Quick (38 page)

Vandelay rushes from the right side of the truck.

Vandelay’s part of it?

The injured Iron Rhino driver must have been balanced on the cabin’s step, waiting for him.

They knew I was here all along.

Billy swings his weapon towards Vandelay as Vandelay swings his walking stick towards Billy —

Crunch.
The heavy stick nails the Australian across the back, slams him into the truck’s grill.
Man, it’s hot.
He pushes off and aims the pistol at his assailant —

Thwaap.
Vandelay swings the cane again and swats the gun out of Billy’s hand like he’s playing T-ball. The gun skitters across the roadway as Vandelay swings the stick once more —

Thwump.
Billy catches it, twists it from his hand and kicks out his right foot —

Ooofff.
He nails Vandelay in the breadbasket, knocks the air out of him. Gasping for breath, the guy staggers backwards, arms windmilling as he tries to find his balance. He fails and falls —

Clang.
His head strikes the metal catch fence
hard
and he slumps to the ground like a wet noodle, unconscious.

Billy looks down at him with a pained smile. ‘Not so tough without your walking stick, are you mate?’ He then turns to pick up his gun —

Thwump.
Billy’s kicked hard in the gut and now it’s his turn to stagger backwards. He trips, stumbles and thumps onto the roadway. He raises his head and looks at his assailant.

Juan-in-a-million.

The Spaniard points his pistol at the Australian.

Billy stares down the barrel.

I am screwed.

Juan steps forward. ‘Think of it like this, at least you got to start a Grand Prix.’

The only thing Billy can do is delay while he thinks of a way out of this. ‘Tell me, what is it about the Monaco royal family that pisses you off so much?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough—oh, no you won’t, because you’ll be dead.’ Juan grins. ‘Now I do believe you are attempting to delay the inevitable.’ He squeezes the trigger —

Billy notices something behind the Spaniard. ‘You expecting company?’

Juan glances back and takes in a low black shape twenty metres away. It slowly creeps towards him—then its exhaust barks, its engine howls, the rear end squats, its massive tyres bite the tarmac and the vehicle leaps forward.

It take less than half a second to reach the Spaniard. It’s so quick the curly-haired mofo doesn’t even get his gun pointed at it before the car’s sharply raked nose hits his legs with a violent crack—and propels him straight up. There’s another crack as he hits the ceiling above, this one duller than the first, then he drops to the tarmac ten metres away with a wet splat.

Billy rolls out of the vehicle’s way but he needn’t have bothered because the car’s giant carbon ceramic disc brakes pull it up a foot in front of him. Both stunned and relieved, the Australian looks up at its cabin.

Claude rises through the car’s open roof. ‘You’re welcome.’

Billy can’t believe his eyes. ‘See, you’re not too old for this
merde
after all.’

Claude’s happy to think it might be true. ‘Hope you’re right.’

The Australian nods at the car. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘A Lamborghini. I thought: If I’m going to thwart a terrorist attack I may as well do it with a little style.’

‘Thank you.’

The Frenchman grins. ‘What are partners for?’

Billy smiles at this, finds his feet, retrieves his pistol and moves to the Spaniard’s crumpled body. The guy is bloodied and broken but still alive.
Just.
Billy kneels beside him, pats him down, doesn’t find what he’s looking for. ‘Where’s the detonator?’

Confused, Juan speaks haltingly: ‘What—detonator?’

‘For the explosives in the fucking truck!’

‘There’s no—detonator—it’s on a—timer.’ Juan holds up his arm, shows him the G-Shock digital watch on his wrist and smiles.

Billy sees the timer countdown: one minute fifty-two seconds, fifty-one seconds.

‘When it reaches zero—boom, you’re dead.’ The Spaniard grins, then his expression freezes, and his head slumps to the side. He’s dead.

‘Shit.’ Billy unbuckles the watch from Juan’s wrist then sprints to the truck’s cabin.

