His attention was focused to his right and the inferno beyond when suddenly, at the very edge of his peripheral vision, he caught a vague form running down the road on a collision course with the Cord.
He stomped on the brakes, hard, and cramped the steering wheel to the right, whipping the Cord into a ninety-degrre angle and sending it on a broadside skid. The high, narrow tires shrieked from their treads'
friction against the pavement. The Cord ended up sideways, blocking both lanes of the highway, the driver's side not more than a meter from a woman standing stock-still.
Pitts heart had doubled its beat. He let out a deep breath and looked at the woman he'd come within a hair of mashing like a bug. He saw the fear and shock in her eyes slowly transform into an expression of incredulity.
"You!" she gasped. "Is it really you?"
Pitt stared at her blankly. "Ms. Kamil?"
"I believe in d'eji vu," Giordino mumbled. "I do, I do, I do."
"Oh, thank God," she whispered. "Please help me. Everyone is dead.
They're coming to kill me."
Pitt climbed from behind the wheel at the same time Lily stepped from the passengers' compartment. They helped Hala inside and lowered her on the rear seat.
"Who's they?" Pitt asked.
"Yazid's paid assassins. They murdered the Secret Service men guarding me. We must get away quickly. They'll be here any second."
"Rest easy," Lily said soothingly, noticing Hala's smokeblackened skin and singed hair for the first time. "We'll take you to a hospital."
"No time," Hala gasped, making a trembling gesture through the window.
"Please hurry or they'll kill all of you too."
Pitt turned just in time to see two black Mercedes sedans burst from the woods and veer onto the highway. He studied them for no more than a second before jumping into the driver's seat. He shifted into first gear and jammed the accelerator to the floor. He twisted the wheel and turned the Cord in the only direction open to him-back toward downtown Breckenridge.
He looked briefly into the mirror strapped to the side mount spare tire.
He estimated the distance between the Cord and the terrorists' cars at no more than three hundred meters. That brief glimpse was all he had time for. His rear view was suddenly cut off as a bullet drilled through the mirror and shattered the reflection.
"Down on the floor!" he yelled at the two women in back.
There was no drive shaft on the Cord, and the women were able to curl up and press themselves against the flat floor. Hala stared into Lily's face and began trembling uncontrollably. Lily put an arm around her and forced a brave smile.
"Not to panic," she said encouragingly. "Once we make it to town we'll be safe."
"No," Hala murmured as shock began to set in. "We won't be safe anywhere."
In the front seat Giordino hunched low to get what shelter he could from the gunfire and higid wind whistling around the windshield. "How fast will this thing go?" he asked conversationally.
"The best top speed ever recorded for an L-29 was seventy-seven,"
answered Pitt.
'Miles or kilometers?"
'Miles. "
"I have a sinking feeling we're outclassed." Giordino had to shout in Pitts ear to be heard above the howl of the Cord's second gear.
"What are we up against?"
Giordino swung around, leaned over the door and cast a wary eye backward. "Hard to tell what model a Mercedes is from the front, but I'd say the hounds are driving five hundred SDLS."
"Diesels?"
"Turbocharged diesels to be exact, capable of 220 kilometers per hour."
"They gaining?"
"Like tigers after a -toed sloth," Giordino replied drily. "They'll chew our ass long before we reach the local sheriff's coffee hangout."
Pitt jammed the clutch to the floor, grasped the end of the gear-shift arm that extended from the dashboard and shoved it into third. "Better we save lives by staying away. Those killcrazy bastards are liable to slaughter a hundred innocent bystanders just to assassinate Kamil. "
Giordino peered to the rear again. "I think I can see the whites of their eyes."
Ismail screamed a dozen curses as his gun jammed. In a rage, he heaved it out of the Mercedes onto the highway and snatched another from the hands of his follower in the backseat. He reached out the window and squeezed off a burst at the Cord. Only five shells spat from the muzzle before the armno clip emptied. He cursed again as he fished in his pocket for another clip, wrestled it free and pushed it in the slide.
