The Black Silent

by David Dun

  "Hey, you," the man with the foot on Ted's neck shouted.

  Sarah ran hard, straight for the forest, and did her best to keep her shoes on her feet.

  Nelson hadn't told her much, but he'd made one thing clear: these people would kill her when they were finished getting what they wanted. She clutched her laptop computer and ran without her bag.

  CHAPTER 19

  Frick sat in the conference room in the main building at Sanker with Khan, waiting for the arrival of Sarah James and also for reports from the checkpoints and from men going house to house. The two men after Sarah hadn't found her at her home, but they had just minutes previously seen somebody running and they were searching now through the forested area, hopeful that they'd capture her. Although the Orcas sergeant, officer 201, was still sedated in his own basement, the canine unit he handled could be brought to Lopez if they didn't find her soon.

  On the wall was a map with pins showing the various places from which private boats might leave San Juan Island, the locations of known friends of Ben Anderson, and the locations of four private airstrips. They would see to it that all the planes at the private strips were inoperable for the night. None of the air services out of the main airport would run a charter tonight. No one was leaving on public transportation by his order.

  Frick wasn't only worried about the fugitives or Ben Anderson, he was also worried about someone telling stories and bringing in the feds or the state.

  Rolf, the hacker, was trying to tell him something. Frick gave him his attention.

  "We have something really weird," Rolf was saying.

  "What's that?"

  "Long story short, Ben's computer is set up to pass certain e-mails through to his home and it automatically double-deletes them on the Sanker computer. There are numbers of retired scientists that he corresponds with, and now that we look at the phone bills, he's been calling all over the place. He's working with a lot of people besides Sanker scientists and contractor labs."

  "How many?"

  "More than twenty. Probably more than thirty."

  "Why in the hell didn't McStott know about this?" Frick asked. "Never mind. I guess you wouldn't know that."

  "The e-mails from a dozen or so men are automatically forwarded and deleted," Rolf said. "Clever, right? But the e-mails of their secretaries, assistants, or spouses are not. I gather that they meet over on Orcas. Lots of credit card activity in the West Sound retail area."

  At that moment McStott showed up and plopped himself down in one of the conference room's swivel spring-back conference chairs. No doubt he was worried about being upstaged by Rolf. McStott had on a bright pink shirt that irritated Frick.

  "Any relation between all this collaboration and Anderson's aging research?" Frick asked McStott.

  "We don't know," said McStott. "But we do have an idea of one topic under discussion."

  "What's that?"

  "Natural disasters, millions dead, due to sudden methane release. Tsunamis, climate change. Some of it's hypothetical, some based on the geological record. Pretty compelling stuff."

  "Like what?"

  "Do you really want me to bore you with the details?"

  "Bore me with killing millions of people? With more than twenty damn scientists we don't know anything about? With secret meetings on Orcas? Risk it and bore me!"

  "We found this file folder full of articles, journals, and magazine stuff," said McStott.

  "It all related to the danger of methane deposits. Listen to some of these quotes.

  '"Prehistoric oceans could have had releases with energy up to ten thousand times the entire nuclear arsenal in the world today,'" McStott read.

  '"Similar, smaller-scale eruptions of methane over time could account for other events and climatic changes, including the biblical flood.'

  "They cite an article from the American Journal of Physics postulating that methane bubbles from the seafloor could be sinking ships in areas like the Bermuda Triangle.

  "Apparently there's a huge methane deposit just off the coast of Oregon-there's a map here that shows it and all the other methane pockets along the continental shelf. Potential time bombs, they say. And all the methane's made by tiny undersea microbes. One of the articles says: 'Unfortunately, they make so much methane that if even a tiny portion of it were released, we would be faced with gigantic tsunamis from underwater landslides, runaway global warming from methane in the atmosphere, and resulting extraordinary extinctions.'"

  "Impressive," said Frick. "But nothing about aging?"

