No. Now, it is you or it is nothing. Now, whatever happens, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that you will not be leaving this cabin alive.'
'But what about you?' Race said defiantly. 'You'll die too.'
'I am old, Professor Race. Old and decayed. Death means nothing to me. The fact that I can take the rest of the world with me, however, means everything…”
And at that moment, quick as a rattlesnake, Ehrhardt whipped his Glock up, aimed it at Race and pulled the trigger—- Blam!
Race's G-11 bucked against his shoulder as he fired a single round.
The caseless bullet smacked into Ehrhardt's enormous chest, causing a gout of blood to explode out from it, the impact hurling the big man into the wall behind him.
Ehrhardt slammed into the wall and—bablam!—his Glock went off, firing into the ceiling, smashing a smoke alarm to pieces, and suddenly a series of fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the cabin burst forth with showers of water.
Ehrhardt sank to the floor in the teeming indoor rain—a dribbling, ugly mess—his mouth open, his eyes wide with shock.
Race just stood there in his doorway, frozen in the firing position, water hammering against his face, stunned.
He had never shot a man before. Not even during the river chase earlier. He felt ill. He swallowed back the bile welling in his throat.
And then he saw the Supernova's timer: 00:03:00 00:02:59 00:02:58
He snapped out of his trance, hurried over to examine the fallen Nazi leader.
Ehrhardt was still alive, but barely. Blood dribbled out from his mouth, bubbled out from his chest.
But his eyes still glimmered, glaring up at Race with a kind of mad delight, as if Ehrhardt were thrilled to have left him in this position—alone in a control booth in a foreign country, with nothing but a dying Nazi, a ticking Supernova, and eight drums of explosive hypergolic fuel that would kill him for certain even if he did manage to disarm the main bomb.
All right, Will, stay calm.
00:02:30 00:02:29 00:02:28
Two-and-a half minutes to the end of the world.
Stay calm, my ass!
Race scrambled across the floor to the Supernova, peered at the screen on its arming computer.
YOU NOW HAVE
00:02:27
MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE.
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
Race stared in dismay at the timer. Sprinkler rain pounded against his head.
What are you gonna do, Will ?
It wasn't like he had a choice now, was it?
He could die along with the rest of the world or he could try to figure out how to stop the Supernova—and die that way, too.
Damn it! he thought.
He wasn't a hero.
People like Renco and Van Lewen were heroes. He was just a nobody. A guy. A university professor who was always
late for work, who always missed his train. Jesus, he still
had outstanding parking fines to pay, for God's sake!
He wasn't a hero.
And he didn't want to die like one either.
Besides, he wouldn't know the first thing about cracking the code on the Supernova's arming computer. He wasn't a hacker. No, the simple fact of the matter was that Fritz Weber was dead, and he was the only one who knew the code that would disarm the Supernova.
0002:01 00i02:00 00i01:59
Race shut his eyes, sighed.
Might as well die like a hero.
And so he sat up straight in front of the Supernova, and stared at its display screen with a fresh mind.
All right, Will, deep breaths. Deep breaths.
He looked at the screen, at the line that read:
ENTER DISARM CODE HERE
