shit.’

It looked like a veritable armada.

There must have been at least twenty boats out there on the wide brown river at the base of the waterfall. Boats of all shapes and sizes.

Five longbodied shallow-draught assault boats sped around the perimeter of the fleet. They were Rigid Raiders— sleek, open-topped aluminium-hulled attack craft commonly used by the SAS for high-speed raiding.

Four Vietnam-era military patrol boats known as ‘Pibbers’ cruised casually alongside some of the larger boats near the centre of the armada. Pibbers were superfast 35-foot gunboats fitted with armour plating, turret-mounted 20mm machineguns and sidemounted torpedo pods. Their name was a serviceman’s abbreviation of their official designation PBR (Patrol Boat River), and although the Pibber was already well known for its exploits in Vietnam, it had been immortalised in the Hollywood movie Apocalypse Now.

Three massive helicopter landing barges surged along the river inside the circle of attack boats. On the helipads of two of the barges sat Mosquito light-attack helicopters. The chopper that had been up on the tower top earlier was in the process of landing on the third barge’s helipad right now.

Trailing behind the middle helipad barge, however—and looking remarkably out of place alongside the three ultra-high-tech Mosquitos—was a rather battered-looking little seaplane.

It was a Grumman JRF-5 ‘Goose’, a compact twin propellered riverplane that dated back to the Second World War.

The Grumman Goose was a very distinctive little plane, classic in its design. From the side, its bow was roughly the same shape as a labrador’s snout—short and fiat-topped but rounded at the waterline. It sat in the water on its belly with two stabilising pontoons hanging down from its outstretched wings. Notably, the Goose had two methods of entry, a side door and a pop-up hatch in the nose.

This Goose, however, also packed a punch—a lightweight twin-barrelled 20mm Gaffing gun had been affixed to its left-hand flank.

In the centre of the Nazi fleet sat the armada’s focal point—and the destination of Anistaze’s Zodiac—an enormous white catamaran.

The command boat.

It looked magnificent, sleek in the extreme, at least 150 feet long. Its two massive hulls were painted pristine white while its sharply slanting windows were tinted jet black.

Sonar arrays rotated atop its roof. A dazzling white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter sat on the helipad that made up the stern of the giant craft.

In addition to the helicopter, rocking in the water alongside the big catamaran, tied to it, was the meanest-looking speedboat Race had ever seen. It, too, was painted white, the same colour as the command boat and the helicopter—a matching set. It sat low in the water and it had an ultra-long hull that tapered sharply to a point at the bow. A backward-slanting spoiler arched over the driver’s seat—an aerodynamic precaution designed to prevent the highpowered speedboat from being lifted off the river’s surface while it flew across the water at top speed. Race saw the word ‘SCARAB’ painted across its side.

Scooting around the whole motley fleet-cutting thin ribbons of white wash behind them—were about six Jet Raiders: small one-man assault vehicles not unlike regular jet-skis.

But they were longer than normal jet-skis—maybe nine feet from tip to tail. And they were sleeker, meaner, faster.

They had saddle-like seats and bulletshaped noses, and they all sat high in the water as they moved, with only the back half of their hulls touching the water’s surface as they skimmed lightly across it, whipping around the larger boats.

Race and the others watched as Anistaze’s Zodiac reached the command boat and the notorious Nazi field commander climbed aboard. Immediately, the big white catamaran began to power up. As it did so, the rest of the fleet began to move out.

‘They’re leaving!’ Doogie shouted.

“There!” Van Lewen said, spotting three abandoned Jet Raiders lying on the riverbank not far from the waterfall— left there, no doubt, by the members of the Nazi demolition team.

‘Come on,’ Van Lewen said.

The six of them raced for the three Jet Raiders.

The river’s surface raced by beneath them.

The three stolen Jet Raiders kicked up spectacular sprays of white behind them as they raced side by side across the water in pursuit of the Nazi armada.

Race rode double with Van Lewen. He drove while the Green Beret sat behind him like a pillion passenger on a motorcycle, with one hand wrapped around Race’s waist, the other holding his M-16 ready to fire.

Doogie Kennedy skimmed across the water to their right, riding double with the German paratrooper Molke, while Renee and Schroeder shot along the river’s surface to their left—Renee driving, Schroeder riding shotgun.

The Nazi armada was about three hundred yards ahead of them, powering quickly along the wide brown river—looking a lot like a carrier battle group, with the big command boat in the centre, surrounded by Rigid Raiders and Pibbers.

The three helipad barges trailed behind the other boats, bringing up the rear, while the little Jet Raiders just ducked and weaved madly in between all the larger boats like flies around a rubbish heap.

Race rode hard, wind and water pounding against his face. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the trees along the river’s edge racing past him in a blur of green, saw the odd stray log floating on the surface next to him.

Don’t hit the logs, Will. Don’t hit the logs…

And then he realised.

They weren’t logs.

They were caimans.

Don’t hit the caimans, Will. Don’t hit the caimans…

“Van Lewen!’ he yelled above the roaring wind. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Easy! We take the command boat, we get the idol, then we hold the boat until the air support arrives!’

‘We take the command boat…’

“Once we get it, we can hold it.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Race yelled.

Up ahead, the Nazi armada rounded a bend in the river and disappeared from Race’s view. From above, the Alto Purus River looked like the undulating body of a snake, a never-ending series of twisting bends and turns.

‘All right, everybody,’ Van Lewen said into his throat mike. ‘See those trees up ahead. That’s where we’re going.’

Race looked forward and saw that the bend in the river that the Nazis had just rounded was comprised of a thick outcropping of trees. As he looked at the outcropping more closely, however, he noticed something odd about it—there was no dirt or soil at the base of the trees situated there. It looked as if the trees simply rose up out of the water.

Then he realised. It was the rainy season, and with the advent of the annual rains, the water levels of the rivers in the Amazon Basin rose dramatically. The land upon which that outcropping of trees stood was deeply submerged—a flooded forest.

Which meant that someone travelling on a small rivercraft like a Jet Raider might be able to wend their way through the trees, rather than going around the natural bend in the river.

Doogie’s Jet Raider shot into the treeline—Race’s right behind it—

Renee’s close behind.

Tree trunks whipped past them on either side, blurring with motion.

The three Jet Raiders shot through the maze of thick dark trees—

banking left, leaning right, skimming lightly across the waves, their long flat hulls barely even touching the surface while off to their left, through the flashing wall of tree trunks, they could make out the Nazi armada as it powered around the bend in the river.

Race tried desperately to concentrate as he drove. The speed at which they were travelling was utterly frightening.

It was so fast. So incredibly, incredibly fast!

Tree trunks whooshed past him at phenomenal speed.

Wavelets streaked underneath the bow of his riverbike. So quickly were they travelling—so lightly and smoothly on the surface of the water—that he barely had to touch the handlebars of his bike in order to bank it left or right.

Race was sitting high in the saddle of his Jet Raider as he sped along behind Doogie’s riverbike when suddenly he saw Doogie and Molke duck for apparently no reason. And then abruptly he saw why and he yelled, ‘Van Lewen!

Duck!’ and the two of them yanked their bodies down just as a low-hanging branch whistled by over their heads.

‘Thanks!’ Van Lewen yelled.

‘No problem!’

And then through the lattice of dark tree trunks ahead of him he saw daylight. Heavy, grey, late-afternoon daylight.

‘All right, everyone,’ Van Lewen said. ‘Arrowhead formation. Doogie and Molke, you take the lead. Agents Schroeder and Becker, you’ve got the left. Professor Race and I will cover the right. Okay; you all ready?’ The big Green Beret raised his M-16 in one hand while he held onto Race with the other.

Up ahead, Race saw Doogie and Molke lift their own M16s.

‘Ready,” Doogie’s voice came back.

The three Germans called in. ‘Ready-Ready-Ready.“

‘Professor?’

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ Race said.

‘Then let’s rock,’ Van Lewen said.

The three American-German Jet Raiders burst out from the treeline in a perfect arrowhead formation right alongside the Nazi armada and in an instant Race found himself shooting across the water in the midst of four Nazi jet Raiders!

The four Nazis turned as one to see the three American rivefbikes, total surprise in their eyes, They reached for their guns fast as Van Lewen called, ‘Doogie! Take left!’ and the two Green Berets let fly in both directions with simultaneous bursts of M16 gunfire. The four Nazis were blasted off their riverbike in an instant as the three stolen jet Raiders whipped past them.

