The Black Silent (41 page)

Sam slid out of the pickup with a big lug nut wrench, broke the window on Sarah's car, and set off the car alarm. He reached in the backseat and grabbed the computer case. In the cradle he noticed her cell phone and took it. Surprising, Frick's men hadn't gotten to her car. They were not a high-IQ group.

Headlights came on just down the road, bathing Sam and the pickup in incandescent light. It occurred to Sam that Frick had left Sarah's car as bait.

"Police! You're under arrest," someone yelled.

Sam jumped in the truck and they didn't shoot.

Must be a real cop.

Sam floored it and headed toward the sheriff's car, but in the right-hand lane. In a split second the sheriff was moving to block him. Sam swerved to the left, got half onto the opposite shoulder, and went around the back of him. As he went around the bend in the road, the cop was turning around to follow.

"Now we've got a problem," Sam said. He put the truck in a slide and waited for the rear tires to hit the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Instantly the truck spun around on the loose rock; now he was going the opposite direction, accelerating full out. He wished he had his Vette, the "Blue Hades."

"What are you doing?" Haley whirled as they passed the flashing lights of the cop car in a blur.

Sam accelerated, quickly getting to one hundred miles per hour. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Haley's body taut like a bow.

"We're going to take a chance. A big chance. We'll try the plane one more time." When he approached the resort, he noticed there were more cars than before. One was a police cruiser. He slammed on the brakes, anyway; they jumped out and he led the way, carrying the computer, going as best he could toward the dock. Haley actually had to slow her pace to keep next to Sam.

At that, Haley ran on ahead. Sam ran more slowly. Looking back, he saw something that tightened his gut. Frick was in the resort with a tall black man. They had stumbled onto Frick's base of operations.

She ran down the section of the dock spanning the beach, arriving at the long ramp. At the bottom was a wharfinger's booth, which was better lit than the rest of the dock. Then suddenly she was struggling. Someone had grabbed her. Incredibly, they seemed so intent on her that they didn't seem to notice Sam.

Her assailant was facing the water, hanging onto her, saying something Sam couldn't discern. He managed to get the computer flat on the dock. At the last second, before he struck, the man turned and saw him. Shoving Haley away, the man reached inside his coat. Although Sam already had his gun in his right hand, he used it as a club. It was a risk, but he didn't need more bodies.

Sam connected with the man's jaw, but not squarely. It ripped open his skin and angered him. This was a big bruiser of a man, maybe a slight bit fat, but under the fat was a mountain of muscle. Instinctively Sam went for the man's gun hand and dropped his own pistol. The man struggled, shouted for help while trying to free his weapon. With his left hand Sam gripped the man's right wrist. Using his palm, Sam struck upward to the nose.

When the man rocked back on his heels, Sam punched to the solar plexus, doubling the man over. An elbow to the back of the head took the man down completely. Sam took his gun and retrieved his own and the laptop from the edge of the dock.

The squad car had screeched to a halt and another man was coming at them. Haley was cranking the plane's engine. It started. He hobbled the 150 feet or so around the outer rectangles of the dock. Instead of shooting, the deputy was running fast.
Another real
deputy,
Sam thought.

The man was gaining.

Sam rounded a large boat at a ninety-degree bend in the dock and climbed in the fisherman's cockpit of a Californian 55. Grabbing a handy boat hook, he waited about two seconds until the deputy came running by. It took some coordination, but he jammed the pike into the dock just ahead of the officer, who tripped and went flying. Sam was on him, got his gun and Mace, and threw them overboard. Then he backed off.

"You're under arrest," the officer said. His shin was bleeding.

"Later. Report Frick and get yourself to safety."

"You're under arrest—now," the man shouted over the din of the plane.

Sam towered over the officer, who seemed determined to make an effort. The officer tried to get Sam's hand and wrist in a disabling hold. Sam tossed him into the bay.

"I'm sorry," Sam said at a shout. "Can you swim to that ladder?"

"I'm sure I can."

Sam limped over to the plane.

