Impact wf-3

by Douglas Preston

  "All right." Abbey turned the wheel, altering their course to approach the island from the far end. They halted about a hundred feet offshore and anchored. The stars were coming out. Dousing the anchor lights and electronics, she left the boat dark, while Jackie stuffed a small backpack with the essentials: Jim Beam in a metal flask, scuba knife, binoculars, canteen, matches, flashlights, batteries, and a can of Mace.

  They climbed in the dinghy. The water lay glossy and dark, the island looming ahead, swallowed in blackness. Abbey rowed toward shore, feathering her oars to reduce the splash of water. The boat crunched on the sand and they hopped out. Through the trees Abbey could just see the glimmer of light from the house.

  "Now what?" Jackie whispered.

  "Follow me." Abbey took a heading with her compass, crossed the beach, and bulled her way through a thicket of beach roses, finally breaking into the forest. She could hear Jackie's breathing behind her. In the trees it was as black as a cave. Turning on her flashlight, she kept it hooded with her hand as they moved through the mossy woods, casting right and left with the light, looking for a crater. Once in a while Abbey stopped to check their bearing on the compass.

  Ten minutes passed but they found nothing. Toward the far end of the island, they slogged through a swamp and waded across a sluggish stream, water up to their chests, Abbey holding the backpack over her head. The swamp gave way to an open field. Crouching in the trees, Abbey scouted it with the binoculars while Jackie took off her shoes and dumped out muddy water.

  "I'm freezing."

  The field sloped up a hill to a manicured lawn and tennis court, beyond which stood the giant house. She saw a movement in one of the windows: a moving shadow.

  "We've got to cross that field," whispered Abbey. "Could be a crater there."

  "Maybe we should go around."

  "No way. We do this right."

  Neither one moved.

  Abbey nudged her. "Scared?"

  "Yes. And wet."

  Abbey slipped the hip flask out of her pack and handed it to her friend. Jackie took a shot and Abbey followed with a slug of her own.

  "Fortified?"

  "No."

  "Let's get this over with." Abbey could feel the warmth creeping through her belly and she headed into the field. The glow from the house was all the light they needed and she shoved her flashlight into the backpack. Moving slowly on hands and knees, keeping low, they crept across the dead, matted grass.

  About halfway across, a dog barked in the distance. They both instinctively flattened themselves in the grass. The faint sound of Frank Sinatra came from the house and then faded--someone had opened and closed a door. They waited.

  Another distant yelp. Abbey could feel icy water trickling down her back and she shivered.

  "Abbey, please. Let's get out of here."

  "Shhh."

  As Abbey was about to rise, she saw two fleet shadows come tearing around the corner of the house and hurtling across the top of the lawn, weaving back and forth, noses down.

  "Dogs," she said.

  "Jesus, no."

  "We gotta get the fuck out of here. On three, we break for the stream."

  Jackie whimpered.

  "One, two, three." Abbey leapt up and tore across the field, Jackie following. A furious barking erupted behind them. They dove into the stream, the sluggish but powerful current pulling them along, swirling them toward the woods. Abbey immersed all but her face, trying to breathe through her pursed lips. The barking got closer, and now she could see flashlights bobbing at the top of the hill, two men running down the field toward them.

  More barking sounded, now upstream, where they'd entered the water. Shouts from the approaching men, a gunshot.

  The dark trees closed around her as the current swept her into the forest. She tried to look for Jackie but it was too dark. The current was getting swifter as the water ran between polished boulders and thick-rooted spruce trees. She heard a sound--the roar of water--as the current sucked her along, ever faster.

  Waterfall. She struck out for shore, grasped a boulder, but it was slippery with algae and she was pulled away. The roar got louder. Looking downstream, she saw a thin white line in the darkness. Scrabbling at another rock, she clung for a moment, but the current swung her body around and it, too, was torn from her grasp.

