Impact

by Douglas Preston

  “We’re passing a lot of islands here. How do you know they’re not in a cove somewhere?”

  “We don’t. We search open water first, then come back looking into coves.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Straw was motivated, that was for sure. His hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white, his narrow eyes constantly darting around, seeking other boats. He looked on the verge of cracking.

  “We still have plenty of time,” said Burr, trying to keep his voice calm. “Don’t worry. As long as they’re out on the water, he won’t strike. He’ll need her to operate the boat.”

  “I know every harbor, cove, and gunkhole from here to Isle au Haut and I swear we’re going to search every one of ’em until we find her.”

  “We’ll find her.”

  “Damn straight we will.”

  Burr plucked a pack from his pocket and shook out a cigarette. The man was becoming tiresome. “Mind if I smoke?”

  Straw looked at him. His eyes were haggard, bloodshot. Poor fellow was thinking too much. “Smoke at the stern, away from the engine. Bring your binocs and keep looking.”

  Burr went to the taffrail and lit up. They were rounding the point of the island and soon another vast expanse of ocean appeared to the northeast, dotted with islands. The late-afternoon sun shimmered in a golden swath across the blue water. There were several lobster boats moving to and fro, hauling their traps. He raised the binoculars and examined each one in turn.

  None were the Marea II.

  He inhaled again and wondered just what Ford and the girl were up to, why they had run to sea like this. Some kind of espionage? As usual, he didn’t know the real identity of his clients nor why they wanted the hard disk, which made it impossible to understand why Ford and the girl went from Brooklyn to Washington, stole a car, and drove to Maine and took a boat out on the water. All he knew was that Ford had a hard drive worth two hundred grand. And that was all he really needed to know.

  66

  Abbey pulled the Marea II up to the tiny floating dock at the Owls Head Harbor. Jackie hopped off and tied up. The harbor was deserted, a few boats at their moorings, gulls watching them from the tops of the pilings. The sun had just set and the sky was suffused with wispy orange clouds of the kind her father called mare’s tails, which signified bad weather. The tiny harbor was deserted, only half a dozen boats on their moorings.

  Wyman Ford picked up his briefcase and stepped onto the creaking dock, smoothing down his rumpled suit and trying to comb his hair into place with his fingers.

  “Forget it, you still look like you’re coming off a drunk,” said Abbey, with a laugh. “Are you going to steal another car?”

  “I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. Which way is the town?”

  “Just follow the road. Can’t miss it. You better get going, storm’s coming.”

  “How do you know?”

  She glanced up. “Sky.”

  “Stay on the island until you hear back from me. If you haven’t heard anything in five days, it means I’ve been taken into custody. In that case, take the boat close enough to the mainland to get cell reception and call this number.” He handed her a piece of paper. “He’ll help you.” He paused. “I’ve decided to go public with this information.”

  “The shit’ll really hit the fan if you do that.”

  “It’s the only way. The world’s got to know.” Ford took Abbey’s shoulder in an affectionate grip, peering down at her from his massive frame, his unruly black hair sticking out every which way, his gray eyes steady. “Promise me you’ll stay on the island and lie low. Don’t go tooling around in the boat. You’ve got enough supplies to last you a week.”

  “Will do.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Good luck, Abbey. You’ve been a great assistant. Sorry I got you mixed up in this.”

  Abbey snorted. “No problem, I enjoy stealing cars and getting shot at.”

  He turned and she watched him stride up the gangplank, walk up the pier, and onto the road. After a moment his tall angular figure disappeared around a bend, and she felt a certain odd and unexpected loneliness take hold.

  “Well, there goes Mr. CIA,” said Jackie. “You fuck him yet?”

