Driven (5 page)

‘W
hat do you mean – you’ve put it back?’ snapped Sabatino. ‘How can it be as serious as you’re trying to make it out to be, if you’re not getting rid of it?’

Straker and Backhouse were meeting her, in private, first thing the next morning in the cabin of the motor home. ‘And what do you mean, you want some
bait
? I’ve got a car to drive – I don’t need the distraction of this sort of spy-game crap.’

Because of Backhouse’s advance warning, Straker was not fazed by her reaction. Speaking noticeably softly, he said: ‘Doing this is the only chance we’ve got of identifying the people who are trying to sabotage you.’

Sabatino shook her head. ‘You’ve made a massive leap from the crackle of a defective radio to sabotage. You might be ex-army, but don’t think there’s an enemy under every bush. I won’t be distracted by your need for self-justification.’

Straker smiled tolerantly and simply let the jibe pass. ‘The last thing I want is to cause you any distraction. All I need is one ploy – which I’ve discussed with Andy – and which, in any case, might only be needed when you’re coasting, and certainly not when you’re racing.’

Backhouse said nothing but looked at Sabatino. Very gently, he nodded, simultaneously indicating his assent and assurance.

‘S
orry about that,’ said Backhouse to Straker after the meeting broke up. ‘Drivers are notoriously focused people. They don’t like anything that can possibly distract them.’

Straker patted Backhouse on the shoulder, and went straight back to work.

By mid-morning, nifty negotiation had resulted in two rooftops
in different parts of Monte-Carlo being rented, on which a number of direction-finding dishes were quickly erected and tuned to the activation frequency of the bug. Two more dishes were installed on the superstructure of Quartano’s yacht, out in the marina.

An hour before the start of Qualifying, Straker was checking his network of equipment. Sitting in the Intel area of the Ptarmigan headquarters truck, he was wearing a pair of headphones, with Sabatino’s radio net in one ear, and Helli Cunzer’s in the other. In front of him was a computer screen displaying the networked output from the dishes. This showed a wire diagram of the principality – outlines of the buildings in line-of-sight of the Grand Prix circuit, as well as all the boats berthed in the harbour.

Straker’s set-up meant that any transmission to activate the bug in Sabatino’s helmet ought to be picked up by one or more of his direction-finding receivers. Each detection would then be vectored and instantly shown as a line on his display. Where any two or more such lines triangulated – crossed – that would give him the location, to within a few square metres, of any signal trying to jam their radios. Straker would then be able to plot out, and print off that location on his wire diagram of Monte-Carlo.

A
t one o’clock that afternoon, Qualifying started.

Straker felt he was ready.

His trap was set.

I
mmediately after Qualifying started, there was a surprising lack of activity. For all the anticipation, it felt like an anticlimax. Few cars were in a hurry to get out, and only a handful were even out of their garages. Everyone seemed to be waiting to see what the others would do. This was not unexpected, though. Q1 was not the high-pressure session. For this first round of Qualifying, the drivers only needed to finish in the top sixteen.

Eight minutes in and the level of activity was a very different story. Most of the cars were then out on the track or ready to leave the pit lane. England’s Paddy Aston in one of the Lambourns, the current Championship leader on 44 points, set a challenging time. Simi Luciano from Italy, Massarella’s number one driver, soon went six tenths faster, while the Argentinean Adi Barrantes in the other Massarella was clearly struggling with a poor set-up. Straker, watching the main TV broadcast pictures, saw a fleeting shot from a camera zooming in for a close-up of team boss Eugene Van Der Vaal’s face. The Afrikaner was clearly not impressed by the way one of his cars was performing.

Midway into the qualifying session Remy Sabatino headed out onto the circuit. The air was warm and humid. She put on a burst of acceleration up through Beau Rivage to bring the car up to temperature, and felt content. Aerodynamically, the car was performing well. And by the time she rounded the corner at Mirabeau, she was reassured their adjustments of yesterday afternoon were mitigating the understeer. It hadn’t gone completely, though.

Straker switched his TV channel to the on-board camera above Sabatino’s helmet. As she coaxed the car round the out-lap, he saw her rolling her head gently, flexing her neck and relaxing her shoulders. The car accelerated and braked in rapid succession; he then saw
Sabatino weave extra violently left and right through the Chicane – trying to work temperature into her tyres and brakes.

As Sabatino approached Tabac in the middle of the harbour complex, Backhouse’s voice came up over the radio: ‘You’ve got a window in thirty seconds. There’s traffic around Loews, but by the time you’re hot they’ll be long gone.’

Straker began to feel himself drawn into the live picture of the road ahead as Sabatino cranked up the pace around the Swimming Pool. Pulling up the hill after La Rascasse, she shot past a Ferrari and a Lambourn peeling off into the pits. Through Anthony Noghès, into the pit straight, she floored the throttle and let the Ptarmigan go.

Because of the suspected sabotage, Straker couldn’t help but feel apprehensive. He watched the TV picture even more closely, listening out intently over the radio for any kind of trouble.

The car was clearly on top of its game.

Sabatino went two tenths up in the first sector, four tenths up in the second and, even with a minor lift to pass a Red Bull around La Rascasse, still clocked up the fastest time of the weekend so far.

