Junkyard Elvis looked entirely mystified.
“Two reasons …”
The arena seemed to shake as several things collided in quick succession.
“First, my best friend is in there risking everything for us and I never got the chance to tell him that I’d looked up Lou Reed and he was an awesome dude. Secondly, I was just trying to kill time.”
“Why were you—”
The question was cut short by the fender of a 1968 Buick slamming into the back of his head. As Junkyard Elvis crumpled to the ground, the orangutan standing behind him grinned widely and slapped his chest.
Chapter Forty-Six
Smithy eyed the Rhino as it prepared to charge. The Bug couldn’t move. Smithy killed the engine. He wasn’t wild about the idea of dying engulfed in flames, but if it was going to happen he didn’t want it to be from his own vehicle’s engine exploding.
He could hear the crowd roar in anticipation of the kill. The other two remaining vehicles were too far away to have any effect on proceedings. From the corner of his eye, Smithy could see the gunner from the Black Dahlia scrambling up the back wall, trying to get out of the arena alive.
With his left hand, Smithy wiped his forehead. His eyes were burning from the smoke and the sweat pouring down from under his helmet. As he took his hand away, he saw that there was blood mixed in with the sweat – it was hard to know from where. Now that he’d stopped moving, everything was starting to ache. He dipped his right hand down to open the wooden box wedged by his side. He dug down amidst the bubble wrap and other improvised packaging to find what he was looking for.
The Rhino was spewing flames and had started to accelerate towards him. Thanks to all the armour, it wasn’t moving that fast, relatively speaking, but it didn’t have to.
Suddenly, Smithy felt the exhaustion tugging at his eyelids. The heat had been so intense. He was tired. So. Damn. Tired. He felt the large metal weight in his hands and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second, to try to stop the burning.
WAKE UP, IDIOT.
It was as if time had jumped forward. Suddenly, the Rhino was bearing down on him, eating up the ground between them.
Smithy’s fingers scrabbled around and found the button underneath the discus-shaped object that would arm it. He heard the click as the pressure pad on the top activated.
His shoulder ached as he pulled back his arm. The thing was damn heavy. He heaved it with everything he had.
Wilkins had explained things in great detail. As anti-personnel mines went, the ones he had were responsibly manufactured. Meaning it wouldn’t blow up from being jostled, or indeed thrown, as long as it landed the right way up. It wasn’t that powerful, but it would severely curtail the ballroom-dancing ambitions of anyone unlucky enough to stand on it.
Smithy held his breath as the device landed ten or so yards from the Bug. As throws went, it had been a pretty good one. He watched as the Rhino passed over it.
For a second nothing happened. Then came an explosion under the rear of the vehicle. Dust flew up as the Rhino jumped in the air and came down again, minus the rear axle that the mine had removed. It gouged a trench in the ground as it came to a juddering halt just behind the Bug, belching flames uselessly into the sky.
Smithy leaned forward, ducking down to avoid the Bug’s caved-in roof as he reached for the clasps that secured it in place. He needed to get the roof off, but the catches wouldn’t budge. He unstrapped himself from the seat and pounded the surrounding metal with his fist, but the attack from the Scorpion had warped it too much.
The crowd cheered.
With a sickening thud, he felt the Unmentionable’s forklift apparatus slide under the Bug’s still-armoured right side and lift it up.
The car was utterly helpless now.
Smithy grabbed the hammer that was also in the wooden box and started to pound on the roof for all he was worth. His shoulders ached and his shirt was stuck to him with sweat. More of it poured into his eyes as he hammered desperately at the roof. Trying to get the metal to release.
He shifted his position and kicked upwards with all his might. As the Bug came to a halt, in a moment of blessed relief the roof fell away and sunlight poured into the cockpit.
Smithy looked up to see that the Unmentionable was holding him up below the point on the wall where Emperor Chaz and his vice-emperor sat. They were both applauding, their faces filled with glee.
Smithy sat back in his seat.
Emperor Chaz stood and shouted down to him. “It was a valiant effort, my midget friend.”
Smithy sighed as he pulled the lever to remove the steering wheel. “Been meaning to mention. ‘Midget’ is the wrong word, you patronising asshat.”
“Really?” Chaz said, laughing. “And pray tell, what should I call you?”
Smithy unhooked the steering wheel and tossed it to the ground. “Well, it doesn’t really matter now. I doubt we’ll be seeing each other again.”
“Anything you’d like to say before our brave champions use that buzz saw of theirs to cut you into even tinier pieces?”
“Yes,” said Smithy. “First off – are you wearing the Lewinsky dress?”
“It isn’t the real one.”
Smithy nodded as he casually strapped himself back into his seat.
“Regardless, a word to the wise – you don’t have the hips for it. And more importantly, what do you and a former Miss Alabama have in common?”
Smithy watched as the look of confusion spread across the self-proclaimed emperor’s face. Then the penny dropped.
“That’s right,” said Smithy. “You both got screwed by someone in this seat.”
Smithy reached his left hand down and pulled the lever. If this didn’t work, he was going to look briefly stupid followed by permanently dead.
He heard the mechanism fire as the ejector seat from the Space Shuttle Enterprise added to its already storied history, by doing exactly what it had been designed for.
Smithy might be dead in a matter of seconds, but the look on Chaz and Lousy Louis Reed’s faces as the chair launched itself into the sky made it almost worthwhile.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Although Smithy did not know it at the time, he would be forever grateful for the work of the Martin-Baker Aircraft Company. They were the people primarily credited with the invention of the zero-zero ejector seat, one capable of ejecting at zero altitude and zero airspeed. Any ejector seats designed prior to that would have left him as a smoking hole in the ground where he landed – or, more accurately, impacted. Given that the Enterprise was one of only two NASA space shuttles fitted with ejector seats, the fact that they happened to have zero-zero capabilities was extremely lucky.
It was just one of the fortunate happenstances that Smithy experienced in quick succession. The under-seat cannon whose role it was to clear the seat from the aircraft – or, in this case, the shattered husk of a demolition derby runner-up – detonated correctly. Then the under-seat rocket-pack fired on cue to propel the seat to an appropriate altitude before the small explosive charge deployed perfectly to open the parachute canopy quickly enough to allow for a successful descent.
All of the above were part of a series of miraculous technological achievements worthy of celebration. Doubly so, given the fact that the seat had been assembled around fifty years previously. In hindsight, it was therefore quite disappointing that Smithy spent his entire flight in the Enterprise’s magnificently preserved ejector seat screaming the most standard of swear words with his eyes clenched shut.