NEW YORK CITY, USA (SAt.u.r.dAY).
RACE 3: THE PURSUIT.
LAP 120 OF 120.
The Argonaut screamed down the Hudson River at top speed, with Etienne Trouveau"s Vizir right alongside it, banging against it, ramming it - on the very last lap of Race 3 - and with only one turn to go, the fearsome Liberty"s Elbow, Jason and Trouveau were out in front of the other racers, battling it out for the win.
The world blurred around Jason. The buildings of New York City. The bridges. The vast hoverstands flanking the river.
This race had been bitter. Bitter and tough.
But now it had come to this - one turn, two racers. The Argonaut dived into the Elbow. So did the Vizir. Jason battled the G-forces, gritted his teeth.
6-Gs...
The Vizir was still beside him.
7-Gs...
The Argonaut began to shake.
Jason gripped his steering wheel with all his might. 8-Gs and Jason"s vision started to darken, the initial stages of blacking out.
Gotta stay conscious! he told himself. Gotta stay conscious! But the Vizir was still beside him. Worse, it was creeping past him, round the outside on the terrible turn!
How was Trouveau doing it! Jason"s mind screamed.
8.5-Gs...
Jason started to feel nauseous. He"d never survived this many G-forces before - but all he could think of was the Vizir edging away from him, slipping out of his grasp, beating him in this race that he had to win to stay in the Masters.
Had to win.
Win.
Then the end of the giant hairpin came into view and - Jason blacked out.
The Argonaut was instantly flung clear of the Elbow.
Jason flopped back in his seat like a rag doll. Dimly, he heard the Bug scream in terror as their car rocketed out of control over the demag lights flanking the turn, screaming like a wounded fighter jet, before it flipped and bounced horribly on the surface of the harbour - pieces of it being stripped away in the process. Then the Argonaut slammed at tremendous speed into the carca.s.s of another car that had crashed in the same manner earlier in the race and which was blocking the nearest Dead Zone.
There was no chance to eject. No chance of survival. The Argonaut hit the wreck and exploded.
Jason awoke with a shout - dripping with sweat and breathless to the point of suffocation.
He caught his breath, and recognised his surroundings: he was in his cousin"s bedroom in New Jersey. The Bug lay in the single bed beside his, snoring happily.
The digital clock next to Jason ticked over to 4:44 a.m. It wasn"t yet Sat.u.r.day.
Race 3 had not been run.
It had just been a bad dream. A really bad dream. But the emotions of it lingered: Jason"s overwhelming desire to win, his pain at watching Trouveau pull away, the nausea of the G-forces, the descent into black-out, and worst of all, Jason"s fear of that turn, Liberty"s Elbow.
He just didn"t like Liberty"s Elbow - it was perhaps the toughest turn in racing and today, like it or not, Jason was going to be taking it once every minute for two hours.
CHAPTER TWO.
NEW YORK CITY, USA (SAt.u.r.dAY).
RACE 3: THE PURSUIT.
Race 3 of the New York Masters is a variety of race known as a "Collective Pursuit Race".
Just like the pursuit races Jason had run in the School tournament, it involved racers blasting around a relatively short circular track - in Race 3, it was a lap of Manhattan Island, starting and ending at the Brooklyn Bridge. Each lap took approximately one minute: redefining the term "quicker than a New York Minute".
But this track featured obstacles: Firstly, ion waterfalls that rained down from all of the bridges of New York City. They looked like upside-down fireworks displays: the luminescent gold particles of the ionised waterfalls wreaked havoc on magnetic and electrical systems. If you missed the one-car-wide gaps in the (moving) waterfalls, and accidentally drove your car through the falling curtain of golden ions, your car emerged on the other side as merely the sh.e.l.l of a hover car - no power, magnetic or electrical. A horrible crash usually ensued.
Secondly, the Meat Grinders: there are two forks in the Pursuit course, at Roosevelt Island and at Ward"s/Randall"s Island (they are in fact one island, but were once two, hence the double name). At both forks, racers can take a longer, less dangerous route to the righthand side.
The left-hand fork, however, is much shorter - but in both cases it contains an enormous iron wall, forty metres thick, blocking the way completely. In the centre of each iron wall is a narrow cylindrical tunnel. The thing is, the walls of this tunnel - the entire tunnel - open and close in an iris-like fashion. If a racer chooses to take the short route, and gets caught in the closing tunnel, that racer can be crushed, hence the name "meat grinder". More often, desperate racers opt to take the short route, miss the opening of the tunnel, and lose even more time waiting for it to re-open.
And, of course, at the very end of each lap, at the end of the superlong and superfast Hudson River Straight, Liberty"s Elbow loomed. It was the final challenge for every racer - pitting one"s body against one"s desire to win. As had happened to Jason in his dream, it was not uncommon for drivers to knock themselves out taking the Elbow, allowing their desire to win to overcome their good sense.
There was also one extra feature, unique to this race, known as The 15-Second Rule.
In short, every racer had to stay within 15 seconds of the lead car. As the leader pa.s.sed underneath each bridge, a timer was initiated. After 15 seconds, the ion waterfall on that bridge flicked from gold to red - and the gap in the waterfall closed, turning it into an impa.s.sable wall of ions. Meaning if you failed to stay within 15 seconds of the leader, you could physically go no further. You were out of the race.
At this point in the Masters, since there were only eight contenders left, the scoring system also changed.
For the final two races, the winner still got 10 points.
The 2nd placed racer, however, now only got 8 points; 3rd got 6 points; 4th: 4 points; 5th: 2 points; and the last three drivers, nothing. Those racers who DNF"d - Did Not Finish - still got a flat zero points.
