by David Dun
He was trapped.
CHAPTER 40
Each sea sled had a bright light that lit the inside of the pipe, the bottom of which was covered with a sprinkling of sand, which stirred from the quiet whir of the propellers as they skimmed over the rippled surface, their chests just inches from the sand. It was claustrophobic and the thought that you couldn't just rise and burst from the surface into the clean salt air was never far from consciousness.
The divers entered single-file and continued for about three minutes, then broke into open water at a depth of about sixty feet.
Ben turned parallel to the beach, obviously intending to come up a good distance from the lodge. Would they be shot like fish in a barrel? Haley worried about that, and she worried even more about Sam.
Based on his memory, Sam felt for the pile of dive gear and turned on the air to one tank. Pushing the purge valve, he verified that it had some air and hoped it was full.
Feeling the second tank, he unscrewed the regulator and opened the valve, creating an eerie, very loud hissing sound as the tank began to empty.
The shoulder straps on the buoyancy compensator doubled as a backpack. Sam slipped it on over his pants and shirt and managed to find the mask by the tank and some fins.
Once he had the tank, mask, and fins on, he fired the Uzis in the direction of the water, hoping to scare someone with the sound.
"We need more lights," he heard someone shout from above. All his diving had been for sport, and usually in the tropics, and no one had ever shown him how to turn on a sled.
Given that he had as little as a minute or two, he knew he had to get in the water and get out of sight. He pulled on the fins, sucked the mask tight to his face to make sure he had a seal, and sat on the edge of the rocks. In the water with the sled he tried the trigger throttle. Nothing. There was no time to grope in the darkness and guess at where the switch might be. Going into the cold ocean with no dive suit and no light was foolish, but it was his only choice. He kicked in a direction he thought was down, until he hit the bottom, then swam with his hands touching the bottom, until he hit a rock sidewall. It was pitch black and he could see nothing. The cold felt worse than he had imagined; he didn't know how long he could stay conscious this time around.
Feeling along the rock, he hoped for an opening. The rock disappeared and it felt like metal. As his fingers ran along the corrugated metal wall, he thought about meeting his Maker. Even if he made it out to the sea, he wasn't at all sure he would be able to remain down long enough.
Without doubt the cliffs would be rimmed with shooters.
Frick and Khan had remained in the lodge by the shattered trunk.
"Maybe we should go down," Khan said.
"Anderson had months or years to prepare security here," Frick said. "There have to be other exits, some on land, some in the sea. I think they'll come up in the ocean and a boat will come. That's why we heard about boats and divers on President Channel. It's the reason nobody notices large groups driving vehicles in and out. It's why I sent men to the bluff. Let's get a report first."
When the report came, Frick didn't like what he heard. No live bodies and apparently no significant research materials-written or otherwise-anywhere in the cavern that they could find. The search was continuing.
"So where the hell did they go?" he asked his man.
"Down into a stone stairway," the man radioed back, breathless. "It goes to a pool, looks like the sea. There's no usable diving equipment. There are tanks, but the valves are all open and they're empty. We can't pursue. Repeat, we-"
"I heard you," Frick growled. It was just as he'd thought, although he hoped his men would catch up before they completed their exit. "Khan?"
"Yo."
"Get men down the bluff. If anybody comes to the surface in front of the bluffs, cut 'em to pieces-unless it's Ben Anderson. Him we have to swim for."
"At this late date, what good will shooting divers do us?" Khan asked.
"It'll make me feel a hell of a lot better. I want Chase dead. He won't forget."
"All right. But then we take what we have and we leave," Khan said.
"I'll take the sheriff's boat around from West Sound. You go by land. We should get them one way or the other."
"After that, I've had enough," Khan said. "If the men find something, I'll bring it." He paused. "There's one other thing. McStott's back on the octopus. Said he told you about it before, but now he has proof that it's got the genetic markers. Could be at least part of the formula."
"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 an
d 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.
Knowing that they wouldn't be able to see the beach down the way without coming quite some distance, Sam signaled madly at the yacht. He tried to run down the shoreline on the rocks. From the cold his already suffering muscles had become so incapacitated they didn't want to function. Even if they spotted him, bringing the yacht in tight to the beach risked running it onto the rocks.
