Impact

by Douglas Preston

  “Keep up.”

  He took off at a jog across a trash-strewn strip of grass, jumped the drainage ditch, and headed into the parking lot. Abbey heard a faint squealing of tires and turned to see a yellow New Beetle tearing down the service road behind the motel. It screeched to a halt, the door burst open, and a man jumped out, kneeling.

  Ford grabbed her arm and yanked her behind a parked car. There was a thunk and the side windows blew out in a spray of glass.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Another thunk as a round punched into the car.

  “Just stay down. Forget the suitcases. Follow me.”

  Ford took off at a crouch, scuttling between the parked cars. After a moment Abbey heard another squeal of rubber and the Beetle had taken off. She could see it heading at high speed for the main road.

  “He’s coming around into the parking lot here,” Ford said. “Run, and I mean run.”

  He sprinted toward the only section of the parking lot where there were cars, his jacket flapping behind him, still carrying his briefcase. Abbey ran to keep up. She glanced over her right shoulder and could see the yellow car whipping along the main road, then the screech of tires as it slewed into the mall parking lot and came bombing toward them.

  “Get down.”

  They crouched behind a battered old Ford pickup and Ford immediately began to work on the lock. In a moment he had the door open. “Crawl in, stay down.”

  Abbey obeyed, crawling into the cab and staying below the window. Ford got in beside her, shoved the briefcase behind the seat, and popped the glove compartment. He pulled out a screwdriver, pried off the cover and panel around the ignition tumbler, exposing a panel clipped to the rear. He stuck the screwdriver into the ignition switch, turned it—and the car fired up.

  Abbey lay crouching on the floor in front of the seat, head down.

  “All right,” said Ford. “Hold on and keep on the floor.”

  She heard the engine roar, the floor vibrating, and the truck shot out, rolling Abbey back. There was a screech of rubber as the truck cornered and another high-pitched roar as Ford floored it.

  She heard the pop pop of gunfire, felt the truck swerve and go into a powerslide, then spin back in a fishtail and continue on.

  “Jesus,” she cried, trying to keep from being thrown about.

  “Sorry.”

  Another distant pop pop.

  With a tearing screech of rubber and a sickening sideways slide, the truck took a sudden bump that threw it up, airborne for a moment, then a violent bottoming out. Now the truck was pounding and shaking along what was either a bad dirt road or a field, lurching up and down, rattling hard, stuff jouncing up and around her.

  “You can get up now.”

  Bracing herself, Abbey lurched back up and into the seat. Sure enough, the truck was tearing across an abandoned field toward a set of railroad tracks. Ford turned and raced parallel to the tracks, following an old tractor path, and after half a mile came to a raised road crossing; he gunned it up onto the roadbed, skidded sideways, crossed the tracks, and bombed down the dirt road, fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour.

  “Take a look, Abbey, make sure we lost him.”

  Abbey turned. There was nothing but the dirt road, the big field full of stubble, the looping tracks of the truck, and in the far distance, a broken fence and the road they had just come from. Abbey thought she could just see the yellow spot of the Beetle, by the side of the road.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Excellent.” Ford slowed down and they soon came to a paved road. Ford turned onto it.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, flicking an old french fry from her hair. She looked around at the truck for the first time. It was an old-model pickup and it stank of stale cigarette smoke and sour milk. She was filthy from the car floor, which was heaped with food trash and dirt. They passed a sign for the interstate and soon they were humming along.

  “I don’t like this,” Abbey said. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “I’m truly sorry, Abbey. I’m getting you to a safe place, right now.”

  “I quit. This job sucks. I want to go home.”

  “Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  “Did we just steal this truck? Or is that a stupid question?”

  “Yes to both.”

  She shook her head and wiped her eyes, which had unaccountably teared up. “This is like a bad movie.”

  “Yes.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’m taking you someplace where you’ll be absolutely safe and leaving you there until I can fix this problem.”

