His reaction was to drop from fifth gear into fourth, and flatten the accelerator pedal. In spite of the speed at which he was already travelling, the massive brake-horsepower of the engine thrust the small of his back deeper into the rich leather of his seat-back, and the speedometer climbed up to one hundred and sixty-five miles an hour. He allowed himself a fraction of a second to look in the mirror and see that the police were setting off after him, and then they ceased to become even specks in the distance. He shifted into fifth gear, and the car surged forward. The speedometer swept past the one hundred and seventy mark, one hundred and seventy-five, flickered up past one hundred and eighty, and then finally hovered around the one hundred and eighty-five mark. He passed an orange 2CV Citroen and nearly blew it off the road with his slipstream. The driver was enjoying himself, and his enjoyment of the fine car and the thrill of the speed was all the more satisfying because he was actually being paid to do this.

A mile and a half behind him, the two Motoguzzis accelerated down the road, their sirens bleating. Half a mile behind them, the articulated lorry, with the Montélimar licence plates, suddenly acted very strangely, slewing across the road, and then reversing, so that it blocked the road completely.

My airspeed was now one hundred and forty knots. The stall-warning buzzer shrieked almost continuously. There was hardly any response to my movements of the control column. Down below, the road stretched out. Then the articulated lorry came into view, exactly in the right place. We passed barely fifty feet over its roof; I had full flap, the undercarriage down and locked, and beneath that bulbous nose in front of me, the road was rushing up to meet us. We sank down, down; I fought with the column to keep the nose up, and with the rudder to keep the aircraft straight. It must be now, I thought, it must be now! I pushed the four throttle levers forward, and as the surge of acceleration came, I felt the centre wheels touch, ever so gently, and I was about to congratulate myself. I pulled the throttle levers back to cut the thrust, but to my surprise, the aircraft at that moment lifted several feet back up into the air, and then thumped back down with a jarring I could feel through every bone in my body. We lifted up again and crashed down again, then up again, then down again, and this time, to my relief, we stayed down, racing along the road. Then finally, the nose came down and the nose-wheel touched. I waited for a moment for it to settle, then I wrenched the throttle levers right back into full reverse thrust, and stood on the brakes for all I was worth.