The latch clicked shut with a hollow, tinny sound.
Inside the Carrera, the world was stripped of every comfort. There was no radio, no sound-deadening insulation, no rear seats, and no plush carpeting—only exposed, primer-painted metal floors, a simple black vinyl dashboard, and the smell of high-octane racing gasoline mixed with stale sweat and cold leather.
Lindemann flipped the ignition toggle. He didn't look at the gauges; he knew the car by muscle memory. He turned the key with his left hand while his right foot pumped the throttle twice to prime the Weber carburetors.
CRACK.
The flat-six fired with an instantaneous, violent snap that vibrated directly through the steel floorboards and into Marcus’s spine. The idle was ragged, lope-sided, and loud—a furious, mechanical clatter of timing chains, rocker arms, and titanium valve retainers dancing in synchronized fury.
Lindemann kicked the heavy clutch pedal, slammed the spindly gear lever forward into first with a crisp clack, and dumped the pedal.
The rear tires broke loose on the damp asphalt, squealing for a fraction of a second before biting into the pavement. Marcus was slammed hard against the back of his bucket seat as the car rocketed out of the pit lane and plunged straight into the descending left-hander at Hatzenbach.
The world outside the windscreen blurred into an endless streak of dark green pines and gray guardrails.
To an ordinary teenager, the experience would have been pure, paralyzing terror. The speed was immense, violent, and relentless. Lindemann drove with the ruthless, precision aggression of a man who had made his peace with gravity long ago. He threw the two-million-dollar sports car into blind, off-camber corners, his hands constantly dancing on the thin leather steering wheel, correcting slides over damp patches of moss, clipping apex curbs with jarring, bone-rattling impacts.
BRAAAAP!
Third gear. Four thousand revs. Five thousand.
The mechanical cooling fan behind their heads shrieked like an industrial turbine. Marcus held onto the steel door pull with his left hand, but his body remained surprisingly fluid, absorbing the violent lateral forces. His head was tilted slightly to the right, his eyes closed beneath his helmet visor.
He wasn't watching the road. He was listening.
In the chaos of noise—the shriek of the wind, the roar of the exhaust, the whine of the straight-cut gearbox—Marcus’s brain acted as an acoustic separator. He mentally isolated the sounds: the rhythmic hum of the front wheel bearings, the slap of the radial tires over concrete seams, the hiss of fuel rushing through brass jets.
They crested the rise at Flugplatz. The car went momentarily weightless, airborne for three terrifying yards before crashing back down onto its suspension with a metallic groan.
Lindemann braked violently, heels and toes dancing across the pedals to blip the throttle for a downshift into second: vroom-vroom!
Pop.
A tiny, sharp crack echoed from the right side of the intake shroud—exactly as Marcus had predicted.
Lindemann’s eyes flicked to the passenger seat. Marcus’s right hand shot out, his index finger pressing downward toward the floorboards in a calm, rhythmic pumping motion: feather the clutch.
Lindemann obeyed the boy’s hand instantly. He eased his left foot back, dipping the clutch just enough to take the compression load off the engine. The RPM dropped to four thousand. The pop did not return. Two seconds later, as the car rounded the tight right-hander, Lindemann planted his right foot back onto the floorboards.
The engine roared in clean, uninterrupted fury:
VROOOOOOOOOM!
They exited the corner onto the long, sweeping downhill run toward Fuchsrohre. Lindemann pinned the throttle in fourth gear.
Six thousand revolutions per minute. Six thousand five hundred. Seven thousand.
The speed climbed past two hundred and forty kilometers an hour. The steering wheel shook violently in Lindemann’s hands as the aerodynamic downforce compressed the front suspension. The noise inside the stripped cabin was an all-consuming, terrifying wall of sound—the howl of twenty-four valves reciprocating at seventy times every second.
And through it all, the magnesium crankcase held.
The main bearing shells floated on their microscopic cushion of pressurized oil, undisturbed by thermal distortion, the ductile bolts stretching in perfect harmony with the expanding metal.
Lindemann held the throttle wide open through the compression at the bottom of the gorge, letting the car carry its massive momentum up the opposite rise before finally lifting off the pedal as they approached the entrance to the old pit lane.
The car coasted down to a halt beside Vance’s waiting figure.
Lindemann switched off the ignition.
The sudden silence in the mountain air was staggering. The tick-tick-ticking of the red-hot exhaust headers sounded like footsteps on dried leaves. Blue smoke curled softly from the rear brake calipers, smelling of scorched carbon-metallic friction material.
Lindemann sat back in his seat, panting slightly, his face drenched in sweat. He slowly turned his head to look at Marcus.
The boy was already unbuckling his helmet strap. His face was pale, his knuckles slightly white from gripping the door pull, but his breathing was steady. He pulled the helmet off, shook his short black hair, and looked at the instrument cluster.
"The fuel bowl on three was dry for three seconds after the crest," Marcus said softly, his voice trembling only slightly from the adrenaline. "The float needle is hanging up on the pivot pin. We need to polish the brass shaft with six-hundred-grit paper before we run it again."
Klaus Lindemann let out a long, ragged exhale that turned into a deep, booming laugh that echoed across the empty pit lane. He reached over with his heavy, gloved hand and clapped Marcus on the shoulder so hard the boy rocked in his seat.
"Arthur!" Lindemann shouted out the open window toward the billionaire. "Pay this boy whatever he asks! Because if you don't, I’m stealing him and taking him to Le Mans next summer!"