Then he heard the sliding scrape of tires and in the mirror he saw the green Mercedes’s snout yaw toward the center of the glass and he realized that Franke was still there, still crowding him into the inside of the turn, and he knew there was only one reason for Franke to do that.
Franke was going to ram him from behind, break his wheels loose in the turn and toss him tumbling off the track.
He hit the accelerator and straightened the wheel.
It sent him careening toward the outside of the turn. His outside wheels rode up on the steep embankment. In the mirror the Mercedes was still there, swaying because he’d taken Franke by surprise and Franke had been forced to correct his steering.
At the top of the turn he was bending in along the very outside rim of the track and his wheels barely had purchase. Either the Bugatti would grip or it would slide off the track.
The seat bucketed under his rump, off-wheels juddering on gravel. You couldn’t touch the brake because that would be death. You just had to hope the frame would take it, stay flat enough for traction. Anything less low-slung than the Bugatti wouldn’t have the slightest chance.
With two wheels off the track surface the Bugatti held the curve and he skittered onto the verge of the straightaway, accelerating hard and eating toward the center track.
That was when the green Mercedes behind him broke loose. Centrifugal force pulled it right off the track and he glimpsed it up in the air, tail high. In the mirror it executed a ponderous somersault right over the astonished faces of the Italian pit crew in their dugout. It slammed down just beyond the dugout, flat upside-down and when it burst into an enormous sheet of flame he knew there was no chance Erich Franke would come out alive.
But Franke must have known that anyway. From the outset. Because once he’d committed himself to the ramming attack there’d been no way for the Mercedes to get through the turn.
Under the eyes of flagmen and race officials the cars idled around the course one half-lap, keeping their positions until the crash trucks and firemen had rushed across the oval.
Through some blind trick of fate the machine had arced clear of the eight men in the Italian dugout and crashed directly behind it in a place where there were no spectators because from that place the roof of the dugout would have obscured their view of the race. No one was hurt except Erich Franke.
Less than twelve minutes after the crash the flagman ordered the race to continue.
On the ninety-fourth lap he passed the Invicta on the straightaway and bluffed an SSK out of the inside position on the far turn. The Talbot-Lago and the Auto Union went into the pits, out of the race. Streicher was in the open, trailed by the one-off-the-pace Alfa Romeo, with Felix closing the margin in grim earnest now because the bloody Fuehrer was not going to win this race; Felix wasn’t dead yet and there were six laps left to decide it.
High anger had infected the Alfa Romeo’s driver and Felix saw him skid too fast through the lap turn, roaring relentlessly in pursuit of the red Mercedes—pure rage driving the car, the search for some obscure vindication because even if the Alfa overtook Streicher it would mean nothing in the record books: Streicher was on his ninety-fifth lap, the Alfa on its ninety-fourth.
The Alfa swung into the far turn beside the Mercedes; the Mercedes gave ground gracefully and the Alfa shot out ahead of it onto the straight. There was something sardonic in the way Streicher lifted his left hand off the wheel for a moment—as if in benediction to the charging Alfa Romeo.
That left nothing between Felix and the German except space: a half dozen car-lengths which Felix made up in the turns, two steps forward in each turn and one step backward in the straightaways where the Mercedes’s superior power took it away from him. On the lap turn with two full laps remaining in the race Felix was within a single car-length of Streicher’s rear hub.
Then he was approaching his own pit dugout and he saw Sergio DeFeo standing on the verge making semaphore Waves of his arms.
Felix ignored the pit boss and pushed the fuel pedal to the floor.
In the far turn Streicher accelerated hard and his tires almost broke loose but he held his lead. But Felix saw his head cock to the side as he went through the turn and that meant something significant: an alert driver normally didn’t do that. It meant Streicher was tired.
But it was the last lap turn coming up: two kilometers left in the race and Streicher still had a jump on him. Felix had part of the Mercedes’s heavy slipstream but he had to overtake.
The crowd was roaring in anticipation. Felix swung left toward the verge—Streicher veered the same way, blocking him. On the long straightaway Felix weaved to the right but Streicher stayed with him, just ahead, the great swollen Mercedes taking up too much room. Streicher wasn’t pushing it full out; he had two thirds of his attention on his wing mirrors. There was more than enough unused soup in the Bugatti to get ahead of Streicher because the Bugatti could accelerate faster than the big car but first there had to be an opening and Streicher wasn’t going to give him one.
He was going to have to make one for himself by outfeinting Streicher; it was the only chance left. The raw final question was whether the old lion’s reaction time was still quick enough and Felix didn’t think it was. He feinted left and broke to the right. Streicher stayed with him but he’d expected that; he feinted left again, straightened, and broke left, and got his nose in before Streicher pushed hard to the left and crowded him against the verge. He had to drop back and they were approaching the far turn now, and Streicher damn well wasn’t going to let him by on the inside even if he had to slow the big Mercedes to a crawl.
That was the answer then—if Streicher wasn’t alert enough to second-guess him. But if Streicher countered with the right move it would finish the race with a German win.
Going into the turn he began to swing wide. He did it hesitantly in order to give Streicher the idea that he only wanted to move Streicher out into the middle before veering back to the inside where the Mercedes couldn’t go because of its centrifugal momentum in the turn. It was the sensible way to do it—the classic ploy—and Streicher wasn’t having any: he stayed two meters off the inside edge of the track, ready to veer either way.
The crest of the turn, and now was the time. Felix slammed throttle to floor and went whistling toward the outside bank of the turn, accelerating so rapidly that both rear wheels broke loose and skidded to the right.
It slid him into line with the straightaway and he dropped the pressure just enough to give the tires a bite before he straightened the steering wheel and drove his foot hard against the accelerator.
Streicher was coming across at him like a projectile but his reaction had been just a hair too slow and Felix saw the prow of the Mercedes off his left shoulder when he reached the whining top of third gear and slipped the rear right wheel off the track onto the loose embankment. The free tire spun a fog of dust into the sky and then his engine speed was up in the red zone and he yanked the Bugatti back onto the track at top revs in fourth and that was the race. The Mercedes chewed up his tonneau all the way to the line but Streicher had no way to get past him and the chequered flag dropped across the Bugatti with the German a single handspan behind.
The pit crew formed quickly around him and he stood under the hard hot sun waiting for his belly to stop chugging. Someone said, “Good, your Highness. Damned good.”