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Vandelay rises and glares at Billy with unconcealed fury: ‘You fucking killed my brother.’

Hold the phone.
Brother
? What the hell is he talking about? Kurt’s an adopted only child. He didn’t have any brothers.

Is that the connection between these people? Are they related?

Apoplectic, Vandelay hobbles towards Billy and raises his pistol.

Bam bam bam.
He fires.

Thud thud thud.
Bullets thump into the Iron Rhino chassis.

Billy raises his nine-millimetre and takes aim.
Bam.

Thud.
One shot. Vandelay crumples to the ground, a bullet to the forehead.

Billy takes a breath, tries not to dwell on the fact he just killed
two
men, albeit in self-defence. He turns and locks eyes on the C-123, which now rolls across the grass. Thorne and Franka close in on its open rear hatch. Not only does Thorne drag Franka along behind him but he now carries all four duffel bags.

Franka looks back at Billy, her expression a portrait of fear and apprehension.

She needs my help. I can’t let that plane take off.

He points the Iron Rhino towards the rear of the aircraft and stamps on the gas. The car pounces forward and slides behind the C-123. It’s thirty metres away so the prop wash severely buffets the vehicle.

Thorne and Franka reach the aircraft’s ramp and the turboprops instantly run up.

Billy realises the plane is no longer taxiing but taking off. It gathers speed.

But the car is quicker.

It’s just twenty metres away.

Billy drops down a gear and the Iron Rhino surges forward.

Ten metres away. Five. One.

The car’s front wheels thump onto the ramp. Immediately the ramp rises and the vehicle is lifted off the ground. Half on and half off the ramp, the car is hoisted towards the large upper door as it swings down to close.

Oh shit.

With immense hydraulic force the upper door presses onto the front of the vehicle —

Crack.
The nose shatters.

Boom.
The front left tyre explodes.

Crunch.
The air intake is crushed.

This is not working out the way I had hoped.

Billy feels like he’s in a horizontal version of the garbage compactor from
Star Wars.
He looks up, realises his head is a foot away from suffering the same fate as the air intake. He drops the gun into the cockpit and braces his hands against the upper door’s metal skin, pushes against it.

It doesn’t stop, just continues on its merry way towards his face, five inches away, four inches —

Eeerrk.
It grinds to a halt, its hydraulics whining in protest, Billy’s right cheekbone jammed against its cold metal surface. He can’t move. The only thing he can do is look out the left-hand side of the car’s cockpit. It’s not a cheery sight. The green grass of the runway falls away as the C-123 lifts into the sky.

The hydraulic whine stops abruptly. The upper door rises and the pressure is released from Billy’s face. The front of the car has been squashed flat, like it’s been stepped on by a stegosaurus. The wrecked vehicle is balanced precariously, still half on and half off the ramp. Billy reaches down, searches for his pistol, can’t locate it in the cockpit —

The vehicle shudders and tilts backwards.

‘Oh shit.’ He’s going over.

Clunk.
The inch-wide endplate on the front wing catches under the right side of the hatch and the car stops tilting. It’s the only thing preventing Billy and his vehicle from tipping over the edge and plummeting to that lush forest below.

Thorne steps into view at the top of the ramp, a pistol in one hand and the ramp’s controller in the other. He is no longer handcuffed to Franka.

Billy reaches down, searches for his pistol again, feels something on the floor of the cockpit, looks down. After being crushed, the cockpit’s safety tub has cracked and there is a gaping hole in the floor. The gun has fallen through it.

Pistol raised, Thorne strides down the ramp towards the Australian, shouts over the wind: ‘You know she fought for you. She really does like you.’

Billy considers this and for the first time since his accident at Bathurst truly feels his mortality, realises he’s about to die,
right now,
and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. But, even more than that, he feels sadness because he’s sure he has missed out on something extraordinary with Franka.

What a bummer.

Thorne rests his foot on the car’s front wing. ‘This is for my brothers. Enjoy the view on the way down, it’s a sight you’ll never see again.’ He grins at his lame joke, then presses his foot down and begins to push the car off the back of the plane . . .

~ * ~

28

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Thorne turns.

It’s Dieter. The old German stands on the ramp two metres behind Thorne.

Billy is stunned.

What on earth is he doing here?

And then the penny drops: ‘You’re part of this crew?’

‘God no, but I made sure they had what they needed so they could deal with their daddy issues.’

Billy is confused. ‘Daddy issues? I don’t understand—you
funded
them? To commit those robberies?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you had
me
working for you?’

‘So I could keep an eye on you. It was better to have you close. Now get out of that thing.’

Billy doesn’t have to be asked twice. He steps out of the cockpit, then nods at Thorne. ‘And you didn’t tell him who I was?’

‘If I’d done that you would have been dead in an instant and I would have had police swarming all over pit lane.’

Billy tries his best to process the information. ‘So why did you do it?’

‘For my race team. For the
money
for the race team actually.

The Australian is even more confused now. ‘What? But you’re worth like a
billion
dollars.’

Dieter shakes his head and smiles. ‘I have never been worth a billion dollars. Not even close. That was just PR spin so people would think the company was successful and want to advertise on the cars. The Iron Rhino drink business is buckling under the weight of the Formula One expenditure. At the current rate of spending, which is two million a week, a little under, I won’t be able to finish the season and the company will be on life support. At least that’s what the accountants tell me. Red Bull is kicking our behinds in the marketplace and the banks won’t lend me any more money, and I’ve spent all my own. So, well, it is not a rosy picture.’

