Sky Monster yanked his steering wheel left and did a full 360-degree lateral skid. It was an amazing evasive manoeuvre, but it cost them precious speed and suddenly, as they sped in a wide arc onto the third and last straight of the circus, they had two enemy vehicles pressing close on either side of them: Fear’s APC on the right and a massive minotaur-filled Typhoon on the left.
Minotaurs began leaping from the Typhoon onto the struts of their LSV en masse.
One, then two, then three . . .
As Sky Monster drove, Jack and E punched and kicked them off.
It quickly became clear to Jack that this was hopeless: no sooner would they dispatch two minotaurs than two more would take their places.
He looked over at Fear in his white helmet—and an idea hit him. A way to get out of this. This whole thing . . .
‘Sky Monster!’ he called above the wind. ‘Whatever happens, keep driving! Keep going!’
‘What are you doing?’ Sky Monster shouted.
‘Using my classical education to get us out of this!’
With those words, Jack leapt off their LSV onto the running board of Fear’s Spartan and in one quick movement, grabbed the crossbow attached to Fear’s forearm guard and fired it across the bonnet of the LSV . . . and hit the driver of the minotaur-filled Typhoon on the other side, right in his eye-visor!
Its driver dead, the Typhoon peeled left before its wheels clipped the outer wall of the circus and the whole massive truck suddenly rolled, tumbling down the straight, hurling minotaurs this way and that, before it slammed to a crunching halt on its side. It lay still, shrouded by a cloud of dust and dirt.
Freed from the bad-guy sandwich, Sky Monster powered ahead in his LSV.
Jack remained standing on the running board of the Spartan, holding on to the side mirror with one hand while with the other he grappled with Fear.
Two things struck Jack about his opponent: one, the big warrior in the lion helmet was fucking strong and, two, he had all the leverage. Jack wasn’t going to win this fight.
Better do something then, his mind screamed.
He looked ahead and saw that the straight bent to the right, heading toward the tunnel set into the crater wall. A final pit, filled almost to the brim with water, yawned before him.
Jack leaned close to Fear. ‘You wanna dance, asshole? Let’s dance.’
He then released his grip on Fear, reached inside the cab and yanked on the steering wheel.
The big black APC swung left and with Jack on it, it ploughed straight into the oncoming pit with a monumental splash.
The crowd of royal spectators gasped as one as the Spartan went plunging into the pit with Jack hanging on to its side.
‘Fucking brilliant!’ the prince named George exclaimed.
Beside him, Lily watched in horror as the big armoured truck sank into the inky black water, taking the fighting figures of Jack and Fear with it as it slowly disappeared from view.
Inside the sinking Spartan, Jack and Fear grappled ferociously.
Fear was trying to bring around his other forearm, with a second crossbow mounted on it, while Jack—standing awkwardly, half-in, half-out of the driver’s window—tried to hold his arm at bay.
Water flooded over the top of Jack, gushing in through the window in a constant stream—but he couldn’t let go of Fear’s arm. To do so would mean death.
Then, with frightening speed, the Spartan went vertical and with a whoosh, went entirely underwater.
On the track above the pit, all the other cars and trucks raced out of the circus and disappeared into the tunnel leading to the next section of the course.
The royal spectators, however, were all glued to the water pit, waiting to see who would emerge from its sloshing waters, Fear or Jack.
A minute passed.
The water went still.
Neither combatant emerged.
Lily watched the pit with desperate eyes. ‘Come on, Dad . . .’
Another minute passed.
The water in the pit was now perfectly still.
Lily despaired. No-one could hold their breath for that long, not even Jack.
‘Look there!’ Prince George called. ‘Over in the far corner! Someone’s surfacing!’
Hope surged through Lily as she peered to see who it was. She saw a man break the surface on the far side and step up out of the pit.
She didn’t need to see his face.
His white lion helmet said it all . . . so did the battered fireman’s helmet gripped in his right hand.
