Impact

by Douglas Preston

  He threw over the last trap and brought the boat into a tight idle, wheel hard to starboard. The line zinged out, the float popping into the water, followed by the buoy. For a moment Worth let the boat drift while he pounded down the last half of a Coors Light and threw the can overboard. He wiped his mouth and eyed the engine panel. The engine was running cold, the injectors were shot, there was fuel coming out the wet exhaust and spreading rainbows over the water. Every few minutes the bilge pumps would kick in, vomiting oily water over the side. He spat again, the gobbet lying on the deck like a shucked oyster. He kicked the raw water hose and washed the lougey out the scuppers.

  He hoped his piece-of-shit boat would last the season. Then he’d buy insurance and sink it. All he had to do was stick a bad fuse into the bilge pump, moor his boat, and wait two days.

  As Thrumcap Island passed to starboard the distant outline of Crow Island came into view, the huge white dome of the old Earth Station rising up like a bubble. The Crow Island ferry was just coming out of the harbor, churning away as it rounded the point and headed for Friendship. As he glanced back toward the mainland he was surprised to see a boat anchored in a quiet corner of Marsh Island Passage. He squinted.

  The Marea. Abbey Straw’s boat.

  He immediately throttled down, staring. A feeling of rage crawled up his spine and spread through his brain like water into a sponge. Fucking jungle bunny, he couldn’t forget what she’d said about that deeper, deeper shit. Right in front of that cunt Jackie Spann, somebody should whack her upside the head. There they were, on Louds Island, looking for the treasure of Dixie Bull. The rumor going around town was that Abbey had gotten her hands on a map.

  As the boat drifted in the tidal current, Worth pulled the last can of Coors out of the plastic rings and tossed the plastic overboard. Maybe it’ll strangle a few seals.

  He hammered down the beer and stuck the can in the beer holder screwed to the side of the engine panel. He was starting to feel edgy, tense, his skin crawling. The crank bugs. He began itching nervously at the skin of his cheek, inadvertently breaking off a scab, feeling the wetness of blood on his fingertips.

  He swore. Ducking into the tiny cuddy, he removed a glass bulb pipe from behind some gear, dropped in a rock, and with a shaking hand lit a Bic and directed the flame down into the bulb. There was a sudden cooking noise and he drew in hard, filling the bulb with smoke, then taking it into his lungs. Leaning back against the hull, he closed his eyes and let the rush happen, a sense of elation so strong it made him feel, for a moment, almost like a real human being.

  He stuffed the pipe and crank back behind the fishing gear and bounded into the wheel house, feeling on top of the world. Once again he saw the Marea casting a long shadow on the water, and a black rage seized his heart. They were digging for treasure and with a map they might even find it.

  Suddenly, he had an idea. A good idea. In fact, it was the best idea he had ever had.

  Worth checked his watch: four o’clock. The girls were obviously going to spend the night on the boat. This would give him time to go into Round Pond, fuel up, load up on beer and beef jerky from King Ro. He could pay a visit to his connection and score some more crank and collect the money he was owed for the stuff he’d boosted out of that mansion on Ripp Island. He could be back out at Louds at dawn.

  With an out-loud laugh he goosed the throttle to 3000 rpms, spun the wheel, and headed back out past Thrumcap Island and around the southern end of Louds toward Round Pond Harbor.

  With the money from the treasure, he’d buy himself a new boat—and he’d name it the Skull and Crossbones.

  12

  “He looks like Squealer, the Beanie Baby pig,” said Mark Corso. “You ever see that pig? Big, soft, fat, and pink.”

  Marjory Leung leaned back on the stool and laughed, her long black hair swaying, then lifted the martini to her pursed lips. Corso watched her abdomen stretching, her apple-shaped breasts sliding under the thin stretchy cotton of her top. They were in one of those California theme bars, done up in bamboo and teak, with corrugated tin roofing and colored floor lights, tarted up like some watering hole on the beach in Jamaica. Reggae music throbbed in the background. Why was it in California that everything had to look like somewhere else? He remembered what Gertrude Stein had said about California. There is no there there. How true it was.

