Douglas Preston - Impact

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 pile 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.