Reality was the road.
He hit the duel envelope, tore through it at a hundred and sixty. Driver Control squawked the fact, whole seconds late. Peripheral glimpses of huddled vehicles on the bridge and ramps. Police lights, news crew vans and a rising boil of activity as the Saab slammed past them. He thought he felt the lenses of the cameras swing hungrily to follow.
No, you’ve just had way too much coffee.
A slightly hysterical laugh sat behind the thought. He forced it down and watched the hurrying perspective of the road, keyed up for the evening-blue flash of Mike’s BMW. His speed sank to a more cautious hundred and thirty. The ghost of strategy floated up behind his eyes. Retained knowledge of the route from the blow-ups, sense of how Bryant drove.
Bryant! He grinned wolfishly. Folded away his misgivings, gave in to the pure hot flow of too-fucking-late-now.
Come on, you motherfucker. I took Liz off you, now let’s see about that pretty blue car. Let’s see about your plastic.
Lopez. Barranco. The men and women in the gunship-tortured highlands of the NAME. But most of all Bryant, Bryant and his craven fucking, keep-the-rain-off-me need for Hewitt and Notley and all the rest of it.
He mapped the faces over - Bryant into Quain. Just another murderous fucking suit. Just another—
The Saab hammered down towards junction ten. The first of the automated transporters blew up in his vision, nailed to the centre lane. Chime from the proximity alert, as he swung the Saab out and past. Gut-deep satisfaction as the car swayed and then straightened out under his hands. The high metal wall slid away on his left and he swung back in.
The road ahead—
Impact!
He was still swimming in the warm gutswirl of car control. Flash of twilight blue in one wing mirror, metallic screech of impact from the rear. Jolt of the crash, the seatbelt webbing grip across his chest. He braked instinctively, remembered the transporter and slewed the Saab hard right. The automated vehicle’s collision alert split the air, blaring banshee outrage above and behind him. He didn’t have time to see if it had braked. Mike Bryant’s BMW shot past on the left, shedding speed and hauling across to stay with the Saab. Forcing the duel, right here, right now, right under the grille of the transporter.
He swam the blind spot, Chris knew numbly. Shadowed the automated vehicle from the front until he spotted Chris in the depths of the wing-mirror, falling back on the left as Chris overtook right, timing it on instinct, pinning the Saab’s blind spot as it emerged ahead of the transporter, getting up close for the ram—
Even drunk, even like that, he’s the best I’ve seen.
He’s harder and faster than you—
Chris saw the BMW coming side-on and hauled over savagely. The two cars met with a shriek. Flayed paint and sparks in the crushed air between. Counterforce tried to push them apart again. Chris kept the clinch, steering against the other car so the grating scream ran on like nails down a blackboard. Bryant rode it, forcing him back and closer to the central reservation. The BMW’s greater weight was telling, the plan loomed massively clear. Side impact at this speed would smash the barrier down but not clear it. The wreckage would kick the Saab into the air like a toy.
Options.
Behind them somewhere, the automated transporter came on, an unknown quantity Chris didn’t have time to look for.
Desperation crept out, flicker-tongued in his guts.
He floored the accelerator, but the BMW’s nose already had him blocked. Bryant had locked with careful malice, a half metre ahead of neck-and-neck, enough to cut off any escape forward. Now, through both side windows, he looked over at Chris and ripped a cocked thumb across his own throat. He was grinning. The crash barrier—
Chris hit the brakes with everything he had.
The Saab staggered. Jerked free of the sparking, sandpapering fury on its left flank. There was time for a flash glimpse of the transporter coming up and he hauled hard left across Mike’s rear, across the centre lane and out of the automated vehicle’s path. Another blaring of machine rage and the transporter thundered past on his right cutting off vision of the BMW and what it was doing. Chris gritted curses and let them both go. Junction eight. His speed bled down to an unsteady ninety. Adrenalin reaction sloshed in his guts.
He caught a distant glimpse of the BMW disappearing down the incline towards the underpass.
It didn’t take much imagination to work out what was coming. He had about a minute, he reckoned. After that— After that, somewhere down in the gloom of the tunnel, Mike Bryant would have executed his one-hundred-and-eighty degree crash-stop turn, would be barrelling back up the road towards him for the head-to-head chicken.
That old number. The Mike Bryant profile - fearless, headlong, savage. Conservative to the end.
Chris built speed. Cranked his nerves back up to drive tension. He passed the transporter again. Head buzzing with calculation.
Two outcomes for this. The head-to-head kills the duel, one way or another. Saab or BMW out of the game, turned too hard, too late and tumbled, into the path of the long-suffering transporter maybe, or maybe both cars, clipped against each other, tossed effortlessly apart with kinetic energy raging off at all angles, looking to shed itself in impact and flame. Or—
Or we both make it, and you’re south, up and into the Gullet, no way to fight but slow down and let him ram you off into space like Hewitt did to Page, or try for the turn, a hundred and eighty screaming degrees on a vaulted highway only two lanes across.
He thought of this. He thought it out. Three-stage play, the crash barrier, the head-to-head, the end game in the Gullet. And he knows you can’t make that turn. The BMW bloomed in the road ahead. Up out of the tunnel ramp. Very fast.
He had time for a glance at the speedo, saw a hundred and something insane, doubled it in his head for Bryant’s share of the speed, saw the BMW’s armoured snout coming at him, rock steady and directly ahead—
He’s harder and faster than you— —and yelled, and hauled hard right.
The BMW flinched fragments of a second later. Flashed past. Was gone.
Chris floored the accelerator and the Saab dived for the tunnel. Again, he had a minute at best. Not the time he needed, he’d have to make some more. The tunnel flew past in the hollow roar of the Saab’s echoed passing. Up, out of the gloom and into sudden, watery sunlight. The Gullet flung itself down at him like a massive asphalt loading ramp. He rose to meet it, took the first curve at the very edges of his driving ability.
Felt his heart stumble as the Saab palpably gathered enough sideways momentum to skid. He dared not brake, there wasn’t time. He needed the straight at speed. He unhinged the angle of the turn a miserly couple of degrees, slewed back across the double lane, fishtailing, muttering imprecations to the car. The Saab came back to him. He picked up the long rise-and-fall of the straight and ran for the next curve.
Almost to the end of the gut-tickling swoop, almost on the curve, he choked off his speed and threw the Saab into a shrieking, gibbering handbrake turn.
For one very long moment, he thought he’d fucked up. Thought he’d lose a tyre and then the car and plunge with it through the crash barrier into the zones below. The car slithered, tripped drunkenly across a badly mended pothole, screamed protest and tyre smoke he could suddenly smell—
And stopped.
Not the hundred and eighty. Just a ninety-degree sprawl across both lanes, blocking the Gullet like a bone in the throat.
Back along the straight, the BMW came over the rise.
He grabbed the shotgun from the passenger side footwell, threw open the driver side door and tumbled out of the car. Found his feet, found the BMW and cranked the action of the tactical pump.