The Black Silent (42 page)

"Yeah," she shouted from a distance.

"Come here, fast."

She kicked the starter twice more before the engine caught. Then she was near them in seconds.

To locate Sam and Sarah she had flicked on the landing light, illuminating a swath at least one hundred yards or more in length. She could see the three men, two appeared headed for a point to her right and the third headed directly at the plane. Sam and Sarah were close by, swimming toward her, Sarah on her back pushed by Sam on his belly. She killed the lights and gunned the throttle, then came up beside them.

Now she flicked on the cockpit lights, giving the area around the hull a soft glow, allowing her to see.

Sarah was floundering and nearly incoherent. Putting a ladder over the side, Haley climbed down and tried to help Sarah up. Sarah was going into shock, from hypothermia probably, and Haley couldn't lift her the couple of feet up and in the plane.

Suddenly it occurred to her that Sam had disappeared.

She had been so intent on Sarah that she didn't see one of the men right near the ladder.

He had a gun pointed at her gut.

"Drop her and help me," the man said.

Sam was ten feet away and swimming toward the man from behind.

"I said let her go."

"I can't, she'll die," Haley said. "And if you kill me, I can't help you, anyway."

The man's gun hand was shaking. His lips were blue. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
The safety.
As if telegraphing the thought, the man glanced at the gun. Then the gun boomed.
Missed.

Sam grabbed the gun and swung it down.

They began to struggle.

"Paddle, Haley."

She knew he was afraid of this man getting to the plane. Desperate, she pulled Sarah up on the edge of the plane, draping her body and putting her hands on the seat where Sarah could grip. Grabbing a paddle, Haley pulled on each stroke trying to move the plane away. She hoped the plane was moving fast enough. Haley could hardly think with Sarah's terrible groaning in her ear and Sarah about to fall back in.

Sam and the man had disappeared. Pain squeezed Haley's heart as she imagined that Sam might die.

"Hold on, Sarah," she said through gritted teeth.

She heard screaming from the man fighting with Sam.

"Let go, let go," the man yelled; then he went under again. Sam was still nowhere to be seen. They both surfaced. "Oh God, my fingers," the man shrieked.

Sam hit him in the jaw and he disappeared. Then Sam was pulling something, no doubt the man.

Haley stopped paddling and turned around, keeping a strong hand on Sarah's arm. "Let him sink."

"Maybe in a minute," Sam said. "Right now I'm busy trying to save him."

In one of the strangest moments of her life, Haley smiled at Sam's joke.

He drew the guy to the side of the boat. Sarah was still groaning, but more quietly now.

For a moment Sam let go of the man and helped shove Sarah in the plane. Quickly he grabbed his assailant, who was starting to sink.

Sam wedged the unconscious man's head and shoulder through the ladder rungs until he could climb up and into the plane. Then he took the plane's dock line, wrapped it under the man's arms, crawled out on the wing, and tied the man under the wing to a tie-down eye.

Haley was exasperated that they were saving this killer, while Sarah was suffering and hypothermia was menacing the three of them. Then she felt ashamed and knew Sam was right. They were not like Frick and never would be.

Sam was shaking badly. His stamina had left him.

Sarah curled in a ball from the sting of the salt and shivered from the cold. She could not endure much more.

Haley revved the plane's engine.
Still a little gas left,
she guessed.

Frick pulled up to the Harlasens' and found a man named "Philly" Duggan in the front yard. The first name was a handle reflecting his choice of baseball teams.

"What's going on?"

"Residents are in the house, except for two of their boys. We have the boys cuffed in a car."

"Where's Sarah James?" Frick asked.

"Out on the water. All hell broke loose out there. I've heard shots and screams, but I can't see a thing. We made the Harlasen lady talk when we threatened a kid. They had Sarah James hid pretty good. Chase and Haley Walther went off in a car, then the Lake airplane. Rafe's team jumped in one of the family boats and went out, figuring the plane would land. I guess they came back for the James woman. Besides, the plane is full of holes, so they ain't goin' far. We know that."