  “Freeman warned me about him,” he added. “How the hell did a guy like that get to be second in command?”

  Leung set the drink down and leaned toward him, conspiratorially, her thin, athletic body like a bent spring. “You know why he keeps his door shut?”

  “I’ve often wondered about that.”

  “He’s surfing for porn.”

  “You think so?”

  “The other day I knocked on the door and I heard this sudden movement inside, like he was startled. And then when I came in he was hastily tucking in his shirt and his computer screen was blank.”

  “Putting away his schlong, I bet. The very thought makes me want to puke.”

  Leung issued a bell-like laugh, twisting on her stool, her hair swinging again, her knee touching Corso’s. Her drink was almost empty.

  He polished off his own drink and waved his hand for another round. The knee remained in contact with his. Leung worked at the Mars mission down the hall as a Mars meteorology specialist. She was funny and irreverent, a refreshing change from the nerds who swarmed that end of the building. And she was smart. First-generation Chinese, she’d grown up in the back of a Chinese laundry run by her parents. They didn’t speak English and she went to Harvard. Corso liked that kind of story. She was like his own grandfather, running away from home in Sicily and getting to America, all by himself, at the age of fourteen. Corso felt a kind of kinship with her.

  “You read that report on Freeman?” he asked her.

  “Yeah.” The bartender slid the drinks over and she took hers. “So creepy. We used to come here for drinks once in a while.”

  Corso had heard about something brief between Leung and Freeman. He hoped it wasn’t true.

  “It’s just awful, him getting murdered like that.” She shook her head, sending ripples through that hair.

  Corso took a chance, pressing his knee against the side of hers with a little more pressure. There was an answering pressure. He could feel the flush of the martinis traveling through his capillaries.

  “You must have taken it hard,” she said.

  “I did. He was a really good guy. A little crazy.”

  “You know why he got fired?” she asked.

  “Not specifically. Other than a sort of general deterioration. He might have had a run-in with Derkweiler over data issues.”

  “Data issues?”

  “Gamma ray data.” Corso realized he was approaching a security compartment line, talking about data outside of the building with a person in another section. He sipped his drink; fuck the rules.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “He was talking about that but I didn’t really get it. What about gamma rays?”

  “Seems to be a gamma ray source somewhere on Mars. A point source. At least, that’s what I get when I subtract the overall background noise—a faint periodicity.”

  She leaned forward. “Wait a minute. You’re kidding.”

  She got it right away, thought Corso. “No, no kidding. The period is somewhere around twenty-five to thirty hours. Which is pretty close to the Martian day.”

  “What the heck in the solar system could be producing gamma rays? Not even the sun has enough energy.”

  “Cosmic rays.”

  “Yeah, but cosmic rays produce a weak, diffuse glow from every body in the solar system. You say this signal has periodicity. That implies a point source on the planet’s surface.”

  Corso was even more taken aback by how fast she was figuring it out.

  “Right. Problem is, the Compton detector on MMO isn’t directional—no way to tell where the gamma rays are coming from. It could be anywhere on the pl
anet’s surface.”

  “You have any ideas what it might be?” Leung asked.

  “At first I thought it might be from a nuclear reactor that crashed on the planet’s surface—maybe from a secret government project. But I ran the calculations and it would have to be, like, a reactor the size of a mountain.”

  “What else?”

  Corso took another swig. He could feel his heart pounding from the pressure of his knee, now on her inner thigh. She was returning the pressure. “I’ve been wracking my brains. I mean, high energy gamma rays are usually only produced by big-time astrophysical processes—supernovae, black holes, neutron stars—stuff like that. Or in a nuclear reactor or atomic bomb.”

  “This is incredible. You’re on to something big.”

  He turned to her. “I think it could be a miniature black hole, or a very small neutron body, somehow caught on the surface of Mars or orbiting around it.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  He gazed steadily into her lively, black eyes. “No. I’m not. When you’ve eliminated the impossible . . .”

