The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,208

place, I live here, and I'm telling you - "

A loud explosion from behind them drowned out the rest of his words: the marina had been blown up. Part of a rubber dingy was thrown high into the air and landed on the side of the road.

Now Janson depressed the accelerator pedal farther, barreling down the narrow road faster than would ordinarily be safe. At eighty miles per hour, the tall grass and thorn trees zipped past in the rearview mirror. The roar of the motor seemed to grow ever louder, as if the muffler was cutting out. Now it seemed as if he were floating in the bay, as the spit narrowed to little more than sixty feet across, some beach, some low, scruffy vegetation, and the road, half covered in drifting sand. Janson knew that the sand itself reduced traction like an oil slick, and he reduced speed slightly.

The sound of the motor did not subside.

It was not the sound of his motor.

Janson turned to his right and saw the hovercraft. An amphibious military model.

It was skimming along the surface of the bay, a powerful fan keeping it aloft, a couple of feet above the surface of the water and the flat nets stretched beneath. It was unstoppable.

Janson felt as though he had swallowed ice. The lowlands of Chesapeake Bay were perfectly suited for the hovercraft's capabilities. The land would not provide them shelter: unlike a boat, the craft could move almost as easily over dry surfaces as over wet ones. And the powerful engine enabled it to keep pace easily with the Corvette. It was a more dangerous foe than the gunboat, and now it was gaining on them! The sound of the fan was deafening, and the small convertible swayed precariously in its mechanical gale.

He sneaked another glance at the hovercraft. From the side, it had some resemblance to a yacht, with a small forward windowed cabin. Mounted at the other end was a powerful upright fan. Heavy-duty antiplow skirts were mounted to the fore of the craft. As it zipped along the placid waters it gave an impression of fluid effortlessness.

Janson floored the accelerator - only to realize, sickeningly, that the hovercraft was not merely keeping pace; it was passing them. And, perched just below and to the left of the rear fan encasement, someone wearing ear protectors was fumbling with what looked like an M60 machine gun.

Janson aimed his M9 with one hand and emptied the magazine - yet the relative motion of the car and his target made accuracy impossible. The bullets simply clanged off the massive steel blades of the fan.

And now he had no more ammunition.

Bouncing lightly on its bipod, the M60 produced a low, grunting noise, and Janson remembered why it was known as the "pig" when he was in Vietnam. He hunched down as low as he could in his seat without losing control of the car, and the car's body jarred to a jackhammer rhythm as a spray of bullets, two hundred 7.62mm rounds per minute, sledgehammered the yellow Corvette, tearing into its steel body.

There was a momentary pause: A jammed bandolier? An overheated barrel? It was customary to replace the barrel every hundred to five hundred rounds to prevent overheating, and the overzealous gunman may not have realized just how quickly those barrels became hot. Small consolation: the pilot of the hovercraft used the interruption to shift direction. The craft eased back, even with the racing Corvette, and suddenly up onto the beach, and then to the cambered road itself.

It was just a few yards away, and the powerful sucking propellers seemed to loom over the tiny sports car. He heard another noise - a whooshing, bass-heavy thrum. That could mean only one thing: an auxiliary Rotex engine and propulsion fan had just now been activated. In the rearview mirror, Janson watched, bewildered, as the blousing PVC flaps puffed out farther and the entire craft, which had been flying about a foot above the ground, suddenly rose higher - and higher still! The roar of the Rotex engines blended with the howl of the blasting air as a small sandstorm materialized just behind them.

It was increasingly difficult to breathe without choking on the airborne grit. The hovercraft itself was partly obscured in the swirling sand and yet from behind the fore windshield he made out the goggled face of a powerfully built man.

He could also make out that the man was smiling.

Now the hovercraft seemed to jump