Gun Metal Heart (22 page)

Daria hit her brakes. Her cycle jerked back.

She held the attacker's helmet strap in her fist. The sudden change twisted his helmet and snapped his neck.

*   *   *

Owen Cain Thorson rode on, mind racing, directly behind Daria, now just passing the eight downed bicycles, his fevered mind trying to process the scene.

Jake Kenner and his Kawasaki drove forward. Jake's stiff leather jacket cocooned his body tightly, but Kenner himself was looking backward, hard over his left shoulder. And his mouth hung open.

He wasn't even looking ahead as his motorcycle rode straight and true for a dozen more feet. The highway began veering softly to the right. The motorcycle didn't.

The Kawasaki hit the guardrail and crashed through it and rode on before dropping off a cliff. His spine snapped, and he was dead before his bike went off the cliff.

Daria summited Col du Mont Carbonnel.

 

Twenty-Six

The television helicopters picked up bits and pieces of the melee on the mountain. Eight men landed on the asphalt, bike tires springing up here and there. And one of the motorcycles, from Team Rostelecom, careened off the road and began rolling downhill. It wasn't a truly treacherous cliff. The motorbike rumbled downhill for all of a couple dozen feet then simply fell over.

Sports fans and news directors don't care about the people on the motorcycles or in the follow cars; the TV cameras stayed either with the eight riders sprawled on the asphalt or with the few riders at the head of the now twelve-man chase pack. The chasers began hitting the summit, the fronts of their bikes dipping.

The racers themselves went from vertical to horizontal; from standing on their pedals to sloped low, grinding it out, all arched backs and tucked-in elbows, aerodynamic helmets snugged into the hollows of their spines.

Uphill, gravity is one of the great challenges. Downhill, too, but for the exact opposite reason.

The chasers began picking up speed as they raced downhill.

*   *   *

As Daria summited Col du Mont Carbonnel, a vast, emerald valley emerged. A pristine lake, Lac du Mont Carbonnel, glittered below her in the sun. The valley seemed impossibly low from her vantage point. There was no way this road could get them down that far in so short a linear distance.

That's when she saw the switchbacks ahead of them.

She glanced back behind Estebe and saw another teal-and-cream bike right on her tail.

She heard Estebe's shocked voice, an octave higher than before, through her earpiece. “Holy Mary! What in God's name happened back there?”

Daria spoke into her mic. “Not sure.”

“That man tried to take us out with a crowbar!”

“Yes.”

“Did … is he …
did you kill him?
”

“A bit. Hold on, please.”

*   *   *

Downhill the look and nature of the race changed. The speeds picked up dramatically. The straightaway climb gave way to nasty, 180-degree switchbacks.

Ten kilometers meant that they would reach the finish line in about eleven minutes.

The twelve remaining chasers began gaining on the plucky seven in the lead group.

Daria cared about none of that. But it took her to the first harrowing switchback to realize that the second Kawasaki was still on her tail. She tucked in low and tight on her bike and pushed it hard through the hairpin. She quickly caught up to the chase group.

“Be careful!” Estebe shrieked through their mic. “You can stay behind them!”

Daria glanced at the tiny rearview mirror. The Kawasaki was on her six. And the rider was just now unzipping his leathers and reaching in for what she assumed was a handgun.

Daria leaned low and took the curve probably ten miles per hour too fast. Two of the bicycles veered to get out of her way.

“The fuck are you doing?” Estebe bellowed.

“Fond of that camera?” she shouted to be heard despite their mics.

“Am I … what? My camera?”

“Treasured heirloom?”

“
Look out!
”

Daria shifted her weight, lifted her thighs off the seat, and arched her back to power through the reverse hairpin curve. The Moto Guzzi heeled dangerously to the left, Daria's knee only inches from the asphalt. Estebe squeezed her tight. Bicyclists looked up as she whizzed past them on the tight downhill curve, a dangerous gambit.

Daria straightened out of the turn and now was a meter ahead of the chase group. The Kawasaki stayed on her tail, but it was riding even with the twelve bicycles.

The road straightened, and Daria toed her brakes—tap tap—quickly decelerating.