At the end of Q1 Sabatino was comfortably through to the next round; Helli Cunzer in the second Ptarmigan was also through, as were the two Lambourns and both Massarellas.

Straker sat back in his chair and squinted at the screen. This was not good.

Nothing. No sign of the saboteur. At all.

He stepped out of the motor home and, making sure he was not able to be overheard, telephoned Backhouse in the pit lane. ‘No sign, Andy, I’m afraid.’

‘That was only Q1, Matt. No one would expect our cars to fall out this early.’

‘Okay. Can we do the tease on the first in-lap of Q2?’

‘She’s not going to like it.’

Q
ualifying Two started seven minutes later. This time, the field was to be reduced from sixteen cars to ten.

Sabatino put in a good lap early on. They were confident it would be fast enough to get her through, so she wouldn’t need to pound the car unnecessarily. Coasting home on her in-lap, she reached the tunnel. Straker heard Backhouse come up on the radio again: ‘Remy, we’re looking at the hard compound and a three-stop strategy.’

Straker waited to see how well she would participate in their ploy.

‘Okay,’ was all she grunted in response.

Backhouse kept going with the pre-agreed script: ‘We’ve just run the numbers, Remy. If we go for three, we’d need to make up nine seconds per stint. What do you think?’

Sabatino did not reply.

‘Remy?’

Straker groaned.

Finally, she mumbled: ‘Okay. Go for three.’

‘We might have to play with your brake balance midway through Q3…’ Backhouse went on.

There was no further response from Sabatino.

Straker sucked his teeth, not sure how convincing that had been. He hoped that with the competitive significance of their transmission, though, they might have done enough to bait his trap. The next – and final – round of Qualifying was critical.

The shootout.

For Q3, it was mandatory for cars to be in race trim – the very set-up in which they would start the race the next day – no fundamental adjustment being permitted under the rules from then until the start of the Grand Prix itself. Backhouse’s and Sabatino’s discussion over the radio, therefore, was meant to sound like they were finalizing their set-up for the race. On a three-stop strategy, the Ptarmigan would be considerably lighter than the other competitive cars, giving it an advantage. However, running that light would alter the car’s balance; the team’s only chance to test and adjust the set-up would come over the air during this last Qualifying session. Straker hoped that news of the three-stop strategy – and expected radio exchange in Q3 – would excite the jammer to act.

When Sabatino got back to the pits, the soft compound tyres were replaced. Under Backhouse’s instructions, the fuel rigger deliberately fumbled the hose – attaching it and removing it several times – to disguise the fact that he was actually fuelling for a two-stop strategy.

T
owards the end of Q2, things were put dramatically into perspective.

Helli Cunzer, Sabatino’s teammate, was out on a hot lap. Something wasn’t quite right. The car was yawing noticeably under braking.

Straker quickly switched one of the screens over to watch the feed from Cunzer’s Ptarmigan. Down into Mirabeau, the German clearly locked-up his front left, sending a plume of blue smoke into the air. Round Loews, he could be seen jabbing at the brakes again, and flat spotting the front right.

Through Portier, TV viewers could see the car’s rear end step out and Cunzer snatching at the wheel, trying to keep the car from hitting the wall. He was clearly having a torrid time of it.

Under the Fairmont Hotel tunnel, the car finally seemed to settle. Cunzer wound the Ptarmigan up through fourth, fifth and sixth gears. Except that, as his speed increased round the long right-hander, he found himself wafting to the outside of the corner.

From the relative darkness of the tunnel, he was soon back out in the glare of the Mediterranean sun.

Was he momentarily blinded? Did he blink? Did he squint?

Did he take his eyes off the game – even for a moment?

No one knew for certain. Hurtling down the slope by the harbour wall towards the Chicane, though, the car suddenly jinked.

Badly.

The back end stepped violently out to the left.

Unweighted by the crest of the road there? Who knew?

Cunzer, himself, had no time to think about the cause.

Right then, all he could think about was one thing.

Survival.

As a reflex, the driver snapped the wheel the same way, to correct the slew. But too much. By now, though, the car was on the marbles – the small spheres of cooled molten rubber thrown off the tyres of the other cars and littering the edges of the circuit. On this dirty part of the track, the car became almost unsteerable.

Worse, the unweighting of the car had disturbed the natural airflow under the front wing. And, with the attitude of the car, its aerodynamics were not working. Air seemed to be getting underneath it. Instead of downforce, the wing started to generate lift – to fly. The car was soon imitating a blown piece of paper skimming across the surface of a table. Cunzer’s car was starting to hover. Ground effect. Doing one hundred and eighty miles an hour in a confined space, surrounded by steel Armco barriers – he was completely out of control.

The world watched on in horror. The car skimmed on down the hill towards the Chicane, still not responding to any controls.

Its left rear hammered the barrier. Bits of the car exploded outwards. That collision saw the car bounce off, veering out to the right and back down the middle of the track. Viewers watched aghast as Cunzer’s head whiplashed like a rag doll in the impact despite the restraint from the tethers of his HANS – Head And Neck Support – device.

