Sure enough, the two semi-trailer rigs arrived at the junction of the airstrip road and the Great Ocean Road and promptly turned sideways, skidding to simultaneous halts, splaying their combined bulk across the road.
Blocking it completely.
'Mother,' Schofield said into his radio. 'We have to go. Please get here as soon as you can.'
The WRX whipped along the winding cliff-side road, rapidly approaching the two semi-trailer rigs.
Then, two hundred yards short of the road block, Schofield hit the brakes and the WRX squealed to a stop in the middle of the road.
A stand-off.
Two rigs. One rally car.
Schofield checked his rear-view mirror—the gang of five ExSol supercars was shooting along the Ocean Road behind him.
Beyond the ExSol cars loomed the giant stone castle, dark and sombre, before suddenly two helicopters dropped in front of the fortress, blasting through the air in pursuit as well.
Zamanov's two Skorpion Mi-34 choppers.
'Between a rock and a hard place,' Schofield said.
'A very hard place,' Gant said.
Schofield whirled back to face the road in front of him.
His eyes swept the scene—two rigs, the Axon helicopter, sheer rock wall to the right, 400-foot drop to the left, protected by a low concrete fence.
The fence, he thought.
'Pursuit cars are almost on us . . .' Gant warned.
But Schofield was still gazing at the concrete guard-rail fence. The Axon chopper hovered just out from it, almost at road level.
'We can do that,' he said aloud, his eyes narrowing.
'Do what}' Gant turned, alarmed.
'Hang on.'
Schofield slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.
The WRX roared off the mark, racing toward the rigs.
The rally car picked up speed fast, all four of its wheels giving power, its turbocharger screaming—tzzzzzzzzz!
60 kilometres an hour became 80 . . .
100 .. .
120 .. .
The WRX rushed toward the road block.
The two drivers of the rigs—ExSol men who had been waiting up at the airfield—swapped looks. What was this guy doing?
And then, very suddenly, Schofield cut left . . . bringing the rally car close to the concrete guard-rail fence.
Screeeeeeech!
The WRX hit the fence, its left-side wheels scraping against the concrete barrier, pressing against it, pinching against it, causing the whole left-hand side of the car to lift a little off the road . . .
. . . before abruptly—ka-whump!—the WRX mounted the fence!
Its left-hand wheels lifted clear off the asphalt, now riding along the top of the fence, so that the car was travelling at a 45-degree angle.
Schofield and Gant's world tilted sideways.
'There's still not enough room!' Gant yelled, pointing at the rig parked closest to the fence.
She was right.
'I'm not done yet!' Schofield yelled.
And with that he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.
The response was instantaneous.
The WRX lurched sideways, its front half going right, its tail section going left—swinging dangerously out toward the ocean until finally its tail section slid . . .
. . . off the edge of the concrete guard-rail.
The WRX's rear wheels now hung 400 feet above the ocean!
But the rally car was still moving fast, still skidding wildly forward, its underside sliding along the top of the guard-rail fence—its front tyres hanging over the landward side of the fence, its rear wheels hanging above the ocean—so that now none of its wheels was touching the ground.
'Ahhhhhhhr Gant yelled.
The WRX slid laterally along the guard-rail, its weight almost perfectly balanced, its underside scraping and shrieking and kicking up a firestorm of sparks until, to the amazement of the rig drivers, it slid right past their road block, squeezing through the gap between the outermost rig and the fence, a gap that until now had been too narrow for a car to pass through.
But then the inevitable happened.
With a fraction more of its weight hanging over the ocean side of the fence, the car—despite its forward momentum—began to tilt backwards.
'We're going to drop!' Gant shouted.
'No we're not,' Schofield said calmly.
He was right.
For just at that moment, the tail of the sliding car smacked at tremendous speed against the nose of the Axon chopper hovering just out from the fence.
The rear section of the car bounced off the chopper's nose at speed—ricocheting off it like a pinball—the impact powerful enough to punch the sliding WRX back over the fence and back onto the road ... on the other side of the road block.
