The Black Silent

CHAPTER 20

Sam went through the Sanker Labs Oaks Building door. After the third security guard had come running out onto the docks, the man stupidly aimed his service revolver toward the bay and the speeding boat. Sixty seconds later, Haley picked up Rachael and was halfway to Brown Island, breaking one hundred miles per hour.

Sam went in the door to the first hallway running parallel to the water and skipped the first lab, going to the second lab area from the outer door. All the labs on the waterside had a good waterfront view and this was no exception. Ben's office and labs were on the floor above, however the shop described by Lattimer was on this floor. He made his way past the paper cluttered desks and the many plastic tanks with their circulating salt water and myriad tiny creatures. After Haley disappeared behind Brown Island, he put the portable VHF to his lips.

"Hello, Frick," Sam said into the radio.

"Go ahead," Frick answered.

"Twenty-two alpha." He deliberately picked the coast guard working channel for the conversation and changed over from channel 16.

"Frick?"

"I'm here."

"This is Robert Chase," Sam said. "Nice boat you have here. Foot pedal for the gas is nice for two-handed driving- excellent custom addition. I like the singing bass on the wall plaque belowdecks. I also found your collection of pornographic torture magazines.

They certainly are windows into your soul. Of course, we knew what you were; this will just help during your trial for the rest of the world to understand."

With that, Sam ended the call, got on the lab phone, and called the police dispatcher.

"Sheriff."

"I understand you're looking for Robert Chase," Sam said.

"Yes, we are." The dispatcher's voice crackled with tension.

"I think a tow truck just took him and his 1967 Corvette and put them on the eight o'clock ferry that's motoring past Brown Island on the way to Anacortes. Only he gave the tow driver the name Fred Raimes."

"I'm showing a caller ID that matches the Sanker Foundation."

"I work security here, and I don't want any hassles with Frick. All right?"

"Okay. How do you have this information?" asked the dispatcher.

"I stopped to get gas at the Chevron and there was this hopped-up '67 Corvette, and I went over and talked to the tow truck driver, who was checking out the running gear and the engine. That's it. Good luck."

Sam hung up. The story sounded plausible enough.

Sam got on VHF channel 68 and said one word: "Go."

"Copy that." Rachael replied from the navigator's seat.

"Hey, there goes the ferry," Khan said. From the conference room they looked out over Friday Harbor and the ferry dock in the distance.

"The ferry pulled out when we were screwing around," said Frick. "We don't know where Robert Chase is. He could be using a VHF from anywhere."

"So he's looking at your porn and you don't know which boat Chase was in?"

They watched as Opus Magnum swerved to miss the log raft and then turned sharply back out toward San Juan Channel.

"Get boat two after them," Frick snapped. "Boat one is already being outrun. Out in the rough of the channel, the police boats may keep up."

"Boat two has my guys in it," Khan said. "We won't have anyone to watch the marina."

"I know who will be in it. They'll never catch Opus if it gets a big start. They used the loop around Brown Island to leave boat one behind. Boat two goes about fifty-five miles per hour with no fat asses and light on fuel."

"What about the Coast Guard?" Khan asked.

"That's liable to bring in the feds," said Frick. "Get your guys after it. Now!"

Frick's cell rang.

"This is dispatch," said the female voice.

"I know," Frick said wearily.

The dispatcher explained the anonymous call from Sanker Foundation.

"Damn it to hell," Frick muttered as he hung up.

Khan ended his call with the newly deputized men just getting into the second boat.

"They're getting the engines started and trying to get away from the dock."

"Now I've got to stop the ferry," Frick said. "You've got to interview the security people in this building and anyone else in the building. Someone called from here. I'll explain in a minute."

"We're being played like fish," Khan said.

"Yeah, well, he's got Moby Dick on the line. We've got forty men and it's a small island."

Frick got on the phone and called the deputy sheriff who had been at the ferry lineup when they loaded the ferry. In sixty seconds the deputy had him livid. After a brief bit of cursing, Frick got off the phone and turned to Khan.

