Temple

They came out of the rainforest silently, with their machine- guns pressed firmly against their shoulders, ready to fire but not firing yet.

Race and the others were now watching them intently through the ATV's 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 some thing out of a Star Wars movie.

An unbelievable amount of bullets flared out from the gun's rectangular muzzle and ripped one of the cats' heads to shreds. One second the cat's head was there, the next it just erupted in an ugly splash of exploding flesh and blood.

The cats scattered in an instant just as another one of their number was torn to pieces by the savage hail of gunfire.

Race peered out through his window, tried to get a better look at the gun in the intruder's hands.

It looked remarkable, space-age even.

It was completely rectangular in shape, with no apparent gunbarrel. Indeed, the barrel must have been concealed somewhere within the gun's long rectangular body.

Race had seen these guns before, but only in pictures, never in real life.

They were Heckler & Koch G11s.

According to Race's brother Marty, the Heckler & Koch G-11 was the most advanced assault rifle ever built.

Designed and built in 1989, even now—ten years on—it was still twenty years ahead of its time. It was the Holy Grail of firearms as far as Marty had been concerned.

It was the only production weapon in history to fire a caseless cartridge. Indeed, it was the only hand-held firearm in the world known to contain a microprocessor—principally because it was the only firearm in the world complex enough to require one.

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. Mon key 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 dis played 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.