It snapped in half.
The handle was nothing more than a length of black-painted dowel. Diamondback looked at him mockingly, the blow practically painless. He flipped the gun in his hand, bringing it to bear—
Eddie stabbed the pointed, broken end of the rake into his crotch.
This time, the result was anything but painless. Diamondback’s eyes bugged wide. Eddie saw his chance, grabbing him by his scaly lapels and slamming a steamhammer headbutt into his face before wrenching the gun from his hand and standing on the table to survey the scene.
The chaos had spread to the rest of the room, some people trying to flee, others rushing in from the corners in the hope of claiming a prize before they were all gone.
Somebody screamed, seeing the gun. He looked round. More security men were hurrying in. He had to get outside. But all the exits were covered.
That left the windows.
He leapt from the table and ran towards the courtyard entrance. An attendant moved to block him, but the revolver’s muzzle swinging towards him quickly changed his mind. Eddie had no intention of shooting, though. Even if he’d had more than a puny six bullets, he wasn’t about to blast his way out of a building full of innocent tourists. He rounded a craps table, looking up at the ornate ceiling, the chandeliers hanging from it . . .
Another of Osir’s men sprang out from behind a row of slot machines. Eddie jinked sideways just in time to avoid being tackled, but the hulking bodyguard still managed to grip his waist. He bashed at the man’s head with his elbow as they ran, but the goon wouldn’t let go, intent on ramming him into the nearest solid obstacle.
Which was another slot machine, right in front of them.
Instead of trying to dodge, he hooked his arm tightly round the man’s neck and deliberately aimed for the machine. The bodyguard realised too late what he was doing and tried to stop, but now the tables were turned, Eddie pulling him towards a very painful collision—
The machine’s video screen shattered as the bodyguard smashed into it head first. Eddie reeled back as sparks exploded from the hole - and a cascade of tokens spewed into the tray, the machine chiming happily.
‘You hit the jackpot, mate,’ Eddie told the unconscious man. He was about forty feet from the nearest curtained window - and thirty-five from a trio of security guards pounding towards him.
He used the slumped bodyguard as a stepping stone to scramble up on top of the row of slot machines, then charged along it. The guards snatched at his legs as he sprinted past, but too late to stop him from making a flying leap off the last machine and grabbing a chandelier.
With a musical clash of crystal, he swung through the window.
The curtains ripped away and wrapped round him as he fell, a protective shroud against the shattering glass. Unable to see, he hit the ground hard, rolling several times. Sharp shards rained round him.
Eddie threw off the curtains and got painfully to his feet. Shocked partygoers gawped at him. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he grunted. ‘Just came to see the . . .’
His gaze landed on the green and gold car at the courtyard’s centre, its engine still idling. The driver was half standing as he looked over the rear wing to see what had happened. ‘Car,’ Eddie concluded.
He ran for the vehicle. The driver - he recognised him as a Finn called Mikko Virtanen - stared at him in confusion.
‘Sorry, mate,’ said Eddie, shoving him out of the cockpit. He pocketed the gun and jumped into the cramped compartment, sliding to a lying position almost parallel to the ground. ‘Good luck with the race!’
The team technicians snapped out of their paralysis at the sight of their star driver being carjacked and ran at him - but Eddie had already pulled the lever to engage the clutch. He squeezed the steering wheel paddle to switch into first . . . and pushed the accelerator.
The result was like nothing he had ever experienced.
Without a helmet or earplugs, the engine’s howl was almost deafening, and the jolt of acceleration smacked his head back against the unpadded roll bar so hard that he saw stars.
People leapt out of Eddie’s path as the pointed nose of his new ride speared at them, one of the huge front wheels clipping a table and sending hors d’oeuvres to the four winds. He aimed for the street, closing his eyes as he hit the lightweight barrier—
Osir ran out of the ballroom, Nina behind him, just in time to see the car smash through the cordon into Casino Square. ‘Zarba!’ he gasped. ‘Stop him, somebody stop him!’
Shaban and the bloodied Diamondback burst from the casino. Diamondback raised his second Colt and pointed it at the car, but a frantic screech of ‘No! Not here!’ from Osir stayed his trigger finger. ‘Get after him! Sebak, go!’
With an angry glare at Nina, Shaban ran after the car, Diamondback and another of Osir’s bodyguards following. Casino security staff poured into the courtyard, too late to do anything but mill in confusion. Macy appeared in the doorway, but Nina gestured for her to get back inside.
Osir turned to her. ‘Your husband just stole a million dollar racecar! ’
‘Yeah, that’s something else about him that drives me mad,’ she said, feigning infuriation, ‘his total lack of respect for other people’s property!’
He shook his head in dismay. ‘At least it’s only the spare car. And since he’s not a professional driver, he won’t get far.’
Eddie was quickly discovering that driving a racing car was vastly harder than it looked. The slightest touch of the stiff and heavy accelerator seemed to send several hundred horsepower instantly to the rear wheels, making the back end slither about wildly, and with cold tyres and not enough speed for the wings to generate downforce it felt like driving on an ice rink.
To make matters worse, even though he was now on the racing track, the road was still busy with civilian traffic - coming straight at him. He was going round the circuit the wrong way. What was more, since he was sitting so low to the ground, the oncoming headlights were at eye level, dazzling him.
He swerved, barely avoiding the monolithic nose of a Bentley - only to have one end of the front wing disintegrate into razor splinters of carbon fibre as it scraped against the roadside crash barrier. He battled with the steering wheel, ignoring the battery of furiously flashing warning lights on it as he struggled to stay in a straight line.
Back into two-way traffic as he joined the Avenue d’Ostende and descended the hill towards the harbour, but being able to go with the flow was little help as this road was even busier. The back end of a Range Rover loomed: he braked, sliding forward as the wheels locked up. The engine threatened to stall, and he pushed the accelerator again.
Too hard.
The car lunged, cracking his head another blow. The other side of the front wing shattered against the Range Rover’s rear wheel, shards stabbing into the rubber.
Eddie swerved away as the big 4×4’s tyre exploded and it crashed down on its alloy wheel rim. ‘Sorry!’
But the broken chunks of carbon fibre had also damaged his own tyre, the front wheel shuddering as he steered round another car. He was losing what little control he had.
And he could hear something else over the engine’s scream - sirens. The police were coming. It wouldn’t exactly be hard for them to pick out his car from the rest of the vehicles.
He had to get to the harbour before they caught him.
The other cars almost blocked his view of the road ahead, but he could see enough to tell that he was coming to the bottom of the hill. Which, he remembered from past races on TV, was the location of the first turn after the start.
A sharp turn.
‘Oh, shit,’ he gasped. Even in first gear, he was doing close to fifty miles an hour as he zigzagged through the traffic towards the Saint Devote corner. And the corner itself was busy, a complex intersection in its everyday guise.