The Black Silent (27 page)

"Understood." Frick breathed a sigh of relief and signed off, expressing more gratitude than he felt.

"We have something suspicious on Warbass," Khan said as Frick hung up the phone.

"I'm sending in a bunch of cars."

"Do it," Frick said.

Then it hit him. The so-called Sam was a professional with an agenda. It was the only reasonable explanation for all that was happening. This was the moment when Sam had worked the maximum distraction, and if that was true, this was the moment of maximum danger for Sam and his plan. So what was the most dangerous thing Sam might be doing?

It was obvious, now that he thought about it. Frick grabbed his radio and advised everyone that Sam, aka Robert Chase, might be in the building or in the Oaks Building next door. Soon they'd search the workshop, which was fine with Frick. It was time the world find out about the brutal slaying of Detective Ranken.

Sam took from Ben's office the volumes Haley had described—four thick three-ring binders—and moved toward the window. He stopped for a moment. With the volumes he'd already gathered, he now had a sizable burden. Too much to carry onto the roof. He needed to narrow it down.

Taking what he could, he opened the window and spread four new volumes down the roof, along with the two he had brought from the shop, the bases of all six binders resting in the gutter. He turned off the office lights and then in agony forced his bad leg through the window and crawled onto the narrow wisp of a ledge. He closed the window and moved down the ledge until he reached the side of the dormer. Here he half-reached and half-crawled to pull each volume to his sorting spot.

Risking the giveaway of the beam from his penlight, he skimmed as fast as he could.

What would normally take minutes or hours had to be done in seconds.

He started at the front of the first volume from the workshop, which discussed methane hydrates and catastrophic release mechanisms. Thermonuclear release was the most eye-catching chapter title. Sam quickly tore out the chapters that seemed most interesting and stuffed them in a bag.

He quickly found what appeared to relate to the science of aging. It focused on cell mitochondria. Fine. He took those pages as well. He had to run, but the question came again to Sam:
What is going on with these people?

When Rachael finally reached her parents', she slowed down and stood off from the dock about one hundred yards. The water was calm because it was sheltered from the winds and there wasn't much boat traffic at 8:15 on Sunday night. A phone call to her parents' house produced no one. The engines idled comfortably, but loudly, with a deep, throaty gallop, the exhaust blowing forward in the slight breeze, making an acrid smell.

Rachael kicked the engines out of neutral and the boat moved ahead. There didn't seem to be anyone about, but there was an eerie feel in the night air and she wondered if she shouldn't go to a marina, instead.

Something moved in the shadows of the channel next to the rocks near her father's dock. Maybe she was imagining things. She spooked, turned a 180, and increased her speed to twenty knots.

She didn't want to be alone with Frick's hired men. As she moved away and was turning the corner into Fidalgo Bay, the boat out of the shadows picked up speed and began following. It was a small runabout. What were the odds on a wintry night?

The runabout increased its speed and kept coming. A wave of panic washed over her.

Maybe they had been waiting. Rachael called her father's cell and got no answer. He normally would be out for dinner at this hour on a Sunday night and sometimes he turned off his phone. She couldn't help but wonder if he was all right.

What have I gotten into?

She came hard to the starboard, moving in close to the giant rocky point, sure of the bottom from her days as a teenager. Quickly the runabout changed course as well.

Thinking that she might have to do something drastic, she turned on the forward-looking sonar and increased her speed to forty knots—insanely fast for the tiny channel through the mudflats. In thirty seconds she slowed as she came into a very narrow channel only about 6.6 feet deep. Her props would be stirring mud badly. Abruptly she stopped and turned the large yacht around. She risked running fast aground but didn't. It was precision piloting with the electronics.

Beyond the major marinas with exits off the channel, she turned off all the lights and waited in the dark. The only way someone would come all the way down the channel in a runabout would be if they were looking for her.

