David Dun - The Black Silent

The man had a pen, which was surprisingly serviceable, and they had a piece of paper in the cockpit. Sam scribbled on the paper: / am a killer and a criminal brought here from Las Vegas by Garth Frick, of the Sanker Corporation.

"As if they'll believe you," Haley said.

"It's a start, whether they believe me or not."

"Now what? We're going to die of exposure."

"I know," Sam said, his body already shaking. "Let's get to the yacht."

"We'll wake the dead with this motor," Haley pointed out.

"She may die of exposure if we don't." Sam nodded toward Sarah, huddled under the light summer coat.

"Pulling up that anchor with the windlass will be too noisy. I don't think we can take the whole yacht."

"Agreed. We'll warm up and take the big inflatable to Orcas."

They pushed off the plane and Haley tried to start the engine. She hit it a dozen times, but it wouldn't engage.

"This time we're really out of fuel," Haley said. "Now what?"

Inside the Harlasen home, in the living room, Frick found rope and tape on the floor.

Duggan had tried to bind them after a fashion and was counting on keeping them under control, with the two younger boys as hostages. Now the entire family was gone, this after having freed the two young boys.

Frick kicked in a large-screen TV set. He was dealing with morons. The minute Duggan had walked out of the house, they finished loosening their bonds and found the two boys and headed into the thick forest. There was plenty of that around. The area was covered in second-growth trees and the Harlasens apparently had been here for a generation or two, so they had to know the whole forest and its ridges, thickets, and swales.

Frick ran out of the house, toward the beach, where Rafe Black and his guys had allegedly trapped Sam and Haley Walther. On the shore he strained to discern something on the black water, but could see only the shadow of the hills. The water had calmed after the front and was quietly lapping at the shore, largely undisturbed by wind or swell.

It was near high tide, so the air smelled clean and salty, the herring in the bay making little splats as they jumped to avoid some hungry predator.

Frick did not like the quiet. With the near-silence ringing in his ears, he walked out toward the easternmost point of McArdle Bay. Given the steep rock near the water, he had to stay high and in the trees, and it was difficult to see through the heavy forest. He told himself he could not be diverted from his main targets and his new goal. This was no longer a job. He wouldn't stick around, trying to explain all the bodies. Ben Anderson's discoveries were all that he needed; then he could flee and begin planning their sale. The notion was somewhat freeing.

He put in a call to dispatch and said there were cars at the Harlasens', but no men.

Robert Chase, aka Sam, had terrorized the family, which had escaped, then shot Special Deputy Duggan right between the eyes and left him dead. He was concerned that Chase had slaughtered the remainder of the men as they pursued his plane in the bay.

Stories remained necessary in the near term, and Frick thought he'd just told a good one.

As best he could, he walked parallel to the beach, just inside the tree line. There was no answer on any radio, and that was not good. He had most of the men on the island coming, but it was difficult to reconstruct what might have happened. They had heard a plane, but they really didn't know where it landed. Rafe hadn't had the good sense to report on progress, so there was no telling where that Zodiac had gone. Even full of men, it would go twenty knots easily. They might be around the point, but if they were there, they should still answer the radio. More likely, Chase had taken down Rafe and three men and gotten away.

But to where?

On instinct he looked to the sky. No plane there. None on the water, at least within view.

He cursed in his head in long, rhythmic phrases with such guttural texture that his invective made poetry.

This was another waste of his time.

He dialed McStott.

"What are we finding? We're running out of time."

"We've torn apart Ben's home place," McStott said. "Your guys are over there tearing apart the beach house, and we've gone through the Gibbons residence. I'm convinced he does have something amazing-beyond the methane mining. But exactly what, I don't know."

"And why do we conclude that he has something amaz-ing?"

"Because he's been talking to the government and to American Bayou Technologies, and everybody is imploring him to tell them what he knows. Although I'm not at all sure that the requests pertain to the same subject. Or maybe they do and I just don't see the connection."

"Doomsday, energy crisis, and living several life-spans," Frick said. "Could there be something else?"

"Maybe."

"Are you nuts, McStott? What else could there be?"

"Maybe no other technology, but there's a storehouse, some sort of off-site lab. Best I can tell, it's a large house or building, where he meets with other scientists."

"Where in the hell is it?" Frick asked.

"I think Orcas Island, near West Sound, maybe Deer Harbor. I'm working on it."

"That's one big area, so work faster. I'm tired of all your notions. I want results."

Frick heard the sound of the engine on the amphibian. "Damn," he muttered.

It stopped.

He wondered if they were headed to Orcas Island.

Studying the plane, Haley had found a fuel tank switch that sucked from the dregs of a second ruptured tank. For just a second she had fired it up and got them started in the right direction away from the unconscious officer and then shut it down, wincing at the horrible racket.

"To paddle this plane, it's too far and will take too much time," Sam said. "That leaves walking or the motor. If we motor, we wake people and arouse curious eyes."

"Some people get up at this hour. It's all dangerous. I'll leave it up to you. I'm worried about Sarah," Haley said.

"Use the motor to get near; then we paddle."

They both silently cringed at the noise of the big Lycoming engine and, of course, its sound was magnified greatly by their worry. It reverberated off the rocky bluffs and probably caused Haley to shut it down early. It would be a long paddle.

Fortunately, they found a second paddle behind the rear seat. With both Sam and Haley paddling, they reached the yacht in twenty minutes. The hard work had one side benefit: neither felt hypothermia In fact, they were cold but breathing strongly as they approached the yacht from the stern, then climbed out on the fantail.

It was a large, beautifully constructed north-sea trawler design. Once on the stern, teak steps rose to the aft deck. Sam tried the aft main-deck door and found it locked. It was beefy and the glass heavy, so breaking in was a poor option.

He climbed to the wheelhouse and found it locked as well. Normally yachtsmen would hide a key. He climbed back up to the wheelhouse and looked for a hiding place.

Using his fingers to hunt every nook and cranny around the wheelhouse, he found nothing. He studied the far back corner of the upper deck and saw a large round canister that held an emergency life raft. He felt underneath it and all around it. Nothing there.

He went up on the outdoor bridge above the pilothouse and took the canvas off the controls and the wheel. It was too obvious a place to hide a key, but he looked, anyway.

After opening every storage locker door, he found nothing.

The situation was getting serious. They hadn't the time to move Sarah again.

There was a door on the front deck that would be rarely used and he tried that as well.

Of course, it was locked. There was a second tender on the yacht, a large Avon hard-bottom inflatable. The owners had taken the other ashore. He took off the cover, begging the Great Spirit for a break. He didn't claim to deserve it, but he thought Sarah might.