Just as Schofield had planned.
The WRX's tyres caught bitumen again, regained their traction, and the rally car shot off down the road once more.
Not a moment too soon.
Because a second later, the two rigs backed up, allowing the five ExSol pursuit cars to shoot between them like bullets out of a gun and catch up to Schofield's car.
The ExSol cars were all over them.
The two European sports cars that ExSol had 'borrowed' from Jonathan Killian—the red Ferrari and the silver Porsche, both low and sleek and brutally fast—were right on Schofield's tail.
The two mercenaries inside the Porsche made full use of its open-air targa roof—it allowed one man to stand up and fire at Schofield's WRX. The gunman in the Ferrari had to lean out of its passenger window.
As the rear window of the WRX shattered under a hail of gunfire, Gant turned to Schofield.
'Can I ask you a question!' she yelled.
'Sure!'
'Is there, like, some secret school where they teach you stuff like that? Death-defying driving school?'
'Actually, they call it "Offensive Driving",' Schofield said, glancing over his shoulder. 'It was a special course at Quantico given by a retired Gunnery Sergeant named Kris Hankison. Hank left the Marines in '91 and became a stunt driver in Hollywood. Makes a bundle. But every second year, as a kind of payback to the Corps, he offers the course to Marines assigned to Marine Security Guard Battalion. I got invited last year. You think that was good, you wouldn't believe what Hank can do on four wheels—'
Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!
A line of bullets razed the road beside Schofield's WRX, chewing up the bitumen, smacking against his driver's door. A
split-second later one of the nimble Skorpion Mi-34 choppers roared by overhead.
But then the road bent right, hugging the cliff-face—and the chopper continued straight while the WRX whipped out of its line of fire just as—
SLAM!
—a colossal gout of earth exploded out from the rock wall on the right-hand side of the road, sending a starburst of dirt spraying out spectacularly behind the speeding rally car.
'What the—?' Schofield spun, searching for the source of the massive explosion.
And he found it.
'Oh, this cannot be happening . . .' he breathed.
He saw a warship powering in toward the coast, separating itself from a larger group of naval vessels on the horizon.
It was a French Tourville-class destroyer and its powerful 3.9-inch forward-mounted guns were firing, each shot accompanied by a belch of smoke and a noise so loud that it reverberated right through one's chest: Boom! Boom! Boom!
Then a second later . . .
SLAM!
SLAM!
SLAM!
The shells rammed into the cliff-side roadway, raining dirt all around Schofield's speeding car. Explosions of asphalt and dirt flew high into the air, leaving lethal craters in their wake—craters that took up nearly half the roadway.
After the first shellburst hit, Schofield's WRX screamed over the edge of its crater, blasting through the dustcloud above it and, looking down, Schofield saw that the shell had gouged a semi-c
ircular hole in the Ocean Road that led all the way down to the sea.
The other shells rained down on the Great Ocean Road, striking it left and right. Schofield responded by flinging the rally car right and left, avoiding the newly-created craters by centimetres.
The Axon helicopter behind him banked and swayed, also trying to avoid the destroyer's deadly rain.
But the two more nimble Skorpion Mi-34 choppers didn't care, they just continued to pursue Schofield with a vengeance, their side-mounted cannons shredding the road.
And then Schofield's WRX rounded a bend and zoomed into a cliff-side tunnel and the two Russian choppers rose quickly, swooping over the jagged cliffs, and suddenly Schofield and Gant were enveloped by silence.
Not for long.
Into the tunnel behind them rushed the two ExSol sports cars— the Ferrari and the Porsche—their engines roaring, each car's gunner firing at the fleeing WRX.
Schofield swung left^ toward the ocean side of the tunnel and abruptly discovered that this tunnel wasn't technically a tunnel— precisely because its entire seaward wall wasn't a wall at all. It was a series of thin columns that rushed by in a fluttering blur, allowing drivers to take in the view as they passed through the tunnel.