As he shot by the fallen Nazis, Race turned in his seat to s.ee several sets of ripples cut a beeline through the water toward them.

The 4aimans…

And then suddenly a line of 20ram bullet holes raked the water on either side of his speeding jet Raider and he was instantly snapped out of his trance.

He Spun quickly and saw two attack boats—one Rigid Raider and one Pibber patrol boat—swing in quickly behind them, the Pibber firing wildly -with its turret-mounted 20mm cannon.

Race gunned the accelerator and his riverbike surged forward, Behind him, Van Lewen swivelled around on the Saddle so that he was now facing backwards, levelled his M-16 and opened fire on their pursuers; His volley of mace fire strafed both boats cracking the windshield of the Pibber and nailing three of the four men on board the Rigid Raider.

Then, abruptly, the whole fleet veered left as it rounded another bend in the river;

‘Everybody! Bank hard left!’ Van Lewen yelled.

‘Left?’ Race shouted confused.

‘Through the trees again! We’ve got to get to that command boat!

At that moment, more gunfire rang out all around them as Pvo Nazi riverbikes swung in behind them.

Bullets flew everywhere; whizzed over Race’s head, and then suddenly—sprack! Race saw a hideous gout of blood splash out from Doogie’s left shoulder as the young Green Beret was hit.

‘Arrrggghhh!” Doogie’s voice roared over the radio, but somehow he managed to keep up his speed.

Voom-voom-voom. The three American riverbikes shot into the treeline—Renee and Schroeder first, Doogie and Molke second, Race and Van Lewen last of all.

They were followed a split second later by the two Nazi bikes.

Bullets smacked against the tree trunks just above Race’s head as he flew by them at phenomenal speed. Low-hanging branches rushed at him. Each time he saw one approaching, he yelled at Van Lewen—still facing backwards—and ordered 1-rim to duck

Van Lewen was firing hard with his M-16 at the two Nazi riverbikes close behind them, but the Nazis found cover behind the tees, and after an extended burst of fire Van Lewen suddenly went dry.

Seeing the chance the two Nazi Jet Raiders closed in.

One of them pulled up quickly alongside Race and Van Lewen’s riverbike, sped along the water on their righthand side, and the Nazi rider immediately drew a Glock from his saddlebag. With nothing else to call on, Van Lewen swung his empty M-16 like a baseball bat, hitting the Nazi’s pistol clean out of his hand—just as the trees all around the two speeding jet Raiders splintered violently under the weight of a burst of G-11 gunfire!

Van Lewen and Race ducked instantly as the second Nazi Jet Raider roared out of the trees to their left and slammed into the side of their riverbike, Race was almost jolted out of his seat by the impact but somehow he managed to hold on. He kept his speed up banked quickly to avoid an onrushing tree. Then he glanced left; tried get a look at his new assailant—and found himself staring into the barrel of a G11 supermachine-gun.

Race looked up from the barrel and saw the face of its holder, grinning evilly, smiling with delight.

And then—SMACK!—the Nazi was crunched out of sight as his jet Raider slammed at full speed into the centre of a thick black tree trunk and his riverbike exploded into a great billowing fireball Race’s head whipped around It had happened so fast! it was as if the tree had just swooped past them and collected the Nazi on its way by.

The other Nazi—the one immediately to their right snapped round to look at the explosion too. Van Lewen caught him looking and in one swift movement, M-16 in hand, he jumped across onto the man’s speeding let Raider, landing on its saddle right behind him!

The Nazi rider turned in surprise, As he did so, however, Van Lewen looked forward at the river ahead of them—and his eyes widened—and then with the reflexes of a cat he ducked just as the Nazi turned to look forward and caught the full force Of a speeding branch whipping by at head-height.

The branch ploughed into the bridge of his nose, drilled itself into the back of his brain, killing the man in an instant, and the Nazi toppled backwards, over Van Lewen’s bent-over body and off the back of the riverbike.

A few seconds later, Van Lewen and Race now on separate jet Raiders—pulled alongside Doogie and Molke’s speeding riverbike, Renee and Schroeder were up ahead of them, racing along in the safety of the trees.

‘Doogie, You okay?’ Van Lewen said into his throat mike.

‘I’ll be okay. The bullet went right through,’ Doogie’s voice came back.

While Van Lewen checked on Doogie, Race kept watch for more Nazis. There were no more coming through the trees behind them. But through the flashing rush of tree trunks to his right, he could see a couple of the silver Rigid Raider assault boats racing across the river’s surface parallel to them. Armed Nazi commandos lined their decks, peering into the flooded forest, searching for them, waiting fo them to emerge again.

Van Lewen said. ‘All right, everybody, listen up. Doogie’s taken a hit but he’s okay to keep going. Here’s the plan. We want that command boat, okay. The way we’re going to get it is between you two BKA guys’—he nodded at Renee and Schroeder ‘I want you two to grab one of those Pibbers. If we’re gonna hold that cruiser we’re gonna need some heavy fire support and that means getting our hands on one of those 20 turrets. Think you can manage that?’

‘We can try,’ Schroeder said.

‘Good; Doogie. You, me and Molke are gonna go for the command boat, you up for that?’

‘I can handle it,’ Doogie grimaced.

‘What about me?’ Race asked.

‘I got a special job for you, Professor.’ Van Lewen said.

‘Owing to your lack of special forces training, I kinda figured you wouldn’t want to go storming any boats.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘So I thought that, instead, you could run decoy for us.’

Decoy?’

‘I want you to scoot around in front of those Nazi gunboats as fast as you can and draw their fire while we take the command boat and a Pibber. Once we’ve got those two boats we’ll bring you aboard the main cruiser.’

Race swallowed. ‘Okay…’

As he said it, he glanced left and get Renee’s eye. She must have seen the apprehension on his fate and nodded reassuringly

“You’ll be all right,’ she said softly over his earpiece. ‘Thanks.’ he said.

Then he looked forward and saw that their treelined Sanctuary ended about a hundred yards ahead of them at a stand of half-submerged trees.

Beyond the stand of trees, he could see grey daylight and the river proper and in the river, would be the Nazis,

‘All right everybody,’ Van Lewen said ‘Speed up and stay sharp; You know what you have to do.’

Race felt his blood rush He couldn’t begin to imagine what lay beyond those trees;

But he didn’t have long to dwell on it because a second later, the six of them hit the edge of the tree at full throttle and burst out into daylight.

The Nazis were waiting for them

No sooner had Race and the others blasted out of the treeline than a wave of supermachine-gun fire erupted all around them, Look out!’ Doogie yelled, ducking, but Molke was too slow. A thunderous barrage of bullets whizzed over Doogie’s head and slammed into the young German soldier’s body, ripping his chest open, causing Molke to convulse violently before he was thrown off the back of the speeding river bike.

Race’s eyes went wide as saucers as he saw Molke get shot to bits right alongside him. They went wider still when he beheld the sight before him. Two of the three Mosquito choppers that had previously been resting on the helipad barges now hovered in the air above the water right in front of him and his team, while the rest of the Nazi fleet powered up the river behind them. Damn it! A spray of deadly 20mm machinegun fire spewed out from the helicopters’ sidemounted cannons, raking the tree trunks behind Race, strafing the water all around him. ‘Split up! Split up!’ Van Lewen yelled.

The four American German Jet Raiders split up instantly, two going left, two going right, and suddenly Race found himself speeding across the water alongside Doogie Kennedy, who was now sitting alone on his river bike, his wounded left shoulder caked in blood.

Van Lewen and Renee and Schroeder shot off in the other direction, whipping out of sight behind the flotilla of river boats.

Race and Doogie sliced in between the Nazi boats, ducking and weaving. One of the Mosquitos wheeled around in the air above them, came roaring in toward them with its cannons blazing.

In the face of the onslaught, Race banked away to the left and sped in between two of the helipad barges. The line of gunfire behind him pummelled the side of the nearer barge, kicking up sparks along its length.

Race shot along the alleyway of water between the two barges, then abruptly he burst out into open space in front of them and cut right, taking air as he leapt across the bow-wave of the right-hand barge.

He was met with the sight of Doogie’s Jet Raider racing alongside him at exactly the same speed—but underneath the hovering Mosquito helicopter and alongside one of the speeding Nazi Pibbers.

