Chapter 8

The roads were better outside of Baghdad. They still weren’t as smooth as the central Reich’s autobahns, but this didn’t stop Katsuo from blasting fourth-gear fast into the desert. It didn’t keep Luka from following, fist tight against the throttle, teeth set on edge.

It might not be by blade or vial, but Katsuo was coming for him. With Georg Rust and Kobi Yokuto out of the way, there were no names on the Axis Tour roster that could possibly usurp the Japanese victor other than his own. Victor Luka Löwe—the greatest hope for the Third Reich’s Double Cross—was next. He felt it with each turn of the wheel. Next, next, next, through the dried carcass of wilderness, past the watchtowers and fort ruins of long-lost kingdoms.

Luka rode ready: clenched muscles, adrenaline almost erupting from his ears. Fifty kilometers came and went. Then one hundred. By kilometer 250 and its accompanying fuel stop, Luka’s entire body had turned into a giant cramp, muscles burning to do something.

But Katsuo was giving him nothing. The Japanese victor didn’t even look over his shoulder, much less weave or brake in a way that might cause Luka to wreck. He drove straight through the hellish-looking landscape. (The land was literally on fire in places, as if Hades had risen up and taken its rightful place by the roadside. Cracked earth, flames and all. The sight was unnerving, until you realized it was simply oil fields.)

The first day out of Baghdad came to a close. Luka remained a knot of nerves. He sat by his pup tent, Luger on his knee, gnawing the last of his jerky with a jaw that had been in perpetual grit-mode all day.

“Cigarette?” Adele offered him his own fare with an arched brow. “You look like you need one. Or ten.”

Luka dug the pack from his jacket and tapped it against his gunless knee. One lone cigarette tumbled out. He handed it to Adele and moved to his motorcycle for a refill. They’d burned through over half of his stash, Luka discovered as he dug through his panniers. Too much, too fast to last until Tokyo.

Not that this stopped him from stuffing a whole new pack into his pocket.

The cigarette he’d given Adele was wedged between her lips. Unlit. “Match?”

“The Li River is too far away,” Luka said as he handed one to her.

Adele struck the match against her boot: spark and blaze. “I thought you wanted Katsuo to get comfortable.”

“Comfortable is one thing,” Luka told her. “We’re almost halfway through this race, and Katsuo has gone beyond the defensive. He’s aggressive.”

“So what’s your plan? Sneak into Katsuo’s camp and punch a hole in his fuel tank? If he’s as aggressive as you say, he’ll be as jumpy as you.” She nodded at the gun on his knee. “You’re going to get yourself shot.”

“Wouldn’t be such a bad thing for you, Fräulein Third Place.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Adele didn’t laugh. “It would if you cashed in your blackmail currency from your hospital bed.”

He wouldn’t. Luka knew this. He almost said it, but then stopped himself. There was no need to go around baring all the dents in his armor. Let Adele think her herness was still a liability.

“Your Li River plan is a good one,” Adele went on. “You shouldn’t just abandon it because Katsuo is getting a little narcotics happy.”

“Bottlenecking Katsuo is impossible now that Georg and Yokuto are out of the picture. Even if we both pull ahead on that leg, he’d still claim the third space on the ferry.”

“Then find a way to make the space count. You’ll be a heartbeat away from his bike. Cut the fuel lines or slit his tire or something else knifey.”

“He’ll be watching,” Luka pointed out.

“He can’t watch both of us.” Adele shrugged. “One of us can distract him while the other does the deed. If you take your hit at Katsuo now, we’d have to part ways. And, honestly? I’d miss this.” She held up her cigarette, arm straight as a heil into the constellation-cracked sky.

This. Secrets, smoke, stars. This. The stir inside his chest, the way his nerves smoothed out and reconnected with new warmth whenever Adele looked at him.

He wondered if she felt it, too.

He… hoped?

“So would I.” Luka’s voice was so soft, so wrapped in layers of cigarette smoke, he wasn’t sure Adele would hear.

The Wolfe girl puffed out her own smoke so hard that the little nubby angel hairs by her forehead danced. Lamplight and movement made them twinkle, a bit like a crown of frost. “We should keep riding together, stay the course.”

Next, not yet, next, not yet.

He wanted to win. How long had he dreamt of that second Cross? How often had he imagined the look on his father’s face when he glimpsed the sight: iron proof that Luka was far from weak.

He wanted to keep riding with Adele and, more than that, keep talking beneath starlight and smoke, watching the lamplight toss dramatic shadows across her face. Striking, all striking.

Why couldn’t he have both?

There were no cameras, no prying eyes, and so Luka let himself smile. “We ride together.”

“So.” Adele leaned closer. “Tell me about all these sweethearts you don’t have.…”

They kept talking—long, too long—into the night.

Katsuo did not strike the next day. Or the next. Luka stayed the course—through the last of the flatlands, into the mountains that eventually tore themselves off the horizon and swallowed the road. He stayed the course even when the road whittled down to a series of cliffside paths barely wider than his motorcycle. He stayed the course through bare rock valleys and curves that couldn’t make up their verdammt mind. More than a few times he lost sight of Katsuo’s fender gleam—and whenever Luka checked his mirror there was a fifty-fifty chance that he wouldn’t see Adele. That’s how twisty the roads were. Too twisty, really, to be stealing rearview glances. The chance of straying off road was far too high.

