The Black Silent Read online

  The Black Silent

  David Dun

  David Dun

  The Black Silent

  PROLOGUE

  The shock of no air hit him at the same instant someone pulled his mask loose from behind, filling it with icy water. Despite the shock, Ben's diver's mind instinctively began a countdown: he had two minutes.

  Ben couldn't sense his attacker's location-the other diver had to be staying behind him, hovering at the edge of a forest of kelp, where Ben had been concentrating on a broken pump. Forcing himself to stay calm, he tried reaching up for his air hose, hoping to follow it with his fingers to the mouthpiece. But his assailant had looped his right wrist with a restraint. Ben struggled against the cuff, quickly realizing that his left wrist had also been fastened.

  It had been perhaps fifteen seconds since his last breath. He pulled frantically on both the lines, but seemed only to tighten the restraints around his wrists. In the blur he saw that the material around his wrists led to some sort of white line around his torso and thighs. It was a simple but effective binding slipped on from behind in the distraction of work. Ben had no time to solve it. Compressed air pumped into the seawater behind his head, making a tantalizing bubbling sound. He wrenched his arms and reached for the air button on his buoyancy compensator to inflate and ascend. By hunching over he could barely push the valve. Instead of the comforting feeling of an inflated vest, a torrent of bubbles escaped the BC. The other diver had opened the release valve when Ben used the compressed air.

  He tried hard kicks to propel himself to the surface, but his restraints seemed to be tied to the net wall of the octopus pen.

  Panic set in. He forced himself to think of something else. Pumping air into his dry suit wouldn't work because his assailant had opened the heavy zipper on his back. Releasing his weight belt might help. Ben had enough leeway to unbuckle it, but when it fell away, he didn't ascend. It hung on him somehow, perhaps clipped to the lines at his thighs.

  Almost unconsciously, Ben's fingers inched toward the backup mouthpiece velcroed to the BC at his chest. The lines at his wrists were too short; he couldn't bring it to his mouth. He hunched over, but his lips came just short of the mouthpiece.

  Ben could feel the other diver's nonchalance, confidence born no doubt from days of preparation. His enemy would be agile and skilled, younger than Ben, waiting for him to tire, watching from behind while Ben drowned.

  The man dropped to Ben's leg, wrapping him in kelp. They would blame Glaucus, the octopus that lived in the pen, or the kelp, or both for the drowning. It had all been choreographed. By Frick.

  It has to be Frick.

  The anger Ben felt couldn't compete with his growing fear. Ugly thoughts passed through his oxygen-starved head as the air in his blood dissipated.

  Without thought he gave a mighty tug with his right arm and curled and hunched as far as he could. Miraculously, either the line gave a little or he hunched farther this time, because he was able to get his lips over the emergency mouthpiece. Sweet air bled into his mouth.

  Through the saltwater murk Ben thought he saw the other diver now, still working below him and not looking up. The killer had made a mistake. Ben sucked deeply. The air gave him strength and hope. Ben forced himself to breathe regularly. And think.

  Deep breaths, relax, relax, relax.

  Flick's face flashed again in his mind. With it came the solution: Frick wants it to look like a fatal accident. To survive, play dead.

  Ben let his head dip as if he were losing consciousness. To add to the ploy he released the emergency mouthpiece. After an appropriate time he relaxed his body and listened to the vigorous bubbling from his equipment. Ben remained slack even as his lungs screamed once again for air. He felt the diver move up behind him, apparently satisfied that he had fouled his legs with enough kelp, so that he could unfasten the body from the mesh netting. He was probably watching him, waiting for the last exhalation of breath and bubbles.

  Relax… be a dead man.

  He felt the diver turning him to see his face… Playing dead was becoming easier. Ben sensed his consciousness flickering, the freezing cold water feeling warmer. Through half-closed lids a blurry image appeared as the diver put his hands on Ben's face, peering at him.

  The diver moved downward once again, fiddling with Ben's leg and the sidewall mesh.