"You're holding two kids hostage?" Frick knew he shouldn't have been surprised. "You threatened them in front of their mother?"

The man nodded.

"Why didn't you call me or Khan?"

"We did, but you didn't answer," Philly said. "And it all happened so fast, I mean we heard the plane. It was seconds."

Frick was shocked but displayed utter calm, as was his habit before killing. There would be no means of explaining this on Monday morning unless he created one. There was still the slim possibility that he would be around giving explanations.

"I heard a lot of shooting and hollering out there on the water," the guy said, hoping for redemption. "Rafe's got 'em. I'm sure of it."

"All right," Frick said. "You take this gun and come with me. You shoot this family.

We'll say Chase did it."

"Hey. Wait a minute. I've killed people, you know. But not kids. Not a family."

"Fine." Frick shot Duggan between the eyes before the man could think to protest.

Strangely, he didn't drop immediately. It was as if he were staring out from either side of the bullet hole before realizing that he couldn't stand.

Frick walked toward the house, knowing that he had no choice but to kill them all and blame Sam.

Sarah, barely conscious, clearly suffered hypothermia. Sam dug a coat out of the amphib's storage compartment and covered her.

"Now what?" Haley asked.

"Those men are poor swimmers, but they'll probably make those rock walls and crawl out," Sam said.

"I'm not worried about them," Haley said. "I'm worried about the Harlasens. More'll be coming. You know it."

"Take us to that big yacht. Just taxi us there, on the water. I'll go back to the Harlasens, once we get Sarah taken care of."

Halfway to the yacht, Sam signaled Haley to approach the shore. In a couple minutes they had motored to a sloping rock face on the westerly point and then paddled the plane in until they bumped rocks, which were like granite shark's teeth in the thigh-deep water.

Sam pulled the unconscious gunman onto the rocks and left him. He had a police radio, and they left it on; the GPS in the radio would send a location signal to the dispatcher and a deputy would eventually show up to save him.

The man had a pen, which was surprisingly serviceable, and they had a piece of paper in the cockpit. Sam scribbled on the paper: /
am a killer and a criminal brought here from
Las Vegas by Garth Frick, of the Sanker Corporation.

"As if they'll believe you," Haley said.

"It's a start, whether they believe me or not."

"Now what? We're going to die of exposure."

"I know," Sam said, his body already shaking. "Let's get to the yacht."

"We'll wake the dead with this motor," Haley pointed out.

"She may die of exposure if we don't." Sam nodded toward Sarah, huddled under the light summer coat.

"Pulling up that anchor with the windlass will be too noisy. I don't think we can take the whole yacht."

"Agreed. We'll warm up and take the big inflatable to Orcas."

They pushed off the plane and Haley tried to start the engine. She hit it a dozen times, but it wouldn't engage.

"This time we're really out of fuel," Haley said. "Now what?"

Inside the Harlasen home, in the living room, Frick found rope and tape on the floor.

Duggan had tried to bind them after a fashion and was counting on keeping them under control, with the two younger boys as hostages. Now the entire family was gone, this after having freed the two young boys.

Frick kicked in a large-screen TV set. He was dealing with morons. The minute Duggan had walked out of the house, they finished loosening their bonds and found the two boys and headed into the thick forest. There was plenty of
that
around. The area was covered in second-growth trees and the Harlasens apparently had been here for a generation or two, so they had to know the whole forest and its ridges, thickets, and swales.

Frick ran out of the house, toward the beach, where Rafe Black and his guys had allegedly trapped Sam and Haley Walther. On the shore he strained to discern something on the black water, but could see only the shadow of the hills. The water had calmed after the front and was quietly lapping at the shore, largely undisturbed by wind or swell.

It was near high tide, so the air smelled clean and salty, the herring in the bay making little splats as they jumped to avoid some hungry predator.

