Death Echo (5 page)

“Faroe’s phone,” said a woman’s voice. “Grace speaking.”

“Emma Cross. Is he around?”

“Annalise has her daddy in a chokehold. Anything I can do for you?”

Emma laughed. “I’d like to see that.”

There was a brushing sound, then Faroe’s voice said, “Where are you and—”

“I’m north of Seattle, heading for a Puget Sound waterfront town called Rosario,” Emma cut in. “The captain is about six foot two inches, rangy, stronger than he looks, unusual coordination, maybe thirty-five, very dark brown eyes, short black hair and beard, no visible scars or missing digits or teeth.”

“Name?”

“MacKenzie Durand, called Mac, no ‘k,’ according to his card.”

“Impression?” Faroe asked.

“Warm smile, cold eyes. Very smart. In the right situation, I bet he’d be damned dangerous.”

Faroe grunted. “Somebody wasn’t happy to find out that
Blackbird
is the same vessel that left Shanghai.”

“Somebody will have to be happy with the radiation patch and business card I passed off in Seattle.”

“Somebody is never happy.”

“Yeah, I get that. The
Blackbird
is either owned or brokered by Blue Water Marine Group in Rosario,” she continued. “I’d like a fast run on them from research. Mac is a transit captain. Is the research in on him yet?”

“Still pulling threads. Stay on him and watch your back.”

“How carefully?”

“How many backs do you have?”

Emma closed her eyes. “Right.”

“If research turns up anything useful, it will appear on your computer or as a text on your phone.”

“Faroe…”

“Yeah?”

“I’d swear I was being followed when I left the Belltown Marina.”

“Description?”

“That’s the problem,” Emma said. “I never saw anyone. I just had this feeling I was being watched. I did all the standard things for dumping a tail, both on foot and after I got in my rental. Nothing popped.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“A little foolish for wasting time, but I’d do it all over again.”

“The dumping tail thing?” Faroe asked.

“Yes.”

“Keep it up. Everyone who ever worked with you at the Agency mentioned your good instincts. Some folks didn’t like what you found with those instincts—”

“I’m shocked,” she cut in.

“But that’s why St. Kilda hired you,” he continued. “We’re not politicians. All we want are answers. Get them.”

Faroe disconnected before Emma could say anything.

She sat, staring at the phone, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking.

I left the Agency because I got tired of shadows within shadows within darkness. Every shade of black and gray.

And now all my instincts are twitching like I’m in Baghdad.

Bloody hell.

She snapped the phone shut, started her rental Jeep, and headed north on Interstate 5.

BEYOND
ROSARIO

8:03 P.M.

M
ac Durand slid the black-hulled yacht through the narrow channel at dead idle. By dark or sunlight, Winchester Passage was beautiful, distracting, something he didn’t need while single-handing a complex new boat in the ever-changing waters of North Puget Sound. The long-lasting twilight made everything difficult—seemingly clear but actually not.

Yet Stan Amanar had insisted that
Blackbird
be in Rosario tonight, even if it meant running after dark.

Mac didn’t like it. Deadheads—logs that had been soaking in the saltwater so long they floated straight up and down, exposing only a few inches of themselves above the water—were a constant danger. More than one twin-prop boat had met a deadhead and limped into the nearest port on one prop. Unlucky single-prop boats were towed or came in very slowly on a small kicker engine.

Some of the boats sank.

Never underestimate the sea.

Or a woman.

Mac smiled slightly. He was looking forward to seeing Emma Cross sometime soon. It would be interesting to find out what her game was. Or to get her out of her clothes, depending.

He didn’t get naked with crooks.

He picked up a channel marker a half-mile ahead and checked the paper chart spread out on the helm station in front of him. He would turn to port when the marker was abeam on his starboard side. Then it was a straight shot in two miles of deep water to the lights that marked the channel into Rosario.

Mac set aside the joystick controller and returned to the throttles, nudging them forward. Speed had its risks. So did going too slow and feeling his way in the dark. Without radar or an electronic chart plotter, he was cutting things close. Sight navigation in full darkness was a good way to be surprised to death.

Mac made his turn at the markers and brought the speed up more. The diesels purred and the wake boiled out behind the transom, a pearl fan spreading over the black water. He headed for town at what he estimated was the most efficient rate for both speed and fuel use—about fourteen knots. Engines like the ones in
Blackbird
‘s belly could push the hull at more than twice that speed.

Two hundred yards outside the breakwater, he cut the throttles back to reduce his own wake. The marker at the outside end of the alley was flashing red against night-black water.

He picked up the hand-held
VHF
he had brought aboard.
Blackbird
wouldn’t have any proper electronics until after she was commissioned.

“Blue Water Marine, Blue Water Marine, Blue Water Marine, this is
Blackbird
outside the breakwater.”

The response was immediate.

“
Blackbird,
this is Blue Water Marine, switch and answer on six-eight.”

He twisted the channel selector and punched the transmit button. “Blue Water, this is
Blackbird
. You have somebody down there to catch a line?”

The man-made marina looked calm in the deceptive light, but tidal currents could be a bitch.

“With those pod drives, you won’t need help,” Bob Lovich said, “but we’re coming down to watch.”

Whatever,
Mac thought impatiently, and punched the send button instead of answering.
The worst part of this job is owners who don’t know as much as they think they do.

No matter what the spec sheet said,
Blackbird
was an untried boat. It took a lot of arrogance, plus a full helping of stupidity, to assume that the spec sheets were the same as the actual boat in the water.

