Hover Car Racer (24 page)

The Japanese racer’s nosewing fell clear off, splashing down into the Canal, and Ideki - poorly, in a panic, desperate to finish the race - tried to avoid the safe landing that the nearest Dead Zone alongside the Grand Canal would have provided him.

Instead, he grappled with his steering wheel and straightened his Yamaha up - but he hadn’t counted on how quickly he would lose altitude.

And he realised the truth of his situation too late.

His Yamaha was going to smash directly into the
Argonaut II
, helpless on the surface of the Grand Canal.

Ideki may have realised it too late, but Jason, still treading water, saw exactly what was going to happen.

The Kamikaze’s Yamaha was going to slam into the
Argonaut II
…and the Bug was still trapped in it under the surface!

Jason gauged the distance and the Kamikaze’s screaming speed: impact would come in about five seconds.

And so, with the out-of-control Yamaha zooming like a guided missile toward his upside-down hover car, Jason took a deep breath and went under to try and free the Bug in time.

Underwater again.

Frantically swimming in his flightsuit, Jason came to the Bug, and saw that his brother’s seatbelt buckle had jammed. It wasn’t coming free.

The Bug was in a fearful panic - tearing at his buckle, screaming underwater, yelling bubbles.

And in that instant, Jason saw the future.

This would take more than five seconds.

Kamiko Ideki’s Yamaha shot through the air like a bullet. A moment before it hit the
Argonaut II
, two blurring
objects could be seen rocketing up into the sky above it - the ejection seats of Ideki and his navigator.

Then without slowing or stopping or even veering to the side, the Yamaha slammed into the stationary
Argonaut
at a shocking 700 km/h.

The impact of hover car on hover car shook the world. And the ensuing flaming explosion filled the Grand Canal, expanding across its breadth in a billowing orange cloud.

Pieces of the
Argonaut II
rained down on the Canal for a full minute, creating a thousand tiny splashes.

A deathly hush descended upon the crowds gathered in the grandstands around the Finish Line. Sitting in his own
VIP box, Umberto Lombardi could only stare at the horrific scene in disbelief.

The
Argonaut
was gone - blasted to nothing.

And with it: Jason Chaser and the Bug.

‘Oh…my…Lord…’ Lombardi breathed.

THE FINAL STAGES OF THE ITALIAN RUN VENICE II, ITALY

The explosion of Kamiko Ideki’s Yamaha crashing at 700 km/h into Jason Chaser’s stricken
Argonaut II
echoed across Italy - in every grandstand, in every home, on every television, on every digital radio.

For a full twenty seconds, not a single person in all of Italy spoke.

They just stared at the ghastly scene in horror.

Where once there had been two racing cars, now there was just a rising cloud of black smoke.

No-one could believe it.

Jason Chaser and his little brother, the Bug - the two young boys from the International Race School who had won the hearts of race fans with their determined never-say-die attitude; the kids who had turned the tables on Fabian during that wonderful exhibition race - were dead.

Killed in a spectacular blazing inferno.

* * *

Watching from a hover stand overlooking the Finish Line, Henry and Martha Chaser were in total shock.

They couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t drag their eyes away from the tall wispy smoke-cloud on the water’s surface - the smoke cloud that had once been their sons.

‘Oh, no…’ Martha gasped. ‘Dear God, no!’

Henry just whispered: ‘Come on, Jason, tell me you got out of there…Please tell me you got out of there…’

But nothing happened. Rescue vehicles took off from the shore, their siren-lights blazing.

They arrived at the smoke-cloud just as, without warning, two tiny figures burst up from beneath the surface of the harbour twenty metres away from the big black cloud.

Jason and the Bug!

Henry and Martha leapt to their feet.

The crowd - formerly silenced - now positively
roared
with delight.

The rescue vehicles cut a bee-line for the two boys, now bobbing on the surface. Every TV camera in the area zoomed in on them - but on this closer view, the scene took on a disturbing angle.

The Bug was waving frantically, but Jason wasn’t moving at all.

Thirty seconds earlier:

The
Argonaut II
lies on the surface of the wide body of water at the end of the Grand Canal, a hundred metres short of the Finish Line. It lies upside-down. Jason surfaces, sees Kamiko Ideki’s Yamaha heading straight for him. He holds his breath, goes under to save the Bug. Four seconds later, Ideki’s Yamaha
slams
into the
Argonaut II
. Boom.

Seen from under the surface of the water, it is a different scene altogether.

Things are happening.

Jason sees that the Bug’s seatbelt is jammed. It cannot be undone in time - certainly not in enough time for them to get away from the blast zone of the impending crash.

So inside four seconds, Jason does the only thing he can think of.

Straddling the Bug’s upside-down seat, effectively sitting on his trapped brother’s lap, he yanks on the ejection lever.

Shoooooooom!

A supercharged finger of bubbles lances down and away from the overturned
Argonaut
- it is the Bug’s seat ejecting not upward but
downward
into the blue-green world of the harbour, with both brothers sitting on it - a split-second before the
Argonaut
is hit from above by the Kamikaze and explodes in a burst of roiling bubbles.

The water ‘catches’ the rocketing ejection seat on its downward flight, slows the boys about thirty metres below the surface.

The Bug is still screaming, blowing bubbles.

Jason has been gripping his seatbelt’s clasp for the whole of their downward flight and suddenly -
snap!
- it comes free.

The Bug wriggles out from his seat - and sees that Jason isn’t moving. He grabs Jason and kicks for the surface, powered by adrenalin, expelling air as he rises. He cannot know that his brother’s lungs are filled with water - water that rushed into his open mouth as they plummeted down through the blue haze.

They hit the surface together and the Bug starts waving frantically, trying to get someone, anyone, to come and help his unconscious brother - the brother who risked his life to save his.