"The moron checked every trunk on every car and every truck except the trunk of the Corvette on the tow truck. Says that is because he just never thought a tow truck driver would allow someone in the trunk of a towed vehicle. Why in the hell does he think Robert Chase is gonna ask permission?"

"It's not likely he's on the ferry."

"I can't take a chance," Frick said. "We need those papers. And call the men after Sarah James. I need her more than ever."

Four hundred years. Four hundred years! It was so fantastic he couldn't get it out of his head.

"Go see how they're doing on the list of scientists," Frick said. "Let's start calling them and asking them if they've seen Ben. You never know what an egghead will say."

Although Ben had been blindfolded again, he could tell that he was in another dark room and it had a familiar musty smell. His mind flooded with thoughts of Sarah: the way she smelled; the look of her in clingy silk dresses, her leaf green eyes watching him.

Leaning against a tree, playing with children, dancing in an empty ballroom when only he was there to spy. Now that they both faced death, he knew he'd made a big mistake in not asking her to be his wife. It was something he would remedy if he ever got out of this mess.

He tried to focus on his environment. The complete silence made him think he couldn't be in a home or otherwise occupied building. Heating in the winter and refrigeration, among other things, would be audible in the quiet. He was pretty certain the floor was concrete. Was it a cellar? A warehouse? A garage?

He strained to listen for voices or road noise but heard nothing. This time his captors had been much more cautious about escape. He wore manacles fastened to something that seemed to be a table or a heavy desk. The chair was hard and felt cool like metal.

The temperature was probably below sixty, but Ben still wore his windbreaker, so he was okay. They had fastened him to a stretcher when they transported him, but he was sure he had been lowered a considerable vertical distance, also puzzling. Suddenly he heard a creak, then someone walking on concrete. They stopped and again there was silence.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Your worst nightmare," came the answer.

Sam went back to the doorway of the lab from which he had come and glanced up and down the hall. The place was quiet. The concrete floors, although not the quietest walking surface, were the most practical and aesthetically pleasing in a building honeycombed, in a work environment with large tanks and flowing salt water. He waited and after a moment heard the security people returning from the dock, their voices and radios chattering away.

"Did you see that? Stole the boat right from under Flick's nose."

"Our noses too. Don't forget that. There'll be hell to pay."

Their radios crackled. "Garrity? Khan."

"Yes, sir. Right here on the first floor."

"Keep your eyes open inside your building. We don't know what's going on right now."

"Yes, sir, we're watching."

They clicked off the radio.

"Why the hell would somebody steal a boat and then break in here? He's nuts," the man called Garrity said.

"It was Frick's boat," said the other. "It's like a dog who pisses on your tree."

"Everybody is trying to figure out what Ben Anderson was up to," Garrity said. "And I know, but do you think they'd ask me?"

"What was he doing?" the other guard asked.

"He was up to something really good," said Garrity. "I guess I better look around down here."

The two others evidently walked away up the stairs. Sam looked around and saw no obvious hiding place. Opening cupboards would prove noisy. The best he could do was move behind the door and cram himself next to a bookcase. He waited. Garrity was moving down the hall and by the sound of it went in the lab next door. There were occasional sounds as though the man was actually checking closets and the like. Moving as fast as his stiff-legged gait would allow, Sam went to the edge of the door to the small lab and flattened himself against the wall. The night had taken a toll on his bad leg, and he was stiffening badly in the knee. Worse yet, he felt stiffening in the spine where he'd had surgery. In the back of his mind he began wondering about the return of paralysis.

Hearing something that sounded like the opening and closing of cabinets, Sam stepped past the doorway, and went as fast as he could down the main hall. Halfway he ducked in a lab, amazed at his luck. Any second Garrity might exit the one lab and move on to the next.

"Hey, Garrity," a voice said. "You seen any big, dark-haired-lookin' guys down here?"

Another guard had come back downstairs. His manner sounded easy and relaxed.

"Frick's all in an uproar and has us checking the building. The guys he's hunting just stole his boat and told him so and he's so paranoid he's got private dicks crawling all over this place. Our new fearless leader, you know…"

"Khan," Garrity said.