Tears began to well in her eyes.
Prince George pumped his fist. ‘Fuck yeah! The fifth greatest warrior is toast.’
The royal spectators all began cheering and applauding as, on the empty racetrack far below them, the familiar figure of Fear—in his lion helmet, white body armour and combat boots—turned to face them.
Then he removed his helmet.
And they all instantly fell silent.
Only Lily smiled, through tear-streaked eyes.
It was not Fear.
It was Jack.
The fight between Jack and Fear inside the cabin of the Spartan had been as brutal as it had been desperate.
As they struggled over the crossbow, Fear had hit a button on the side of his helmet.
Jack knew what he was doing.
He recalled the Second Challenge in the water maze, when he’d noted that Fear’s helmet had scuba capabilities: Fear had used it to hold the golden minotaur underwater and drown him.
Fear was switching on his helmet’s scuba breather.
But in doing this, Jack saw, he had revealed his weakness, his classical weakness: a bare section of skin between his helmet and his throat.
In his mind, Jack recalled how, according to the legend, Hercules had killed the Nemean Lion. After his arrows had bounced harmlessly off its impenetrable hide, Hercules had shot it with an arrow through its only weak point: its mouth.
That was Fear’s weak point.
Jack figured that the Nemean Lion in the legend had actually been a warrior like Fear dressed in similar armour.
Buoyed by this knowledge, Jack lunged forward and twisted Fear’s forearm-guard with the crossbow on it so that it pointed upward. Then Jack fired it up into the gap between Fear’s helmet and his throat, at the exposed skin there, right up into his mouth.
The arrow lodged deep in Fear’s brain and he went instantly still, dead.
Then as the water filled the sinking truck around them, Jack grabbed the dead man’s helmet and put it on, biting down on its internal scuba mouthpiece just as the incoming water consumed him fully.
Now, he would wait—wait for all his enemies above to think him dead and leave the circus. In that time he grabbed Fear’s body armour and boots and put them on.
That was another thing his classical education told him to do.
After slaying the Nemean Lion, Hercules had used its own claws to cut off its pelt and head. He’d then used the impenetrable pelt as his own armour in the other Labours.
Jack was starting to see the symbolism of the Games. He not only had to achieve what Hercules had achieved, he had to do it in the same ways Hercules had done it.
After a few minutes had passed, he decided it was safe to surface and he swam upward.
Jack stood on the deserted racetrack, now wearing Fear’s white battle gear over his jeans and t-shirt.
On one forearm, he wore Fear’s crossbow and in his other hand, he gripped a rocket launcher and a couple of RPG rounds.
He tossed Fear’s white lion helmet to the ground and put back on his own fireman’s helmet.
He glared up at the royal balcony and called, ‘Hades! I know! About the Labours! So now I know what I have to do!’
The assembled royal spectators whispered to each other in
shock. Champions did not dare address Hades in such a fashion. They all recalled what had happened to the Taiwanese soldier who had defied him at the start of the Games.
Vacheron, who had returned to the balcony by this time, turned to Hades and held up his remote. ‘Shall I punish this insolence, my Lord?’
Hades shook his head. ‘Heavens, no. This is not insolence. This is courage.’
He called back to Jack. ‘I am glad to hear you know what you must do, champion! Honour us and do it!’
Down on the track, Jack whirled on the spot, looking for a car or truck he could appropriate.
All the other vehicles were gone, all except one.
The crashed Typhoon, the one that had rolled earlier, hurling clear all of its minotaur crew.
Dented and dusty, it stood on the track about fifty metres from Jack.
He hurried over to it, jumped into the driver’s seat and keyed the ignition.
Nothing happened.
He tried again and only got a weak wheezing noise from the engine.
Even from this distance, he could hear the royal spectators laughing at him.
And then an LSV came blasting back out from the tunnel in the crater wall and Jack raised his weapons, tensing for the fight.
Only then did he recognise the driver of the Light Strike Vehicle.
