Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

  In return, Mac watched the radar screen that overlaid the charts, his eyes alert for anything that followed their course, random alterations included.

  “And?” she asked after he had studied the radar a particularly long time.

  “Nothing that makes my neck tingle.”

  She watched Blackbird cut through blue water to the imaginary but very real international line in the water. When their radar showed the boat entering Canadian territory, Emma looked at Mac.

  “How long does inspection take?” she asked.

  “Normally it’s just a courtesy,” Mac said. “You show passports, get a number, put the number on both sides of the front cabin, throw out whatever fruits are in season, and you’re good to go. Fifteen minutes on a busy day.”

  “Friendly, in a word.”

  “Anything to grease the flow of commerce and tourism—as long as someone isn’t suffering from short dick syndrome.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll go back to learning to drive.”

  To get a feel for manually steering the boat under different water conditions, Emma took off the automatic navigation and guided Blackbird through the choppy waters that marked the fluid boundary between sovereign nations. The motion of the boat changed and the speed dropped.

  Tidal line, she thought, remembering Mac’s explanations. Or currents. Maybe both together.

  Gently she nudged the throttles up until they were making about nineteen knots again.

  Mac watched for a few moments, then said, “Push it to the max. Let’s find out what these big engines are really made of.”

  And how Emma’s stomach was.

  35

  DAY FOUR

  MANHATTAN

  1:15 P.M.

  Ambassador Steele rolled his chair from one workstation to another, talking through his headset the whole time. He stopped rolling long enough for his fingers to fly over a computer keyboard. One of the wall screens blinked and showed a close-up of a dirty village whose open sewers festered among glorious mountain peaks.

  Dwayne glanced over. The name on the bottom of the screen was Ecuador. But for that, the village could have been in any mountainous country where poverty and villages prevailed.

  “The op is compromised,” Steele said. “Evac is on the way to primary location. You have less than ninety minutes to extraction.” He paused. “Good. And if you see that lying toad on the way out, step on him.”

  Dwayne winced. Steele was at his most lethal when his voice was neutral. A click told Dwayne that his boss had disconnected.

  “Did we get the kidnap victim out in one piece?” Dwayne asked.

  “I’ll tell you in ninety-one minutes.”

  Dwayne pursed lips that more than one woman had openly lusted after. He blew out a long breath that was also a curse. “So the government was in on it after all?”

  “Crotch-deep and still sinking.” Steele sped toward another station, another screen. “That’s why factions are useful, though slippery. It’s the ones that aren’t getting a cut of the ransom money that get chatty.”

  “And then they go to another faction and sell the same information.” Sell us out.

  Steele shrugged. “If we can buy someone, we can be assured that someone else can and will. Just a matter of who gets to the finish line alive. Has Alara returned my call?”

  “Twice.” Dwayne glanced at a bank of lights on his desk. Number Four was still blinking. “Transferring line four to your headset.”

  Before Dwayne had finished speaking, Steele was.

  “Alara. Thank you for getting back so quickly. What have you discovered?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was as clear and precise as Steele’s. “Somebody in the FBI stuck a screw-you flag on Blackbird’s name in the Canadian customs’ computer system.”

  “Any reason, other than the usual?”

  “An inter-agency pissing contest.”

  “That would be the usual,” Steele said.

  “The FBI was quite unhappy that they weren’t made aware of Temuri’s presence within U.S. jurisdiction.”

  “According to Joe Faroe, Temuri left Rosario shortly after Blackbird did.”

  “The FBI was notified as soon as Temuri’s car turned onto Interstate 5, heading north or south,” Alara said blandly. “Our informant couldn’t be certain of the direction. In fact, he wasn’t certain that it was Temuri’s car until we traced the plates back to a rental agency. As soon as we were certain, one of my co-workers shared the information with the FBI.”

  “Pity it was too late to catch him,” Steele said, his voice deadly neutral. “Any sign of other computer tags on Blackbird or its crew?”

  “None.”

  “Any new information?”

  “I’ve sent many files to your computer,” Alara said.

  “My dear, if I were a farmer, I would be ecstatic at the amount of fertilizer you’ve given to me.”

  Alara beat Steele to the disconnect button.

  36

  DAY FOUR

  NANAIMO

  11:40 A.M.

  After being at full throttle, or even at sixteen knots, four to six knots was a yawning crawl. Emma felt like giving back the controls to Mac, who had let her take over as soon as they were through Dodd Narrows.

  She wouldn’t have touched the controls in the narrows. The current had been running at six knots and the slot looked like a churning, foaming invitation to disaster.

  Mac had brought Blackbird through without hesitation. “Are they serious?” Emma asked, looking at the “speed limit” sign floating at the beginning of Nanaimo Harbor.

  “Very,” Mac said. “Enjoy the slow-motion scenery.”

  She shook her head, but didn’t argue, just kept easing off the throttles. After some time at Blackbird’s controls, she was more relaxed, if no less alert to the hazards on the water.