Frick did not like the quiet. With the near-silence ringing in his ears, he walked out toward the easternmost point of McArdle Bay. Given the steep rock near the water, he had to stay high and in the trees, and it was difficult to see through the heavy forest. He told himself he could not be diverted from his main targets and his new goal. This was no longer a job. He wouldn't stick around, trying to explain all the bodies. Ben Anderson's discoveries were all that he needed; then he could flee and begin planning their sale. The notion was somewhat freeing.

He put in a call to dispatch and said there were cars at the Harlasens', but no men.

Robert Chase, aka Sam, had terrorized the family, which had escaped, then shot Special Deputy Duggan right between the eyes and left him dead. He was concerned that Chase had slaughtered the remainder of the men as they pursued his plane in the bay.

Stories remained necessary in the near term, and Frick thought he'd just told a good one.

As best he could, he walked parallel to the beach, just inside the tree line. There was no answer on any radio, and that was not good. He had most of the men on the island coming, but it was difficult to reconstruct what might have happened. They had heard a plane, but they really didn't know where it landed. Rafe hadn't had the good sense to report on progress, so there was no telling where that Zodiac had gone. Even full of men, it would go twenty knots easily. They might be around the point, but if they were there, they should still answer the radio. More likely, Chase had taken down Rafe and three men and gotten away.

But to where?

On instinct he looked to the sky. No plane there. None on the water, at least within view.

He cursed in his head in long, rhythmic phrases with such guttural texture that his invective made poetry.

This was another waste of his time.

He dialed McStott.

"What are we finding? We're running out of time."

"We've torn apart Ben's home place," McStott said. "Your guys are over there tearing apart the beach house, and we've gone through the Gibbons residence. I'm convinced he does have something amazing—beyond the methane mining. But exactly what, I don't know."

"And why do we conclude that he has something amaz-ing?"

"Because he's been talking to the government and to American Bayou Technologies, and everybody is imploring him to tell them what he knows. Although I'm not at all sure that the requests pertain to the same subject. Or maybe they do and I just don't see the connection."

"Doomsday, energy crisis, and living several life-spans," Frick said. "Could there be something else?"

"Maybe."

"Are you nuts, McStott? What else could there be?"

"Maybe no other technology, but there's a storehouse, some sort of off-site lab. Best I can tell, it's a large house or building, where he meets with other scientists."

"Where in the hell is it?" Frick asked.

"I think Orcas Island, near West Sound, maybe Deer Harbor. I'm working on it."

"That's one big area, so work faster. I'm tired of all your notions. I want results."

Frick heard the sound of the engine on the amphibian. "Damn," he muttered.

It stopped.

He wondered if they were headed to Orcas Island.

S
tudying the plane, Haley had found a fuel tank switch that sucked from the dregs of a second ruptured tank. For just a second she had fired it up and got them started in the right direction away from the unconscious officer and then shut it down, wincing at the horrible racket.

"To paddle this plane, it's too far and will take too much time," Sam said. "That leaves walking or the motor. If we motor, we wake people and arouse curious eyes."

"Some people get up at this hour. It's all dangerous. I'll leave it up to you. I'm worried about Sarah," Haley said.

"Use the motor to get near; then we paddle."

They both silently cringed at the noise of the big Lycoming engine and, of course, its sound was magnified greatly by their worry. It reverberated off the rocky bluffs and probably caused Haley to shut it down early. It would be a long paddle.

Fortunately, they found a second paddle behind the rear seat. With both Sam and Haley paddling, they reached the yacht in twenty minutes. The hard work had one side benefit: neither felt hypothermia In fact, they were cold but breathing strongly as they approached the yacht from the stern, then climbed out on the fantail.

It was a large, beautifully constructed north-sea trawler design. Once on the stern, teak steps rose to the aft deck. Sam tried the aft main-deck door and found it locked. It was beefy and the glass heavy, so breaking in was a poor option.

He climbed to the wheelhouse and found it locked as well. Normally yachtsmen would hide a key. He climbed back up to the wheelhouse and looked for a hiding place.

Using his fingers to hunt every nook and cranny around the wheelhouse, he found nothing. He studied the far back corner of the upper deck and saw a large round canister that held an emergency life raft. He felt underneath it and all around it. Nothing there.