Chapter 43
KNIGHT AND JACK fought their way down through the crowd. Jack was barking into his mobile, informing the stadium’s security commander of the situation. They both showed their Private badges to get onto the stadium floor.
Knight spotted Teeter holding the US flag and talking to Filatri Mundaho, the Cameroonian sprinter. He took off across the infield just as the American flag began to topple. The flag-bearer went with it and collapsed to the ground, convulsing, bloody foam on his lips.
By the time Knight reached the US contingent, people were screaming for a doctor. Dr Hunter Pierce broke through the crowd and went to the shot-putter’s side while Mundaho watched in horror.
‘He just falls,’ the ex-boy soldier said to Knight.
Jack looked as stunned as Knight felt. It had all happened so fast. Three minutes’ warning. That’s all they’d been given. What more could they have done to save the American?
Suddenly, the public address system crackled and Cronus’s weird flute music began playing.
Panic surged through Knight. He remembered Selena Farrell turning crazed in her office, and then realised that many of the athletes around him were pointing up at the huge video screens around the Olympic venue, all displaying the same three red words:
OLYMPIC SHAME EXPOSED
Part Three
THE FASTEST MAN ON EARTH