For Jason, the situation was clear.
Sitting on only 8 points, a full 8 points behind the leaders in the series, he needed a good finish in this race - top two at least - and he needed some of the other racers to finish poorly or not at all.
But if he"d learned anything this year, it was that in hover car racing, anything could happen.
As daylight broke on Sat.u.r.day, Manhattan Island had essentially become one gigantic stadium.
Enormous crowds swarmed all over the outer banks of the East River, the Harlem River and the Hudson River, all facing inwards. While on Manhattan itself, New Yorkers had commandeered every piece of available viewing s.p.a.ce - from parks and buildings to the major freeways that ringed the edges of the island: the Henry Hudson Parkway, West St and the FDR - all looking outward.
And the subject of their collective gaze: The eight humming rocket cars hovering above the waves of the East River, in the shadow of the mighty Brooklyn Bridge.
Jason and the Bug sat hunched in the Argonaut, eyeing the river stretching away before them.
Fabian"s Ma.r.s.eilles Falcon sat on their left and Trouveau"s Vizir - Jason had discovered that it was named after Napoleon"s horse - on their right.
"Anything can happen..." Jason said aloud.
It was about to.
The lights went green and the race began.
CHAPTER THREE.
NEW YORK CITY, USA (SAt.u.r.dAY).
RACE 3: THE PURSUIT.
LAP: 1 OF 120.
Eight cars. 120 laps. On one very short track.
To Jason, the three rivers of New York resembled one continuous watery trench, flanked by hills of roaring spectators and spanned intermittently by sweeping bridges, from which cascaded the spectacular golden ion waterfalls.
The first bridge after the Brooklyn Bridge was the Manhattan Bridge, but since it was so close to the Brooklyn, its waterfall wasn"t initiated till Lap 2. But the next bridge, the colossal Williamsburg Bridge, like the first turn of any race, was a crunch point. Its golden waterfall was most certainly active - and by the time the eight racers reached it, they had to be in single file in order to pa.s.s through the narrow opening in its curtain of golden ions.
The surface of the East River rushed under the nose of the Argonaut as Jason threw every lever forward, banking with the leftward bend in the river toward the tiny gap under the Williamsburg Bridge.
He saw the bridge, saw the gap, saw all the speeding cars around him and wondered: How the h.e.l.l are we all going to fit through?
But in the moment before the bridge was upon them, all eight cars converged like the teeth of a zipper and roared - shoom-shoom-shoom-shoom - through the narrow gap.
But then as he shot through the gap in the waterfall in the middle of the field, Jason saw that one car hadn"t quite made it through.
It was the second US Air Force driver, Dwayne Lewicki, in his modified F-55 fighter, Car No. 23.
Trailing two cars behind Jason, Lewicki"s car emerged on the other side of the waterfall, seemingly all right - but it wasn"t.
Lewicki must have clipped the ion curtain.
Slowly, painfully, inexorably, his car peeled away to the right in a soaring downward arc, before it came to an abrupt jarring halt in the Dead Zone in front of the spectators on the eastern sh.o.r.e - out of the race.
"Game on," Jason said.
Jason roared around the track - all but overwhelmed by the intensity of the racing.
This was unlike anything he"d experienced at Race School. Cars whizzed across his nose at reckless speeds. Racers b.u.mped and pushed each other. And the crowd, it was always there, always around him, roaring, cheering, almost...well...baying for blood. It kind of felt like an old Roman chariot race.
The two Renault drivers, Fabian and Trouveau, had obviously decided to make Jason"s life h.e.l.l. All round the first lap - and then the second and the third - the two Frenchmen badgered Jason, the pair of them taking calculated swipes at both his tailfin and his nosewing, zeroing in on the Argonaut with their bladed nosewings.
Every time they cut in, the New York crowds booed.
And every time Jason evaded their thrusts, the crowds cheered. He held them off doggedly.
But it was only a matter of time till their attacks did some damage and on Lap 6 they did.
At Liberty"s Elbow, the two French cars cut across the bow of the Argonaut in such a way that Jason either pulled out of the turn or lost his nosewing.
He pulled out of the turn - and decelerated - and watched as the field raced away from him.
"d.a.m.n it!" he yelled. "French b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"
He gunned the Argonaut once more, and shot off in pursuit - now chasing the 15-second rule.
At each bridge now, he saw a giant digital countdown, telling him how far ahead the leader was (of course, it was Alessandro Romba).
Jason hit the Start-Finish Line at the Brooklyn Bridge eleven seconds behind Romba. Close. But okay.
But in a race like this - by its very nature, tight and close - that kind of lead could only be regathered in the pits or with the help of a crash.
In the end, Jason would benefit from both.
Pit stops in a collective pursuit race were pre-set - so as not to allow cheap knock-outs when someone pitted. In this race, they were pre-set to take place every 20 laps.
At those stops, Sally performed like a genius. And it was she who hauled in Alessandro Romba"s lead - in stops on Laps 20, 40, 60 and 80 - in one of those stops, hauling in three whole seconds.
And then things started to get interesting.
LAP: 105 OF 120.
Romba was still in the lead, in his silver-and-black Lockheed-Martin.
The USAF pilot, Carver, was in 2nd in his blue F-55. Then there was a pack of four - among them, Jason.
Last of all, in 7th place, came Jason"s quasi-team-mate in the Lombardi Racing Team, Pablo Riviera.
Riviera was languishing in last place, having woefully botched a pit stop on Lap 100, and was now travelling along only just inside the 15-second mark.