Impact (Book 1): Inbound

by Isherwood, E. E.

  He sat down behind his giant glass-topped desk and tried to seem relaxed, then he pushed the button for the intercom. “Send him in, please.”

  The two doors swung open, revealing the government functionary waddling his way into Petteri’s corporate safe haven. The man turned his stomach. He was fat, for starters, but his real crime was how he dressed. The sloppy suit was ill-fitting, his Coke-bottle glasses were from the last century, and his shoes shuffled over the expensive tile, like he was unable to lift them off the ground. Despite his misgivings, he stood to receive the man.

  “Welcome to my humble chambers, Mr. Stricker.” He held his hand out yet made no effort to reach across the desk. Instead, the portly man had to lean over to grasp his hand. Petteri suffered the sweat-soaked palm as long as he could before pulling back. He sat in his chair and immediately wiped his hand on his trouser leg.

  “Thank you for seeing me. I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll be brief.”

  “No, please, take your time,” he said to be polite, while meaning none of it.

  “Uh, I only need a minute. I was sent here by my boss to ask if you are aware that your asteroid is still heading for Earth? NASA engineers have sent data showing it will impact with northern Europe if the course isn’t corrected.” Mr. Stricker didn’t sit down; he stood at the edge of the desk as if unwilling to move from the spot.

  “Do you think I would hold out on you? On him? Of course, it isn’t heading for Earth. 586001 Tuonela is going into a parking orbit above the Earth, just like I’ve said in public. We’re waiting for the right moment to nudge it into its proper entry window, but it’s only a formality.”

  Mr. Stricker acted like he was in a sauna, despite the cool air keeping the room at a comfortable sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Petteri wanted the man gone; his profuse sweating created an odor even from six feet away. To help him along, Petteri held out his hands as if to say, See, I have nothing to hide. It was an old salesman trick to disarm the buyer.

  “Excellent. I was praying it was something like that.” Stricker shuffled a few paces and took off his glasses and wiped his face with his forearm. His demeanor suggested he wasn’t finished.

  “Is there anything else?” Petteri asked in his most pleasant tone.

  “Yeah, I, uh, just wanted to confirm we’re still good. You know? You and I?”

  Petteri’s lip ticked upward in a smirk. It was rather uncouth to talk about compensation in such an open fashion, but everyone was under pressure. Clearly, the Secretary of Homeland Security had more going on than most. Even so, before he answered, Petteri wanted to make the man feel self-conscious. “Can you see me without your glasses, Mr. Stricker?”

  The other man fumbled with his spectacles and put them back on in a rush. “I can see you, now.”

  Petteri leaned back in his chair, satisfied he’d maintained the desired pecking order. “Yes, we’re always good. You keep telling the president the relevant facts you and I agree upon, and we have no problems.” He stressed those words as part of the undertone of the discussion. What was the point of paying off people if they didn’t know what was expected of them?

  “I’ll tell him right away,” he replied.

  Petteri exhaled all his stress as the other man hustled for the door. It wouldn’t be hard for the government to gain the upper hand in the dance, but, so far, Petteri’s coalition of the unwilling was holding together. He might have pressed Mr. Stricker a little harder than necessary, but the result was perfect. He’d bought himself more time.

  Chapter 9

  Yellowstone

  Grace checked over her shoulder to make sure the mining guy wasn’t following her. Something about his behavior poured ice down her spine, and she suddenly understood Asher’s passion to stay away from him. The man blended back into the crowd, which was a relief, even as she desperately needed to catch up to Asher and warn him that—

  She didn’t know what to warn him about. Asher seemed terrified, and Misha appeared to be an ill-tempered jerk. Still, one bad apple didn’t mean the whole TKM company was out to harm him. Lots of people she’d dealt with on the job were ill-tempered—it didn’t mean they were dangerous. Maybe the company had legitimate reasons for wanting to find him.