"This whole thing sucks," the officer bellowed in a shout as he was arriving at the ladder. Obviously the man had reservations about Mr. Frick. Perhaps the feeling would grow. Sam managed to push the plane off the dock and get it headed away with a paddle.

Haley gave the engine a shot of throttle, moving the plane forward slowly until Sam was able to flop in the cockpit.

Haley gunned the engine and they were soon hurtling down the rippled bay. Before they took off, at least one bullet thunked into the hull of the plane in the backseat area.

Obviously Frick figured out too late what was happening. They flew very low over the sandy spit that formed the bay. They then went down the coast about two hundred feet above the water at half-throttle. They used no lights; they would be virtually invisible.

There was no road along the beach, and even if there had been a car inland, it couldn't possibly have traced their path.

"Davis Bay," she said at a sparse ring of residential lights.

They approached a peninsula. "MacKaye Harbor," she said as if documenting her progress.

"Aleck Bay and McAr&le Bay." She turned on the landing light.

Sam knew it was dangerous. One miscalculation, an anchored boat or log, and they were dead.

"There's where we're going—that tiny hole in the rocks," she said, dropping down right above the water. She banked to the left. The bay looked like the shadow of a giant outfielder's glove, but with a very narrow opening. It was an area of steep banks, rocky bluffs, and intermittent breezes.

She held the nose high, trying to ease down. They hit the water outside the entrance of the bay and bounced badly about four hundred yards from its mouth. The second time they came down, they stuck. She was giving herself room because once inside the bay, the beach would come up quickly. She flicked off the light and killed the motor.

The dark was eerie and the water sloshed against the hull.

"I think we're just outside the mouth of McArdle Bay."

She lifted open her door, which folded up, wing fashion. There was a slight breeze and the smell of the beach was strong in the air. A bird flopped in the night, just awakened and compelled to flee. Another bird squawked as if encouraged by the neighbor's departure. The largest beach in the small bay lay directly ahead. To either side the rock rose up barren for fifty feet or so, and the shadows of the trees lined up along the divide between earth and rock like spooks on a shelf.

"Shall we use the engine or the paddle?" she asked.

"The bay is maybe two hundred yards," Sam said. "The beach may be another few hundred yards beyond that. Let's use the motor. We'll make noise, but it'll be over with fast."

They heard an outboard motor start.

"Oh no," Haley said, the fear apparent in her voice. "That could be Harlasen or it could be Frick's men."

Sam pulled out the two guns and prepared himself to use them. There was a calm in him that was always there before a fight and he could feel it despite his climbing heart rate.

As he watched the white of the boat's wake in the moonlight and judged there were a number of people aboard, he decided what he would do. It was a quiet place, a bowl, and had walls of rock, so the sound was held and then deflected toward the entrance. Sam could hear every change in the motor and the turning of the boat as it made good the course direct to their location. Even the sounds of men talking could be heard, although the words were not plain. The moon passed from behind a cloud and the increase in light made the branches of the trees shine, the figures in the boat starker black silhouettes.

Sam had told himself that it would be unlikely that Frick's men would have been able to move that fast. Wishful thinking, in all likelihood.

As the boat approached, someone in the back flicked on a bright light, illuminating two figures in front. One appeared an angelic apparition in filmy white. He took an involuntary breath.

Sarah.

Something was terribly wrong.

As the boat drew closer, and he began to form an image of what was before him, a horrible feeling of resignation overtook him. In the front of the boat were Sarah and a man standing behind her with her head pulled back, neck exposed, and a knife against her Adam's apple. Pictures of the Harlasen family massacred poured unbidden into his mind. More innocent fellow travelers fallen. He struggled to stay in the moment.

"Surrender or I cut her throat," the man said. He was big and confident.

Sarah's nightgown billowed in the breeze.

"We're unarmed," Sam lied.

"Don't mess with me, Chase. I'll kill her and then the two of you."

Sam recognized the ugly voice of Rafe Black.

Sam believed him. In his right hand Sam had the 10mm SIG-Sauer and in his left he had Ranken's .38.

