The Black Silent (32 page)

Stutz sounded skeptical, but Rachael could tell the argument had hit home. This guy was a no-nonsense, get-ahead career officer.

"All right," he said. "I'll try to get someone from the state police. You'll have to wait here on the boat."

Sam was huddled down in the forest. He heard the dog breathing hard, trampling through the bushes covering more ground in a few minutes than a man could cover in an hour. Although the dog was moving away on his circle that would take him back to the water, on the next swing he would probably run right over him. There wasn't enough charcoal in the forest to block his scent if the dog came too near. Unfortunately, he didn't know what
too near
was.

The dog was concentrating on the portion of the forest that lay between the gravel road and the water. Sam had to move deeper into the forest to the far side of the gravel road, and that would make it difficult for him to respond to the plane. It was a tough choice. If she landed and tarried, these men would come with their guns and it would be all over for Haley unless she fled. If she did that, he would be trapped on foot. None of it seemed good.

When Sam hit the road, he resisted the temptation to run down it. It would be an easy place for Frick's men to lie in wait. Instead, he crossed the road quickly, seeing no one, and walked about fifty yards inland. Then, watching the stars, he did his best to parallel the road. It was rough going. He could see nothing and had to hold his hands out in front of him, guiding himself through the tree trunks. The ground occasionally had holes and rocks protruding from the surface. His body hurt in so many places that at times it seemed one whole leg and his back were an interlocking maze of stabbing pains, muscle knots, and aches.

Lying flat on his back undisturbed became his fantasy.

After checking the stars a dozen times and traveling for fifteen to twenty minutes, he turned back toward the water and came to the edge of the road. Far down around a bend he saw what he figured was the faint cast of a flashlight beam against the trees. He supposed the dog was in that vicinity, working back and forth between road and beach.

Nearly dragging his stiff leg, he made it across the road and looked for the trail to the fire pit and found it. In the distance he heard the dog's handler calling the dog; then he heard a woof. Like scalding water on skin the realization came over his mind. The dog was coming closer. No sooner had he thought it, than the dog started whining and barking.

Uh-oh.

This was bad.

He had little time. First he picked up a stick and covered his knees to his shoes with charcoal as fast as he could. It took about thirty seconds. The dog was charging through the woods along the far side of the road, probably on his trail. It sounded as though he were casting about, trying to sift through all the charcoal. It would give Sam a couple minutes. What he was about to do would either save him or kill him. He found a piece of driftwood about the volume of four footballs. He could hide his head behind it; maybe it would help him float.

A large madrona tree stood just up from the rock line. It was nothing but a vague shadow. He felt for the base and, after turning the cell's ringer to silent, placed his phone, watch, and the papers in the bag under the duff right at the base of the tree. Then he found a big rock and put it atop, careful not to put too much weight on the cell phone.

With the first few steps the cold seawater lapped his ankles and immediately set them to aching. It was an ache powerful enough that he very much wanted to step out of the water and find relief. Even worse was the horrible burning from the cuts that he had encountered earlier. Although he tried moving quietly, the dog was coming ever closer, and with his stiff leg some splash was inevitable. It required only seconds to get to deep water. He was still far too close to land. Miserable from the cold boring into his body, probably cooling his vital organs, he winced at the sheer pain of it. He ducked underwater to take off his shoes. It took some fumbling.

The dog's yelps were frantic and the animal was due to break out of the forest.

Sam began swimming with one shoe on the stiff-legged foot and one off. With some effort he stuffed the one shoe into his belt so he could paddle. Placing one hand on the piece of wood, he used the remaining hand to sidestroke and his legs to create a crippled scissors kick. It was tough to swim at all with his sodden clothes. He tried to keep all movement beneath the surface. For some reason, the dog seemed to stop, perhaps running in tight circles, distracted by a scent. Then, after a short time, the dog started running again and soon burst out on the beach, barking. Hopefully, he wouldn't swim.