Schofield caught this information just as he saw a Skorpion chopper appear outside the blurring line of pillars and start firing into the exposed tunnel!
Bullets slammed into the road, his car, and against the far wall.
Schofield weaved right, away from the barrage, pressed his WRX up against the right-hand wall of the curving tunnel, losing speed . . .
. . . and in a second the pursuit cars were on him, the Porsche ramming into his rear bumper, the Ferrari boxing him in on the left, their two ExSol shooter-passengers letting fly.
Automatic gunfire ripped into the WRX.
Schofield's side window shattered—
—just as a deadly shape appeared at the end of the tunnel.
The second Skorpion Mi-34 chopper, rising above the roadway, its side-mounted missile pods poised and ready to fire.
'We're dead,' Schofield said matter-of-factly.
A flare of yellow backblast issued out from the back of one of
the chopper's missile pods just as without warning the chopper itself exploded in mid-air—hit by a shell from the French destroyer off the coast. The Mi-34's missile exploded too, having never cleared its pod.
The massive naval shell hit the Skorpion helicopter so hard that the chopper was hurled against the edge of the roadway, where it crumpled like an aluminium can before falling 400 feet straight down. It hadn't been a deliberate strike, Schofield felt. The chopper had just got in the way.
'Close,' Gant said.
'Just a little,' he said as their car blasted out of the tunnel, racing past the spot where the Mi-34 had fallen, still boxed in against the rock wall by the two ExSol cars.
The three cars whipped along a short stretch of road. But then Schofield saw another tunnel yawning before them, 200 yards awa—
Bang!
The Ferrari rammed into the WRX's left side, forcing it closer to the rock wall.
Schofield grappled with his steering wheel.
The Porsche, meanwhile, pushed up against his rear bumper.
At first Schofield didn't know why they had done this, then he looked forward and saw that the arched entrance to the upcoming tunnel was not flush against the rock wall—it jutted out about six feet.
And so long as the Ferrari and the Porsche kept Schofield and Gant's car pressed up against the rock wall and travelling forward, the WRX would slam right into the protruding archway.
Schofield guessed they had about five seconds.
'This is very bad . . .' Gant said.
'I know, I know,' Schofield said.
Four seconds .. .
The three cars raced in formation along the narrow cliff-side roadway.
Three seconds . . .
The Ferrari pushed them up against the rocky wall on their right. The WRX's right wheels lifted slightly, rubbing against the hard stone wall. But the Porsche behind it kept pushing it forward fast.
'Please do something,' Gant said.
Two seconds . . .
The stone archway of the tunnel rushed toward them.
'Okay . . .' Schofield said. 'You want to play nasty? Let's play nasty.'
One . . .
Then, just as the WRX was about to slam at tremendous speed into the arched entrance of the tunnel, Schofield allowed the Ferrari to push him closer to the wall, driving him further up it, making the WRX rise up to about 60 degrees, its right-hand wheels riding clear up onto the wall itself.
And then time slowed and Schofield did the impossible.
He let the WRX ride so high up the rocky wall that, five metres short of the tunnel's archway, the electric blue rally car went too high . . . and rolled ... to the left, turning completely upside down ... so that it landed, on its roof. . . on the roof of the low-slung Ferrari travelling beside it.
And so, for a brief instant in time, the WRX and the Ferrari were travelling rooftop-to-rooftop, the WRX's wheels pointing skyward, its roof resting momentarily on the roof of the lower red Ferrari!
And then time sped up again and the WRX rolled off the Ferrari, bouncing back down to earth, now safely on the ocean side of the scarlet red supercar, and blasted into the tunnel with the Ferrari on its right.
The Porsche, unfortunately, had no options.
Travelling right behind Schofield it had intended to pull away at the last moment. Its driver, however, had never imagined that Schofield might roll over the top of the Ferrari. When Schofield did so, the Porsche driver stared at his feat for a split second too long.
As such, it was the Porsche that hit the archway at colossal speed. Instant fireball.
The Ferrari was only slightly more fortunate.