Second mention of Khan. Sam made it a point to remember the name.

"Yeah, he's more even-keeled."

"Don't kid yourself, that's one mean dude," Garrity said. "Damn, I'm probably just jumpy, but out of the corner of my eye when I was on the dock, I thought I saw the door closing and somebody going through it."

Sam knew he was in trouble. They might be dumb and slow, but they would start searching the place.

"Well, hell, why didn't you say so? We're down here by ourselves."

The new guy got on the radio. "Jack, Garrity thinks he might have seen something."

"But I'm not sure," Garrity said in the background.

"Garrity's scared to say anything because if he's wrong and we bring people over here from the main office, then Frick will have one of his fits."

"Yeah, I know," the fellow on the radio said. Sam gathered it was Jack. "Well, let's get started, but let's stick together."

"Then you better pull your gun out, man," the other guard ribbed Garrity.

They were spooking each other and that was both good and bad.

Sam had no gun and he was about to be cornered. He would have to move very fast.

Sam found a seat and removed the cushion.

He went to a double-pane slider window, opened it, and breathed a sigh of relief when no alarm sounded. The trouble was they could be silent alarms. He climbed out to the steep rocks next to the building. Hobbling on the uneven ground, he made his way down the building, carrying his bag and his cushion.

There was more activity at the main building. The Sanker main building was connected to the Oaks extension by a breezeway and he was now headed to the end of Oaks-the end opposite the balcony where Ben had escaped. All the lights were blazing in the main building-probably where Frick was working when he wasn't at the sheriff's office.

The workshop Gibbons had mentioned was supposedly at the very end of the Oaks Building by the breezeway on the upland side. The waterside of the building was taken up by another small marine lab. When Sam got to the end of the building and there was only a breezeway to the main building beyond, he took the cushion, placed it against a lab window, and smashed the window through the cushion. It required repeated strikes to clear out both panes. Worried about the loud clinking and shattering sounds, Sam sidled in as fast as he could.

It was some distance from where he had heard the two men. He'd entered a lab with numerous tanks and benches. Light came in from the hallway, but the room was dark, and he passed through it in seconds. When he arrived at the door, he checked the breezeway to the left and the hall to the right, saw no one, and shuffled across to the workshop.

He opened the door to the workshop, looking for the shelves that would hide the small office. His eyes stopped casting about when he saw the small door into the storage area Gibbons had described. The boards and plywood were pulled aside, and the passage was already open and not hidden. Although it was dark, Sam could just make out something hanging from the ceiling. He looked more closely. It appeared to be a large side of half a beef. He flicked on the light and gasped.

Detective Ranken hung by a foot from a block and tackle, suspended over a barrel.

Embedded in his throat were the large tweezers from upstairs.

The tweezers Sam had handled without gloves.

Another nice setup, Frick.

Frick must have watched Ranken bleed into the barrel as he hung, gagged and struggling. Sam's heart pounded. He was being beaten at his own game.

Haley had her hands on the wheel and was using the foot pedal for gas. Engine temperature was 180 degrees. If she was particularly afraid of dying in a boat crash, she was even more afraid of being shot. Guns scared her. As a child, before she came to Ben and Helen, an uncle had taken her with him on a deer hunt when he was supposed to be baby-sitting. As he drove through the forest, he came to an enticing meadow and a hillside turned green from fall rains. There was a deer on the slope, beautiful gray among the green, and her uncle shot the animal through the open truck window.

Forever afterward, the vision of a gut-shot deer was frozen in her mind; she couldn't shake it, and she never wanted to be shot. Being hurtled free of the boat, through the air at over one hundred miles per hour, after colliding with a deadhead log, sounded like a quick and merciful way to die.

The boat skipped across the water, and sometimes when it came down, and cracked the back of a nasty little swell, the jarring could put a tooth through her tongue if she didn't keep it sucked down in her mouth. It was punishing work, fraught with the worry of flipping the boat or tearing off the power drives to the propellers and sinking the boat.

