Dragon

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  Guided by Loren Smith on one side and Al Giordino on the other, Pitt backed the Stutz town car down the ramps of a trailer and parked it between a red 1926 Hispano-Suiza, a big cabriolet manufactured in France, and a beautiful 1931 Marmon V-16 town car. He cocked an ear and listened to the engine a minute, revving the rpm's, satisfying himself it was turning over smoothly without a miss. Then he switched off the ignition.

  It was an Indian summer day. The sky was clear and warm for early fall. Pitt wore corduroy slacks and a suede sport coat, while Loren looked radiant in a dusty rose jumpsuit.

  While Giordino moved the pickup truck and trailer to a parking lot, Loren stood on the running board of the Stutz and gazed at the field of over a hundred classic cars arranged around the infield of the Virginia Memorial racetrack. The concours d'elegance, a show where the cars were judged on appearance, was combined with one-lap races around the track between classic vehicles designed and built as road and tour cars.

  "They're all so gorgeous," Loren said wonderingly. "I've never seen so many exotic cars in one place."

  "Stiff competition,

  Pitt said as he raised the hood and wiped down the engine. "I'll be lucky to take a third in my class."

  "When is the judging?"

  "Any time."

  "And the races?"

  "After the concours, winners are announced and the awards passed out."

  "What car will you race against?"

  "According to the program, the red Hispano next to us."

  Loren eyed the attractive Paris-built drop-head cabriolet. "Think you can beat it?"

  "I don't know. The Stutz is six years newer, but the Hispano has a larger engine and a lighter body."

  Giordino approached and announced, "I'm hungry. When do we eat?"

  Loren laughed, gave Giordino a light kiss on the cheek, and produced a picnic basket from the back seat of the Stutz. They sat on the grass and ate mortadella and brie with sourdough bread, accompanied with a pate and fruit and washed down by a bottle of Valley of the Moon zinfandel.

  The judges came and began examining Pitt's car for the contours. He was entered in Class D, American classic 1930 to 1941 closed top. After fifteen minutes of intense study, they shook his hand and moved off to the next car in his class, a 1933 Lincoln V12 Berline.

  By the time Pitt and his friends had polished off the zinfandel, the winners were announced over the public announcement system. The Stutz came in third behind a 1938 Packard sport coupe and a 1934

  Lincoln limousine.

  Pitt had lost one and a half points out of a perfect hundred because the Stutz cigarette lighter didn't work and the exhaust system did not strictly adhere to the original design.

  "Better than I expected," said Pitt proudly. "I didn't think we'd place."

  "Congratulations," said Frank Mancuso.

  Pitt stared blankly at the mining engineer who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Where did you pop from?"

  "I heard through the grapevine you'd be here," said Mancuso warmly, "so I thought I'd drop by, see the cars, and talk a little shop with you and Al."

  "Time for us to go to work?"

  "Not yet."

  Pitt turned and introduced Mancuso to Loren. Giordino simply nodded and passed the newcomer a glass of wine from a newly opened bottle. Mancuso's eyes widened when he was introduced to Loren.

  He looked at Pitt with an approving expression, then nodded at Loren and the Stutz. "Two classic beauties. You have excellent taste."

  Pitt smiled slyly. "I do what I can."

  "That's quite a car," Mancuso said, eyeing the lines of the Stutz. "LeBaron coachwork, isn't it?"

  "Very good. You into old automobiles?"

  "My brother is a car nut. I soaked up what little I know about them from him." He motioned up the aisle separating the line of cars. "Would you care to give me a guided lecture on all this fine machinery?"

  They excused themselves to Loren, who struck up a conversation with the wife of the owner of the Hispano-Suiza. After they strolled past a few cars, Giordino grew impatient.

  "What's going on?" he demanded.

  Mancuso stared at him. "You'll probably hear about it from Admiral Sandecker. But Team Mercedes has been put on hold. Your project to salvage any remains of the ship that carried the bomb cars has been scrubbed."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "The President decided it would be best if we kept hands off for now. Too many problems. Soviet propaganda is already trying to lay the blast on our doorstep. Congress is talking about launching investigations, and the President is in no mind to explain an undercover salvage operation. He can't afford discovery of your Soggy Acres venture. That went against international laws governing mining of the seafloor."

