Darwin's Blade Read Online Free PDF Page A

Camino get two of those?”
    Dar shrugged. “Andrews Air Force Base just north of here. Twelve Palms just down the road. More military bases around here than any other comparable patch of real estate in the United States. Who the hell knows what military surplus they sell for scrap or whatever.”
    â€œJATO units!” said Cameron, looking at the endless skid marks again. They weaved in several places, but recovered and then headed straight as a double-shafted, black arrow for the distant canyon. “Why’d he use two?”
    â€œOne wouldn’t have done him much good unless he sat on it,” said Dar. “If he lit off just one and it wasn’t positioned perfectly on the El Camino’s exact center of mass, the vehicle would’ve just spun like a Catherine wheel until the rocket dug or melted him a hole in the desert.”
    â€œAll right,” said Cameron. “He strapped or bolted or cinched on two of these Air Force surplus rocket fuckers. Then what?”
    Dar rubbed his chin; he had neglected to shave in the rush to get going. “Then he waited for a break in traffic and lit them. Probably a simple battery circuit. Once they’re lit, you can’t shut them off. They’re essentially just oversized skyrockets, like miniature versions of the two strap-on boosters that the space shuttle uses. Light ’em and go. No turning back.”
    â€œSo he turned into a space shuttle,” said Cameron, his expression strange. He looked at the mountains two miles away. “Airborne all the way into that rock wall.”
    â€œNot all the way,” said Dar, turning on the ThinkPad and pointing to some delta-v estimates. “I can only guess at the thrust those things put out, but the rocket flare melted those patches of the highway back there and probably got him up to about two hundred and eighty-five miles per hour at just the point these skid marks begin, about twelve seconds after ignition.”
    â€œHelluva ride,” said Cameron.
    â€œMaybe the kid was going for a land speed record,” agreed Dar. “About this point, with the telephone poles flashing past in the dark like a picket fence—the rocket blast would’ve illuminated them—our boy had second thoughts. He slammed on the brakes.”
    â€œLot of good it did him,” said Cameron. The sergeant was almost whispering now.
    â€œBrake linings melted,” agreed Dar. “Brake drums melted. Tires started coming apart. You notice that just the last hundred meters or so of road marks are intermittent.”
    â€œBrakes going on and off?” said Cameron, his voice filling now with the future pleasure of telling and retelling this story. Cops loved roadkill.
    Dar shook his head. “Nope. These are just tire-melt patches at this point. The El Camino is taking thirty- and forty-foot hops before becoming completely airborne.”
    â€œHoly shit,” said Cameron, sounding almost gleeful.
    â€œYes,” said Dar. “There’s a final melt point just beyond where the tire marks cease. That’s where the JATO units were burning down at a nice healthy thirty-six-degree takeoff angle. The El Camino’s climb ratio must have been impressive.”
    â€œFuck me.” The sergeant grinned. “So those candles burned all the way to the cliff wall?”
    Dar shook his head. “My guess is that they burned out about fifteen seconds after takeoff. The rest of his ride was pure ballistics.” He pointed to the GPS map on the ThinkPad’s screen, with the simple equations to the right of the arching trajectory from desert to canyon wall.
    â€œThe road turns and starts climbing where he impacted,” said Cameron.
    Dar winced slightly. He hated the verb-use of nouns such as impact. “Yeah,” he said. “He didn’t make the turn. The El Camino was probably spinning around its own horizontal axis at this point, giving it some flight