Motocross Madness (11 page)

The brothers went back to the garage, where
they
found Jamal finishing his preparations. The three of them rolled their bikes out to the
course.

“I was thinking,” Joe said to Frank as they went, “that
Kendallson might not have gotten that leg injury last night. He could have hurt it
making those jumps during the pipe factory chase.”

Jamal nodded. “He wasn't in that heat, so he could have had
time to clock me and be my replacement. We're about the same size.”

“Size is hard to tell under the riding armor,” Frank reminded
them. “It really could have been just about anyone.”

“But if Kendallson replaced Jamal, why did he do it?” Joe
asked. “And how does his buddy Sylvia Short fit into the scheme?”

Frank shook his head. “I'm not sure,” he said.
“But all of us had better be careful during this phase of the race.”

The contestants lined up in order of their placement: Those who had done
best during the first two days of the race got a head start on the others; those with
the lowest combined scores, would start later. Jamal was starting early, and Frank and
Joe were placed in the middle pack.

“Welcome to the exciting final phase of the benefit
challenge!” Corrine Fernandez's voice said over the loudspeaker.
“Starting times will be staggered, according to each competitor's finish
time during the previous two days. Everyone will race the
course at
the same time. The first racer over the finish line wins the competition—
and
the grand prize. Good luck, everyone! Here comes the
starting signal for the first rider . . . GO!”

Amber Hawk roared off the line and around the dirt track, heading for the
trail in the woods. Fifteen seconds later, Paco followed her; then, the others,
according to their previous finish times.

The Hardys were starting in the first group, though well behind the
leaders. They watched Elizabeth Navarro start, then Jamal.

“She looks a little shaky again today,” Joe said about
Navarro.

“I can't figure out what's up with her,” Frank
said. “One race she seems like a novice; then the next, an expert.”

“Maybe she's got a bad case of nerves,” Joe said. He
nodded in the direction of Elizabeth's father, Richard. He was standing atop a
nearby hill, fidgeting with a stopwatch.

Frank pulled his helmet on and checked the radio link. “Time to
go,” he said. He shot off the line, followed a few seconds later by Joe.

The two of them tooled around the dirt track before heading into the
woods. The trees cut down visibility to either side, but they could still make out the
other racers ahead of them.

Jamal had a good lead on the brothers, but Elizabeth Navarro had nearly
caught up with him. Paco
and Hawk also remained within sight. Even
the top finishers seemed to be having some difficulty with the cross-country course.

Taylor Fohr rode between Navarro and the brothers. Frank and Joe took up
positions nearly side by side—the way they traditionally rode together.

As they sped forward, Fohr began gaining on Navarro's shiny yellow
and white 125.

Suddenly Navarro swerved, avoiding some obstacle in the trail that the
Hardys couldn't see.

Fohr didn't spot it either. His front tire went into a deep rut in
the road, and his back wheel skidded out from under him. He lost control of his bike and
tumbled sideways, right in front of Frank and Joe.

The Hardys hit the brakes as Fohr rolled toward their motorcycles. Fohr's bike spun like a top, throwing its rider off.

Frank and Joe swerved, both leaving the trail to avoid the falling cyclist and his machine.

Joe cut to the right, narrowly missing both Fohr's legs and the careening motorcycle. Frank cleared the spinning bike on the left, but headed for a stand of thick trees.

He cut the handlebars hard, and just avoided a big pine at the trailside. The elder Hardy skitted between several small saplings, their branches slapping against the side of his helmet.

Fohr rolled into the woods on the right side of the trail. His bike, badly damaged, crashed into a
tree on the left. Fohr got up woozily; his riding armor saved him from serious injury. He got out a race-issued field phone and called for help.

In their rearview mirrors, Frank and Joe saw him get up. They both breathed a sigh of relief and steered back onto the trail.

“Watch out for that dip!” Frank called to Joe as they came up to the depression that had unseated Fohr.

The brothers whizzed past it, unscathed. “I don't know how Navarro saw that coming,” Joe radioed back.

“Maybe we underestimated her skills in the woods,” Frank said.

