Chapter 76
THE OLYMPIC FLAME atop the Orbit burned without disturbance or deflection and the flags around the stadium hung flat; the wind had died to nothing – perfect conditions for a sprint race.
The radio nub in Knight’s ear crackled with calls and responses between Jack, the security crew, and Lancer, who’d moved off to get a different view. Knight looked around. High atop the stadium, SAS snipers lay prone behind their rifles. A helicopter passed overhead. The war birds had been circling the park all day, and the number of armed guards around the track doubled.
Nothing bad is going to happen in here tonight, Knight told himself. An attack would be suicidal.
The sprinters went to starting blocks that relied on a state-of-the art fully automated timing – FAT – system. Each block was built around ultra-sensitive pressure plates linked to computers to catch any false starts. At the finish line and linked to those same computers was an invisible matrix of criss-crossing lasers calibrated to a thousandth of a second.
The crowd was on its feet now, straining for better views as the announcer called the sprinters to their marks. Shaw was running in lane three, and Mundaho in lane five. The Jamaican glanced at the Cameroonian pivoting in front of his blocks. Setting their running shoes into the pressure sensors, the speedsters splayed their fingertips on the track, heads bowed.
Ten seconds, Knight thought. These guys spend their whole lives preparing for ten seconds. He couldn’t imagine it: the pressure, the expectations, the will and the hardship involved in becoming an Olympic champion.
‘Set,’ the judge called, and the sprinters raised their hips.
The gun cracked, the crowd roared, and Mundaho and Shaw were like twin panthers springing after prey. The Jamaican was stronger in the first twenty metres, uncoiling his long legs and arms sooner than the Cameroonian. But in the next forty metres, the ex-boy soldier ran as if he really did have bullets chasing him.
Mundaho caught Shaw at eighty metres, but could not pass the Jamaican.
And Shaw could not lose the Cameroonian.
Together they streaked down the track, chasing history as if the other men in the race weren’t even there, and appeared to lean and blow through the finish simultaneously with a time of 9.38, two-tenths of a second better than Shaw’s incredible performance at Beijing.
New Olympic Record!
New World Record!