‘Professor! Quickly!’ Doogie yelled as he drew his SIGSauer pistol with his bloodsmeared left hand. “Give me cover! I’m going to board that Pibber!”

‘What about the command boat!’ Race yelled into his throat mike.

‘What about the plan!’

“The plan went to hell as soon as we came outta the trees! Come on!”

‘All right!’

With that, Race quickly drew his own SIG and opened fire on the two Nazi crew members standing on the stem platform of the Pibber.

As he fired, they ducked for cover, and as they did so Doogie quickly pulled his Jet Raider alongside the speeding Pib and leapt up onto its elevated foredeck.

Race watched in amazement as Doogie found his footing on the Pibber’s roofed forward section and took two bounding steps aft, dancing up onto the roof of the gunboat’s wheelhouse and then leaping down onto its open stem plat form and blasting the two Nazi crew members to kingdom come with his SIG.

‘Professor! Get over here! I need you to man this gun!’ Doogie jabbed a finger at the Pibber’s turret-mounted 20 cannon.

Race skimmed across the river’s surface, heading for the Pibber.

On board the Pibber, Doogie scooped up a G-11 from one of the fallen Nazis and took the wheel, firing up at the Mosquito helicopter above him while still maintaining his furious speed.

Race came alongside the speeding Pibber.

He brought his Jet Raider in close to the fast-moving patrol boat, trying desperately to keep control as the riverbike bounced wildly on the Pib’s side wash.

Race rode grimly, trying to keep up with the Pibber, his eyes locked onto the speeding gunboat’s side handrail, three feet away.

That was all he wanted. To get his hands on that rail.

Just then a wave of bullet holes cut across the Pib’s side-right in front of him.

He spun instantly.

And saw another Pibber skipping across the water toward him, with five more Nazis on its deck!

It was coming right for him.

And it wasn’t slowing down.

It was going to ram Doogie’s Pibber, whether Race was in the way or not!

Race turned to look at Doogie’s boat again, his eyes zeroing in on the handrail once again.

Do it! his mind screamed.

Race leapt off the Jet Raider, grabbed hold of the handrail, his legs dragging through the water behind him; He quickly swung his legs up and over the rail just as— crunch!—the second gunboat slammed into the p0rt-side rail of Doogie’s Pibber.

Race rolled across the deck as the entire boat under him jolted wildly.

‘Professor! Over here!’ Doogie yelled.

Race was still lying flat on his belly on the deck. He looked up quickly, saw Doogie standing in the wheelhouse looked up quickly, saw Doogie standing in the wheelhouse waving him over when suddenly a pair of combat boots thudded down into his field of vision, cutting off his view of Doogie.

At exactly the same moment as the boots landed on the deck—

—a gun went off and the owner of the boots dropped instantly, his bug-eyed face landing on the deck tight in front of Race a single bullet hole gouged in the middle of his forehead, In the background behind the dead Nazi Race saw Doogie standing with his G-11 extended in his good right arm,

Christ, Race thought, as he saw the second Pibber bar= telling along just beyond the handrail of his own boat-saw the four Nazis arrayed along its deck, readying themselves to board him, He snapped to look out in the other direction and saw one of the large helipad barges closing in from the other side, Cutting off their escape, boxing them in.

This is not good, he said to himself.

Doogie was obviously thinking the same thing

He swung their Pibber left, ramming it into the Nazi boat had, causing all of the commandos on its stem deck to i0se their balance for an instant, buying himself the precious few seconds he needed to raise his G-1i and fire,

But he didn’t fire at the deck of the Nazi Pibber, principally because he didn’t have enough time to bring his gun that fat around, Rather, he trained it at the bow of the Nazi boat—where no Nazis were standing.

‘What the hell are you doing!’ Race yelled.

Doogie’s gun roared to life.

An extended burst, maybe two dozen shots.

Sparks flew up instantly all around the steel anchor at the bow of the Nazi Pibberrrrrrr,

And then suddenly—smack!—the small metal latch securing the Pibber’s anchor to its housing was hit by Doogie’s fire and the anchor was dislodged from the deck and went plunging off the side of the Pibber’s bow and into the rushing water below, its nylon rope shooting rapidly over the side as it did so.

The four Nazis on the Pibber saw their anchor drop, turned back to face Doogie and Race with their G11’s up.

And then it happened.

Whatever it snagged on—a submerged tree root, or maybe just a whole goddamned submerged tree—Race never knew, but whatever it was, that anchor must have snagged on something big.

It was as if some hideously strong monster had just yanked on the speeding Pibber’s anchor, because in a single shocking instant, the Nazi Pibber went from sixty-five nautical miles an hour to zero the whole boat just snapping over on itself, ass-over-keel, as its bow was abruptly jerked down into the water.

As the bow went under, the stern shot up out of the waves and the whole boat did a complete floundering cart wheel, flipping over in mid-air and crashing down on the roof of its wheelhouse, smacking down into the water with an enormous explosive splash.

Race spun to see the overturned Nazi boat shrink into the distance behind them, sinking slowly.

Leonardo Van Lewen weaved his Jet Raider in and out of the Nazi armada zipping lightly across the river’s surface as he disappeared and reappeared from behind the various helipad barges, Pibbers and Rigid Raiders.

Angry gunfire rang out all around him as he desperately tried to outrun the Rigid Raider assault boat and the Mosquito attack chopper that were in hot pursuit behind him. Strangely, there was only one Nazi on board the Rigid Raider behind him. It was the boat that he had assailed with gunfire earlier, killing all its occupants bar one. Truth be told, though, Van Lewen didn’t really care much for the boat or the chopper astern of him. He only had eyes for the vessel looming fifty yards in front of him. The big white catamaran. The Nazi command boat.

Twenty yards behind Van Lewen, the lone helmsman of the Rigid Raider filed wildly after the American soldier’s riverbike, his bullets spraying all over the place as his longbodied assault boat bounced madly over the waves.

Then abruptly the helmsman heard a loud whump! from somewhere behind him and he turned quickly—

—just in time to see Karl Schroeder’s fist come rushing at his face.

Renee Becker rode her Jet Raider hard, flecks of spray assaulting her face like a thousand pinpricks.

To her immediate left, she saw Schroeder take the wheel of the Rigid Raider he had just jumped onto and give her the thumbs up.

Once she was sure he was in control of the Nazi boat, Renee immediately gunned the engine of her riverbike and swung in front of the Rigid Raider, using it for cover against the helicopter above them as she took off after Van Lewen, joining him in his pursuit of the command boat.

The massive Nazi command boat powered down the river at the head of the fleet.

About a halfdozen Nazis lined its aft rail—standing underneath the rotor blades of the white helicopter that sat off the helipad there-firing on Van Lewen.

But the big Green Beret deftly weaved his speeding Jet Raider left and right, ducking their fire, before suddenly— without warning—he whipped in behind a nearby helipad barge just astern of the command boat.

Under the cover of the barge, Van Lewen picked up the pace, gradually overtaking the bigger boat on his nimble Jet Raider.

In a few seconds, he came to the bow of the barge, where he took a last deep breath.

Then, when he was ready, he yanked his handlebars hard to the left.

Like a fighter jet swooping in after its prey, his Jet Raider swung in fast across the bow of the helipad barge and in behind the big twin-hulled command boat.

The Nazis on the stern of the massive catamaran immediately opened fire on him, but to Van Lewen’s surprise, they -were suddenly taken down by Renee—screaming in from the left on her own Jet Raider, firing hard with her M-16 as she skipped across the water.

With the Nazis down, the two of them zoomed in underneath the bridge-like body of the catamaran, shooting into the shadows in between its One-hundred and fifty-foot hulls!

The two jet Raiders shot forward in the darkness beneath the catamaran, quickly came to the bow of the boat.

Van Lewen pulled in close to the right-hand hull. Ren4e took the left; Then she watched as Van Lewen reached up and grabbed h0id of the bow rail above him and hauled himself up Onto the co—and boat’s bow, disappearing from he-view.