Claude watches him from the Lamborghini. ‘What?’

The Australian doesn’t answer, just pulls open the truck door and climbs inside.

The key is not in the ignition.

He frantically checks all the obvious spots, under the chair, behind the sun visor, in the glove box. No joy. ‘Fuck a duck!’

The Frenchman is confused. ‘“Fuck the duck”? What does this mean?’

‘“Fuck
a
duck!” And it means this thing is going to blow up in a minute and a half and I can’t find its bloody key!’

‘What? Well let’s get out of here.’

‘No.’

‘No? What do you mean
no
.’
Claude jabs a finger at the Lamborghini’s passenger seat. ‘Get in the car!’

‘If it explodes in here it’ll take out the hotel above. There’s a thousand people up there.’

The Frenchman understands. ‘So then what?’

Billy gets an idea. He turns to the Claude and points at the Lamborghini. ‘Back it up.’

~ * ~

Crunch.

The nose of the Lamborghini slams into the truck’s rear bumper bar. It’s steel so the Lamborghini’s carbon fibre bonnet cracks and splinters on impact. The truck shudders forward half a foot— then stops.

Claude mashes the accelerator to the carpet and the hand-built V12 thunders. He glances in the side-view mirror as the rear tyres brake traction and spin up in the world’s most expensive burnout. White smoke billows out of the wheel wells like a Pope just died but the truck doesn’t move. The Frenchman keeps his foot in. ‘Come on you
bâtard!’

~ * ~

‘Come on you bastard!’ Hands wrapped around the steering wheel, transmission in neutral, park brake off, Billy sits in the cabin and wills the truck forward. He glances at the Spaniard’s watch which is now on his right wrist. Sixty-three seconds, sixty-two seconds until detonation.

The truck is not moving.

‘Come on!’ He looks through the windscreen. The glowing end of the tunnel is a long way away, a good hundred and fifty metres off, but the downhill slope starts in about thirty. He just needs to get this thing to that point and start it rolling. Then once the truck reaches the Nouvelle Chicane at the bottom of the hill he’ll steer it to the spot where he thinks—believes—
hopes
—the bomb will detonate safely.

The snarl of the Lamborghini engine reverberates off the tunnel’s walls. He looks back, sees the cloud of billowing rubber smoke envelop the car.

The truck is not moving.

I need to do something.

He swings the door open, leaps out and sprints to the Lamborghini. He ploughs through the smoke, passes the Frenchman who has an expression of steely determination on his face, and reaches the back of the car where the mid-mounted engine screams and orange-blue flames blast from its quad exhaust pipes.

Billy grabs the rear and pushes hard. He promised the Frenchman that if it didn’t happen with fifteen seconds to spare they’d pull the plug and get the hell out of Dodge. He glances at the Spaniard’s watch. Forty-seven seconds, forty-six seconds until detonation.

‘Come on.’ The Australian leans into it, gives it everything he’s got. The Lamborghini fishtails. He holds on to the swaying vehicle, pushes harder. Claude glances back at him. Billy can just make out his grave expression through the haze of tyre smoke as the Frenchman shouts over the thundering power plant: ‘How much longer?’

Billy looks again at the Spaniard’s watch —

The car lurches forward—and keeps moving at a walking pace, then faster, then faster still. Billy pushes hard, passes through the cloud of rubber smoke and looks up.

The truck is rolling.

It bloody worked!

The truck pulls away from the Lamborghini, picks up speed. It has reached the incline. Now all Billy has to do is get on board the damn thing. He stops pushing the car and starts running after the truck.

He passes Claude, shouts into the open cockpit: ‘Get the hell out of here!’ The Lamborghini brakes hard and veers away as Billy sprints on, closes in on the truck’s cabin. He’s just three metres away from jumping on the driver’s step. He digs deep, pumps his arms, lifts his knees, visualises that 11.3-second hundred metres he ran in high school. Two metres away. His eyes lock on the grab handle behind the door. One metre away. It’s right here.

