Impact

by Douglas Preston

  “Good. Now your GPS coordinates?”

  Jackie reached over and grabbed the mike, turning off the transmit button so they couldn’t be heard. “Abbey, you know he’s lying. He’s going to kill us.”

  “I know that,” Abbey said ferociously. “Just let me think.”

  Even as they had been speaking, the swell was rising fast. The Marea II, engine grinding away, was being shoved sideways by each wave.

  “Abbey? Are you there?”

  Abbey took the mike back. “I’m figuring it out!” She turned to Jackie. “What do we do?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Hello? Maybe Dad needs another beating to help you figure?”

  “I’m just southwest of Devil’s Limb,” Abbey said.

  “Devil’s Limb? What the hell are you doing way out there?”

  “We were heading for Rockland,” she said, madly thinking.

  “Bullshit! If you’re out there, gimme the coordinates!”

  Abbey punched the keys of the chartplotter, fixed a waypoint next to Devil’s Limb, and read him back the false coordinates.

  “Jesus Christ,” said the killer after a moment. “I’m not going out there. You come back here.”

  Abbey sobbed. “We can’t! We’re almost out of fuel!”

  “Lying bitch! Get back here now or Dad goes chumming!”

  “No, please,” Abbey sobbed. “All your shooting cut a fuel line. We’re almost out of fuel!”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “We just now clamped it. It’s the truth!”

  Smack. “You hear that? That’s for lying again!”

  Abbey swallowed. She had to take the risk. “Please believe me!” she said, controlling her voice. “Why do you think I was calling the Coast Guard?”

  “Fuck that, I’m not crossing open water in this sea.”

  A gust carrying a wallop of rain lashed the boat, water spraying in the broken windows. Another swell shoved the boat sideways and Abbey had to seize the ceiling grips to keep from falling.

  “He’s going to kill us!” Jackie hissed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m . . . pretending to surrender.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You hear me?” came the voice. “Get your ass back here or he’s chum.”

  She pressed transmit. “Look, please, I don’t know how to make you believe me, but I swear I’m telling the truth. You blew the shit out of this boat and a bullet nicked a fuel line. I barely got enough left to maneuver. Just bring me my father and I’ll do whatever you want. You win. We surrender. Please believe me.”

  “I’m not going out there!” the man screamed.

  “You have to come this way to get to Rockland Harbor.”

  “Why the fuck would I want to go to Rockland?”

  “You’ll never make it anywhere else in this storm! Don’t be an idiot, I know this ocean! If you think you’re going to Owls Head, you’ll be wrecked on the Nubble.”

  She heard a string of profanities. “This better not be bullshit because your father’s handcuffed to the rail. My boat sinks, he’s going down.”

  “I promise I’m not lying, just please get here and bring me my father.”

  “Keep channel seventy-two open and listen for my instructions, over.” The transmission clicked off with a burst of static.

  “What’re we doing?” Jackie cried. “You have a plan after we surrender or what?”

  “Take us to Devil’s Limb.”

  “In a storm like this? It’s way the fuck out there!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “I will when we get there.”

  Jackie shook her head, gunned the engine, and sent the boat surging through the moiling sea on a course for Devil’s Limb. “You better think fast.”

  77

  Rising from takeoff at the Portland Jetport, the plane broke through the storm clouds and was suddenly bathed in the eerie light of the full Moon. Wyman Ford peered out the window, freshly awed by the spectacle. It was no longer the familiar orb of memory and romance but a changeling Moon, new and frightening, casting a greenish light over the mountains and canyons of cloud below the plane. The plume of debris from the strike had gone into orbit, spinning into an arc. An excited murmur of voices rose in the cabin as passengers peered out the windows. After gazing at it for a while, Ford, disturbed by the sight, slid the window shade shut and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes, and concentrating on the meeting to come.