A second later, with a deep breath of her own, she reached up for the left-hand bow rail and began to climb aboard. Galeforce wind assaulted her face as she emerged from the shadows beneath the catamaran and stood up on its left-hand bow. She saw Van Lewen on the other bow, about fifty feet away from her, holding his M16 up and ready. With the command boat powering along at the head of the fleet, the Nazis obviously hadn’t expected anyone to board them from the front, so there were no commandos up here. Not yet anyway. Renee took in the catamaran around her. It was big, really big. The superstructure mounted on top of the two enormous hulls was sleek in the extreme, aerodynamic beyond belief. It was made up of two levels, both of which were hidden behind deeply tinted slanted windows. Wide side passageways ran down both of the big boat’s flanks. ‘Where to now?’ she yelled. ‘We take the boat and then we hold it until the choppers get here!’ Van Lewen called back.

‘What about the idol? If we can’t take the boat, we should at least try to get the—’

At that moment two Nazi commandos came charging out from the portside passageway, their Glls blazing. But they were shooting from the hip, firing high. Van Lewen just whipped his M16 around, drew a bead on them and took them down with two brutally accurate shots.

‘What did you say?’ he yelled to Renee.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Go now! I’ll cover you.’

And with that the two of them took off down the starboard passageway.

Race and Doogie flew across the water in their Pibber patrol boat. One of the Mosquito attack choppers shot low through the air above them, hovering over the top of their speeding boat, occasionally pivoting in midair so it flew backwards in front of them and fired on them directly. It even had one of its side doors open, out of which a Nazi commando sat, firing on them with a G11. To their right rumbled one of the helipad barges, boxing them in, cutting off any escape in that direction. As he drove, Doogie fired up at the chopper with his Gll. He was trying in vain to get up into the forward gun turret of their Pibber, but the blistering suppressing fire from the chopper was keeping him pinned down in the wheelhouse.

‘Goddam it, I can’t get to it,’ he yelled as the Mosquito whipped by overhead again, the loud roar of its rotors quickly followed by the impact of about a million armour piercing rounds banging into the roof of the wheelhouse.

‘We have to do something about that chopper!’ Race shouted.

‘I know, I know,’ Doogie yelled. ‘Professor, quickly! Go down below. See if you can find any grenades or something down there.’ Race obeyed instantly, threw open the hatch at the forward end of the wheelhouse and hurried down into the belly of the gunboat. He found himself standing in a bare, small room with grey metal walls. Netting and wooden crates lined its slanted walls. In the centre of the room he saw a grey boxlike object. It was about three feet high and three feet wide, roughly the size of a card table, and at first glance he thought it was just another crate, some kind of ammunition container or something. But it wasn’t a container at all. On closer inspection, Race saw that it was attached to the floor. Then he realized. It was a diver’s hatch. In Vietnam, Special Forces and the SEALs had preferred to use Pibbers ahead of other river boats because they alone had these special hatches concealed in their hulls. Using them, frogmen could enter the water without the bad guys knowing where they’d been let off. Race quickly began searching the various racks and shelves for weapons. The first thing he found was a small crate of British L2A2 antipersonnel hand grenades. The second thing was a Kevlar box with some words stencilled across its side in English:

PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY ORDNANCE ISSUE K/56005/C/DARPA 6 X M22 CHARGES

Race opened the box and saw six futuristic looking chrome and plastic vials sitting snugly inside separate foamlined pockets. Each vial was quite small, about the size and shape of a tube of lipstick, and they were all filled with a strange kind of lustrous amber liquid. Race shrugged, grabbed the Kevlar box, and carried it and the crate of regular grenades up to Doogie in the wheelhouse.

‘Ah, Professor,’ Doogie said when he saw the Kevlar box. ‘I … uh … wouldn’t go throwing those babies too quickly if I were you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll kill us too.’

‘What?’

‘They’re M22s. High temperature explosive charges. Serious shit. See the amber liquid inside ‘em. Isotopic liquid chlorine. One ounce of that stuff’ll vaporize everything within a two hundred-yard radius, including us. These Nazi assholes must have been the ones who stole that shipment of M22s from that truck in Baltimore a few years back.’

‘Oh,’ Race said. ‘We won’t be needing that much firepower,’

Doogie smiled, grabbing one of the more conventional L2A2 hand grenades. ‘This should be all we need.’

Not a moment later, the Mosquito above them made another pass, pummelling the walls of the Pib with bullet holes. But this time, as it shot by overhead Doogie pulled the pin on his grenade and threw it baseballstyle with his good arm up at the chopper’s open side door.

The grenade shot through the air like a missile and then it disappeared inside the Mosquito’s door. A second later the Mosquito’s walls blasted out as one and the little attack chopper pitched wildly forward, crumpling over on itself and bursting into flames before slamming down nosefirst into the speeding water beneath it.

‘Nice throw,’ Race said.

Van Lewen and Renee raced down the wide starboard side passageway of the command boat, their Ml6s pressed firmly against their shoulders. They moved quickly, sweeping their guns from side to side, until suddenly they burst out into open space, out onto the aft helipad deck of the big catamaran. Van Lewen immediately saw the white Bell Jet Ranger chopper sitting on the deck before them, with its pilot standing beside it. The man saw them instantly, reached for his gun. Van Lewen dropped him, turned right just in time to see a squad of six more Nazi commandos come charging out from the interior of the catamaran, their Glls up and firing. Supermachine gun fire raked the deck all around them, splintered the wooden handrail behind them. Van Lewen ducked, saw Renee dive back behind the corner they had come from. He, however, was too far gone. He looked back at the Nazis coming towards him.

They were about fifteen yards away with their futuristic machine guns spewing forth a shocking wave of bullets and in the face of their onslaught, with absolutely nothing else to call on, Leo Van Lewen did the only thing he could think to do. He leapt over the side.

From the helm of his Rigid Raider speeding along the river behind the command boat, Karl Schroeder watched in horror as he saw Van Lewen go sailing off the side of the big catamaran. But Schroeder didn’t have time to gawk. At that moment, a hailstorm of Gll fire came his way as two Nazi Rigid Raiders swooped in on him from either side, assailing his boat’s flanks with gunfire, forcing him to dive for cover. He hit the deck hard, and immediately scanned the floor of the boat for something he could use to fight off the two Nazi Rigid Raiders. The first thing he saw was a Gll, lying on the deck next to a Kevlar box of some sort. Good start. But then, beyond the Gll, he saw something else. And he frowned. Van Lewen flew through the air, waited for the impact with the speeding river beneath him. It never came. Rather he landed on something hard, something solid, something that felt like plastic or fibreglass. He looked about himself and found that he was lying on the deck of the Scarab speedboat that was secured to the rear right-hand rail of the command boat. Not a second later, three Nazi commandos snapped their Glls over the command boat’s rail and drew a bead on the bridge of his nose and in that moment, as he looked up into their eyes, Van Lewen knew that his battle was over. The three Nazis jammed down on the triggers of their guns. At first, Schroeder hadn’t realized what it was. It was an odd looking, backpack-sized device roughly rectangular in shape, with a series of digital gauges on it, variously measured in kilohertz, megahertz and gigahertz. Frequency measurements … And then it had dawned on him.

It was the Nazis’ jamming device, the device that they had used to neutralize the Americans’ communications systems when they had arrived at Vilcafor. Stuck to the front of the device was a strip of grey electrician’s tape, on which was written in German the words:

WARNING! DO NOT SET EMP LEVELS ABOVE 1.2 gHZ.

Schroeder’s eyes had gone wide at the sight of the word ‘EMP’. Jesus. A pulse generator. The Nazis had an electromagnetic pulse generator. But why would they set a limit on the level of the pulse at 1.2 gigahertz? And then it had hit him. Schroeder immediately snatched up the Gll next to him and looked at the specifications marked on its body.

HECKLER & KOCH, DEUTSCHLAND 50 V.3.5 MV: 920 CPU: 1.25 gHZ

In the nanoseconds in which the mind operates, he quickly recalled the theory of electromagnetic pulses: EMP nullified anything with a microprocessor in it computers, radio transmitters, televisions. And also, Schroeder realized, Gll assault rifles, since the Gll was the only gun in the world to use a microprocessor, the only gun complex enough to require one. The Nazis didn’t want their men to set the levels on their EMP generator too high, because if they did, the electromagnetic pulse would knock out their Glls. Schroeder smiled. And then, at exactly the same moment as Van Lewen looked up into the barrels of the Nazis’ Gll assault rifles from his position on the deck of the Scarab, Karl Schroeder had flicked on the pulse generator and turned the gigahertz dial to 1.3. Click. Click. Click. Van Lewen’s look of resignation turned to one of complete bewilderment as each of the three Glls above him failed to fire.