Billy is astonished. ‘You’re broke?’

Dieter chuckles half-heartedly. ‘And the team isn’t even competitive, which is the funniest part, or the saddest, I can’t decide. No, saddest. Anyway, it’s all going to turn around now. There’s at least seventy-five million in the bags from the casino. Fifty million of that is my pay-off for helping them. And that should see us through to the end of the season. Hopefully you’ll score some points in the remaining races and we can start to charge a little more for signage on the car and pick up some prize money along the way —’

‘You think I’m going to drive for you?’

‘What else are you going to do?’

‘I’m a
cop,
mate.’

‘But only because no one would give you a drive. But now I am giving you a drive.’

‘What on earth makes you think I would do that?’

‘The continuing health and safety of young Miss Franka Edlebrock will be your guiding motivation, I suspect. It will make sure you give one hundred per cent on the track and never mention anything to anyone.’

Billy takes in the threat, astonished.

Thorne is apoplectic. ‘He’s fucking Interpol, you old fool. He’s the only one who knows who we are. We need to get rid of him
now
.’

Dieter’s not having it. ‘The team always comes first.
Always.
I didn’t go through all this to have you to kill the only quick driver we’ve had in five years who I don’t have to pay.’

Thorne shakes his head. ‘He’s a fucking
driver.’
He points the weapon at Billy’s face. ‘There are hundreds of them.’

‘The same could be said for team principals. Now put that thing down. You’re not good enough at your job to annoy me like this.’

Thorne squeezes the trigger. ‘You’ll thank me for this one day —’

Bam.
Thorne’s body convulses and a dark circle spreads across the front of his shirt. Stunned, he looks down, raises a hand to touch it and is horrified to feel blood on his fingers. ‘What did you —?’ He looks up and sees the pistol in Dieter’s hand, then staggers sideways, tries to find his balance, fails miserably and drops off the side of the ramp.

‘Enjoy the view on the way down, it’s a sight you’ll never see again.’ Billy knows it’s a terrible thing to say, but hey, the guy’s a prick. He watches Thorne fall but quickly realises he’s not going to take the advice. He has something else in mind, like turning in midair and pointing his weapon up at the aircraft.

Oh damn, this is going to be bad.

Billy now wishes he hadn’t said anything.

Bam.
Thorne fires the pistol.

Boom.
The C-123’s starboard turboprop detonates in a cloud of flaming debris. A chunk of engine cowling flips straight back towards Billy. He ducks and turns away —

Whack.
It slams into his shoulder, stings like a mofo, spins him around. He stumbles backwards, towards the edge of the ramp.

Woh!
He just manages to stay upright as the aircraft shudders violently. The car’s front wing endplate dislodges from the side of the hatch and the vehicle swings around —

Wham.
Its shattered nose slams into Billy’s legs, knocks him off his feet. ‘Oh dammit.’ He tumbles off the ramp —

Thump.
He catches the trailing edge with his left hand, dangles over the abyss like a ribbon in a breeze. The car swings over his head then tips over the edge and drops away.

Billy watches it tumble towards that lush forest below, then grabs at the ramp with his right hand and looks up. Through a giant flaming hole in the left side of the fuselage he can see the burning nacelle that was once the left engine.

Not good.

He turns and his eyes find Dieter, slumped outside the hatch, his hand wrapped around a large, jagged chunk of rotor blade embedded in his chest.

That can’t be good either.

Dieter’s gun slides over the edge of the ramp and falls away. Billy doesn’t want to suffer the same fate and pulls himself forward. It’s the chin-up from hell so he uses all his strength.

Jeeezus this is difficult.

He hooks his left leg over the ramp, drags himself on, crawls forward, finds his knees and stands up —

Woh!
The plane shudders. The Australian just keeps his footing but Dieter’s body slides off the side of the ramp and follows his weapon to the forest below. Billy watches him go, conflicted. He liked the guy, and he saved Billy from Thorne, but then he also bankrolled the Three Champions and considering everything they’ve done, it erases any of the good. The old bastard gave everything for his love of Formula One and that now includes his life.

Billy sprints into the dark cabin and his eyes take a moment to adjust. On the right-hand side there are three parachutes secured behind orange netting.

At least there’s a way off this thing.

At the end of the cabin he sees a two-metre-square wooden pallet. It carries five one-hundred litre barrels and five twenty-five kilogram bags.

He stops dead. ‘Oh, come on!’

It’s
another
fertiliser bomb. A big one.

‘You have to be fuckin’ kidding me!’

Behind it Franka stands near the short metal ladder that leads up to the raised cockpit. He runs to her, wants to kiss her but feels it’s inappropriate considering the situation. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes.’ She’s clearly relieved to see him. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘So did I.’ He nods at the fertiliser bomb anxiously. ‘It’s not armed or on timer, is it?’

‘No, they hadn’t done that yet. They were going to drop it on the palace.’

He looks at her, confused. ‘Palace? Buckingham Palace?’ It’s the only one he can think of.

‘No no,
Monaco
Palace. Where we went to the ball.’

‘Right. Why do these guys have such a problem with the royal family—oh.’ He remembers Dieter’s words: ‘
daddy issues’
, then thinks about what Vandelay said after Kurt died. It takes a moment then the Australian pieces it together and is shocked by what it reveals: ‘Prince Alfred is your father, isn’t he? And not just you but Kurt, Juan, Vandelay and Thorne?’

‘Yes.’

‘So he—what, cut you out of his life? Like you said?’

‘He didn’t want to know us because he thought we would make a claim to the throne.’