  An hour and a half later, as the plane approached Dulles, Ford roused himself and, despite his vow not to, lifted the shade to look at the Moon again. The arc of debris was still stealing around the disc of the Moon, growing into a ring. The city of Washington lay spread out below, bathed in an eerie green-blue glow that was neither day nor night.

  He was not all that surprised to be met at the gate by federal agents, who escorted him through the deserted concourse, the television screens in waiting areas blaring identical news, showing pictures of the Moon intercut with various talking heads and reports from the reactions around the world. Panic, it seemed, was taking hold—particularly in the Middle East and Africa. There were rumors of the testing of nefarious and top-secret weapons by the U.S. or Israel, panic about radiation, hysterical people being rushed to emergency rooms.

  The agents walked on either side of him, stone-faced, saying nothing. The streets of Washington were virtually deserted. People in the capital were, perhaps instinctually, staying inside.

  Walking through baggage claim, the agents helped him into a police-issue Crown Victoria, placing him between them in the backseat. The car blazed through the deserted streets, light bar going, until they arrived at the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Seventeenth Street, pulling up to the ugly redbrick building where Lockwood and his staff worked.

  As he expected, all the lights in the building were ablaze.

  78

  Using the GPS, Harry Burr fixed a waypoint on his chart and set a course for the reef labeled “Devil’s Limb.”

  He glanced back at the father; he lay slumped in the stern, still shackled to the taffrail, semiconscious, the pouring rain and sea spray drenching him. Burr might have hit him a little too hard that last time. Fuck it, he’d revive enough to play his part for the final act.

  As the boat moved from the protection of the Muscle Ridge Islands into the exposed seas of Penobscot Bay, Burr found himself struggling with the wheel. One massive swell after the other marched toward him out of the darkness, each one honeycombed with foam and chop, lashed by sheets of rain. He turned on the spotlight mounted on the hardtop and swiveled it around, peering into the stormy murk. The beam illuminated mountains upon mountains of water as far as the beam could reach. It frightened him.

  This was crazy. Maybe he didn’t need to do anything—they’d probably sink on their own and solve his problem for him. But there was no guarantee of that and God knows what they would say to the Coast Guard in the meantime. They might have an emergency radio beacon on board—his boat did—which would go off automatically even if they didn’t call the Coast Guard. No, he could not take the chance—not even the slightest—that they would survive to tell their tale. All three had to die. And the storm provided cover.

  The radar screen was awash with static return from the rain, high seas, and blowing spume. He fiddled with gain but the radar was useless. The GPS put his speed at six knots and at least the chartplotter was working perfectly. He edged the throttle up to eight knots, the boat bucking and kicking through the sea, rising precipitously on each wave, ploughing through the foaming crest, and then dropping with a sickening falloff, almost as if going over a waterfall. He clung to the wheel, trying to keep his balance and keep the bow headed right, when all the forces in the world seemed to want to shove the boat sideways to the terrifying sea. As if to underscore his fright, a comber broke over the bow, green water racing along th
e gunwales, slopping into the cockpit and boiling out the scuppers. Losing his nerve, Harry eased his speed back down to six knots. The girl wasn’t going anywhere—and the father was his ace in the hole. The bitch would never abandon her father.

  He considered the possibility that this might be some kind of ruse, an attempt to lure him out into the open ocean where the storm would sink him. But surely that wasn’t her plan: he had her father on board. Beyond that, he had the bigger, more seaworthy vessel. If anyone would sink, it would be them.

  Did they plan to ambush him? Maybe. If so, that was the stupidest plan of all. He had a gun and he had the father shackled to a rail, the key in his pocket. Did they plan to lure him onto the rocks? Not with the state-of-the art GPS and chartplotter he had on board.

  No, Harry Burr figured they were probably telling the truth about their fuel problem. They were so freaked out that they were willing to believe his lame promises. He had run no less than five loads through the Desert Eagle, thirty .44 mag rounds in all, and it seemed quite possible that at least one would have damaged the fuel system. Devil’s Limb was on the way to Rockland, and it also made sense that getting around the Nubble into Owls Head would be way too dangerous in this sea. Everything they said held up.

