No! Jason thought. Not on the home straight!
‘Hang on, Bug!’ was all he had time to yell.
Its tailfin gone, the speeding Argonaut dropped its nose instantly and ploughed at a sizzling 790 km/h into the pavement of Fifth Avenue.
Sparks flew everywhere.
The Argonaut‘s nosewing dislodged immediately and flew away, loose pieces of the car were stripped off by the wind, while its wings bounced against the pavement and were torn clean off.
And the battered little Argonaut skidded to a sideways halt in the middle of Fifth Avenue, a tantalising two hundred metres short of the Finish Line, before it tipped clumsily onto its side, its cockpit pointed towards the Line.
Jason snapped his neck upwards and saw - tilted sideways - the Finish Line, so close but so far away.
‘Bug! You okay?’
The Bug said he was.
In a flash, Jason assessed his options.
He knew Romba was close behind him - and by the sound of it, almost on him - too close to beat to the Line on foot as the Bug had done to Barnaby back at Race School.
‘Damn it!’ he yelled. ‘I am not gonna lose this race!’
And as he saw Romba’s car blur past his stationary position, inspiration struck and Jason jammed his golden fleece in his lap, unclipped his transponder-equipped steering wheel, and did the only thing he could think to do to win the race.
He yanked on his ejection lever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RACE 4: THE QUEST
SECTION: FIFTH AVENUE (INBOUND)
It was an image no race-goer would ever forget.
The black Lockheed of Alessandro Romba sweeping past the crumpled wreck of the Argonaut just as - shoooooom! - Jason, on his ejection seat, came shooting out of the wreck, rocketing horizontally and head-first, like a human cannonball, a bare two feet above Fifth Avenue where he…
…overtook Romba’s car in flight…
…and shot over the Finish Line one single foot ahead of the shocked Italian!
No sooner was the ejection seat over the Finish Line than it lost all its horizontal momentum and arced downward, and hit the ground and skidded - on its side - kicking up a million sparks all around Jason, but protecting him with its reinforced construction.
And then it stopped.
A sizzling, steaming crumpled wreck.
Race officials came running from all sides, concerned.
The crowds were stunned into silence.
Henry and Martha Chaser just stared, searching for a sign of life in the smoking ejection seat and the crowd of officials gathering around it.
No-one had ever seen anything like it - the kid had ejected over the Line to win!
And then an official lifted Jason from the crumpled mess of his ejection seat and Jason stood, wobbling, and held his steering wheel and golden fleece aloft -
- and the roar that went up from the crowd gathered around the Finish Line was like no other that had ever been heard in the history of hover car racing.
It was so loud, it almost brought the city down.
And Henry and Martha Chaser both breathed a sigh of relief - before Henry leapt into the air, pumping his fists.
‘YOU…LITTLE…BLOODY…BEAUTY!‘ he yelled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Delirious scenes followed.
Like a dam breaking, the ecstatic crowd burst through the barricades and stampeded onto Fifth Avenue, massing around Jason’s crumpled ejection seat.
Jason - now flanked by officials and security guards - sought out Alessandro Romba nearby and shook his hand.
‘I’m sorry about the Grand Slam, Mr Romba,’ he said.
Romba just smiled ruefully. ‘I have a feeling that today might have been my last chance to get it - from now on, I’ll be facing a tough new opponent in every race.’
Jason nodded. ‘Good race today.’
‘You too. Now go, young Chaser. Celebrate.’
‘I will,’ Jason smiled broadly.
And he ran off down Fifth Avenue, to the wreck of the Argonaut, still lying on its side in the middle of the wide boulevard, where he found the Bug, now standing beside the wreckage.
The two brothers embraced - as camera flashes blazed all around them.
‘Jason! Doodlebug!’ Martha Chaser came running from the VIP stand, with Henry behind her. Martha grabbed Jason in a great big hug and squeezed him tight.
Henry Chaser stopped a few steps behind her, knowing that the Bug - currently unhugged - didn’t like to be held by him.
He was, then, quite stunned when the Bug leapt up into his arms and cuddled him warmly, resting his head on Henry’s shoulder.
‘Well done, son,’ Henry said, his voice breaking slightly. ‘Well done.’
‘Thanks…Dad,’ the Bug whispered softly - the first words he’d ever spoken directly to Henry Chaser.
Martha released Jason. ‘I almost had a heart attack when your back fin exploded in the final straight. What was that all about? Why did that happen?’
