U.S.— or else we detonate the device…
Nash stared at the transcript in shock.
Everyone else was silent.
Race gazed at the words: one hundred billion dollars U.S., or else we detonate the device.
Jesus H. Christ.
Nash turned to Schroeder. 'So what have you done about all this?'
'We have executed a two-pronged plan,' the German said. “Two separate missions, each designed to reinforce the other should either of them fail.
'Mission One was to get the thyrium idol before the Nazis did. To do that, we obtained a copy of the Santiago Manuscript and used it to find our way here. And as it happened, we beat the Stormtroopers—but we never expected to find those things inside the temple.'
As he listened to Schroeder speak, something twigged in the back of Race's mind, something about what the German agent had just said. Something that wasn't quite right.
He shook it off, put it to the back of his mind.
'And the second part of the mission?' Nash said.
'Take out Colonia Alemania,' Schroeder said. 'After we intercepted that telephone conversation three days ago, we opened entreaties with the new Chilean government for a warrant that would allow BKA agents to search Colonia Alemania in co-ordination with Chilean authorities.'
'And?'
'We got it. If everything has gone according to plan, BKA agents and the Chilean National Guard are right this minute storming the grounds of Colonia Alemania and seizing the Stormtroopers' Supernova. I'm hoping to receive a radio update from them any minute now.'
At that very same moment six hundred miles away, a ten- ton truck owned by the Chilean National Guard exploded through the gates of Colonia Alemania.
A stream of olive-skinned Chilean soldiers rushed through the gates behind the rampaging truck. A dozen German agents dressed in blue assault helmets and SWAT gear hurried into the compound after them.
Colonia Alemania was a large estate, easily twenty hectares in size. Its grassy green pastures contrasted sharply with Chile's barren brown hills. Its Bavarian-style cottages and idyllic blue lakes were an oddly peaceful sight in what was an otherwise harsh and dry land.
Doors were smashed open and windows exploded .inwards as the National Guardsmen entered every building in the estate. Their main target was the Barracks Hall—a large, hangar-like building in the centre of the compound.
Minutes later, the doors to the Barracks Hall were blasted open and a horde of National Guardsmen and BKA agents rushed into the building.
And then they stopped.
Row upon row of empty bunk beds stretched away from them for the length of the enormous hall. Each bed was crisply made and perfectly aligned with the bunk next to it.
It looked like an army barracks.
The only problem was, it was empty.
Reports came in quickly from the rest of the compound.
The whole compound was empty.
Colonia Alemania was completely deserted.
In one of the laboratory buildings adjoining the Barracks Hall, two German tech agents waved small Geiger counter wands in front of them, measuring the radioactivity in the air. Their small detection units clattered loudly.
The two agents entered the compound's main laboratory and their Geiger counters instantly went into the red.
'All units, this is Lab Team, we are detecting high trace quantities of uranium and plutonium in the primary laboratoryh'
The first agent came to a door that opened onto a glass- walled office of some kind.
He pointed his wand at the closed door—
—and his Geiger counter went off the charts.
He exchanged a quick look with his partner. Then he pushed open the door, tripping the wire.
The explosion that ripped through Colonia Alemania was absolutely devastating.
It rocked the world.
A pulse of blinding white light shot out laterally in every direction, obliterating everything in its path—whole barns blew out instantly into a billion matchsticks, concrete silos were shattered in a millisecond, everything within a five-hundred-yard radius of the Barracks Hall was vaporised—including the one hundred and fifty Chilean National Guardsmen and the twelve BKA agents.
When they were interviewed about it in the days to come, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages would say that it had looked like a sudden flare of lightning on the horizon, followed by an enormous plume of black smoke that rose high into the sky in the shape of a gigantic mushroom.