  "Jackie!" she spluttered, and felt a sucking current, a sudden weightlessness, a white roar all about her, and then a sudden plunge into cold, tumbling darkness. For a moment she didn't know which way was up, and she swam wildly, kicking and stroking, trying to establish equilibrium--and then her head broke the surface. Gasping for breath, flailing and trying to keep her head above the pounding rush of water, she cast around, stroked away from the turbulence, and a moment later found herself in a calm, sluggish pool. The night sky, the ocean--she was at the margin of the shore. The current carried her between bars of gravel and she kicked for the embankment, her feet digging into the loose shingle below. Hauling herself up the gravel bar, she coughed and spat water. She looked around but all was quiet. The men and dogs were nowhere to be seen.

  "Jackie?" she hissed.

  A moment later Jackie heaved herself out of the water, rising to her knees, spluttering.

  "Jackie? You okay?"

  After a moment a hoarse voice answered, "Fuck yeah."

  Keeping to the edge of the trees, they followed the shore around to the dinghy, hauled it down to the waterline, climbed in, and pushed off. A moment later they were back on the Marea. After a brief silence, they both dissolved into raucous laughter.

  "All right," said Abbey, recovering her breath. "Let's haul anchor and get the hell out of here, before they come looking for us in that big yacht of theirs."

  They both stripped off their wet clothes and hung them on the rails. Buck naked, they drove the boat off into the ocean night, swapping a pint of Jim Beam.

  20

  Ford considered himself a fast hiker, but the Buddhist monk moved through the forest with the swiftness of a bat, swooping along the trails in his flip-flops, his saffron robes flapping behind him. For hours they walked in silence without resting, until they came to a boulder at the mouth of a steep ravine. Here the monk stopped abruptly and, with a flouncing of his robes, seated himself, bowing his head in prayer.

  After a silence he looked up and pointed up the gorge. "Six kilometers. Follow the main canyon to the hill, and climb it. You'll find yourself above the mine, looking down into the valley. But watch out--there's a patrol that passes along the flanks of that hill."

  Khon put his hands together and bowed in thanks.

  "Bless the Buddha on the trail," said the monk. "Now go."

  Khon bowed again.

  They left him there, sitting on the rock, head bowed in meditation. Ford led the way up the gorge, threading between many huge boulders rolled and polished by ancient floods. As the canyon narrowed into a ravine, the trees on the steep hillsides leaned over them, forming a tunnel. Insects droned in the heavy air and the air smelled of sweet-fern.

  "Awfully quiet around here," said Ford, huffing.

  Khon wagged his round head.

  Here and there, Ford noticed Buddhist prayers carved into the boulders, the script almost obliterated by time. At one point they passed an entire reclining Buddha, forty feet long, carved from a natural outcrop in the side of the canyon. Khon paused to make a silent offering, casting flowers on it.

  At the head of the ravine a trail began to climb a steep hill. As they neared the top, sunlight loomed up through the trees. A broken wall encircled the summit, and through its ramparts Ford could see the ruins of a modest temple rising from the tangling vines. A burned and twisted antiaircraft gun, dating back to the Vietnam War, occupied one end of the temple, a second gun emplacement at the other.

  Gesturing for Khon to stay back, Ford crept through the foliage and climbed over the broken wall. He heard a rustle and spun, drawing his Walther, but it was only a monitor lizard crawling away into a pil
e of dead leaves. Keeping his pistol unholstered, he proceeded into the clearing, looked around, and gestured for Khon to come up. They worked their way up the trail to the second gun emplacement, which had been set up at the very brow of the hill, affording a view into the valley beyond.

  Ford crept to the edge of the stone platform and peered down.

  The sight was so strange he couldn't comprehend at first what he was seeing. The trees in the center of the valley had been flattened in a perfect radial pattern, pointing away from a central crater like the spokes of a giant wheel. A pall of smoke lay over a scene of incessant activity. Lines of ragged people moved to and from the central crater, carrying burden baskets filled with rocks on their backs, tumplines stretched across their foreheads. They dumped the bluish rocks on a huge pile fifty yards distant and shuffled back to the mine, backs bent, to refill the baskets. The rock pile in turn swarmed with emaciated children and old women, who split the rocks with small hammers and sorted through the pieces, searching for gems.

