Death Echo (23 page)

The channel looked even more narrow on paper.

“Tell me this is safe,” she said.

“What is?”

“Shoving this whacking great boat through the eye of a small damn needle.”

“Bigger boats go through without problem.”

“Knowing there are bigger fools on the water isn’t comforting.”

Mac laughed. “Have I mentioned that I like you, Emma Cross?”

“That’s me, Ms. Congeniality.”

But she smiled at him before she stared at the water swirling around the nearly exposed tip of the second rock in the channel. She told herself that it was all good. If Mac wasn’t worried, she wasn’t worried. And he wasn’t worried.

Alert, yes. Worried, no.

The second shadow slid by beneath the water, chained to another buoy. She let out a relieved breath when the channel opened up in front of them. They dodged through the flotilla of small craft running for harbor.

As soon as they were out of the lee of the islet, the wind whooshed over the yacht and the water changed, becoming rougher. Out in the strait, whitecaps were turning over.

“In a few minutes we’ll be using the fourth chart,” Mac said. While she replaced the chart she’d been looking at with a new one, he stepped close to her and added, “Faroe passed on a blast from Alara. Temuri is very well connected to Georgia’s most-secret service.”

Her hands stilled as he stepped back to the wheel. “About all this sweet talk, Mac. I don’t think my heart can take it.” But even as she spoke, she was running possibilities in her mind. It was one of the things she did best. None of the possibilities made their life easier.

“Bloody hell,” she said as she smoothed out the chart.

“Yeah.”

“Mac…”

He looked at her.

She closed her eyes for an instant, then met his dark glance. “I’d rather have dealt with international crime lords.”

“Why? Killers are killers.”

“With crime, motivation is a lot easier to discover. Money is the primary mover. Everything else follows, including power. If you know motivation, you know your enemy’s weak point and can plan accordingly. But politics is like building something on the tip of a flame. Every breeze changes the lay of the land. Motivation follows the breeze.”

The curve of his mouth changed. “Pretty much how Faroe and I feel about it.”

“God, I hate politics and politicians. Give me a gang-banger any day. How good is Alara’s intel?”

“Your guess is better than mine. You were in the business more recently than I was,” he said, coming up on the throttles.

Open water lay ahead.

She fiddled with her phone. “Has Steele put Alara through research?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Emma hit speed dial.

“Got a problem?” Faroe asked by way of greeting.

“What do St. Kilda’s data banks say about Alara?”

“Nothing you couldn’t get by searching a few very academic magazines and some former State Department types who have online blogs.”

“What does the gossip side of research say?” Emma asked.

“Twice divorced, various lovers at various times, never married a third time, three children, eight grandchildren, career government in departments whose names mean nothing and whose funding isn’t questioned by Congress. Retired nine years ago.”

“Someone’s file needs updating.”

“Someone didn’t retire,” Faroe agreed.

“What did Steele tell you?”

“That she’s one of the shining ones still left playing a tarnished game.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh. Grace thinks that any ambitions Alara has are related to making sure her grandchildren don’t inherit a world where every balcony has a dictator with a suitcase full of secondhand nukes.”

Emma let out a slow breath. “Then we have the same goal.”

“Now pray that you have the same path to that goal.”

STRAIT
OF
GEORGIA

1:45 P.M.

L
ina Fredric, who wanted very much to forget that she had started life as Galina Federova, watched Taras Demidov from the corner of her eye. Though the water was choppy, headed toward outright rough, the motion didn’t appear to bother his stomach.

But of course,
Lina thought.
Nothing short of a nuclear blast would upset that man.

At least he is paying me well. Quite well.

It could have been much worse. Whether in the “free world” or the
FSU
, money and violence talked very clearly. She preferred money. So far, Demidov seemed to share her preference. If that changed…

Mentally Lina shrugged. Even though she had learned that he carried a knife rather than a gun, she didn’t fancy her chances against Demidov in physical combat. She’d grown soft over the years. He hadn’t.