  “. . .whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” She finished the familiar aphorism for him, punctuating it with a bright smile on her red lips.

  He lowered his voice. “If this is a miniature black hole or tiny neutron star, it could grow, eat Mars—and sterilize the Earth with killing gamma rays—or even explode. This isn’t some academic exercise. This is real.”

  Leung breathed out. “Jesus.”

  He put his hand on her leg, gave it a squeeze. “Yes. It is real.”

  She leaned forward, her face closer to his. He could smell her shampoo. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “It’s going to be the subject of my presentation.” He slid his hand just a bit under her skirt, which was riding up on her thigh as she sat on the stool. After a moment she flexed her hips forward, causing the hand to slide up farther. He could feel the hotness of her thighs.

  She leaned closer to him and said, “Mmmmm,” into his ear, her peppermint breath tickling his face.

  “Another drink?” he asked.

  She adjusted herself on the stool, sliding her hips even farther forward so that his fingers came in contact with the hot curve of her panties. She pressed her thighs together on his hand. “Do you want to come back to my place?” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

  13

  Sisophon was as ugly as Ford remembered it, whitewashed cement buildings scattered among tattered palms and sickly banyan trees. The streets were dirt and many of the building facades were still pecked with shrapnel from the war. As Ford’s driver entered town, a UN Land Cruiser, stuffed with blue-helmeted men, careened past, its sides emblazoned with UNDP MINE ACTION SERVICE logos.

  The Tourist A-1 Hotel was right where it had always been, more rundown than ever, the street outside thronging with child vendors. The cinder block building mostly hosted NGOs and had probably never seen a real tourist in all its shabby days. Ford booked a room and left his suitcase with the manager, giving him a ten-thousand riel note with a promise of fifty thousand more if the case was intact on his return.

  Leaving the hotel on foot, Ford directed his steps toward an open-area antiquity workshop on the outskirts of town. As he walked, cement buildings gave way to wood-and-thatch huts on stilts, small rice paddies, and water buffalo hauling wooden carts. The antiquity workshop, sprawling over a vast field, was a scene of bustle and activity. Open-sided tents were set up in long rows, inside of which stonemasons labored to the merry clink of steel chisels on stone. It was one of the more famous antiquity workshops in Cambodia, where a battalion of talented artisans turned piles of broken sandstone rocks into fake Angkorian antiquities to be sold in Bangkok and around the world.

  Strolling through the cheerful outdoor workshop, Ford watched stoneworkers chiseling away at chunks of stone propped on sandbags, from which emerged eleventh-century dancing apsaras, devatas, buddhas, lingams, and nagas. In a nearby metal shed, powered by its own generator, the hum of high-tech printing could be heard, as forgers created the documents necessary to authenticate an antiquity and give it a convincing provenance. To one side the fresh sculptures were being subjected to acid sprays, mud baths, tea stainings, egg-white coatings, and even burial to make them look old.

  Ford scanned the crowds of workmen, buyers, and sellers, looking for the figure of his old friend Khon. And there he was, impossible to miss, the rotund figure and polished head moving among the artisans, chatting with everyone, rapping on various pieces with his walking stick, laughing loudly, and enjoying himself immensely.

  “Khon!” Ford strode over and clasped the man’s hand warmly.

  “Wyman, my good friend! How fucking delightful to see you!”

  “The name’s Kirk,” Ford said, with a wink.

  Without a beat, Khon declaimed, “Kirk, my good friend!” He laughed, a bell-like laugh, his head thrown back, then composed himself, his face becoming serious. “I never thought I’d see you again, after . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Here I am.”

  “Kirk, you’re damned thin! And so much gray hair! There’s an ancient Cambodian saying: ‘Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t a fire in the fireplace!’ ” He laughed again.

  “Somehow I doubt that’s an ancient Cambodian saying.”