Sky Monster.
The big New Zealander swung the little car to a skidding halt beside Jack. E smiled a goofy Neanderthal grin from the back seat.
‘Need a ride?’ Sky Monster said. ‘We got a short way into that tunnel but then I figured it didn’t matter if we finished this race. It only matters that you do.’
Jack leapt into the LSV.
‘Thanks, buddy. Let’s do some fucking damage.’
The LSV’s rear tyres kicked up dirt as the little car roared off the mark and raced out of the stadium, into the tunnel that led to the next section of the course.
THE GREAT BEND
The Great Bend
In his introduction to this challenge, Vacheron had mentioned something called the Great Bend. Now Jack knew why it was called ‘Great’.
Upon leaving the circus, he and Sky Monster shot through a short stone-walled tunnel.
It was rectangular in shape, like a mine tunnel, and it was wide enough only for two vehicles to travel side-by-side. Its walls, floor and ceiling were cut from solid stone. There were no crevices or recesses in them.
Then, abruptly, as Jack and Sky Monster sped along the dark tunnel, the left-hand wall simply disappeared and all of a sudden the tunnel only had three sides: floor, ceiling and the right-hand wall.
An utterly immense chasm fell away to their left.
There was no guardrail or fence protecting that side; the roadway simply ended at a sharply cut edge. The chasm below it seemed to drop away forever.
Floodlights illuminated the enormous underground space.
And what a space it was.
Jack saw that this ledge-like road ran in a long sweeping curve around the circumference of the gigantic chasm. It was essentially a superlong bend: a Great Bend.
He saw the five cars of the other champions, the five Typhoons and the one remaining Spartan racing around the track, doing battle with each other, tiny against the colossal landscape.
If the big circular bend were a clock face, Jack had entered it at five o’clock. He saw a distant exit on the opposite side of the chasm at seven o’clock. The other champions were at one o’clock. To get to the exit, Jack would have to drive anti-clockwise all the way around the chasm, passing through the centrepiece of the cavern at twelve o’clock.
And that centrepiece was, quite simply, stupendous.
An enormous pyramid, easily two hundred feet high, stood inside a box-shaped shelf cut into the wall of the cavern.
In front of it, overhanging the dizzying chasm, was a building-sized stone structure.
It looked like a New York skyscraper that had been attached to the wall of the chasm, only instead of rising upward, it plunged downward perhaps twenty or thirty storeys.
Scores of horizontal recesses could be seen on the hanging building’s flanks, each one the size of a large coffin. A square shaft seemed to run down the building’s core and its walls were also dotted with recesses.
Jutting out from the lowest point of the upside-down skyscraper, infinitesimal in the distance, was a half-bridge that extended out over the abyss. The half-bridge had a podium at its tip on which stood a single Golden Sphere.
‘Floor it, Monster!’ Jack called.
Up ahead of Jack and Sky Monster, Scarecrow was driving hard, trying to stay ahead of a Typhoon truck filled with minotaurs while not tipping off the edge of the roadway.
Without warning, a minotaur charged onto the bonnet of the Typhoon directly behind him, took three bounding steps forward and dived like a maniac onto the back of Scarecrow’s Light Strike Vehicle.
Mother grabbed the little bastard by the horns of his helmet and tossed him off the speeding LSV into the chasm. The little figure fell away into darkness, falling forever, squealing all the way down.
Further ahead, the Navy SEAL DeShawn Monroe was leading the pack and his LSV blasted out of the three-sided roadway onto the enormous shelf that housed the pyramid and the hanging skyscraper.
He swung his Light Strike Vehicle onto the roof of the hanging skyscraper and quickly leapt out of it, leaving his SEAL companion to take the wheel.
Monroe himself began climbing down some ladder-like handholds cut into the face of the skyscraper. The handholds ran in a vertical line in between the many coffin-sized recesses carved into the structure, leading to the sphere’s platform.