The static and snatches of words from the
VHF
radio made a familiar background for her thoughts.

“...Sun Raider.”

“Sun Raider to XTSea 4EVR, switch to channel…”

The only good news about the shifting weather was that the clouds were being blown out by the northwest wind. Clear skies were nice but the price was wind, which meant rougher water, especially when the tide changed and the wind pushed against the flooding water.

A gust of wind, a small trough, and the
Redhead II
lurched beneath Demidov. Though he was sitting down, the sudden motion jerked him like a puppet. He muttered a Russian curse, lowered the binoculars, and rubbed his eyes. With barely veiled impatience, he switched his attention from binoculars to his special cell phone. Relieved not to be viewing a world that jumped about like water drops in a hot skillet, he keyed in a number.

After a few moments, two sets of latitude and longitude numbers appeared on the small screen. A cold, thin smile stretched his lips as he checked, then checked the lower numbers again.

Blackbird
was out of Canadian customs and working her way north from Nanaimo.

North, where Demidov lay in wait.

STRAIT
OF
GEORGIA

2:03 P.M.

W
hen Emma glanced up from making a late lunch in the galley, she was glad she’d ditched the eye-candy look. The waters north of Nanaimo were colder somehow, even though the temperature reading on
Blackbird’
s many gauges had shifted only a few degrees down after leaving the harbor.

“Brrrr,” she said.

Mac gave her a fast look. “Brrrr? The temperature inside the cabin hasn’t changed that much.” He half-smiled. “I’ll turn up the heat if you go back to the tube top.”

She shook her head. “Men.”

“That would be me.”

She laughed and sliced cheese. “It’s just that the water seems different out here. Like the whole world is colder.”

“Until now, we’ve been pretty much sheltered by either the San Juan Islands or Canada’s Gulf Islands. The Strait of Georgia is long enough and wide enough for the wind to work the water. It’s a good fetch from Campbell River to the Gulf Islands. The wind is free to play. So it does.”

Emma measured the increasingly choppy water. The whitecaps that had looked so tiny from the harbor weren’t all that small—they were riding the backs of steep-sided, wind-stacked waves that looked to be three feet high.

“Is it always like this?” she asked.

“It can be calm as a cup of tea. It can be six-foot razor waves. It can be like now, two or three foot waves with some wind chop on top. A little snotty, but hardly noticeable on a boat the size of
Blackbird.
”

“So what happened between here and Nanaimo. Just the wind?”

“Partly wind, partly the water itself, and a good bit that we’re heading right into it,” Mac said. “The tide is pushing to the north and the wind is shoving to the south. Irresistible force meets immovable object, and we’re caught between.”

She reached for crackers, braced herself against an unexpected motion, and waited. The next motion was equally unexpected.

“There’s no rhythm to the waves,” she said.

“We’re in the strait, not out on the ocean. The period between waves is shorter in the strait, less rhythmic. Unreliable. Makes for a spine-hammering ride if you’re in a small boat.”

Carefully she stacked crackers, cheese, celery, and sliced sausage on a plate with a rim around the top and a rubber ring on the bottom. Then she looked through the windows at a world of water, wind, and sky.

“You don’t think of
Blackbird
as small?” she asked.

“Compared to a ferry or a containership, yes. Compared to most of the pleasure craft on the water, no. We’re big enough that we’re officially allowed to decide if we want to play in gale force winds, which would make these winds look like a baby’s breath.”

“Pass,” she muttered.

“Me, too.”

She looked at him, surprised. “It wouldn’t be safe?”

“Safe ain’t the same as fun,” he said. “I’d rather be tied up snug in port listening to rigging lines slap and sing than out hammering my spine through a storm. On my own time I’m a pleasure boater, not a masochist.”

A few of the waves that broke against the bow sprayed over the decks and dotted the windshield with saltwater. Emma was aware of a change in motion, but she didn’t feel any need to hang on to things when she moved around the galley.

