Impact

by Douglas Preston

“What motivates him now?”

  “Survival. Pure and simple.”

  “Not money?”

  “You need money to survive. What does fucking Brother Number Six want? I tell you what he wants: to live out the last of his days in peace and quiet and die a natural death. This is what the mass murderer wants: to die of old age, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He’s almost eighty, but he clings to life like a young man. All that horror in that valley, the mine, the enslavement—it’s all about squeezing out those last years of life. You see, if the bastard relaxes his grip, even for a second, he’s a dead man and he knows it. Not even his soldiers will back him up.”

  “And then an asteroid falls into his lap.”

  Khon stared at him across the fire. “Asteroid?”

  Ford nodded. “The explosion that the monks talked about, the crater, the flattened trees, the radioactive gemstones—everything points to an asteroid impact.”

  Khon shrugged, tossed a stick in the fire. “Let your government take care of it.”

  “Did you see the kids picking through that pile of rocks? It’s killing them. If we don’t destroy the mine, they’ll die.”

  After a silence, Khon rummaged in his pack and removed a pint bottle. “Johnnie Walker Black,” he said. “Clears the mind.” He tossed it over.

  Ford cracked and unscrewed the cap, raised the bottle. “Prost.” He took a sip, then another, and passed it back. Khon helped himself, placed the bottle between them. He lifted the lid on the rice, nodded, took the pot from the fire, and scooped out steaming rice onto tin plates.

  Ford accepted the plate and they ate in silence as the fire died down into ashy coals.

  To live out the last of his days and die a natural death. If that’s all that motivated him now, perhaps dealing with Brother Number Six wouldn’t be so difficult after all.

  “Khon, I have the glimmer of an idea.”

  23

  Randall Worth hooked his boat up to a disused mooring in the Harbor Island anchorage and doused his lights. The girls had left the admiral’s island in a big hurry and gone to ground in a cove on Otter Island. They’d be there for the rest of the night.

  Fucking insane, landing on the island when the admiral was home—especially after the old fart had discovered half his antiques gone. Worth wheezed with laughter, thinking of the admiral finding his house stripped, a shit deposited on his floor.

  Worth pulled a Bud out of the cooler, popped it, and took a good pull. They must have a hot lead on the treasure to take a risk like that. He got a knob thinking about how he’d do those two bitches, pirate style, first one, then the other. After he got the treasure.

  His mind circled back to his encounter on the dock with Abbey. Deeper, deeper. What a slut, saying that right in front of big-mouth Jackie Spann. Jackie would laugh it all over town. He felt a burning rage take hold, like crank fumes in his head. He hated the whole town. The kids who had pushed him around in school and called him “Worthless” were now coaches, insurance salesmen, mechanics, fishermen, accountants—the same bastards, only grown up. He would fuck ’em all, starting with Abbey and Jackie, and then kill them. Abbey reminded him of his mother who had screwed every big-gut in town, groaning and humping, while he was forced to listen through the paper walls of the trailer. The best day of his life was when she wrapped her rice-burner around a tree and had to be cut out in sections.

  He tossed the beer can overboard and cracked another, his fingers trembling. He gave a long pull, then another, draining it in less than a minute, tossed it. Cracked a third, belched, sucked it down. He could feel the creep of the alcohol in his brain, but it wasn’t helping with the crank bugs. It wasn’t tamping down that twitchy feeling of ants and worms. A sour taste of nausea burbled upward into his gullet and a muscle began twitching in his neck. One of his scabs was bleeding again.

  His eye fell on the RG .44, sitting on the console. He picked it up, flipped open the cylinder. Might be a good idea to fire it a couple of times, make sure it still worked. He ejected the unfired rounds, looked them over. They were a bit mottled but still looked tight. He shoved them back in, closed the cylinder, and went out on deck. Taking a few deep breaths, he looked around. With the money from the treasure, he wouldn’t have to deal with dickheads like Doyle anymore. No more B&Es, no more risking prison. He’d open that pub he’d always thought about, with the widescreen TV, wood paneling, pool table, English ale on tap. In prison he’d spent hours in his cell constructing it in his mind’s eye, the sawdust-covered floor, the smell of beer and fries, the wraparound oak bar, the waitresses in miniskirts waggling their pert asses.