  Abbey sat back, rummaged in the glove compartment, found some tissue, and blew her nose. “I had my iPod in that suitcase.”

  “That’s the least of your worries.”

  “But all my songs!”

  “I’ve got to get you into a safe location. I’m thinking of a cabin in New Mexico I’ve used in the past . . .”

  “New Mexico? In a stolen car? We’ll never make it.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. My friend Jackie’s family owns an island off the coast of Maine with a fishing shack on it. Got a solar panel, water from the roof—perfect place to go to ground.”

  The car hummed along the interstate. “And Jackie?”

  “She’ll come with us. She’s cool. And she knows boats and the sea like no one else.”

  Ford moved over and took an exit. “So how do we get to this fishing shack?”

  “Borrow my father’s boat and go at night.”

  “That just might work,” said Ford. “You understand, Abbey, I’m going to leave you there for a while until I straighten this mess out. I can’t stay. You’ll have to fend for yourselves.”

  “I’m all for hiding. Getting shot at really sucks.”

  “Good. Then we’re going to Maine.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you,” Abbey said, taking a deep breath. “I made a pretty wild discovery on that NPF drive.”

  Ford looked astonished. “How did you break into it?”

  “I guessed the password. You aren’t going to believe this—there are pictures on that drive of something on Deimos. Something unnatural. And very old. Corso labeled it the DEIMOS MACHINE.”

  Ford stared at her. “Come now.”

  “ ‘Come now’ yourself. There are a whole suite of images of it. At the bottom of a crater called Voltaire, hidden in the shadows, barely visible. A machine of some kind. No shit.”

  “It could be a natural geological feature. Or a scientific prank.”

  “No way.”

  Ford gazed at her, his pale blue eyes probing. “What does it look like?”

  “A round, rimlike thing, like a cylinder, or maybe the opening to a tunnel. With some spheres attached to it. Half-buried in dust.”

  Ford stared at her. “Wait. Are you saying this is something alien?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  59

  Harry Burr cruised into the mall, swinging his arms, strolling along with his face arranged into a suitable slack-jawed shopper expression. He checked a color-coded mall map and saw where he needed to go. It was a downscale mall, shabby, 20 percent of the storefronts vacant. The AC was cranked up. They needed the Siberian temperatures, Burr figured, to keep the natives cool. Wouldn’t want all these fat ones to stroke out before they’d unloaded their dollars.

  He finally found what he was looking for in a sign that said mall security. The door was shut. Burr knocked, waited, then tried the knob. Locked. He looked around: not a security man in sight.

  At this, irritation rose up like a hiccup of bile in the back of his throat. This was turning into a real balls-up. Surely he wasn’t losing his touch. His research revealed that Ford was ex-CIA and somehow the fucker had sniffed him out back at the bar, when that damn Jap-in-the-box bartender popped up with a cannon. Lucky for him the man couldn’t shoot worth a shit, probably
never fired a .45 before in his life. Somehow Ford had also eluded him at the motel. Burr sure was earning his money on this one.

  Burr tried to push down his anger. He prided himself on being a cheerful fellow by nature, not given to brooding or vengeful feelings. That was another of his strengths. He didn’t allow himself to get emotionally involved in what was essentially the straightforward business of killing for money. Or so he told himself. He couldn’t let this one become personal.

  He looked around at the mall, rapidly filling with morning shoppers. Good luck finding the door shakers in this place. Instead of wasting fruitless hours searching the entire mall for security, better to have security come to him. The mountain to Mohammed, so to speak. Spying a CD World he strolled in, picked out a mark in the heavy metal section, and began browsing nearby. The mark was perfect: a pimply faced goth with purple hair, smelling like hemp, carrying a shopping bag. Burr edged toward him, plucked up a CD by a group called Spineshank, turned and walked past the goth, bumping him gently as he went by.

  “Excuse me.”

