Free Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) by Ryan Graudin Page B

had Luka ridden to get to this point? How many lungfuls of dust had he inhaled? How many ounces of blood had he spilled for a chance to make history?
    Was a fräulein worth all these things?
    She shouldn’t be.
    But that didn’t mean she wasn’t.
    Adele cleared her throat. It was a sound that begged Luka to look at her, just look at her. He stared even harder at the 1ST , his vision decaying into neon around it. When Luka blinked, the staleness cleared. He could see Katsuo across the room, watching him. Why the hell was the victor smiling?
    It was
verdammt
unnerving.
All
of this was so
verdammt
unnerving. Kisses and long games and kilometers still undriven. Luka almost wanted to go back to the starting line: where things were—well, not exactly simple, but at least they were straightforward.
    Now it was more than just road jitters fraying his insides.
    Luka patted his pocket for a cigarette. There was only one left in the pack he carried on his person. He took it out and lit it. Flames’ warmth prickled his insides at the first inhale, washed out with his exhale—
Scheisse
taste coated his mouth.
    “Don’t expect me to go easy on you,” Adele spoke into her bowl, words mixing with meat bits.
    Katsuo kept smiling.
    Stay the course, Löwe.
    “Likewise,” Luka muttered.

Chapter 13
    They were an exhausted lineup, eleven racers at the end of their proverbial rope, strung out on fumes of sleep and the promise of the end. Not quite in sight, but close. At 2,394 kilometers, Hanoi to Shanghai was the final exam of endurance. To be a victor, you had to complete this stretch without camping. It was a dangerous race against sleep deprivation.
    The sun was all shine. Their motorcycles rumbled, weariless machines. Luka’s wrist shuddered over the Zündapp’s throttle, but the engine revolutions weren’t enough to rattle the weariness from his veins. They did not banish the shadows from the edge of his goggles, the ones that threatened to shove him into sleep there and then.
    Speed helped. Thick, humid ribbons of air smacked Luka’s cheekbones, spurring him out of Hanoi, past rice fields of mirrored sky. Katsuo’s fender flashed only meters ahead—something to chase, something to beat.
    They were well into the day—zooming through a land of mountains without ranges—when Luka made his move. He was awake now. All awake. Wrist, hand, fingers, made of pure adrenaline as he twisted the throttle. Katsuo was so close Luka could see the vertebrae sloping along his neck. Their wheels were a turn away from touching, lunging along with a maniac hum. Katsuo lashed his engine forward. Luka’s acceleration matched it, until he realized that bikes
did
get weary. Hot oil and rattling bolts. You could only push an engine so fast, so far before it broke.
    The land blurred green around them: rice seedlings into hillside foliage into bamboo stalks. Luka’s Zündapp—stretched with speeds faster than his speedometer needle could measure—made noises he’d never heard before. Katsuo’s motorcycle joined the duet, refusing to slow.
    The road curved, sloped downward to its first glimpse of the Li River. Its waters were as green as the rest of the landscape, threading around the hillsides like a jade necklace. Cormorants sat, wide-winged, on docks made entirely of stone. A lone ferry operator stood at the end of the nearest one, waiting to transport the racers across.
    The race path was ending, but Katsuo kept pushing. The dock’s rocks flew forward—too narrow to drive on—and Luka knew it was down to nerves. Who would buckle first?
    The cormorants—unsettled by the dueling engines—slipped into the water. The ferry operator gripped the edge of his hat, knuckles knotted. Luka was close enough to see the whites of the old man’s eyes. Fear gleamed in them.
    Luka had to fight the
put on your brakes, you death-flirting dummkopf
flex of his fingers. There were only a few meters left before not even a state-of-the-art brake system or