Yet.

“Will it get rougher?” she asked.

“If the wind doesn’t drop, yes. It’s supposed to fall off as we go to the north. That’s why we’re running for Campbell River.”

“What if it gets worse?”

“Depends,” he said.

“That’s an all-around, universally unsatisfactory answer. You want tea?”

He gave her a sideways glance. “Depends.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Yes.”

“Yes to the no?”

“No.”

Laughing quietly, she put a bottle of iced tea in a holder near the wheel and gave him the food.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

Watching the water, she shook her head.

“You work on this plate,” he said, handing over the wheel. “I’ll make more after I take a bio break.”

“Um…”

Before Emma could think of an excuse, she was left with the wheel and her doubts about steering
Blackbird
in anything but calm water.

“Put it on auto if you want,” Mac called over his shoulder as he disappeared below with a handheld
VHF
radio. “Just make sure you stay well outside those rocks and islands.”

“What rocks and islands?”

“Zoom out on the chart. You’ll see what I mean.”

She zoomed out on the computer screen, saw what he meant, and frowned. Going around the various small islands would take longer. But then, going
aground
would waste even more time.

Mac’s voice floated up from below. “If you’re nervous, I can keep an eye on things while I pee off the stern.”

“Great, I’m stuck on a boat with a flasher.”

“Flashers are used with downriggers. For trolling. Wanna see how it’s done?”

“MacKenzie, just pee!”

Laughter, then she was alone with
Blackbird
and frisky water. She thought about putting the controls on auto, then decided to try learning the rhythms—if any—of boat and water.

With her hands on the wheel,
Blackbird
became a living presence caught between external forces and its own nature. The balance between vessel and water shifted continually. At the edges of her concentration she heard the sounds of the head flushing and the static of a
VHF
radio. Mac was talking to someone.

She was too busy to wonder who or why. She oversteered a few waves, overthought a few more, and was surprised by several. The waves seemed steeper than they had been.

At least some of them did. The problem was, she couldn’t tell which ones until it was too late to do much but stagger on through.

“Different when the water is choppy,” Mac said cheerfully as he climbed up from the lower deck.

Emma’s hands were clenched around the wheel. She stood in front of it, stiff-legged, her face tense.

“A lot more motion,” she agreed curtly.

“Ever ride a horse with a western saddle?”

“Yes.”

“Move with the boat as you would a horse,” Mac said. “Loosen your knees. Let your spine flex. Fighting against the motion just tires you out.”

She looked at him. He was relaxed, balanced, his legs apart and his knees loose.

He looked good. Edible, even.

Blackbird
took advantage of her lack of attention. The bow slid off the heading, pushed by the quartering waves.

“You’d better grab it,” Mac said.

He moved closer as he took a cracker and a slice of cheese from the plate by the pilot station.

Emma turned the wheel too hard. She knew it even before the boat’s bow went past centerline.

“Damn,” she said under her breath as she swung the wheel hard the other way.

Too far.

Again.

“Give the helm a chance to respond before you crank on the wheel again,” he suggested.

“I know,” she said, remembering his instructions when she took the wheel on and off during the run to Nanaimo. “I’m just not doing it. The choppy water makes everything different.”

“Relax. Have a cracker.”

He fed one to her before she could object.

She chewed through the cracker and cheese, forced herself to slow down, and handled the helm more gently. To her relief, the boat responded. The motion evened out.

“Good,” he said. “Now, look at the compass. Try to steer a course of 340 degrees.”

She studied the compass dial beneath its glass dome and identified the 340-degree mark. It danced slowly with each motion. She tried to make tiny corrections on the helm to keep the alignment exact.

“Remember what I told you before?” he asked calmly, picking up another cracker. “Five degrees on either side is fine. It all evens out on the water.
Blackbird
isn’t suspended like a race car, where every little twitch from the driver results in a big change in the car’s direction.”