  She spared the scenery a few admiring glances. Nanaimo was a surprising gem set about halfway up to Campbell River on the east side of Vancouver Island, right in the middle of boating paradise—green and blue and white, rocky islets, whipped-cream clouds, and picturesque shoreline. The water was alive with workboats and cruisers, water taxis and the single-and twin-engine seaplanes of three different airlines. Not enough commerce to totally destroy the ambience, yet enough to sustain a small city.

  Except…

  “That smell,” she said.

  “Pulp mill,” Mac answered. “Used to be the perfume of the Pacific Northwest, the engine of growth. Now, so few lumber operations are active that the smell is almost nostalgic.”

  “Nostalgic.” She cleared her throat. “That’s one word for it. I suppose you get nostalgic over the odor of fish canneries.”

  “Me? No. But a lot of old men who used to provide a good living for their children and grandchildren sure would.”

  “The world still eats boatloads of fish.”

  “Processed by factory ships on the high seas, ships fed by trawlers clear-cutting the ocean bottom far away from shore,” Mac said. “Out of sight, out of mind, the way clear-cutting forests used to be.”

  As he spoke, he kept a wary eye on a nearby sailboat struggling with the Pacific Northwest’s famously fickle winds. But he couldn’t decide if it was the on-and-off wind or the captain’s inexperience that was causing the bigger problem.

  Then there were the young kayakers larking about in chunky, wide-bottomed plastic craft, ignoring shouted directions from the leader of their colorful little flock.

  Not to mention the aluminum workboat that thought speed limits were for tourists. It was leaving a wake steep enough to cap-size a careless or inexperienced kayaker.

  Emma had also noticed the sudden complications of her life as newbie captain. Trying to figure out where the sailboat, kayakers, and speeding workboat would/might intersect with Blackbird gave her a headache.

  “I just surpassed my pay grade,” she said. “The wheel is yours.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive. It’s
not an emergency, so I’m outta here.”

  She switched places with Mac.

  After a few moments she got twitchy. To everyone else, she and Mac looked like a couple on an autumn vacation, but they weren’t on vacation. The gap between appearance and reality kept smacking her in the face. She just wasn’t used to the double game. Or triple. Maybe more.

  “When I was in training,” she said, “we spent hundreds of hours preparing for border crossings. Potentially, they’re always the most dangerous part of any operation.”

  “You aren’t crossing from Casablanca to Lisbon, sweetheart,” he said, doing a reasonable impression of Humphrey Bogart.

  She smiled in spite of her restlessness. “You’re saying the natives really are friendly? Even after Steele’s heads-up call?”

  “Oh, we’ll probably get tossed, thanks to the FBI ass clown who put a flag in the Canadian customs’ computer.” Mac’s dark eyes checked gauges. “But I doubt if it will be a rubber-hose experience. America as a nation may be genially despised, but our money is always welcome.”

  “If the government isn’t the problem, why did Lovich and Amanar send you on Blackbird? Why didn’t they just take the boat themselves?”

  “Same question Faroe asked. And I asked,” Mac said.

  “And the answer is?”

  He shrugged and adjusted the throttles so that the sailboat and the most foolish kayakers could get tangled up without him. The workboat was little more than a frothing, receding wake, throwing small craft around like wood chips. Somehow the kayakers had managed to stay human side up.

  “I think Blue Water wanted to establish an unremarkable profile for Blackbird in Canada,” Mac said.

  “New owner and new girlfriend taking new boat for a cruise?”

  “Pretty much. Nothing special. Nothing different. Nothing unexpected. Absolutely nothing to notice.”

  “Amanar didn’t expect the FBI to say that we’re smuggling in enough champagne for a party of two hundred,” Emma said, thinking about Steele’s call. “If we don’t get through Canadian customs…” She hesitated. “I can’t figure out if that’s good or bad. It’s certainly a game changer.”

  Mac eased through the kayakers without upsetting anyone. The sailboat had lowered yards of flapping cloth and gone back to good old diesel power.

  “But since we don’t know what the game is,” he said, “we don’t know if this is opportunity knocking or an IED ticking by the roadside.”

  She winced. “I don’t suppose Alara gave any hints to Steele. Beyond the champagne charade.”

  “You don’t suppose correctly.”

  She started to say something, then looked at him. “Was that grammatically possible?”

  “Did you understand me?”

  “Yes. Frightening, but true.”

  “Then it was possible.”

  Laughing, enjoying his quick mind, Emma put her head against Mac’s shoulder. And bit him.

  He gave her a look that went from startled to smoky in one second flat.

  “Shouldn’t we go through the border protocol again?” she asked as though nothing had happened.

  “There are a lot of things I’d like to do. Doubt that they’re in the protocol manual.”

  “You’d be surprised. The manual is very…thorough.”

  “Some day you’re going to read it to me,” he said. “Thoroughly.”

  Emma thought of all the dreary paragraphs and subparagraphs. “You’d fall asleep.”

  “Try me.”

  She wanted to. Really wanted to.

  “Border protocol,” she said.

  “Nothing we haven’t covered. You help me dock—”

  “That’s a whole different thing we haven’t talked much about.”

  “—then get back aboard immediately,” Mac said, ignoring her interruption. “I take our passports and Blackbird’s papers to the official on duty. He runs them through the computer, asks a few questions, and decides to search the boat or not. Either way, you don’t set foot on the dock again until the official tells you to, or I have an entry number, or we’re told to take our ugly American selves back south.”