The Nazis seemed even more bewildered. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. Van Lewen didn’t miss a beat. In a second, he had his M16 raised in one hand and his SIGSauer in the other. He pulled both triggers at the same time. Both guns blazed to life. All three Nazis were hit instantly and they flopped back behind the rail, their heads exploding in identical fountains of blood. Bullets pinged off the rail itself, ricocheting in every direction, one of them slicing through the rope that held the Scarab to the command boat. The speedboat immediately fell away from the big catamaran and all the Nazis on the command boat could do was hold their useless Glls in their hands and stare at the Scarab as it receded into the wash behind them. On the other side of the river, Doogie Kennedy sat in the swivel chair of his Pibber’s forward gun turret, creating all manner of hell with the patrol boat’s double barrelled 20mm cannon. He spun the turret around and let fly with a hailstorm of fire, turning one of the Rigid Raiders speeding across the river to his left into Swiss cheese. Then he turned his sights onto one of the helipad barges in front of him, the one with a Mosquito helicopter still on it, and pummelled it with 20mm gunfire, rupturing its fuel tanks, causing the entire boat and chopper combination to erupt into a billowing ball of fire.

‘That’s right, take that, you Nazi sunzabitches!’

Three yards behind him, in the wheelhouse of the Pibber, Race drove hard, scanning the river as he did so. Just then the third and last Mosquito attack chopper made another low pass, its side mounted cannons blazing. Race ducked quickly. On the forward deck in front of him, Doogie swung the revolving gun turret around and loosed a deafening burst of 20mm gunfire at the chopper, but the Mosquito just banked away sharply as his red hot tracers hit only air around it.

At that moment, however, Race saw another Pibber gunboat swing in ominously behind them. No Nazi gunmen lined its rails, no gunfire spewed forth from its 20mm gun turret. It just kept its distance, cruising silently, hanging well back behind them, at least three hundred yards away. And then Race saw a puff of smoke burst out from the square shaped pod that hung off its side and abruptly something long and white shot out of the pod and splashed down into the water. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he said, at exactly the same moment as another Nazi Rigid Raider swung in behind their boat, in between it and the Pibber that had just launched the strange object from its sidemounted pod. Four Nazis stood on the deck of the open topped Rigid Raider, firing at Race and Doogie with Beretta pistols. And then suddenly, so suddenly that it made Race jump, the Rigid Raider in between the two Pibbers just exploded. There was no warning. No apparent cause. The longbodied aluminium assault boat just shot up into the air in a geyser of smoke, water and twisted metal. No apparent cause, Race thought, except for the object that the other Pibber had just launched into the water from its pod. The realization hit him and Doogie at the same time.

‘Torpedoes …’ they both said, exchanging a look. As they said it, another wisp of smoke puffed out from the pod on the side of the Nazi Pibber and a long white torpedo exploded out from it, splashed down into the water, and shot forward at incredible speed, heading directly for their boat.

‘Oh, man,’ Doogie breathed.

Race pushed forward on the throttle of the Pibber. The torpedo shot through the water. Race guided the speeding Pibber away from it, swinging left in the water, towards the rest of the fleet, in the hope that he could put another boat between them and the torpedo. But it was no use. The nearest boats to theirs were the two remaining helipad barges, the one with the Grumman JRF5 Goose seaplane trailing behind it immediately to their right, and another forward and to their left. Both barges’ flight decks were empty, their wide, rail-less helipads bare. Race gunned the engine. His Pibber shot forward, hit a stray wave, bounced high into the air and then with a sudden crashing lurch, came down again, hitting the water hard. The torpedo bore down on them.

‘Professor!’ Doogie yelled. ‘You got about ten seconds to do something!’

Ten seconds, Race thought. Shit. He saw the helipad barge to his left, got an idea, swung in towards it. Eight seconds. The Pibber shot across the surface about thirty yards to the right of the wide, flat barge. Race’s eyes were glued to the barge. It was little more than a landing pad on water, just a wide, flat helipad that floated about three feet above the waterline, with a small glass enclosed wheelhouse at its bow. Six seconds. Abruptly, Race yanked his steering wheel hard to port and the Pibber banked left through the water, skipping quickly across the waves, taking air every few metres as it shot at breakneck speed in towards the helipad barge.

Five seconds. The torpedo closed in. Four seconds.

‘What are you doing?’ Doogie yelled.

Three.

Race jammed the throttle forward as far as it would go.

Two.

The Pibber skimmed across the water on a collision course with the barge’s starboard flank. Then suddenly the Pibber hit a wave and like a stunt car leaping off a ramp, it shot high into the air. The speeding gunboat leapt clear out of the water, its propellers spinning in the air behind it, literally flying, and with a bone jarring whump! its hull landed right on top of the barge’s empty helipad. But the Pibber was still moving fast and with a scraping, shrieking, earsplitting screech, the patrol boat skidded across the empty helipad deck, kicking up sparks as it shot across it until shoom! the Pibber blasted off the left-hand edge of the barge and splashed down into the water on the other side where its propellers caught hold of water again and it peeled away from the helipad barge, just as the torpedo behind it hit the hapless barge and detonated. The walls of the barge blew out as one. Jagged lengths of steel, curving pieces of hull and a thousand shards of glass went blasting out into the air as the barge exploded with the impact of the torpedo.

‘Wahooooo!’ Doogie yelled from the gun turret. ‘What a goddamned ride!’

Breathless, Race peered back at the river behind them as pieces of the destroyed barge rained down on the roof of his wheelhouse. ‘Whoa,’ he said.

Renee Becker slid in through a side door of the command boat, cautiously made her way down a narrow white-lit corridor. She slipped into an alcove as a door in front of her opened suddenly. Two Nazis emerged and hurried past her, carrying pistols in their hands, one of them saying, ‘They’re using our own EMP against us!’

They ran off down the corridor, unaware of her presence. Renee pressed on. The interior of the catamaran was plush beyond belief white walls with dark wooden panelling and lush blue carpet. But she didn’t care. She was only after one thing. The idol. After leaping out of the water and dry-skiing across the landing pad of the helipad barge, Race and Doogie’s Pibber was now whipping across the river’s surface again, with Doogie firing from his turret up at the last Mosquito helicopter as it buzzed wildly about above them. But the Mosquito was too quick, too nimble. It evaded his fire easily until finally his 20mm cannon ran out of ammo and just started clicking repeatedly.

Doogie frowned. ‘Aw, shit.’ He quickly slid out of the turret, snatched up his G11, and joined Race in the wheelhouse. ‘We gotta nail that chopper,’ he said. ‘While it’s still up there, we got no chance of beating these guys.’

‘What do you suggest?’

Doogie nodded at the last remaining helipad barge ploughing along the river about fifty yards to their right, the one with the Grumman Goose seaplane being towed along behind it. ‘I suggest we get up in the air with it,’ he said. Seconds later, their Pibber swung in alongside the wide, flat helipad barge.

The two boats touched for a moment and Doogie leapt across onto the landing deck of the barge. ‘Okay, Professor,’ he yelled, ‘your turn!’

Race nodded, left the wheel of the Pibber just as the entire patrol boat jolted wildly under the weight of a stunning impact. Race fell to the deck, looked up in time to see one of the two remaining Nazi Pibbers ram the left-hand side of his boat again. On the helipad barge to the right of the two Pibbers, Doogie whipped up his Gll and pulled the trigger but for some reason, it wouldn’t fire. ‘Damn it! Shit!’ he yelled as he watched Race and the other Pibber drift away from his barge. Race was in hell. Gunfire rang out all around him as the Nazis on the other Pibber opened fire on his wheelhouse with pistols from close range. The forward windshield of his Pib shattered and a storm of shards rained down all over him. Then suddenly he felt another lurching thump as the second Pibber rubbed up against his portside rail. He snapped around and saw the Nazi Pibber looming large alongside his boat, saw four commandos on its stern deck holding Berettas, readying themselves to board his Pib and kill him. He spun, looked the other way, and saw that the gap between his own boat and the helipad barge with Doogie was now at least thirty feet wide. Too far away. He was on his own now. He drew his SIG. What are your options, Will? Can’t see many. The first Nazi leaped over onto his Pibber. Race whirled around instantly and dived forward through his boat’s shattered windshield and up onto the Pibber’s elevated foredeck just as the Nazi opened fire with his pistol, his bullets pinging off the windshield’s frame inches above Race’s head. Race went sprawling on the foredeck of the Pibber, out of the line of fire, at least for the moment. He heard the sounds of the other Nazis landing on the aft deck of his boat. Shit. He looked aft and saw the heads of the four Nazi commandos coming forward. He instinctively rolled away from them and abruptly something sharp hit his back. Race turned. It was the Pibber’s anchor. The Nazis were still coming forward. Do something! All right… Race aimed his SIGSauer at the anchor’s rope and fired. The bullet cut the rope just above the anchor and the stainless steel weight instantly dropped free from it, clattered down onto the deck. Race then yanked off his cap and wedged it firmly between his teeth. The first Nazi appeared in the wheelhouse, raised his Beretta and fired. Race dived clear of the bullet, scooping up the anchor rope in his hand as he did so, and then, without so much as a second thought, he rolled quickly across the foredeck towards the bow of the boat. The steel foredeck around him erupted with bulletholes as he rolled but the bullets missed their mark. For at the exact moment that the four Nazis appeared in the wheelhouse of the Pibber, William Race rolled his body off the bow of the patrol boat and fell down into the speeding water below.