The truck pulls ahead. Two metres. Three metres.

No!

They reach the end of the tunnel and race outside into the brilliant sunlight. He can now see how much his earlier warning to the television camera helped clear the crowd.

Not that much.

Clearly some people have left but it’s still packed.

The truck heads down the hill towards the Nouvelle Chicane, the spot where he needs to turn it left. Instead of doing that it will slam into the ground floor of an eight-storey highrise apartment building that overlooks the track which, as far as he can see, is packed with hundreds of spectators on at least twelve balconies.

This is not working out the way he had hoped. He’s just moved the explosion from one location to another. Visions of the Oklahoma City bombing and the half-collapsed Federal Building swirl through his mind.

He digs even deeper, ups his pace. He catches up to the truck a little—but it ain’t happening. The cabin is now five metres ahead, and a hundred and fifty metres away from an extremely rude introduction to that building. He’s running out of time.

Christ, the time.

He glances at the Spaniard’s watch.

Thirty-two seconds, thirty-one seconds until detonation.

I am so screwed.

Hooonnnnkk.
A car horn. He glances back.

The sharp angles of the black Lamborghini loom behind him.

Claude Michelle, you magnificent bastard.

The Frenchman jabs a Gallic finger at the car’s bonnet. The carbon fibre is cracked and broken but Billy knows what he means. The Australian drops onto the left wheel arch and grabs the windscreen for balance.

The Lamborghini’s V12 screams and the car lunges forward, instantly catches the truck, slides up beside it. Billy leans, reaches for the grab handle behind the door, misses, tries again, snags it, levers himself onto the step and sees the chicane is just twenty metres away.

‘Oh man.’ He wrenches the door open, leans in, pushes on the steering wheel, and keeps pushing. Tyres screech as the truck abruptly turns into the corner. The dramatic change in direction causes the inside wheels to lift off the ground.

His eyes flick to the watch again.

Seventeen seconds, sixteen seconds until detonation.

He looks ahead. A metal safety fence is ten metres away.

Time slows.

It’s all about to go down and Billy has no idea how it will end. At least this bomb won’t detonate under the hotel, or the apartment block, though it might take out one of those superyachts. Yes, that’s where this sucker is headed, straight to the bottom of Monaco Harbour, which is ringed by a flotilla of very large, extremely expensive boats.

Time speeds up.

Bam.
The truck blasts through the barrier at seventy-five kilometres an hour. Designed to stop lightweight racing cars, the fence doesn’t stand a chance against a big rig at speed.

Billy launches himself into the cabin as the torn fence slams the door shut beside him and cracks the window. He looks out the windscreen and sees a superyacht directly in front of him. For a split second he thinks the truck will land on its deck, then its grill drops abruptly and the vehicle plunges into the azure blue of the Mediterranean.

Smash.
It hits the water with a violent jolt—and sinks fast. Cold seawater pours into the cabin through the vents. Billy yanks on the handle to open the door, pushes against it with his shoulder. It won’t budge. The impact with the safety fence has jammed it shut.

‘Shit.’ He’s trapped.

How the hell do I get out of here?

The window is cracked. He slams his elbow against it —

Wham.
It hurts like hell. The crack widens but the glass doesn’t break. He swings his elbow again.

Bam
—
whoosh.
The glass explodes and water pours inside. He looks at the watch.

Eleven seconds, ten seconds until detonation.

He silently counts it down as he squirms through the hole where the glass used to be. He may not know how to swim but fleeing a bomb that’s about to detonate metres away is certainly motivation to learn.

Nine seconds, eights seconds until detonation.

He strokes with his arms and kicks his feet, eyes locked on the water’s glinting surface.

The trailer slips past him on its journey to the ocean floor. It’s just two metres away, which means that gigantic bomb is just two metres away.