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Crunch.
He can hear sand blast against the underside of the vehicle.

He can still save this.

If he can slide the car
across
the kitty litter to where the sand meets the grass then he’ll be able to drive around the edge of trap and rejoin the race. He just has to hope the wheels don’t dig into the sand and flip the car —

The wheels dig into the sand and flip the car.

‘Oh Jesus.’

He can no longer save this.

He’s now a passenger on the way to the scene of the accident. The Commodore flicks up and rolls violently, kicks up a wall of sand with each revolution. Billy holds on for dear life, can only wait for it to end. Metal tears and glass shatters as the six hundred thousand dollar vehicle sheds wheels and panels and wings—and keeps rolling.

Craaack.

What the hell was that?

Centrifugal force wrenches the V8 from beneath the Commodore’s chassis. The engine makes a break for freedom, cartwheels across the kitty litter spewing oil and water and gasoline —

Whump.
It bursts into flames, lights a wall of fire across the sand. Billy catches a glimpse of it as the Commodore keeps rolling. Nine times, ten times, over and over and over. It feels like he’s being dumped by a tidal wave. Without the weight of the engine the chassis seems to pick up speed as it rotates —

Thump.
It stops dead.

A moment passes.

Shaken, Billy blinks twice, takes a breath and does a quick inventory of limbs. They’re all attached and in working order. He can’t believe he escaped such a monster shunt without so much as a scratch. The car is right side up but the nose points towards the heavens at a steep angle. Through a tear in the floor Billy can see the front of the chassis is balanced on one of the wheels.

V8s rumble close by. He looks back. What remains of his Commodore is perched at the edge of the kitty litter near the exit of The Chase. That metal snake of cars whips past on the track just a metre behind.

Creeeeak.

‘Oh damn.’ The wrecked Commodore shudders, slips off the wheel and rolls backwards onto the track. Billy pumps the brake pedal to stop it.

Nothing happens.

Clank.
A car in the metal snake clips the Commodore’s rear quarter panel and spins the vehicle across the track —

Bam.
The last car in the snake T-bones the Commodore’s driver-side door.

Billy’s world turns dark.

There is nothing but pain.

~ * ~

A tenth of a second.

It’s really no time at all.

A finger snap.

An eye blink.

But in motorsport it’s the difference between winning and losing.

Between champion and also-ran.

Between life and death.

~ * ~

Sunday, 12th October 2008.

Craig Lowndes wins the Bathurst 1000 with co-driver Jamie Whincup in a Vodafone Ford Falcon. Billy Hotchkiss’s Autobarn Commodore is destroyed on the first lap when it is hit by a back-marker at the exit of The Chase.

The back-marker escapes injury.

Billy does not.

He breaks his back, his pelvis, his left shoulder and both legs.

He spends a year in physical therapy.

He never drives a V8 Supercar again.

~ * ~

SIX YEARS LATER

~ * ~

1

With landing gear raised, the single-engined Beechcraft 19 descends from the clear blue sky.

Billy Hotchkiss pilots the aircraft. He doesn’t look that different from the fresh-faced kid who tried and failed to lead the first lap of Bathurst back in 2008. He’s still tall and lean with a cheeky grin. The only visible change in his appearance is the pair of long, thin vertical scars above his left eyebrow, where his helmet shattered and sliced into his forehead.

Beside him sits his flight instructor, Ernie Jenkins, thinning hair, happy face, sixty if he’s a day. ‘So we’re cleared to land.’

Billy nods, his expression a portrait of concentration. ‘Okay, cleared to land.’

Stick and pedals, stick and pedals.

‘I can do this. Stick and pedals.’

Ernie nods. ‘So, what do we need to think about?’

Billy scans the instruments of the tiny aircraft, his mind turning. ‘Well, we have a crosswind. It’s . . . it’s about eight knots.’

‘Okay. That’s good. Are you all lined up?’

Billy looks out the aircraft’s windscreen. ‘Runway thirty-five at Essendon Airport is directly ahead. Big tanks to the right, hangars to the left. All lined up.’

‘Beautiful. Okay, what else?’

Billy glances at the instruments once more. ‘Airspeed is correct. Altitude is . . . correct. I just need to take it on in.’

‘Sure, but is there anything else?’

Billy racks his brain, glances at his instructor with a concerned smile. ‘I don’t know, what am I forgetting?’

‘What do we land on?’

‘The runway.’

‘Yes, and what lands on the runway?’

‘The plane.’

‘What part of the plane?’

Billy’s confused. ‘The undercarriage?’

‘And what else is that called?’

Billy stares at him blankly for a moment, then: ‘Oh Christ, the bloody landing gear!’ He flips a lever. The landing gear lowers with a hum then locks with a clunk below them.

Ernie smiles. ‘There you go.’

Billy is mortified. ‘Ohmigod.’

‘Happens to everyone once. Just make sure it doesn’t happen twice. Now just take us on in, nice and gentle.’

Billy nods, works the stick and rudder and eases the little Beechcraft down.

Chirp.
He settles the plane on the tarmac nice and gentle, just like Ernie asked. This is Billy’s third flying lesson so he’s pleased with how quickly he’s picked it up, though that’s the only thing that’s pleased him. He hoped flying would give him something approaching the adrenaline rush he felt when he raced, the adrenaline rush he missed so much, but no, flying is like doing maths with a chance of engine failure. It is exacting rather than exciting and there is always the chance you could plummet out of the sky, which might be worth it if it was more exciting, which it isn’t. Through the lessons Billy realised that what he loves is speed when it’s up close and personal. That’s what gives him the rush. In the air he could be doing one hundred knots or three hundred and it all felt the same because there were so few reference points. But on the ground you feel everything because the road is right beneath you and it’s one big reference point.