  Another shiver in his spine, an unpleasant creeping sensation, destroyed the daydream. He wouldn’t yield to the sensation. Not yet. He would never let the meth take control.

  What could he shoot at? A slice of Moon was up and he could see a lobster buoy about seventy-five feet away, rising and falling with the gentle swell. He had once been a decent shot, but the gun, he knew, was a piece of crap and seventy-five feet was a long distance for a .44.

  His hands were dirty and he wiped them down on his shirt, feeling the bony ribs underneath. Jesus, he was getting thin. He felt that itching sensation again, like hookworms wriggling under his skin.

  He raised the revolver with both hands, aimed at the buoy, thumbed back the hammer, and fired.

  A deafening boom sounded and the gun kicked back. Three feet to the right of the buoy a jet of water shot up.

  “Fuck,” Worth said out loud. He aimed again, relaxed, tried to control the tremor in his hands, fired. This time a gout went up to the left. He paused, waited until his irritation had passed, then aimed a third time, controlling his breathing, steadying himself, squeezing slowly. This time, the lobster buoy jumped up in the air with a snap, Styrofoam pieces flying.

  He lowered the gun, flush with satisfaction. This called for a celebration. He fumbled around in the cuddy, moving aside the fishing gear, retrieving his pipe and stash. With trembling fingers he prepared the hit. Like a drowning man coming up for air, he sucked it in hard, filling every lobe and air sac of his lungs with hot crank.

  He sagged back against the wheel, feeling the rush radiate outward from his lungs to his reptilian brain stem and up into his higher brain, and he groaned out loud with the sheer pleasure of it, the absolute bliss, the fucked-up world softening and melting away into a lake of smooth uncaring contentment.

  Abbey kicked back in the canvas deck chair, her feet propped on the gunwale, looking skyward. Midnight. The Marea rode at anchor in a deep cove on the south side of Otter Island. The night blazed with stars, the Milky Way arching overhead. Water lapped against the hull, and a steak sizzled on the grill.

  “What about the meteorite?” said Jackie. “We didn’t finish searching the island. Maybe we missed the crater.”

  “I’m not going back there.” Abbey took a swig from the only bottle of real wine she had brought, a Brunello from Il Marroneto, vintage 2000. A magnificent wine. She didn’t dare tell Jackie she’d spent almost a hundred dollars on it.

  “Lemme have a sip.” Jackie’s voice was temporarily interrupted by the bottle. “That’s kind of dry for my taste. Mind if I mix it with a cooler?”

  Abbey smiled. “Be my guest.” She turned back to the night sky. Whenever she looked at it, she felt strangely elated and a feeling that could only be called religious stole over her. “That’s a big place up there,” she said.

  “Where?”

  Abbey pointed up.

  “I can’t even imagine it.”

  “The human brain can’t imagine it. The numbers are too large. The universe is a hundred and fifty-six billion light-years in diameter—and that’s just our part of it. The part we can see.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “A few years ago the Hubble Space Telescope stared for eleven days at an empty spot of night sky no bigger than a dust speck. Night after night it collected the faintest light from that pinpoint of sky. It was an experiment to
see what might be there. You know what it saw?”

  “God’s left nostril?”

  Abbey laughed. “Ten thousand galaxies. Galaxies never seen before. Each one with five hundred billion stars. And that was just one pinprick of sky, chosen at random.”

  “You really believe there’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?”

  “The math requires it.”

  “What about God?”

  “If there is a God—a real God—it wouldn’t be anything like the lameass Jehovah dreamed up by shepherds tending their flocks. The God who made this would be . . . magnificent beyond all comprehension.” Abbey took another sip. The wine was opening up. She could really get used to drinking fine wine. Maybe she should go back to college and become a doctor after all. The thought immediately soured her mood.

  “So what are we going to do with this meteorite if we find it?”

  “Sell it on eBay. Don’t overcook that meat.”

