They completely ignored Book II and Mother—instead they headed straight for Schofield, their machine pistols drawn.
Knight saw them in the rear-view mirror, slammed down on the brakes.
The Driftrunner lurched, and everyone was thrown forward, including Schofield, Mother, Book and Pokey in the back.
Like dominoes falling, the three other trucks in the convoy all rammed into each other, thumping nose-to-tail, nose-to-tail, nose-to-tail.
Up in Schofield's Driftrunner, the three Skorpions attacking him were all flung forward.
One dropped his gun as he reached for a handhold; another tumbled to the floor next to Schofield; the third was thrown all the way forward into the driver's compartment where he slammed into the dashboard and looked up to find himself staring into the barrel of a silver shotgun, a blue laser dot illuminating his nose.
Boom!
Knight fired.
The trooper's head exploded like a can of tomato soup.
Knight jammed the accelerator back down and the Driftrunner shot forward again.
The other two Spetsnaz guys, however, their balance now restored, only had eyes for Schofield.
The gunless one drew a Warlock hunting knife, the other brought his VZ-61 machine pistol around fast—
—and at that very same moment, Knight snapped round and saw them, and something in his eyes ignited, a look that said that Schofield could never ever be touched.
Schofield reacted quickly.
He parried the machine pistol away, karate-style, pushing its barrel to the side just as his enemy fired.
But he couldn't hold off the two of them.
The knife-wielding Skorpion lunged at him, swiping at his throat—
—and suddenly Aloysius Knight was there—
—and with incredible strength, Knight yanked both the knife-wielder and the VZ-61 man away from Schofield, down into the driver's compartment—
—at precisely the same moment as their Driftrunner was rammed hard by the truck behind it.
Knight and the two Spetsnaz commandos were hurled forward, and they smashed right through the windshield of their Driftrunner, went tumbling onto its bonnet.
Truth be told, they didn't actually smash the windscreen. Constructed of shatterproof glass, the windscreen just burst into a spiderweb of cracks and popped out of its frame, landing on the bonnet as an intact but crumpled rectangular mat.
The four Driftrunners continued to rocket down the narrow
tunnel.
Schofield now saw that Knight had wisely wedged a steel bar against the gas pedal, keeping their Driftrunner moving down the dead-straight tunnel, its steering corrected by the tunnel's close
stone walls.
Out on the bonnet of the first Driftrunner, Knight struggled with
the two Skorpions.
The knife-wielder was trying desperately to get back to Schofield, while the VZ-61-armed one had lost his gun in the scramble to get a handhold.
Knight, however, had caught the worst of the smash through the windscreen—he lay with his legs dangling off the front of the speeding Driftrunner, hanging onto its bullbar for dear life.
He saw the knife-wielder clawing his way back towards Schofield, grabbed the man's boot and yanked hard on it, dragging the knife-wielder toward the front of the bonnet . . . and off it!
With a horrified scream, the Russian trooper went under the front of the Driftrunner, under its roaring tyres. He tumbled and smacked underneath the wheels of the whole convoy of Driftrunners before he was spat out the back of the fourth truck, crumpled and mangled and dead.
The other Skorpion saw this and started kicking at Knight's hands, but Knight got a grip on the man's belt and started pulling on it too.
'No!' the Skorpion yelled. 'Noooo!'
'You can't have him!' Knight called, dragging the Spetsnaz trooper toward the front of the bonnet.
The Skorpion came alongside Knight. He was a big guy, with a fierce angry face. He clutched Knight's throat.
'If I go, Black Knight, you go too . . .' he growled.
Knight looked him in the eye. 'Fine.'
And with that Knight kicked himself clear of the front of the Driftrunner—dragging the aghast Russian commando with him— and dropped to the dusty roadway in front of the speeding truck . . .
The Spetsnaz trooper hit the ground and rolled and—splat!—was flattened under the wheels of the lead Driftrunner.
Unlike Knight, he hadn't grabbed the mat-like windscreen of the Driftrunner on his way down.
As he'd fallen off the front of the Driftrunner, Knight had snatched the cracked-glass mat and thrown it to the rushing ground
beneath him.
The mat hit the ground—and Knight landed on it, cat-like—and the mat slid along the dusty ground, at first sliding forward, before whoosh the first Driftrunner roared over the top of it, and over the top of Knight, too!
The convoy of Driftrunners—all four of them—rumbled quickly forward, over the tiny figure of Aloysius Knight sliding on his back on his makeshift mat.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh . . .
Knight shot underneath the quartet of trucks and was about to blast out behind the last Driftrunner when he drew his second shotgun, held it by the barrel . . . and hooked its pistol-grip on the underside of the rear bumper of the fourth and last
Driftrunner.
The mat swished out from under him, tumbled away into the darkness of the tunnel, and Knight was dragged along behind the Driftrunner, his flailing legs bouncing on the roadway.
Then he reached up and hauled himself up into the tray of the last Driftrunner, ready to rejoin the fight.
• • •
Up in the first Driftrunner, Schofield was now sitting in the driver's seat. After Knight had gone flying out through the windshield and under the front of the truck, Schofield had kicked away the steel bar pinned to the gas pedal and taken the wheel.
In the rear-view mirror, he saw Mother and Book II fighting hand-to-hand with their two Spetsnaz assholes—saw two more Skorpion troopers make the leap forward from the second Driftrunner onto his one.
These two new guys charged straight for Schofield in the driver's compartment.
There are just too many of them, Schofield's mind screamed.
He saw the two new Skorpions rushing forward, guns drawn. They'd be on him in seconds.
And then he remembered something about mining vehicles. He hurriedly reached for his seatbelt.
'Book! Mother! Hang on to something!'
Then he reached across the driver's compartment . . . and kicked open the passenger door of the Driftrunner.
The response was instantaneous.
The Driftrunner's handbrake immediately activated itself and the speeding truck came to a sudden bone-jarring halt. It was a safety feature on all mining vehicles—to prevent miners from being hurt, if the passenger door was opened, the vehicle was instantly disabled, its park-brake initiated.
Caught by surprise, the second Driftrunner slammed into the back of the first one. The third and fourth trucks did the same, running into each other like a collapsing accordion.
As for the two Skorpions who had been coming for Schofield, one went flying through the now-empty windscreen, hurled at least 15 feet clear of the vehicle, the other caught his chin on the roof of the driver's cabin and while his legs flew forward, his head stayed still, and with a sickening snap! his neck broke.