David Dun: The Black Silent

He glanced down at the rocket launcher, waiting to get within fifty yards. Then he'd blow the bow off and pick off the survivors as the yacht sank. He'd keep Anderson and Haley Walther alive long enough to extract the real meat of the scientist's research. And in a way he would have his revenge on Mr. Chase, because as the guy went lights out, there would be no doubt in his mind as to what would happen to Haley Walther.

At fifty yards he cut the throttle and studied the craft, staying low so as not to take a bullet. They could have a rifle on board. He saw no sign of life. That told him he was facing an ambush. They might not anticipate a rocket launcher, though.

He shouldered the green tube and used the laser sight to put the red dot three feet in from the tip of the bow. He blinked sweat from his eyes despite the chill; he didn't like the quiet. There should be some sign, a gun barrel over the edge, anything. He saw nothing.

Curious, Frick lowered the launcher and glassed the boat. They remained well hidden.

"Damn," he muttered, and pulled the trigger. It was almost instantaneous. The whole boat exploded. In front of his eyes it disintegrated. Had he been closer, he would have been injured.

He saw no swimmers; no one could have survived the blast. The blast was unnatural.

Chase had turned on propane or the like. Then it struck him. This was no ambush. It was misdirection. They had gone ashore and he was wasting time. Frick cursed his mother, his father, God, and, most of all, Robert Chase.

He got on the cell phone.

"Khan."

"Get the men down Deer Harbor Road. They've gone ashore. I'll meet you at the dock.

If we don't find them quick, we'll get the octopus, McStott, and his papers and run."

"I figured they might do that," Khan said. "I already have men on Deer Harbor Road and the back lanes."

Khan was a smart man. They might get them yet.

The Sinclairs were good people, Midwestern stock whose ancestors had been covered-wagon settlers. Retired, they lived year-round on Cormorant Bay Road. It was an idyllic setting, the house painted in pastels from the era of Elvis Presley and a sweeping water view. All they needed was an Edsel. Without a doubt, the Sinclairs were with their children in Seattle for Thanksgiving. Nobody was going to check.

Haley showed Sam the large new RV parked by their home.

"Could be tough to hot-wire," Sam said.

"I don't think you'll have to," Haley said. "They loaned it to us a while back so we could put up some visiting scientists. I know where they have a key inside it, I think. All you gotta do is break in through the side window."

"Oh, my God," Ben groaned. "Have we sunk this low?"

"Some of us have," Haley said. Sam figured she was still a bit pissed about the experimenting on people.

It worked just the way Haley said it would. There was a horn alarm and Sam yanked the wires on the horn. Now they'd stolen an RV, if they couldn't convince somebody that it was borrowed.

They drove the Sinclairs' RV to the end of Deer Harbor Road into a large cul-de-sac.

When they parked at the bottom of the street, the deputies were just arriving and starting to screen people.

Sam and Nelson had gotten the bleeding stopped on Stu's leg and applied a dressing, but Stu was in no condition to go anywhere. Sam took a moment to look out through the RV's curtained windows. Attracted by motion, his eye went to the outer docks, and in the distance he saw someone standing behind a piling. It was Frick, gesticulating and talking with a tall man. Sam recalled the guards at Sanker talking about a second-in-command.

Khan, if he remembered correctly.

Luckily, the RV remained on the far side of the deputies' search wave. A deputy was still a hundred feet off and approaching when Sam, Haley, and Ben made for the boat. The RV started up and headed out. The deputy made no attempt to stop either the RV or Sam's group.

When Sam had almost reached the Whaler, Frick realized what was happening and began screaming, the phone to his ear.

Once in the Whaler, they wasted no time. After casting off, they applied the power, pulling away from the docks and heading to the far side of the bay. Sam saw Frick and Khan each raise a pistol and fire repeatedly. Several bullets hit their craft above the waterline, but none connected with flesh.

Sam turned sharply and headed right for Frick and the sheriff's boat.

"Get down," he shouted at Haley and Ben. Khan seemed to have reloaded quickly. As he took aim, Sam raised the Uzi, hoping it wouldn't misfire. The man's rapid fire drove Sam to the floor and peppered the foredeck of the Whaler, but not before Sam had put a burst under the bow of the San Juan sheriff's boat.

The opposing fire stopped. Reloading, Sam thought.

Swinging the Whaler in a partial turn, Sam put another burst into the Orcas Island deputy's boat as well. It was almost painful to imagine the bullets popping through the aluminum hull.

Sam was almost certain that the Lopez boat was at West Sound Harbor.

Now they had the head start they needed.

Succumbing to exhaustion and the extreme cold of still-sodden clothes, Sam gave Ben the helm and retreated to the Whaler's tiny cabin, where a diesel forced-air heater created momentary nirvana. The others still wore dry clothes, having stepped off the boat and onto shore. After they had lifted the dead captain's body to the beach, Sam had forced himself to take the Alice B. away from the shore and swim one last time.

Sam got naked and dried off; then he lucked out when he found a pair of swimming trunks. No doubt the owner used them when he had to go under the boat and cut a fouled line on the prop. Sam knew he was right about the trunks when he found a diving mask in the next drawer down. He put on the swimsuit, and after he had wrung the water from his clothes, he hung them in front of the heater outlet. He kept the cabin door open so that he could hear Haley and Ben. The size of the boat was such that he sat only two feet away from the helm.

Haley had clearly gotten over the hurt of Ben's keeping secrets from her. She nuzzled against Ben while he touched her hair. As if reading Sam's mind, she told Ben, "I forgive you."

Ben's craggy face broke into a half-smile. "But I haven't asked for forgiveness."

She punched his thigh. "I'll give it to you just the same."

Ben put his hand on hers, and she unclenched the fist, hugging him harder.

"I've always been a bit of a renegade. In the end the government won't care that I bought these men more time than their genetics had ordained. The bureaucrats will huff and puff and then want the secret. It's the way things are."

"Can't you tell me how you did it?" Haley said.

"Did what?"

"Don't be coy." She pulled away and looked in Ben's eyes. "Used Arcs to lengthen human life. Everything."

"Essentially," Ben said, "we looked at the problems that humans have and that Arcs don't. We then tried to think of ways to emulate the DNA protection that Arcs enjoy. It's counterintuitive because we burn oxygen, and oxidation destroys our DNA. Arcs don't use oxygen."

"People rust. Arcs don't. Right?"

"Exactly." Ben smiled. "But it gets complicated quickly when you try to understand why."

While Sam listened, he glanced at the nearly flat wake as they passed Reef Island in the Wasp group. Even the small islands had trees and one a resident hawk, another an eagle.

There was no sign of any boat following yet. Sam imagined Frick cursing two leaking sheriff's boats and a third coming all the way around from West Sound. Though the leaking boats would still float, they'd be slowed significantly; each bullet hole would be a fountain-at speed, a geyser.

"The simple answer is that we activated a gene," Ben was saying. "Human mitochondria, it turns out, have an extra crumb of DNA that's not functional. In the Arc it is functional. We activated it in humans with an Arc peptide that controls the production of the Arc protein. Kind of like a hormone-which is just how it acts in humans."