Coming off a particularly bad wave, the boat seemed to float and was dangerously bow up. There was a horrible sickening fear as they balanced on the head of a pin. They nearly flipped. She heard the speed of the overrewing engines and she slowed down. At sixty she found she could keep the propellers in the water and the boat more stable in the building sea.

Haley looked over her shoulder. There were two sheriff's boats, both falling behind, but not by much. Rachael shook her head, realizing the need to get a big lead in order to hide the drop-off at Orcas. The near boat had come straight out of the harbor and hadn't been slowed by the run around Brown Island. The water was pitch black outside the shaft of light created by the spotlight near the boat's bow. Above they heard an airplane, and the moment Haley got an inkling that it was staying above them, she doused every light and they disappeared into the blackness and plunged into their worst fears.

Once established on a heading, they were at Wasp Islands in seconds and Haley went over in her mind Sam's instructions for getting Rachael deposited at her uncle's without detection. The Wasp Islands were a bit of a maze for those not familiar with them. There were all manner of rocks near the surface sprinkled amid a bevy of small islands. Out in the channel she made a sharp turn to starboard and lined up on the ferry route, a narrow passage between Neck Point and Cliff Island. The interisland ferry route was narrow, but at least it was a straight line and was the traditional route used by yachtsmen. The line taken by the ferry was 1.69 nautical miles in length, beginning right beside the rocks off Neck Point and ending a hundred feet short of the rocks at tiny Bell Island. The route was ultimately pinched between Shaw Island and Crane Island. On her chart plotter the ferry route line showed crisp and clear, and even at a hundred miles per hour, the boat could pass safely, so long as it remained exactly on course.

But the route outlined by Sam was much more difficult and much more dangerous. Its advantage was that it would slow the sheriff's boat for a moment and allow her to disappear from their radar. Now that there were two boats that was especially important.

She decided to slow to thirty knots and eased back on the throttles. One slip and she would crash into the rocks. It all depended on a Global Positioning System that could easily hiccup. She set the radar to one-sixteenth mile per ring. Never had she gone this fast through such a narrow, treacherous area. She glanced at the radar and noticed that the distance to the police boat was closing. Without hesitation she leaned on the throttle and upped the speed to fifty knots.

"Oh, my God," Rachael shouted, looking at the chart plotter radar overlay. "How are you going to do this?"

The sweat popped out of Haley's pores. Rachael touched her arm. It would be the only time in her life that Haley would do anything this stupid.

Clenching the wheel and saying a prayer, she went from San Juan Channel to the start of the rocky gauntlet in sixty seconds. During that minute she left off all her lights but for the instrument panel and the screen in front of her. It was now a life-and-death exercise. Instead of heading sixty-nine degrees true through a narrow straight passage, as would the ferries and any sane yachtsman, she held eighteen degrees true north and went to what would be considered the wrong side of Cliff Island. Magnetic variation in this area was 19.1 degrees east. Her heart was pounding as she shot between the rocks. She held the heading for just over three-tenths of a mile, less than twenty seconds. On the chart plotter screen she watched the progress of the Opus Magnum as shown by the GPS. Thirty or forty yards distant to her right were rocks that would rip the bottom out, an island on her left.

Her mind focused without distraction, knowing that the least error would make a very dangerous situation more dangerous. This thing had no seat belt. The beacon lights over on the ferry channel moved by with mind-numbing speed. After about twenty seconds Rachael called out, "Turn sixteen degrees to a heading of two degrees true." She would hold the heading for only 325 yards. That took a second or two. At the next waypoint the boat had to turn very sharply. She turned hard over to the right. Her eyes flashed from compass to screen. She thought she had the turn and Rachael activated the waypoint.

She stared, every muscle in her body taut, wondering if she'd gotten the heading exactly right.

"Right on," Rachael called out. She glanced at the compass, then at the plot line.

"You're off the course!" Rachael shouted suddenly.

Haley flashed to the depth sounder and saw sixty feet, fifty-two feet; she was outside the channel route, forty feet. She wanted to scream.