  "Nothing direct or concrete, but we found a note that said this methane release could start happening at any time but most likely within about four hundred years in the Arctic because of warming trends affecting permafrost and shallow water. Get this: one of these scientists noted that with 'Arc,' something they're apparently working on, some people alive today could be alive when a cataclysmic methane release begins."

  "Four hundred years?" Frick asked.

  "Uh-huh. Bingo."

  "Seriously?"

  "They obviously believe it," said McStott. "One more thing: one of the twelve main collaborators is Nelson Gempshorn, of American Bayou Technologies."

  Frick held up a hand to stop McStott so he could think. The job had just become more complicated than killing an old scientist and stealing his secrets.

  Frick puzzled it out silently for a few minutes. American Bayou's retiring vice president met with Haley Walther. What the hell did that mean? A disaster for Sanker if Ben was dealing with American Bayou too. And why was Anderson studying doomsday scenarios? Were the twenty or thirty other scientists in on the secret of aging? There had to be answers and he needed them now.

  "The ferry is coming, running a little ahead of schedule. I'll call the deputy." Khan picked up a second phone that had been plugged in temporarily and set it on the conference table. "That ferry is huge; must be all kinds of places to hide."

  "It doesn't matter about hiding," Frick said. "That ferry doesn't leave."

  "How you gonna do that?"

  "We're gonna tell them they probably have a coldblooded killer on board." Frick turned to McStott and Rolf.

  "Find out why Ben is studying doomsday, if it's really four hundred years that people might live, and get me the names of all of those scientists that he's working with. Find out where they meet on Orcas."

  Frick dismissed them and told Khan to assign a couple of the smartest and least thuglike men to assist McStott and Rolf. Khan nodded yes while listening to somebody on the phone. Frick's mind was spinning. Khan pushed the button on the speaker phone and Frick heard one of his deputies at the ferry trying to reassure Khan that he had searched the ferry traffic as it waited in line.

  "They have to get on the boat to escape," the deputy said, obviously referring to the fugitives.

  "All they need is a friend's truck, and a deputy that isn't too thorough," Frick said. "We don't have that long. We…"

  Frick paused, not believing what he was seeing. "What the hell is that?" he heard himself shouting as the scene outside the window gelled in his mind. "My boat's lit up."

  Frick picked up the radio. "Down on the dock, fast! They're stealing my boat!"

  Haley had felt power like this in her former boyfriend's boat, but she had never felt such stark fear. It displaced her anger at Frick as the lump in her gut. When she approached the outer dock of the Friday Harbor marina, she saw Rachael, slowed, and came alongside, allowing Rachael to leap in the boat. It was a gutsy maneuver and they were lucky Rachael wasn't hurt. As she once again invoked the awesome power of the big engines, Rachael hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. In seconds the danger in what she was doing overtook her and she couldn't even take a perverse pleasure in stealing Frick's precious toy, not at this speed.

  She knew that driving the eight-foot-beam boat at over one hundred miles per hour would feel like driving a motorcycle on rough ice. The connection between fingertips and the throttle pedal and the ocean's surface w
ould be highly sensitive when she couldn't see, and any misstep potentially disastrous.

  Glancing at the radar while trying to feel the water through her hands on the wheel, she tried to keep the boat headed just off the tip of Brown Island so that she would pass close by it as she headed into the San Juan Channel. For a couple of seconds she spied a radar target in the bay a quarter of a mile to her starboard, knowing that she would see it again in a short time. It was a log raft used as a tie-up for some derelict sailing yacht occupied by a fellow of little means that had no doubt been kicked out of the harbor, leaving behind only what had been his floating front porch.

  It was smooth in the harbor and so she was able to go full out. The noise was all-encompassing, like standing beside Niagara Falls. The vibrations of the first little wind waves came hard. Rachael was gripping a handhold in front of her, watching the electronics.