Jason dreamed.

As he did so, his mind raced with fleeting images: Of himself being loaded onto a hovercopter - of shouting voices - someone pumping on his chest - flying over Venice II with the sun in his eyes, and then abruptly coughing, vomiting water, expelling it from his lungs…and then
breathing
, inhaling and exhaling, wonderful deep breaths of glorious air…and then falling fast asleep.

Voices in his dreams: ‘He’s going to be all right, Mr Chaser,’ a man’s voice said calmly. ‘He’s just sleeping now. You can go back to the hotel. We’ll call you when he regains full consciousness.’

‘I’m not going anywhere till my son wakes up,’ Henry Chaser’s voice replied.

At one point, Jason woke briefly, just long enough to see that he was in a bed and wearing pyjamas. The bed was in a hospital of some sort and it was the dead of night - moonlight streamed in through a nearby window.

And in that brief instant, he saw his father slouched in a chair under the window, sitting upright but asleep, his chin all bristly and unshaven, his clothes rumpled. They were the same clothes he’d been wearing on race day.

His father hadn’t left his bedside.

Jason fell asleep again.

Then the nightmares came.

They all involved crashing a speeding hover car. Hitting the entry pillars of a mountainside tunnel. Slamming into a cliff-face near the Race School. And worst of all - in the most often repeated nightmare - Jason would find himself rushing at the surface of the Grand Canal, his car out of control, his steering wheel completely unresponsive.

And as in all the other nightmares, a nanosecond before he hit the water, his eyes would dart open and he would find himself lying in his bed, breathless, drenched in sweat.

Then, one day, sunshine hit Jason’s eyes and he awoke fully.

He opened his eyes to immediately see his father staring at him from his chair, smiling. ‘Hey there, son.’

‘Hi, Dad,’ Jason’s throat was dry. He blinked, sat up. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘Almost two days now,’ Henry Chaser checked his watch.

‘Two days…’

‘All of Italy has been waiting to hear that you’re okay. You’re a hero, saving your brother like you did - while an out-of-control hover car was screaming right at you. I’m very proud of you, son. Very proud. You could have got away, but you didn’t. You didn’t leave your brother behind.’

And Henry hugged Jason. Hard. ‘Good boy.’

Half an hour later, Martha Chaser and the Bug rushed into the hospital room, followed by Sally McDuff and Scott Syracuse.

Martha enveloped Jason in a bear-hug, as did the Bug, who whispered in his ear.

‘No problem, buddy,’ Jason replied. ‘You wouldn’t have left me.’

Sally said, ‘All right, Hero. I tell you, when you lose, you really do lose in style. You like going out with a bang, don’t you? Although, I have to say, reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated.’
She handed him a copy of
Il Corriere Della Sera
, the Italian daily newspaper, headlined ‘
THE DEATH OF JASON CHASER
‘ and accompanied by a motion-photo of the
Argonaut II
being hit by Kamiko Ideki’s Yamaha and exploding into flames.

Sally explained: ‘Apparently, the
Corriere Della Sera
prepared two editions for today’s paper - one with you alive, the other with you dead - and they accidentally printed 1,000 copies of the wrong edition. I think I’m going to get this framed.’

Jason snuffed a laugh.

‘How’s Mr Lombardi taking it?’ he asked.

‘At first he was horrified that you might’ve died driving one of his cars. But then, when he was informed that you were okay - ‘

‘WHERE IS HE!’ a loud voice boomed from the corridor outside Jason’s room.

Umberto Lombardi strode into the room, his eyes wide. ‘Where is the young man
who destroyed my car!’

Jason shrank into his pillow, not entirely sure if Lombardi was really angry or just faking it.

Lombardi stopped in front of him…and his angry face relaxed into a wide mischievous grin. ‘I just have to know, Young Signor Chaser, what does it feel like to
destroy -
destroy
- million-dollar Ferrari?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Lombardi.’

‘Bah! Forget it. It’s insured - and I love claiming big payouts from insurance companies! God knows I pay them enough in premiums! But you, you’re
a hero
, boy! Which means you’ve made
me
a guy who
employs
heroes. I just hope you don’t mind me basking in the reflected light of your magnificent glow!’

‘You can bask all you want, sir. I’m still sorry about the car.’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Lombardi said kindly. ‘Ferraris come and go, but young men like you’ - he winked - ‘come once in a lifetime.’

* * *

But Jason couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Nor could he rest.

As soon as he was able to, he asked for a video-disc copy of the final moments of the race and he watched his crash over and over again.

He saw his car overtake Trouveau’s Renault - moving into 5th place - then saw it swing round the final lefthand turn, banking under the Accademia Bridge…before without warning, its tailfin just exploded to nothing.

Then he watched in horror as the black-and-yellow Ferrari arced down into the water, where it tumbled and splashed and rolled, before it stopped abruptly, upsidedown.

And then the Yamaha screamed into it.

Boom.

What the hell had happened to his tailfin?
he thought.
What
had caused it to explode?

It was just too weird. And since there was nothing left of the
Argonaut II
, it was impossible to inspect the wreckage.

But Jason knew one thing: tailfins didn’t just explode by themselves. Sure, a broken tailfin might get rammed and drop into the airpath of a car’s own thrusters, but such instances were rare, and by all appearances, Jason’s tailfin hadn’t been damaged in any way.

It had just spontaneously exploded.

The truth was clear to Jason: someone had tampered with his car in order to put him out of the Italian Run.

And now, more than anything, he wanted to know who that had been.

* * *

At one point, as he was watching the video-disc for the thousandth time, his mother tapped lightly on the door.

‘Hello dear,’ Martha Chaser said. ‘There’s someone here who was hoping to see you.’