Impact

81

Burr handed the VHF mike to the lobsterman, placing it in his manacled hands. It didn't matter what he said now; Burr just wanted to remind the girl her father was alive and in desperate straits, keep her terrified, panicked, easier to handle.

'Dad? Dad? Are you okay?'

'Abbey! Get the hell off the water! Your boat can't take it! Go!'

'Dad.' There was a choking silence. 'We're out of fuel.'

'Good God, Abbey, he's got a gun. Call the Coast Guard! Don't be fooled--'

Burr snatched back the mike. It was an obscure, unused channel and they were broadcasting at a quarter watt, a range that wouldn't reach the mainland, especially in this weather--but why take chances?

'You hear that?' he said into the mike. 'Everything's going to be okay, you'll get your father back. I need you alive, I can't get the drive otherwise. Think about it--you're more useful to me alive than dead. We need to figure this out, but let's do it in a place where we're not going to drown. You hear me?'

'I hear you,' Abbey said tersely.

He clicked off, thinking that they probably didn't believe it but what could they do? He was holding all the cards. Sure, they might have some stupid plan but it wasn't going to work.

The boat rose on a wave and lurched to starboard. Christ, he hadn't been paying attention. A rogue wave was approaching, a two-story wall of water, black as Guinness with a breaking crest. He turned the wheel toward the wave, the boat lifting fast. But he couldn't get it all the way around before the roaring crest slammed into the hull, knocking the boat sideways, and it fell back as ebony water burst over the gunwale, pushing the boat down and heeling it over.

The boat tipped into the trough, the water boiling out the scuppers, the deck tilting thirty degrees from the horizontal, while he clung to the wheel, speechless with fear. He tried to turn the wheel, but it was as if a huge weight was pushing back, pressing the boat down. He shoved the throttle forward but heard no answering rumble from the engine, just the creaking strain of thousands of pounds of water roaring over the boat. And then the wheel began to loosen up and the boat shuddered as the weight of the sea lessened, the water pouring off the bow and gunwales. Gradually it righted itself.

Burr had never been so frightened in his life. He looked at the chartplotter; they were halfway to Devil's Limb. Behind the reef they could at least get into the lee of this crazy sea. They were going six knots--how much longer would it take? Ten minutes. Ten more minutes of hell.

'Let me take the helm,' said the fisherman. 'You're going to sink this boat.'

'Fuck off.' Burr braced himself as another whitecapped comber came at them, the boat rising swiftly to meet the boiling mountain of water, which slammed into it, the pilothouse shuddering and groaning as if about to come apart at the seams. If it fried the electronics . . . he'd be helpless.

He clung to the wheel, the boat sinking precipitously down the backside into another bottomless trough of the wave, the water swirling around his feet and rushing for the scuppers.

'Unlock me,' said Straw. 'Otherwise we're both going to the bottom.'

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.