  "We only took samples," said Pitt defensively. "It was purely an experimental program."

  "Maybe so, but you got the jump on the rest of the world. Third-world nations especially would howl their heads off at the UN if they thought they were being cut out of an undersea bonanza."

  Pitt stopped and studied a huge open car. "I'd love to own this one."

  "A Cadillac touring?"

  "A Cadillac V-Sixteen phaeton," Pitt corrected. "They're bringing close to a million dollars at the auctions."

  Giordino nodded. "Right up there with the Duesenbergs."

  Pitt turned and looked at Mancuso steadily. "How many cars with warheads have they found?"

  "Only your six so far. Stacy and Weatherhill haven't sent word of their progress on the West Coast yet."

  "The Japanese must have a fleet of those things scattered around the country," said Pitt. "Jordan will need an army to nail them down."

  "There's no lack of manpower, but the trick is to do it without pushing the Japs into a corner. If they think their nuclear bomb project is threatened, they might overreact and set one off man

  "Nice if Team Honda can penetrate the source and snatch a map of the locations," Giordino said quietly.

  "They're working on it," Mancuso stated firmly.

  Pitt leaned over and peered at a Lalique crystal head of a rooster that adorned the radiator of a Pierce-Arrow roadster. "In the meantime we all sit around with our fingers in our ears."

  "Don't feel left out. You accomplished more in the first four hours than the entire team in forty-eight.

  We'll be called when we're needed."

  "I don't like waiting in the dark for something to happen."

  Giordino switched his attention from the cars to a girl walking past in a tight leather skirt and said vaguely, "What could possibly happen at a concours?"

  They seemed an unlikely group, but there they were, seriously observant in their dark suits and attaché cases amid the casually dressed classic car owners and spectators. The four Japanese men gazed studiously at the cars, scribbling in notebooks and acting as though they were advance men for a Tokyo consortium of collector car buyers.

  It was a good front. People noticed them, were bemused by their antics, and turned away, never suspecting they were a highly trained team of undercover operatives and their attaché cases were arsenals of gas grenades and assault weapons.

  The Japanese team had not come to admire the automobiles, they came to abduct Loren Smith.

  They combed the area around the concours, noting the exits and placement of armed security guards.

  Their leader, his dark face glistening in the midday sun, noted that Pitt's Stutz was parked in the center of the field of classic automobiles, making it next to impossible to spirit Loren away without causing an outcry.

  He ordered his three men to return to their stretch limousine that was parked by the track while he hung around keeping an eye on Loren's movements. He also followed Pitt, Giordino, and Mancuso for a short distance, examining their clothing for any telltale bulge of a handgun. He saw nothing suspicious and assumed all three were unarmed.

  Then he wandered about patiently, knowing the right moment would eventually arrive. br />
  A race steward informed Pitt that he and the Stutz were due on the starting line. With his friends going along for the ride, he drove along the grass aisle between the rows of cars and through a gate onto the asphalt one-mile oval track.

  Giordino raised the hood and gave a final check of the engine while Mancuso observed. Loren gave Pitt a long good-luck kiss and then jogged to the side of the track, where she sat on a low wall.

  When the Hispano-Suiza pulled alongside, Pitt walked over and introduced himself as the driver stepped from behind the wheel to recheck his hood latches.

  "I guess we'll be competing against each other. My name is Dirk Pitt."

  The driver of the Hispano, a big man with graying hair, a white beard, and bluegreen eyes, stuck out a hand. "Clive Cussler."

  Pitt looked at him strangely. "Do we know each other?"

  "It's possible," replied Cussler, smiling. "Your name is familiar, but I can't place your face."

  "Perhaps we met at a party or a car club meet."

  "Perhaps."

  "Good luck," Pitt wished him graciously.

  Cussler beamed back. "The same to you."