  “Jackie, cut it out. He’s twice my age. You’ve got sex on the brain.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  They cast off and Jackie lit up a joint as they cleared the harbor, Abbey driving the boat slowly, enjoying the evening. The great bulk of Monroe Island loomed in front, covered with trees. A steady swell broke on Cutters Nubble, a reef beyond the southern end of the island, the cadence of the surf as regular as a slow clock. Abbey made a wide berth around the Nubble, and as they cleared it, a buttery full Moon rose over the limb of the ocean. A group of guillemots winged home low and fast across the water, like flying bullets, while an osprey, far overhead, headed back to his nest with a fish, still wiggling, clasped in its talons.

  “Man, look at that,” said Jackie, gazing eastward at the full Moon. “Looks like you could almost touch it.”

  Abbey eased the throttle forward, turning the wheel, and set the Marea II toward the Muscle Ridge Islands, a line of black humps on the horizon, four miles distant. It all looked so peaceful, so perfect, so timeless . . . It seemed surreal that somewhere up there, on a distant moonlet, there might be a weapon taking aim, right now, at the Earth. And that in a split second, all of this could be gone.

  67

  Burr tossed the cigarette into the wake and looked around once more with the binoculars. The sun had set and most of the fishing boats had disappeared, but here and there he could still see the odd boat, loaded with traps, churning along toward some home port or other. From time to time he’d spied a lone motor yacht or sailboat cruising along—but no Marea II. He hadn’t realized just how big the coast was and how many damn islands there were. And it seemed likely that they had gone to ground anyway or were doing whatever the hell it was they were doing, far from prying eyes. For the first time, he began to worry that he might not complete the assignment.

  He lit up another cigarette, his eighth. Usually he paced himself, smoking no more than seven a day, but this was a bad day.

  He strolled into the open pilothouse and stared at the chartplotter.

  “Where are we now?”

  “We’re just leaving the north end of Muscongus Bay.”

  “Where to?”

  “Penobscot Bay opens up on the far end of the channel.”

  Burr grunted, inhaled. “It’s almost dark. I think we should find a place to hove to for the night.”

  “We’re not going to hove to. We’re going to keep looking. We got radar, we got GPS. We can cruise these islands all night, looking for boats in out-of-the-way places.”

  Burr grunted. “How are you going to see it in the dark?”

  “Full Moon tonight. On the water under a full Moon it’s almost like day.”

  He glanced up. “What about this storm?”

  “We’ll deal with it when it comes. This is a fine, seaworthy boat.”

  “Good enough.”

  He went to the gunwale and finished up the cigarette. It was getting dark and there was no sign of the approaching storm. He tossed the butt overboard. In the distance he could see the dim outline of another lobster boat, crossing the far end of the channel—appearing from behind a large island and heading out instead of in. He quickly raised the binoculars. It was just light enough to make out the name painted on the stern.

  Marea II.

  Making an effort to control his excitement, he examined the boat more carefully. He could barely make out what looked like two figures in the pilothouse. Ford and the girl. This was an amazing stroke of luck. The boat was heading for a cluster of islands east of the channel.

  Burr had already worked out in his head what he would do when he found his quarry. He reached into his holster and pulled out the Desert Eagle. No need for the noise suppressor, which was damned awkward, they were at least a mile offshore. He walked up behind Straw,
who had just lifted the binoculars to look at the boat. A quick intake of breath.

  “See that boat?” he cried. “It’s the Marea II! They’re heading for the Muscle Ridge Islands.” He swung around. “All right. We did it. Your plan worked. Now we call in the cavalry and get that son of a bitch.” He reached up for the VHF.

  Burr gently placed the muzzle of the gun against the back of his head. “Do exactly what I say, Straw, or I’ll kill you.”

  68

  As the Marea II slipped into the cluster of islands, Abbey throttled back to four knots. Little Green lay almost in the center of the grouping and it had only two approaches, one from the northwest and another from the east. Both were tight, with sunken rocks and reefs all around, and the approach took a high degree of caution. Twilight had descended and the first stars were appearing in the night sky.

  The islands passed by, dark and silent. With her eye fixed on the chartplotter, Abbey maneuvered the boat through the winding channels until Little Green came into view, a long island forested in spruce, with a half-moon cove in the middle and a meadow above, at the far end of which stood the old fishing shack.

