Cross of Fire by Colin Forbes Read Free Book Online Page B

the chassis, examined it carefully. No sign of a bomb. It would have been a bomb activated by remote radio control - he had realized earlier there would be no danger of an explosion with the motoryclists so dose. I'm getting paranoid, he thought. De Forge is just an egomaniac who likes to show off.
    He drove on towards Bordeaux. Five minutes later, mov ing along the deserted road, he saw a black Berliet van, a large wide vehicle, appear in his rear-view mirror. The type of vehicle used by the CRS, the French paramilitary police brought in to quell mob violence. Surely de Forge hadn't managed to persuade them to become his allies? Then he recalled the phoney DST men who had taken Francis Carey from the Bar Miami. Had the vehicle been hijacked?
    It was closing up on him rapidly, huge in his mirror. In the cab sat the driver and two men wearing Balaclavas which concealed their faces. One held what looked like a long truncheon. Standard CRS equipment for beating back a seething mob.
    Newman had an excellent memory for routes. He had only to drive along a new complex route once to be able to remember every detail on the return trip. He rammed his foot down and again there wasn't the normal reaction he'd experienced when driving out to the GHQ, the same burst of speed.
    Newman knew exactly what had happened. He recalled the change in de Forge's manner when he had refused to accept the 'off the record' condition imposed so belatedly. The arrival of the cynical Lamy, de Forge's conversation with him, Lamy's use of the radio to send back a message. They had used skeleton keys to open his car, had tampered with the accelerator. He glanced in the mirror again. The black Berliet van was moving like a shell from a gun, was almost in his boot.
    He pressed his foot all the way down, coaxed more speed out of the damaged mechanism. Newman swung round a bend, sped on, recognizing exactly where he was. Could he reach the bridge in time? It would be a matter of seconds. No bookmaker would give odds on him for this race for survival.
    The two Balaclava-masked passengers in the cab leaned forward. Newman could sense their savage eagerness to get at him. The gap between the two vehicles had temporarily widened with his recent pressure on the accelerator. Two more bends.
    The Berliet was closing the gap again, filling his rearview mirror like a mobile hulk. He swung round the first bend, his foot pressed down with all his strength. Ahead lay the last bend. It seemed to creep towards him as the Berliet almost touched his rear bumper. He swung the wheel, negotiated the last bend and the narrow hump-backed stone bridge was a hundred yards away. Newman tightened his grip on the wheel, forced himself to ignore the mirror.
    On his outward journey he had slowed to cross the narrow bridge, just sliding both sides of the car between the stone walls without scraping the Citroen. Now he had to judge in centimetres, taking the bridge at a belting speed. He risked a brief final glance in the mirror. The Berliet was about to ram him. The wheels of the Citroen mounted the near side of the hump-back, raced over the crest. The solid stone walls flashed past him in a blur. He gripped the wheel more firmly as he felt the Citroen descending. He almost lost control but his nerve held. He was beyond the bridge.
    hi his rear-view mirror he saw the Berliet reach the bridge. Because he'd had plenty of time Newman had not taken the main road to Third Corps GHQ; he had driven along a more devious route to see the vineyards and maybe a château. The driver of the Berliet saw the bridge too late. The wide van roared up the near side, metal screaming as it grated against the stone. The van stopped abruptly, jammed between the walls. The left-hand wall broke under the pressure, fell into the gorge below and took with it a portion of the floor of the bridge. The Berliet swayed, hung tilted at an angle over the drop for a fraction of a second, then followed the wall, turning over in