The Black Silent

CHAPTER 39

Frick stood in the great room of the Astrology Research Center, trying to calculate whether they could tear it apart fast enough. Burning the place was an option that presented as many difficulties as benefits. Any paperwork hidden away in a wall would likely be destroyed.

Khan's men were emptying cupboards and tearing through walls and furniture, and even examining the giant brick fireplace.

Khan stuck his head out of a bedroom door. "We got something."

Frick walked into the bedroom and saw a trunk that had been torn to shreds with a pry bar. Underneath it was a large opening that could only be an entrance. And underneath it, a solid steel sheet.

"Get through it," Frick said.

There was a man standing near Khan who looked like he understood something about such things. "Its edges are fit into the rock. We have no idea how thick the steel is. It will be very tough to jackhammer the rock and get around the edge. Not in a few minutes, anyhow"

"There must be another exit," Frick said. He nodded toward the men around him and Khan began organizing them. "We aren't going to use a jackhammer," Frick said. "I have something much better."

Frick went to the Suburban with tinted glass, which he'd had brought from San Juan Island. In the back lay several wooden boxes. Combined together, they contained a phenomenal arsenal.

Frick brought out five automatic weapons and chose one. "Hopefully, you men are familiar. This is the P90. Be careful on the trigger. Take a few minutes and get used to it.

You may need to use it."

The men walked off toward the house.

Next he grabbed a handheld M136 AT4 88mm antitank rocket launcher with six rockets.

A second lay beside it.

"What you got there?" Khan asked.

"It's an antitank rocket," Frick said. "Should bore right through steel. Then it'll explode and blow the hell out of everything. Help me with these."

Khan motioned two men over; the three of them carried the boxes back to the house.

Khan seemed amused. "What else you got?"

"Claymore mines and good old-fashioned TNT."

Khan's cell rang as they got to the house.

Frick took the antitank weapon into the room and stared at the steel plate. Firing it in close quarters was a problem, but if he stood outside, it would strike only a glancing blow. The men would mutiny if he tried to sacrifice one of them, likewise the sheriff's deputies. Quickly he took the P90 upstairs and shot a circular hole in the floor. It wasn't easy and required several clips, but he didn't want to use up a Claymore just yet.

After he made sure all of the men were away from the house, he found a volunteer who wanted to make $10,000. The man stood on the second floor and aimed the rocket directly down on the steel door. Frick went outside.

Everyone waited. There were seventeen men ringing the house, not counting those unconscious on the lawn.

"Well, fire," Frick shouted. "We're in a hurry."

"I'm not sure about this," the man called out.

The men muttered about Heinz being a chicken. Frick went back inside, climbed the stairs, and looked at the fear-filled face of a thirty-five-year-old bodybuilder. His hair was cropped close and blond and his eyes were blue. With that physique he certainly hadn't seemed like a coward.

"Heinz is your name, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Heinz, would you hand me the rocket launcher?"

The man looked uncertain, so Frick took it.

"I'll do it. I'm just trying to figure…" Heinz faltered.

Frick aimed the weapon and hid his face in the crook of his arm. He fired while Heinz was still talking and had turned his face toward the hole, unprotected. The shot and the massive explosion from the impact were simultaneous. It threw Frick backward, along with the big fellow.

"I can't see!" Heinz screamed from the floor.

"Should've covered your eyes," Frick muttered. His own forearm was bleeding; it would have been his face, had he not covered it.

"Let me help you," he said to Heinz. He took Heinz's hand and, after getting him on his feet, pushed him in the direction of the hole. Heinz fell through and landed head down.

He made a small noise and his body shook. It smelled like he'd defecated.

"Terrible tragedy," Frick said when Khan met him in the room.

"We can't afford to lose men," Khan said. "He was no man."

The explosive rocket had opened a large, jagged hole in the steel plate. Frick held his breath against all the dust and lowered himself through the ripped metal.

"I need a light."

"Light," Khan called out.

"I need the damn Claymores and a stick of that TNT."

Even with the light, it was hard to see. He took a few steps down what felt like a stone stairwell. As the dust settled, he discerned what appeared to be another slab of steel about twenty feet below.

Khan joined him with the Claymores and TNT. When Frick armed the Claymores, Khan looked nervous.

"Nothing to worry about," Frick said. "If one of these babies go off, you won't even have time to think about it. You'll just be gone. You hold one, have Jake hold the other.

I'll blow a hole with the rocket. Then I'll throw down the TNT. Then we'll send some men down. If anybody wants to fight you, get down in there and see if there's an opening to toss a Claymore. Now, if there isn't, you be very careful until we get the mines disarmed. You got that?"

"It all sounds good," Khan said, "except the part where I go down in there."

Frick stuck the rocket launcher over the lip and made sure it was aimed down the stairwell at the door. He got his men with the automatic weapons ready to go. He pulled the trigger and the rocket detonated with an earthshaking roar. Frick fell onto his back, his arm burned but functional.

