life.
A second later, the entire hydrofoil blew, its windows blasting outwards in a shockingly violent explosion.
The force of the blast flipped Herbie's bipod, too, causing the little speedboat to flip over onto its top and skid in a gigantic spraying mess across the surface of the canal, before it smashed into the wall of the canyon and stopped.
After the impact, the crumpled bipod just lay still, droplets of water raining down all around it.
Back at the X–Intersection, Schofield was about to take off after the rogue South African bipod that had skulked away from the fight when, from completely out of nowhere, a line of bullet geysers shattered the water all around his boat.
It was the fourth and last South African bipod firing on him.
It had started up again and was now heading eastward, back into the canyon that led to the crater with the mesa in its middle.
Before Schofield could even think of a response, two parallel lines of much bigger bullet geysers erupted all around his sand-colored bipod. They hit so close, their spray spattered his face.
This barrage of fire came from the third Penetrator helicopter, which still hovered above the X-shaped junction, turning laterally in midair, searching for Kevin. The black chopper's sixbarreled Vulcan cannon roared loudly as it spewed forth a long tongue of bright yellow flames.
Schofield gunned the engine of his bipod, wheeling it around to the left, away from the Penetrator's gunfire — but also, unfortunately, away from the rogue bipod that he was sure contained Kevin — instead taking off after the other South African bipod that had headed back east, toward the crater with the mesa in it.
The Penetrator gave chase, lowering its nose, powering forward like a charging T-rex, its thrusters igniting.
Schofield's bipod skimmed across the surface of the water, its hull barely even touching the waves, trailing the South African bipod through the winding rock-walled canyon, the sharklike Penetrator looming in the air behind it.
'Any ideas?' Book II yelled from the gunner's pod.
'Yeah!' Schofield called. 'Don't die!'
The Penetrator opened fire and two more lines of geysers hit the water all around their speeding bipod.
Schofield banked left — hard — so hard that the boat's left-hand pod lifted clear out of the water, just as a line of bullets ripped up the choppy surface beneath it.
And then, just then, two torpedoes dropped out of the bottom of the Penetrator.
Schofield saw them and his eyes widened.
'Oh, man.'
One after the other, the torpedoes splashed down into the water and a second later two identical fingers of bubbles took off after the two bipods, charging up the water-filled canyon behind them.
One torpedo immediately zeroed in on Schofield's boat.
Schofield cut right, angling for an oddly shaped boulder that jutted out from the right-hand wall of the canyon. The gently sloping boulder looked remarkably like a ramp…
The torpedo closed in.
Schofield's bipod whipped across the water. Book II saw what Schofield was aiming for — the boulder…
The bipod hit the rock ramp, just as the torpedo swung in underneath its jet engines and — the bipod shot up out of the water, its exposed twin hulls rocketing up the length of the rock — scratching, shrieking, screeching — and then suddenly, whoosh! like a stunt car leaping up into the sky, it shot off the end of the sloping boulder, just as the torpedo detonated against the base of the ramp, shattering it into a thousand fragments that went showering upwards in a glorious flower-shaped formation behind the soaring bipod.
The double-hulled boat landed in the water with a splash, still moving fast.
Schofield looked forward just in time to see the South African bipod up ahead of him veering left, heading for a semicircular tunnel burrowed into the left-hand wall of the canyon.
He took off after it, the remaining torpedo charging through the water behind him like a hungry crocodile.
The South African bipod shot into the tunnel.
A second later, Schofield's twin-hulled boat whipped into the darkness behind it.
The torpedo swung in after them.
Their headlamps blazing, the two bipods zoomed down the length of the narrow tunnel at almost a hundred miles an hour, the dark wet walls of the passageway streaking past them in a blur, like some ultrafast indoor roller-coaster ride.
Schofield concentrated hard as he drove.
It was so fast!
The tunnel itself was about twenty feet wide and roughly cylindrical in shape, with its walls curving slightly as they touched the shallow water surface. About two hundred yards ahead of him, he saw a small point of light — the end of the tunnel.
Suddenly Book II yelled, 'It's closing!'
'What!'
'That other torpedo!'
Schofield spun.
The torpedo behind them was indeed moving in quickly, closing the gap fast.
He snapped to look forward — saw the water-blasting jet engines of the South African bipod five yards in front of him. Damn it. Since each bipod was about thirteen feet wide, the tunnel wasn't wide enough to pass.
Schofield gunned it left — but the South African bipod cut him off. Tried right. Same deal.
'What do we do?' Book II called.
'I don't…' Schofield cut himself off. 'Hang on!'
'What?'
'Just hold on tight!'
The torpedo weaved its way under the surface of the shallow water like a slithering snake, edging dangerously close to Schofield's stern.
Schofield hit his thrusters, pulled closer to the South African bipod in front of him — so that now the two sleek twin-hulled boats were whipping along at a hundred miles an hour in the tightly enclosed space barely afoot apart.
Schofield saw the South African driver turn quickly in his seat and see them.
'Hello!' Schofield gave the man a wave. 'Goodbye!'
And with that, just as the torpedo began to disappear underneath the stern of Schofield's boat, Schofield jammed his thrusters as far forward as they would go and yanked his steering yoke hard to the right.
His speeding bipod swung quickly right, the whole twin-hulled boat lifting completely out of the water as it ran up the curving right-hand wall of the tunnel. The bipod bounced so high up the wall that for a moment it was actually traveling at right angles to the earth.
The torpedo didn't care. With its original target lost, it quickly overtook Schofield's wall skimming boat and zeroed in on the only other object in the vicinity — the South African bipod.
The explosion in the narrow confines of the tunnel was huge.
The South African bipod was blasted to bits — bits that were flung all around the tunnel, followed by a rolling, roaring fireball that filled the narrow cylindrical passageway.
Still moving fast, Schofield's twin-hulled boat swooped down off the sloping wall and blasted right through the charred remains of the South African bipod, exploding through the billowing wall of fire that now filled the tunnel before — suddenly, gloriously — it burst into the bright open space of the awaiting canyon at the end of the passageway.
Schofield eased back on the throttle an his bipod ground to a halt in the middle of this new canyon.
His face and body were soaking wet, covered in spray. Book II was the same.
He looked at this new high-walled canyon around them, trying to get a bearing on where they were, and quickly realized that this wasn't a new canyon at all — it was the same subcanyon he had taken earlier when he