  Jackie took the steaks off, put them on paper plates, passed one to Abbey. They ate for a few minutes in silence.

  “Come on, Abbey. Stop kidding yourself. You really think we’re going to find it? It’s a wild-goose chase, like when we went looking for Dixie Bull’s treasure.”

  “What’s the matter—not having any fun?”

  Jackie took a small sip of wine and cooler. “All we’ve been doing is dragging our asses through the woods. And that chase on Ripp Island scared the crap out of me. This isn’t the adventure I thought it would be.”

  “We can’t give up now.”

  Jackie shook her head. “Your father’s going to have a shit-fit about you stealing his boat.”

  “Borrowing.”

  “He’ll kick you out of the house and you can forget going back to college.”

  “Who said I want to go back to college?” Abbey said hotly.

  “Come on, Abbey, of course you have to go back to college. You’re like the smartest person I know.”

  “I get enough of this shit from my father without you piling it on.”

  “There’s no meteorite,” said Jackie defiantly.

  Abbey tipped up the bottle, finished the wine, and ended up with a mouthful of sediment. She spat it over the side. “There is a meteorite and we’re going to find it.”

  The sound of three measured gunshots came rolling across the water and all was silent again.

  “Sounds like the yahoos are out tonight,” said Abbey.

  24

  Ford noticed a strange silence in the jungle as they approached the edge of the valley. The forest at the margins of the blowdown zone had been abandoned by life. A light smoky haze drifted through the trees, bringing with it the smell of burning gasoline, dynamite, and rotting human flesh. The heat grew as they approached the clearing, and Ford could hear but not yet see the activity ahead: the clank of iron on stone, the shouts of soldiers, the occasional gunshot and cry.

  The tree trunks thinned and light loomed up beyond. They had reached the clearing. Beyond, hundreds of trees lay on the ground, flattened from the explosion, torn and shattered, stripped of leaves. The mine area itself was a scene out of the busiest and lowest circle of hell . . . a hive of monstrous activity.

  Ford turned to Khon and looked him over one last time. The Cambodian looked the part of a miner—filthy face, ragged clothes, the scabs and sores they had doctored on his arms using mud and red dye from tree bark. He was still fat but it now looked more like the product of disease.

  “You look good,” said Ford, adopting a light tone.

  Khon’s grim face softened. Ford held out his hand, grasped Khon’s. “Take care. And . . . thanks.”

  “I survived the Khmer Rouge once,” said Khon cheerfully. “I can do it again.”

  The little round man made his way through the fallen timber and out into the cleared area, limping toward the line of miners. A soldier shouted at him and shoved him into line, gesturing with his weapon. Khon stumbled forward, as if drugged, and vanished into the shuffling masses.

  Ford checked his watch: six hours before he made his move.

  Over the next hours, Ford circled around the camp observing the routine. As noon approached, he moved carefully to the head of the valley, avoiding the patrols, and from a small hill observed the white house where Brother Number Six held court. The man had spent the entire morning on the verandah in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe and gazing on the scene below with a smile of contentment, like an old grandpa watching his grandchildren play in the backyard. Various soldiers came and went, bringing reports, taking orders, and taking turns standing guard. Ford’s attention was drawn to a skinny, gloomy-looking man with bags under his eyes, a bent frame, and hangdog face who never seemed to leave Six’s side. He seemed to be an amanuensis of some kind, leaning over and speaking into the man’s ear, listening and taking notes.

  At noon, a manservant in white came out of the house and passed around drinks. Ford watched the two men, Six and his advisor, sipping and chatting like guests at a garden party. The time passed slowly. Lunchtime at the mine arrived, and the ragged lines of humans gathered around the cooking fires, each receiving a ball of rice in a banana leaf. Five minutes, and then back to work.

  As Ford watched the camp, he realized that an elite group of guards in pressed uniforms seemed to be guarding the rest of the soldiers. There were about two dozen of them patrolling the perimeter of the camp, heavily armed with Chinese-made AK-47 knockoffs, RPGs, M16s, and Vietnam War–era 60mm light mortars. Guards guarding guards. Maybe, Ford thought, it would be like the Wizard of Oz: all you had to do was kill a few—or one—and everyone else would fall into line.