Race hit the water hard, backfirst. He kicked up a spectacular spray of wash as he bounced wildly on the speeding surface, skipping over it at phenomenal speed, trying desperately to keep his grip on the anchor rope. Occasionally his entire body would spring up off a wave and bang against the side of the Pibber’s bow as it carved knifelike through the water beside him. He bit down firmly on the brim of his cap, held onto the rope as hard as he could. It was a rough ride, bruising, belting, battering, but he knew if he didn’t do one more, thing, it was about to get a lot worse. He heard the heavy thump, thump, thump of Nazi boots on the foredeck above him. If they saw him hanging from the bow, he was a dead man for sure. They would shoot him where he hung. Do it, Will!

All right, he thought. Let’s do it. Race steeled himself against the speeding waves beneath him, squeezed his eyes shut against the spray that assaulted his face. Then he adjusted his grip on the anchor rope and stiffened all of his muscles at once. And then he allowed himself to sink into the water, under the speeding bow of the Pibber! His legs went under first. Then his waist, then his stomach, then his chest. Slowly, his shoulders edged under, followed by his neck. Then, with a final, deep breath, Race allowed his head to go under the surface. The world went eerily silent. There was no roar of outboard motors, no thumping of choppers, no clatter of automatic gunfire. Just the constant vibrating hum of boat engines echoing across the underwater spectrum. The steeply slanted grey hull of the Pibber filled Race’s field of vision. Small specks of God only knew what rushed past his face at a million miles an hour, disappearing into the murky green darkness that lay beyond his flailing feet. Slowly, deliberately, hand over hand, Race lowered himself down the length of the anchor rope, heading aft along the hull of the Pibber, holding his breath for dear life, while still holding onto his cap with his teeth. He was about a third of the way down the length of the hull when the first reptilian shape materialized from the green darkness around him. A caiman. It swooped in alongside the speeding Pibber, opening its mouth right next to his flailing feet, and with a rattlesnake quick snapping motion, lunged viciously at his sneakers. Race lifted his legs up just as the caiman’s jaws came crunching together, catching nothing but water, and the big reptile, unable to keep up with the speeding Pibber, shrank prizeless into the hazy green darkness behind him. Race desperately needed air. His lungs burned. He felt bile crawling up the back of his throat. He quickened his pace down the rope until, finally, he found what he was looking for. The diver’s hatch. Yes! He reached into the hatch and punched upwards with his fist, knocking its interior lid off. Then he shoved his head through it. He broke the surface inside the lower cabin of the Pibber. Race quickly spat his Yankees cap out of his mouth and sucked in every ounce of air that he could. Then, when he had got his breath back, he hauled himself up through the boxlike hatch and fell in a clumsy heap onto the floor of the cabin, battered, bruised and absolutely breathless, but glad as hell to be alive. Doogie Kennedy ran across the open deck of the last helipad barge with a trail of sparks strafing the deck behind him.

As soon as he had seen Race go under the bow of the Pibber, he had opened fire on the four Nazis in its wheelhouse. Now they were returning his fire as he made a break for the seaplane being towed behind the big helipad barge. He came to the stern edge of the barge and quickly unlooped the rope that secured the Goose to it. Then he leapt across onto the bow of the seaplane and yanked open the small entry hatch situated on top of its nose. He dived headfirst down into the hatch, rising several seconds later inside the cockpit of the plane. Doogie punched the ignition switch and the Goose’s two wing mounted propellers immediately kicked into gear, at first rotating slowly, and then abruptly snapping into rapid blurring circles. The seaplane pulled away from the helipad barge, the Nazis’ bullets pinging against its bodywork. In response, Doogie rotated the Goose on the river’s surface so that it pointed at the deck of his recently abandoned Pibber. Then he jammed down on the trigger of his control stick. Instantly, a deafening burst of 20mm machinegun fire spewed out from the Gatling gun mounted on the side of the Goose. Three of the Nazis on the Pibber dropped immediately, hit square in their chests by the Goose’s powerful fire. The fourth one fell too, but of his own accord, dropping quickly out of the line of fire.

‘God, I love these twenty millimetre guns,’ Doogie said.

On the Pibber, Race had been standing just behind the small metal doorway that led back up to the wheelhouse when Doogie’s gunfire had assailed the boat. When at last the firing stopped, Race peered out of the doorway to see that only one of the original four Nazis was still alive. He was lying on the deck of the Pibber, reloading his Beretta. It was his chance. Race took a moment to steel his nerves. Then he threw open the door, levelled his SIG Sauer at the surprised Nazi, and pulled the trigger. Click! The SIG’s slide was racked back into the empty position. No bullets! Race threw the gun down in disgust and then, seeing the Nazi jam a new magazine into the grip of his own pistol, did the only thing he could think of doing. He took three bounding steps forward and hurled himself at the man. He hit him hard and both men went sliding along the deck of the speeding Pibber, towards the stern They got to their feet, and the Nazi swiped at Race backhanded, but Race ducked and the Nazi’s fist went sailing over his head. Then Race was up in the commando’s face, rushing at him with an angry right. The punch connected and the Nazi recoiled at the blow, his head flailing backwards. Race hit him again, and again, and again yelling with each punch as the Nazi staggered backwards.

‘Get—’

Punch.

‘—off—’

Punch.

‘—my—’

Punch.

‘—boat!’ With the final blow the Nazi slammed into the stern railing of the Pibber and tumbled over it, falling off the back of the boat, splashing down into its wake.

Race, his chest heaving, his knuckles bleeding, stared out after the fallen Nazi and swallowed hard. After a few moments, he saw a familiar pack of ripples converge on the soldier and he turned away as the Nazi began to scream.

Renee was creeping cautiously down a narrow corridor of the command boat, leading with her gun, when all of a sudden she heard voices coming from a room to her right. She stepped forward, peered around the doorframe. And saw a man she recognized standing in the centre of an ultra hightech laboratory. He was an older man, but huge, obese, with a fat bull-like neck and an enormous girth, his white wash and wear shirt stretched tight across his enormous belly. Renee held her breath as she stared at the old man. It was Odilo Ehrhardt. The leader of the Stormtroopers. One of the most feared Nazis of World War II. He must have been, what, seventy-five years old now, but he didn’t look a day over fifty. His classically Aryan features were still apparent, if worn with age. His white blond hair was thinning on top, revealing a series of ugly brown lesions. And his blue eyes sparkled, glistened with madness as he barked orders to his men.

‘—then find that generator and turn it off, you imbecile!’ he bellowed into a radio. He jabbed a pudgy finger at one of his commandos. ‘You, Hauptsturmfuhrer! Get Anistaze in here right now!’

The laboratory around the Nazi general was a mix of glass and chrome. Cray YMP supercomputers lined its walls, vacuum sealed chambers sat on workbenches. Lab technicians in white coats ran about in every direction. Commandos with pistols hustled out through the main glass doors that led onto the boat’s rear helipad deck.

But Renee only had eyes for the object that Ehrhardt held in his left hand. An object wrapped inside a ragged purple cloth. The idol.

At that moment, Heinrich Anistaze charged in from the helipad deck and stood to attention before Ehrhardt. ‘You sent for me, sir.’

‘What’s going on?’ Ehrhardt said.

