The Black Silent (48 page)

In his mind he saw another explosion of white. He was in the room, Anna was screaming.

Another explosion rocked the cavern. The shock wave slammed him against the rock.

This time he could see Anna screaming, begging to die.

In front of him, his female captor taunted him. She had loosened one of his hands.

Another explosion slammed into him. Her lips were forming obscene words. Faster than she could see, Sam drove his fingers into her eyes and felt the membranes give as he pushed deep into the sockets, enough to put out the light forever. He hit the man with his elbow before he could react, the distance between them perfect for achieving maximum force. The blow went to the point of his nose, shattering bone and cartilage, driving it into the brain, dropping him to the floor like a sack of cement.

The woman was clutching her face, screaming. Sam grabbed her gun from the holster at her waist. The other two men had heard the ruckus and ran back into the room with guns drawn. A glance to the side showed a dim, final light in Anna's eyes; she was begging Sam to shoot her, the words and tone pure and without a hint of doubt. Then her head rocked to the side, shattered by another man's bullet. Something broke inside Sam, blurring the actions that followed.

But here, near the end of his life, huddling in a rock cavern under assault, Sam felt a great release inside him that he could not explain with words.

Once again his eyes saw what lay before him. The small building was full of bullet puncture and other, jagged holes. In the space of a few seconds, the laboratory had been ruined.

For a moment nothing happened. It was dead quiet. Sam looked around at what little was left of the wooden stairs, also blown apart. It didn't appear that the remaining fragments of the stairway would hold a man; Frick may have outsmarted himself.

Sam looked over at Len. He groaned at what he saw and tried not to second-guess himself. Len lay on the floor bleeding from the head. If he weren't dead already, he soon would succumb. Sam looked again just in time to see the green blur of the next falling weapon. Once again he covered and again came a terrific explosion.

He looked at his watch. Three minutes had passed. A man on a rope descended quickly with a rappelling device alongside the stairs. Scooping up Len's Uzi, Sam fired a burst.

The man on the rope appeared dead when he hit the ground. Within sixty seconds a rocket came down the hole and there was another fiery explosion near the base of the stairs.

The next time a rocket launcher appeared out of the ceiling, it was pointed nearly parallel to the ceiling. When it was released, a blinding explosion appeared across the cave, some fifty feet in front of Sam. Even though he was behind solid rock, the shock wave traveled around the vault and hit Sam like a fist. But for his hands over his ears, he knew he would be deaf. Another man rappelled against the destroyed stairs, only this time the rocket launcher appeared simultaneously. Sam didn't want to lose his ears, so he covered. His eyes were closed just long enough to avoid being blinded by the flash. The man hit the ground, shooting an automatic weapon at him. It was probably a P90, a superior weapon to the Uzi.

Sam fired back, hitting the man, but to no immediate effect.
Flak jacket.
He glanced around the cavern. Instead of watching the man on the ground, he looked to the ceiling.

The moment he saw the rocket launcher come down, he released a burst at the opening.

A hail of bullets poured in from the man on the ground. Sam flattened himself against the rock, but not before he saw the rocket launcher fall. He had wounded the man who held it.

Sam heard sounds of gunfire from a new direction, in the distance, and he imagined a firefight wherever the extra exit tunnels emerged. He wondered how many of the old men would be slaughtered by Frick. It renewed his determination. Taking a terrible chance, he tossed his coat out from the rock, drawing a hail of bullets. He took the moment to focus on the fallen rocket launcher and to fire at it. With a near blinding flash it exploded a few yards from the shooter. As he ran for the small, steel portal, Sam could see the mangled body.

This wasn't going the way he had planned.

As quickly as possible, Haley, Ben, Nelson, and Stu donned bulky diving suits, known as dry suits, designed to keep the moisture out and warmth in. Haley, like many marine biologists, was an experienced diver, and they were ready in a third of the time that might normally be required by the inexperienced. They pulled the dry suits over their clothes, while more explosions came from above. All Haley could think about was Sam.