"Stop," Rachael shouted. Haley let her foot off the throttle. Fifty feet. Fifty-five feet.

She came to the left a few degrees.

"Good," Rachael shouted. Back in the channel she slammed her foot down. Crane Island was just under six-tenths of a mile distant and she was flying toward it at a mile a minute and accelerating. She got ready to slow and make a left turn before she hit the rocks. Quickly she glanced over her shoulder. The lights of the first sheriff's boat were clearly visible. They were slowing, obviously confused. Behind them the second boat was barely visible.

No time to ponder. She went left along the shore of Crane Island at fifty knots, now completely out of sight of the sheriff's boats, and more important out of radar range in the shadow of Crane Island.

Then a green line on the radar-dead ahead-out of nowhere.

"Look out!" Rachael screamed.

Haley got off the gas and twisted the leather-covered wheel. Her wake slammed into Opus's stern lifting it crazily. She managed to resume course and then she tried to get oriented. The boat was askew in the passage but rapidly straightening. She told Rachael to goose the starboard engine with the hand throttle and that brought it square. Then in a giant gamble, Haley hit the foot pedal, opening the throttle on both engines full out.

She glanced and saw the sheriff's boat following at speed evidently having overcome their fear. Opus Magnum heaved its mass out of the water as it rose up on the plane. She reset the course more than ninety degrees to the next electronic way station lined up with Poll Pass. Scared, she held the wheel-as if by gripping it, she could will the yacht through the passage.

The distance between the small boat piers on her left and the shore on her right was less than one hundred yards at low tide. But there was considerable kelp choking the area. It was now about low tide and she probably had an unobstructed passage about thirty yards wide. It was the narrowest navigable passage in the world's oceans.

If she found one log in Poll Pass, she would be out of luck. Maneuvering would be impossible even if the radar picked it up. She had a few seconds to think this thought; then she was aligned, using the wheel, locking the autopilot, and approaching full speed.

Her left hand hovered over the wheel and her right was on the off switch for the autopilot. Given the very narrow passage and the near-zero visibility, she thought the autopilot might do better than she could. She had to get through Poll Pass before the police boat saw what she was doing. She was in the pass itself for a couple seconds, then in the still inner channel beyond.

She spun the wheel and nearly flung Rachael out of the boat. She popped on the spotlight and radiated the dock and the big express yacht that she knew to be Inevitable, belonging to Rachael's uncle. She pulled up beside the dock, Rachael touched her shoulder and leaped. Rachael waved as Haley doused the spotlight and raced away. It was lonely and the fear was even worse. Once in the middle of the converging passages, she stopped amid the swirling white water of her own incredible wake. If one of the police boats had proceeded on the ferry route, they would be popping up directly in front of her. What she expected was that one of the sheriff's boats would follow her route and the other would approach Crane Island, cautiously sticking with the ferry route and avoiding the S turn, and then depart the ferry route and follow the shore around Crane Island as she had done. From there, she didn't know what they would do.

She poked her nose out into the ferry lane and watched the radar for oncoming traffic.

There was no police boat. They had both gone behind Crane Island trying to follow, but no doubt at a slower speed. She waited a minute more and then reversed direction at full speed, breaking one hundred miles per hour on the ferry route along the south side of Crane Island. When she reached the middle of the island, she glanced at the radar. The absence of the police boat from the radar picture made her suppose they had to be near the opposite end of Crane Island, near Poll Pass. Hopefully, they were confused, doubting their radar. There were three routes to Anacortes or to Bellingham. Worse yet, each of the various starting points had multiple possibilities the further you traveled, so it would get confusing, quickly, if they lost her.

She kept the power full on and headed back out to San Juan Channel, trying to remain in the shadow of Crane Island for as long as possible. As she passed the western end of Crane Island, the night was pierced by flashing lights. One sheriff's boat had waited right by shore in case she made another circle as she had done at Brown Island. There was a boom and she knew a bullet had just ripped through the hull. Fear coursed through her like electrical energy.