But this was part of the reason he had to look. The mountain rocks echoed all sorts of noises. Pops, revs, shrieks… loud violent things that made Luka worry Adele had gone accidental lemming on him. (Later, he found out via the Reichssender’s dramatic recap, a racer had lost his bike off a cliff. Himura Kenji of Tokyo managed to cling to the ledge as his Zündapp slipped, shattered into a dozen pieces below. Since the supply vans were taking their regular detour around the mountain range, the fourteen-year-old was doomed to wander the race path on foot for a day and a half until officials sent a search party.)

The mountains began petering off—raggeder to ragged. The road tossed this way and that. Luka’s brakes began to reek of burning rubber from overuse and, though not normally one for prayer, he willed them to last through New Delhi.

On the fourth morning they reached the Seventieth Meridian. The line itself wasn’t marked, but the space around it was decorated in as much patriotic flair as a wilderness outpost could muster. Standards not yet faded by the south Asian sun fluttered from buildings. Swastikas claimed the first half of the settlement, shifting abruptly into flags with rising suns. Border guards—Reich on one side, Imperial Army on the other—watched the racers cross into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The day stretched on with the road, and the land started changing yet again. Colors other than the duochrome blue sky–dirt brown bled into the landscape. Green piled onto green: a tree here, a bush there, palms spiking every which way. Though the racing path had straightened out considerably, Luka’s habit of checking his rearview mirror was unabated. Adele stayed just two meters behind him, hunched against winds created by her own speed. She commanded her stretch of pavement with ease, keeping cataclysmics and hopefuls at bay with quick swerves of her bike.

One racer in particular kept edging up. He wore a Japanese band around his arm and kept tailing Adele’s tires with tireless persistence. Luka wouldn’t have thought twice about the sight if not for the glint of metal in the racer’s hand: a sharp fang of folded carbon steel that didn’t belong to the bike. Takeo’s Higonokami knife.

The sight of the blade catching sunlight cut Luka’s breath. Next, next, already? But Takeo wasn’t going for Luka this time; Adele was in the way, veering off to Luka’s right, her arm in perfect swiping distance. A one-handed, drive-by stabbing took talent, but Watabe Takeo seemed well practiced in the maneuver. He pulled next to Adele, his knife slashed out, catching—

Adele didn’t yell so much as bellow. The sound punched through Luka’s back, came out of him chest-first, and seized him like a grappling hook. He slammed his brakes. Takeo drew up on Luka’s right side, blade within easy reach. Luka lunged for the weapon, hoping to knock it out of Takeo’s grasp, but the knife-fighter was too well trained. Punch, dodge, slice! Luka’s riding glove bore the brunt of the Higonokami’s edge, but Luka felt the color of pain across his palm. Red. Diagonal through his life line.

Luka’s hand flew back to his handlebars, oozing blood on the throttle. Takeo, balance wavering, passed by, knife jutting out like an extra finger. Adele was still alive, still driving. She charged up Takeo’s right side, and was now cutting him off with a sharp veer left. The move wasn’t just daring, but completely insane—the kind of courage distorted by pain. Adele’s rear wheel spun only centimeters from Takeo’s front tire, forcing the boy to brake and drop back to a safer distance.

Luka gunned his Zündapp forward. The throttle was slick and hard to grip, especially with an injured hand, but Luka seized it anyway, shoving his conscious mind away from the electrical impulses that told him he was hurting. HURTING.

He stole a look at Adele’s arm as he drew close. The knife had gone straight through her jacket, but Luka couldn’t see much beyond the tear. Her jaw was set, white with pain. The colorlessness blended with the zinc oxide still streaked across her cheeks. Several times Adele caught his stare. Those eyes… they were starting to get addicting. Hooking him again and again. The asphalt ripped beneath them, the wind thrashed, and despite his right-hand fire, Luka was soaring.

Road high. Her high.

They drove side by side. Far enough away not to wreck each other, close enough to prevent Takeo from barreling through their center. Every time their attacker tried to move up one of their sides, they drifted apart, blocking him. After several attempts, Takeo eased off their rear, slipping his knife away just in time for the fuel stop and its accompanying press cameras.

Threat averted. For now.

Luka’s high—adrenaline mixed with Adele—throbbed against his palm as he pulled into the refueling station. These stops were always short, five minutes or less, as the officials siphoned fuel from gasoline barrel to Zündapp tank. Racers had to choose which necessity was most pressing: a swig from the canteen, a hurriedly chewed protein bar, or nature’s calling. Luka went straight for the first-aid kit, whirling through its contents: Iodine! Morphine syrettes! Gauze! Teeny-tiny bandages that looked more suited to patching up baby dolls than sixteen-year-old boys! The cut wasn’t deep, but it was still oozing. He splashed the wound with iodine and wrapped it in gauze.

“Need anything?” he asked Adele, who stood by another gasoline drum, guzzling water and examining the tear in her jacket’s black leather.

“It’s just a nick.” She screwed the cap back on her canteen. “I’ll live.”

Luka wasn’t so sure, but before he could press, the official refueling his motorcycle began pulling the hose out. Time to go! He shut his med kit with such haste that several of the miniature bandages twirled out. Luka left them in the dirt.