Lutz.
He knew now why Lutz had whirled away and walked away out of the hangar. And he knew exactly why Lutz was here now.
The car swerved toward them. Ahead the brick face of the tunnel entrance swelled in the windshield like an oncoming apparition.
The car thumped against the left handlebar of the motorcycle, sending it into a violent oscillation. Maxwell heard Claire scream, and he fought to maintain control.
He clamped on the brakes, trying to slow down and drop behind the car. Lutz slowed with him, still swerving, again banging into the bike. Maxwell jammed on full throttle to accelerate ahead.
It didn’t work. Lutz sped up, turning to cut him off. The Toyota swerved into the bike again, veering it toward the ditch.
The brick wall was on them. Maxwell turned the bike hard to the right, off the road and through the shallow ditch. The bike hit the slope of the embankment, missing the brick tunnel face by three feet.
Whump. The big Harley bounced off the incline of the embankment, the front wheel kicking high in the air.
The bike was airborne, sailing over the embankment. He heard a piercing wail from behind him. Claire’s fingers were gouging like daggers into his ribs. In his peripheral vision Maxwell saw the white car vanish into the tunnel.
The railroad track skimmed beneath them. The bike cleared the crest of the embankment, still airborne descending rear wheel first, plummeting toward the hard Virginia soil like a stone.
Maxwell’s last impression before impact was the long, loud wail from the girl on the seat behind him.
Darkness.
It happened so quickly. Lutz’s head was turned to the right, watching the bike disappear, when he entered the tunnel at over fifty miles per hour. Then the blackness inside the tunnel. It was if a switch had been thrown.
Fifty yards ahead he saw an expanding light at the end of the tunnel. It was like peering through a telescope.
The motorcycle? His last glimpse was as it veered off to the right. Then it hit something. The wall? The embankment?
He would stop beyond the tunnel and go back on foot. He’d find the wreckage of the motorcycle, and if they were somehow still alive he’d finish them.
Squinting in the darkness of the tunnel, he could trees and foliage ahead. Then he saw the diamond-shaped sign just beyond the exit. A left turn arrow.
And something else.
Lutz was momentarily blinded as the car flashed back into the sunlight.
Too late, he saw it. The orange construction barricade, blocking the right lane. He was going too fast, still over fifty. He slammed on the brakes and snatched the wheel hard to the left. The Toyota went into a tire-screeching skid.
The car smashed broadside through the wooden barrier. Skidding through the depression of the fleshly excavated asphalt, the Toyota spun around, sliding backwards, and left the road in a sickening skid.
When the Toyota hit the ditch, it flipped onto its side, then slid through the brush and low saplings until it impacted a solid stand of maple trees.
A cloud of dust and leaves settled over the wreck. No sound came from the Toyota except the tinkle of glass and settling debris and the hiss of steam.
A hell of a ride.
Wobbling to his feet, Maxwell removed his helmet and did a damage assessment. The helmet had an ugly scrape where it had contacted something solid. His uniform coat was torn, one sleeve hanging like a pennant. The knee was gone from one trouser leg.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, he seemed to be alive. Leaping a railroad embankment at fifty miles an hour on a motorcycle was a feat he had never expected to survive. He should have broken every bone in his body.
He stood there, his thinking still muddled, trying to reconstruct what happened. They had landed in a hedge, which had probably—
Claire. Oh, hell, where is Claire?
He had a vague memory of flying over the embankment, plunging into the hedge, being vaulted over the handlebars. He’d landed on his side, rolling in a ball down the slope into a waist-high thicket of vines and saplings.
Where is Claire?
He clambered back up the slope. The Harley was protruding from the hedge like an abstract sculpture. The front wheel was skewed back at a grotesque angle, and the handlebars were bent like a pretzel.
No sign of Claire. She wasn’t in the hedge. Nor was she on the embankment where he had landed after departing the bike.
Then he saw her. She was in a thicket of briars and vines, thirty yards away. The foliage was so thick he hadn’t seen her. She appeared to be okay except—
She wasn’t moving. She was sitting in the weeds, motionless, as if she were paralyzed. Or badly hurt. Or worse.
Maxwell stumbled down through the weeds to her. “Claire! Are you—”
“Sssshhh.” She held her finger to her lips. She wasn’t paralyzed. She was kneeling, pointing at an object fifty yards away. It was the hulk of what used to be a white Toyota, crunched up against a stand of trees. A wisp of steam was coming from the crumpled hood.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“I think so. Where you’d learn to ride like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like Evel Knieval.”
“I didn’t. That’s why we crashed.”
She made a face, then turned back to the wrecked Toyota. “That’s the car that almost killed us. I think he hit something coming out of the tunnel.”
Maxwell looked at the car. There was no sign of life. If Lutz was still in it, he was unconscious. Or dead, which was even better.
He started toward the car.
Claire grabbed his sleeve. “Where are you going?”
“To have a chat with the driver. He needs some remedial training.”
“Don’t, Sam. Did you see his face? He’s a killer.”
Worse than that, thought Maxwell. If he was right about Lutz, he was the one who gave the Black Star to the Chinese.
“He’s probably unconscious. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” He gave her a quick kiss and a smile that conveyed more conviction than he really felt.
Watching for movement, he crossed the low thicket between them and the smashed Toyota. The car lay on its side, driver’s side up. The roof was crunched up against the trunk of a large tree. As he approached, he saw no sign of life.
Maxwell knelt and peered through the broken back window. He couldn’t see the driver. Maybe he was slumped on the floor.
He walked around to the front. Steam was hissing from beneath the wrinkled hood. The windshield was shattered, the spider web of cracks making it difficult to see inside. He had to stand on the bumper, raising himself up to peer through the broken glass.
He was still standing on the bumper when Claire’s voice reached him from across the thicket. “Sam! Behind you!”
Maxwell whirled, and there was Lutz. His face was twisted into a snarling mask. Behind the thick-lensed spectacles, the bulging orbs looked like the eyes of an undersea creature.
Lutz was on him before he could react. From three feet away he lunged, grabbing Maxwell around the torso. They hit the ground in a heap, Lutz on top, ramming the breath from Maxwell.
Lutz had a hand clamped on his throat. His other hand was clawing at Maxwell’s face, gouging at his eyes. Lutz glowered down into Maxwell’s face. “Hello, glory hound,” he said. “Remember me?”
Maxwell was shocked at the man’s agility. Lutz was big, at least two inches taller and a good sixty pounds heavier, but he had moved with surprising speed.
Lutz’s fingers were probing for his eyes, clawing his face. The hand on his throat felt like a vise, squeezing the life from him. Maxwell’s vision was fading into a dark field of tiny twinkling lights. He felt the life draining from him.