David Dun: The Black Silent

"He also said it could take a long time to learn anything from it," Frick said.

"Look where we're at," Khan said. "You wanna leave it behind?"

"So what do we need? Just a good-size piece of that ugly bastard?"

"That's what he says."

Frick snapped his ringers. "Wait a minute. You suppose that's where they're going?" He thought for a second. "I bet they are. Kill the octopus and hide the carcass, and the secret's safe. Call the foundation and tell them to stop anybody from getting near Glaucus."

"All we got's McStott, Rolf, and a couple broken-down old night watchmen."

Frick realized he was right. His radio crackled: "There's men coming out a hole in the ground."

Now Frick could hear the shots.

"Big bastard's in the rear and shooting an automatic."

"Let's go," Frick said.

They ran about twenty-five yards into some trees and came to three of their men hunkered down. Almost immediately they jumped flat on the ground as automatic fire whacked the trees, throwing wood about like a buzz saw.

The radio crackled again: "There's a boat."

"Follow the guys on foot," Frick said to Khan. They called for more men and Frick ran back toward the lodge.

Breaking out of the trees, Frick ran across the plateau through green grass grown high by fall rains. When they made the edge, they saw two divers in the back of a large yacht.

A third was climbing up the ladder. His men were down the bluff somewhere and obviously weren't seeing the boat.

The dive tanks were in the back in the cockpit of the yacht, and even as he watched, a man at the helm gave it power and the boat pulled out. Frick looked for a man with an automatic weapon but found none. He grabbed his semiautomatic pistol and aimed, thinking he might shoot the dive tanks; he emptied the pistol.

"Too far away," one man, who had just come from his car, said. "We need one of those rifles in the Suburban or one of the automatics. And you don't even know who you're shooting at."

The man was a regular deputy and Frick wished he hadn't come in from the road.

"It couldn't possibly be the people shooting at the other men down underground. They haven't had time to get out."

"It's their accomplices, I'm sure of it," Frick said.

Khan came running up. "There was a road, they got in cars. I didn't see it, but a couple men came back and said it was useless. It was obviously a planned escape route."

"Put men to work searching the entire place underground. We're going after that boat.

It's big and not very fast. The sheriff's boat will eat it up."

"Look, the yacht stopped," Frick said, looking way down the coastline. "Let's grab the rifles quick." Frick and Khan ran to the truck, looked in the back, grabbed four M4s, dropped two on the ground, and ran with two.

"You men get the rifles!" Khan shouted. "And start firing!"

They went back to the cliff edge, ready to cut the big yacht to pieces, but it had disappeared, probably behind the rocks that made a small point close to shore.

Frick noticed that Khan seemed to have forgotten all about protocol-the sheriff's men weren't supposed to be killing people.

"I want you to work the land," he told Khan. "I'll go to the water. I'll be on the phone and radio. I think I can get them in that slow boat. I got one more rocket launcher."

Sam felt his way along, using the big fins to propel himself, his right hand touching the steel of the pipe and his left wrapped around one of the Uzis. It was the spookiest thing he had ever tried. It was utterly dark and utterly cold and the temperature bored in on him, getting down to his muscles in moments. Because he had no weight, he had to swim in a slightly head-down position, his body having some tendency to float to the tunnel ceiling. It was probably related to his BC, but he didn't have time to figure it out in a pitch-black pipe.

The cold was so pervasive it became a form of pain. That was the first stage. Soon he knew he would start becoming spastic again, like a hamstrung animal in a pack of wolves, only here he would be eaten slowly, a tiny piece at a time.

He kept looking for light, thinking somehow it would help him fight the cold. If he could just see something, anything, it might not seem so hopeless. No one had told him the length of the pipe. Surely he would be able to sense the light, twenty or thirty feet off, at the very least.

If he made it, he'd have to contend with the men on the rocks. He didn't know if his Uzi would still shoot. If he survived the cold, he guessed he'd need to worry about such things.

Time was hard to measure in the cold and he didn't know how many minutes he had been in the pipe when he finally could see light ahead. It was dim, he supposed he was very deep-probably below sixty feet, near a hundred. As soon as he came out from the pipe, he angled down the beach, while moving up slope to shallower water. As he rose, he realized he had overestimated his depth because of the great cold and the darkness of the water on a late-fall morning.

He felt the weakening first in his legs and knew that if he didn't get out soon, he wouldn't get out at all. He was moving with the current, at perhaps a knot or two, and his buoyancy became welcome now. He fought through a patch of kelp and headed for the rocks finally visible at the shoreline.

The trick was to break the surface unobserved and avoid being instantly shot.

Hopefully, the kelp would provide cover and make his bubbles less noticeable.

He slipped the mask down around his neck and came up under some broad kelp leaves.

Quickly looking around, he saw no one on shore. It was rocky and steep and a sniper would have no easy route down to the beach.

Studying the bluffs carefully, he finally saw what he hoped he wouldn't: five men, four with automatic weapons, making their way down a slash in the rock overgrown with alders. Turning, he saw the yacht in the distance, waiting. He knew that Haley would be nearly hysterical with worry. If they came for him, the boat would be shot to pieces and perhaps even disintegrated by a rocket if they had any left.

With the cold he knew he couldn't stay in the water, so he crawled out on the rocks into some nearby bushes, which grew at the base of the bluff. His clothing stuck to him and the denim of his jeans created a murderous cold in the wind. The wool of the shirt was better, but not much. Crawling next to the bank, he slipped off his tank and stood with his back to the rock. The gunmen wouldn't be able to see him here, but he hoped that with binoculars his friends might spot him from the boat.

In minutes the men would reach the water and they would find him. He had to move.

Forcing his body, he made his way along the steep rocky slopes, stumbling frequently as the cramped muscles and shot nerves sent all manner of pain through to his brain.

He'd hoped he wouldn't have to use his Uzi.

Frick drove back Deer Harbor Road to West Sound, where his boat was moored. If the yacht remained behind Orcas, he would intercept and destroy it. And if Ben Anderson were found, he would fish him out of the water. Spurred on by his proximity to the prize, he floored it and went eighty miles an hour, except where the curves were too much.

He called McStott.

"Did you get a piece of that octopus?"

"It's harder than you think," McStott said. "We don't have any of the technicians and none of us dive. We don't know what they do to get him to come up."

"Get food. Put it over the side, entice him."

"Where's the food?"

"In the house, there on the dock, I would think." This guy had a Ph. D.? "If not, it would be in the storage areas."

"All right, we'll try."

"Do better than try."

Evidently the gunmen saw Sam just as he was disappearing around a large rock. He heard shouts of "cop killer" that bore the excitement of blood sport, a sound he would never get used to. Given the nature of the hired thugs, it was an ironic rallying cry and a tribute to Frick's ability to control the message.