Even after that ricochet off the barriers, the car was still travelling at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour. There was an ear-splitting crack and wrench as the car passed over the raised kerbs of the Chicane, ripping off parts of the undertray. That jolt also broke the suspension in the front right, causing its wheel to collapse inwards. Sparks scattered in all directions as the resultant lower ride height brought other components into contact with the road making it easier for them to be wrenched from the bodywork – bargeboards, the front wing, and fancy aerodynamic trimmings like fins and blades.

Everyone held their breath. Eyes flicked from the car and then on down the track and back again, it being all too easy to plot Cunzer’s likely trajectory.

The outcome was all too obvious.

It was too horrible to watch.

But impossible to turn away from.

Cunzer was heading for the end of the solid, bewalled and tree-lined island that was the central reservation of the road normally used as the Avenue Président J. F. Kennedy. A tyre wall had been constructed for the race to soften the sharp point of this island in the road. A car hitting this on a slight angle was meant to glance off – be deflected away without serious impact – down either side.

But Cunzer wasn’t going to glance off. Everyone could see that.

They could see exactly where he was heading – straight for the apex, perpendicular to the narrowest point.

His impact was going to be head-on.

It happened.

Blam.

Cunzer’s car smashed into the end of the central reservation. From one hundred miles an hour it decelerated to zero in a millisecond. The G-force on the car – and the man – was unimaginable. Cunzer’s head flopped around like a ball tied to the end of a stick. As the inadequate tyre wall did its best to absorb the massive kinetic energy – bulging and erupting under compression – it somehow started to lift the car, so that it was soon standing up – improbably on its gearbox, its front wheels held up like hands in surrender. It began to pirouette on its rear end. In agonizing slow motion, the car soon lost its balance and started to fall back, crashing down onto the road – upside-down, resting at an angle on the air intake above the driver’s head. All the car’s extremities were snapped off as it crashed down, creating a turquoise explosion of broken parts radiating out from the impact.

The car rocked back and forth, as the last of its energy slowly dissipated.

All that could be heard was Cunzer’s very sick engine – just about turning over, but in the process of grinding itself to pieces. Soon, it, too, spluttered to silence. Vapour or smoke started billowing out from somewhere within the car. Finally, there was stillness.

Cunzer did not move. His body and head were simply hanging vertically – upside-down against his harness – from the upside-down car.

Marshals started running in immediately. Astutely, one of them ran back up the track towards the Fairmont Tunnel frantically waving double yellow flags as a warning to any cars still out on the circuit that might be racing down the hill towards the Chicane.

Marshals ran to Cunzer’s stricken Ptarmigan.

There was still no sign of life from the driver.

Just as one of the marshals took charge and started directing the others, there was a massive explosion. Cunzer’s fuel tank erupted, sending out a deafening shock wave and a huge ball of orange flame, engulfing the car and driver.

Cunzer was completely hidden by fire. Viewers were hit with instant déjà vu – of Jos Verstappen at Hockenheim.

Stoically, the lead marshal recovered from the shock of the explosion and retook command. Charging forward with a fire extinguisher, he blasted white foam in front of him as he waded into the fireball towards the cockpit. Other marshals, taking their lead from this astonishing selflessness, followed on – first, though, blasting their jets of white foam over their colleague, and then over the car and the stricken driver.

The flames were put out remarkably quickly.

Moments later blaring sirens could be heard. Two ambulances and a fire engine were belting down the Avenue Président J. F. Kennedy, while another emergency vehicle approached from the other direction, from under the Fairmont tunnel. Screeching to a halt, paramedics jumped out of the first ambulance and sprinted towards the crash.

With the fire out, one of the marshals had ducked under the upside-down car, cautiously peering up into the cockpit at the driver, dreading what he was going to find. Squatting beneath the car, he tried – still awkwardly – to look up underneath to assess the driver in the cockpit. A paramedic crouched down beside him. Attention
was drawn to the blood pouring from the cockpit rim. Concerns of any danger from moving a suspected spinal injury, though, were surrendered to the greater fear of further explosions and fire – and the bleeding.

There was clearly no way to carry or support the driver’s weight up under the car – given the cramped space available.

The two men seemed to agree on a plan. The paramedic lowered himself on all fours directly underneath the car.

The marshal pushed his head up into the cockpit and prepared to release the harness, awaiting the order from the paramedic.

Click.

Under gravity, the inverted driver slid down out of the cockpit and landed on the paramedic’s back. Their plan seemed to have worked. Cunzer’s fall had been broken. Several other medics clustered round, helping the laden paramedic reverse out awkwardly from under the car with Cunzer’s limp body draped across his back. He crawled his way clear. A stretcher was brought up and put on the ground alongside. Foam blocks were placed around the driver’s head and neck to immobilize him. Cunzer’s vital signs were checked. Automatically, a mask, providing oxygen, was placed over his nose and mouth. Another medic, seeing the copious blood pouring from Cunzer’s leg, quickly pulled a tourniquet from his pocket and, slipping the rubber strap under the driver’s leg, connected the buckle assembly and pulled it flesh-distortingly tight around the top of his thigh.