  Khon waved his hand. “I brought you a present.” He dipped into his pocket, removing a small stone head of Garuda, the mythical birdlike creature. “It’s a fake of course. Welcome back.”

  Ford was glad he had remembered the Cambodian way of exchanging gifts. “Here’s something for you.”

  Khon stared at the carved green stone through his round spectacles. “Don’t tell me you’ve been buying gems in Bangkok!”

  “It’s an emerald, and it’s real. Lousy quality, mind you, but I liked the carving. And trust me, I didn’t get taken.”

  Khon squinted at the small stone, took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirttail, and put them back on. “Why, it’s Garuda again!”

  “Great minds think alike.” Ford gestured with his head toward an empty area of the field. “Let’s take a walk.”

  They strolled along. Khon said, “I never had the chance to tell you how very, very sorry—”

  Ford stopped him with a light touch to his arm. “Please don’t.”

  Khon nodded and they walked across the field. He waved his hand. “Good business, this, eh what?”

  “An excellent business,” said Ford. “Now they aren’t tearing down temples to steal the real thing. I heartily approve.”

  “Welcome to the new Cambodia!”

  As they strolled along, Ford took the opportunity to examine his old friend out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t changed in the slightest; although Khon had to be at least fifty, he seemed ageless. Neatly dressed in an olive canvas jacket, white shirt, loose cravat, khaki pants, and walking stick, he could have been an extra from an Indiana Jones film. Appearances were deceiving; he was a man of rare courage, placid and unflappable. That’s what happens, Ford thought, when you grow up under the Khmer Rouge.

  “Well, Kirk, what’s the assignment?”

  “Honeys.”

  “Girls or stones?”

  “Stones. I’m here to track down the source. The mine.”

  Khon halted, turned. “You back at the CIA?”

  Ford shook his head. “Freelance job.”

  Khon’s hand relaxed on his walking stick. “For who?”

  “Never mind for whom. My job is to get the GPS coordinates, document the mine, photograph and videotape it, and pass on the information.”

  “And what will ‘they’ do with it?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  Khon wagged his head thoughtfully, thumbing an ear.

  “There’s a middleman honey dealer here by the name of Prum Forgang,” said Ford. “Know him?”

&nbs
p; Khon nodded his rotund head. “Oh yes. He’s one of the top gem brokers in town. Antiquities, gems, and rice—the three pillars of our economy.”

  “Any family?”

  “A son. Eighteen. Bright lad. Going to university in Phnom Penh.”

  “Does Prum live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll pay him a visit tonight.”

  Khon’s eyes lit up. “Will there be violence?”

  “No.”

  Khon’s face fell. “How are you going to get what you want?”

  Ford squinted at the metal building on the other side of the field, where the hum of printing could be heard. “You say he has a son in university? Maybe all it will take is a few pieces of paper.”

  He broke into a fast walk, heading for the printing building.

  14

  Randall Worth tied up his dingy at the town floating dock, slung on his backpack, and stomped up the ramp to the wharf, keeping his head down. It was five o’clock—maybe he wouldn’t run into anyone. He could feel the heavy lump of the old RG .44, the gun he carried on his boat, tucked in his belt.

  “Hey, Worth.”

  Fuckin’ A. Worth looked up to see the last man he wanted to see—Ernie Jura, owner of the lobsterman’s co-op, six foot four, two hundred twenty pounds, standing there in foul-weather gear and rubber boots. Jura’d tormented him in high school and never stopped.

  “I’m going to need that money you owe for diesel, three hundred and twelve bucks. I can’t fuel you up again until I get it.”

  “I told you I’ll pay you.” Worth felt his limbs trembling with anger. Jura, he was sure, was one of the bastards who had cut his traps.

  Jura looked at him hard, his eyes narrow. “I hope you do.”

  Worth brushed past him, and then, on impulse, gave him a little shove with his shoulder as he went by. Jura seized his collar and hauled him around, pushing his beefy face into Worth’s, breathing beer breath over him.