David Dun - The Black Silent

The man quickly put out the cigarette and closed the door. Sam breathed deeply, suddenly realizing the fear. Quickly he went back to work and cut the remainder in seconds. He crawled through the break in the wire and lay flat. Now he beckoned to Haley, and she began a fast climb to the ramp and through the hole. In less than a minute she lay beside him.

With his duffel slung on his arm, Sam hobbled down the dock in the glare of the lights, feeling like a sitting duck. Haley ran ahead. He arrived at the Opus Magnum and followed Haley under the canvas. It was an exquisite piece of machinery, and it took someone like Sanker to afford it. As he expected, there were keys in the ignition. It was a locked and guarded facility, after all.

They turned on the dash lights; then Haley found a chart light at the helm. Having owned his own ocean-cruising sailboat and chartered many so-called bare-boat-power cruisers, Sam was familiar with the electronics, as was Haley. Normally, these racing boats didn't carry radar, but as a concession to the fickle fog of the Pacific Northwest, this boat had a custom-made radar arch. The screen was specially mounted between the two consoles. He turned on the radar and let it warm up on standby. Crawling outside, he took the canvas off the top of the dash but decided to leave the rest in place for the moment. These boats did not have windshields unless they were a completely enclosed canopy with fighter jet-grade Lexan. If one of these boats went upside down at over one hundred miles per hour, any normal sort of windshield would separate from the hull and decapitate driver and navigator.

Haley turned on the chart plotter, the GPS, autopilot, the depth sounders, and the rest of the electronics. The most significant custom feature was a gas pedal integrated to override the hand throttles. Old man Sanker had customized the boat so that he could control the power without a navigator and keep two hands on the wheel.

"You know that you shouldn't go over seventy in chop," Sam said.

"I can if I let off the gas when I become airborne and reapply the throttle when I hit."

Sam looked at her askance. He knew that her last serious boyfriend had been a wealthy race boat aficionado from California. According to Haley, the man had a boat with three 1000 hp Paul Phaff-built engines, with MerCruiser number six outdrives in a forty-two-foot hull. It was a few years ago, but having driven that, she might drive this speed machine.

He noticed a tremor in her hand. She zeroed the chart plotter in on Friday Harbor and Brown Island. Keeping the volume down, Sam tuned the VHF to channel 16, knowing that she was likely to hear a lot of yelling from the foundation over the hailing channel.

That brought a brief smile.

Quickly he went below and rummaged through the cabinets looking for Frick's personal items. It didn't take him long to find what he needed.

When everything was ready, he pulled back a good section of canvas making an easy escape hatch. He clicked the radar off standby, making sure it was set to one-quarter mile, and that the gain gave her a sharp image. It would be critical.

Taking a deep breath, he jumped back on the dock, cast off the stern, and tossed the line in the boat, then the midships and last the bowline. She was drifting backward when he saluted her and half-ran, half-hobbled as best he could up the dock to the Sanker Building. The knee was hurting him bad. At the building he waited on the hinge side of the door to the foundation labs.

Wasting no more time, she fired up the engines, gave them a goose on the throttle once, didn't bother with a warm-up, and then popped them in gear. Then she stepped on the gas and the turbo diesels whirled the props, causing the fifteen-thousand-pound boat to leap out of the water.

Haley switched on the running lights and the rear deck lights as well as the spotlight up front. Now she was lit up like a Christmas angel atop the tree.

"Hey!" someone shouted as she literally roared away from the docks.

Sarah pressed herself against the wall of the house, hoping that the man would go to the front door and not the back. He walked forward slowly, seemingly uncertain. He was large in every respect. No doubt he was a thug who worked for Frick. He wore a trench coat and something bulky beneath it that protruded from under the sleeves. For some reason he was looking back at the county road and then looking around 360 degrees.

She was afraid to think about why he might be doing that. Then he opened the trunk of the car. She shivered despite herself. These days car trunks were supposed to have internal latches. She wondered if this car had one.

She was frightened, more frightened than she could recall. She tried to be absolutely still but found herself breathing more heavily and she had the terrible urge to run.

Instead, she ducked low and went down the three stairs of the back porch to the ground level and got on the far side of another tree. Then she moved down the side of the house toward the forest. She lived on five mostly forested acres, typical of the island, and she was going to get away from the house where no one would find her. When she glanced back, she saw him coming forward, obviously approaching the back door. Perhaps he had heard her. Then she was around the corner of the house, her shoes full of mud, scrunching her toes to keep them on as she ran.

"Roxy, Roxy." She barely heard the calls. Suddenly it came clear to her. The man was Ted Henry, her neighbor, looking for their cat, Roxy. The bulky thing under the trench coat was his pajama top. His pants had looked baggy. They were the pajama bottoms.

Darn. She looked down at her mud-spattered nylons and her ruined shoes. She marched back across the mucky grassland and walked around the corner. Then she froze. There was a second car behind Ted's, who was now a shadow lying on the ground under a man's boot. The boot was on Ted's neck and Ted was swearing to the man that he didn't know anything. The man was saying something about a Peeping Tom. Instantly she got it. The thugs were pretending to have something on Ted so that they could rough him up, rattle him, get him to talk about Sarah and Ben. Lately Ben had visited often and Ted had noticed the comings and goings and, of course, had remarked upon his observations.

"Hey, you," the man with the foot on Ted's neck shouted.

Sarah ran hard, straight for the forest, and did her best to keep her shoes on her feet.

Nelson hadn't told her much, but he'd made one thing clear: these people would kill her when they were finished getting what they wanted. She clutched her laptop computer and ran without her bag.

Frick sat in the conference room in the main building at Sanker with Khan, waiting for the arrival of Sarah James and also for reports from the checkpoints and from men going house to house. The two men after Sarah hadn't found her at her home, but they had just minutes previously seen somebody running and they were searching now through the forested area, hopeful that they'd capture her. Although the Orcas sergeant, officer 201, was still sedated in his own basement, the canine unit he handled could be brought to Lopez if they didn't find her soon.

On the wall was a map with pins showing the various places from which private boats might leave San Juan Island, the locations of known friends of Ben Anderson, and the locations of four private airstrips. They would see to it that all the planes at the private strips were inoperable for the night. None of the air services out of the main airport would run a charter tonight. No one was leaving on public transportation by his order.

Frick wasn't only worried about the fugitives or Ben Anderson, he was also worried about someone telling stories and bringing in the feds or the state.