  Oxygen-starved instincts overtook Ben's thoughts and he leaned to the emergency mouthpiece and sucked air. Consciousness bloomed again, along with the pain, the cold, and the fear.

  The diver hadn't appeared to notice. A new thought occurred to Ben: on his dangling weight belt hung a knife, and he could reach farther down than up because the wrist restraints had been fixed low on his body and around his thighs. Ben managed to remove the knife and still the diver concentrated on fastening Ben's leg with kelp to the sidewall of the pen.

  Ben quickly used his free hands to clear his mask. Through the strands of kelp he could just make out the diver's first-stage regulator below him, atop the tank. He gently took hold of the diver's hose and put his knife to it, waiting until the man released Ben's last leg restraint from the fence. Once freed, Ben cut the diver's primary air hose cleanly, then twisted behind him and cut the emergency air hose. As the diver flailed, himself now wound in the kelp, Ben slashed his BC so it would hold no air. The slice was so vigorous it opened the wet suit and drew blood.

  Ben took more breaths from his emergency air. Thinking became easier, colors brighter.

  Ben inhaled deeply as he hung fast to the other diver's tank and weight belt. Predictably, the diver dropped his weights into Ben's hand, and Ben managed to cram the belt into the strap around his own thigh, where it hung with his own. They were going down together despite the kelp. Ben was heavy, his dry suit nearly full of water. The other diver was in serious trouble, struggling, and from the sounds of it, choking. He was becoming ineffective. Ben made him more so by removing the man's dive mask. He turned as the diver turned, staying behind him, just as the other diver had done to him, clinging to his tank.

  Seconds later, the diver released his backpack. Ben put an arm around him from behind, keeping the man tightly against him. They hit the bottom, Ben on his knees, still behind the other diver, both of them swathed in kelp. In desperation the man shook himself and pried at Ben's fingers, but he was growing weak. The entire harness for the tank and backpack was loose. The man was still strong enough to get clear. Ben grabbed the diver's hood, pulled it off his head, and used it as a handle. They stayed down.

  The man tried his BC again, but merely blew clouds of bubbles through the knife slit.

  Out came a knife. Ben saw it coming in time to bring his own knife up and slash the arm. Then he grabbed the diver's knife hand and the weakened attacker lost his grip on the knife.

  In seconds all struggle went out of the man and he started to convulse. Ben cut loose the weight belts dangling from the lines, along with the pump clipped to his own belt, and hacked away at the kelp. They ascended with the buoyancy of the man's wet suit and the neoprene of Ben's own dry suit.

  As they rose, a horrible thought came to Ben. If Frick were behind this, then he or another accomplice might be waiting at the surface. Or in Ben's office in the Sanker Foundation. Or outside. Ben would be no match for anyone on the dock. He slipped under his assailant and pushed him to the surface, remaining below his body the whole time. The mass of kelp should keep anyone on the dock from spotting Ben. He waited.

  Nobody came to the dying man's aid. If he'd had helpers, hopefully they'd fled when their part of the job was over.

  At the dock Ben let go of the unconscious man and pulled himself onto an octopus-feeding platform at the edge of the water. Then he pulled him onto the planking and rolled him on his bac
k.

  Ben's assailant was the new lab tech. Surprise, surprise. Ben breathed into the man's mouth until the diver choked, spit up water, and began robust coughing.

  Once it was clear that his assailant might survive if he didn't die of hypothermia, Ben ran into the building, went to the locker room, and grabbed towels and a blanket. With the large slash in the upper sleeve and body of the wet suit, water would have poured in around his assailant's chest. The cold would be overwhelming. Ben himself was shaking badly. Hurrying back out on the dock, he covered the still-gagging diver in an attempt to raise his body temperature or at least keep it from going lower. Significant quantities of heat are lost from out the head, so he pulled the hood back over the man's head. Ben was too weak to pull him up the steep incline and he had neither the time nor the inclination to get the man walking again. Wasting time would only set himself up for another murder attempt.

