David Dun - The Black Silent

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.

For a moment Haley was shocked and couldn't comprehend what Sam was planning- only that he'd disappeared into the ocean. In a second she realized that he would attack.

The man with the knife screamed that he was going to cut Sarah. Blood began oozing from her neck.

"Where'd he go?" one of the other men shouted when Sam disappeared.

"He's trying to escape," another said.

"Be careful," the leader shouted.

The men were nearly submerging one of the pontoons, trying to peer over the side. Then a loud bang rang out. Haley saw the man's forehead burst open, spewing its contents all over Sarah. Rafe Black crumpled, leaving Sarah teetering and calling to Haley for help.

More shots. A great rush of air came from the boat's pontoon collar.

Sarah was reaching out into thin air for the airplane. They were drifting apart. Then Sarah and the boat tilted to the side, submerging a pontoon completely.

"We're going under," one man shouted as they rolled over the side and into the freezing water.

Sarah fell and the sight of her white nightgown billowing around her as she went under frightened Haley.

Sarah popped to the surface, screaming in pain.

The scene was chaos-all wild struggling, crying, and splashing.

As Haley removed her shoes to dive in after Sarah, she heard a loud voice from the water, in front of her and to the side.

"Haley, start the plane."

It was Sam, but he couldn't mean it. How could she leave Sarah?

Most of the men were trying to get back into the sinking Zodiac, but one had spotted Sam and had come after him.

When the man reached him, Sam pushed him underwater, moving away. The man came back up and at him, fighting hard and amazingly resilient. He actually got above Sam and shoved him down. Sam went down willingly, deeper than the man expected, then came up the man's pants, quickly disabling the man. Sam could have detached the testicles from their plumbing, but he elected against permanently maiming him.