Schofield saw it all before it happened.
And he knew he could do nothing.
'Good God . . .' he breathed.
A second later, the speeding Mack truck missed the corner completely and blasted right through the guard-rail fence and shot out into the clear afternoon sky, heading straight for the hovering Mirage fighter.
The Mack truck soared through the air in a glorious arc, nose high, wheels spinning, its path through the sky traced by the line of black smoke issuing out from its flaming bonnet.
But its arc stopped abruptly as the massive trailer rig slammed at tremendous speed into the Mirage fighter hovering just out from the cliff-side roadway.
The truck and the plane collided with astonishing force, the Mirage lurching backwards in mid-air under the weight of the mighty impact.
Already on fire, the Mack completely blew up now, its flaming bonnet driving into the nose of the hovering French fighter. For its part, the Mirage just rocked—then swayed—and then exploded, blasting out in a brilliant blinding fireball.
Then it dropped out of the sky, falling four hundred feet straight down the cliff-face with the remains of the Mack truck buried in its nose, before it smashed into the waves below with a single gigantic splash.
And in the middle of it all, in the middle of the tangled mechanical mess, without a rope or a Maghook to call on, was Shane M. Schofield.
Knight and Gant saw it all from their rig as they sped away along the winding cliff-side road.
They saw Schofield's Mack blast through the guard-rail and crash into the hovering Mirage after which came the fiery explosion and the long drop to the ocean below.
No-one could have survived such an impact.
Despite her wounds, Gant's eyes widened in horror. 'Oh God, no. Shane . . .' she whispered.
'Son of a bitch,' Knight breathed.
A flurry of thoughts rushed through his mind: Schofield was dead—a man worth millions to Knight // he could have kept him alive—what did he do now—and what did he do with this wounded woman who was worth absolutely nothing to him?
The first thing you do is get out of here alive, a voice said inside him.
And then suddenly—shoom!—the last-remaining Peugeot rally car whizzed past his rig, heading quickly down the road.
Surprised, Knight looked ahead and saw the road before him.
It contained a strange but impressive feature: at the next curve, a small castle-like structure arched over the roadway.
Made of stone and topped with tooth-like battlements, it was a two-storey gatehouse which must have been as old as the Forteresse de Valois itself. Presumably, it marked the outer boundary of the Forteresse's land.
On the far side of this gatehouse, however, was a compact drawbridge, spanning a 20-foot section of empty space in the roadway. You only got over the gap if the drawbridge was lowered, and at the moment, it was.
But then the Peugeot arrived at the gatehouse and disgorged one of its occupants who ran inside—and suddenly, before Knight's eyes, the drawbridge slowly began to rise.
'No . . .' he said aloud. 'No!'
He floored it.
The Kenworth rig roared toward the medieval gatehouse, picking up speed.
The drawbridge rose slowly on its iron chains.
It was going to be close.
The big rig rushed forward.
The bridge rose slowly: one foot, two feet, three feet. . .
The men in the Peugeot opened fire as Knight's rig thundered over the last fifty yards.
Knight ducked. His windshield shattered.
The drawbridge kept rising . . .
. . . and then the rig roared in through the gatehouse's archway, whipping past the Executive Solutions men . . .
. . . and raced up the ramp-like drawbridge, easily doing a hundred, before—vooml—it launched itself off the leading edge of the bridge, shooting high into the sky, soaring over the vertiginous gap in the road beneath it and . . .
Whump!
. . . the big rig hit solid ground again, banging down on the roadway, bouncing once, twice, three times, before Knight regained control.
'Phwoar,' he sighed, relieved. 'That was—'
SLAM!
The road in front of the rig erupted in a mushroom cloud of dirt.
A shellburst from the destroyer.
Knight hit the brakes and his rig skidded sharply, lurching to a halt inches away from a newly-created hole in the road.
Knight groaned.
The entire road in front of him had simply vanished—the whole
width of it vaporised—the distance across the chasm to the other side at least thirty feet.
He and Gant were trapped—perfectly—on the vertical cliff-face, bounded both in front and behind by sheer voids in the roadway.
And at that moment, as if right on cue, the Axon corporate helicopter—which had watched the entire chase from a safe distance high above the road—hovered into view beside them, its pilot speaking into his helmet radio.
'Fuck,' Knight said.
UNITED STATES EMBASSY LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T USA)
lIn their opinion, the war on terror isn't going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn't plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them . . .'
The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King's Tower an hour ago.
Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.
Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.
Book scanned the pile of documents again:
Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.
Secretly-taped phone transcripts.
Stolen US Department of Defense files.
Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world's leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.
The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.
The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad's leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis's arrest to themselves.
Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin: 'All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/ Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.'
But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal's interrogation.
Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.
First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:
The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.
The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.
Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.