Monroe was so intent on his task, he didn’t look into the shelf-like horizontal recesses.
He just ran out onto the elongated half-bridge, snatched the sphere and began his return climb.
He reached the top of the skyscraper and ran back to his partner in their LSV—
—just as a crossbow bolt slammed into Monroe’s forehead, a bolt fired by Gregory Brigham in his incoming LSV, using a crossbow he’d taken from a minotaur.
Monroe collapsed to the ground, dead, the sphere still gripped dumbly in his hand.
His partner spun, searching for the source of the bolt, but his only reward was a bolt to his own face, shot by one of Brigham’s partners. The Navy SEAL snapped back in his seat under the weight of the shot, his face exploding with blood.
Brigham’s LSV swept to a halt beside Monroe’s corpse. Brigham leaned down and scooped up the sphere.
His car then sped off, away from the pyramid and the upside-down skyscraper, beginning the return journey down the other side of the Great Bend.
Jack saw it all from his own speeding car, far behind.
He recalled Brigham’s words at the luncheon and how, if he won the challenge, he would use the reward to have Jack killed.
‘Monster,’ he said. ‘We gotta catch that asshole. It’s time to clear the road.’
Racing at outrageous speed along the first half of the Great Bend, Jack’s LSV closed in on the last Typhoon truck.
As Sky Monster brought them closer, Jack stood in his seat, hefted his stolen RPG launcher onto his shoulder and fired it.
The RPG lanced forward, issuing a dead-straight smoke trail before it slammed into the rear axle of the Typhoon and detonated.
The rear end of the Typhoon was lifted off the roadway before it began to fishtail and wobble . . . until one of its outer tyres tipped off the edge of the roadway and the whole truck fell into the abyss. It dropped away into the void, taking its crew of minotaurs with it.
On the royal balcony, the assembled spectators were now watching the challenge on large plasma-screen monitors.
They were all glued to the screens, watching them with rapt attention.
No-one noticed Lily step up beside Vacheron as he stared at the big screens.
Likewise, no-one noticed when she slipped her hand into one of the pockets of his robes and removed his remote control from it.
The Return Bend
There were now two races going on.
Out in front was one pack. It was led by Gregory Brigham, streaking away with the sphere, hurtling down the roadway on the far side of the chasm.
He was closely followed by the Delta man, Jeff Edwards, and Scarecrow. Immediately behind them were the Hydra in his Spartan and two minotaur-filled Typhoon assault trucks.
The second pack of vehicles was only just going past the pyramid and the suspended skyscraper.
In this pack was one other champion—a Tibetan prince named Renzin Depon, brother of the dead champion named Tenzin—plus two more Typhoons, and last of all, Jack, Sky Monster and E-147.
As they sped out onto the wide shelf containing the pyramid, Jack eyed the rearmost Typhoon.
A couple of the minotaurs standing in its open-sided hold were firing long-barrelled sniper rifles at the fleeing Light Strike Vehicles ahead of it.
‘That’s what I need,’ Jack said as he reloaded his RPG launcher, hefted it onto his shoulder and fired it at the Typhoon.
The shot hit the truck’s right rear tyre, sending it careering up the sloping flank of the pyramid before it rolled onto its side—throwing the minotaurs clear—and tumbled to the base of the pyramid, smoking and broken.
Sky Monster brought their LSV to a halt beside the crashed truck. Jack and E-147 leapt out and scooped up two sniper rifles that had been tossed clear of the wreck. A couple of dazed minotaurs charged at them, but Jack dispatched them with quick hits from the butt of his newly acquired rifle.
As he and E-147 jumped back into the LSV and Sky Monster gunned it off the mark, Jack looked backwards, taking in the magnificent suspended skyscraper.
He saw the many shelf-like recesses cut into its outer flanks and also the ones cut into its hollow core.
He squinted.
The Four Legendary Kingdoms: A Jack West Jr Novel 4 (Jack West Junior) Page 20