  The goth grunted something unintelligible and went back to flipping through the CDs. Moving toward the cash registers, Burr waited for the goth to finish browsing and then followed him toward the exit. As soon as the goth hit the security gates the alarms began to whoop, and the freak stood there like a deer caught in the headlights, his kohl-rimmed eyes wide with a who me? expression.

  And here came the mountain to Mohammad, two mountains in fact, huffing and jingling. They surrounded the goth and searched his bag, finding the Spineshank CD. Overriding his ineffectual and utterly unbelievable protests that the CD must’ve fallen in the bag by accident, they began to hammer him with questions like the tough guys they were, giving him the third degree.

  Harry Burr walked over, flashed a shield he carried—formerly in the possession of a D.C. state police officer who had allowed himself to be pickpocketed during a traffic stop. “Officer Wilson?” he asked the door shaker in charge, reading his name off the badge.

  “Yes?”

  Burr folded away the shield. “They told me you were the man to ask for.”

  “They did?”

  “It’s about the car theft this morning. I’m the D.C.-Virginia liaison officer, Undercover Investigations Division, Motor Vehicles. Name’s Lieutenant Moore.” Offered his hand. Wilson took it.

  “Talk in private, Officer?”

  “Certainly.” Burr moved Wilson away from the increasingly shrill protests of the kid, who was now being cuffed. Burr pulled out a little notebook, licked his finger, turned the pages. “I won’t take up but a minute—just need to get a few details.”

  “The file’s back in the office. We forwarded the information to the state police already.”

  Burr rolled his eyes in disgust at the bureaucracy. “We’re a bit top-heavy these days. Could take a week for the file to rise to the surface—or you could help me out right now.” A wink. “What say?”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant. Glad to help.”

  The office was just what Burr expected, a windowless cell smelling of Mennen. Wilson, the glorified door shaker, sat behind the desk, pulled open a drawer, and took out a file.

  “I need the usual,” said Burr, “car, license plate, witnesses . . . whatever you got.”

  “No witnesses, Lieutenant,” said Wilson, his face firmly set as befitted the seriousness of the crime. “It was a white Ford F150 king cab pickup, 1985 model, Virginia license . . .” He reeled off the details in full-throated cop-speak, while Burr jotted it down.

  “We’ll recover the vehicle; we always do,” said Wilson. “Some kids on a joyride. No chop shop would be interested in an old-model pickup like that.”

  “I have no doubt you will attain a successful conclusion, Officer,” said Burr, rapping his gold pencil on the notebook and tucking it away. He held out his hand. “Don’t bother contacting me, I’ll keep in touch with you myself, by phone. When that pickup resurfaces, I’d sure like to know. Got a card?”

  Wilson passed him his card.

  “Much obliged, Officer.” He hesitated. “Might be best—for diplomacy’s sake, you understand—not to mention my visit to the D.C. or Virginia state police HQs. They don’t like it when someone from UID makes an end run around their wall of bureaucracy.” Again he flashed Wilson a knowing wink.

  “Sure thing,” said Wilson, with a grin.

  Burr left the mall and got back into his Beetle. God, it was hot, especially after the frigid air in the mall. Ford and the girl had almost certainly gone to ground. Now he could do nothing except cool his ass waiting for the stolen vehicle to turn up. Slapping the steering wheel in frustration, Harry Burr muttered a low curse. This was one fucked-up situation. Maybe this time he would make an exception—and take pleasure in the kill.

  60

  A warm summer breeze was blowing off Great Salt Bay as Abbey darted up to the door to an old building in downtown Damariscotta, firescape looming above her, framed against a starry sky. She buzzed Jackie’s apartment, giving the button a quatrain of long, insistent pushes. A moment later a muffled voice said, “What the fuck?”

  “It’s me, Abbey. Let me in.”

  The buzzer went off and Abbey pushed open the door and mounted the rickety stairs. They had ditched the stolen truck in the parking lot of a depressed mini-mall along Route 1, where it seemed unlikely to be noted, at least for a while, and had hiked two miles through the woods and on back roads to get to Damariscotta.