Sam paddled to keep afloat, knowing the cold would soon kill him. If he ended his life drowning in order not to kill a dog, maybe his decision would count for something, but it would be a dumb decision, nonetheless.

Now the dog was nearly hysterical in his barking. Sam swam into the night, slowly heading toward Shaw Island, knowing the swim was over a mile and that he would never make it. However far he swam from San Juan Island, he would have to swim back. So far that was about sixty yards and growing.

Men arrived on the beach and he guessed he was now probably eighty yards distant. He was too far from shore to see at night with an ordinary flashlight.

"Come on, Roamer."

Sam assumed that was the dog and thought it a good name.

"Maybe the guy went in the water," a second searcher said.

"If he did, he's dead now. That'll freeze your nuts in no time and your brain in just a few minutes longer. He can't survive."

"Not necessarily."

Oh yes, necessarily,
thought Sam.
You try it.

"Go ahead, Larry, jump in," said the dog handler. "Swim out there a quarter-mile and let me know if you see him."

"We could call for the boat," Larry said, chastened.

"Oh yeah. And leave the harbor unguarded on a dumb hunch. Come on, Roamer. Let's go look up here."

Sam hoped they didn't take the dog too near the madrona tree. Roamer would smell his personal items in an instant.

The dog barked and the man kept insisting. Finally the man with the water theory lost.

"Look at Roamer now. He's back in the damn fire pit. That guy's not in the water. See, he's back to circles again."

Sam was getting numb. A nap sounded good.
Just give up and sink and be done with it.

He thought about the
sigh
that
kills,
and about the microbes that live thousands of years and people who do not, and methane disasters and nuclear triggering. One certainly seemed to have nothing to do with the other. If Haley didn't arrive quickly, he might never know. Actually he might never know even if she did.

He went under and had to struggle to get another gasp of air. But there was no air. He took some big strokes and at last he broke the surface. If he died, he would miss the answer to the most incredible riddle of his life. They'd left the beach more confused than the dog. If it hadn't been for the stupidity of the handlers, the dog would have beat him.

Now the ocean might beat him.

Sam began swimming toward the beach, thinking only that very few jobs were worth his life.

This one might be.

T
he Lake amphibian 270 turbo was, in essence, a flying marine hull. Like larger amphibious aircraft, the entire body of the plane landed in the water. It had a single engine that sat up on a pylon on top of the plane. It would carry four people in relative comfort, land on the water or at an airport with equal facility, and was FAA certified.

Haley and Grant looked over the south end of the airport and saw only one deputy pulling through the gate near the fueling station.

"They were all over this place," Grant said, "but I think they've moved on to the houses.

They don't know about this amphibian. It belongs to my brother and, to tell you the truth, I haven't flown it all that much."

"Uh-oh," Haley said. "How many water landings?"

"Unassisted?"

"What's that mean, 'unassisted'?"

"Without my brother touching the controls."

"Have you ever flown it alone?"

"No, but I've made unassisted landings," Grant said.

"How many?"

"Well, what difference does it make?" he said. "I'm here and we're going, unless
you
want to fly it."

"Let's just go."

"That's the spirit." Grant went one door down from the end of the hangar row immediately adjacent to the main passenger terminal and quickly unlocked the hangar door while Haley remained hidden inside his shop hangar. Once he had the doors open and the plane out, she ran out and jumped in.

Grant didn't bother with a preflight inspection.

Without hesitation he cranked up the engine, applied full power, and began a takeoff roll with no lights on.

"Can you see?" she asked.

"Not well," he muttered, and hit the lights. They illuminated the cop.

As if someone had jolted the deputy, he hit the gas, spun the tires, and pulled around as if considering whether to drive into them. But he was slightly off center to their left and, in a couple seconds, they would miss him by a few feet. Turning on all his lights and his siren, he waited like the lone bowling pin in the second frame.

"Damn it." Grant kept it at full throttle. They gained speed, aiming for a space between the hangars at the far southern end of the runway.