The Kawasaki was trapped: guardrail on his left, twelve chasers on his right, Daria dead ahead. He had no option but to return his gun hand to his handlebars and to brake back.

Daria then surged forward.

“Throw your camera!”

Estebe's voice rose yet another octave. “Throw … what? What did…?”

The team manager, Paco Montoya, tried to cut in via the communications link. Daria reached behind her back, up under her leathers, and disconnected the transceiver. Estebe could still hear her but the Dodge Durango was cut off.

Daria kept one eye on the road and the bicycles, another on her rear view. “First Kawasaki tried to kill us. Second one is behind us! When I say, hit him with your camera!”

“Wait! What? Kill us?”

Daria said, “Okay, trying to kill me! Second rider has a gun! On my mark, hit him!”

“No! Are you insane! What … why would they be trying to kill you?”

Daria shrugged “Top three reasons…?”

Before she could explain she stomped on the gas pedal and rocketed forward. Before the Kawasaki could react, she drew ahead of the first of twelve riders in the chase group. She slid to her right, directly in front of the bikes. She heard riders screaming at her in four languages. Once past, she tapped her brakes again and let the cluster of chasers pull even with her.

She was on the bicycles' right. The Kawasaki was on their left.

The Kawasaki rider didn't look like an idiot. That maneuver bought Daria no more than sixty seconds at best.

But then and there, and at that speed, sixty seconds equals most of a kilometer.

And the chasers were nine kilometers from the finish line, five kilometers from the edge of the village of Romans-sur-Mercellen.

And the return of the big crowds.

Daria said, “Estebe?”

“Y-yes?”

“When I say stop, I want you to dismount the bike. Ready?”

The Basque said, “W-why?”

“Because I have a gun in my backpack and I'll shoot you if you're not off this bike in three, two, one: now.”

She braked hard. The man chasing her surged ahead, but to the left of the bicycles. He lost sight of her for a moment.

Daria screeched to a halt. Estebe dismounted the bike without comment.

Daria said, “Ciao,” and peeled out.

*   *   *

The race now was down to the seven riders in the breakaway lead group and the twelve riders of the chase group.

The psychotic switchbacks of the downhill run began affecting the riders differently. The seven in the breakaway thinned out, three pulling way ahead, four falling back. The twelve chasers did the same, the head of the chase group drawing within visual distance of the four riders ahead of them. Instead of staying two distinct groups they were slowly morphing into one long, thin line of riders.

Daria played dodge 'em with the Kawasaki: breaking, gliding, drifting, using the thinned-out, fast-moving riders of the chase group much the way a bullfighter uses the red cape—to distract, to obscure, to confuse. Without Estebe's weight, she was much freer to maneuver.

But the Kawasaki didn't go anywhere. Daria stayed away from his gun hand, and her maneuvers forced him to keep his hands on his handlebars. But she couldn't shake him.

They hit the flatlands and flashed beneath the ridiculously tall and narrow arches of a Roman aqueduct. They drew within sight of the town, Romans-sur-Mercellen. The village consisted of white walls and tall red roofs, with a Germanic or at least alpine look to the three-story homes and the winding streets.

The nineteen riders began clustering closer together now that they were within the city limits.

Roaring through town, and through ever-growing throngs of screaming fans, the racers and the motorcycles passed beneath one of the inflatable latex arches over the road, indicating they were two kilometers from the finish line. Daria peered through the arch to the other side and caught sight of a roundabout.

Daria watched as the bicycles in front of her used the roundabout to curve gently to the left. The riders slipped clockwise along the shortest route toward the finish line.

Daria edged her Moto Guzzi toward the middle of the furious pack. She created a steady pace, right next to a cluster of five bikes. She had been watching, and she was pretty sure at least one of the bikes, and maybe more, would slide in tight behind her, drafting off the slipstream she was creating to cut their own wind resistance.

The Kawasaki pulled in behind her.

But he remained far enough back—and two of the bicyclists slipped closer to Daria's wake, letting her slice through the headwind for them.

The group hit the roundabout and the bicycles drifted to their left: clockwise, going from six o'clock to nine o'clock.

