Impact wf-3

by Douglas Preston

  She read through several articles but it all came down to the same thing: no known natural process could create a point source of gamma rays in the solar system. No wonder Corso was interested. He'd found a point source for gamma rays on Mars--and no one at NPF believed him. Or was it all in his head? It was hard to tell.

  She stared at the computer screen, rubbed her eyes, glanced at the clock. Three A.M. Where was Ford?

  She sighed and got up, rummaged in the small fridge. Empty. She had drunk up all her Diet Cokes, eaten the bags of Cheetos and wolfed down the Mars Bars. Maybe she should sleep. But the thought of sleep did not appeal to her. She was too worried about Ford. She began idly looking through the data, and then Googled the Mars Mapping Orbiter. Launched a few years ago, gone into orbit around Mars a year later. An orbiter stuffed with cameras, spectrometers, subsurface radar, and a gamma ray scintillator. Purpose: to map Mars. It carried the most powerful telescope ever launched into deep space, called HiRISE, which was classified but thought to be able to see an object twelve inches across from 130 miles up. In the few months of its operation the MMO had sent more data back to Earth than all previous space missions combined.

  And it looked like a lot of that data, maybe all of it, was on the hard disk.

  She reordered the folders by date. At the very top was a recent one--very recent--labeled DEIMOS MACHINE.

  That sounded intriguing. She opened it and saw there were more than thirty files in it, with names like DEIMOS-BIG and VOLTAIRE-ORIG to VOLTAIRE-DETAIL with a suite of files labeled VOLTAIRE1 through VOLTAIRE33.

  She clicked through them all, one after another, staring at the blurry, false-color images, each one clearer than the last. They were all of a strange-looking construction, a hollow cylinder surrounded by spherical projections sitting on a five-sided base. Sunken in dust. It looked like something from a movie set or an art project of some kind.

  She began clicking through all the Voltaire images, and finally the bigger files at the top, DEIMOS-BIG and VOLTAIRE-ORIG, staring at the images with growing comprehension. Her heart began to accelerate as it dawned on her just where this strange construction had been photographed. She could hardly breathe. This was incredible, unbelievable--

  She heard a footfall outside the door, a thump, the click from the lock, and the door swung open.

  She sat up. "You won't believe--!"

  Ford cut her off with a harsh gesture. "Shut that down and pack up. We've got to get out of here. Now."

  57

  Harry Burr looked around the lobby of the cheap hotel, smelled something, checked his shoes for dog shit. Nothing--somebody else must've tracked it in. He had had plenty of time to cool off on the trip down to Washington. He'd been so close: Christ, he'd even seen the girl rip the drive from the back of the fridge on their way out, but they'd jumped in a damn cab before he could catch up to them and finish the job.

  They hadn't completely escaped him. He'd been able, with the hack number on the cab's roof and a little help from a friend on the D.C. force, to trace them here. He went up to reception and rang the little bell, and a few moments later a doughy man-boy with a belt three sizes too tight, squeezing a tight ring in his fat, shuffled out from the back. "Help you?"

  Burr put on an appropriately agitated air and spoke in a rush. "I certainly hope you can. I'm looking for my daughter. She ran away with a man, a real scumbag, met her in church if you can believe it, the pervert." He paused to take a breath. "I think they spent the night here, got some pictures of them"--he fumbled in his suitcase and pulled out glossies of Ford and the girl--"here they are." He paused, gulping in breath.

  Smacking his lips, the man slowly bent over the two photographs and looked. A long silence ensued. Burr resisted the impulse to poke him a twenty, which was clearly what the man was waiting for. Burr didn't like paying for information--you sometimes got bad information that way. People who gave you information from the kindness of their dumb little hearts always gave you good.

  Another smacking of the lips. Mr. Phlegmatic raised his eyes and met his. "Daughter?" he asked, with a skeptical note in his voice.

  "Adopted," he said. "From Nigeria. My wife couldn't conceive and we wanted to give a little girl in Africa the opportunity. Look, have you seen her? Please help me, she's my little girl. That scumbag met her at our church, he's twice her age and married, too."

  The eyes dropped back to the picture and a long sigh came out, like a bag being squeezed. "I seen 'em."

  "Really? Where? Are they staying here?"

  "I don't want any trouble."

  "There won't be, I assure you. I just want to save my daughter."

  The clerk nodded, masticating a piece of gum. His face reminded Burr of a cow with its cud. "If there's trouble, I'll have to call the cops."

  "Do I look like a man who'd cause trouble? I'm a professor of English literature at Yale for heaven's sake. I just want to talk to her. What room?"

  No answer. Now was the time to apply a little cash. He flipped up a fifty, which the clerk pawed out of his hand. With a grunt he went into the back office and came out with the register. He opened it on the desk and turned it around, pointing with a fat finger. Mr. and Mrs. Morton.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Morton? They took only one room? Number one-fifty-five?"

  The man nodded.

  Harry Burr made the face of a father thinking about something he'd rather not think about. "What about ID, didn't they have to show ID?"

  "Sometimes we forget to ask," he said lamely.

  Burr checked the map of the motel and noted that room 155 was in the motel's back wing, first floor. It was a cheap motel, all the rooms with separate front entrances and no back doors. So much the better.

  He straightened up. "Thank you, thank you very much."

  "No noise or I call the cops."

  "Don't worry." Burr went out to his idling car, pulled out of the drive-through, reached in the glove compartment, and felt the reassuring grip of the Israeli Desert Eagle .44 magnum semiautomatic, his working firearm. He grasped the suppressor and affixed it to the muzzle and laid it on the seat next to him as he eased the car around to the back of the motel.

  There wouldn't be any noise if Burr could help it.

  58

  "Out the window? Are you nuts?" Abbey stood in the door to the bathroom, hands on her hips.

  Ford ignored her. He pulled open the cheap sliding aluminum window in the bathroom. He shoved Abbey's suitcase out, pushed out his own. "Now you."

  "This is crazy." But Abbey obeyed, ducking her head out and wiggling through the window. Ford handed her the laptop and drive and then he squeezed out. They were behind the motel. There was a weedy service drive, a chain-link fence, a drainage ditch, and then a large parking lot surrounding a frowzy mall. The sky was gray and a light drizzle fell.

  Abbey picked up her suitcase. "What now? Call a cab?"

  "To the mall."

  "It isn't open yet."

  "We're not shopping. Just follow me."

  "Why are we running?" Abbey asked. "What've you done?"

  "Later."

  Abbey followed Ford across the driveway. He tossed their suitcases and his briefcase over the fence. "Go."

  "This is ridiculous." Abbey grabbed the chain links and climbed over, dropping down the other side. Ford scrambled up and over.

  "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 th
e 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, pluck
ed 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."