Having rolled over the top of it, Schofield now started ramming it into the wall of the tunnel. He did a better job than they had, cutting across the bow of the Ferrari, causing it to jackknife against the tunnel's right-hand wall and flip and tumble—spinning over and over like a toy flung by a child—bouncing down the confined space of the tunnel, skimming off its walls, before it stopped on its roof, wrecked and crumpled, its occupants deader than disco.
.
Schofield and Gant blasted out of the tunnel, just as the second Skorpion Mi-34 attack chopper swooped in alongside them, flying parallel to the cliff-side roadway with a sniper in its right-side doorway firing viciously.
One thing was clear—while Schofield was driving as fast as he could, the nimble chopper was merely cruising.
'Fox!' Schofield called. 'We have to get rid of that chopper! Nail that sniper!'
'Gladly,' Gant said. 'Lean back!'
Schofield did so as Gant raised her Desert Eagle pistol and fired it across his body, out through his window at the chopper.
Two shots. Both hit their mark.
And the sniper dropped . . . out of the chopper's door.
But he was buckled to a safety rope, so after about 40 feet of falling, his rope snapped taut and his fall abruptly stopped.
'Thanks, honey babe!' Schofield called, watching the suspended figure when suddenly Gant shouted, 'Scarecrow! Look out! Another fork!'
He snapped forward and saw a new fork in the road, this one with a side-road branching left and downward, while the Ocean Road continued flat to the right.
Left or right, he thought. Pick a side.
A shellburst from the incoming French destroyer hit the right-hand road.
Left it is.
He swung the car left, tyres squealing, and careered down the steeply sloping side-road.
The chopper followed.
Half a mile behind Schofield, Aloysius Knight was shooting along the Great Ocean Road in his shiny black Lamborghini Diablo.
The two semi-trailer rigs that had formed the road block before now rumbled along directly in front of him, while beyond them, he saw th
e three yellow Axon-sponsored Peugeots that ExSol had taken from the castle.
And about fifty yards beyond the Peugeots, he saw Schofield's blue WRX reach a fork in the road, hounded by the remaining Skorpion Mi-34 helicopter.
Knight stole a glance left at the destroyer out on the ocean, just as two bird-like shadows shot through the air over the warship, heading directly for the coastal road.
They looked decidedly like fighter jets, originating from the French aircraft carrier on the horizon.
Uh-oh, Knight thought.
He faced forward again just in time to see Schofield's car cut left at the fork in the road, disappearing down a side-road set into the cliff-face.
At which point, he saw Schofield's pursuers do a strange thing.
They split up.
Only one of the Axon Peugeots followed Schofield down the side-road. The other two went right, following the Ocean Road, skirting a newly-formed crater in the roadway.
Then the two trailer rigs came to the fork and went left, charging down the hill after Schofield.
Co-ordinated movement, Knight thought. They've got a plan.
And then Knight himself reached the fork and without any hesitation, he gunned the Lamborghini down the left-hand roadway, shooting down the hill after Schofield.
• * *
Schofield's WRX whizzed down the steep boathouse road, burning around blind corners, skidding around tight bends.
As it sped along, a storm of bullets hammered its flanks and the rock walls all around it—it was still under heavy fire from the Mi-34 chopper flying low through the air behind it, firing at the WRX with its side-mounted machine-guns.
The chopper's dead sniper still hung limply from its open side door, his body swaying wildly, occasionally bouncing on the road, leaving blood on the asphalt.
More fire came from the yellow Peugeot rally car that had followed Schofield down the boathouse road, from the shooter poking out of its passenger-side window with a Steyr.
Two hundred yards behind this speeding gun battle, Knight was also driving hard.
His Lamborghini easily hauled in the two semi-trailer rigs, and he whizzed past them in a fluid S-shaped move before they even knew he was there.
Knight came up behind the yellow Peugeot, tried to get around it on the right, but the Peugeot blocked him. Tried left and gunned it hard—very hard—and in a daring move, overtook the Peugeot on the ocean side of the road.
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