"Do not excite yourself," said the driver carefully. "We'll catch them in the next kilometer. I'll come around on the left while Omar and his men in the other car take the right. We can snare them in a cross fire at close range."
"I want to kill the scum who interfered," Ismail snarled.
"You'll get your chance. Patience."
Almost like a sullen child who can't have his way, Ismail slumped in the seat and stared vengefully through the windshield at the fleeing car ahead.
lsmail was the worst kind of killer. He was utterly incapable of remorse. He would have celebrated after blowing up a maternity ward.
First-class hit men recorded their kills and studied ways to improve their craft. He never bothered to react or count the bodies. His planning was sloppy, and on two occasions he had wiped out the wrong quarry, which made a fanatic like Ismail all the more dangerous.
Unpredictable as a shark, he struck indiscriminately and without mercy at any innocent victim who was unlucky enough to step in his way. He justified his bloody deeds by killing for a religious cause, but in another time, another place, he'd have been a serial murderer, leaving a trail of dead for the full of it. Ismail would have sickened John Dillenger and Bonnie and Clyde.
He sat there moving his fingers over the rifle as if it were a sensual object, waiting, waiting to pump its lethal fire through the thin walls of the old car and into the flesh that had temporarily cheated him of his prey.
"They must be saving their ammunition," sadd Giordino thankfully.
"Only until they box us in and can't miss," Pitt replied. His eyes were on the road, but his mind was desperately turning over escape schemes.
"My kingdom for a rocket launcher."
"Which reminds me. When I got in the car this morning, I accidentally kicked something under the seat."
Giordino bent down and probed the floorboard under Pitt. His hand touched a cold, hard object. He held it aloft. "Only a socket wrench,"
he announced sadly. "Might as well be a hainbone for all the good it'll do."
"There's a Jeep trail just ahead that leads up to the top of the ski runs. Maintenance vehicles sometimes use it to carry supplies and equipment to the peak. Might give us a slim chance to lose them in the woods or a ravine. We're dead if we stick to the highway."
"How far?"
"Around the next bend in the road."
"Can we make it?"
"You tell me."
Giordino looked back for the third time. "Seventy-five meters and hauling ass."
"Close, too close," said Pitt. "We'll have to slow them down."
"I could show my ugly face and make obscene gestures," Giordino said dryly.
"Only make them madder. We have to go to plan one."
"I missed the briefing," Giordino said sarcastically.
"How's your throwing arm?"
Giordino nodded in understanding. "Keep this old barge in a straight line and fireball Giordino wig retire the opposing term."
The open town car made a perfect platform. Giordino planted his knees on the seat facing backward, his head and shoulders exposed above the roof. He took aim, raised his arm and hurled the socket wrench in a high arc toward the leading Mercedes.
for an instant his heart seized. He thought he had underthrown as the wrench dropped low and landed on the hood of the car. But it took a bounce and smashed neatly through the windshield.
The Arab driver had spotted G
iordino in the act of heaving the wrench.
His reaction time was good but not good enough. He hit the brakes and cramped the wheel to swerve out of the way just as the glass burst in a thousand tiny pieces and sprayed into his face. The wrench caromed off the steering wheel and dropped into Ismail's lap.
The driver in the second Mercedes was hanging close to the rear bumper of Ismail's car, and he didn't see the socket wrench sailing through the air. He was caught completely off guard when the taillights in front of his eyes suddenly flashed red. He stared helplessly as he rammed the first Mercedes, sending it spinning out of control until it came to a halt facing in the opposite direction.
"That what you had in mind?" asked Giordino cheerfully.
"Right on the money. Hold on, we're approaching our Turn." Pitt slowed and swung the Cord onto a narrow, snowpacked road leading in a series of switchbacks up the mountainside.