She cursed herself for letting him stay.

When ready, they dropped the sea sleds in the sea and did a large scissor step into the water, which Haley discovered was at least twenty feet deep. They each grabbed a sled, pulled the triggerlike throttle, and started down into a round rock bowl, cored by a corrugated pipe of at least ten feet in diameter. The pipe was the only exit.

Haley and the others had gone through the same steel portal at the rear of a cave and into a rough tunnel carved from the rock. Fortunately, the lights still worked. Sam didn't want to be stuck feeling his way around in the blackness with no light. Behind the steel door he looked for a crossbar and found it. A stout board slipped through two steel holders affixing the door in the closed position. It was a common but brilliant idea. If they had no more antitank rockets, they might be stymied for long enough to enable Haley and Ben to escape.

When Sam came to a fork in the tunnel, he took the left, as Ben had said. The right-hand fork probably had led the others to the surface.

Sam climbed down a circular stairwell of cut stone that seemed endless. When he got to the bottom, he found another much smaller vault carved in the rock, its floor primarily seawater.

Off the main vault was a side vault, housing a closetlike chamber. Just in front of the chamber they had laid out two sets of dive gear and a couple torpedo-shaped sleds. He had seen but had never personally used the latter. Another explosion rocked the stone around him, its blast forcing air and debris into the vault.

So much for his head start.

Without warning Sam was plunged into darkness, able to see nothing, neither the gear nor even the water. He could not hope to don the intricate dive gear.

He was trapped.

E
ach sea sled had a bright light that lit the inside of the pipe, the bottom of which was covered with a sprinkling of sand, which stirred from the quiet whir of the propellers as they skimmed over the rippled surface, their chests just inches from the sand. It was claustrophobic and the thought that you couldn't just rise and burst from the surface into the clean salt air was never far from consciousness.

The divers entered single-file and continued for about three minutes, then broke into open water at a depth of about sixty feet.

Ben turned parallel to the beach, obviously intending to come up a good distance from the lodge. Would they be shot like fish in a barrel? Haley worried about that, and she worried even more about Sam.

Based on his memory, Sam felt for the pile of dive gear and turned on the air to one tank. Pushing the purge valve, he verified that it had some air and hoped it was full.

Feeling

the second tank, he unscrewed the regulator and opened the valve, creating an eerie, very loud hissing sound as the tank began to empty.

The shoulder straps on the buoyancy compensator doubled as a backpack. Sam slipped it on over his pants and shirt and managed to find the mask by the tank and some fins.

Once he had the tank, mask, and fins on, he fired the Uzis in the direction of the water, hoping to scare someone with the sound.

"We need more lights," he heard someone shout from above. All his diving had been for sport, and usually in the tropics, and no one had ever shown him how to turn on a sled.

Given that he had as little as a minute or two, he knew he had to get in the water and get out of sight. He pulled on the fins, sucked the mask tight to his face to make sure he had a seal, and sat on the edge of the rocks. In the water with the sled he tried the trigger throttle. Nothing. There was no time to grope in the darkness and guess at where the switch might be. Going into the cold ocean with no dive suit and no light was foolish, but it was his only choice. He kicked in a direction he thought was down, until he hit the bottom, then swam with his hands touching the bottom, until he hit a rock sidewall. It was pitch black and he could see nothing. The cold felt worse than he had imagined; he didn't know how long he could stay conscious this time around.

Feeling along the rock, he hoped for an opening. The rock disappeared and it felt like metal. As his fingers ran along the corrugated metal wall, he thought about meeting his Maker. Even if he made it out to the sea, he wasn't at all sure he would be able to remain down long enough.

Without doubt the cliffs would be rimmed with shooters.

Frick and Khan had remained in the lodge by the shattered trunk.

"Maybe we should go down," Khan said.

"Anderson had months or years to prepare security here," Frick said. "There have to be other exits, some on land, some in the sea. I think they'll come up in the ocean and a boat will come. That's why we heard about boats and divers on President Channel. It's the reason nobody notices large groups driving vehicles in and out. It's why I sent men to the bluff. Let's get a report first."

