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He eases up beside the Red Bull, noses in front, keeps the ERS button depressed.

The corner is right there.

He releases the button and dabs the brakes, wants to carry as much speed as he can into the curve so he can slide past Vettel.

It doesn’t work.

The German sticks with him the whole way around—on the outside.

Jeeze.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, the guy has won the world championship for the last four years in a row, but still. After they’ve taken the Massenet curve side by side, Billy has the inside line for the right-hander. Late on the brakes, he turns in.

He takes the lead.

Yes—what the
?

Bloody Vettel is going round the outside
again.
And he gets better traction out of the corner and eases ahead.

‘Come on!’ Billy has one straight and one corner to fix this. He shadows Vettel down the short bumpy hill. The German has the outside line so there’s no avoiding the big bump on the inside for Billy. He grits his teeth.

Thwump.
The car hits it and is momentarily airborne.

Thwomp.
The car lands and bottoms out. The impact sends a shot of pain straight into Billy’s back. Worse, Vettel has his nose in front and better track position for the tight, right-hand U-turn at Mirabeau.

Billy is late and hard on the brakes, but the German is just as late and hard and swings around the outside, still leads by a nose. They drop down and down and down to the ultra slow, sweeping roundabout at Loews.

This is where it must happen.

It’s three seconds, two seconds, one second away.

I’ll need to be the last of the late brakers.

Vettel brakes and turns into the corner.

Don’t-brake-yet-don’t-brake-yet-don’t-brake-yet.

Billy waits and waits—then brakes hard.

He’s in the lead.

He turns the steering wheel and aims his car straight
at
Vettel’s.

Whump.
The Iron Rhino’s front wing slams into the Red Bull’s front right wheel. It’s not a big hit but that’s all it takes to cut the rubber. The tyre instantly deflates.

Yes!

Vettel starts to drive on.

No!

He’s trying to get back to the pits so he change the tyre.

That can’t happen. No car can proceed past this point.

Billy flattens the accelerator, wrenches the steering wheel to the left and spins the Iron Rhino around in a one hundred and eighty degree arc —

Crunch.
The right rear wheel thumps into the Red Bull’s front right wheel and shatters the suspension arm.

Vettel’s not going anywhere.

But Ricciardo is. He’s seen the two morons ahead collide and thinks it’s his moment to take advantage. He creeps around the outside of the track with the intent of passing both cars and taking the lead.

Not today buddy, not today.

Billy keeps his foot in, wrenches the steering wheel right and spins the Iron Rhino around in the opposite direction —

Crunch.
His left rear wheel slams into the left side of Ricciardo’s Red Bull. The car grinds to a halt, steam billowing from the cracked bodywork.

Billy turns, looks up the hill to the Mirabeau corner. Nose to tail, the other cars slow and then come to a halt. There’s no way past this accident. His plan has worked beautifully. The irony is not lost on the Australian. At Bathurst he crashed because he wanted the lead. At Monaco he lead because he wanted to crash.

Billy unbuckles his safety harness and climbs out of the vehicle, leaves it idling, knows that if he switches off the engine he won’t be able to use the car again because it doesn’t have a starter motor. He pulls off his helmet.

Sebastian Vettel leaps out of his car, yanks off his helmet and storms towards the Australian. He’s not a happy camper: ‘What the hell are you doing, man?! What the hell are you doing?!’

‘Sorry. That’s my bad.’

“‘My bad?” You drove straight into me!
Twice.’

‘That’s why I said it was my bad. It means “I apologise”—’

‘I know what it means!’

‘It’ll make sense in a minute.’ Billy steps onto the nose of his car and turns to the large television camera on the other side of the safety barrier, which he identified on his out lap. He waves his arms to get the cameraman’s attention. ‘Hey! Over here! Point it over here!’ He looks up at a giant video screen in the distance and watches the camera zoom in on his face. He speaks loudly: ‘I need everyone to listen.’ He can hear his voice reverberate across the track. ‘I am an officer working for Interpol. There is a significant, imminent threat to the Monaco Grand Prix. All spectators should leave this track and the immediate vicinity in an orderly manner as soon as possible.’

Nobody moves. He looks behind him, takes in what must be a thousand people packed onto the balconies of the giant Fairmont Hotel, which sit above the Tunnel. They just stare at the crazy man.

Billy turns back to the camera. ‘This is not a drill. When I said “as soon as possible” I meant you need to leave
right now.’

~ * ~

In the Iron Rhino change room, a groggy Thorne shakes himself awake and notices the television hanging in the corner. He is stunned to see Billy Hotchkiss talking on the screen.

‘Shit.’ They were going to wait until the last lap of the race but that strategy has now been blown. Thorne draws a small walkie-talkie from his pocket, triggers it and speaks: ‘Change of plans, we go now.’

~ * ~

Through the trees to the right Franka watches the giant video screen, stunned and thrilled to see Billy is alive and well. She does her best not to let it show.

Kurt isn’t so happy and does let it show. He triggers his walkie-talkie and answers Thorne. ‘Copy that.’

~ * ~

Billy hears a low, deep rumble.

He pivots to the left and takes in a stand of trees and bushes on the high ground to the west, overlooking the hairpin. He looks up into it but can’t see anything through the dark foliage.

The rumble gets louder.

He jumps down from his car and turns to Vettel. ‘Can you hear that?’

The German looks at him, confused. ‘Hear what?’

Billy holds up a finger. ‘
That
.’

Vettel listens for a moment—then realises he can. ‘Yes.’

Billy turns and stares into the trees again. ‘Me too.’

The rumble gets louder still and is joined by another sound, sharp and high-pitched, like the crackle of a fire—no, like the
cracking
of branches.

Vettel hears that too. ‘What is that?’

The tree leaves shake and shudder like there’s a T-Rex charging towards them.

