The narrow cobbled street raced by in a blur.
Tom quickly lost sight of the names of any street signs, not that it was a problem. Away from the main tourist section, he didn’t have a clue where they were heading. It didn’t matter. He was already putting distance between them and their attacker.
Unable to aim and shoot, the rider had backed off a bit. Every now and again, she would gain on them, and Genevieve would fire another shot. The Alfa 4C wasn’t designed for rearward shooting. Its carbon fiber shell and mid-positioned engine made for decent protection, but a lousy shooting platform.
Four or five blocks passed by quickly. The main road separated into two smaller one-way streets. Tom glanced at Genevieve. “Which way?”
“How the hell should I know?” Genevieve asked. “There’s no map. Go right.”
Tom braked hard and swerved right.
The lateral G-force meter read 1.3 gravities. He felt his entire body slide to the left, and then he straightened up and it returned to zero.
The street opened into a small piazza.
“Corso Cavour up ahead!” Tom said, spotting a street sign.
“Go right.”
Tom rounded the corner, without easing off the speed in the process. The G-force meter read 1.6 before the back-end started to slide. He worked the steering wheel and accelerated out of the slide, straightening up in an easterly direction.
“You know where we are?” Tom asked.
“No!” Genevieve smiled like she was enjoying herself. “But look what just fell on me from behind my seat.”
Tom glanced at her. She looked beautiful. Her short brown hair had become tousled in the wind, and her sapphire-blue eyes sparkled as they deliberately fixed on a tourist map of Orvieto. Her lips curled in that mischievous smile that depicted everything he’d come to love and adore about her. “Look what I just found!”
“Nice. Where are we headed?”
“Stay on this one and take the left onto Via della Cava.”
Tom turned left and sped down and under a small bridge.
At the roundabout Genevieve said, “Go left again!”
“Okay.”
Tom took the left onto Str. di Porta Romana. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The rider was a fair way off, but it wasn’t going to take much for her to catch up once they were out in the open away from Orvieto.
A signed pointed to the entrance to Orvieto.
“Shouldn’t we be heading away from here?” he asked.
“Not yet.” Genevieve grinned. “There’s a sharp bend coming up.”
“I see it!”
“Good. I need you to put as much distance as you can between us and our pursuer. When you get around the blind side of the bend, stop the car and let me out.”
“Then what?”
“Keep going, and I’ll get rid of our tail.”
Tom thought she was crazy, but she had the right idea. He took the sharp bend into Via Ripa Medici at eighty miles an hour. The G-meter went berserk, indicating a 2.1 G lateral force. Tom glanced at it and wondered at what point the little Alfa would cease to defy the laws of physics and roll.
He straightened up and jammed on the brakes.
The car skidded to a stop.
Genevieve jumped out and aimed her Beretta toward the edge of the blind corner. Tom put his foot down and took off again.
In his rear-view mirror, he spotted the Aprilia leaning heavily into the left as it rounded the tight bend. Then he heard the shots fire. Three of them in immediate procession.
The bike wobbled, and the rider threw her body into the right side trying to save it. She might have succeeded, too, if there was more room. But in the narrow bend approaching Via Ripa Medici, there just wasn’t enough time.
The rider realized it at the last moment, but it was too late.
The Aprilia hit the guardrail. In an instant the rider and bike were flung off the edge of the fortress-like wall that surrounded the outer ring around Orvieto — falling more than a hundred feet to the ledge below.
Tom spun the car around and picked up Genevieve.
He took off again. Driving at a normal speed, he turned left at the roundabout and down the winding Via della Segheria.
“Now where do you want to go?” Tom asked.
“Florence airport.”
Tom looked at her and smiled. “Perguia’s closer. That much I know.”
“Sure, but Sam’s jet won’t be here for another three hours to pick us up, and I bet you anything you want, Perguia’s the first place our new-found friends will go to look for us.”
“There’s plenty of things I want.” He smiled lasciviously. “And all of them are with you. But you’re probably right.”
“I’m always right,” she said.
“And magnanimous in your victory, too.”
He pulled onto the A1 Autostrada del Sole and floored the accelerator. The four-cylinder turbocharged engine purred in delight. “It sounds like a great day for a drive…”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The Gulfstream G650 circled the picturesque island.
Sam glanced out the large window to his side at the idyllic sight of a bygone world. Positioned some 436 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia in the Pacific Ocean, the irregular, crescent-shaped volcanic remnant formed a well-protected cove to the west that appeared turquoise from the air. The island was home to a variety of endemic flora and fauna, while its reef boasted the most southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and was filled with a plethora of marine-life.
The aircraft came in to land, using up nearly every single one of the 2,907 feet of runway. The island normally didn’t accept jets, but today they were just going to have to make an exception. On board during the flight, Sam, Tom, Billie, Genevieve, and Elise were each combing through digital databases of the island for any indication of an old burial ground, or deep underground recess or cave. So far, they’d found nothing.
Sam ended his cell phone call.
Billie looked at him and asked, “Find anything?”
“Yes. We got our first lead.”
“It’s on the island?” she asked.
“No.”
Tom entered the conversation. “Then where are we going?”
“Beneath Ball’s Pyramid.”
Elise was incredulous. “Not much of a hiding spot for a temple, is it?”
Sam smiled at that. “No. But I’ve spoken to Demyan, the volcanologist we met in Hawaii. He tells me that Ball’s Pyramid is the ancient erosional remnant of a shield volcano. He’s crunched the numbers, and given the natural movement of the shape of the earth over time, the location makes a better match for the antipode than Lorde Howe Island.”
“That’s your lead?” Billie asked.
“Think about it,” Sam persisted. “The place is the perfect shape for a hidden pyramid, its set on a volcanic plug, and with a height of 1844 feet, the stone tower would have plenty of mass to fill the sacred stone.”
“How did you plan to get there?” Tom fixed on the more obvious logistical problem. “There are no helicopters on the island.”
Sam said, “A local dive operator’s going to take us out by boat. I’ve explained what’s going on, and he’s happy to help any way he can.”
Billie smiled. “You told him about the sacred stones and the extinction of the human race? How did that go?”