  At one o’clock sharp, Ford rose from his hiding place and walked toward the valley on an open trail, making noise and whistling. When he came within a few hundred yards of the white house, a burst of gunfire shredded the leaves above his head and sent him to the ground. A moment later three soldiers converged, yelling in a hill language. One held a gun to his head while the others roughly searched his clothing. Finding him unarmed, they jerked him to his feet, pulling his hands behind him and tying them, and pushing him forward along the trail. In a few minutes he was standing on the verandah, in front of Brother Number Six.

  If Six was surprised to see him, he didn’t show it. He rose from his rocking chair and strolled over, examining Ford as if he were a piece of interesting sculpture, his birdlike head bobbing up and down. Ford examined his captor in turn. The man was dressed like a French colonial official in an embroidered white silk shirt, khaki shorts, knee-high black socks, and wingtips. He was smoking latakia in an expensive English Comoy pipe, generating fragrant blue clouds of smoke. His face was delicate, almost feminine, a puckered scar above his left eyebrow. As he circled Ford, he smacked his red, girlish lips, his white hair slicked back with Vitalis.

  Inspection complete, Six walked over to a verandah post, knocked the dottle out of his pipe, reamed it, and then, while leaning on the post, repacked and lit it. The process took a long five minutes.

  “Tu parles français?” he finally said, his voice unexpectedly smooth, buttery, his French elegant.

  “Oui, mais je préfère to speak English.”

  A smile. “You not carry identification.” His English was much cruder, with a nasal Khmer accent.

  Ford said nothing. In the door of the house, the stooped figure appeared, the advisor that Ford had earlier noted. He was dressed in loose khakis, his thinning gray hair hanging limply over his forehead, dark circles under his eyes, perhaps fifty years old.

  Six spoke to the arrival in standard Khmer. “We found an American, Tuk.”

  Tuk peered at Ford with his drooping, sleepy eyes.

  “Your name?” Six asked.

  “Wyman Ford.”

  “What you doing here, Wyman Ford?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “To have a conversation.”

  Six slid a knife out of his pocket and said quietly, “I cut your testicle
off. Then we have conversation.”

  Tuk held up a restraining hand and turned to Ford, speaking in a much more practiced, British-accented English. “You are from where, exactly, in America?” The lidded eyes closed, remained closed for a moment, then opened.

  “Washington, D.C.”

  Six gestured lightly with the knife toward Tuk and spoke in Khmer. “You’re wasting time. Let me work on him with the knife.”

  Tuk ignored him and turned to Ford. “You are in the government, then?”

  “Excellent guess.”

  “Who did you come here to have a conversation with?”

  “Him. Brother Number Six.”

  There was a sudden, freezing silence. After a moment, Six waved the knife in his face. “Why you want meet me?”

  “To accept your terms of surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Six pushed his face in close. “To who?”

  Ford looked up into the sky. “Them.”

  Both men looked into the empty sky.

  “You have . . .” Ford smiled and glanced at his watch, “. . . about a hundred and twenty minutes before the Predator drones and cruise missiles arrive.”

  Six stared.

  “Do you want to hear the terms?” Ford asked.

  Six pressed the flat of the knife blade into Ford’s throat, giving it just a slight turn. He could feel it begin to bite into his flesh. “I cut your throat!”

  Tuk laid a light hand on Six’s arm. “Yes,” he said easily. “We want to hear the terms.”

  The knife blade relaxed and Six stepped back.

  “You have two options. Option A: you don’t surrender. In two hours, your mine will be flattened by cruise missiles and Predator drones. Then the CIA will come in to clean up—to clean you up. Maybe you die, maybe you escape. Either way, you’ll be hunted to the end of your days by the CIA. You will have no rest in your old age.”

  A pause.

  “Option B: you surrender to me, abandon the mine, and walk away. In two hours it is flattened by American bombs. The CIA pays you one million dollars for your cooperation. You live the rest of your life in peace, a friend of the CIA. Your old age is calm, restful, and financially secure.”