‘I don’t know but it can’t be good —’

Smash.
A gigantic Kenworth truck crashes through the tree line. It mows down the catch fence and thunders towards Billy and Vettel.

‘Oh shit!’ The vehicle is upon them in a flash. Billy pulls Vettel clear as the truck sweeps past with a foot to spare. It slices past Billy’s Iron Rhino car—and drives straight over Vettel’s Red Bull, crushes it into a pile of carbon fibre, then continues around the right-hander and disappears from view.

Vettel looks at Billy, stunned. ‘Thanks man.’

‘Sorry about your car.’ Billy takes one, two, three steps and leaps into his car.

The German watches him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Don’t let anyone into the tunnel. Get the spectators as far from the track as possible. He points at the Fairmont. ‘And out of that hotel.’

Vettel takes it in with a nod. ‘Okay. Why?’

‘I think there’s a bomb on that truck.’

‘Oh
scheiβe.’

‘Exactly.’ Billy stamps on the gas and peels off.

~ * ~

Claude strides up the hill as quickly as his gimpy knee will let him. He wants to get back to his hotel, packed and out of here as soon as possible. He rounds a corner and sees a matte-black eight hundred thousand dollar Lamborghini Aventador Roadster convertible parked on the street. All crazy, low-slung angles, the hulking machine looks like the unholy love child of a cruise missile and Darth Vader’s helmet. The Frenchman drinks it in for a moment, then continues up the hill then turns to look back at it one last time and catches sight of a giant video screen in the distance.

‘Christalmighty.’ It shows a replay of Billy standing on his car talking to a camera and telling everyone, Claude is sure, to leave the circuit. The image then cuts to a giant semi-trailer truck as it crashes onto the circuit, narrowly misses Billy and some other guy, crushes a Formula One car, then carries on around the track, after which Billy jumps into his car and chases after it.

Claude turns, sees a crowd of people rush up the roadway away from the track. It’s happening
now.
The attack is under way and that Aussie is attempting to stop it, single-handedly, while Claude skulks back to his hotel room because he’s ‘too old for this
merde
’.

The Frenchman looks back at the giant screen as Billy’s Iron Rhino speeds along the track, then glances down at the black Lamborghini, then back up at the screen where the racing car plunges into the tunnel beneath the Fairmont Hotel.

What do I do?

~ * ~

Billy accelerates along the gloomy tunnel. It’s a half kilometre long and curves gently to the right, lit by muted fluorescent tubes in the right-hand corner of the ceiling, above the shiny white-tiled wall. To the left is a low catch fence and a walkway.

The Australian can’t see the truck directly but he can see the glow of its brake lights reflected off the white tiles as it slows to a stop. He pulls the Iron Rhino to a halt and leaves it idling. He doesn’t want whoever’s in the truck’s cabin to see him or the car so he needs to travel the rest of the way on foot.

Okay, now what?

Simple. He takes control of the truck and drives it out of this tunnel. He realises that if these people are suicide bombers the weapon could detonate at any moment and he’ll be toast. Unsurprisingly, he’s not feeling the same concern about dying as he did at Ski Dubai when he thought he had something to lose with Franka. That relationship is, well, complicated, to say the least, so he’s back to his old fearless, happy-to-stare-death-in-the-eye self.

He climbs out of the car, draws the nine-millimetre pistol from his pocket, sprints to the left side of the track, vaults the safety fence and drops to the walkway. He stays low and runs fifty metres towards the truck, the fence providing him with enough cover. He can just make out the vehicle through its narrow horizontal slots.

The truck’s engine shuts down. He needs to deal with whoever’s in the cabin, but before that he needs to confirm there’s actually a weapon on board and the truck doesn’t belong to some fool delivering fruit who took a wrong turn on the way to market. And before he does that he needs to get up and over this fence without whoever’s in the cabin seeing him.

Here.

The curve of the tunnel is such that at the right spot the angle of the truck obscures both rear-view mirrors. And that’s where he stands right now. He vaults the safety fence and lands directly behind the rear door of the trailer, which is chained and padlocked shut.

The trailer’s sides and rear door are covered in white, heavy-duty plastic sheeting. He ejects the magazine from his pistol and stabs its sharp end into the plastic. The material is tough but the magazine slices through it. He yanks the magazine down and makes an inch-long cut. He replaces the magazine then pulls the cut open with his fingers and looks inside.

‘Yep.’ He pulls his eye from the hole. There is a
giant
fertiliser bomb inside, which they must have transferred from the van. He needs to get it out of here
right now.
If this thing goes off it will destroy the tunnel and the hotel above will collapse. There were at least a thousand people there. At least.

He crouches, looks beneath the rig. There’s no one there. He drops to the ground, crawls under the trailer towards the cab and quickly reaches the front axle. He hasn’t seen any feet climb down from the cab so whoever drove it in here is still up there. He could pump the contents of his pistol through the floor into whoever’s driving this truck and end it like that, but he won’t. He doesn’t know who’s in the cabin, doesn’t know if that person might detonate the weapon if they’re hit by a bullet and doesn’t know if one of those bullets might accidentally trigger the weapon on its own. That’s a whole lot of ‘doesn’t know’ so it’s not worth the risk.

He crawls forward to the front bumper, then out from beneath it and crouches by the giant front grill. He can feel heat radiate off the metal, can hear the tick-tick-tick as the engine cools. This should be relatively straightforward. He just needs to stand, point the gun at the cabin’s windshield and order the occupants to put their hands up. He takes a breath and loops his forefinger tight on the pistol’s trigger.

Okay, here goes.

He stands and raises the gun.

There’s nobody inside the cabin. ‘What the —?’ He hears shoes land on the bitumen, then footsteps. Billy searches for the source of the sound —