The Black Silent

CHAPTER 34

Haley and Sam climbed in the Harlasens' truck and Haley started the drive to the marina, where they hoped to find Sarah's car and the laptop computer. The truck was an

'80s Chevy that somebody had worked over a bit with a flashy interior. No doubt one of the Harlasen boys had an interest.

"The government…," Haley mused. "Could they have Ben? The terrorist angle?"

"It's something we can't answer," Sam said. "Not yet. I'm wondering about Sarah having to dive in the night. An underwater entrance or a secret approach to something, but what?"

"I don't know how Ben thought we'd think to look in Sarah's computer for a stew recipe," Haley said. "Why would I ask Sarah about Sargasso stew? He was gonna pick her up. It was a complete fluke that we figured it out."

"Maybe we didn't figure out about the computer in the way he intended. Also, if he were gone, wouldn't you be talking to Sarah about things you didn't understand, just the way you did?"

"You could be right on both counts," Haley said. "It's just obscure."

Sam looked hard through the trees along a slight bend in the road. "Stop," he said.

Haley hit the brakes and they lurched to a stop. "Up ahead it looks like a car stopped in the middle of the road. Just beyond that you see flashing lights-it's a cop stopping traffic."

"I don't see anything," she said.

"Through the trees. It's just visible."

"Oh, I see. Yeah. If they stop traffic in this area, they block off the whole lower part of the island. I'm not sure there's any way around."

"Turn off the headlights quick." Haley did it. "Slide over the top of me. Let me drive."

Sam got behind the wheel of the old, stick-shift Chevy. It was now apparent that somebody had enhanced the power block and power train.

Sam turned around before he flipped on the headlights. After taking a slight turn in the narrow road at fifty, he found a driveway and drove down it, quickly dousing the lights.

Within sixty seconds there was a siren and a deputy's car screaming by with all the lights flashing.

"How'd you know to do that?" asked Haley.

"They would have seen the lights approaching and then all of a sudden they disappear.

Nothing comes. They're gonna think it was a turnaround."

Sam resumed travel, hurried to the turn, saw no lights, and proceeded to Fisherman's Bay, taking some back roads, trying to avoid as much of the main thoroughfare as possible. They drove the pickup back down along the Fisherman's Bay, the only vehicle on the road, both convinced that at any moment they would be tailed.

They were somewhat surprised when they found Sarah's car unmolested.

"Thank God," she said.

"Amen."

"I think I'd rather shoot myself than let them get me."

"No, you wouldn't."

"I feel so much better knowing Ben is alive and probably safe. Honestly, I can't believe she didn't tell us immediately," she said.

"She was doing as she thought Ben had instructed and, truthfully, she didn't have that much real opportunity. She's been totally traumatized and suffering from stress syndrome. Ben or whoever he's with may have their own security concerns that aren't the same as ours. If you think about it, she told us within a few minutes after she got to the house. She couldn't think clearly."

"You're right. When you say whoever Ben's with, do you mean like the government?" she asked.

"Possibly, but not likely. The feds would never let this go on, even for a few hours. I'm afraid Sarah knows a lot of significant stuff that she doesn't realize is significant. We've got to get that computer back to her and see what jogs her memory. Who knows what's on that thing if Ben used it?"

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 amp;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.