  It did not surprise Ben that Frick had planned to murder him for the Sanker Corporation. Many men would murder to possess Ben's knowledge. Where they had erred was failing to realize that it was a secret not easily possessed.

  CHAPTER 1

  Ben stood on his carpeted office floor, dripping in his dive suit, his chest heaving and leg muscles cramping badly. But his mind was working fluidly.

  It was a relief to find his workspace unoccupied. As dangerous as it had been to return, Ben simply couldn't leave things where they lay.

  He had worked alone through the holiday weekend, feverishly setting flasks of nutrient broth inoculated with strains of genetically altered bacteria on an orbital mixer and watching three timers. He'd had no choice but to keep the manufacturing process moving at a frantic pace. Time was of the essence.

  After growing the genetically altered bacteria, he had used the sonicator to break them up and then put the solution in the centrifuge to separate out the constituent protein of interest. He'd planned on completing the project by the wee hours of Monday morning, then leaving Sanker forever. The entire time he'd worked as if someone's life depended on it-in this case it was his own.

  On the wood bench in front of him lay priceless tubes of organic molecules; all of which had never previously been manufactured except by Ben. In fact, the last part of the process was using a new gene that promised to be even more effective. Nothing on earth existed like these particular organics, and in the future, men would study them with the devotion of acolytes.

  An hour earlier, Ben had been working on the last phase when the Sunday-morning quiet had been pierced by the sound of a horn that sounded similar to the dive signal on a World War II submarine. It meant the lab's saltwater system was in some jeopardy. In minutes Ben had concluded the problem was in the octopus pen, and he'd left his work to don scuba gear and fix the malfunctioning pump. Just as Frick had planned.

  Fortunately, as far as Ben could tell, Frick's people hadn't tampered with his lab.

  Perhaps they were waiting for confirmation of his "accident" and the death certificate before exercising the foundation's legal right to take possession of all Ben Anderson's research, materials, and lab work.

  Ben wondered about Glaucus, the octopus that, in addition to the broken seawater pump, inhabited the marine pen. Glaucus was the world's largest-known North Pacific octopus. Ben had named him after a fisherman in Greek mythology who had eaten magic sea grass, becoming a sea god and gaining eternal life.

  Ben admired the creature. Glaucus had a leg span of more than thirty-eight feet from tentacle tip to tentacle tip and weighed more than seven hundred pounds. Octopuses of Glaucus's species only had a five-year life span, Glaucus was now seven. That made him the rough equivalent of a ninety-two-year-old human with a thirty-year-old body. Only Ben Anderson knew how and why.

  Before leaving, Ben had a few important things to do.

  First, notify the police.

  After a dozen or so rings someone answered at the sheriff's office.

  Ben asked, "Is the sheriff in?"

  "I'm sorry, he's on vacation."

  Of course. Ben knew that. "Can I speak to a deputy?"

  "This is the dispatcher. There are two cars on patrol, both at Roche Harbor."

  "I have a situation over at the Sanker Foundation. This is Ben Anderson."

  "Are you in trouble?" The dispatcher's tone had gone from bored to slightly concerned.

  "Someone just tried to kill me," Ben said.

  Real concern now. "Are you safe?"

  "I don't know." Ben looked out his window and down the hillside. He couldn't see the walkway along Glaucus's pen. Somehow he doubted the diver was still there. Ben explained the events of the last few minutes as best he could.

  "Okay," the dispatcher said. "Where are you in the compound?"

  "In my office. Second floor in the Oaks Building."

  "Just a minute."

  Ben heard the dispatcher talking to a patrol car before returning to Ben's call. "Is your door locked?"

  "No. But it will be." Ben went and locked the door, wondering what good it would do.

  "I need to go now."

  "Okay, sir. Don't let anyone in. I'm calling Officer Frick at home."

  "Wait. He's not a regular deputy," Ben said, heat rising into his neck and face. "Would you please send someone else."

  "He's a special deputy with the rank of sergeant and fully empowered," the dispatcher said. "He's also chief of security there at Sanker. I'm going to call him now."