The straight-eight engine with its 115-horsepower strained to pull the heavy car over the slippery, uneven surface. The stiff chassis springs jolted everyone like tennis balls in a washing machine as the lighter rear end slewed back and forth. Pitt compensated with a deft touch on the accelerator and steering wheel, using the pulling power of the front-wheel drive to keep the long hood pointed up the middle of a road that had all the qualifications of a vague hiking to.
Lily and Hala had picked themselves up off the floor and were sitting in the seat, feet braced against the divider partition, hanging onto the overhead straps for dear life.
Six minutes later they left the trees behind and were climbing above timberline. The road now ran between steep inclines carpeted with massive rocks and deep snow. It had been Pitts original idea to abandon the Cord and make a run for it, using the woods and craggy landscape for cover, but the depth of Colorado's famous powdery snow sharply increased at the higher altitudes, making any passage on foot nearly impossible.
He was left with no alternative but to reach the summit with enough time to take a chair lift down the mountain to the town and become lost in the crowds.
"We're boiling," Giordino observed.
Pitt didn't need to see the steam starting to issue around the base of the radiator cap; he'd been watching the needle on the temperature gauge creep upward until it was pegged on HOT.
"The engine was rebuilt with close tolerances," he explained. "We've given it too much of a beating before it had a chance to break in."
"What do we do when the road ends?" asked Giordino.
"Plan two," answered Pitt. "We take a leisurely ride down a chair lift to the nearest saloon."
"I like your style, but the war's not over." Giordino nodded over his shoulder. "Our friends are back."
Pitt had been too busy to keep track of his pursuers. They had recovered from the accident and charged up the mountain after the Cord.
Before he could look behind, bullets shattered the rear window between Lily's and Hala's heads, traversed the car and passed cleanly through the windshield, leaving three small, starred holes. The women didn't have to be told to crouch on the floor again. This time they tried to melt into it.
"I think they're mad about the wrench," said Giordino,
"Not half as mad as I am over the way they're trashing my car."
Pitt hauled the car around a steep switchback, and when he straightened oirt again, he turned and stole a quick look at the chasing cars. The rearward view was not lacking in menace.
The twin Mercedes were violently slewing all over the snow-covered road.
Their superior speed was partially offset by the Cord's front-wheel traction. Pitt pulled away in the tight turns, but the Arabs narrowed the gap in the straightaways.
Pitt caught a glimpse of the lead driver twisting and turning his wheel like a maniac, ignoring caution and keeping the rear-drive wheels in a constant state of spin. At every switchback he came within a hair of sliding into heavy snow and becoming hopelessly stuck.
Pitt was surprised that the Mercedes showed no signs of wearing snow tires. He couldn't have known the Arabs had driven the cars over the border from Mexico to muddy their trail. Registered to a nonexistent textile company in Matamoros, they were to be abandoned at the Breckenridge airport after Hala's assassination was completed.
Pitt didn't like what he saw. The Mercedes were moving relentlessly closer. They were only fifty meters behind. He also didn't like the sight of a man sticking an automatic rifle through the smashed windshield.
"Here comes the mail!" he shouted, slipping under the wheel until his eyes barely peered over the top of the dashboard. "Everyone down!"
The words were barely out of his mouth when bullets began thumping into the Cord. One burst ripped the right fendermounted spare tire and wheel. The next tore through the roof, shredding the leather padding and mangling the metal skin underneath.
Pitt tensed and tried to duck even lower as the left side of the car was cut open as if attacked by an army of can openers. The hinges flew off a rear door and it fell open, hanging grotesquely for a few moments until it was torn away as the Cord brushed a tree. Glass fragments flew like rain. One of the women screamed, he didn't know which one. He became aware of a fine spray of blood on the dashboard. A bullet had ploughed a furrow through one of Giordino's ears, but the gritty little Italian made no sound.
Giordino probed the wound indifferently, almost as though it belonged to someone else. Then he tilted his head and gave Pitt a slanted grin. "I fear last night's wine is leaking out."
"Is it bad?" Pitt asked.
