Chapter 28
Lara could see nothing. The safety glass of the windscreen was a mess of distortions and white.
Lara could do nothing. Her belts held her firmly in place and she was helpless before the drop...
Lara was scared - and then the bottom of the world fell from beneath her.
In that instant, she was no longer a world-renowned adventurer, o longer the idol of millions - she was a scared little girl in a disabled airliner with death tugging at the sleeve of her dress. She turned to her left, expecting to see her friend Amanda, her hands held over a scream that would not come. Instead she saw Max, his pale face a mask of determination.
Max had her back.
The eternity that they been weightless came to and end, gravity returned and bore its full wrath down upon Lara. The straps of the belts bit painfully into her chest, crushing the air from her lungs. Instinctively, she tried to re-fill them, but found that she was unable to inhale.
Panic began to set in. This was not as it was before. Before she had lived. Even in all the nightmares of the plane crash, she knew that she would survive - but this time it was not to be.
Another terrific impact jostled her, but even that terrible force was not enough to get her breathing again. In need of help, she turned, very slowly, to Max.
"Help me."
Of course, no words were formed for her plea, and even if they were, Max would not have heard them. He was wrenching the wheel right and left. Max seemed to be in a great automotive struggle with death itself, fighting to keep Lara safe.
Max had her back.
In the slow-motion that life had become, Lara forgot her lack of oxygen and realized just what Max was doing - or rather, what he was not...
Every man Lara had known had always wanted something from her. True, many of them just wanted a night of passion, but others were either intent on ingratiation themselves with her, or proving that they were better than she. No one, save for Max, had ever been there for no real reason. Even Winston, dear Winston, who had served her with such skill - did so only because of her Aunt's dying wish.
Just the sight of her friend made everything a little better. She felt the fear melt away, even as the window behind Max turned from rock to sunlight and back.
Then it was over.
With a final jolt, the Impreza came to a rest. The car became very quiet, and Lara wheezed in a single, small breath. She could see Max look at her, and saw him mouth the words, "are you okay?" However, she realized that the silence that had befallen them was merely a high-pitched ringing in her ears.
The ringing soon subsided, as did her difficulty in breathing. Satisfied that she was okay, Max turned his attention to that problems at hand. He tried to open his door - no luck. The roll over had mashed the thing shut. He was trying to work out a method of climbing out the window when he happened to glance at the instrument cluster. There was nothing wrong with the gauges, despite the punishment that they had received in the recent past - but there was something about the tachometer...
It was hovering just over eight hundred RPMs - the engine was still running! Smiling to himself, Max decided to save the damage report until they had gotten themselves out of immediate danger. With the car in gear, Max gave it some throttle.
While the car did get moving, there was a terrible sound coming from the rear passenger side. As there were tracers already incoming from the mountain, Max chose to ignore the sound and accelerated from the area with as much speed as he could muster.
* * *
After five miles, Max and Lara decided they were well out of range of Elder's employees. He stopped the car so that they could survey the damage that had been done.
None of the windows of the little car had survived the plummet unscathed, nor had the body panels. However, they had seen proof that the engine was operational, and that was good news.
The driver's rear wheel was not. The tire had been shredded, but more to the point the entire wheel seemed to be stuck under the fender well. Max surveyed the damage while Lara broke out her medical supplies to tend to her recent gunshot wound.
"I think we might be able to fix this, this is so cool..." Max informed her from shaky legs.
"And why do you say that?"
"It's just a bent cross member, we can bend it back."
"Why are you smiling?"
"We're alive, for one. Also, this same damn thing happened to the Subaru team earlier this year."
"Not your rallys again. How do we fix it?"
"We need two big rocks."
"Plenty of those about."
"Yeah, I see. We just jack up the car, remove the bent piece and smash it straight. Slap it back on with a new tire and we're good to go - Colin McRae won the next three stages after doing it in Argentina. Damn, there's never a camera around when you're doing something really cool..."
Lara did much of the work removing the damaged pieces, as Max was far too weak to be of much help - his condition was getting worse. As she fought her own discomfort and fatigue (against the clock, of course) the name that Max had uttered kept rolling over in her mind, she knew it from somewhere...
"Max, this McRae chap..."
"Greatest driver who ever lived, until he goes to Ford next year - then he'll suck the massive one."
"Quite," she placated as she worked loose the last bolt on the damaged suspension component. "I think I knew him from my schooling - he is a Scotsman, right?"
"No..."
"McRae sounds..."
"...no..."
"What is wrong?"
"There is no way that you went to school with Colin McRae, fate is not that evil!"
Lara slammed a rock upon the cross member, annoyed (again) at Max.
"It's a common name, this racer might be a different chap from my schoolmate."
"Didn't you find out what happened to him after graduation?"
"I'm not really that involved in alumni events..." she replied as she hit the piece a final time. "Is that right?"
"Sure, fine. I can't believe that you never told me that you knew my hero..."
"I had no idea."
"You suck, I hate you. Now, lets get these pieces on and get out of here."
The replaces the straightened part and affixed a new tire. Both were looking back the way they came often, expecting a line of lorries to pursue, but none came - they had made it clear.
The return trip was taken at a much slower pace, as the auto was making some unpleasant noises and neither of them wanted to push it into retirement, and the absence of a windscreen would have made reasonable speeds difficult.