  Only the slightest touch of the wheel was required to control the boat. As she passed through the entrance out of Friday Harbor into San Juan Channel, the turbo-charged diesels were screaming in a high-pitched whine, and when she looked back, she saw the sheriff's safe boat accelerate quickly from the mouth of the main marina, its twin custom-installed 325-horsepower turbo-charged diesels pushing it to sixty miles per hour.

  She heard shouting on channel 16, something like, "Get them." Only nobody could get this water rocket because there wasn't a boat north of Seattle, short of a hydroplane, that could catch Frick's ocean racer.

  Out in the channel near the shore of Brown Island, she encountered moderate chop. It did not bode well for the next leg of their trip to Wasp Islands. For the moment they would circle Brown Island to increase their lead on the sheriff's boat and to reconnoiter the planned finale of her boat ride. Opus Magnum began to pound and some of the smacks on the water hurt their teeth if they didn't clench. Rachael looked grim.

  Sometimes the boat wanted to ricochet off the small lumpy waves, and at those moments she felt out of control. Wind whipped over her head and then was catching the loosened canvas boat cover that had never been removed. Glancing at the speedometer, she noticed that she was at one hundred miles per hour when the canvas pulled off the grommets and disappeared behind the boat.

  Even at night the sensation of speed at 106 miles per hour was incredible. The skin on their faces was molded back by the wind and their ears literally vibrated. At these speeds the wind came at hurricane force.

  Blips on the radar screen held their eyes and Rachael's unending concentration. Every bird on the water, every decent-size chunk of wood, even waves with unusual crests, could make a blip, and a blip dead ahead could mean disaster.

  In less than two minutes they had run the entire length of the outside of Brown Island and slowed to about seventy miles per hour to round the southernmost tip of the island, now heading back into Friday Harbor.

  "Opus Magnum, Opus Magnum, this is the sheriff."

  The sheriff's boat with its sirens and lights was hailing her. And it was gaining on her, having made a much tighter corner around Brown Island still at top speed. She swung wide and went very close to San Juan Island, so close she was afraid of hitting the docks. There was much more to this game than making it around the island. She had to worry about the longest of the docks. Using the radar, she lined up the tips of the yacht docks that came out into the channel like a series of fingers. She let her eye fall on the most prominent that reached out much farther into the water than the rest. Without increasing her speed she set the autopilot for dead ahead. Autopilots were not normal equipment for these boats and the placard said not to use it when traveling in excess of thirty-five knots, which was almost always. Ignoring the placard, she lined up perfectly on the Sanker Foundation docks and the small floating log raft in the channel between Brown Island and San Juan. At night the raft was visible only on the radar.

  "Slow down, slow down," the deputy yelled. "You'll hit something. Dead ahead on the radar; dead ahead, turn!"

  CHAPTER 20

  Sam went through the Sanker Labs Oaks Building door. After the third security guard had come running out onto the docks, the man stupidly aimed his service revolver toward the bay and the speeding boat. Sixty seconds later, Haley picked up Rachael and was halfway to Brown Island, breaking one hundred miles per hour.

  Sam went in the door to the first hallway running parallel to the water and skipped the first lab, going to the second lab area from the outer door. All the labs on the waterside had a good waterfront view and this was no exception. Ben's office and labs were on the floor above, however the shop described by Lattimer was on this floor. He made his way past the paper cluttered desks and the many plastic tanks with their circulating salt water and myriad tiny creatures. After Haley disappeared behind Brown Island, he put the portable VHF to his lips.

  "Hello, Frick," Sam said into the radio.

  "Go ahead," Frick answered.

  "Twenty-two alpha." He deliberately picked the coast guard working channel for the conversation and changed over from channel 16.

  "Frick?"

  "I'm here."

  "This is Robert Chase," Sam said. "Nice boat you have here. Foot pedal for the gas is nice for two-handed driving- excellent custom addition. I like the singing bass on the wall plaque belowdecks. I also found your collection of pornographic torture magazines.