"Nothing a plastic surgeon can't fix for two thousand dollars. What about the women?"
Pitt shouted without turning. "Lily, are you and Hala all right?"
"A few scratches from flying glass," Lily replied gamely. "Otherwise we're unhurt." She was good and scared but not anywhere near the edge of panic.
The steam from the Cord's radiator was escaping like a high-pressure jet now. Pitt could feel the engine lose revolutions as it slowly began to seize up. Like a jockey riding a tired old nag long overdue for the pasture, he pushed the car as hard as he dared.
He worked coolly, concentrating on hurling the Cord around the last switchback before the summit. He had gambled and failed to elude the assassins. They clung to his rear bumper as if chained there.
The engine bearings began to rattle in protest from the excessive heat and strain. Another volley of bullets peppered the left rear fender and flattened the tire. Pitt fought the wheel to keep the rear end from careening off the side of the road and dragging the car down a 60-percent grade filled with large jagged boulders.
The Cord was dying. Ominous blue smoke filtered through the hood louvers. Beneath the engine, oil seeped through a gouge torn in the oil pan by a rock Pitt could not avoid. The oil pressure gauge quickly registered zero. any chance of making the temporary safety of the summit became more remote with each knock of the piston rods.
The lead Mercedes charged around the switchback in a wild skid. Pitt clutched the wheel despairingly. He could picture the look of triumph on his pursuers' faces as they sensed they were seconds away from naming their prey to the ground.
He saw no place for a desperation escape on foot. They were trapped on the narrow road between a steep drop on one side and a sharp rocky rise on the other. There was nowhere to go but ahead until the Cord's engine gave up and froze.
Pitt jammed the accelerator pedal against the floorboard with all the strength in his leg and uttered a fast prayer.
Incredibly, the battle-weary old classic had something more to give. As though a mechanical engine had a mind of its own, it reached down into its iron and steel for one final, magnificent effort. The engine revolutions suddenly increased, the front wheels dug in, and the Cord wiggled up the final grade to the sunmiit. A minute later, through clouds of blue smoke and white steam, it broke out onto the open crest of a ski run.
Not one hundred meters away stood the upper end of a triple-chair ski lift. At first Pitt thought it strange that no one was
skiing on the slope directly below the Cord. people were dropping off the chairs and turning toward the opposite side of the lift before starting down a parallel ski trail.
Then he observed his section of the slope was roped off. Several signs hung on a line festooned with bright orange streamers warning skiers not to ski this run because of dangerous, icy conditions.
"The end of the trail," Giordino said solemnly.
Pitt nodded in frustration. "We can't make a break for the lift. They'd shoot us down before we ran ten meters."
"It's either fight them with snowballs or take our chances and surrender."
"Or we can try plan three."
Giordino peered at Pitt curiously. "Can't be any worse than the first two." Then his eyes widened and he groaned, "You're not-oh, God, no!"
The two Mercedes were almost within spitting distance. They had pulled side by side to box in the Cord when Pitt twisted the wheel and sent the car plummeting down the ski run.
"Allah help us," muttered lsmafl's driver. "The crazy idiots. We can't stop them."
"Keep after them!" Ismail shouted hysterically. "Don't let them escape."
"They'll die anyway. No one can survive a runaway car down a mountainside."
Ismafl swung his gun barrel and roughly pushed the muzzle into his driver's ear. "Catch those pigs," he snarled viciously, "or you'll see Allah sooner than you planned."
The driver hesitated, seeing death no matter which move he made. Then he gave in and turned the Mercedes down the steep incline after the Cord.
"Allah guide my actions," he uttered in sudden fear.
Ismail pulled the gun away and pointed through the broken windshield.
"Be still and mind your driving."
Ismail's henchmen in the second Mercedes didn't pause. Dutifully they plunged after their leader.
The Cord hurtled across the hard-packed snow like a runaway freight , gaining speed at a terrifying rate. There was no slowing the heavy car.