DEATH
IN THE DRAFT
A “Driver 27” Mystery
PROLOGUE
Thunder
Hill Raceway – 10 Years Ago
Ever
since he’d first stepped into a race car at the age of fourteen, he’d had a
sense of supreme confidence behind the wheel. Confidence
in his own skills as both a driver and an engineer. The
fact that he now felt worried driving a car that he had designed and built
himself intensified his fear. He
felt he was entering unknown territory.
He
tried to drive through it, see if the problem would correct itself. Maybe
it was a loose part that would settle into place? Maybe
it was a set-up issue and the feel of the car would improve as the track
conditions changed during the race, as they always did. Trapped
in the cockpit, circulating among twenty five other similarly focused drivers,
he made a fateful decision. He would
stay out until at least lap thirty and try to analyze the problem as he drove. The
driver in him switched into almost an auto-pilot mode, and the race engineer
part of his mind took over. He
mentally ran through check lists and reviewed design decisions while circulating
at just under one hundred miles per hour, mere inches from other cars.
But
competitive driving is a ten-tenths effort. It
needs focus and it needs concentration, especially on a tight short paved oval
track like Thunder Hill.
As
he started working lap twenty-four, he made his decision. He
would pit next time around and call it a night. He
knew what the problem was, and it was his fault. His
design choice aimed at giving him an advantage on the larger, longer oval tracks
was not working out. That choice
that was now making the car almost un-drivable on this tight track, the first
one they’d competed on in this year’s schedule.
A
sudden change in the pattern of the cars circulating in front of him snapped him
back to full attention. It was just
a small movement from the red car in front of him, like seeing the flash of
brake lights far ahead on the freeway and knowing you will be heading into a
problem. There was a slight shift in
the rear end of the red car as it jigged right, quickly corrected by the driver.
Or so it seemed for a second. Then,
the red car snapped violently right, its backend sliding up the track to connect
with the concrete wall lining the oval. The
impact was deafening as the red car’s kinetic energy was transferred into a
combination of sound and flying shards of brightly painted body shell.
The
red car was now nothing more than an uncontrollable missile spinning back down
into a pack of speeding cars. With a
sick inevitability, it struck the side of a yellow and black car running at
mid-track. The two stricken vehicles
were locked in an embrace of mutual destruction. The
tortured rubber of the tires, being forced to slide across the concrete in an
unnatural direction, began to scream. The
rubber’s howls of protest were accompanied by clouds of thick acrid smoke.
It
had only taken a few seconds since the red car started to spin for the track to
become totally obscured by the smoke. He
was now faced with his second critical decision of the evening. This
time he didn’t have the luxury of time to analyze his situation; this time it
would have to be a split-second choice.
He
knew that when faced with a spinning car, there are only two ways a driver can
react. The first is to hit the
brakes, hoping that your car will stop short of the carnage, and more
importantly, hope that the cars behind you will stop before they collide with
you. The second choice is to aim for
the cloud of smoke and keep your foot hard down on the throttle. The
theory is that the spinning cars should have spun out of the way and no longer
be at the original point of impact. The
risk is that you are literally driving blind into a wall of smoke with no idea
of what is on the other side.
Either
choice is a matter of faith. Faith in luck, and faith in your fellow drivers.
In
most cases, the conventional wisdom is that you aim for the cloud of smoke.
But
he’d seen the way those two cars had been locked together. The
engineer in him said that there was no way they were going to spin out of the
way as quickly as a single car would. That
ruled out going high through the smoke. He
couldn’t go down to the inside of the track either as another car was already
there. There was only one option
left. He hit the brakes.
Trying
to stop a three thousand pound stock car from close to a hundred miles per hour
in just a few feet takes an incredible amount of energy. The
car strained at the effort. He felt
the brakes go soft as the discs and pads overheated, then the tires burst from
the pure friction of being dragged across the surface. Then
came a sound he didn’t expect. The
sound of snapping metal. The front
part of the car’s space frame, the true structure of a racing stock car, was
detaching. The stresses of hard
braking hadn’t been factored into his new light-weight design. His
welds weren’t holding.
The
engineer resurfaced. If he hit
anything, he knew that the frame would snap completely, driving the engine,
gearbox and steering straight back into the cockpit.
Now
he was just a passenger in a vehicle of fate. His
fingers clenched tight on the wheel, eyes focused ahead, his back drenched in
sweat as he hoped against hope that he would stop before making contact.
His
car creaked and groaned in its death throes as it slowly entered the cloud of
smoke still hanging over the track. In
what seemed like minutes, but was in reality only a few seconds, it slowed to
almost a walking pace as it emerged from the smoke. In
front of him sat the remains of the red and yellow cars that had triggered the
accident. The drivers had abandoned
their cars and were running down to the infield. He
knew he’d hit the wrecks but at a low speed. With
a sense of relief, he momentarily took his eyes off the wrecked cars in front
and glanced into his mirror.
From
out of the smoke behind him came a pure white car with a rookie stripe across
the front spoiler. The stripe let
other drivers know that this competitor was inexperienced, still in his first
year of racing at this level. The
rookie was doing what he’d been told to do. Drive
through the smoke flat out.
The
impact was brief and explosive. The
white car was launched into the air off the back of his car and he saw it spin
out of sight. The added velocity of
the speeding rookie pushed his car forward as if it had accelerated, driving it
into the two cars sitting in the middle of the track.
The driver in him swore. The engineer knew what was about to happen.
"Death In The Draft" and all associated characters are (c) Alan J. Porter, 2006-2007