Impact by Douglas Preston Page A

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.
    Ten minutes later they hit the upper part of the ravine, and paused at the banks of the stream to catch their breaths. Ford knelt and threw water into his face and neck, trying to cool himself off.
    “They’re tracking us,” said Khon. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
    Ford nodded. “Upstream. They won’t expect it.”
    Wading in the water, stepping from pool to rushing pool, Ford climbed up the loose boulders of the steep streambed. A half hour of grueling climbing brought them to a spring, where water poured from a fissure. A ridgeline lay a hundred yards above and a dry gully went off to the right.
    They crossed the gully and climbed the ridge, down the other side, and up the next one, bulling through dense thickets of brush. A couple of hours passed and twilight began to fall. The forest sank into green gloaming.
    Khon threw himself down on a bed of small ferns, rolled on his back, tucked his hands behind his head. A big smile spread over his placid features. “Lovely. Let’s make camp.”
    Ford sank onto a fallen log, breathing hard. He took out his canteen, handed it to Khon,