Scarlet Thunder by Sigmund Brouwer Read Free Book Online

tire. As soon as the fender released, the fourth tire fell loose. Another two crew members hoisted the new tire into place.
    In the back of the car, they’d already finished pouring twenty gallons of fuel into the car. While all of this was happening, someone was mopping Sandy’s face with a cool wet cloth.
    â€œIt’s been forty-five seconds,” Tim said. “On the track, they’ve pushed the cars down and cleared the wreck.”
    I checked the main television monitor, filming it as I did. All three cars were off the track. The drivers had pulled themselves out of their cars. One kicked the ground. The other two walked away with their shoulders slumped.
    I swung my camera back to the Scarlet Thunder. Sandy was just swinging the visor of her helmet down.
    All the crew cleared the car.
    She roared ahead, just beating another car coming down pit road behind her.
    Then I noticed the crew had drawn into a circle. Someone was down in the middle.
    I stepped closer, filming, filming, filming.
    One of the crew, a little red-headed guy, was squirming in agony. I could see him clutching his knee.
    â€œHe got bounced with a hammer,” someone explained. “Took him down like he’d been shot.”
    I closed in on the guy’s face. Our television viewers were going to love how real this was.
    â€œYou guys are vampires,” I heard a voice say. “Real vampires.”
    That came from George Lot.
    â€œHuh?” I said. I didn’t stop filming my close-up. “Vampires?”
    â€œThat man is flesh and blood. He’s in agony. And all you can think about is the camera shot?”
    Without shifting my camera, I gave him the answer I’d heard Uncle Mike give dozens of times. “We didn’t hurt him. We’re not part of it.”
    â€œYou would be if you were human,” George said.
    Before I could argue, his radio squawked.
    He walked away.
    That left me standing there. Alone.
    What does he know about our job? I asked myself. Nothing.
    I zoomed back from the hurt pit crew member and got a wide angle of the people helping him walk away.

chapter eleven
    That night, long after the race had ended, Uncle Mike and I watched it from Sandy Peterson’s point of view.
    That had been Uncle Mike’s job—juggling Sandy’s audio and the cameras that showed the front and rear views.
    We sat back in the darkness of a motel room as we reviewed those segments.
    After the yellow flag that let the crew repair her dinged front fender, Sandy had reentered the track.
    The front camera had a view from the dash. It showed the pavement in a blur coming toward her. The rear camera, mounted with a view through the back window, showed the pit crew growing smaller behind her, with another race car slowly filling the view.
    Then she entered the track.
    â€œI’m looking to get back in line,” she said into her audio. “I wish the yellow-flag restart was more like Indy Car.”
    Uncle Mike put the video on pause and asked me to explain. I told him what I knew from all the studying I had done earlier. The Indy Car Formula racers in their low-slung sleek cars, unlike stock cars, had a much easier time restarting. Indy Car rules put all the cars in single file with the lead-lap cars mixed in with the lapped cars, in the order they came out of the pit.
    In stock-car racing, leaders were allowed to bunch up for a restart, with the cars that are down a lap lined up single file to the inside of the leaders. That meant Sandy, as one of the leaders, would be in a big pack of cars when the race began again.
    Sure enough, the front and back cameras showed cars moving in on her. The cameras gave a wide-angle view that distorted the bumpers of those cars. Still, it was accurate enough to make you almost feel like you were there.
    â€œCome on, boys,” Sandy said in her mike, “give me your best shot.”
    I grinned. That would be a good voice-over to splice into the