"You're not going to make it." Haley thought of the cop car, the tethered planes, the hangars, and the chain-link fence at the end of the taxiway.

"The hell I'm not."

They were passing through forty knots; they needed to hit sixty.

"You'll never clear the planes." She gripped her armrests.

The cop wasn't moving, probably in love with his life.

"Hope he knows I can't stop," Grant mumbled.

Now it appeared the deputy was backing up. Grant eased back on the yoke, lifting the front wheel. The stall warning went off as their right wing shot over the cop's hood.

"Whew," he said. Then the plane staggered into the sky, missing the cop car and the planes by inches, but the hangar roof by quite a few feet.

Haley's stomach was upset, but she was alive.

Grant's legs were visibly shaking.

"Cop probably pissed his pants."

"I almost did," Haley said.

Immediately they turned over the harbor and were beyond it in seconds, dropping down to two hundred feet.

"Grant?" she shouted. "How did Ben keep this secret with so many people? And why did he keep it from me, when so many others knew?"

Grant glanced at her. She knew it was unwise to be firing questions at him now.

"Only one thing I can figure," he said. "Ben was protecting you."

"They have Sarah James at Lopez," Frick told Khan. "Finally. By Ben's beach house, as it happens. I'm gonna take care of it."

Khan looked dubious, as though he understood Frick's methods and suspected his pleasure in them. Frick didn't have time to be irritated. Khan was pointing.

"What the hell?" Frick looked out the conference room window and saw lights from an aircraft taking off from the airport. Running to the hallway past a bewildered special deputy, he grabbed an M4 from the corner. Out on the patio he started aiming at the plane, a mile distant, and coming in his direction.

Khan came out and stood beside him.

"You're gonna shoot down an airplane, right in front of Friday Harbor?" Khan asked.

"You're damn right. Get her; then get Chase."

"You don't want Haley Walther alive?"

"I want her, unless I can't have her," Frick said. "Then I want her dead. With that plane she gets away and probably beats us to Anderson's research."

Frick now had his finger on the trigger. The plane was approaching almost dead on. He waited.

"Uh, excuse me," McStott said apologetically from behind him. "We found something more."

Sam was kicking and swimming and thinking about whether there was any chance he would live. Fleetingly he decided that next time he might try a full nelson on the dog, temporarily putting it to sleep in lieu of swimming in the North Pacific in the late fall.

His limbs were starting to become spastic and it was difficult to swim at all. His leg managed to hurt despite the growing numbness. Occasionally he reached down with his toe, trying to touch the bottom, but got nothing. As he realized that he couldn't swim much longer, that his body would just quit from the cold, he tried to guess how far it was to the beach. His mind was muddled; it wouldn't think right.

Stroke, stroke, stroke,
he told himself. It was all he could think to do.

Somewhere he heard his cell phone beep, so he couldn't be too far from the shore. He'd thought he'd turned it to silent. Evidently under the profile "silent," he had inadvertently used a quiet beep for the designation silent. He had done that once before. Big mistake.

It quit beeping. He realized he no longer heard it because he was sinking. Dying in the ocean didn't seem so bad. One good deep breath and he would take in God's ocean.

In that second he realized that he desperately wanted to cleanse himself. It was a wish that lived at the core of his soul and it burned in him. He didn't know why. Probably one swallow of ocean water and ending it wouldn't accomplish his desire. Something about Haley came to mind. She was really not cut out for this.

He decided on a couple hard strokes. There was air and he was coughing, although it seemed like someone else was coughing. The liquid of the ocean felt heavy over him.

He took a couple more strokes, or tried, and knew it was over. The arms would not work. Although he could think of the motion, it just didn't happen. It was not a matter of will. The nerves weren't functioning.

So sorry, Haley.

The old pictures in his mind—the torture room, the blood on the walls—taunted him—

Anna's screaming worse than he could have imagined. He had to stop it. He had to stop it. The memories went and salt water washed across his face.