Trees flashed by as the cross-country trail wound deep into the heart of the forest. The brothers stuck close to each other—out of habit
and
because there seemed to be more safety in riding together.

“This has changed a lot since we last rode here,” Joe said.

“I think we just missed this part of the trails,” Frank called back.

He watched Navarro deftly dodge around the obstacles ahead of them. Though she wasn't the fastest racer in the pack, she was rapidly gaining on the leaders, who seemed to be having more trouble with the course.

“It looks like Navarro knows this trail real well,” Joe noted.

Frank nodded. “She seemed shaky at first, but the way she's riding now, you'd never know it.”

Another racer ahead of them went down, unseated by the trunk of a newly fallen sapling at the turn of a bend. Again, Navarro avoided the obstacle.

“She must have eyes like an eagle,” Joe said. “No wonder this trail is slowing the top riders down. There are hidden dangers at every turn.”

“Don't let her get too far ahead,” Frank radioed back. “She can scout the land for us.”

The trail looped left, then right, then cut back on itself. The brothers lost sight of Navarro more and more as stretches of clear road became less frequent.

The whir of a helicopter overhead made the Hardys glanced up.

“Covering the race, do you think?” Frank asked.

“Probably,” Joe replied. “Look out!”

Frank ducked out of the way just in time as a thick, overhanging branch whizzed past his head. Joe ducked too, and the big tree limb scraped past his helmet.

“Someone could have lost a head on that!” Joe said angrily. “Why didn't they eliminate a hazard like that from the course?”

“The trail does seem pretty rough,” Frank replied, “even for cross-country. It could be that most Enduros are like this, though. Jamal told us they were difficult.”

“There's tough, and then there's
deadly
,” Joe said.

“Well, let's make sure that this ride falls into the first category, rather than the second.”

Joe barely heard his brother's reply. Something in the course seemed to be interfering with their radio transmissions.

In the next few minutes, they passed a couple of bikes by the side of the road. One had blown a tire, and the other had a bent front fork. The riders seemed uninjured, and both of them were talking on cell phones to race officials.

Frank and Joe glanced warily at each other; the course had claimed two more “victims.”

The race leaders came into sight ahead of the brothers. Jamal and Elizabeth rode nearly side by side, dueling for third place. Hawk and Paco raced in front of them, still a good distance ahead. Marissa Hayday rode in fifth place, between the Hardys and the pack at the front.,

“I don't know whether to be happy that the trail is slowing the leaders down, or worried about what might be coming next,” Joe called to Frank.

Frank didn't hear him, though. He'd pulled ahead of his brother, temporarily out of radio range. Frank gunned his engine and headed for the leaders.

Joe bore down and accelerated as fast as he dared over the bumpy, irregular trail.

Soon the course widened out, and the trees fell
away for a moment. Jamal took advantage of the change and accelerated past Elizabeth, taking a clear hold on third place.

Marissa Hayday made a move too, closing in on Navarro's shiny motorcycle. Hayday swung out, heading for a stretch of wide, leaf-covered clearing, trying to loop around Navarro and Jamal, who were both sticking to the rocky trail.

Navarro braked when Hayday cut in front of her. But Hayday's wheels skidded on a slippery pile of leaves at the trail's edge. She fell, though not very hard. Elizabeth Navarro accelerated away from her. Frank and Joe zipped past Hayday as she picked herself and her bike out of the bracken.

A bump in the road sent Jamal into the air. He fought hard and managed to control the motorcycle as it came down. Navarro scooted sideways, avoiding the rock that had nearly unseated Jamal. She closed in and passed him. The two raced nose to tail for a while.

Following Elizabeth's course, both Frank and Joe avoided the bump.

The trail narrowed in again, forcing Jamal to abandon his attempt to pass Navarro as they went uphill. Ahead, Hawk and Paco dipped out of sight as they crested the rise.

Elizabeth and Jamal struggled up the slope as the course suddenly became mired with sand and gravel.

Frank saw his chance and took it. While Navarro and Jamal skidded on the loose earth, he cut to the right, up a rocky outcropping With a surge of speed, he passed both his friend and the rider in yellow and white.