  She arrived at the apartment door. “Jackie?”

  She heard a querulous grunt. “Go away.”

  “Wake up, it’s important!”

  A groan. The sound of feet hitting the floor. The locks turned and Jackie opened the door. She stood squinting in a nightgown, her hair disheveled. “It’s two in the frigging morning.”

  Abbey pushed her way in and shut the door. “I need your help.”

  Jackie stared at her. A sigh. “God, you in trouble again?”

  “Big time.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Round Pond Harbor lay black under the night sky, the water lapping around the oak pylons. Abbey paused at the top of the pier. She could see Marea II on its mooring about fifty yards off. It was three o’clock, dark as a tomb, Moon obscured by clouds, about half an hour before the lobstermen normally began arriving. Close enough to the normal hour that a boat firing up and heading out would not be noted as anything special.

  Jackie Spann and Wyman Ford stood on the dock behind her, Ford with his ubiquitous briefcase in hand. “Wait here. I’ll bring the boat around to the floating dock, then you come down and get in fast.”

  Abbey untied her father’s dinghy, unshipped the oars. As she rowed out to the waiting boat, she hoped her father wasn’t up yet. She had left a short note, but there was no way of knowing how he would react to her “borrowing” his boat again for some unspecified purpose—and then asking him to lie about it.

  She pulled hard. The splashing of the oars and the tapping of rigging against the masts of the sailboats at anchor were the only sounds in the quiet harbor. Even the gulls were sleeping. She arrived at the Marea II, boarded, and started the engine, the sudden rumble shattering the peace of the summer night. She was pretty sure no one would notice. Boat noise, even in the middle of the night, was a way of life in a working harbor.

  She eased it into the floating dock, not even bothering to bring it to a full halt as it drifted along. Jackie and Ford tossed in their supplies and hopped in, and she turned the wheel and headed out of the harbor, past the blinking light on the can marking the channel, into the sound.

  “So,” said Jackie, settling down in a seat in the pilothouse and turning to Ford with a grin. “Who are you and what the hell’s going on?”

  61

  Mabel Fortier left the Wand-o-Matic Laundromat with her laundry in a wire basket, wheeling it across the parking lot toward her car. At the far end of the parking lot she could see the usual group of scruffy kids t
hat hung out there with their souped-up cars, talking on their cell phones, cursing, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and throwing the butts on the ground.

  Once again Mabel tried to tell herself that these were nice boys letting off steam. She had even taught some of them in the first grade before she retired. They were such nice little kids then. What had happened? She shook her head; all teenagers smoked these days, and swearing today wasn’t what it used to be in her time.

  Trying to keep these charitable thoughts in her mind, she stacked the laundry on the backseat, folded up the basket, and put it in her trunk. In the background she heard a fresh screech of tires as another car arrived at the teen gathering. She looked up and saw a metallic blue Camaro—the Hinton boy’s car—tearing into the far end of the parking lot at a high rate of speed, announcing its arrival with a blaring horn. He was driving too fast, way too fast. The car made a turn with a squeal of rubber and then she heard a smack! and the grinding sound of metal against metal as bits of plastic went skittering across the macadam. The fool in the Camaro had taken the corner too sharply and clipped the back end of a white pickup truck parked in front of a row of vacant storefronts at the far end.

  She watched as the fellow driving the Camaro halted, got out, and bent down to examine the three-foot-long gouge in the side of his car. Didn’t even bother to look at the damage to the pickup, with its taillight obliterated, the bumper pulled halfway off. She could hear his terrible curses all the way across the lot, answered by laughs and jeering from the crowd of youths. Then he got back in the Camaro and roared out of the parking lot with another screech of tires.

  Mabel Fortier stared, shocked. The boy had just left the scene of an accident. And now the other boys were climbing into their cars and leaving, all of them “beating a retreat” before the police arrived.

  It was outrageous. Outrageous. The Hinton boy had done thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to somebody’s vehicle and driven off, just like that.