  She carefully brought the boat into the cove and Jackie dropped anchor. It splashed into the water and the chain rattled out of the locker. As soon as the anchor was set, Abbey killed the engine.

  In the ensuing silence she noticed the distant sound of another boat, somewhere among the islands to the west of them.

  They got into the dinghy and rowed to shore. Inside the shack, Jackie turned on lights while Abbey put kindling in the small stove.

  “Hamburgers?” Jackie asked, rummaging in the cooler.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Abbey lit a fire in the woodstove and adjusted the dampers. The kindling crackled to life. She went to the door and breathed in the night air, which was heavy and still. There was the smell of damp grass, wood smoke from the stove, and the sea. A faint hiss of gentle waves lapped the strand—and, off in the distance, the persistent throbbing of a boat engine. It seemed to be coming from behind the adjacent island, moving very slowly.

  Abbey turned in the door and spoke calmly to Jackie, so as not to alarm her. “I think I’ll go out for a walk.”

  “Don’t be long, these burgers are almost done.”

  Instead of walking along the shore, Abbey slipped into the moonlight-flecked woods and headed toward the western end of the island, toward the sound of the boat. At the tip of the island she paused at the edge of the trees, remaining in shadow, and looking out over the water in the direction of the sound. The air was humid. The tide had turned and was flowing back in, the currents curling and gurgling past the island. A mackerel sky was advancing from the northeast but it hadn’t yet reached the Moon, which glowed almost painfully bright in the night sky.

  The sound seemed to be coming from behind an adjacent island. It was probably just a yacht looking for an anchorage—recreational cruising of the coast was popular in the summer. She chided herself for being paranoid.

  A dark shape of a boat, about four hundred yards distant, passed across a gap between two islands. She felt a sudden chill: the boat had doused its running lights. It vanished behind the next island and after a moment the sound of the engine stopped.

  Abbey listened intently, but the wind was starting to come up and the sighing in the trees covered any faint sounds. She crouched in the darkness, waiting. She tried to calm herself down; she was spooked because Ford was gone. The killer could not possibly have followed them to Maine, let alone traced them to Little Green Island. It was probably some yachtsman who had had one martini too many and forgot to turn on his running lights. Or maybe they were drug smugglers. Marijuana smugglers often used this wild stretch of coast to bring boatloads of weed down from Canada.

  She waited, and watched.

  And then she saw, emerging from shadow into moonlight, the dark shape of a rowboat moving steadily across the narrow channel separating the other island from Little Green. As she stared, it resolved itself into a dinghy being rowed with care by a tall man, and it was heading right for their island, angling toward her end of the island in such a way that it wouldn’t be visible from the fishing shack. The boat moved swiftly with the incoming tidal current. It would be landing in minutes on a beach just below the bluff at the island’s tip.

  Abbey backed into the woods and crept to a point where she could observe the probable landing point. The man pulled steadily, the faint splash of his oars reaching her across the water. He remained a dark silhouette, hunched over as he rowed. In a minute the boat grounded with a crunch. He hopped out, pulled the boat up the strand, and then stood quietly, looking around, his face still in shadow.

  Abbey flattened herself on the mossy ground, watching. The man removed something from his waist and seemed to be checking it; she saw the faint gleam of metal and realized it was a handgun. He reholstered it and, with a quick look about, slipped into the darkness of the trees. He would be passing her way in a moment.

  Abbey rose and sprinted through the woods, ducking branches and leaping fallen trees, and in a few minutes she arrived at the cabin, bursting through the door.

  “Thanks to you, I burned the ham—”

  “Jackie. We gotta go. Now.”

  “But the hamburgers—”

  Abbey grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. “Now. And keep quiet—there’s someone on the island with a gun.”

  “Oh my God.”

  She pulled her out into the darkness and cast about. He would probably be coming straight to the cabin.