“Yeah! Go Frank!” Joe cried. Then his wheels caught on the same scree that had slowed the other two. He was too far behind to use the route that Frank had taken. He kept touching his feet down to steady himself.

Elizabeth's gleaming motorcycle climbed up on the rocks and surged forward once more. Jamal did the same, keeping close to Navarro's back tire. Joe kept plodding forward, kicking up a cloud of dust as he went.

Frank, Elizabeth, and Jamal disappeared over the top of the rise. Joe glanced back. No other racers were in sight; even Hayday had been lost from view. Joe knew that, if he was to have any chance, he couldn't let the distance between himself and the leaders get any larger.

He struggled up the hill until he could finally use the rocky path that Frank and the others had discovered. His bike's tires found better traction, and he zoomed up the wooded hill. As he reached the top, he saw Frank leading the others at the bottom of the next valley.

The woods opened out a little below. The trail widened only to narrow again as it headed toward
the top of the next rise. Joe gunned his engine and shot downhill.

At the bottom of the decline, Jamal and Elizabeth jockeyed for position. As they reached the short straightaway before the next rise, a battered blue-gray motorcycle surged out of the woods toward them. Two people in cycling leathers rode on the back of the bike.

Jamal and Elizabeth didn't see the intruders zooming toward them. The gloved hand of the intruder riding on the back of the bike held a long, stout stick.

Joe watched in horror as the helmeted rider raised the log like a baseball bat. The intruder took aim on the unsuspecting Jamal.

“Jamal, look out!” Joe cried, knowing full well that his friend couldn't possibly hear him.

The intruder surged into Jamal and Elizabeth as they rode side by side across the narrow trail. Neither one of them saw their attacker coming.

The enemy bike roared into them from the side, like a wolf pouncing on unsuspecting deer. The rider on the back of the bike swung the big stick toward Navarro's midsection.

At the last second Elizabeth noticed the tree limb and turned her bike slightly. But Jamal was in the way, and the two of them bumped hard. The stick missed both of them, but Jamal's and Elizabeth's machines got tangled. They careened off the
course and into a nearby clearing. Their bikes twisted around as they went, as though caught in a frantic dance. Jamal and Elizabeth fought to maintain control, but both bikes went down.

Jamal hit first, landing in a pile of leaves by the side of the clearing. His borrowed bike skidded to the ground beside him. Elizabeth sailed head over heels and landed hard at the base of a tree. Her shiny new bike kept going and smacked into a boulder protruding from the ground nearby.

Jamal rolled over and tried to stand; Elizabeth lay flat on her back, totally still.

“You rats!” Joe cried as he raced downhill toward the scene of the ambush. “Frank! Frank, come back!”

No reply came from Joe's radio. His brother was too far up the next rise to hear him. Neither Frank nor the other leaders had noticed the attack in the valley below.

The thieves stopped their bike amid the fallen riders. The helmeted intruder in back got off their motorcycle, went over to Jamal, and kicked him in the chest. Jamal went down.

Joe charged down the slope and into the small clearing. The ambushers turned as they heard him coming, but they reacted too late. Joe stuck out his left arm, looking to clothesline the dismounted bandit.

The thief ducked and tried to bring up his big stick. Joe grabbed the lumber and jerked it out of the bandits hand. The man lurched away as the younger Hardy swung the piece of wood at the ambusher's helmeted head.

The bandit who was still on the motorcycle surged forward. His front tire slammed into the side of Joe's bike, barely missing the younger Hardy's leg. Both intruders were about the same size as Joe; both wore identical black riding leathers and beat-up gray helmets.

Joe's bike skidded to a halt, and the impact jarred the piece of lumber from his hand. He kicked out at the intruder's motorcycle and caught the bandit's left thigh. The ambusher yelped and drove away from the younger Hardy.

The second intruder grabbed Jamal's motorcycle and started it up. As his partner circled around Joe, he grabbed the stick again and began to circle as well.

Joe and his bike stood caught between the circling bikers. Jamal, stunned, lay nearby, and Elizabeth still wasn't moving. With the bandits zooming around him, Joe had no good way to protect himself.