  Hanging onto the wheel with one hand, he took the four empty magazines and laid them out on the dashboard, next to a box of rounds. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he awkwardly thumbed the bullets into each magazine until all were filled. He slipped the heavy magazines into his pants pockets, two on each side. There would be no dicking around here. His plan was simple: kill them, sink their boat, and run for Rockland Harbor. There he would tie the boat up and walk away. Nothing was in his name; Straw had rented the boat by himself and picked him up in another location later, in a nearly deserted cove up the coast. Nobody even knew he was on board. Sure, in a few days or weeks they might find Straw’s fish-eaten corpse with a bullet through the brain, but by then he’d be long gone. And he’d make sure Straw received a proper sea burial, with plenty of anchor chain and rope to keep him down.

  As for the girls, well, he’d give them a similar burial, and sink their boat as well.

  It was probably too late to get the hard drive and make his two hundred grand, at least on this go-around. But it was never too late to clean up—nor was cleanup optional. He felt the anger boiling up again and he tried to keep a lid on it. All in a day’s work, he said to himself. Win some, lose some. This wasn’t the first job he’d failed, and it wouldn’t be the last. Take care of loose ends and you’ll live for the next job.

  He fished the cigarettes out of his pocket and realized they were, of course, soaked. The boat bucked over a wave and dropped down the other side, the engine roaring, and he grabbed the wheel and held on. Jesus Christ, he’d be glad when those three sons of bitches were at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  79

  As the Marea II moved farther out into the open ocean, the wind increased to a roar and the seas rose up in monstrous hills and valleys, the foaming crests of the combers like dim gray ridges coming at them. Abbey let Jackie remain at the wheel, grateful for her seamanship. Jackie had a trick of riding up each wave at a thirty-degree angle, gradually increasing speed, and giving the boat a turn and a goose to bust through the breaking water on top, then throttling down as they sank into the trough. It scared the hell out of her but Jackie seemed to pull it off, again and again.

  “Oh shit,” said Jackie, peering ahead. A line of white came rumbling toward them, higher than the others, so high it looked like something detached from the sea, a freakish low cloud. The boat sank down into the preceding trough with stomach-churning speed, falling into an eerie silence as they entered the lee of the approaching wave. Then the boat began to rise, tipping up as the face of the wave loomed above them, striped with foam.

  “Ease off!” Abbey cried, losing her nerve.

  Jackie ignored her, pushing the rpms up to three thousand, turning the boat more diagonally to the wave as it surged up the face. The comber suddenly appeared above them, hissing loudly, a tumbling wall of water, and the boat’s prow slammed into it as Jackie gave the wheel a sudden turn. Seawater broke over the bow with a roar and raced across the deck, slamming into the pilothouse windows and jetting off into space; the boat gave a shudder, hesitated as if about to be pushed under, and broke free with a roar, tipping forward and suddenly descending. Jackie instantly throttled back almost to idle and let gravity take the boat down into the next trough.

  “There’s another ahead,” said Abbey. “Even bigger.”

  “I see it,” murmured Jackie. She gunned the engine and climbed the face, busting through the breaking top, the entire boat groaning from the stress, before sinking back down. They fought through the massive series of waves, one after another, mountains of water on a march to nowhere. Each time Abbey felt sure they were going under; but each time the boat shed the water and righted before plunging down to start the terrifying process all over again.

  “Jesus, you learn that working on your dad’s boat?”

  “We used to fish beyond Monhegan in the winter. Got caught in a few northeasters, no big deal.”