  “This way,” she whispered, pulling Jackie across the meadow and into the woods stretching toward the southern end of the island. But the woods were too small and too obvious to be a good hiding place. On the other hand, the boulders and whalebacks at the southern tip of the island offered a better option, especially since it was low tide, exposing a range of giant, seaweed-covered rocks.

  She motioned to Jackie to follow and they snuck through the trees to the bluff above the rocks. The Moon was still low in the sky and the tall spruces cast a shadow over the jumbled boulders, burying all in darkness. They slid down the dirt bluff and scrambled over the boulders, Abbey heading below the high-tide line to the long string of rocks jutting into the water.

  “Tide’s coming in,” whispered Jackie, slipping and sliding over the seaweed. “We’ll be drowned.”

  “This is only temporary.”

  At the far end, she found a dark hiding place between two steep-sided, seaweed-covered boulders with crawl spaces along their underside. The tide was coming in fast.

  “Get in there.”

  “We’re gonna be wet.”

  “That’s the point.”

  Jackie hunkered down against the black, cold seaweed, wedging herself under the overhang of the rock. Abbey did the same, pulling and arranging the seaweed around and over her as much as possible. The strong smell of it filled her nostrils. She could see back up through the rocks to the spruces and, just barely, to the lighted cabin across the meadow five hundred yards away. Just beyond, the water lapped and gurgled among the rocks as the tide came in.

  “Who is it?” Jackie whispered.

  “The guy who’s after us. Now shut up.”

  They waited. After what seemed like an eternity, Abbey saw the man’s figure emerge from the forest into the moon-drenched meadow. Gun drawn, he slowly circled the cabin, crept up to a window and, flattening himself against the outside wall, peered inside. He spent some time looking, and then moved around to the door and kicked it in. The noise shattered the calm night air, echoing across the dark water.

  He went into the cabin and came out a moment later, looking around. A flashlight appeared in his hand and he slowly circled the meadow, shining it into the trees.

  Meanwhile, the tide came in.

  The figure disappeared into the woods above their hiding place, the light flashing through the trees, back and forth.

  He reappeared at the edge of th
e woods, on the top of the bluff above the rocks. Picking his way down, he stood on a tall rock, playing the light along the shore, the yellow beam licking about the rocks around them, probing here and there. Abbey put her hand on Jackie’s arm and felt a tremor.

  The figure began walking toward them, the loose cobbles dislodged by his feet making a rattling sound. The light flashed over the tops of the boulders again, probing briefly on either side of them. Meanwhile, Abbey could feel the tide crawling among the seaweed-covered rocks at their feet. What was the rate? Something like a vertical inch rise of water every two minutes, even more at the full moon.

  As he got closer, she pulled her head back and down into the seaweed. She could feel the hiss of water now swirling around her feet, the gentle swell coming in and out. As the man got closer, she heard his hard breathing.

  Once again, this time very deliberately, the yellow beam moved over the rocks. It passed by them with excruciating slowness. Once. Twice. Then came a grunt, and he began to move off. The beam flickered over a jumble of rocks to their right and moved on down the shore.

  The water swept in around her ankles, stirring the seaweed, hissing back out. Darkness returned. Abbey waited for a minute, then two, and ventured another look. She could see him moving cautiously down the shore, a few hundred yards away, probing as he went, heading toward their dinghy.

  “We’ve got to get off this island,” Abbey whispered.

  “How the hell are we going to do that with our dinghy out there in the open?”

  “We’re gonna take his.”

  Jackie was shaking. Abbey put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You stay here. Move up a little with the tide. I’ll go steal his dinghy, get our boat, and come to you. I’ll pass as close to shore as I dare. When you hear me coming, start swimming. The current’ll be with you.”

  “Okay,” Jackie whispered.

  Suddenly, Abbey noticed a flash in the sky, a rapid brightening. For a moment she thought the killer had found them, suddenly turning on his flashlight beam.