Knight, Schofield and Gant were all thrown forward by the impact.
Knight and Schofield turned to each other and said at exactly the same time: 'There are two rally cars coming at us from in front!'
They both paused. Mirror images.
'What happened to her!' Knight said.
'She got shot by a fighter plane,' Schofield said.
'Oh.'
The two trucks charged up the hill, their exhaust stacks belching black smoke.
Then suddenly the two yellow rally cars that had gone ahead came into view, rounding a wide bend right in front of Knight and Schofield's rig, roaring down the same slope—both cars featuring men leaning out their passenger windows, holding AK-47 machine-guns.
They might as well have been firing pea-shooters.
The giant Mack rig blasted right through the left-hand Peugeot, blowing it to smithereens, while the second Axon rally car just fish-tailed out of the way, side-swiping the rock wall on the landward side of the roadway before skidding to a jarring halt, the two rigs rumbling past it.
The Mack reached the top of the hill and rejoined the flatter main road at a fork junction.
The snub-nosed Kenworth was right behind it, closely followed by the last-remaining Peugeot. Rejoining the chase, the rally car leapt up onto the main road a split second before—SLAM!—the entire fork junction erupted in a cloud of dirt, hit by a shell from the ever-present French destroyer.
The two big rigs flew around a bend, the ocean dropping away to their left, when suddenly they were confronted by the yawning entrance to another cliff-side tunnel. This tunnel bent away in a long curve to the right, hugging the cliff-face, and was clearly longer than any of the previous tunnels.
The Mack thundered into the tunnel doing ninety, just as behind it, the Peugeot pulled alongside the Kenworth and the gunman in the rally car's window unleashed a volley of fire at the Mack's rearmost tyres.
The Mack's tyres were blasted apart, started slapping against the roadway, and the big rig's rear-end started fishtailing wildly.
Which was when the Kenworth rig made its move, and powered forward.
'They're coming alongside us!' Schofield yelled.
In the confines of the tunnel, the snub-nosed rig pulled up next to the Mack's right-hand flank.
'I'll take care of it,' Knight said. 'Here, take the wheel.'
With that, Knight jumped out of the driver's seat and charged aft into the Mack's sleeping compartment where he quickly fired two shots into its rear window, a window which opened onto the rig's flat trailer-connection section. Within seconds he had disappeared out through the window, into the roaring wind.
The two rigs rushed through the curving tunnel side-by-side, whipping past its ocean-side columns.
Schofield drove, glancing at the wounded Gant beside him. She was hit badly this time.
There came a loud aerial boom from somewhere nearby, and Schofield snapped round to see the second Mirage fighter whip past the blurring columns on his left, shooting ahead of the chase.
Not a good sign, he thought.
And then the snub-nosed rig came fully alongside his own on the right. He saw two ExSol men inside its cabin, and as it drew level with the Mack, he saw the gunner climb quickly across the driver and throw open the door closest to the Mack.
He was going to come across.
Schofield raised his Desert Eagle pistol in response—click.
No ammo left.
'Crap!'
The Executive Solutions man leapt across the gap between the two speeding semi-trailer rigs, landing on the passenger step of Schofield's Mack. He raised his machine-gun, pointing it in through the window, an unmissable shot—
—at the same time as Schofield drew his Maghook from his thigh holster, aimed it at the thug and pulled the trigger—
Ppp-fzzz . . .
The Maghook didn't fire. It just emitted a weak fizzing sound. It was out of propulsion gas.
'Goddamn it!' Schofield yelled. 'That never happens!'
But now he was out of options: he and Gant were sitting ducks.
The ExSol man in the window saw this, and he leered, his finger squeezing on his trigger.
At which moment he was squashed like a pancake as the Kenworth rig—his rig—rammed viciously into the Mack, hitting it so hard that both trucks were lifted momentarily off the road!
The hapless mercenary simply exploded, his body popping in a burst of red, his eyes bugging before he dropped out of Schofield's view and fell to the rushing roadway beneath the two rigs.
And as the man dropped from sight, he revealed the new driver of the snub-nosed Kenworth rig—Aloysius Knight.
For when the ExSol mercenary had jumped over from the doorway of the Kenworth to the doorway of the Mack, another figure had crossed over in the other direction, from the rear section of the Mack to the rear section of the Kenworth rig.
Knight.
Now the two rigs raced side-by-side through the long curving tunnel, pursued only by the last yellow Peugeot.
But with its blown-open rear tyres, Schofield's Mack was dangerously unstable. It slipped and slid wildly, trying to get traction.
Schofield keyed his radio. 'Knight! I can't hold this truck! We have to come over to you!'
'All right, I'll come in closer. Send your lady over.'
The Kenworth swung in next to the Mack, rubbing up against its side.
Schofield quickly secured the Mack's steering wheel in place with his seatbelt. Then he shuffled over, kicked open the passenger door, and started to help Gant move.
At the same time, Knight opened his driver's side door and extended his spare hand.
Abruptly, gunfire.
Smacking into both trucks' frames. But it was just wild fire from the trailing Peugeot.
Schofield made the transfer, handed Gant over to Knight—who pulled her across the gap into the Kenworth's cab, before laying her gently on the passenger seat.
With Gant safely across, Schofield started to step across the gap__
—just as a shocking burst of a zillion tracer bullets ripped horizontally through the air in front of him, creating a lethal laser-like barrier, cutting him off from Knight and Gant's rig.
Schofield snapped to look forward and saw the source of this new wave of gunfire.
He saw the end of the curving tunnel, saw the road bend away to the right beyond it, and saw, rising ominously into the air just out from the turn, the second Mirage 2000N-II fighter, its six-barrelled mini-gun blazing away.
And then, to Schofield's horror, the line of sizzling tracer rounds swung in toward his rig and—baml-baml-baml-baml-bami-baml-baml-baml-baml-baml-baml—an unimaginable barrage of bullets slammed into the metal grille of the Mack, hammering it with a million pock-marks.
The Mack's engine caught fire, hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere, and suddenly Schofield could see nothing through his windshield. He pumped the brakes—no good; they were history. Tried the steering wheel—it worked only slightly, enough for him to say to the fighter plane:
'If I'm going down, you're going down with me.'
The Mack careered down the length of the tunnel, together with the Kenworth.
And still the Mirage's withering fire didn't stop.
The two rigs hit the end of the tunnel—separated now and Aloysius Knight had no choice but to take the bend to the right, while Schofield's Mack—its bonnet blazing, its rear tyres sliding— could do nothing but rush straight ahead, ignoring the corner.