  A young, disheveled mother held a small baby while blocking her path. “Miss, I demand someone help me. I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes!” The woman swayed the bundle from side to side as if trying to soothe the child in the busy room, but Grace didn’t have time to stop.

  She side-stepped and tried to get away. “I’m not on duty.”

  “The hell you aren’t.” The woman grabbed her arm. “My husband and I drove for twenty hours to get here from Chicago. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  It was a classic park ranger no-win scenario. It was against the code of ethics to be violent to any of the visitors, and even though the woman deserved to be shoved aside, Grace couldn’t even raise her voice to a lady holding a baby.

  “Ugh. I’m in a big hurry. What do you need?”

  The woman let go, offering a chance to escape, but she stayed with the hope she could answer a quick question.

  “Yes, well, our campsite is reserved for tonight. They told me we can’t go in and set up our tent until three this afternoon. That’s, like, ten hours from now. I’ve got a little one. I need our campsite right now.” She shoved the baby toward Grace, apparently as her proof of purchase.

  Grace had heard the complaint a million times working at the information desk. The instant-gratification culture always wanted what was coming to them as soon as they stepped foot in the park. Never mind someone else was already in the same campsite after staying there the night prior. “Ma’am, tell me what campsite you’re in, and I’ll go look it up for you. I don’t have a computer on me.”

  The woman balanced the little baby as she searched her pockets and purse. Grace looked around the visitors’ center, hopeful she’d catch a glance of Asher before Misha and his friend found him. While the woman continued to search, Grace checked out the biggest diorama in the building, which was a full-sized mule deer. A ton of people stood around it, but on the other side, she saw Asher’s curly brown hair. He was evidently hiding behind the stuffed creature.

  “Please hurry, ma’am,” she said as she moved one step away.

  “I’ll have it. Don’t you go off yet.” The woman pulled out her phone, and a piece of paper was stuck to it. “Here! This says we’re spot 304 on F loop at a place called Bay Bridge.”

  It was the same campground Grace had done her campfire talk the previous night. It was on the far side of the park, relative to where they were at Mammoth. That was a red flag. “Have you even been to the campground today? How do you know they turned you away?”

  “Well, I, uh… No, I haven’t been there. I just know how these government places operate. As I’ve said, we’ve been driving for a long time. We’re—”

  Grace lost her patience. “304 Bridge Bay. Got it. Wait right here. I’ll be back with your information.” She moved away from the woman.

  “You better help me!” the mother scolded.

  She ran directly for Asher, pausing briefly to unbutton her uniform top, peel it off, and then wrap it around her waist. She wore a gray T-shirt underneath, but it lacked logos or name tags; it would help lower her profile so the other visitors might leave her alone. She had no intention of looking up the campsite for the woman, either, so it would hide her from that problem, too.

  Asher had been looking toward the front of the house and didn’t notice as Grace cut through the crowd and came up behind him. “Tap tap,” she said with humor as she tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Crap!” he blurted out.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied in haste, “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was going to get here sooner, but these people are like piranhas with their questions; once they get a hold of you, they don’t let go.”

  “Hello, Mr. Creighton.” It was the Russian-accented Misha; he’d c
ome alongside the mule deer while Asher was looking back. “I was told you were not here by this lady. Apparently she made a mistake about your identity. Not Alex Trebek, after all.”

  Asher flashed a confused look between Misha and Grace.

  “I’ll explain later,” she bemoaned. “I was trying to help.” She glared at the foreign man. “And I bet this isn’t your brother, either.”

  “I don’t have a brother,” Asher said matter-of-factly.

  Misha chuckled like he’d had his fun. “Come with me and we will get this wrapped up nice and neat.” He was taller than Asher, though not by much. However, the TKM guy seemed as if he might have worked in an actual mine. He was big and bulky, causing his muscles to strain his suit coat, like pushing mine carts was his other job.

  Asher turned to her. “You have to help me. I don’t want to go with him. They’re going to kill me; you see that, right? They know I’ve got information about their precious projects they don’t want me to share.”

