Armageddon Read Free Page A

have come for are there.”
    He pointed to the rock. One of the tourists was treading water next to it; the other must have been hiding behind him.
    “There?” asked the man near the wheel of the boat.
    “Yes,” said Sahurah. “Take us there.”
    He took the machine-gun from Adi’s hands, cradling it against his shirt. While it was heavier than the AK47 he had first learned to shoot as a boy, it was surprisingly small for a gun that could fire so rapidly and with so much effect. Sahurah had only a pistol himself, strapped in a holster beneath his shirt.
    Adi took the gun back greedily as soon as he was in the boat.
    “We will not shoot them unless it is necessary,” Sahurah reminded him.
    Adi frowned, but then set himself against the side of the boat in a squat, holding the weapon’s barrel upward and protecting it from the spray as they turned and started toward the rock. The helmsman brought the boat around in an arc, circling around from the west.
    The man at the wheel cut the engine when they were twenty meters from the rock. Sahurah reached to his shirt for his gun; he would fire a shot and then tell the tourists to surrender. He would use sweet words to make the idiots believe he meant no harm. The Westerners were, without exception, cowards, eager to believe whatever they were told.
    Adi tensed beside him. Sahurah knew he was about to fire. He turned to stop him, but it was too late: the gun roared. Sahurah turned and saw Adi falling backward as the machine-gun fired—he thought the little man had been pushed back by its recoil and tried to grab him, but both Adi and the gun fell off into the water. Stunned, Sahurah reached for him when he felt something punch against him, a stone that tore into his rib. He grabbed for his weapon and found himself in the bottom of the boat, finally realizing that the man on the rocks had a gun.
     
    ZEN’S FIRST SHOT MISSED, BUT HIS SECOND AND THIRD caught the man with the machine-gun in the head. He fired three more shots; at least one struck the man next to the gunman. The boat jerked to the left and roared away out to sea.
    Zen lost his grip on the rock as the wake swelled up. He couldn’t keep the gun above the water, let alone himself—he slid down and then pushed up with his left hand, clambering up on top of the rock.
    The boat was headed off. Thank God, he thought to himself. Thank God.
    Something ricocheted against one of the rocks about thirty feet from him. Zen threw himself into the waves, still clutching the pistol. He pushed around to the seaward side of the rock then surfaced.
    There was a man on shore about fifty yards away with an AK47. Zen went down beneath the waves as the man aimed and fired again. The rocks would make it almost impossible for the gunman to hit him unless he came out on the isthmus. A second gunman stood near the brush on the eastern end of the beach; Zen paddled to his right, finding a spot where he couldn’t be seen from that angle. He was safe, at least for a while.
    Then he heard the motor of the speed boat revving in the distance. They were coming back.
     
    WHEN BREANNA SAW THE OBJECT IN THE DISTANCE, SHE thought at first it was a large crocodile. She stopped mid-stroke, frozen by fear.
    Then she saw that it was bobbing gently and thought it must be a raft. She started toward it, and in only a few strokes realized it was part of a dock that had been abandoned ages ago and now sat forlornly in the water. Abandoned or not, it was the first sign of civilization she had seen since setting out and she swam with all her energy, kicking and flailing so ferociously that she reached it in only a few seconds. She pulled herself against it to rest. As she did, she saw a small skiff maybe seventy-five yards away, the sort of small boat a fisherman might use to troll a quiet lagoon on a hazy afternoon. An old American-made Evinrude motor, its logo faded, sat at the stern. Breanna threw herself forward, stroking overhand in a sprint to the