Dutch grabbed a torch from the same place she got the wrench and peered inside the interior of the wheel-well. ‘If he planted anything, I don’t see it.’
‘Seems to me we caught him before he had a chance to plant anything at all. The question is, why do it?’
She looked up at him. ‘Muto still has two death notices with my name on them.’
He stared at her. ‘You think Elektron’s capable of murder? He’s a creep, but I didn’t have him pegged as a killer.’
‘Elektron’s been on the skids for a long time,’ said Dutch, ‘even since before I wound up in jail. He might be capable of anything, if it gave him a chance at coming first in the Run.’
Nat stepped towards the door, still looking pale. ‘I’ll go let Wu know we’re looking at threats of sabotage on top of potential assassination.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell the race administrators?’ asked Dutch. ‘It’s possible we could get him kicked out of the race altogether.’
‘Except then there’d be an investigation,’ said Nat, pulling the door open. ‘And if Elektron does turn out to be connected to Muto or anyone else, it could open up a whole can of worms we’d rather stay unopened until we’ve finished our business on Teijouan. After all,’ he added, ‘the point is for us to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.’
* * *
Nat returned a few minutes later with six mechanics who near as damn stripped the Coupé down to its chassis and back up again and even took out Muto’s traffic-pacifier while they were at it. They found nothing, but it did little to settle Dutch’s unease. Then they rolled the garage door up, letting in the morning sun and the noise of the crowd gathering on the grandstand above.
She and Nat were last on a randomised schedule of trial participants posted on the wall of each garage. She stepped out into the sunshine and watched the Australian driver, Vishnevsky, roll his enormous vehicle up to the starting line. An amplified voice boomed out his statistics, history and betting averages. Vishnevsky was something of a mystery, she learned, with questions around his origins.
Vishnevsky’s vehicle leaned towards the tank end of the spectrum, being a modified vintage Oshkosh Tactical Protector that looked more suited to gunning down insurgents in some bombed-out city than racing. It rumbled forward once the flag came down, accelerating faster than Dutch thought such vehicles could. She stepped up to the side of the race-course, watching as Vishnevsky and his navigator threaded their way through a forest of girders pushed into the race-track at different angles before disappearing from sight. A few moments later she heard screeching tyres, followed by the bass thump of an explosion, and a huge cheer from the grandstand audience.
‘What’s Vishnevsky’s deal?’ Dutch asked a mechanic standing nearby. ‘Is the big game hunter look just some kind of shtick?’
‘He’s the real deal, a Kaiju-hunter,’ the mechanic replied. ‘He killed a Viper-Tail two years ago and sold the skin for something like thirty million dollars.’
Dutch shook her head in wonder and watched the rest of the contestants drive their time-trials, most often returning with scorched paintwork. Lucifer Black clearly still favoured the retro flying-saucer-on-wheels look for his current ride, which combined 1960s retro-futuristic styling with fuck-you armoured tyres. The windows, as usual, were tinted one-way so you couldn’t see anything inside.
Armoured or not, Black crossed back over the finishing line with two of his tyres blown. Dutch watched mechanics swarm over his weird-looking car like fire ants descending on an injured rodent. Black’s identity had remained a mystery for years; no one had ever set eyes on him, and no one had even seen him getting into or out of his car. Some rumours claimed the vehicle was in fact remote-controlled, using some secret technology that could operate within Teijouan’s d-field. Like many, however, Dutch suspected Black’s “representative” Dietrich Sokoloff was the real person behind the wheel.
‘Ready?’ asked Nat, appearing by her side. He’d changed into a dark blue racing-suit. Dutch, by contrast, intended to race in her street-clothes, like she always had.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, brushing her hands down her jeans. Her palms felt sticky and damp. She felt more nervous than she’d thought she would; it had been a long time after all.
They walked back over to their garage, where engineers and mechanics, under the supervision of Nat’s hired security, finished performing last-minute checks on the Coupé and fuelling it up. She felt her heart thud the way it always did before a race, a steady thrum that left her mouth gritty and dehydrated. She got in behind the wheel, Nat sliding into the passenger seat beside her.
She strapped in and guided the Coupé out into the open air. The grandstand appeared to be packed to capacity, and as she pulled up at the starting line, she saw even more people in their thousands scattered across grassy slopes rising up on either side of the race-track. She had a fleeting mental image of a sniper crouched up high amongst the crowds and pushed the thought away.
The countdown began, banks of TV cameras swinging around to focus on them. She focused on her breathing, hands firm on the wheel.
Then the flag came down, and the tyres span against the tarmac, propelling them forward. They hit the first turn, and she eased back, but not too much.
‘I heard someone say there’s a lake of fire right after the girders,’ Nat informed her.
She grunted an acknowledgement. The girders, each six metres long, had been driven into the race-track at different angles. There were a few narrow gaps, but she managed to slalom the Coupé through them without losing too much speed.
Screw not winning, she thought, one hand on the wheel and the other on the clutch. A savage grin stole onto her face as the speed built up again.
The next turn brought
