Treasure (Dirk Pitt 9)

"Allah guide my actions," he uttered in sudden fear.

Ismail pulled the gun away and pointed through the broken windshield.

"Be still and mind your driving."

Ismail's henchmen in the second Mercedes didn't pause. Dutifully they plunged after their leader.

The Cord hurtled across the hard-packed snow like a runaway freight , gaining speed at a terrifying rate. There was no slowing the heavy car.

Pitt steered with a light touch and feathered the brakes, cautious not to lock them and send the Cord into an uncontrollable spin. A sideways slide down the steep incline would only result in the car's overturning and ending up at the base of the mountain in a scattered trail of metal and broken bodies.

"Is this a good time to raise the question of seat belts?" asked Giordino with his feet raised and wedged against the dashboard.

Pitt shook his head. "Not optional equipment in this model."Pitt sensed a tiny bit of luck as the bullet-shredded rubber tore off the rear wheel. Free of the deflated tire, the double edges of the rim gave him a small measure of control as they bit into the icy surface, throwing up fanlike sheets of ice particles.

The speedometer was hovering at sixty when Pitt saw a field of moguls coming up. Expert skiers found the rounded snow bumps a favorite obstacle course. So did Pitt when he schussed down a slope at that speed. But not now, not playing downhill racer with a weighty 2,120

kilograms of automobile.

With a deft touch, he gently nudged the car off to the side of the road where the path ran smooth. He felt as though he were trying to thread a needle with an Olympic bobsled. Subconsciously Pitt tensed himself for the violent shock and crashing impact should he make the slightest wrong move and hurl the car into a tree, smashing everyone to bloody pulp.

But there was no crushing impact. The Cord somehow shot through the narrow slot, the moguls on one side and the trees on the other flashing by like blurred stage sets.

As soon as Pitt was on a wide, unobstructed run, he snapped his head around to check the status of his pursuers.

The driver of the lead Mercedes was savvy. He'd followed in the Cord's tire tracks around the moguls. The second driver either didn't see them or didn't consider them dangerous. He realized his mistake too late and compounded it by throwing the Mercedes wildly from side to side in a desperate effort to dodge the meter-high humps.

The Arab actually slipped past three or four before he took one head-on.

The front end dug in and the rear rose up and appeared to hang on a minety-degree angle. The car stood poised there for an instant, and then it flipped end over end as if a child had flipped a short stick. It struck the hard snowpack again and again with the splitting sound of crashing metal and glass, The occupants might have survived if they'd been thrown clear, but the jarring series of impacts had jammed the doors. The car began to disintegrate. The engine tore from its mountings and tumbled crazily into the woods. Wheels, front suspension, rear-drive train, none of it was built to take this destructive tomm-It all wrenched away from the chassis, bouncing in mad gyrations down the hill.

Pitt could not spare the time to watch the Mercedes cartwheel and crumple into an indistinguishable heap before finally grinding to a halt on its squashed roof in a small ravine.

"Would it sound gauche," said Giordino for the first time since they plunged off the crest, "if I said, One down?"

"I wish you wouldn't use that term," Pitt muttered through gritted teeth. "The score is about to escalate." He briefly took one hand from the wheel and motioned ahead.

Giordino tensed as he observed the ski run fork and merge with another trail crowded with people in vividly colored ski suits. He jerked himself to a standing position by grabbing the remains of the windshield frame, shouting and waving frantically as Pitt laid on the Cord's twill horns.

The startled skiers turned at the honking and saw the two speeding cars barreling down the ski trail. With seconds to spare, they traversed to the sides and gaped in astonishment as the Cord, with the Mercedes right behind, sped past.

A ski jump rose from the trail and dropped off a hundred meters away.

Pitt hardly had time to distinguish the snowy ramp blending in with the hillside. Without hesitation he aimed the radiator ornament at the starting drop-off.

"You wouldn't?" blurted Giordino.

"Plan four," Pitt assured him. "Brace yourself. I may lose control. "

"I thought you've been doing that right along."

Far smaller than the structures built for Olympic competition, the jump was used only for acrobatic and hot-dog skiing exhibitions. The ramp was wide enough to take the Cord and then some. It extended thirty meters into a concave dip before abruptly ending twenty meters above the ground.

Pitt lined up on the starting gate, using the Cord's wide body to hide the ski jump from the view of the Mercedes. The tricky part depended on exact timing and a nimble twist of the steering wheel.

At the last instant, before the front wheels rolled across the starting line, Pitt flicked the steering wheel and spun the Cord's rear end, whipping the car away from the ramp down the ski jump. Alert to the sudden antics of the Cord, Ismail's driver swung to avoid a collision and made a perfect entry through the starting gate.

As Pitt wrestled the Cord back on a straight path, Giordino looked back at the Mercedes and stared into a face masked with a weird expression of frightened rage. Then it was gone as the car shot down the steep slant out of all control. It should have soared into the sky like a fat bird with no wings. But the rear end broke loose and it slipped on a slight angle, dropping the right wheels off the ramp's side a few meters before the final edge and sending the car spiraling through the air like a well-thrown football.