It’s not a race car at all.

It’s the big-wheeled tractor that was pulling the Roman Coliseum float.

It’s idling in the middle of the street, belching a plume of black exhaust.

The tractor has been modified. It has a bigger-than-normal vertical muffler. An additional fuel tank. And an expanded metal grille, lined with horizontal spikes jutting out like a torture device from the Middle Ages.

I take a few steps and realize the tractor is no longer hooked up to its float.

And its driver—a gladiator wearing a costume of body armor, a metal helmet, and a pair of sunglasses with one red lens and one green—is settling back into the driver’s seat.

And buckling his seat belt.

My mind races, piecing everything together. It all makes terrifying sense.

The tractors in the safe houses weren’t being packed with explosives.

They were being taken apart and put back together.

Customized with powerful after-market engines. Fitted with police-style tactical bumpers. Modified to carry out a European-style vehicle attack here in the US, to cause the maximum amount of damage to people in the shortest amount of time. London, Nice, Barcelona … and now, New Orleans.

Panic surges through my body as the driver engages the clutch and puts the tractor into Drive, and without the weight of the float behind it, it quickly roars ahead, chasing after the fleeing partygoers.

CHAPTER 79

I lift my pistol.

Aim.

Fire.

POP!

The driver flinches from my gunshot—damnit, I’m sure I hit the bastard!—but he keeps on driving, and the cursed thing roars by me, getting way too close to the throngs of fleeing people.

Lowering my pistol, I start running, desperate to line up a better shot, the tractor moving away from me.

But I can’t get there soon enough to stop the madness.

The helmeted driver cuts the wheel sharply and plows straight through the metal police barricades, as easily as if they were made of Styrofoam.

The tractor keeps going, barreling right into the crowd. Zigzagging wildly. Wounding people with its spiked grille. Tossing them aside from its massive wheels.

More screams pierce the air and there’s another roar, and I look behind, seeing another souped-up tractor emerge from the chaos, the one hauling the Superdome float, and never in my life have I felt so helpless, so alone, as this float roars up, like it’s providing backup to its blood-spilling partner.

I can get a better shot here, and I whirl and lift my pistol in the approved two-handed grip, when—

The tractor halts.

The driver leaps from the raised seat.

The float—

It falls apart, pieces dropping to both sides, large plywood and papier-mâché pieces tumbling to the still-crowded streets, and—

Armed men emerge from it, where they had been hiding all the while.

Good God!