Like a bull watching the matador, she considered what she would do. If she were onshore, taking her in secret would be harder for Frick. Out here who would notice? She took out her flare pistol and loaded it. The other boat was warily following her path down the channel. The lights of the gas plants on the far side of the bay to her right shone like pyres on the horizon, like something out of Tolkien.

She got on channel 16 and chose the direct approach.

"What do you want?"

"Just to talk," someone said.

That was amazingly stupid of them, she thought.

A new voice came on the line. "This is the United States Coast Guard. Vessels on channel sixteen, this is an emergency and hailing channel only."

"Coast guard, coast guard, this is the vessel
Inevitable.
I am Rachael Sullivan in Fidalgo Bay, and I am being chased by armed men in a small boat." She idled the throttles and put the shafts in forward and turned on all the lights, including the spot.

"This is coast guard, Bellingham Group, switch and answer twenty-two alpha."

She switched and repeated the message, no doubt to a disbelieving seaman. Still, they would be compelled to send a boat.

According to the line between buoys, as shown on the chart plotter, they were moved over up against the edge of the channel. She stopped. Studying her pursuers' position on the radar chart plotter overlay, they actually appeared to be on the mud. But that wasn't likely. It gave her an idea.

The boat was about two hundred yards distant and she plotted a course to put it right under her bow. She increased speed to fifteen knots. The boat wanted to plane, but she kept it half on the step in the maximum bow-high position. Then she adjusted the trim tabs and brought the bow higher still. She couldn't see over
Inevitable's
bow now; she had to bring her down so that on the balls of her feet she could see her quarry.

Inevitable,
at sixty-five feet, weighed fifty-four thousand pounds and could walk right over the runabout. They would die if she so desired, and she wouldn't receive a scratch.

Bent prop shafts, props, and fiberglass damage were a pain, but they would not kill her.

They were seconds away and dead ahead.

The radio crackled. "Stop, for Christ's sake!"

They fired a flare right at her windshield and it burst bright against the hard plastic.

In seconds she turned off the autopilot, took the wheel, used her eye, and hit the throttle, digging the huge props into the water, sinking the stern and throwing a mammoth wake.

With the precision of a marksman she smacked the small boat a glancing blow. The impact picked the runabout up and tossed it like a chef might flip an omelette. The boat almost ended on its side; her huge wake pushed it high onto the mud; water to the floorboards, no doubt, and grounded.

A thud came against
Inevitable's
side, followed by a violent lurch. She'd hit the mud.

She veered back to starboard and heaved a sigh of relief as
Inevitable
continued on up the channel.

The torrent of curses that came over the radio must have astonished the coast guard.

A coast guard helicopter was coming in close, followed by a coast guard motor lifeboat turning the corner into the bay. The jig was up. She killed the power and waited. This was the beginning of what would be a long night with a lot of paperwork. She hoped the coasties would listen. Thank God her pursuers had shot the flare and shattered the windshield. Given that, and her original call for help, they'd be the focus of the investigation.

Her part of the plan had just begun. Now she could only pray that Sam and Haley would escape Frick long enough for her to get some help.

F
rick sprinted down the hall to the other end of the second floor, through the breezeway, and into the Oaks Building. His gun was out and adrenaline pumping. He slowed.

Slipping into Ben Anderson's lab with his gun at the ready, he was actually surprised that Robert Chase was nowhere to be seen. He checked the closets and the electron microscope room and other side rooms. Nothing.

Sweat poured off him. Back in Ben Anderson's office he saw a man and drew his gun, then stood down. It was one of the guards, staring openmouthed.

Saying nothing, Frick ran downstairs into the workshop, suddenly feeling sick with worry in his gut.

People made little slips when they did things in a hurry and he had created this particular set piece in a few minutes. When he arrived in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, he could see one regular deputy and one of his men standing in the room with Ranken hanging in the background. So far, so good. It should shock them.

"What happened here?"

"Somebody got in here and Ranken must have found them. They took his gun and his spray."