  The central crater was, quite evidently, the mine itself.

  In the valley above the mine, an area had been cleared in the fallen timber and a crude village erected, crooked wattle huts with thatched roofs standing in rows, the encampment enclosed by rolls of concertina wire lying on the ground. It was not unlike a concentration camp. Plumes of smoke rose from dozens of cooking fires. A pair of old tanks were parked at either end of the camp and soldiers carrying heavy weapons patrolled the perimeter of the valley. More soldiers kept the lines of miners moving, prodding the slow and weak with long, sharpened sticks--but always keeping their distance.

  Ford reached into his pack and slipped out a pair of binoculars to take a closer look. The crater leapt into view--a deep, vertical shaft, showing unmistakable evidence of having been created by a powerful meteoritic impact. He examined the line of miners; they were in hideous physical condition--hair falling out, ragged bodies covered with open sores, skin dark and shriveled, backs bowed, bones prominent. Many people were so eaten up by radiation poisoning--bald, toothless, and emaciated--that Ford couldn't tell the men from the women. Even the soldiers guarding them looked listless and ill.

  "What do you see?" Khon whispered from behind.

  "Things. Terrible things."

  Khon came crawling up with his own binocs. He stared for a long time, in silence.

  While they watched, one of the miners carrying ore staggered and fell, the basket spilling to the ground. He was small and slight, and, Ford guessed, no more than a teenager. A soldier dragged the boy out of the line and kicked him, trying to get him to rise. The boy struggled but was too weak. Finally the soldier placed a pistol against the boy's head and fired. Nobody even so much as turned a head. The soldier waved over a donkey cart, the corpse was swung in, and Ford watched as the donkey was driven to the edge of the valley. There the body was dumped into a trench cut like a raw wound into the red soil of the rainforest--a mass grave.

  "You see that?" Khon said quietly.

  "Yes."

  Ford glassed the soldiers on patrol and was shocked to see that most of them, too, looked like teenagers and some were clearly children.

  "Take a look up the valley," murmured Khon, "where those big trees are still standing."

  Ford swung the glasses up and immediately spied a wooden house tucked in amongst the trees at the head of the valley. Built in classic French colonial style, with a pitched tin roof, dormer windows, and walls of whitewashed boards and batten. The roof sloped down to a broad verandah, shaded by tall flowering heliconias in vivid orange and red. As he watched, he could see an old, birdlike man moving around the verandah, pacing back and forth, holding a drink in his fist. His hair was snow white, his back bowed almost to a hunchback position, but his face appeared unlined and alert. As the man paced, he was talking to two other men, making chopping gestures with his free hand. Teen soldiers with AK-47s guarded both sides of the house.

  "You see him?"

  Ford nodded.

  "I'm pretty sure that man is Brother Number Six."

  "Brother Number Six?"

  "Pol Pot's right-hand man. Rumors had it the bastard was controlling an area somewhere along the Thai-Cambodian border. Looks like we just found his little fiefdom." Khon slipped his binoculars back into his pack. "Well, I guess that wraps it up."

  Ford said nothing. He could feel Khon's eyes on him.

  "Let's take some pictures, roll videotape, get a GPS reading, and get the damn out of here."

  Ford lowered his binoculars and did not respond.

  Suddenly, Khon frowned. He spied something in the weeds at his feet; reaching out, he plucked it up and showed it to Ford. It was a hand-rolled cigarette butt, fresh and dry.

  "Uh oh," said Ford.

  "We must get off this hill."

  They crept back from the edge and scurried at a crouch past the gun emplacements. Ford spied a movement in the forest below and pitched himself to the ground, Khon following.

  He gestured to Khon. "Patrol."

  "They're surely coming up this way."

  "Then we go down the other side."

  Ford crawled on his belly toward the encircling wall and crouched below it, Khon following.

  "Can't stay here. Got to get over that wall."

  Khon nodded.