Looking down the hole, he saw that the plate had been breached. Next he threw the TNT. This explosion equaled the rocket's.

"Now," said Frick, "we'll see if anybody wants to fight."

Outside the conference room Nelson whispered in Ben's ear

"The counsel is uncertain about letting you go," Ben said when he returned. "No one has broken in yet."

The "counsel" members looked like nervous cats. Sam thought that drugs might indeed be in order if you were on the regimen; he didn't fancy spending a very long middle age fidgeting like that.

"I hope they know," Haley said, "just how bad Frick is. He's right above us now, and believe me, you don't want to find out. He'll torture us and then kill us to get what he wants."

"And presumably he wants," said a slim, white-haired gentleman, "the Arc regimen.

Correct?"

Ben and Haley both nodded.

"If we gave it to him, would he let us go?" the man asked.

"Of course not," Nelson said. "They need to steal it without witnesses."

"That's right," Sam said. "Doesn't matter if Frick's still working for Sanker or himself.

No witnesses."

Ben closed his eyes. Haley unconsciously moved closer to Sam.

"We're not only dealing with a greedy criminal," Sam said. "Frick's also a desperate man. His old plan, framing Haley and me, won't work now. He's gone too far. He'll keep coming until we stop him."

All at once, everyone involuntarily ducked as a massive reverberation coursed through the rock, followed by an ear-splitting boom.

"It sounds like they might be making progress," Ben said.

"That was heavy military stuff," Sam said. "Now who's going to let me out of these?"

He indicated his hands cuffed behind him.

"I think we should unlock them," the guard Len said. "We may need them."

Nelson unlocked Sam's handcuffs first, then Haley's and Ben's.

"I'd like to make use of one of those Uzis," Sam said.

Len obliged him without hesitation.

"Everybody needs to get out of here," Sam said.

"There are other tunnels," Ben said, "but the three of us and a couple of others will take a boat. It's standing by. We'll go the underwater route."

As Ben spoke, the other scientists hurried out of the chamber, using a small, steel portal hidden near the back.

"That's great. You and Haley go. I'll stay with Len and we'll give everybody a head start.

I'll catch you if I can. But don't wait. I'd suggest the other big fellow here go with you."

"I'm Stu," he said.

"Get going, and keep her safe, Stu."

"Count on it," he said.

"I can shoot," Haley said. "I'm staying."

Sam knew that she meant every word of it, and he stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if seeking inspiration. "I could argue the greater good, and that would be true," he said, turning and looking into her eyes. "Or that Ben needs you, and that would also be true.

But what if I simply don't want to deal with it if you die? How about I've had enough people die? You've taken enough chances." He could tell his words were rolling off her like water. "Let me talk to you."

He glanced at the others, who moved away as if distracted by their upcoming exit.

"Right now," Sam said, "in a way, I'm like your mother. This is a critical moment for me, for us. Letting you go- making you go-is the only smart decision, no matter how I feel, no matter how you feel. Think about your mom. You were the only really precious thing she had. You were her caretaker, her dream, her reason for living. And still she gave you up so you could live, thrive. Survive. And right now I need to do the right thing, just like your mom. And so do you."

Haley bit her lower lip. She was looking in his eyes, engaging him in a mutual soul search that neither fully understood.

"Okay," she said at last. "Okay." She kissed him on the cheek.

Thank the Great Spirit, he thought.

"Take the left-hand fork," Ben said as they moved to the back of the cavern.

Sam kissed Haley back; then she followed Ben to the same small, steel portal with Nelson and Stu.

"Pleased to meet you, Len," he said. Since they might die together, Sam figured a proper introduction was in order.

"Likewise," Len said, arming himself with another Uzi.

They had just taken cover behind folds in the rock wall when another massive explosion came from above the staircase. An avalanche of dust poured out of the ceiling.

The last of the older men had disappeared down a side tunnel. It was all happening too fast.

Because of the narrow entry they could hold off a small army, unless Frick had enough military firepower to kill everyone in the vault.

Sam was counting the seconds, estimating that he needed to give the others a five-minute head start.

"Cover your ears," Sam told Len.

There was then a huge explosion that blew the wooden stairs in every direction.

Sam held the Uzis between his legs, plugging his ears. Then he saw something else falling and pulled back as tight as he could against the rock. The explosion was incredible and he felt the shock wave in his body.

In his mind he saw another explosion of white. He was in the room, Anna was screaming.

Another explosion rocked the cavern. The shock wave slammed him against the rock.

This time he could see Anna screaming, begging to die.

In front of him, his female captor taunted him. She had loosened one of his hands.

Another explosion slammed into him. Her lips were forming obscene words. Faster than she could see, Sam drove his fingers into her eyes and felt the membranes give as he pushed deep into the sockets, enough to put out the light forever. He hit the man with his elbow before he could react, the distance between them perfect for achieving maximum force. The blow went to the point of his nose, shattering bone and cartilage, driving it into the brain, dropping him to the floor like a sack of cement.