‘I have an idea,’ Jason said, turning to see Ariel arrive on the scene, escorted by two New York cops who held between them: Ravi Gupta, the Indian bookmaker, with his hands cuffed.
‘Is this him?’ one of the cops said to Jason.
‘Yeah. That’s him,’ Jason said. ‘That’s the guy who put the explosives on my car in Italy and here.’
Both Martha and Henry whirled around. So did all the race officials nearby, levelling their eyes at Gupta.
Jason explained. ‘I realised it the other night when we saw the gambling odds on TV. In racing, you can bet on all sorts of results: me winning, me coming in the Top 3 overall. But what really caught my attention were the odds for me coming in the Top 5 in any race. And suddenly I thought about the Italian Run.”
‘Twice in the Italian Run, our team encountered unusual difficulties: that explosion in the home straight, but also before that, just before the second pit stop, when Sally was blocked from getting to the Pescara Pits.
‘And I realised: in both instances those difficulties arose only when I moved into 5th place. On the way to the Pescara Pits, I leapfrogged into 5th by cutting the heel. Then my tailfin exploded just after I got past Trouveau and it looked likeI would be finishing in 5th.
‘And suddenly, I realised: someone didn’t want me to come in the Top 5 in Italy. So I thought about who that could be…and came to one conclusion: gamblers. And there’s been only one bookmaker who’s shown any interest in me. Gupta.
‘So the other night, before I went to bed, I checked his odds on me both here and back in Italy, in particular, Gupta’s odds on me coming in the Top 5 in Italy. They were huge. Gupta stood to lose a fortune if I’d come 5th there, so he’d ensured that I wouldn’t: first by blocking Sally at the Pescara Pits, and second by planting an explosive on my tailfin.’
‘But how could you prove it?’ Henry asked.
‘I couldn’t. I just had to wait - and see if something similar happened today. So I got Ariel to get some cops to watch Gupta for the whole race and…’
He turned to the cop beside Ariel.
The cop said: ‘We have digital surveillance footage of Mr Gupta pointing a remote control at the Argonaut and pressing a button on that remote a moment before the car’s tailfin explodes. Radio-signal surveillance also recorded seek-and-respond signals passing between Gupta’s remote and the Argonaut an instant before the explosion. Which is why Mr Gupta is coming with us now.’
With that, the cops took Gupta away.
‘Gambling…’ Sally growled. ‘It’s bad news.’
‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ Martha Chaser said daintily.
‘And why do you say that, Mum?’ Jason asked, surprised.
‘Well,’ she seemed a little embarrassed to say it, ‘as I said I would, I put a dollar on you to win the Masters, way back before the first race of the series, when you were at 1500-to-1. So I just made $1500. I think I might get myself that new sewing machine now.’
; Jason just shook his head and grinned.
And so he was left with his family and his friends and his fleece and the massing cheering waving crowd in the
middle of Fifth Avenue, New York, on the Sunday of the Masters…as the winner.
That same grin was still fixed on his face as he stood on Liberty Island, at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, behind the winner’s podium, watching Romba (26 points) and Fabian (22 points, having received no points in Race 4 for crashing) receive their wreaths for coming 2nd and 3rd in the Masters.
Then came the moment.
‘And, now, ladies and gentlemen,’ the announcer proclaimed, ‘in 1st place, with a series total of 28 points, two wins, and one 3rd placing, the Masters Champion for this year…Jason Chaser! Team: Argonaut/Lombardi. Navigator: Bug Chaser. Mech Chief: Sally McDuff.’
The three of them leapt up onto the podium.
Jason, the Bug and Sally.
And they accepted their wreaths, and the gigantic Masters Trophy.
Then Jason hefted the enormous trophy aloft, above his head, and the crowd just went ballistic.
And as he looked out over them, Jason thought about everything he’d been through the previous year. It had, without a doubt, been the most incredible year of his life - a year that had begun in the swamps of Carpentaria, proceeded through the many trials of Race School and featured an appearance at the Italian Run, before he had finished off the year winning - yes, winning - the most prestigious and demanding race series of all: the New York Masters.
And now, to cap it all off, in his pocket sat a contract from Umberto Lombardi offering him and his team the privilege of racing full-time for the Lombardi Racing Team on the pro circuit next year.
Jason held the trophy high and smiled.
He was Jason Chaser.
Hover car racer.
THE END
of
HOVER CAR RACER
Matthew Reilly, Hover Car Racer
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