  She was trying to keep her voice steady but Abbey wasn’t fooled. She thought of her own, overprotective father, who had never let her drive his boat. She felt sick with fear for him, shackled to the rail, out in this sea with that maniac. Her plan was crazy, in fact it wasn’t even a plan. Surrender? And then what? Of course he would kill them all. That was his intention. What was she thinking, that she could talk him out of it? Should she make an emergency call to the Coast Guard? He’d hear it and kill her father if she did that. And even if he didn’t, the Coast Guard would never go out in this weather.

  She had to think of something.

  And then, over channel 72, a voice grated out: “Daddy’s awake. Want to say hello?”

  80

  The agents escorted Ford into the conference room. As soon as he came in, Lockwood leapt up from his position at the head of a large conference table, ringed by suits and uniforms, surrounded by flat-panel screens. By the dark and serious looks on their faces he knew they must be at least partially aware of what was going on.

  “Good God, Wyman, we’ve been trying to reach you for hours! We’ve got an extraordinary situation on our hands. The president needs a recommendation by seven.”

  “I have some information for you of critical value,” Ford said, laying the briefcase on the table and gazing around, assessing his audience. Lockwood was flanked by Gen. Mickelson, his grizzled hair roughly combed, his casual uniform rumpled, the athletic frame uncharacteristically tense. A contingency of NPF people occupied one side of the table, among which he recognized Chaudry and Derkweiler, along with an Asian woman with a badge that said Leung. A smattering of OSTP scientists and national security officials sat at the far end; conferenced in on flat-panel screens were the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the national security advisor Manfred, the head of NASA, and the director of national intelligence. The long cherry-wood table was littered with legal pads, paper, and laptops. Various secretaries and assistants sat in chairs along the walls, taking notes. The atmosphere was one of tension, verging on desperation.

  Ford opened his briefcase and took out the fake hard drive, setting it down gently on the table like it was a piece of Baccarat crystal. Then he took out the large print of Voltaire33, the clearest one of the batch which he had blown up at Kinko’s, and unrolled it. “This, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “This is an image taken by the Mars Mapping Orbiter back on March twenty-third.”

  He let a beat pass and he showed it around. “It depicts an object on the surface of Mars. I believe this object fired on the Earth in April, and fired at the Moon tonight.”

  Another moment of shocked stasis, and then the table erupted with talk, questions, expostulations. Ford waited for the hubbub to die down and said, “The image came from that classified hard drive there.”

  “Where on Mars is it?” the woman
named Leung spoke up.

  “It’s all on the drive,” said Ford. “Everything.” He added, lying, “I don’t know the exact coordinates offhand.”

  “Impossible!” cried Derkweiler. “We would have seen that in our general reviews long ago!”

  “You didn’t see it before because it was hidden in the shadow of a crater, almost invisible. The image here required enormous processing time and skill to tease it out of the darkness.”

  Chaudry rose from the table and, giving Ford a suspicious glance, reached out and picked up the drive. He turned it over in his mahogany hands, his black eyes examining it intensely, his California ponytail out of place among the suited Washington crowd.

  “This isn’t an NPF drive.” He looked at Ford, his eyes narrowing. “Where’d you get this drive?”

  “From the late Mark Corso,” said Ford.

  Chaudry paled slightly. “No one can copy or remove a drive like this from NPF. Our data encryption and security procedures are fail-safe.”

  “Is anything really impossible to a skillful computer technician? If you doubt it, check the serial number on the side.”

  Chaudry examined it further. “It does seem to be an NPF serial number. But this . . . this image of yours. I’d like to see the original. This could be Photoshopped for all we know.”

  “Proof of it is right there on the drive, in the original binary data from the MRO.” Ford removed a piece of paper from his suit pocket and held it up to the group. “Problem is, the NPF password on this drive has been changed. I have the new password to unlock it—without which the drive is useless.” He gave the paper a little shake. “Trust me, it’s real.”

  The woman named Marjory Leung had risen from her seat. “Excuse me, did you say the late Mark Corso?”

  “Yes. Mark Corso was murdered two days ago.”

  Leung swayed, like she might collapse. “Murdered?”