“Good things these old cars don’t have airbags.”
Fallon nodded but then realized what she was saying. “Oh, you’re not going to…” Leaving the sentence unfinished, he reached down to the upholstered arm rest on the center console, and flipped it up to reveal several small switches.
“Bumper extensions,” he said as he flipped a couple of them, then straightened in his seat, gripping the dashboard with both hands in anticipation of the impending crash.
Carter didn’t know what he was talking about, and she was too focused on the approaching gate to care. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed movement. A driverless electric cart, possibly the same one that had delivered her to Fallon’s building, was rolling down a side-road on an intercept course.
She pushed the car harder, winding out fourth gear, and shot past the intersection before the cart could cut her off. There was a slight jolt as the robotic vehicle grazed the sports car’s rear end, but they were going too fast for it to make any difference.
Carter kept watch for more kamikaze carts as the gate drew closer, but the hacker was out of tricks. She gripped the wheel and kept the pedal to the floor, closing the remaining distance so quickly that it came as a surprise when the front bumper slammed into the metal gate.
The barrier flipped up and spun around in mid-air, registering a glancing blow on the car’s roof. Carter felt the impact shudder through the vehicle’s frame and heard the engine whine in protest for a moment, but that was it. She downshifted as they reached the main highway. Traffic was light, and she barely touched the brakes as they skidded through the turn, crossing to the far lane that would take them back to Geneva. Then she accelerated again.
Beside her, Fallon let out his breath in a long relieved sigh. “Not bad. I’m glad we’re on the same side. Though you are kind of hard on my toys.”
“Your toys tried to kill us.” She glanced over at him, wondering if they really were on the same side. “We need to get somewhere safe and figure out our next move.”
“Our next move is taking back Tomorrowland. That hacker may have caught me with my pants down, but he’s played his hand. It’s my turn now, and payback’s a bitch.”
Despite the bravado, Carter knew he was right about their priorities. Removing the memory metal from the transmitter had not shut the Black Knight satellite down, so regaining control of the array was imperative. “I have a friend who might be able to help with that.”
She was about to dig out her phone to call Dourado, but a flash of color in the rear view mirror stopped her. A familiar-looking blue car had just turned onto the highway behind them. “Is that your Tesla?”
Fallon craned his head around. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ That must be our hacker.”
Fallon shook his head miserably. “No. It’s autonomous.”
Two more cars, one a cream-colored sedan, the other a sleek black coupe emerged from the Tomorrowland gate to join the pursuit. She couldn’t discern the make or model, but there was little question that they were also from Fallon’s stable. “You turned your cars into robots?”
“No, they come that way. Self-driving cars are inevitable, so a lot of car makers are getting a jump on it by pre-installing the hardware in newer models. Actually, the design uses some of my patents, so I guess you could say it was me.”
The significance of that was not lost on Carter. Their unknown foe could turn any autonomous car on the road against them.
The blue car was closing the distance. In terms of speed, the Tesla was more than a match for the older, classic sports car, but its real advantage was the computer brain controlling it, informed by an array of cameras, radar, and laser sensors, with reaction time measured in picoseconds and no fear whatsoever. The black car swung out from behind the Tesla and pulled up alongside it, matching its speed. Both vehicles were so close that Carter could see their distinctive hood ornaments — the stylized T with wings of Tesla motors on the blue car, and the blue and white checkered circle that identified the coupe as a Beemer.
Fallon saw them, too, and to Carter’s astonishment he gave a little laugh. “Ha. Watch this.”
He reached for the armrest again, and this time Carter could not help but glance down as he threw one of the switches.
A cloud of black smoke billowed out behind the car, blocking her view of the two pursuit vehicles. “A smoke screen?” she asked, incredulous. “Seriously?”
“Whoops,” Fallon said. “Wrong one.” He flipped a different switch.
Although the two vehicles were still partially hidden by the dense cloud, Carter could tell that something was happening. The blue car swerved into the coupe, and then both cars were spinning as if they had hit a patch of ice…
Or an oil slick.
The BMW went sideways and then flipped and started tumbling down the highway before disappearing once more in the smoke. The Tesla veered off the road and crashed into a fence.
“You made a spy car,” Carter said, with more than a little disgust. “Or are you going to tell me those are standard features, too?”
“They are for this car,” Fallon said with a grin. “This is the actual Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger. All the gadgets from the movie were actually built into the car. I got it at auction a few years ago.”
The smoke screen petered out, but there was no sign of pursuit behind them. Or any other traffic for that matter. The opposite lane was turning into a parking lot.
“Someone sold you a car with actual working spy weapons? Oil slicks and machine guns? Missiles?”
“There aren’t any missiles,” Fallon replied, sounding just a little rueful. “And the machine guns were just props. I had to switch those out, but believe me, I wouldn’t have paid what I did for this car unless the gadgets were functional. Never would have dreamed I’d actually get to use them.”
“You just dumped oil all over a Swiss highway, and all you can think is ‘dreams come true?’” Even as she said it, she remembered that she was up to her neck in this mess because of Fallon’s reckless — almost sociopathic — disregard for consequences.
“You said it yourself. My toys are trying to kill us. Well, I just used one of my toys to save us. And I am letting you drive.”
Carter had no argument for either point. “Just don’t use the oil slick again if you can help it.”
“Couldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s a one-shot deal. Smoke screen and oil slick are gone, but we still have road spikes, tire-shredder hubcaps, and of course the machine guns. Oh, and don’t worry about the ejection seat. That was never functional.”
“Pity,” she muttered, entertaining a fantasy of pushing a button and shooting Fallon through the roof. She shook her head to clear the image. “If we can’t get back into Tomorrowland, we may need to come up with some alternatives. What would it take to build a new transmitter?”
“Well, the Roswell Fragment is the critical component. Aside from that, any large radio telescope with a 10 gigahertz frequency transmitter should suffice.” Fallon looked back at Tanaka, as if for confirmation. “There’s at least a dozen of them in Europe. I think the closest one is in France.”
“Finding the right antenna isn’t the problem,” Tanaka said. “It’s time. We’re—”
“Look out!”
Carter had been watching the road the whole time but saw nothing to warrant Fallon’s cry of alarm. Unsure of where to look for the threat, she chose the only route that she knew was clear — straight ahead — and floored the gas pedal again.
The Aston Martin shot forward again. As they raced ahead, she spied movement in the mirrors — not a car, but something else. A flying something.