Daria hauled on the handlebars and veered sharply right. She arced quickly away from the pack. She was now heading counterclockwise, from six o'clock to the five o'clock position. Then four o'clock, three, two …

The Kawasaki had lost sight of her. It veered left with the bicycles. No longer fighting the mountain switchbacks, the rider had drawn his handgun but kept it low, against his thigh, where bicyclists and fans couldn't see it.

Daria took the roundabout too fast, leaning precariously. She reached out and let the tips of her fingers slide along the asphalt, an inch from her knee.

… one o'clock, noon, eleven …

The Tour riders sluiced through the roundabout to the nine o'clock position. The Kawasaki kept with them but slowed a bit, the attacker confused, having lost sight of Daria.

… ten, nine …

Like a fighter pilot coming out of the sun, Daria was in the Kawasaki's blind spot. He was looking ahead and to the left, his eyes following the bicycles, as she pulled in tight beside him and on his right.

She reached out with her left hand, grabbed his right hand and his Glock, and slid her much smaller finger through the trigger guard.

The attacker looked her way, eyes going wide. Daria noticed a dirty stretch bandage on his left cheek and his sky blue eyes under his helmet and visor.

She grinned and squeezed the trigger of his gun.

Daria put one bullet through the attacker's own thigh.

The Kawasaki bolted forward, the frightened attacker reacting by instinct and speeding up to escape the trap. Daria let go of his hand and gave her brakes the slightest of love taps.

The Kawasaki surged ahead, now out of control, and slipped between the upright, portable barriers, scattering screaming fans and gliding onto a sidewalk and through a plate-glass window, into a
boulangerie.

Daria gunned it, catching the bicycles, blowing past them, bent low over her bars, elbows akimbo.

*   *   *

Thanks to the helmet and aviator shades, none of the Tour competitors got a good look at her. But several of them later would describe the ferocious, wolflike grin on the face of the madwoman who crossed the finish line of the first leg of the Tour de France.

 

Twenty-Seven

Without stopping, Daria peeled the Team Tarantola decals off the Moto Guzzi, the remnants floating away in her wake. She powered west, then north to Saint-Etienne-de-Cuines, which didn't amount to much more than a cluster of homes in a town known for decent football and peppermint-striped window frames on oatmeal-and-stone houses. A behind-the-times wayside like Saint-Etienne-de-Cuines was ideal for escaping the closed-circuit cameras that had become so ubiquitous, even in midsized European communities.

She stripped off the form-fitting leather jacket, with its array of team sponsors' logos, and rode in a sleeveless, ribbed white tank top, leather trousers, riding boots, and wrist gloves. The shirt exposed a swath of her midriff and the defined, concave frame of her lower spine. She kept the helmet and sunglasses for safety and for anonymity. But on the E70 northbound she drew more than her share of honked horns and suggestive hand gestures from truckers.

She pulled into a rest stop with a petrol station, a tiny convenience store with prepared foods in a freezer case, and a vaguely Chinese-looking picnic outbuilding with a tall, pointed roof. Only two cars were in the rest stop—two identical, generic white Audi sedans with tinted windows and German plates. A beefy man with a shaved skull and a Celtic neck tattoo rested against one of the Audis, reading
Le Monde
.

Daria booted down the kickstand and left the helmet on the cycle's seat. She slung the little Florentine backpack over one bare shoulder and strolled into the pagodalike picnic building. It had three red wood tables with benches. Only one visitor was there. He was painfully thin and almost translucently pale, with round glasses and hair worn short on the sides, foppishly long on top, and parted in the middle. His hair hung over his glasses, and he had a habit of snapping his neck to the side to clear his vision every few seconds.

He sat on one of the benches, his back to the table. His stick-thin legs were together and turned to the side, as if he rode sidesaddle. Twin aluminum crutches with perpendicular grips and forearm braces leaned against the bench.

As she walked over, Daria said, “Enter the Viking.”

Fredrik Olsson smiled shyly behind his straight, limp, blond locks. “Hullo. You've captured the whole bad biker chick milieu rather nicely.”