'Please do something,' Gant said.
Two seconds . . .
The stone archway of the tunnel rushed toward them.
'Okay . . .' Schofield said. 'You want to play nasty? Let's play nasty.'
One . . .
Then, just as the WRX was about to slam at tremendous speed into the arched entrance of the tunnel, Schofield allowed the Ferrari to push him closer to the wall, driving him further up it, making the WRX rise up to about 60 degrees, its right-hand wheels riding clear up onto the wall itself.
And then time slowed and Schofield did the impossible.
He let the WRX ride so high up the rocky wall that, five metres short of the tunnel's archway, the electric blue rally car went too high . . . and rolled ... to the left, turning completely upside down ... so that it landed, on its roof. . . on the roof of the low-slung Ferrari travelling beside it.
And so, for a brief instant in time, the WRX and the Ferrari were travelling rooftop-to-rooftop, the WRX's wheels pointing skyward, its roof resting momentarily on the roof of the lower red Ferrari!
And then time sped up again and the WRX rolled off the Ferrari, bouncing back down to earth, now safely on the ocean side of the scarlet red supercar, and blasted into the tunnel with the Ferrari on its right.
The Porsche, unfortunately, had no options.
Travelling right behind Schofield it had intended to pull away at the last moment. Its driver, however, had never imagined that Schofield might roll over the top of the Ferrari. When Schofield did so, the Porsche driver stared at his feat for a split second too long.
As such, it was the Porsche that hit the archway at colossal speed. Instant fireball.
The Ferrari was only slightly more fortunate.
Having rolled over the top of it, Schofield now started ramming it into the wall of the tunnel. He did a better job than they had, cutting across the bow of the Ferrari, causing it to jackknife against the tunnel's right-hand wall and flip and tumble—spinning over and over like a toy flung by a child—bouncing down the confined space of the tunnel, skimming off its walls, before it stopped on its roof, wrecked and crumpled, its occupants deader than disco.
.
Schofield and Gant blasted out of the tunnel, just as the second Skorpion Mi-34 attack chopper swooped in alongside them, flying parallel to the cliff-side roadway with a sniper in its right-side doorway firing viciously.
One thing was clear—while Schofield was driving as fast as he could, the nimble chopper was merely cruising.
'Fox!' Schofield called. 'We have to get rid of that chopper! Nail that sniper!'
'Gladly,' Gant said. 'Lean back!'
Schofield did so as Gant raised her Desert Eagle pistol and fired it across his body, out through his window at the chopper.
Two shots. Both hit their mark.
And the sniper dropped . . . out of the chopper's door.
But he was buckled to a safety rope, so after about 40 feet of falling, his rope snapped taut and his fall abruptly stopped.
'Thanks, honey babe!' Schofield called, watching the suspended figure when suddenly Gant shouted, 'Scarecrow! Look out! Another fork!'
He snapped forward and saw a new fork in the road, this one with a side-road branching left and downward, while the Ocean Road continued flat to the right.
Left or right, he thought. Pick a side.
A shellburst from the incoming French destroyer hit the right-hand road.
Left it is.
He swung the car left, tyres squealing, and careered down the steeply sloping side-road.
The chopper followed.
Half a mile behind Schofield, Aloysius Knight was shooting along the Great Ocean Road in his shiny black Lamborghini Diablo.
The two semi-trailer rigs that had formed the road block before now rumbled along directly in front of him, while beyond them, he saw the three yellow Axon-sponsored Peugeots that ExSol had taken from the castle.
And about fifty yards beyond the Peugeots, he saw Schofield's blue WRX reach a fork in the road, hounded by the remaining Skorpion Mi-34 helicopter.
Knight stole a glance left at the destroyer out on the ocean, just as two bird-like shadows shot through the air over the warship, heading directly for the coastal road.
They looked decidedly like fighter jets, originating from the French aircraft carrier on the horizon.
Uh-oh, Knight thought.
He faced forward again just in time to see Schofield's car cut left at the fork in the road, disappearing down a side-road set into the cliff-face.
At which point, he saw Schofield's pursuers do a strange thing.
They split up.
Only one of the Axon Peugeots followed Schofield down the side-road. The other two went right, following the Ocean Road, skirting a newly-formed crater in the roadway.
Then the two trailer rigs came to the fork and went left, charging down the hill after Schofield.
Co-ordinated movement, Knight thought. They've got a plan.
And then Knight himself reached the fork and without any hesitation, he gunned the Lamborghini down the left-hand roadway, shooting down the hill after Schofield.
• * *
Schofield's WRX whizzed down the steep boathouse road, burning around blind corners, skidding around tight bends.
As it sped along, a storm of bullets hammered its flanks and the rock walls all around it—it was still under heavy fire from the Mi-34 chopper flying low through the air behind it, firing at the WRX with its side-mounted machine-guns.
The chopper's dead sniper still hung limply from its open side door, his body swaying wildly, occasionally bouncing on the road, leaving blood on the asphalt.
More fire came from the yellow Peugeot rally car that had followed Schofield down the boathouse road, from the shooter poking out of its passenger-side window with a Steyr.
Two hundred yards behind this speeding gun battle, Knight was also driving hard.
His Lamborghini easily hauled in the two semi-trailer rigs, and he whizzed past them in a fluid S-shaped move before they even knew he was there.
Knight came up behind the yellow Peugeot, tried to get around it on the right, but the Peugeot blocked him. Tried left and gunned it hard—very hard—and in a daring move, overtook the Peugeot on the ocean side of the road.
The Lamborghini shot past the yellow rally car, the driver of the Peugeot looking left just in time to see the Diablo rocket by in a blur of black—at the same time as an M-67 grenade came lobbing in through his open driver's window.
The Lamborghini shot down the road as the Peugeot erupted in a ball of flames. The flaming Peugeot promptly missed the next curve and blasted right through the guard-rail fence there and fell— a long, slow drop that ended in the Atlantic Ocean far, far below.
Knight's Lamborghini was now twenty yards behind Schofield's WRX and the Mi-34 chopper above it.
Knight saw that Schofield was now racing down a long straight stretch of road that ended at a tunnel at the very base of this side-road—a tunnel that gave access to an enormous boatshed.
'Schofield!' Knight called into his radio. 'Don't shoot behind you, okay! The Lamborghini is me!'
'The Lamborghini. Why doesn't that surprise me,' said Schofield's voice. 'Nice of you to join us. Anything you can do about this damn helicopter?'
Knight took in the scene: saw Schofield's blue WRX up ahead, rapidly approaching the tunnel—saw the underbelly of the Mi-34 directly above and behind the WRX, saw the swaying Russian sniper dangling from it, banging and bouncing on the road right in front of his speeding Diablo.