The timers are all set differently, we can have 9 seperate auctions going at once and all have different times they end at. Also when someone bids the timers increase. So they are not only all different but all changing constantly. Its not just a single countdown that we could sync.
http://jehiah.cz/a/ntp-for-javascript
Then have a dedicated ntpd daemon running. That will be way more extensible, maintainable, and scalability than a custom C program.