  She looked at the big man. “In all seriousness, are you going to hurt him? I can’t have violence in my park.” It was true. Park rangers had limited law-enforcement duties, but no park visitor should feel threatened; if necessary, she could take more serious action.

  Misha shook his head and chuckled. “What do you think this is? A spy game? I am just an errand boy having a little fun with you. No one tells me anything.” He hunched his shoulders, which drew up his suit coat a bit. Grace was certain she saw a black shape in the shadows; a gun. Asher hadn’t been paranoid, after all. Unarmed as she was, all she could do was play it cool, like they’d taught her.

  “Well, I don’t want to interfere with your business.” She glanced between Misha and Asher, noting how close some of the other visitors were. None of them were the least bit interested in their discussion. Everyone was wrapped up in their own lives.

  “That is good,” Misha said calmly as he held out a hand, gesturing Asher his way.

  “You can’t do this to me,” Asher beseeched her. “I don’t want to go with him. We are NOT related.”

  She took a step back, careful to line herself up with Misha so the head of the stuffed moose was behind him. The animal was every bit of seven feet, and the head provided a bit of a backstop for what she was about to do. “I know that,” she replied under her breath.

  “Fine,” Asher said, sounding beaten. “I’ll go, only because I don’t want anyone in here to get hurt. These guys are vicious.” He cocked his head at her, as if hoping she’d have a heart and change her mind. Grace couldn’t give herself away by saying she already had.

  She shrugged, feigning indifference.

  Her hand was behind her back, under the uniform shirt wrapped around her waist, unfastening her only weapon.

  Kentucky

  “We have to get out of here,” Ezra said while slowly backing away from the intersection. Several people in the cars had already seen him, but he didn’t want to draw attention to his humble street any more than was necessary.

  “Did we do something wrong?” Susan asked with a sideways glance.

  “We’ve got to get up here in force. I can’t believe no one has turned down this street already. They must believe there’s help up ahead. They don’t want to lose their place in line.” Most traffic jams in the city resulted in people taking side streets to get around it, whereas out in the country and near the lake, it wasn’t possible to go around a traffic snarl. You’d simply drive into the water. Still, he had no idea how long people had been there, and he wasn’t about to ask. It would be another invitation to give his neighborhood a second look.

  Once they’d gone down the hill a short way, he asked Susan to jog with him, so they’d cover the half mile a lot faster. “We’ll find Babs again. She’ll organize what we need.” Brenda Bowler was the last person he wanted to talk to, but he needed her organizational skills.

  Ezra saw her unholy pink slacks from well up the street. The woman stood on the corner of Happy Cove and Happy Hills and was in the midst of a group of about ten men and women from the subdivision. “Hey,” he said with winded breath as he arrived. “Are you guys going up to the top of the hill? We need a serious roadblock up there.”

  “We are,” Babs responded. “Did you conduct the survey of houses like I asked?”

  “What? No. Not yet. I was going to start on the hill, but we walked to the top to get a look at the traffic. You were right. It’s terrible up there.” Besides all the burned trees and fires in the houses of their subdivision, his look out on the rest of the world convinced him it wasn’t any better. The cloud over Paducah remained black and sooty, like the world’s greatest dumpster fire. Ash covered the tops of cars, giving them all the appearance of ghosts. If there was one bright spot, it was that Babs saw the same thing as him up there, and, for once, came to the same conclusion as he did: they needed to protect the street entrance.

  “You better get to it, Mr. Anderson. I was only able to get a small portion of the dues-paying members into this welcome group. I need to know who’s still here.” The gray-haired woman patted her bob haircut and smiled like she’d pulled a fast one on him, though he couldn’t figure out her angle.

  Susan had been standing a bit behind Ezra, but she came up holding her Bushmaster in the low-ready position, as he’d taught her. “I think you’re going to need guns. There are thousands of cars up there.”