By coming down the rock face on a series of ledges, the gunmen had lost their line of sight down the beach rendering their weapons useless at certain target angles. As the yacht moved, this condition wouldn't last. Well down the beach from the gunmen, Sam went to a large rock and leaped into the ocean, swimming frantically with his last few calories. As the yacht approached, a barrage of automatic shots rang out and he could see the superstructure of the yacht begin to dissolve. Apparently the gunmen could see only the uppermost portion of the yacht, to a level just below the flybridge. He hoped no one was on the upper bridge because they could not have survived. The shots continued to eat away at the bridge, sending bits of fiberglass flying and opening up long lines in the fiberglass that became jagged slices.
Sam held up his arm as a signal, as best he could, when a shot hit the water directly in front of him. He went under, waiting for the boat. More shots hit the water around him, but not many. When the boat was almost atop him, he bobbed up. Stu stood on the fantail of the boat. Nelson and Ben held him as he leaned over. They would have one try.
After that, the boat would be shot to pieces as the gunmen got closer and improved their line of sight.
Sam grabbed Stu's forearm as it passed and they struggled to hold him.
CHAPTER 41
Ignoring the five-knot speed limit, Frick drove the sheriff's boat forty-eight knots through Poll Pass. It was the most direct and therefore the fastest route if one ignored all safety considerations, as well as the no-wake zones and the speed limit. At least one man on a small dock shook his fist.
Instead of the roiling waters, the bobbing seabirds, diving eagles, and splashing harbor seals, Flick's mind was on the yacht and the best way to sink it quickly. The victory, if he could achieve it, would be sweet.
Frick got on the cell phone, slightly irritated that Khan hadn't called him with a report.
"He's down by the water and it's rocky," Khan said. "Can't get a clear shot. The guys are going down the rock face. May be a mistake, but it's too late now."
"Where's that yacht?"
"It's in close now. As soon as we get a clear shot, we'll pick 'em apart."
"Sink it, but don't kill Anderson or Walther, unless you have to."
"We'll see. The guys are shooting right now. From up here it looks like… yeah… that's Chase in the water and the boat's coming fast."
"Kill him," Frick shouted into the phone. "Kill him!"
Stu gave a massive pull and got Sam half out of the water with his legs dragging in the wake. Spray flew everywhere as Sam tried to get his leaden lower body clear of the water. Suddenly, as they turned seaward, Stu clenched his own leg, now pressed beside Sam's chest. The blood sprung red from his pants, but Stu kept on. At last they got Sam aboard.
Haley was steering belowdecks in the main salon. He saw no blood on her. Amid a new flurry of bullets they all hit the deck.
Too close to shore to turn in toward the beach, Haley continued an outbound turn and immediately the bullets ate their way along the hull as more snipers had better lines of sight. They all stayed down, and Sam saw Haley sitting on the salon floor trying to steer blind.
The bullets mad
e a horrible racket as they shredded the yacht. Sam expected at any second to see Haley's body explode in crimson. She completed a 180-degree turn and then reached up to shove the throttles forward. A line of bullets blew up the steering console and Sam could see sparks shooting down from under the destroyed woodwork.
He crawled forward into the main salon, throwing himself at the cabinet containing the main breaker switch. He broke the glass, dousing the main breaker.
Then he saw something chilling. A man he didn't recognize-no doubt the captain, who had brought the boat to pick them up-lay dead with the top of his skull half-blown away. He had pitched headfirst into the bullet-riddled galley. "The shore," Sam shouted, seeing that they could get closer to the steep granite wall. Haley turned the wheel as more bullets poured into the boat. A bilge alarm sounded.
"Oh, my God," Ben said. A bullet had gotten below the waterline.
Then there was a horrible impact shaking the boat and tilting it. More shots blew through the boat and everybody stayed down. A damn rock! There was a gut-wrenching grinding sound forward. As bullets poured through the superstructure topside, it literally started to collapse. Haley threw the slowly turning engines in reverse, resulting in more grinding. She increased the power and the grinding got worse. They came off the rock.
More shots. Haley turned the boat slightly outward and it seemed to run without shaking. They must have stopped before the rock hit the shafts, Sam thought, as another swarm of bullets tore through the boat. Haley applied more throttle. The bullets began missing the boat and sprays of water leaped around the yacht as it accelerated to top speed.
Sam rose, marveling that the shredded boat still floated. Engines and steering system were intact, but little else. Nelson came up from below, stepping over the body. Ben came to Haley's side. Miraculously, everyone but Stu and the dead captain had escaped injury. Nelson went to work on Stu's leg.
The raucous bilge alarm continued, assaulting their ears and putting fear in their heads.