When the report came, Frick didn't like what he heard. No live bodies and apparently no significant research materials—written or otherwise—anywhere in the cavern that they could find. The search was continuing.

"So where the hell did they go?" he asked his man.

"Down into a stone stairway," the man radioed back, breathless. "It goes to a pool, looks like the sea. There's no usable diving equipment. There are tanks, but the valves are all open and they're empty. We can't pursue. Repeat, we—"

"I heard you," Frick growled. It was just as he'd thought, although he hoped his men would catch up before they completed their exit. "Khan?"

"Yo."

"Get men down the bluff. If anybody comes to the surface in front of the bluffs, cut 'em to pieces—unless it's Ben Anderson. Him we have to swim for."

"At this late date, what good will shooting divers do us?" Khan asked.

"It'll make me feel a hell of a lot better. I want Chase dead. He won't forget."

"All right. But then we take what we have and we leave," Khan said.

"I'll take the sheriff's boat around from West Sound. You go by land. We should get them one way or the other."

"After that, I've had enough," Khan said. "If the men find something, I'll bring it." He paused. "There's one other thing. McStott's back on the octopus. Said he told you about it before, but now he has proof that it's got the genetic markers. Could be at least part of the formula."

"He also said it could take a long time to learn anything from it," Frick said.

"Look where we're at," Khan said. "You wanna leave it behind?"

"So what do we need? Just a good-size piece of that ugly bastard?"

"That's what he says."

Frick snapped his ringers. "Wait a minute. You suppose
that's
where they're going?" He thought for a second. "I bet they are. Kill the octopus and hide the carcass, and the secret's safe. Call the foundation and tell them to stop anybody from getting near Glaucus."

"All we got's McStott, Rolf, and a couple broken-down old night watchmen."

Frick realized he was right. His radio crackled: "There's men coming out a hole in the ground."

Now Frick could hear the shots.

"Big bastard's in the rear and shooting an automatic."

"Let's go," Frick said.

They ran about twenty-five yards into some trees and came to three of their men hunkered down. Almost immediately they jumped flat on the ground as automatic fire whacked the trees, throwing wood about like a buzz saw.

The radio crackled again: "There's a boat."

"Follow the guys on foot," Frick said to Khan. They called for more men and Frick ran back toward the lodge.

Breaking out of the trees, Frick ran across the plateau through green grass grown high by fall rains. When they made the edge, they saw two divers in the back of a large yacht.

A third was climbing up the ladder. His men were down the bluff somewhere and obviously weren't seeing the boat.

The dive tanks were in the back in the cockpit of the yacht, and even as he watched, a man at the helm gave it power and the boat pulled out. Frick looked for a man with an automatic weapon but found none. He grabbed his semiautomatic pistol and aimed, thinking he might shoot the dive tanks; he emptied the pistol.

"Too far away," one man, who had just come from his car, said. "We need one of those rifles in the Suburban or one of the automatics. And you don't even know who you're shooting at."

The man was a regular deputy and Frick wished he hadn't come in from the road.

"It couldn't possibly be the people shooting at the other men down underground. They haven't had time to get out."

"It's their accomplices, I'm sure of it," Frick said.

Khan came running up. "There was a road, they got in cars. I didn't see it, but a couple men came back and said it was useless. It was obviously a planned escape route."

"Put men to work searching the entire place underground. We're going after that boat.

It's big and not very fast. The sheriff's boat will eat it up."

"Look, the yacht stopped," Frick said, looking way down the coastline. "Let's grab the rifles quick." Frick and Khan ran to the truck, looked in the back, grabbed four M4s, dropped two on the ground, and ran with two.

"You men get the rifles!" Khan shouted. "And start firing!"

They went back to the cliff edge, ready to cut the big yacht to pieces, but it had disappeared, probably behind the rocks that made a small point close to shore.

Frick noticed that Khan seemed to have forgotten all about protocol—the sheriff's men weren't supposed to be killing people.