Billy angles the Beechcraft towards the hangars as Ernie pipes up: ‘So, another couple of flights like today and you’ll be ready for a solo. As long as you remember to lower the landing gear.’

Ernie smiles at this and Billy forces a grin in return. He’s going to have to break the bad news to the old codger sooner or later so he may as well lay it on him now: ‘Ernie, about that. . .’

~ * ~

The sun is out and a cool breeze eases along Collins Street in Melbourne. Traffic is light for a Saturday morning.

A Kenworth semi-trailer truck, without a trailer, trundles along the roadway, the towering skyscrapers reflected in its cherry-red paint job and heavily tinted windows. Inside, three people sit along the front bench seat. They wear dark-grey jumpsuits and racing helmets with visors raised. The person wearing the yellow helmet with wide green stripes is behind the wheel. ‘Can anyone see it?’

The person wearing the red helmet with thin silver stripes nods and points out the windscreen. ‘There. About two hundred metres ahead.’

The person wearing the black helmet with the red, yellow and blue stripes glances in the side mirror. ‘We’re clear behind.’

Mr Yellow nods and presses the accelerator. The giant turbo diesel spools up and the truck gains speed, surges towards the set of traffic lights ahead. Fifteen metres away the light turns from green to amber.

Red puts a hand on Yellow’s arm. ‘We don’t want to have an accident before we get there.’

‘Of course.’ Yellow nods and hits the brakes. The truck eases to a stop, right on the line. Traffic sweeps across the road before them.

Red reaches into a backpack, pulls out three nine-millimetre Glock pistols, keeps one and passes the others to Yellow and Black. ‘They’re loaded and the safeties are on. Do not fire unless there’s no other option.’

They both nod, then Yellow looks up at the set of traffic lights and waits for the green.

~ * ~

Ernie accepted the news with good-hearted disappointment. From the sound of it Billy figured that Ernie had had plenty of students who had taken a couple of lessons before realising flying wasn’t their bag, so he didn’t take it personally.

Billy shifts in the seat. Since his prang at Bathurst, sitting on hard surfaces for long periods, and long meant more than about three minutes, had become a bit of a chore. His lower back starts to sing, he gets pins and needles in his right thigh and his left foot cramps. Even so, he has no cause for complaint. For the first week after the accident the doctors were sure they would need to amputate both his legs, so the occasional bout of pins and needles and the odd cramp seem like the deal of the century in comparison.

He’s seated on a wooden bench by the front window of an old building that had been gentrified and turned into a McDonald’s. He’s here because he loves the hotcakes at Maccas.
Loooves
them. But he only allows himself one serving per week so he doesn’t chunk up. After he’s eaten this week’s helping he plans to meet up with some mates to watch the Formula One qualifying at Albert Park, which will include a V8 Supercar race as a curtain raiser. He’s been looking forward to it for months.

That’s strange.

Through the window he catches sight of a red semi-trailer truck that waits at the lights. It’s a big one, an oversized version with a sleeper behind the cabin. Apart from the fact it’s rare to see a big rig without a trailer attached, and in the middle of the city no less, what surprises him is the fact that its windscreen has what looks like dark tint applied to it. He’s aware of this because he’s a proud member of the Victorian Police Force. He has worked a lot of traffic duty and ticketed a number of people, mostly young guys, for driving cars with tint that is too dark.

Billy picked up the idea of joining the force during his year-long recuperation following his prang at Bathurst. The physical therapist had once been a cop and talked up the idea. Billy never imagined himself as anything but a racing car driver but when that door slammed shut he needed to find a job that would hold his attention. To his surprise, being a police officer did just that.

He pulls his gaze from the red truck and looks at the hotcakes, then glances back at the truck. It isn’t just his imagination, is it? That windscreen is definitely tinted and that is illegal.

The traffic light changes, there’s a blast of smoke from the truck’s exhaust stack and it rolls on.

Time to make a decision.

What do I do?

‘Christ.’ He stands and strides out to the footpath, pulls on his Detroit Tigers cap and Ray Ban aviators. Why, exactly, is he doing this? On his day off? Chasing up some bozo with illegal window tint? It doesn’t make sense and yet here he is, abandoning an incredibly tasty breakfast so he can write a vehicle defect ticket.

Why
?

Well, technically it’s the ‘broken windows theory’ of policing, which states that law enforcement officers should always prosecute petty crimes, seemingly little things like graffiti and littering and broken taillights, otherwise the criminals will graduate to more serious crimes over time. The New York Police Department used it to great effect during the 1990s to cut the city’s crime rate. But Billy knows what he’s doing is not just about enacting a theory of law and order.

It’s about the adrenaline rush.

Since the accident he has rarely been able to find it. Nothing comes close to motor racing, as he just learned with those pricey flying lessons. He experimented with jet skis and skydiving and rock climbing and a bunch of other ‘xtreme’ pursuits, but they didn’t include the two most important elements for him: they weren’t competitive and they didn’t involve cars. He just loved bloody cars, had loved them since he was knee high to his father’s Falcon GTHO. Of course, he could have raced privately, but he barely had enough dough to cover his rent so that wasn’t going to happen. Motor racing was, even at the most junior of levels, eye-wateringly expensive. Luckily for him his job as a cop occasionally gave him the buzz he was looking for. It had the competitive element, the ‘will I or won’t I catch this bad guy?’, and it often involved driving a high-powered vehicle of some description.

The other thing he liked about being a cop, which he hadn’t even considered before he applied to the academy, was ‘being of service’. Sure, you couldn’t always help everyone, but aiding people in need did leave him with a great feeling. It made him think about all the other things he could do, beyond what was happening in this city, or even Australia. What about the people who didn’t have running water, or adequate housing? He wondered if he shouldn’t take his next vacation somewhere he might be able to do something useful.