  She nodded.

  “Are you worried that we won’t get the magic number?” he asked.

  “I’d be surprised if we got turned back,” Emma said. “The FBI isn’t stupid. They’ll get in the CIA’s knickers just to remind everyone to play nice, but they won’t intentionally blow an op.”

  “Unintentionally?”

  “It happens. Too many agencies. Too many secrets. Too little real cooperation, because budgets depend on delivering departmental success stories. Partial gold stars for taking part in joint operations doesn’t get you as many points as getting a job done within your own department.”

  “Sounds like branches of the military fighting over whose elite ops get used in a high-profile rescue,” Mac said, disgust clear in his voice. “None of the brass cares about the poor sucks caught behind enemy lines, just who gets the glory for saving the day.”

  “The really good news is that our enemies are the same.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. Petty, jealous, kiss-up, shit-down humans.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Never looked at it that way.”

  “Feel better?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She smiled rather grimly.

  “Makes the amount of cooperation between Canadian and American border guards all the more impressive,” Mac said. “And I don’t mean the tit for tat of international politics. I mean that the Canadians and the U.S. exchange information on boats crossing the border. The entry number you get from Canada is logged in right next to your return number when you check back into the States.”

  “I’m guessing that’s post-9/11,” she said.

  He nodded. “Even with ‘heightened security,’ most of the yacht traffic between countries doesn’t get more of a look-over than a car full of tourists at the land border crossings.”

  “Probably because the terrorists everyone is worried about don’t use expensive yachts for transport. Neither do smugglers. If you’re caught with contraband, it’s not worth the price of losing a multimillion-dollar yacht. Not cost effective.”

  “But yutzes with small, fast boats and smaller brains…real cost effective,” Mac said.

  “Cannon fodder.”

  “What would a barbecue be without hot dogs?” Mac asked bitterly.

  Emma remembered the reservation and wished she’d kept her smart mouth shut.

  37

  DAY FOUR

  NEAR NANOOSE BAY

  12:00 P.M.

  Demidov looked at the lower set of latitude and longitude numbers on his cell phone, the ones that were direct from the locator aboard Blackbird. Reassured, he turned back to the charts of the water between Vancouver Island and the mainland of Canada. He had the charts spread over Lina’s small living room floor. Every time the breeze shifted the window curtains, the big charts fluttered.

  “I’m surprised this isn’t all on a computer,” he said.

  In the daylight pouring through the front windows, Lina’s red hair was younger than her skin. She tossed stray locks behind her shoulder with the practiced moves of the flirt she’d once been. But her blue eyes didn’t tease. Their color was a bit faded and a whole lot harder than it had been back when she was an untried agent assigned to Taras Demidov.

  “I have a chart plotter and sonar on my boat,” she said. “It’s all I need for fishing.”

  Demidov didn’t bother saying that it wasn’t enough for him. He checked the numbers again, then nodded abruptly.

  “What?” she asked.

  He glanced at her, then back to the charts.

  Blackbird wouldn’t be sailing up the Inside Passage right away. The yacht had gone into Nanaimo harbor, to check in with Canadian customs. Even if it was the usual cursory inspection, there would be time for him to set up the interception. After that…

  After that, it depended on Bl
ackbird’s captain.

  “Taras?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “Something is always wrong. It’s just a matter of finding out what and where and when,” Demidov said. “Your boat. Is it ready to use?”

  “Always. That’s how I make my living.”

  “Come, you will show me about this living.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  38

  DAY FOUR

  NANAIMO

  12:05 P.M.

  Mac let the boat idle for a moment, feeling what the tidal currents and the wind were doing to Blackbird. The brisk northwest wind was strong enough that even the yacht felt its push and pull. The customs dock and its claustrophobic modular shed waited for them. It didn’t look like there was anyone in the small office yet, but someone was strolling down the long ramp that went up and away from the water to much larger headquarters.

  Mac tapped the battery-operated headset he wore. The microphone was the size of a bumblebee hovering just beyond reach of his lips. Low tech compared to what he’d used in war zones, but it got the job done.

  Ate nine-volt batteries, though.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m awaiting detailed instructions.”

  Though they couldn’t see each other, the headphones they wore made it seem like they were standing side by side.

  “You have your PFD cinched tight?” he asked.

  Emma fingered the straps of the flat life vest she wore. It wouldn’t inflate unless she hit the water, which she really didn’t want to do.

  “I’m good,” she said. “The lines are all coiled and ready to go.”

  “This landing is going to be different,” Mac said. “Bowline first, then stern, then forward spring line. Don’t worry about pretty or efficient. Just get it done. Step off onto the dock when I bring her alongside. Ready?”

  Frowning, she thought through the steps.

  “Unless you want to take the controls?” he invited.

  “Pod drive?”

  She’d learned to like it in the few minutes he’d let her play with it before they got into real traffic near the harbor. Then he’d made her switch to old-fashioned throttles for control. The pod drive was sexy and easy, but it wasn’t something he really trusted.