Death Run (21 page)

Bolan realized he was drenched with sweat. It was hot in the storage area behind the loading docks, but the soldier knew that wasn't the reason for the sweat. He looked around at the other men in the room. Osborne and the four surviving members of the BNG were as drenched with sweat as he was. The five men stared at him, their eyes wide, their jaws hanging slack, as if trying to speak, but no one said a word.

After an uncomfortably long time, Osborne broke the silence.

"You did it?" he asked.

"We did it," Bolan replied.

"What about those four?" Osborne asked.

"I told them they're free to go, so they're free to go."

The Executioner looked at the four men. "This doesn't mean my friend here won't come after you the next time you break the law," he told them. "You've seen what he's like when he's mad. Now get out of here before I change my mind."

When they'd left, Bolan walked out to the loading bay and called Kurtzman to have him send in a team to dispose of the device.

Eddie Anderson got a good start off the pole position and rode one of the best races of his life. The only person who could run with him was his teammate, Daniel Asnorossa, but he never got within three seconds of Anderson.

He was riding the race of his life, but he couldn't shake the thought of his brother Darrick from his head, so he decided to go with it and imagined he was following Darrick. Eddie had watched Darrick race this track dozens of times, and he'd memorized every line his older brother had ever taken through every corner, but he'd never been able to put together the perfect lap here quite like Darrick could. Now, in his imagination, he was watching Darrick take the absolute perfect line. Eddie poured on the gas and was running well ahead of the pace of everyone but Asnorossa, but he wasn't going fast enough to catch the image of his brother that he imagined in his head.

Darrick's team had pulled out of the race entirely. The discovery of the bodies in the Team Free Flow garage had created incredible turmoil in the paddock, and there had even been talk of canceling the race. Ultimately the promoters decided to go on with the event, figuring that the body count might rise significantly if they tried to turn back tens of thousands of rabid fans on race day. They figured the crowd would be especially incensed once they learned the reason for the cancellation had been because of a tragedy that had befallen a third-rate back marker team that absolutely no one cared about after the death of its star rider, Darrick Anderson.

No one really cared about Team Free Flow, but Darrick's name still meant something to the crowd, and Eddie had noted hundreds of people wearing T-shirts with images of Darrick from Darrick's winning years. Many even carried banners with Darrick's name on them.

But even more carried banners with Eddie's name on them, and for every T-shirt with Darrick's image, there were three with Eddie's. But the Darrick banners were all that mattered to Eddie. He was riding for his brother as much as he was riding for himself and his team. And he was riding extremely well. He passed his pit board, which told him that Asnorossa had fallen to four seconds behind him.

In his mind he was chasing his brother, who seemed to disappear into the heat waves shimmering up off the hot asphalt. Eddie was riding right on the edge of his tire-performance envelope, and even though he knew better than to risk losing the front end and crashing, costing him valuable points and perhaps ultimately the championship, he pushed his bike even harder trying to catch up with his imagined sibling.

In his mind, Eddie noticed his brother was taking slightly different lines through the corners than he'd remembered him taking. Eddie followed these imagined lines, which were unorthodox, but they worked. He apexed a bit earlier in some corners and a bit later in others, deviating from the accepted fast line through Laguna Seca, but there was a method to his madness. Eddie began to adopt the lines he imagined his brother taking and he started to shave time off his laps. After putting together several laps with the new lines, he passed his pit board to see that he'd just set a new lap record, and not just the lap record for race times — he'd set an all-time lap record, beating his qualifying record set the previous day by nearly half a second.

Eddie knew he had more in him and his bike. He continued to follow the strange lines he imagined his brother taking and his lap times continued to drop. Four laps before the race was over, he set his fastest lap, beating his record of the previous day by over a second.

Asnorossa still hung with him until his fastest lap, falling back only five seconds by the time Eddie set the record. But on that incredible lap, Asnorossa pushed it too hard and he went off the track in Rainey Curve, exactly where Eddie had gone off in practice. Asnorossa almost made it back on track but dropped the bike in the kitty litter just off the edge of the asphalt. He got the bike back up before it stalled and got back on track. The pair of Ducatis had built up such an amazing lead over the third-place rider that Asnorossa was eventually able to bring his bike in at second place, despite his off-track adventure.

Meanwhile Eddie kept up his blistering pace, but he still couldn't catch his imagined riding companion. He was still going faster than anyone ever had before, and on the final lap Eddie wheelied past the finish line, taking the checkered flag.

The crowd lost its collective mind. In his imagination, Eddie saw Darrick turn around and flash him a V-for-victory sign.