Douglas Preston - Impact

Burr fished in his pocket and pulled out the key. He stretched out his hand. "Unlock yourself, bring the cuffs."

Keeping one hand on the wheel, he pulled out his gun and watched as Straw unlocked his cuffs and came forward, holding the rail for stability.

The boat wallowed for a moment in the trough, eerily quiet, and began to mount up. It was turning broadside again.

"Gimme the helm!" Straw cried, seizing it.

Burr stepped back, pointing the gun at him. "Lock yourself to the wheel."

The fisherman ignored him, struggling with the wheel and throttling up as the boat tipped up the face of the wave, steeper and steeper, and suddenly the wind was howling around them, the air full of water, all confusion and noise. The boat rammed through the crest and fell back down, righting itself and subsiding into the churning trough.

"I said lock your wrist to the wheel!" Burr fired a round through the roof to underscore the demand.

The fisherman locked his left wrist to the steeling wheel. Burr stepped over, tested it, making sure it was really locked, took the key and tossed it into the sea.

"You follow the course straight to the reef. Any tricks and I'll kill you. And then I'll kill your daughter."

The boat rose on another wave and a lightning bolt split the sky with a terrific roar, briefly illuminating a wilderness of water.

Burr braced himself as the next wave bore down on them. The fisherman said nothing, hanging grimly onto the wheel, his face set toward darkness.

82

In the silence, there was a faint squeaking of wheels and a duty officer came in pushing a cart, serving coffee all around.

"You said you were to make a recommendation to the president at seven," Ford said. "What are the options?"

Lockwood spread his hands. "Dr. Chaudry?"

Chaudry rubbed a hand over his finely sculpted cheek. "We've got half a dozen satellites orbiting Mars. We had planned to reassign all to a new mission--to locate the source of these attacks. But now you seem to have those coordinates."

"Yes," said Mickelson, "and with those coordinates we could use one or more of those satellites as a weapon, send it crashing into the alien weapon at high speed."

Chaudry shook his head. "That would be about as effective as throwing an egg at a tank."

"Option two," said Mickelson, ploughing ahead, "is to launch a nuke at it."

"The launch window wouldn't be for another six months minimum," said Chaudry, "and the travel time to Mars would be well over a year."

"The nuclear option is our only effective means of attack," said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs from a screen.

Chaudry turned to him. "Admiral, I doubt the alien weapon is going to sit there and allow itself to be nuked."

"May I remind you again that the operative word here is 'machine.' We don't know for a fact that it is a weapon," said Lockwood.

"It's a Goddamned weapon ," said Mickelson. "Just look at it!"

Chaudry spoke quietly. "That artifact comes from a civilization of tremendous technological sophistication. I'm truly aghast that you people think we can kill it with a nuke. We're like a cockroach committee debating how to kill the exterminator. Any military option is futile--and exceedingly dangerous--and the sooner we recognize it the better."

A tense silence built. The conference room had grown hot. Ford took the opportunity to remove his jacket and casually draped it over the back of his chair. The bait , he thought. Now to hook the fish. Or the mole, as it were.

83

The Marea II crested another terrifying wave and Abbey caught a glimpse, through the lashing rain, of a smudge of whitewater ahead. The chartplotter placed them a few hundred yards from the first of the three great rocks.

"There! Ahead!"

"I see it," said Jackie calmly, easing the wheel over. "I'm heading into the lee."

The sea calmed as they entered the protected area of water behind the rocks. A huge swell still warped through, but the chop and wind dropped considerably. As the boat rose and fell, Abbey could see immense seas thundering along the base of the rocks, some of the curlers reaching twenty feet or more, rearing into the rock and exploding upward as if in slow motion, great spumes of atomized water.

"All right," said Jackie, as she brought the boat into a slow, tight circle. "What's the plan?"

"I--" Abbey hesitated. "We pretend to surrender. He'll take us aboard his boat and then we'll look for our opportunity."

Jackie stared. "You call that a plan?"

"What else can we do?"

"He's going to kill us, boom boom . And that's it. There won't be time to 'look for an opportunity.' And don't fool yourself, he ain't giving up your father. Abbey, I want to save your father but I don't want to throw away my own life. You understand?"

"I'm thinking," Abbey gasped.

Jackie brought the boat around in a slow circle, staying close to the lee shore. "Stop hyperventilating, he's going to be here any minute. Focus. You're smart. You can do it."

Abbey turned to the radar to see if she could get a fix on the approaching boat. She fiddled with the gain, trying to tune out the rain and sea return. The screen was a wash of static. Slowly, as she manipulated the various parameters, she began to get an image of the huge exposed reefs to starboard, big green blobs on the screen. And then she saw another blob, smaller, washing in and out--moving toward them.

"That's it," she said. "They're here. Back the boat in that channel between the two rocks."

"You crazy? That's a narrow channel with surf on both sides!"

"Give me the helm then."

"No. I'll do it."

"Get the boat in there so he can't see us on his radar."

Jackie stared at her, face pale. "And then?"

"We need weapons." Abbey threw open the cabin door and scrambled down the shuddering steps--hanging onto the rails. With a hideous feeling of deja vu, she threw open the cabin, hauled out the toolbox, and removed a small pair of marine bolt cutters, standard onboard equipment for dealing with frozen bolts, clamps, and rods. She also took out a fish knife and a long Phillips-head screwdriver. She came back up and slammed the tools on the dash.

Abbey grabbed Jackie by both shoulders and leaned into her face. "You want a plan? Here it is. Ram. Board. Kill him. Cut Dad free."

"We ram them and we're both gonna sink."

"Not if you hit them broadside, aft of the pilothouse. The skeg'll just ride up on the gunwale, I'll jump off, and then you reverse like hell and pull back off before the boat breaks its spine. The Marea II 's built like a brick shit house."

"Ram, board, and kill? He's armed! What've we got--a fish knife?"

"You got a better plan?"

"No."

"Then we go with what we've got."

The green blob on the radar screen was creeping closer. Abbey glanced out at the dark water and could see a glimmer of light.

"He's got his spotlights on! Get going!"

Jackie throttled the boat up and moved it behind the rock, backing and turning furiously, fighting the wind, sea, and a powerful current running between the rocks. The roaring noise of the surf was deafening, the wind blowing tatters of spume over their boat. Jackie struggled to keep the boat in the middle of the channel, beyond the rearing breakers that thundered into the spires of rock.

"How am I going to know when to come out and ram him?"

"He'll enter the lee," said Abbey, "just like we did. He'll be looking for us, shining the light around. A slow target. When he doesn't see us he'll call. That's our signal. Wait for him to get broadside, then you come out full-speed ahead and t-bone him. Here, take a knife."

Jackie took the long fish knife and stuck it into her belt.