Temple

If he had something that required a numerical code, an ATM card or a PIN number, he always used the same number.

Elvis Presley's Army serial number.

00:00:07

Bittiker levelled the Calico at Race.

Christ, what was it!

It was on the tip of his brain…

00:00:06

Race ducked behind the Supernova—Bittiker wouldn't dare shoot him through it—found himself standing in front of the device's arming computer.

God, what was the number?

533…

Think, Will! Think!

00:00:05 5331…

.. 07…

… 61…

53310761!

That was it!

Race started punching the keys on the arming computer, typed: 53310761 and then he slammed his finger down on the 'ENTER' key.

The screen beeped.

DISARM CODE ENTERED.

DETONATION COUNTDOWN TERMINATED AT:

00:00:04

MINUTES.

But Race didn't bother to stay and look at the screen.

Rather, he just clambered quickly away from Bittiker— shielded by the now-disarmed Supernova—and headed along the short ladder that led to the tank's turret hatch.

He didn't know why he headed that way. It was just a completely illogical notion that if he was on the outside of the tank when it hit the ground, he might have a better chance of surviving the impact.

They must be close to impact now.

On his way across the horizontal ladder, he came across the idol—now with a hole in its base—and scooped it up as he crawled.

He came to the hatch, pushed it open. Speeding wind assaulted his face instantly—wind that moved so fast it blinded him.

Clutching onto the now-vertical roof of the Abrams, he quickly kicked the hatch shut behind him, shutting Bittiker inside, just as the steel hatch itself was assailed by a barrage of automatic fire from inside.

Race looked down, into the face of the onrushing wind, as it pounded against his glasses—

—and saw the green rainforest rushing up at him at about a million miles per hour!

The tank screamed towards the earth.

Two seconds to impact.

This was it.

One second.

The earth rushed up toward him.

And in that last second before the Abrams tank slammed into the earth at incredible speed, William Race shut his eyes and offered up a single, final prayer.

And then it happened.

Impact.

The tank's impact with the earth was absolutely stunning in its force.

The world seemed to shudder as the 67-ton tank slammed into it at terminal velocity. The tank imploded on contact with the ground, flattening in a millisecond, sending whole sections of it shooting out in every direction.

Earl Bittiker had been inside the Abrams when it hit the ground. As the giant steel tank slammed into the earth, its walls came rushing in toward him at shocking speed, sending a thousand jagged corners of metal shooting into his body—penetrating him from every side in the nanosecond before he was crushed into nothing. One thing was for sure, Earl Bittiker had been screaming when he died.

William Race, on the other hand, hadn't been anywhere near the tank when it hit the ground.

In that second before the tank smashed into the earth - when it was about eighty feet above it—Race had experienced the strangest sensation.

He had heard a sound not unlike a sonic boom come from somewhere very close behind him and then suddenly, out of nowhere - shoom!—he had felt himself get yanked up into the sky by some powerful unseen force.

But the yank had not been rough or whip-like—-rather it had been abrupt but smooth, as if he had been connected to the heavens by some invisible bungee cord.

So as the tank and Bittiker—hit the ground in a smashing, blazing heap, Race had hovered thirty feet above the explosion, safe and sound.

And then he looked over his shoulder and saw what had happened.

He saw two plumes of white gas shooting out from the bottom of the A-shaped unit that was attached to the back of his unusual kevlar breastplate. In fact, the twin puffs of propellant shot out from two small exhaust ports situated at the base of the 'A'.

Although Race didn't know it, the black kevlar breast plate that Uli had given him at the refuse pit was in fact a J-7 jet pack, the cutting-edge aerial insertion unit created by DARPA in conjunction with the United States Army and the 82nd Airborne Division.

Unlike the Army's current MCI-IB parachutes, which allowed their wearers to be suspended in full view of the enemy for at least several minutes before landing, jet packs allowed their wearers to free-fall to within eighty feet of the ground before swooping to a sudden stop just above the landing zone, in much the same fashion as a bird landing.

Like parachutes, however, all J-7 jet packs were equipped with altimeter switches—altitude-triggered safety mechanisms that engaged the pack's propulsion systems in the event that the wearer failed to engage them himself before he fell below eighty feet. As Race had just failed to do.

There was no way he could have known that on December 25, 1997, at the same time as forty-eight chlorine-based isotopic charges had been stolen from a DARPA truck travelling along the Baltimore beltway by agents of the Stormtroopers, also stolen were sixteen J-7 jet packs.