Impact

'After the death of Pol Pot in '98, he disappeared in the north and started smuggling drugs and gems. His 'revolutionary ideals' degenerated into criminality.'

'What motivates him now?'

'Survival. Pure and simple.'

'Not money?'

'You need money to survive. What does fucking Brother Number Six want? I tell you what he wants: to live out the last of his days in peace and quiet and die a natural death. This is what the mass murderer wants: to die of old age, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He's almost eighty, but he clings to life like a young man. All that horror in that valley, the mine, the enslavement--it's all about squeezing out those last years of life. You see, if the bastard relaxes his grip, even for a second, he's a dead man and he knows it. Not even his soldiers will back him up.'

'And then an asteroid falls into his lap.'

Khon stared at him across the fire. 'Asteroid?'

Ford nodded. 'The explosion that the monks talked about, the crater, the flattened trees, the radioactive gemstones--everything points to an asteroid impact.'

Khon shrugged, tossed a stick in the fire. 'Let your government take care of it.'

'Did you see the kids picking through that pile of rocks? It's killing them. If we don't destroy the mine, they'll die.'

After a silence, Khon rummaged in his pack and removed a pint bottle. 'Johnnie Walker Black,' he said. 'Clears the mind.' He tossed it over.

Ford cracked and unscrewed the cap, raised the bottle. 'Prost.' He took a sip, then another, and passed it back. Khon helped himself, placed the bottle between them. He lifted the lid on the rice, nodded, took the pot from the fire, and scooped out steaming rice onto tin plates.

Ford accepted the plate and they ate in silence as the fire died down into ashy coals.

To live out the last of his days and die a natural death. If that's all that motivated him now, perhaps dealing with Brother Number Six wouldn't be so difficult after all.

'Khon, I have the glimmer of an idea.'

23

Randall Worth hooked his boat up to a disused mooring in the Harbor Island anchorage and doused his lights. The girls had left the admiral's island in a big hurry and gone to ground in a cove on Otter Island. They'd be there for the rest of the night.

Fucking insane, landing on the island when the admiral was home--especially after the old fart had discovered half his antiques gone. Worth wheezed with laughter, thinking of the admiral finding his house stripped, a shit deposited on his floor.

Worth pulled a Bud out of the cooler, popped it, and took a good pull. They must have a hot lead on the treasure to take a risk like that. He got a knob thinking about how he'd do those two bitches, pirate style, first one, then the other. After he got the treasure.

His mind circled back to his encounter on the dock with Abbey. Deeper, deeper. What a slut, saying that right in front of big-mouth Jackie Spann. Jackie would laugh it all over town. He felt a burning rage take hold, like crank fumes in his head. He hated the whole town. The kids who had pushed him around in school and called him 'Worthless' were now coaches, insurance salesmen, mechanics, fishermen, accountants--the same bastards, only grown up. He would fuck 'em all, starting with Abbey and Jackie, and then kill them. Abbey reminded him of his mother who had screwed every big-gut in town, groaning and humping, while he was forced to listen through the paper walls of the trailer. The best day of his life was when she wrapped her rice- burner around a tree and had to be cut out in sections.

He tossed the beer can overboard and cracked another, his fingers trembling. He gave a long pull, then another, draining it in less than a minute, tossed it. Cracked a third, belched, sucked it down. He could feel the creep of the alcohol in his brain, but it wasn't helping with the crank bugs. It wasn't tamping down that twitchy feeling of ants and worms. A sour taste of nausea burbled upward into his gullet and a muscle began twitching in his neck. One of his scabs was bleeding again.

His eye fell on the RG .44, sitting on the console. He picked it up, flipped open the cylinder. Might be a good idea to fire it a couple of times, make sure it still worked. He ejected the unfired rounds, looked them over. They were a bit mottled but still looked tight. He shoved them back in, closed the cylinder, and went out on deck. Taking a few deep breaths, he looked around. With the money from the treasure, he wouldn't have to deal with dickheads like Doyle anymore. No more B&Es, no more risking prison. He'd open that pub he'd always thought about, with the widescreen TV, wood paneling, pool table, English ale on tap. In prison he'd spent hours in his cell constructing it in his mind's eye, the sawdust-covered floor, the smell of beer and fries, the wraparound oak bar, the waitresses in miniskirts waggling their pert asses.

Another shiver in his spine, an unpleasant creeping sensation, destroyed the daydream. He wouldn't yield to the sensation. Not yet. He would never let the meth take control.

What could he shoot at? A slice of Moon was up and he could see a lobster buoy about seventy-five feet away, rising and falling with the gentle swell. He had once been a decent shot, but the gun, he knew, was a piece of crap and seventy-five feet was a long distance for a .44.

His hands were dirty and he wiped them down on his shirt, feeling the bony ribs underneath. Jesus, he was getting thin. He felt that itching sensation again, like hookworms wriggling under his skin.

He raised the revolver with both hands, aimed at the buoy, thumbed back the hammer, and fired.

A deafening boom sounded and the gun kicked back. Three feet to the right of the buoy a jet of water shot up.

'Fuck,' Worth said out loud. He aimed again, relaxed, tried to control the tremor in his hands, fired. This time a gout went up to the left. He paused, waited until his irritation had passed, then aimed a third time, controlling his breathing, steadying himself, squeezing slowly. This time, the lobster buoy jumped up in the air with a snap, Styrofoam pieces flying.

He lowered the gun, flush with satisfaction. This called for a celebration. He fumbled around in the cuddy, moving aside the fishing gear, retrieving his pipe and stash. With trembling fingers he prepared the hit. Like a drowning man coming up for air, he sucked it in hard, filling every lobe and air sac of his lungs with hot crank.

He sagged back against the wheel, feeling the rush radiate outward from his lungs to his reptilian brain stem and up into his higher brain, and he groaned out loud with the sheer pleasure of it, the absolute bliss, the fucked-up world softening and melting away into a lake of smooth uncaring contentment.

Abbey kicked back in the canvas deck chair, her feet propped on the gunwale, looking skyward. Midnight. The Marea rode at anchor in a deep cove on the south side of Otter Island. The night blazed with stars, the Milky Way arching overhead. Water lapped against the hull, and a steak sizzled on the grill.

'What about the meteorite?' said Jackie. 'We didn't finish searching the island. Maybe we missed the crater.'

'I'm not going back there.' Abbey took a swig from the only bottle of real wine she had brought, a Brunello from Il Marroneto, vintage 2000. A magnificent wine. She didn't dare tell Jackie she'd spent almost a hundred dollars on it.

'Lemme have a sip.' Jackie's voice was temporarily interrupted by the bottle. 'That's kind of dry for my taste. Mind if I mix it with a cooler?'

Abbey smiled. 'Be my guest.' She turned back to the night sky. Whenever she looked at it, she felt strangely elated and a feeling that could only be called religious stole over her. 'That's a big place up there,' she said.