  Ford found a good handhold, hauled himself up to just below the broken edge, then threw himself over and down. He lay there, breathing hard. He hadn't been seen. A moment later Khon appeared at the top. A deafening burst of automatic weapons fire ripped out of the jungle to their left, spraying across the wall, sending chips of stone flying like shrapnel.

  "Hon chun gnay!" Khon cried, launching himself from the top and landing heavily next to Ford and rolling. The gunfire swung around and tore into the vegetation over their heads, spraying them with shredded leaves and twigs.

  The firing stopped as abruptly as it had started and Ford could hear shouts as hidden soldiers ran through the trees below them. Trying to keep himself as flat as possible, he aimed his Walther in the direction of the voices and fired a single shot. The response was a torrent of more gunfire, still coming in high. A second spray of rounds snicked off the upper stones of the wall.

  "Let's get out of here," said Ford.

  Khon pulled out his 9mm Beretta. "No shit, Yanqui."

  An RPG overshot their position and detonated on the hilltop above them, the concussion bucking Ford over. His ears ringing, he struggled to clear his head. "Run down that draw while I cover you. Then take cover and do the same for me."

  "Right."

  Ford fired the .32 in the general direction of the soldiers, and a moment later Khon leapt up and tore down the hill. Ford kept up a slow, irregular suppressing fire as Khon dodged down the hill and disappeared.

  A minute later Ford heard the pop pop of Khon's covering fire for him. He scrambled to his feet and tore downhill, into the draw. An RPG went off behind him, throwing him forward--and a good thing, as the vegetation where he had just been was chopped into bits by a discharge of automatic weapons fire.

  He crawled down the draw as twigs and wet flecks of vegetation rained down on him. They were still firing high, raking the understory, unable to get the right angle from their position. A moment later he saw Khon ahead.

  "Run!"

  They both pounded downhill, crashing their way through bushes and vines. Bursts of fire ripped through the vegetation around them, but gradually it became more distant and sporadic.

  Ten minutes later they hit the upper part of the ravine, and paused at the banks of the stream to catch their breaths. Ford knelt and threw water into his face and neck, trying to cool himself off.

  "They're tracking us," said Khon. "We've got to keep moving."

  Ford nodded. "Upstream. They won't expect it."

  Wading in the water, stepping from pool to rushing pool, Ford climbed up the loose boulders of the steep streambed. A half hour of grueling climbing brought them to a spring, where water poured from a
fissure. A ridgeline lay a hundred yards above and a dry gully went off to the right.

  They crossed the gully and climbed the ridge, down the other side, and up the next one, bulling through dense thickets of brush. A couple of hours passed and twilight began to fall. The forest sank into green gloaming.

  Khon threw himself down on a bed of small ferns, rolled on his back, tucked his hands behind his head. A big smile spread over his placid features. "Lovely. Let's make camp."

  Ford sank onto a fallen log, breathing hard. He took out his canteen, handed it to Khon, who drank deeply. He then drank himself, the water warm and fetid.

  "You verified the mine," said Khon, sitting up and examining his fingernails. He took out a nail file and began to clean and sand them. "You have the location. We can go back now."

  Ford said nothing.

  "Right, Mr. Mandrake? We go back now?"

  Still no answer.

  "No more saving the world, please!"

  Ford rubbed his neck. "Khon, you know we've got a problem."

  "Which is?"

  "Why did they send me here?"

  "To locate the mine. You said so yourself."

  "You saw it. Are you trying to tell me the CIA didn't already know exactly where it was? No way could our spy satellites have missed that place."

  "Hmmm," mumbled Khon. "You have a fucking point."

  "So why the charade of sending me in?"

  Khon shrugged. "The CIA moves in mysterious ways."

  Ford rubbed his face, smoothed back his hair, breathed out. "There's another problem."

  "Which is?"

  "Are we going to leave those people to die?"

  "Those people are already dead. And you told me you were ordered to do nothing. No touchee mine. Right, Mr. Mandrake?"

  "There were children there, kids." Ford raised his head. "Did you see them blow that teenager away, just like that? And the mass grave? There must be a couple of hundred bodies in there already and the trench wasn't even a quarter full. This is genocide."