  They certainly are windows into your soul. Of course, we knew what you were; this will just help during your trial for the rest of the world to understand."

  With that, Sam ended the call, got on the lab phone, and called the police dispatcher.

  "Sheriff."

  "I understand you're looking for Robert Chase," Sam said.

  "Yes, we are." The dispatcher's voice crackled with tension.

  "I think a tow truck just took him and his 1967 Corvette and put them on the eight o'clock ferry that's motoring past Brown Island on the way to Anacortes. Only he gave the tow driver the name Fred Raimes."

  "I'm showing a caller ID that matches the Sanker Foundation."

  "I work security here, and I don't want any hassles with Frick. All right?"

  "Okay. How do you have this information?" asked the dispatcher.

  "I stopped to get gas at the Chevron and there was this hopped-up '67 Corvette, and I went over and talked to the tow truck driver, who was checking out the running gear and the engine. That's it. Good luck."

  Sam hung up. The story sounded plausible enough.

  Sam got on VHF channel 68 and said one word: "Go."

  "Copy that." Rachael replied from the navigator's seat.

  "Hey, there goes the ferry," Khan said. From the conference room they looked out over Friday Harbor and the ferry dock in the distance.

  "The ferry pulled out when we were screwing around," said Frick. "We don't know where Robert Chase is. He could be using a VHF from anywhere."

  "So he's looking at your porn and you don't know which boat Chase was in?"

  They watched as Opus Magnum swerved to miss the log raft and then turned sharply back out toward San Juan Channel.

  "Get boat two after them," Frick snapped. "Boat one is already being outrun. Out in the rough of the channel, the police boats may keep up."

  "Boat two has my guys in it," Khan said. "We won't have anyone to watch the marina."

  "I know who will be in it. They'll never catch Opus if it gets a big start. They used the loop around Brown Island to leave boat one behind. Boat two goes about fifty-five miles per hour with no fat asses and light on fuel."

  "What about the Coast Guard?" Khan asked.

  "That's liable to bring in the feds," said Frick. "Get your guys after it. Now!"

  Frick's cell rang.

  "This is dispatch," said the female voice.

  "I know," Frick said wearily.

  The dispatcher explained the anonymous call from Sanker Foundation.

  "Damn it to hell," Frick muttered as he hung up.

  Khan ended his call with the newly deputized men just getting into the secon
d boat.

  "They're getting the engines started and trying to get away from the dock."

  "Now I've got to stop the ferry," Frick said. "You've got to interview the security people in this building and anyone else in the building. Someone called from here. I'll explain in a minute."

  "We're being played like fish," Khan said.

  "Yeah, well, he's got Moby Dick on the line. We've got forty men and it's a small island."

  Frick got on the phone and called the deputy sheriff who had been at the ferry lineup when they loaded the ferry. In sixty seconds the deputy had him livid. After a brief bit of cursing, Frick got off the phone and turned to Khan.

  "The moron checked every trunk on every car and every truck except the trunk of the Corvette on the tow truck. Says that is because he just never thought a tow truck driver would allow someone in the trunk of a towed vehicle. Why in the hell does he think Robert Chase is gonna ask permission?"

  "It's not likely he's on the ferry."

  "I can't take a chance," Frick said. "We need those papers. And call the men after Sarah James. I need her more than ever."

  Four hundred years. Four hundred years! It was so fantastic he couldn't get it out of his head.

  "Go see how they're doing on the list of scientists," Frick said. "Let's start calling them and asking them if they've seen Ben. You never know what an egghead will say."

  Although Ben had been blindfolded again, he could tell that he was in another dark room and it had a familiar musty smell. His mind flooded with thoughts of Sarah: the way she smelled; the look of her in clingy silk dresses, her leaf green eyes watching him.

  Leaning against a tree, playing with children, dancing in an empty ballroom when only he was there to spy. Now that they both faced death, he knew he'd made a big mistake in not asking her to be his wife. It was something he would remedy if he ever got out of this mess.