David Dun - The Black Silent

"For Seattle, I haven't the faintest idea. You'd call main base Seattle to find that out. Do you want me to do anything about Ms. Sullivan here?"

"That's all right. Thanks for coming over," said Stutz.

"I suggest you be careful what you do with her," Hershman said. "She may have been an accessory. This could blow up in your face. The safe thing to do would be to have me get on the phone with San Juan County and find out if there are charges against this woman."

"There's nothing out on her on the wire. All she's done is run her boat a little carelessly.

I think it's a civil matter. The sheriff's taken the guys who were chasing her into custody."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Lieutenant."

"So do I, Sergeant. So do I."

Sam thought they still had a slim chance. Haley's arm was bleeding but unbroken.

"Probably metal. Not a bullet. Clean little cut," he shouted above the engine sound.

They were heading directly away from the beach.

"Hurts like a bullet hole," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Sam knew that it was the loss of Grant that really hurt.

Fuel still poured from the wings. With power, the engine sounds and the wind tore through the rips in the metal, along with the cold. It was like a deep freeze-the last thing Sam's body needed. Full-blast heat kept them from hypothermia. As they moved away from the point, the chop picked up. They couldn't use the calm water of the inner harbor, now made dangerous by Flick's gunfire.

"Forty," he said, calling out the airspeed.

In the plane's spotlights the whitecaps looked murderous. "Fifty," he said as they suffered a jarring crash.

The plane skipped and Haley played with the stick, then, wham, they hit a big wave and were tossed into the air. The airplane came back down and Sam braced for another impact.

"Pleeeease," she said, trying to hold it off the wave tops.

"Sixty."

Now they were experiencing the "water effect," feet above the sea, gaining speed.

"Seventy."

She sighed. They were up in the air.

"We nearly bought it," she said. Sam found no response necessary.

The plane climbed, the ride surprisingly smooth.

"Okay," she said. "What did you find?"

"Aside from Detective Ranken hanging upside down and dead, a lot. There's a note Ben wrote: 'A few evil men with the right idea could take us down.' Also, in a hidden room, a freezer with vials. Did you know about it?"

She shook her head.

"Six colors for six groups of tubes. All were full, but the red tubes. I found some kind of a log concerning dosage amounts, I think."

"Wow."

"Ben might have been giving the drug to people-thirty-six of them-though I could be wrong."

"Double wow," Haley said, wincing from renewed pain in her arm.

He summarized what he'd read. As he did so, he noticed that the fuel was down to an eighth and dropping fast.

Haley's eyes followed his. "The question's whether we run out of fuel first or the plane falls apart from the bullet holes."

The original plan had been to fly to Lopez and Ben's beach house. That seemed to be where Haley was taking them.

"We have enough to get there?"

At that, she actually smiled. "We're there."

"Have you ever flown one of these before?" Sam wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"That should have been obvious."

Without warning, they dropped like an elevator. He looked to Haley.

"There's no time to set up a controlled descent. I got one try at landing."

She manhandled the trim, dropped the flaps, and tried to hold a descent of two hundred feet a minute.

"This bay is small at these speeds. I'm gonna just try a visual."

They were passing lights from the first marina on Lopez. The dock lights reflected off the water and made it slightly easier to see the surface.

She turned on the landing light. The inky surface appeared slightly rippled, but distance remained difficult to estimate.

He watched the rate of descent.

"Three hundred feet per minute. We're coming down fast."

"Not compared to a crash," she said, her lips tight.

"Eighty knots," he called out, so she could keep her eyes outside. "Still three hundred feet per minute."

She gave it a little power but was in danger of overshooting.

"Two hundred feet per minute."

"Dear Jesus." She pulled off the power with the shore in her face.

It dropped.

The plane hit, skipped once, then hit a cushion of air. She eased back on the yoke and it settled down on the water.

"Not according to the book," she said, "but we're alive."

Once down, the amphibian drove like a speedboat, turning well at high speed. Haley brought them up to the resort dock and jumped out, her arm bleeding again slightly.

Sam struggled mightily to rise. His limbs hurt more than they had in the ocean, but he could control them better.

On the deck he saw no holes in the plane below the waterline. After some thought they agreed not to put Grant's body out on the dock.

Haley looked at Sam, her face troubled. "I know we've got to get to Ben's, but first I need to get you warmed up and dry. I know where to do that."

He thought to argue, but his sopping jeans and shirt stuck to his skin and the wind whipped over them, refrigerating his body. He nodded.

The resort appeared nearly abandoned; he hoped she could quickly find someplace warm. Soon he would be incapacitated.

The main building housing the bar, the office, and the restaurant was long, low, and pastel. In late fall the festive-looking outdoor tables and umbrellas were gone. There were no bicycles in the bicycle racks, no badminton nets on the lawn, no canoes or kayaks on the grassy slopes near the beach. It seemed windswept and barren compared to the common jubilation of summer, and it matched the half-dead nature of Sam's own body.

They made it to the door and, thankfully, found it unlocked. Apparently the place was open, after all.

Haley disappeared into the office and returned with a key to a car and some blankets for him to sit on.

"Don't these people have television?" he asked. "Or are the cops on the way?"

"No television, no cops. The tube is in the bar and it's turned off."

"They figure you work in a butcher shop or what?"

Sam nodded at the blood-soaked sleeve of her shirt.

"We know these people. Relatives of Helen's. Our plane had a rough landing after we lost oil pressure. You're soaked. I'm wounded. That's the story. Let's just hope they don't look inside the plane."

"Where are we going?"

"Summer home for a UW faculty member with wealth from way back in his family,"

Haley said. "Friend of Ben's. Another scientist. The name is Williams. Ellis Williams."

She helped him through the building while they talked.

"This Williams hasn't cut his ties with you after the Sanker flap?" Sam asked.

"Of course, he has, but he doesn't remember-I'm hoping-that he told me where the key is, and I'm equally sure that he never thought I'd have the gall to use it without permission."

They climbed in a ten-year-old Chevy Blazer with leather interior and traces of mold. It had seen better days. She put down the blanket. "Belongs to one of the workers who's gone for the winter. They take turns driving it to keep it running. Tonight we're elected."

He had a spate of shaking from the cold that nearly amounted to a convulsion.

"They said the heat in this old Blazer works well."

"I hope so." He felt unbearably miserable. He forced his mind to work, to continue the conversation. It was difficult to focus on anything but the misery.

"I've got the important papers with me," he said through chattering teeth. "They're wet, but I think we can still use them."

He could feel the heating system start to work as Haley drove. It felt good.