Treasure

The engine bearings began to rattle in protest from the excessive heat and strain. Another volley of bullets peppered the left rear fender and flattened the tire. Pitt fought the wheel to keep the rear end from careening off the side of the road and dragging the car down a 60-percent grade filled with large jagged boulders.

The Cord was dying. Ominous blue smoke filtered through the hood louvers. Beneath the engine, oil seeped through a gouge torn in the oil pan by a rock Pitt could not avoid. The oil pressure gauge quickly registered zero. any chance of making the temporary safety of the summit became more remote with each knock of the piston rods.

The lead Mercedes charged around the switchback in a wild skid. Pitt clutched the wheel despairingly. He could picture the look of triumph on his pursuers' faces as they sensed they were seconds away from naming their prey to the ground.

He saw no place for a desperation escape on foot. They were trapped on the narrow road between a steep drop on one side and a sharp rocky rise on the other. There was nowhere to go but ahead until the Cord's engine gave up and froze.

Pitt jammed the accelerator pedal against the floorboard with all the strength in his leg and uttered a fast prayer.

Incredibly, the battle-weary old classic had something more to give. As though a mechanical engine had a mind of its own, it reached down into its iron and steel for one final, magnificent effort. The engine revolutions suddenly increased, the front wheels dug in, and the Cord wiggled up the final grade to the sunmiit. A minute later, through clouds of blue smoke and white steam, it broke out onto the open crest of a ski run.

Not one hundred meters away stood the upper end of a triple-chair ski lift. At first Pitt thought it strange that no one was skiing on the slope directly below the Cord. people were dropping off the chairs and turning toward the opposite side of the lift before starting down a parallel ski trail.

Then he observed his section of the slope was roped off. Several signs hung on a line festooned with bright orange streamers warning skiers not to ski this run because of dangerous, icy conditions.

"The end of the trail," Giordino said solemnly.

Pitt nodded in frustration. "We can't make a break for the lift. They'd shoot us down before we ran ten meters."

"It's either fight them with snowballs or take our chances and surrender."

"Or we can try plan three."

Giordino peered at Pitt curiously. "Can't be any worse than the first two." Then his eyes widened and he groaned, "You're not-oh, God, no!"

The two Mercedes were almost within spitting distance. They had pulled side by side to box in the Cord when Pitt twisted the wheel and sent the car plummeting down the ski run.

"Allah help us," muttered lsmafl's driver. "The crazy idiots. We can't stop them."

"Keep after them!" Ismail shouted hysterically. "Don't let them escape."

"They'll die anyway. No one can survive a runaway car down a mountainside."

Ismafl swung his gun barrel and roughly pushed the muzzle into his driver's ear. "Catch those pigs," he snarled viciously, "or you'll see Allah sooner than you pla

The driver hesitated, seeing death no matter which move he made. Then he gave in and turned the Mercedes down the steep incline after the Cord.

"Allah guide my actions," he uttered in sudden fear.

Ismail pulled the gun away and pointed through the broken windshield.

"Be still and mind your driving."

Ismail's henchmen in the second Mercedes didn't pause. Dutifully they plunged after their leader.

The Cord hurtled across the hard-packed snow like a runaway freight , gaining speed at a terrifying rate. There was no slowing the heavy car.

Pitt steered with a light touch and feathered the brakes, cautious not to lock them and send the Cord into an uncontrollable spin. A sideways slide down the steep incline would only result in the car's overturning and ending up at the base of the mountain in a scattered trail of metal and broken bodies.

"Is this a good time to raise the question of seat belts?" asked Giordino with his feet raised and wedged against the dashboard.

Pitt shook his head. "Not optional equipment in this model."Pitt sensed a tiny bit of luck as the bullet-shredded rubber tore off the rear wheel. Free of the deflated tire, the double edges of the rim gave him a small measure of control as they bit into the icy surface, throwing up fanlike sheets of ice particles.

The speedometer was hovering at sixty when Pitt saw a field of moguls coming up. Expert skiers found the rounded snow bumps a favorite obstacle course. So did Pitt when he schussed down a slope at that speed. But not now, not playing downhill racer with a weighty 2,120

kilograms of automobile.

With a deft touch, he gently nudged the car off to the side of the road where the path ran smooth. He felt as though he were trying to thread a needle with an Olympic bobsled. Subconsciously Pitt tensed himself for the violent shock and crashing impact should he make the slightest wrong move and hurl the car into a tree, smashing everyone to bloody pulp.

But there was no crushing impact. The Cord somehow shot through the narrow slot, the moguls on one side and the trees on the other flashing by like blurred stage sets.

As soon as Pitt was on a wide, unobstructed run, he snapped his head around to check the status of his pursuers.

The driver of the lead Mercedes was savvy. He'd followed in the Cord's tire tracks around the moguls. The second driver either didn't see them or didn't consider them dangerous. He realized his mistake too late and compounded it by throwing the Mercedes wildly from side to side in a desperate effort to dodge the meter-high humps.

The Arab actually slipped past three or four before he took one head-on.

The front end dug in and the rear rose up and appeared to hang on a minety-degree angle. The car stood poised there for an instant, and then it flipped end over end as if a child had flipped a short stick. It struck the hard snowpack again and again with the splitting sound of crashing metal and glass, The occupants might have survived if they'd been thrown clear, but the jarring series of impacts had jammed the doors. The car began to disintegrate. The engine tore from its mountings and tumbled crazily into the woods. Wheels, front suspension, rear-drive train, none of it was built to take this destructive tomm-It all wrenched away from the chassis, bouncing in mad gyrations down the hill.

Pitt could not spare the time to watch the Mercedes cartwheel and crumple into an indistinguishable heap before finally grinding to a halt on its squashed roof in a small ravine.

"Would it sound gauche," said Giordino for the first time since they plunged off the crest, "if I said, One down?"

"I wish you wouldn't use that term," Pitt muttered through gritted teeth. "The score is about to escalate." He briefly took one hand from the wheel and motioned ahead.

Giordino tensed as he observed the ski run fork and merge with another trail crowded with people in vividly colored ski suits. He jerked himself to a standing position by grabbing the remains of the windshield frame, shouting and waving frantically as Pitt laid on the Cord's twill horns.

The startled skiers turned at the honking and saw the two speeding cars barreling down the ski trail. With seconds to spare, they traversed to the sides and gaped in astonishment as the Cord, with the Mercedes right behind, sped past.

A ski jump rose from the trail and dropped off a hundred meters away.