‘They’re everywhere, Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer. There must be dozens of them, maybe more. They appear to have split up, taking out different sections of the fleet and causing significant damage.’

‘Then we leave,’ Ehrhardt said, handing the idol to Anistaze and guiding him back towards the helipad deck. ‘Quickly. We will take the idol in the helicopter and get it to the mine that way. Then, if the heads of government haven’t responded to our demands by the time we insert the thyrium into the Supernova, we will detonate it.’

From the wheelhouse of his newly recovered Pibber, Race surveyed the aquatic battlefield around him. What was left of the fleet still surged forward along the river, but it was a shadow of its former self. Three Pibbers were still afloat, but one of them belonged to Race. Only one helipad barge remained, along with three of the original five Rigid Raiders, and one of those belonged to Schroeder.

Van Lewen’s Scarab sped along in front of the fleet, and of course, there was the last Mosquito chopper still wreaking havoc from above. About forty yards behind him, Race saw Doogie’s Goose seaplane wheel out of the wash of the helipad barge in front of it. It surged out into the river proper in search of a clear stretch of water from which it could take off. Race spun forward. About thirty yards ahead and to the left of his Pibber, he saw the massive Nazi command boat powering along the river.

At that moment, however, Race suddenly saw two men burst out onto its rear deck and dash for the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter sitting on its stern. He recognized one of them instantly Anistaze. The other man was considerably older than Anistaze fat, with a thick muscular neck and a semibald head. Race didn’t know who he was, but he guessed that he was the man Schroeder had spoken about earlier, the Stormtroopers’ leader, Otto Ehrhardt or something like that. Anistaze and Ehrhardt leapt into the rear compartment of the Bell Jet Ranger and immediately the rotor blades on top of the chopper began to rotate. And then it hit Race. They were taking the idol away … Just then, as he was gazing at the activity on the stern of the command boat, Race saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, the glint of a small shadowy figure hustling down the starboard passageway of the command boat. His eyes went wide. It was Renee. She was running swiftly down the side passageway, heading aft, holding her M16 firmly across her chest. She was going after the idol … By herself.

Race watched in astonishment as Renee rounded the rear corner of the passageway and opened fire on the Nazi chopper with her M16. A couple of the Nazi troops standing near the chopper were hit instantly and dropped where they stood, but the others just turned and fired back at Renee with AK47s. She ducked in the face of their gunfire and fell back behind the corner as the Nazis on the helicopter deck took off after her. Race could only watch in horror as she stumbled backwards up the starboardside passageway of the command boat, heading towards the bow. She fired wildly with her M16 as she moved determinedly, keeping the Nazis at the aft end of the passageway pinned down, until at last she was able to hunker down at the forward end of the passageway, holding her attackers at bay at the other end. It was at that moment that Race saw him.

A lone Nazi commando. Moving slowly across the wide roof of the command boat, towards Renee’s position. The man held his gun high, and moved with slow deliberate steps, out of Renee’s field of vision, sneaking up on her from above. She had no chance of seeing him. No way of knowing he was there.

‘Shit,’ Race said, looking around for an option. His eyes fell upon Doogie’s seaplane skipping quickly over the waves behind his boat, coming alongside it in between his Pibber and the command boat as it dashed forward through the fleet in search of a clear stretch of water. Race saw the chance instantly, and without so much as a blink, he quickly leapt out through the shattered forward windshield of the wheelhouse and climbed up onto its roof. Then, just as Doogie’s Goose swept past his Pibber, Race leapt onto the wing of the moving seaplane and danced across its length. It was an amazing sight. The Goose seaplane, speeding along in between the Nazi command boat and the Pibber, with the tiny figure of William Race in his saturated jeans and Tshirt and his New York Yankees baseball cap, running across its wings, his body bent forward, braced against the battering wind. Race ran hard, his feet moving quickly but surely across the fifty foot wingspan of the Goose. He saw the command boat looming in front of him; saw the world streaking laterally beyond it; saw Renee up near its bow holding off the three Nazis at the other end of the passageway; saw the lone Nazi up on the big catamaran’s roof, closing in on her position.

And then, like a racing car overtaking its rival, the Goose came alongside the command boat and Race hit the edge of the left wing at full stride and leapt off it, and flew through the air and landed, catlike, on both feet, on the roof of the command boat, right next to the Nazi who had been sneaking up on Renee! Race didn’t miss a beat. Gunless, he hurled himself at the man, slammed into him, sending both of them flying forward, off the roof of the command boat. They landed in a heap on the foredeck of the catamaran not far from where Renee was hunkered down at the forward end of the starboard passageway. Disoriented, Race rolled clear of where they had fallen, and looked up in horror to see that the Nazi was already on his feet. In a fleeting instant, Race saw the man’s face. It was without a doubt one of the ugliest he had ever seen long and lopsided and heavily cratered with pockmarks. It was also the picture of anger, the picture of pure unadulterated fury. But it was only to be a fleeting glimpse, for in the ‘next flashing instant, his view of the Nazi’s hideously ugly face was replaced by the sight of the butt of the man’s AK47 assault rifle rushing towards his face and then smack! he saw nothing but black. Renee whirled around just in time to see Race’s head snap violently backwards with the blow. His body dropped to the deck, hitting it hard, out cold. Renee saw the ugly Nazi standing over Race’s body, saw him suddenly snap up to look at her. Then she saw him raise his gun and smile.

The Goose seaplane shot out in front of the command boat, into the open water ahead of the fleet. Doogie was pushing forward on the throttle, trying to get the little seaplane up to takeoff speed, when suddenly there came a loud bang from somewhere to his left. Abruptly he felt the whole plane lurch dramatically and he looked out to see that there was now nothing in the place where his left-hand stabilizing pontoon should have been. Not a second later, a pair of Nazi Rigid Raiders zoomed across his bow from either side, crisscrossing in front of him, the commandos on their decks spattering his windscreen with heavy machinegun fire.

Doogie ducked. His windshield cracked into spiderwebs. Then he looked up to see one of the Nazis on the right-hand Rigid Raider heft an M 72A2 man portable rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aim it right at the Goose. ‘Oh, man …’ Doogie breathed. The Nazi fired. A puff of smoke issued from the barrel of the rocket launcher at exactly the same moment as Doogie yanked his steering yoke hard to the left. The Goose banked wildly so wildly in fact that the tip of its pontoonless left wing actually touched the water, kicking up a spectacular shower of spray. As a result, the missile from the rocket launcher shot right underneath Doogie’s elevated right wing, missing it by inches before shooting off into the tree line and blasting an unfortunate tree trunk to hell. Doogie’s little Goose continued to careen across the river’s surface, racing along on its belly and its one remaining pontoon. Just then the last Mosquito attack chopper roared in from nowhere, loosing a devastating burst of cannon fire that raked the water all around the little seaplane. ‘Goddam it!’ Doogie yelled as he ducked beneath the dashboard again. ‘Could this situation get any worse?’ It was then that he heard an ominous, but very familiar, sound. Poof. He spun in his seat.

Just in time to see one of the two remaining Nazi Pibbers swing in behind him and launch a torpedo from its sidemounted pod. The torpedo splashed into the water, shot forward under the surface. Doogie gunned it. The two Rigid Raiders were now speeding along on either side of him, off the tips of his wings, boxing him in. ‘Shit,’ Doogie said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ The torpedo closed in. He pushed the Goose’s throttle forward. The little seaplane shot across the water, surrounded by enemy vessels on no fewer than four sides: by the two Rigid Raiders on both of its flanks, by the Pibber a hundred yards astern of it, and by the black Mosquito attack chopper shooting through the air above it. Doogie looked about himself desperately. While his little plane struggled to maintain its pace, the two Rigid Raiders sped alongside him easily, their supercharged engines roaring, their crews seeming to take a perverse kind of pleasure in watching him struggle.

‘Don’t smile too soon, you fascist assholes,’ Doogie said aloud. ‘It’s not over yet.’

The torpedo was within twenty yards of his tail now. Doogie pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go Fifteen yards, and he hit eighty knots. Ten ninety. Five a hundred. Doogie could see the Nazis on the Rigid Raiders laughing at him as he desperately attempted to outrun the torpedo in his hopelessly outdated Goose. Two yards a hundred and ten. Top speed. The torpedo slid underneath the Goose. ‘No!’ Doogie yelled. ‘Come on, baby! Do it for me!’

