Impact

69

Harry Burr walked down the shingled beach, semiautomatic pistol in one hand, probing the woods and rocks with his flashlight, searching for a glimpse of fleeting figures, a face crouching among the trees, something. He knew they were on the island--their dinghy was still up on the beach and burgers had been burning on the stove. He was also pretty sure Ford didn't have a piece--otherwise he'd have used it in the bar or at the parking lot. So he was the only man with a gun.

He swore under his breath. Somehow they'd gotten wind of his coming. They'd probably heard the sound of his boat engine, which at night carried across the water a long distance. Still, he was holding all the cards; he'd cornered them on a small island and there was no way they could escape--except by dinghy. They couldn't swim to their boat--the tide was coming in full bore and the currents were swirling past the island at several knots. They'd be swept past before they'd ever make it.

There were two dinghies on the island: his and theirs.

It wasn't hard to see what they'd do: try to get one of them. His first job was to secure them. He walked down the beach to where their dinghy was pulled up. He thought of shoving it off into the current but decided that would be risky, leaving himself without a backup if something should go wrong. Instead, grasping the painter, he hauled it up into the woods where it was more or less hidden. Then he removed the oars and hid each one in widely separated locations, shoving them into raspberry thickets. It would take hours to find them.

Now to secure his own boat.

A sudden light above his head caused him to duck and spin around, gun at the ready, until he realized it was coming from above. The full Moon. He stared up at it as a bright jet seemed to come off its surface and extend into the night sky. Another bright spot appeared on the opposite side. What the hell was it?

Just a strange cloud passing over the Moon, creating a striking optical illusion.

Moving rapidly and silently through the trees, he worked his way toward the northern end of the island until he had reached his own dinghy. It sat peacefully in the brightening moonlight. He was about to haul it up and hide it as he'd done the other one when he had an idea: to leave it in full view as bait, hide and wait for them to come get it. When they found their own dinghy missing, they'd come after his. What other course of action did they have? They couldn't hide forever.

He took up a well-hidden position behind a jumble of rocks at the edge of the shore and waited.

The sky grew brighter by slow degrees, and he glanced upward, wondering what the hell was going on with the Moon. The strange cloud kept getting bigger, and it really didn't look like a cloud after all.

He turned away, focusing on the problem at hand, waiting for them to come. He hardly had to wait: after only a few minutes he spied a shadow moving along the edge of the forest; he raised his Desert Eagle, switched on the internal laser sights, then thought better of it and turned them off. No reason to spook them with a dancing red dot. They would be close enough for a kill without it.

But the silhouette was alone. It was the girl. Ford was not with her.