Target of One's Own by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

16

Zoe’d been sitting beside Christian in the Citroën for almost an hour. Breakfast of medialuna crescent rolls had been eaten while watching Ahmed lead Nikita and Drake over the car. She had a thousand things she wanted to ask Drake, about how a guy’s mind worked around women. She wanted to cry on Nikita’s shoulder that it was already over before it began. And she didn’t want to talk to anybody for fear she couldn’t hold it together.

But there hadn’t been a chance for any of that before it was time for them to line up for the start. The motos and quads had started leaving shortly after sunrise. The cars were up next and they’d been in line by midmorning.

They sat along the resort waterfront between the two sprawling, four-story brick buildings of the Hotel NH and Hotel NH Gran Provincial. Ahead of them lay the boardwalk and the sea, behind them stood dozens of ten-story apartment and office buildings like a forest wall. She’d had no opportunity to explore, or even stop long enough to breathe the air.

The Dakar was “the event” and touching “the natives” just didn’t happen. Were her vlogs—video logs—and feeds like that? Zoe DeMille is the event. Don’t associate with the fans directly. Keep everything remote, then it will never affect you? What an utterly depressing thought, she really had to cut that out.

One by one, vehicles rolled up onto the podium at the Stage One start. It had a big ramp up, a car-long flat spot over a story in the air, then a slope down the other side. A great arch spanned over the top to support a giant big-screen projection television.

On the screen were close-ups of what was happening on the podium. It let the huge crowd assembled along the waterfront see and hear everything.

Each racer drove up onto the flat and parked. Motorcyclists dismounted, drivers climbed out of their cars, trucks pulled up beside the ramp and their drivers clambered up to the flat spot. While cameras zoomed in, the emcee announced their names and vital racing stats. The crowd, which numbered in the thousands, cheered and applauded just as strongly for the latest car as they had for the first motorcycle hours earlier. The drivers waved to the fans, blew kisses, and shot a thumb’s up before getting back in their vehicles.

Once they were helmeted and ready, the timekeeper stepped forward and counted down the seconds to their official start window. At the crucial moment—Three fingers…Two…One!—the engine roared to life and they rolled down the front ramp and onto the seaside plaza. A sharp left around the front of the hotel, then out the other side onto Maritime Boulevard to head north. Every two minutes, another team started the race.

The real race wouldn’t start until they had wound through the city and reached the end of the roads. There was a fifty kilometer “Road Section” along normal roads where speed limits and other rules of the road had to be maintained.

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