"Hands on your heads," Black screamed, the knife still furrowing the skin of Sarah's neck.

Sam rose and dived out of the plane into the frigid ocean and disappeared under the sea.

On his way down he put the guns in his belt and used the long, numbing descent to decide exactly how he would get to them.

As he stopped his downward movement into the depths, he turned head up, probably eight feet below the surface, reached down, and slipped off his Top-Siders and crammed them, toe first, into his pants. The pain of the contortion in his bad leg was intense and nearly unbearable. Next he got Eugene's coat off as he was coasting up. Before he broke the surface, he swam for what he believed to be the back of the Zodiac. Glancing up toward the surface, he thought he saw a shadow, but wasn't sure.

Worried about disorientation, he forced himself to remain calm and to take four good strokes. Then he rolled and put his hand in the general direction he thought to be up. He felt the bottom of a boat; he sensed with his fingertips a commotion inside the hull.

Holding his fingers over his head, he bounced along the bottom until the bottom disappeared. He hoped it was the stern. Expecting a gun in his face, he brought his 10mm up and gently broke the surface.

The light shone from the back of the boat. His first glimpse was a split second of hunched-over men below the big man. All were well-illuminated. Sarah remained in front of them, a silhouette.

The big guy was screaming threats, looking around in front and to the side.

"Burial at sea," Sam muttered as he shot.

F
or a moment Haley was shocked and couldn't comprehend what Sam was planning—

only that he'd disappeared into the ocean. In a second she realized that he would attack.

The man with the knife screamed that he was going to cut Sarah. Blood began oozing from her neck.

"Where'd he go?" one of the other men shouted when Sam disappeared.

"He's trying to escape," another said.

"Be careful," the leader shouted.

The men were nearly submerging one of the pontoons, trying to peer over the side. Then a loud bang rang out. Haley saw the man's forehead burst open, spewing its contents all over Sarah. Rafe Black crumpled, leaving Sarah teetering and calling to Haley for help.

More shots. A great rush of air came from the boat's pontoon collar.

Sarah was reaching out into thin air for the airplane. They were drifting apart. Then Sarah and the boat tilted to the side, submerging a pontoon completely.

"We're going under," one man shouted as they rolled over the side and into the freezing water.

Sarah fell and the sight of her white nightgown billowing around her as she went under frightened Haley.

Sarah popped to the surface, screaming in pain.

The scene was chaos—all wild struggling, crying, and splashing.

As Haley removed her shoes to dive in after Sarah, she heard a loud voice from the water, in front of her and to the side.

"Haley, start the plane."

It was Sam, but he couldn't mean it. How could she leave Sarah?

Most of the men were trying to get back into the sinking Zodiac, but one had spotted Sam and had come after him.

When the man reached him, Sam pushed him underwater, moving away. The man came back up and at him, fighting hard and amazingly resilient. He actually got above Sam and shoved him down. Sam went down willingly, deeper than the man expected, then came up the man's pants, quickly disabling the man. Sam could have detached the testicles from their plumbing, but he elected against permanently maiming him.

Sam could hear the screaming even underwater.

When Sam let go, the man was much more interested in swimming in the other direction.

Sam moved toward Sarah.

Even in pain Sarah could swim a little and remained at the surface, floundering next to him.

Then she disappeared. He felt around and found her. He pulled her up, weary, wondering if he could make it.

"I'm trying. I hurt, so tired," Sarah whispered.

"Lie on your back," he said, and she did. "Don't struggle, it makes you colder." Sam knew that struggle circulated the blood and the body acted as a radiator, hence movement equaled lower core temperatures in the body. Her body went limp in the water. "Put your hands on my shoulders." She did that. Instinctively she put her legs to either side of his torso and he began doing the breaststroke, using his healthiest limbs to propel them through the water toward the plane, which had drifted away. As he moved, he could tell Sarah was drifting off; he wasn't sure he could keep her at the surface and breathing.

He heard the amphibian's engine try to start. Haley tried it again and again, but it didn't catch.

"Haley," he called out.