The woman was clutching her face, screaming. Sam grabbed her gun from the holster at her waist. The other two men had heard the ruckus and ran back into the room with guns drawn. A glance to the side showed a dim, final light in Anna's eyes; she was begging Sam to shoot her, the words and tone pure and without a hint of doubt. Then her head rocked to the side, shattered by another man's bullet. Something broke inside Sam, blurring the actions that followed.

But here, near the end of his life, huddling in a rock cavern under assault, Sam felt a great release inside him that he could not explain with words.

Once again his eyes saw what lay before him. The small building was full of bullet puncture and other, jagged holes. In the space of a few seconds, the laboratory had been ruined.

For a moment nothing happened. It was dead quiet. Sam looked around at what little was left of the wooden stairs, also blown apart. It didn't appear that the remaining fragments of the stairway would hold a man; Frick may have outsmarted himself.

Sam looked over at Len. He groaned at what he saw and tried not to second-guess himself. Len lay on the floor bleeding from the head. If he weren't dead already, he soon would succumb. Sam looked again just in time to see the green blur of the next falling weapon. Once again he covered and again came a terrific explosion.

He looked at his watch. Three minutes had passed. A man on a rope descended quickly with a rappelling device alongside the stairs. Scooping up Len's Uzi, Sam fired a burst.

The man on the rope appeared dead when he hit the ground. Within sixty seconds a rocket came down the hole and there was another fiery explosion near the base of the stairs.

The next time a rocket launcher appeared out of the ceiling, it was pointed nearly parallel to the ceiling. When it was released, a blinding explosion appeared across the cave, some fifty feet in front of Sam. Even though he was behind solid rock, the shock wave traveled around the vault and hit Sam like a fist. But for his hands over his ears, he knew he would be deaf. Another man rappelled against the destroyed stairs, only this time the rocket launcher appeared simultaneously. Sam didn't want to lose his ears, so he covered. His eyes were closed just long enough to avoid being blinded by the flash. The man hit the ground, shooting an automatic weapon at him. It was probably a P90, a superior weapon to the Uzi.

Sam fired back, hitting the man, but to no immediate effect. Flak jacket. He glanced around the cavern. Instead of watching the man on the ground, he looked to the ceiling.

The moment he saw the rocket launcher come down, he released a burst at the opening.

A hail of bullets poured in from the man on the ground. Sam flattened himself against the rock, but not before he saw the rocket launcher fall. He had wounded the man who held it.

Sam heard sounds of gunfire from a new direction, in the distance, and he imagined a firefight wherever the extra exit tunnels emerged. He wondered how many of the old men would be slaughtered by Frick. It renewed his determination. Taking a terrible chance, he tossed his coat out from the rock, drawing a hail of bullets. He took the moment to focus on the fallen rocket launcher and to fire at it. With a near blinding flash it exploded a few yards from the shooter. As he ran for the small, steel portal, Sam could see the mangled body.

This wasn't going the way he had planned.

As quickly as possible, Haley, Ben, Nelson, and Stu donned bulky diving suits, known as dry suits, designed to keep the moisture out and warmth in. Haley, like many marine biologists, was an experienced diver, and they were ready in a third of the time that might normally be required by the inexperienced. They pulled the dry suits over their clothes, while more explosions came from above. All Haley could think about was Sam.

She cursed herself for letting him stay.

When ready, they dropped the sea sleds in the sea and did a large scissor step into the water, which Haley discovered was at least twenty feet deep. They each grabbed a sled, pulled the triggerlike throttle, and started down into a round rock bowl, cored by a corrugated pipe of at least ten feet in diameter. The pipe was the only exit.

Haley and the others had gone through the same steel portal at the rear of a cave and into a rough tunnel carved from the rock. Fortunately, the lights still worked. Sam didn't want to be stuck feeling his way around in the blackness with no light. Behind the steel door he looked for a crossbar and found it. A stout board slipped through two steel holders affixing the door in the closed position. It was a common but brilliant idea. If they had no more antitank rockets, they might be stymied for long enough to enable Haley and Ben to escape.

When Sam came to a fork in the tunnel, he took the left, as Ben had said. The right-hand fork probably had led the others to the surface.

Sam climbed down a circular stairwell of cut stone that seemed endless. When he got to the bottom, he found another much smaller vault carved in the rock, its floor primarily seawater.

Off the main vault was a side vault, housing a closetlike chamber. Just in front of the chamber they had laid out two sets of dive gear and a couple torpedo-shaped sleds. He had seen but had never personally used the latter. Another explosion rocked the stone around him, its blast forcing air and debris into the vault.

So much for his head start.

Without warning Sam was plunged into darkness, able to see nothing, neither the gear nor even the water. He could not hope to don the intricate dive gear.

He was trapped.