  Ben hung up. It would be a waste of precious time to argue.

  Frick had used the political power of Sanker and taken great pains to get himself ftilly integrated into local law enforcement. Frick had been brought in by Sanker almost a year previous, not coincidentally around the same time that Ben's research had started finally to become known in a general way to Sanker executives. In small communities retired cops could get special reserve commissions.

  From what Ben had been told, the county sheriff didn't much like Frick and was trying to find a politically graceful way to get Frick out of his department or at least severely limit him.

  From his closet Ben pulled out jeans and a shirt. People who swam in the ocean as part of their work tended to keep extra clothes. His morning's outfit remained in the dive room.

  Now came the most important part. Ben ran back to the spacious lab and went to work destroying everything that mattered.

  Next he took a wooden box full of 50mm freezer tubes bundled in five different lots, each lot with its own color, and removed it from a freezer, then ran with it down the stairs and a long hall to a workshop. There he pushed aside shelving that disguised a hidden door. He stepped into a secret study, most of it taken up with a Revco minus-eighty-degree freezer set to minus-twenty degrees. He put the box in the freezer and slammed the door.

  Then he gathered his lab notes and took them to his office. There he added them to some other notes hidden in a large-scale replica of a blue whale affixed to the wall. He didn't touch the wall safe, even though he was supposed to be the only one with the combination.

  A beep sounded; the light under his office's security camera was flashing. The foundation was rife with security measures that Ben had once considered excessive. It was a part of the corporate culture of this rich, private foundation that Ben had always disliked-dislike that had turned darker after what they'd done to Haley.

  Ben hurried to the video monitor and saw someone standing at the gate. He looked more closely. It looked like Haley. Panic filled him at the thought of someone hurting her. Adopted by Ben when she was nine, and raised by him and his now-deceased wife, she was his family.

  He used the cell phone in his pocket, scrolled down to her name, and pushed the call button. "Haley, this is Ben"-the line had static-"Can you hear me?" It went dead. He hurried back to his desk, engaged the speaker phone, and called Haley's cell phone, hoping to warn her away. He got a steady beep that wasn't a busy signal and that usually meant the repeater was overcrowded. He tried again and got the voice mail. He muttered a curse.
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  "Haley, if you get this message, do not come inside the foundation. Get in your car and go to Sam. I'll call you as soon as I can."

  With mounting frustration he watched her on the monitor just standing there ringing the bell. It occurred to him that she had never appeared to answer her cell phone. Without thinking about it much further, he pulled the spring-loaded handle that operated the front gate. A second camera followed Haley as she walked through. The image was grainy- probably the camera going bad. Something wasn't quite right. He pulled another lever that unlocked the main door to the facility. Then it hit him. That wasn't her walk. No wonder she didn't pick up her cell. It wasn't her.

  The door opened and she disappeared. Then Ben watched in shock as two men ran through the camera's field of view, mere yards behind the Haley look-alike. They wore masks and moved with deadly purpose. Another thought occurred to him, horrifying and hopeful at once: if that wasn't Haley, then it was a decoy, and Haley was probably safe.

  Ben heard heavy footsteps running on the stairs. He looked around the corner at the stairway landing. The two men were coming fast, both of them unrecognizable with nylons over their heads. If they were Frick's, why wouldn't he give them a key? He didn't have time to ponder that one.

  Ben punched the silent-alarm button. Then he pulled back into his office, grabbed a knifelike letter opener, shoved it in his pocket, and ran to the window. He opened the window and put a foot onto the steep roof.

  The roof dropped off for two stories at the gutter, a mere foot and a half from the window. He stepped through the window and onto the tiny section of steep roof. As carefully as possible, he moved along the face of the gable until he reached the corner.

  Then he began crawling toward the rooftop.

  The roof was gray heavy composite shingle that looked much like slate. It was hard on the skin and slick from a light coating of moss. He heard nothing from below. The silence was anything but comforting. Then the window slid open and the intruders' voices became suddenly audible.