  “Nonsense,” Babs replied. “If we carry guns, it will only antagonize them. We can stand up there and be neighborly; we just won’t let them come down here.”

  Ezra would have slapped his own face if he thought it would do any good. The woman wasn’t intending to do it right; she only wanted to do it her way. An armed roadblock was the only way to show they had the means to defend what was theirs. It would keep the good guys on the two-lane honest, and it would remind the bad guys that there was risk to coming down the hill. If they stood on the street corner, unarmed, it would be an invitation to the wolves.

  He looked up at the hazy sun and instantly thought of the smog of Los Angeles. One of his jobs for the post office had taken him there for a long weekend, and he never forgot the air quality. It underscored how things were severely abnormal in rural Kentucky and the subdivision president was taking them down a dangerous path.

  “It’s your funeral if you go up there,” he said to those gathered. “I’d at least have pistols concealed on your person. I guarantee those people are going to come over once you set up shop.” He didn’t have any expertise on crowd control, so he applied his greatest skill: common sense. Human beings in distress always sought answers from strangers. Often, it was the government or the police. In this case, it was going to be Babs and her people, since they were the locals “in the know.”

  “We’ll be fine, Mr. Anderson. You just do what I asked. We need that list almost as badly as we need to protect the entrance. You’re a team player, aren’t you?”

  She’d said the magic words for Ezra. He couldn’t say no while standing in front of his neighbors. For a few seconds, he was going to argue the details, but she kept talking.

  “Besides, weren’t you leaving us? I don’t see why we should listen to someone who was planning to be gone today. The rest of us have to live here, you know.” She angled her head almost sideways, and frowned severely, as if to admonish him like she was his mother.

  He didn’t give her the satisfaction of answering. Ezra shot a knowing look to Susan, and they walked from the scene together.

  Bab’s group headed up to the intersection.

  “Can this day get any worse?”

  Chapter 10

  Yellowstone

  Most rangers didn’t walk around with bear spray attached to their hip, but Grace went to the campfire program the previous night intending to be ready for anything. If a bear did stumble out of the woods while she ran her stargazing event, it would get a face full of hot pepper mix to keep it from advancing. It was a survival instinct she picked up from her dad over the years. He
was prepared for trouble all the time, even inside his own home. That’s why he kept a small armory in his basement.

  She got his attention. “Sir, before you take him away, can you tell me where he’ll be, just in case I need to follow up with him about the fire he started up in the mountains? It’s still burning, you should know. Is your company going to pay for the damages?”

  “I didn’t start that fire. I told you—”

  Misha put his hand on Asher’s shoulder, which made him wince. “He is going back to Bozeman, of course. We want to question him about the fire as well. I am sure suitable compensation can be arranged if he was on company time.”

  She held the soda-can sized canister behind her back, clearing the safety off the top trigger. The big man was right where she needed him, though he was a little too close to Asher. As Misha pulled his captive to the side, he sneered at her as if he’d won.

  Grace didn’t announce her intention to fire the bear spray. She lifted it in front of her, arm outstretched, and tapped the button for half a second. At two feet, it was impossible to miss, and it went all over Misha’s face.

  “Der’mo!” Misha cursed.

  Asher cried out in surprise, too, as some of the cloud went toward him. At the same time, tourists all around the moose screamed wildly, as if they’d been struck as well. The canister had a range of about fifteen feet, though she’d done her best to get it on Misha’s face, or on the moose behind him.

  She grabbed Asher’s arm as Misha screamed in agony while covering his eyes with his hands. Grace felt terrible some of the tourists were holding their eyes; it wasn’t going to look good on her probationary report card. Asher’s eyes were closed as she guided him away from his captor. “Come with me!”

  Chaos and panic went through the room like lightning, sending everyone running and screaming at the same time. Most of them dashed for the front door, which was the one everyone used to come in, but she went against the flow and headed for the employee and fire exit at the back.