  As he settled behind the big steering wheel, Pitt's eyes scanned the instruments on the dashboard and then locked on the official starter, who was slowly unfurling the green flag. He failed to notice a long white Lincoln limousine pull to a stop in the pit area along the concrete safety wall just in front of Loren.

  Nor did he see a man exit the car, walk over to her, and say a few words.

  Giordino's attention was focused on the Stutz. Only Mancuso, who was standing several feet away, saw her nod to the man, a Japanese, and accompany him to the limousine.

  Giordino lowered the hood and shouted over the windshield, "No oil or water leaks. Don't push her too hard. We may have rebuilt the engine, but she's over sixty years old. And you can't buy spare Stutz parts at Pep Boys."

  "I'll keep the rpm's below the red," Pitt promised him. Only then did he miss Loren and glance around.

  "What happened to Loren?"

  Mancuso leaned over the door and pointed at the white stretch Lincoln. "A Japanese businessman over there in the limo wanted to talk to her. Probably some lobbyist."

  "Not like her to miss the race."

  "I'll keep an eye on her," said Mancuso.

  Giordino reached in and gripped Pitt's shoulder. "Don't miss a shift."

  Then he and Mancuso stepped away to the side of the track as the starter positioned himself between the two cars and raised the green flag over his head.

  Pitt eased down on the accelerator until the tachometer read 1,000 rpm's. His timing was on the edge of perfect. He second-guessed the starter official and popped the clutch the same instant the flag began its descent. The turquoise Stutz got the jump and leaped a car length ahead of the red Hispano-Suiza.

  The Stutz eight-cylinder engine featured twin overhead camshafts with four valves per cylinder. And though the horsepower was comparable, the Hispano's six-cylinder displacement was eight liters against five for the Stutz. In chassis and body weight, the big town car gave away a 200-kilogram handicap to the cabriolet.

  Both drivers had removed the cutout that allowed the exhaust to bypass their mufflers and thunder into the air just behind the manifolds. The resulting roar from the elderly engines as the cars accelerated from the starting line excited the crowd in the stands, and they shouted and applauded, urging on the beautiful but monstrous masterworks of mechanical art to higher speeds.

  Pitt still led as they surged into the first turn in a haze of exhaust and a fury of sound. He shifted through the gears as smoothly as the old transmission let him. First gear was worn and gave off a banshee howl, with second coming much quieter. Given enough time and distance, both cars might have reached a speed of 160 kilometers (100 mph), but their accelerating velocity did not exactly snap necks.

  Pitt kept a wary eye on the tach as he made his final shift with the Warner four-speed. Coming onto the backstretch, the Stutz was pushing a hundred kilometers, with the Hispano pressing hard and gaining in the turn.

  Onto the straightaway, the Hispano moved up on the Stutz. Cussler was going all out. He pushed the big French car to the limit, the noisy valve train nearly drowning out the roar of the exhaust. The flying stork ornament that was mounted on the radiator crept even with the Stutz's rear door handle.

  There was nothing Pitt could do but keep the front wheels aimed straight, the accelerator pedal mashed to the floorboard, and hurtle down the track at full bore. The tach needle was quivering a millimeter below the red line. He dared not push the engine beyond its limits, not just yet. He backed off slightly as the Hispano drew alongside.

  For a few moments they raced wheel to wheel. Then the superior torque of the Hispano began to tell, and it edged ahead. The exhaust from the big eight-liter engine sounded like a vulcan cannon in Pitt's ears, and he could see the trainlike taillight that waggled back and forth when the driver stepped on the brakes. But Cussler wasn't about to brake. He was pushing the flying Hispano to the wall.

  When they sped into the final turn, Pitt slipped in behind the big red car, drafting for a few hundred meters before veering high in the curve. Then, as they came onto the homestretch, he used the few horses the Stutz had left to give and slingshotted down to the inside of the track.

  With the extra power and momentum, he burst into the lead and held off the charging Hispano just long enough to cross the finish line with the Stutz sun-goddess radiator ornament less than half a meter in front of the Hispano stork.

