Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“Paul!” She lunged forward as the clamp shot away from the notch. It hit her in the back of the leg, and she screamed.

Her voice was drowned out by the sound of the second clamp being flung from its moorings and the furious dissonance of water gushing into the sub like it was blasting from a high-pressure fire hose.

HALFWAY DOWN the twisting mountain road to Vila do Porto, the game of chicken was on. Katarina kept her foot down on the accelerator. The cars coming up at them seemed undaunted. If anything, they’d accelerated also, and continued to charge shoulder to shoulder, their headlights blazing.

Kurt put a hand up to block the glare, trying to save some of his night vision. He glanced in the mirror; the single car behind them was closing in. He wondered if everyone had gone insane.

He flicked his eyes forward again, caught sight of a road sign and an arrow. It read “Hang Gliders — Ultralights.” He grabbed the wheel, yanked the car to the right.

“What are you doing?” Katarina shouted.

They skidded onto a gravel road, turned sideways for a moment, and then straightened, as Katrina spun the wheel madly in one direction and then the other.

Behind them the sound of screeching tires pierced the night. A slight crunch followed, not the massive impact Kurt was hoping for but a happy sound nonetheless.

“Keep going,” he said.

“We don’t know where this goes.”

“Does it matter?”

Of course it didn’t. And moments later the lights swung onto the dirt road far behind them, so there was no way to turn back even if it did.

“Up ahead,” Kurt said. “Head for the cliff.” “Are you crazy?” she shouted. “I can barely keep us straight as it is.” “Exactly.”

They rumbled along the gravel-strewn road. A massive cloud of dust billowed out behind them, not enough to block out the light completely but enough to obscure everything. He could imagine the Audi’s driver, blinded, getting pinged with rocks, sliding this way and that, as he tried to keep up.

Sometimes extra horsepower and bigger tires were bad. With standing water and gravel, this was the case exactly. At a high-enough speed, the Audi would become uncontrollable — it would literally begin to float on the tumbling rocks and pebbles underneath its tires — but the little Focus, with its skinny tires, dug right through the gravel down to the more solid ground.

“Let him get a little closer,” Kurt said, scanning the terrain up ahead.

She nodded. She seemed as if she knew what he was thinking.

“Now punch it and turn.”

She slammed the gas pedal down, spinning up more dust and rocks and pulling away from the Audi. But the Audi driver must have mashed his pedal as well because his car now surged toward them.

“I said turn,” Kurt yelled.

She threw the wheel over, but the Focus skidded, and Kurt realized he’d overplayed their hand. He grabbed Katarina by the shoulder, pulled her into the passenger seat, and then dove out of the car through the open section where the door had once been, dragging her with him as he went.

They tumbled and rolled on the grass beside the road. The Audi shot by, missing them by a foot or two. The Focus disappeared off the cliff, and the Audi’s brake lights lit up.

“Too late,” Kurt said.

The Audi skidded through the dust cloud and then vanished, going over the edge at twenty miles an hour or so.

It was eerily silent for three seconds, and then twin explosions boomed through the night one right after the other.

The gritty air swirled around them. For a second it seemed as if they were alone.

“They’re gone,” Katarina said.

Kurt nodded and then glanced down the dirt road. White light could be seen filtering through the settling dust, moving toward them. Two cars remained.

“They’re headed this way,” Kurt said.

He took Katarina by the hand and led her back away from the road. “Come on,” he said. “We can’t run, but we can still hide.”