The Goose shot across the river’s surface. The Nazis laughed. Doogie swore. And then suddenly, gloriously, the little Goose did what no one except Doogie thought it was still capable of doing. It lifted off the surface. It only lifted slightly off the river’s rushing surface, maybe a foot or two at the most, but it was enough. With its initial target lost, the torpedo in the water immediately began searching for another. It found it in the Rigid Raider to Doogie’s right. No sooner had the Goose lifted off the surface than that Rigid Raider was blasted out of the water by the shocking detonation of the torpedo. The Goose touched back down again, kicking up a shower of spray behind it.

The Mosquito above it saw what had happened and powered forward, ahead of the Goose, turning laterally in the air as it did so, so that it now flew backwards in front of the speeding seaplane, unleashing a savage burst of gunfire at it. Doogie ducked under the dashboard. ‘Damn choppers,’ he yelled. ‘Let’s see how you like this!’ And with that he hauled his steering yoke hard to the left. The Goose banked sharply, the tip of its pontoonless left wing touching the surface again, cutting across the path of the surviving Rigid Raider. The skipper of the Rigid Raider didn’t react fast enough. Like a missile shooting up into the sky, the Rigid Raider lifted completely out of the water as it rushed up the steeply slanted wings of the seaplane. The assault boat raced up the reinforced wings of the Goose, its exposed silver hull screeching loudly as it shot along the seaplane’s heavily banked wings, using them as a launching ramp, and then shoom! the Rigid Raider launched itself off the end of the right-hand wing and out into the air beyond it where it smashed into the canopy of the Mosquito helicopter that was hovering in front of the sharply turned Goose. The Mosquito lurched backwards, reeling like a boxer punched square in the nose, as the Rigid Raider ploughed into its bubble at incredible speed. Its canopy shattered in an instant and a split second later, the whole helicopter exploded into an enormous billowing fireball. Doogie stared back at the carnage behind him; saw the blackened shell of the torpedoed Rigid Raider sinking slowly into the water; saw the charred remains of the Mosquito and the other Rigid Raider crash down into the river with an enormous splash.

‘Eat that, you Nazi bastards,’ he said softly.

Dazed, confused and possessed of one hell of a headache, William Race was marched at gunpoint out onto the rear deck of the Nazi command boat. Renee walked along beside him, shoved forward by the extraordinarily ugly Nazi Race now thought of as ‘Craterface’. No sooner had he and Renee been subdued by Craterface up on the bow than the big Nazi had called upon his comrades at the other end of the starboard passageway to cease their fire. Then he had marched his two captives down the passageway and out onto the rear helipad, where the pristine white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was on the verge of taking off.

Anistaze saw them instantly, kicked open the side door of the helicopter. ‘Bring them to me,’ he shouted. Van Lewen was racing across the river’s surface out in front of the fleet. He sat at the helm of the Scarab, shooting across the river with only the rear third of the boat’s bulletshaped hull touching the water, the sound of its twin 450horsepower engines thundering in his ears. He turned in his seat to see the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter lift off from the stern deck of the command boat. ‘Damn it,’ he breathed.

Karl Schroeder was in a world of trouble. His Rigid Raider was near the back of the fleet, shooting across the river’s surface in between the last two Nazi Pibbers, being pummelled by their relentless fire. He tried desperately to duck their bullets, but they were too close, too fast. And then suddenly smack, smack, smack a line of bullet holes raked his Rigid Raider, cutting across his right leg, opening up three jagged red holes in his thigh. He fell, clenching his teeth, stifling a scream. Somehow he managed to get up on one knee and keep driving the boat, but it was no use. The Nazi Pibbers were all over him. He looked forward, caught sight of what was left of the fleet the command boat, the Scarab, the Goose seaplane and one of the helipad barges speeding off into the distance a good hundred yards ahead of him. He also saw the white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter as it flew away from the command boat. Only minutes earlier, he had seen Race and Renee get thrown into it— At that moment, another wave of gunfire assailed Schroeder’s boat, strafing a line of holes across his back, puncturing his bulletproof vest as if it were made of tissue paper. Schroeder roared in agony, fell to the deck. And in that instant he knew he was going to die. His wounds burning, his nerve ends screaming, his entire body on the verge of going into shock, Karl Schroeder looked desperately about himself for anything he could use to take as many of the Nazis down with him as he could. His gaze fell upon the kevlar box that he had seen earlier on the floor of the Rigid Raider. It was only now, however, that he saw that it had words stencilled on its side in English.

Slowly, Schroeder read the markings on the side of the Kevlar box. When he had finished reading them, his eyes went wide. Schroeder’s Rigid Raider drifted further and further behind what was left of the fleet, with the two Nazi Pibbers crowding in on either side of it. Karl Schroeder now lay on his back on the deck of his assault boat, gazing up at the storm clouds that rolled by overhead, darkening the late afternoon sky, the life slowly draining from his body. Abruptly, the face of a rather sinister looking Nazi cut across his view of the sky and Schroeder realized that one of the Pibbers had come alongside him. But he didn’t care. Indeed, as the Nazi calmly raised his AK47 to his shoulder, Schroeder just looked up into the barrel of the man’s gun, uninterested, resigned to his fate. And then, strangely, he smiled. The Nazi hesitated. Then he looked slightly to the side, at the Kevlar box that lay to Schroeder’s left. The box’s lid was open. Inside it, he saw five small chrome and plastic vials, each filled with a small amount of shiny amber liquid. Each vial sat snugly inside a foamlined pocket. The Nazi knew what they were instantly. M22 isotopic charges. But there was a sixth foamlined pocket in the box. It lay empty. The Nazi’s eyes snapped left to see the last vial sitting in Schroeder’s blood smeared hand. Schroeder had already broken the rubber seal on top of the charge, had already uncocked the red safety latch that covered its release mechanism. Now he had his thumb pressed down on the release button. He held it down as he gazed calmly into space. The Nazi’s eyes went wide with horror.

‘Oh, fuck …’ Schroeder closed his eyes. It would be up to Renee and the American professor now. He hoped they succeeded. He hoped the two American soldiers were far enough ahead of his boat, out of the blast radius. He hoped … Schroeder sighed a final time, and as he did so he let go of the release button and the M 22 isotopic charge went off in all its glory.

The world shook. A massive white hot explosion blasted out from the Rigid Raider and shot out in every direction. It shot into the trees on either side of the river, incinerating them in an instant, blasting them to nothing. It shot under the river’s surface, a bubbling, frothing wall of heat shooting downwards at unimaginable speed, boiling the water on contact, killing anything in its path as it raced downwards like a speeding comet. It shot into the sky, high into the sky, flaring white like the flashbulb on a camera, an all consuming monumental flash that must have been visible from space. Worst of all, the expanding wall of whitehot light shot along the river’s surface, chasing after the remainder of the fleet. Van Lewen’s Scarab and Doogie’s Goose skipped across the water at the head of the fleet out in front of the gargantuan wave of white light eating up the river behind them. To a certain extent, they’d been lucky. They had been a good three hundred yards ahead of Schroeder’s Rigid Raider when the M22 charge had gone off. The other boats the last helipad barge, the two remaining Pibbers and the command boat itself hadn’t.

And now the expanding wall of whitehot light loomed above them like some immense mythological monster, dwarfing them. And then suddenly, in an instant, the gigantic wall of white consumed the helipad barge and the Pibbers, detonating them on contact before swallowing them whole and continuing on its voracious charge forward. Its next target was the command boat. Like a lumbering rhino trying to outrun a runaway Mack truck, the massive catamaran powered forward in a desperate attempt to get clear of the oncoming wall of searing hot energy. But the blast was just too fast, too powerful. As it had done with the barge and the Pibbers before it, the expanding wall of light reached out and snatched the command boat in its clutches, yanking it into its mass, obliterating the enormous craft in a single fiery instant. And then as quickly as it had risen, the massive wall of light began to subside and dissipate. Soon it lost all of its forward momentum and sank back into the distance. Van Lewen took a final look back at the singed and smoking jungle river behind him. He saw a wispy black smoke cloud rising into the sky above the treetops but it was broken up quickly by the sheets of subtropical rain that had just begun to fall. It was then that he looked about himself and realized that his Scarab and Doogie’s Goose were the only vessels left on the river. In fact, the only other remnant of the chase just concluded was a small white speck disappearing over the trees ahead of them. The white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.