That shook Frick, but he didn't let on. Could he be that lucky, to have Sam in the building with Ranken's gun?

"It's that Sam—Robert Chase—or whatever he's calling himself at the moment," Frick growled. "He's got to be in the building, and now he's armed. Take a picture. Show all the regular deputies. I want them to see what they're up against. Get Ostrowski down here for the forensics." He turned on his heel and ran back to the Sanker Building and the conference room. Before he went in, he got on the radio and announced Ranken's death and made Chase's guilt a fact as fast as he could. His people would alert the media shortly, as to a new "grisly" killing.

When he entered the conference room, he broke up a conversation between Khan and one of the men.

Khan looked uneasy. That couldn't be good. Frick dismissed the other man.

"They found another body," Khan said, obviously suspicious. "But you look pleased for some reason."

"I'm sure Chase is in the building. This is our chance to get him."

"How do you know?"

"He killed Detective Ranken and took his gun. Or somebody did, and who else would do that?"

"Seriously?" Khan looked unconvinced.

"Absolutely." Frick spoke it like a challenge. "He took Ranken's gun."

"I'll start a search."

"Tell the guys in the boat not to waste any more time hunting bodies."

Khan began calling the security people in the building.

Frick picked up a call from their Vegas man at the Sullivan family dock in Anacortes.

"Rachael Sullivan arrived," the guy said, "or rather she drove up near the dock, then turned around and ran. We had three men in a boat. They went after her and, I guess, they're stuck in the mud."

"Where's the woman?"

"I don't know. Our guys talked to me on the radio and said they screwed up. They say she radioed the coast guard."

Frick thought for a moment. Staying around was riskier than letting her go at this point.

"Just leave, there's nothing to do with her."

'That was smart," Khan said.

"I'm gonna go talk to McStott," Frick said, "see what the greedy little bastard's up to."

Frick found him in a large lab area.

McStott seemed glad to see him.

"I found something weird."

"What?"

"A binder that advocates a recovery method for methane."

Frick sighed. He couldn't help himself; he was impatient.

"Listen," McStott begged. "This is worth a fortune."

The word
fortune
did it.

"I'm listening," Frick said.

"This stuff about mining methane from microbes is not crazy, like I thought," McStott said. "They may have this stuff nailed."

The egghead was almost squeaking with excitement.

"The global reserves for methane are eighty thousand times the global reserves for natural gas. Available U.S. reserves alone are 5.7 trillion cubic meters, and that's enough to meet this country's needs for the next two thousand years."

Frick let out a long, low whistle despite himself.

"So how are we gonna get rich?" he asked.

"There are problems with methane."

"Like what?" Frick asked.

"There are three, actually, aside from the danger of blowing something up. Methane is in two forms: frozen with water in an icelike substance called a hydrate, and beneath the hydrates as a gas. When the hydrate turns into gas, its volume increases by a factor of one hundred sixty."

"Okay. So?"

"The first problem is that the methane diffuses and is hard to collect. To make a long story short, they've found ways to get around that problem, to some extent. They don't specify how the mining is done. They only say it's not cheap or easy, but it is doable.

Let's leave it at that."

"Let's," said Frick.

"Problem two is finding exactly the right place to drill. Even though it covers large areas, drill sites are much more rare. That's the key to recovery."

Frick nodded. "And?"

"The third problem is that it's still a fossil fuel. It's the cleanest fossil fuel, but it still makes CO . Right?"

2

"If you say so. I suppose the do-gooders don't like that."

"That's right," said McStott. "So they developed a closed-system way of using it to make electricity. They burn it and use the heat to make steam and the steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. They break down the CO into water and carbon. The 2

carbon goes into the ground, leaving only water vapor."

"Where is all this written down?"

"That's the trouble. They've hidden all the details. So we don't have all the how-to parts," said McStott, "but at least we know what to look for. This is the end of the energy crisis as we know it, man. If somebody does something about it."