  It was a masterful touch, the kind of finish that excited the crowd. He threw back his head and laughed as he waved to them. He was supposed to continue and take a victory lap, but Giordino and Mancuso leaped from the pit area waving their hands for him to stop. He veered to the edge of the track and slowed.

  Mancuso was frantically gesturing toward the white limousine that was speeding toward an exit. "The limousine," he yelled on the run.

  Pitt's reaction time was fast, almost inhumanly so, and it only took him an instant to transfer his mind from the race to what Mancuso was trying to tell him.

  "Loren?" he shouted back.

  Giordino leaped onto the running board of the still-moving car. "I think those Japs in the limousine snatched her," he blurted.

  Mancuso rushed up then, breathing heavily. "They drove away before I realized she was still in the car."

  "You armed?" Pitt asked him.

  "A twenty-five Colt auto in an ankle holster."

  "Get in!" Pitt ordered. Then he turned to Giordino. "Al, grab a guard with a radio and alert the police.

  Frank and I'll give chase."

  Giordino nodded without a reply and ran toward a security guard patrolling the pits as Pitt gunned the Stutz and barreled past the gate leading from the track to the parking lot behind the crowd stands.

  He knew the Stutz was hopelessly outclassed by the big, newer limousine, but he'd always held the unshakable belief that insurmountable odds were surmountable.

  He settled in the seat and gripped the wheel, his prominent chin thrust forward, and took up the pursuit.

  >

  Pitt got away fast. The race official at the gate saw him coming and hustled people out of the way. The Stutz hit the parking lot at eighty kilometers an hour, twenty seconds behind the white Lincoln.

  They tore between the aisles of parked cars, Pitt holding the horn button down in the center of the steering wheel. Thankfully, the lot was empty of people. All the spectators and concours entrants were in the stands watching the races, many of whom now turned and stared at the turquoise Stutz as it swept toward the street, twin chrome horns blasting the air.

  Pitt was inflamed with madness. The chances of stopping the limousine and rescuing Loren were next to impossible. It was a chase bred of desperation. There was little hope a sixty-year-old machine could run down a modern limousine pulled by a big V-8 engine giving out almost twice the horsepower. This was more than a
criminal kidnapping, he knew. He feared the abductors meant for Loren to die.

  Pitt cramped the wheel as they hit the highway outside the racetrack, careening sideways in a protesting screech of rubber, fishtailing down the highway in chase of the Lincoln.

  "They've got a heavy lead," Mancuso said sharply.

  "We can cut it," Pitt said in determination. He snapped the wheel to one side and then back again to dodge a car entering the two-lane highway from a side road. "Until they're certain they're being chased, they won't drive over the speed limit and risk being stopped by a cop. The best we can do is keep them in sight until the state police can intercept."

  Pitt's theory was on the money. The charging Stutz began to gain on the limousine.

  Mancuso nodded through the windshield. "They're turning onto Highway Five along the James River."

  Pitt drove with a loose and confident fury. The Stutz was in its element on a straight road with gradual turns. He loved the old car, its complex machinery, the magnificent styling, and fabulous engine.

  Pitt pushed the old car hard, driving like a demon. The pace was too much for the Stutz, but Pitt talked to it, ignoring the strange look on Mancuso's face, urging and begging it to run beyond its limits.

  And the Stutz answered.

  To Mancuso it was incredible. It seemed to him that Pitt was physically lifting the car to higher speeds.

  He stared at the speedometer and saw the needle touching ninety-eight mph. The dynamic old machine had never been driven that fast when it was new. Mancuso held on to the door as Pitt shot around cars and trucks, passing several at one time, so fast Mancuso was amazed they didn't spin off the road on a tight bend.

  Mancuso heard another sound above the exhaust of the Stutz and looked up from the open chauffeur's compartment into the sky. "We have a helicopter riding herd," he announced.

  "Police?"

  "No markings. It looks commercial."

  "Too bad we don't have a radio."

  They had drawn up within two hundred meters of the limousine when the Stutz was discovered, and the Lincoln carrying Loren immediately began to pick up speed and slip away.