The Black Silent

CHAPTER 23

Once on Warbass Street, it had taken Haley only a few seconds to put her soggy backside on the soft leather of Rachael's BMW. She started it, begging aloud for the heat. Her clothes stuck to her skin, her body felt like rubber, and her teeth literally rattled with the shivering. Never had she been so cold. She checked her pocket with trembling hands to make sure she had the keys to Ben's airplane. God, it was hard to think when your body felt so cold. Her thoughts were a jumble of genes, longevity, the end of the world, and a desperate determination that neither Sam nor Ben should die.

Get to the plane and get to Sam, she reminded herself. She could come in second in this race. She struggled with the old feeling that her mother's loser's karma was trying to take her down. This time she fought it like she had never fought it before, and the fight was part of the antidote to giving up.

Already near panic, she gasped at what she saw in the rearview mirror. Headlights were coming down the street and a spotlight was moving side to side. Looked like another sheriff's deputy. There was no time to put on the dry clothes in the backseat.

She stepped on the gas, careful not to spin the rear tires. The deputy was traveling slowly, probably looking for someone on foot. She continued down Warbass, then noticed that the deputy was speeding up and had doused the spotlight. She exited Warbass near the top of the ferry landing and took a quick, sharp left back up the hill, accelerating hard now that the patrol car was out of sight. In seconds she found herself back on Gibbons's street.

It gave her an idea. She pulled into Gibbons's garage, jumped out, grabbed the bag with her dry clothes, and pushed the garage door button as the deputy's car went careening past. It was a shock when the garage light automatically turned on at the push of the button. It was like a neon sign.

Down the block the brake lights of the deputy's car shone bright.

Without waiting, Haley hit the button, stopped the garage door from closing, grabbed the clothes, and sprinted out into the night. As the police car was backing, she turned into the thick hedge next to the garage, forced her way through, and began climbing the hill at a frantic pace.

Flames were still skyrocketing from Opus Magnum three minutes after the crash. Frick was still waiting for the ferry search to commence and trying to figure a way to keep the ferry stationary all night. He would use his men for something more productive than a full-scale search of the ferry. It smelled like a ruse and he couldn't follow every one of this bastard's feints. The deputies were starting to look for survivors at the wreck site.

That would have to end quickly.

Frick had just yelled at the assistant to the CEO for the ferry system when, amazingly, the transportation secretary called. Obviously he had already been briefed.

"I'm sorry," the secretary said, "but we just don't keep ferries all night at Friday Harbor.

We have a boatload of passengers. We'll call the state police and have them search as people get off in Anacortes. They'll search the vehicles, I'm told."

"I'm calling from the Sanker Foundation," Frick replied. "Mr. Sanker, of the Sanker Corporation and this foundation, and the governor's friend, does not want to call the governor on the Thanksgiving holiday. We believe scientific papers of the utmost importance, so valuable that they might have national-security implications, have been stolen. An informant claims that the thief-who's already shot two police officers, one to death, and killed one employee of Sanker- is on that ferry. We want to keep this confidential and there is no way to do that if that ferry heads back to Anacortes and you bring in the state police. Furthermore, that ferry is due to stop at Lopez and there is no security there whatsoever."

There was a long pause. Frick knew that the last thing the secretary would want would be to disturb the governor on the holiday weekend with a problem from his department.

Old man Sanker had probably contributed a lot of money to various political causes at the governor's suggestion. Although it was doubtful the secretary knew the amount, or even the order of magnitude of the contributions, he could imagine the general level of Sanker's influence by reputation alone. Guys like the secretary got their jobs because they understood politics.

"Mr. Secretary?"

"I'll call right now and ask the CEO to suggest to the captain that he remain at the Friday Harbor dock for repairs to the electronics. It's still much closer than Anacortes and it's dark. We'll do it for safety. The search will be incidental. I don't want to set a precedent here."

"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.