Sam floored it and headed toward the sheriff's car, but in the right-hand lane. In a split second the sheriff was moving to block him. Sam swerved to the left, got half onto the opposite shoulder, and went around the back of him. As he went around the bend in the road, the cop was turning around to follow.
'Now we've got a problem,' Sam said. He put the truck in a slide and waited for the rear tires to hit the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Instantly the truck spun around on the loose rock; now he was going the opposite direction, accelerating full out. He wished he had his Vette, the 'Blue Hades.'
'What are you doing?' Haley whirled as they passed the flashing lights of the cop car in a blur.
Sam accelerated, quickly getting to one hundred miles per hour. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Haley's body taut like a bow.
'We're going to take a chance. A big chance. We'll try the plane one more time.' When he approached the resort, he noticed there were more cars than before. One was a police cruiser. He slammed on the brakes, anyway; they jumped out and he led the way, carrying the computer, going as best he could toward the dock. Haley actually had to slow her pace to keep next to Sam.
At that, Haley ran on ahead. Sam ran more slowly. Looking back, he saw something that tightened his gut. Frick was in the resort with a tall black man. They had stumbled onto Frick's base of operations.
She ran down the section of the dock spanning the beach, arriving at the long ramp. At the bottom was a wharfinger's booth, which was better lit than the rest of the dock. Then suddenly she was struggling. Someone had grabbed her. Incredibly, they seemed so intent on her that they didn't seem to notice Sam.
Her assailant was facing the water, hanging onto her, saying something Sam couldn't discern. He managed to get the computer flat on the dock. At the last second, before he struck, the man turned and saw him. Shoving Haley away, the man reached inside his coat. Although Sam already had his gun in his right hand, he used it as a club. It was a risk, but he didn't need more bodies.
Sam connected with the man's jaw, but not squarely. It ripped open his skin and angered him. This was a big bruiser of a man, maybe a slight bit fat, but under the fat was a mountain of muscle. Instinctively Sam went for the man's gun hand and dropped his own pistol. The man struggled, shouted for help while trying to free his weapon. With his left hand Sam gripped the man's right wrist. Using his palm, Sam struck upward to the nose.
When the man rocked back on his heels, Sam punched to the solar plexus, doubling the man over. An elbow to the back of the head took the man down completely. Sam took his gun and retrieved his own and the laptop from the edge of the dock.
The squad car had screeched to a halt and another man was coming at them. Haley was cranking the plane's engine. It started. He hobbled the 150 feet or so around the outer rectangles of the dock. Instead of shooting, the deputy was running fast. Another real deputy, Sam thought.
The man was gaining.
Sam rounded a large boat at a ninety-degree bend in the dock and climbed in the fisherman's cockpit of a Californian 55. Grabbing a handy boat hook, he waited about two seconds until the deputy came running by. It took some coordination, but he jammed the pike into the dock just ahead of the officer, who tripped and went flying. Sam was on him, got his gun and Mace, and threw them overboard. Then he backed off.
'You're under arrest,' the officer said. His shin was bleeding.
'Later. Report Frick and get yourself to safety.'
'You're under arrest-now,' the man shouted over the din of the plane.
Sam towered over the officer, who seemed determined to make an effort. The officer tried to get Sam's hand and wrist in a disabling hold. Sam tossed him into the bay.
'I'm sorry,' Sam said at a shout. 'Can you swim to that ladder?'
'I'm sure I can.'
Sam limped over to the plane.
'This whole thing sucks,' the officer bellowed in a shout as he was arriving at the ladder. Obviously the man had reservations about Mr. Frick. Perhaps the feeling would grow. Sam managed to push the plane off the dock and get it headed away with a paddle.
Haley gave the engine a shot of throttle, moving the plane forward slowly until Sam was able to flop in the cockpit.
Haley gunned the engine and they were soon hurtling down the rippled bay. Before they took off, at least one bullet thunked into the hull of the plane in the backseat area.
Obviously Frick figured out too late what was happening. They flew very low over the sandy spit that formed the bay. They then went down the coast about two hundred feet above the water at half-throttle. They used no lights; they would be virtually invisible.
There was no road along the beach, and even if there had been a car inland, it couldn't possibly have traced their path.
'Davis Bay,' she said at a sparse ring of residential lights.
They approached a peninsula. 'MacKaye Harbor,' she said as if documenting her progress.
'Aleck Bay and McAr amp;le Bay.' She turned on the landing light.
Sam knew it was dangerous. One miscalculation, an anchored boat or log, and they were dead.
'There's where we're going-that tiny hole in the rocks,' she said, dropping down right above the water. She banked to the left. The bay looked like the shadow of a giant outfielder's glove, but with a very narrow opening. It was an area of steep banks, rocky bluffs, and intermittent breezes.
She held the nose high, trying to ease down. They hit the water outside the entrance of the bay and bounced badly about four hundred yards from its mouth. The second time they came down, they stuck. She was giving herself room because once inside the bay, the beach would come up quickly. She flicked off the light and killed the motor.
The dark was eerie and the water sloshed against the hull.
'I think we're just outside the mouth of McArdle Bay.'
She lifted open her door, which folded up, wing fashion. There was a slight breeze and the smell of the beach was strong in the air. A bird flopped in the night, just awakened and compelled to flee. Another bird squawked as if encouraged by the neighbor's departure. The largest beach in the small bay lay directly ahead. To either side the rock rose up barren for fifty feet or so, and the shadows of the trees lined up along the divide between earth and rock like spooks on a shelf.
'Shall we use the engine or the paddle?' she asked.
'The bay is maybe two hundred yards,' Sam said. 'The beach may be another few hundred yards beyond that. Let's use the motor. We'll make noise, but it'll be over with fast.'
They heard an outboard motor start.
'Oh no,' Haley said, the fear apparent in her voice. 'That could be Harlasen or it could be Frick's men.'
Sam pulled out the two guns and prepared himself to use them. There was a calm in him that was always there before a fight and he could feel it despite his climbing heart rate.
As he watched the white of the boat's wake in the moonlight and judged there were a number of people aboard, he decided what he would do. It was a quiet place, a bowl, and had walls of rock, so the sound was held and then deflected toward the entrance. Sam could hear every change in the motor and the turning of the boat as it made good the course direct to their location. Even the sounds of men talking could be heard, although the words were not plain. The moon passed from behind a cloud and the increase in light made the branches of the trees shine, the figures in the boat starker black silhouettes.
Sam had told himself that it would be unlikely that Frick's men would have been able to move that fast. Wishful thinking, in all likelihood.
As the boat approached, someone in the back flicked on a bright light, illuminating two figures in front. One appeared an angelic apparition in filmy white. He took an involuntary breath.
Sarah.
Something was terribly wrong.
As the boat drew closer, and he began to form an image of what was before him, a horrible feeling of resignation overtook him. In the front of the boat were Sarah and a man standing behind her with her head pulled back, neck exposed, and a knife against her Adam's apple. Pictures of the Harlasen family massacred poured unbidden into his mind. More innocent fellow travelers fallen. He struggled to stay in the moment.
'Surrender or I cut her throat,' the man said. He was big and confident.