He pulled the engines out of gear, flipped off the engine synchronizer, and stepped out onto the main deck. Quickly he coiled bow and stern lines and placed them on the gunwale where someone on the dock could reach them. Because he was cautious, he put most of the weight of the lines on the inside half of the gunwale. If something went wrong, the lines would slide to the deck, rather than into the sea, where they could tangle with the props and cripple the boat.

Caution was also why he tied fenders on the dock side of the boat. He didn’t want sudden wind or current to push him against the dock and mar
Blackbird
‘s hull. Salt washed off. Scrapes didn’t.

As he stepped back into the cabin, he heard the radio’s impatient crackle.

“Stop wasting our time playing with fenders, Mac,” Lovich said. “That boat can dock herself.”

Only if the captain knows the drill. Even a pod drive isn’t idiot-proof.

Yeah, the worst part of his job was the owners.

Mac knew that
Blackbird
was equipped with the latest and greatest pod drives, but he didn’t want to rely on a system he’d never used in the close quarters of a marina. He knew what the boat would do if he used the twin throttles for maneuvering. He couldn’t say the same about the joystick for the pod drives.

Mac glanced around the deck, planning his moves, and then stepped back to the helm station inside and put the engines in gear. Dead-slow, he passed through the slot in the breakwater and entered the boat basin at a crawl. Using throttles and helm, he cruised down the outside alley, stopped and pivoted between two docks that were crowded with moored boats.

The Blue Water dock was flooded with light, more to discourage theft than for safety reasons. Mac saw three men waiting at a gap between a fifty-two-foot sailboat with tall aluminum masts and a smaller pleasure boat with a square stern and long, overhanging bowsprit. He recognized two of the men, Bob Lovich and Stan Amanar, owners of Blue Water Marine Group. The third man was a stranger.

On the approach, Mac kept going in and out of gear to keep his speed down. The gap awaiting him at the dock left him maybe two feet to spare on bow and stern.

Hoohah, this should be fun.

The tide was on a steep ebb. Beneath the glittering dark surface of the water, heavy currents pulled and shoved. He came out of gear and let
Blackbird
drift to a stop parallel with the gap where the three men stood, impatiently waiting for him.

Immediately Mac felt currents work on
Blackbird,
pushing it away from the dock. He stepped out and called to Amanar.

“You sure you want
Blackbird
in this spot? I’d hate to put a mark on your new boat.”

“Ever play video games?” Amanar asked.

“I’m male, what do you think?”

Lovich laughed.

The stranger didn’t change expression. Though he looked about Mac’s age physically, his eyes were older than the first sin. Mac’s instincts started crawling over his neck. He’d seen men like this stranger before, usually on a killing field.

“Forget the wheel,” Amanar said. “Use the joystick. It’s just like a video game.”

Mac didn’t hide his skeptical look.

“Go ahead,” Amanar said. “We won’t charge for scratches.”

“Your boat, your money,” Mac said.

It’s a good thing I don’t have to like someone to work for him. I’d go broke otherwise.

He went back to the helm, checked that the joystick was powered up, then cautiously tapped the upright stick toward the nine o’clock position.

More quickly than he had expected,
Blackbird
moved sideways toward the dock. The short burst of power cut off the instant he released the joystick, but the boat continued to move slowly sideways.

Huh. It works.

He switched the stick toward the three o’clock position for half a second. It was enough to cancel the portside drift and bring the boat to a halt.

“Be damned,” Mac said softly.

He repeated the sequence, nine, then three.
Blackbird
edged regally sideways, then stopped. He pushed a little longer toward nine. The boat sucked in toward the dock.

Mother of all miracles. It really works.

Some of the pod drives he had used were clumsy. This one was sweet.

He checked forward and aft. The anchor mounted on the overhanging bowsprit of the powerboat ahead of him would whittle his margin for error down to inches, so he pushed the joystick toward six o’clock.
Blackbird
slid a few feet out from under the threat. He pushed toward nine again, twice. Each time the boat moved sideways, against the current, as though on rails.

“Really sweet,” he said, loud enough for the men on the dock to hear.

Amanar and Lovich laughed.

The stranger showed the emotions of a cement slab.

Mac nudged the black hull closer and closer until he felt the fenders touch the rail of the dock.

“Just punch the button that says ‘Maintain,’” Amanar called.

Mac did. The twin propellers took over automatically.
Blackbird
held nearly motionless against the dock.

Amanar took the bowline, then the stern line, and secured
Blackbird
to the dock.

Mac leaned on the rail and looked down. “You’re going to put me out of business. Nobody will need a captain anymore. A baby could do it.”

“Have to be a damn rich baby,” Amanar said. “Pod drives ain’t cheap. Shut it down. You’re good.”

Mac stepped back to the helm long enough to shut down the big engines.

Lovich said something to the stranger.

Mac watched the third man, a heavy-set male with a wide Slavic face, black eyes, shoulder-length brown hair, and a well-combed mustache. He looked a lot younger than Lovich and Amanar, who were well advanced on the downhill slide to fifty. All in all, despite the longer hair, the stranger could have been Lovich’s nephew.

And he was colder and more confident than anyone Mac had ever met outside of a sniper reunion.

He caught a word or two of a language that could have been Eastern European or even Russian. Mac couldn’t be sure. Languages hadn’t been a specialty of his. He had been the backup medic and sniper for his team.

Memories stirred in him, black and red, screaming. He shoved them down and bolted the hatch.

Lose the replay,
he told himself roughly.
Long ago, far away, and nobody cares about it but you.

Mac shoved a line through one of the midship hawseholes and leaped onto the dock. As he bent to tie the line to a dock cleat, he deliberately brushed against the stranger.

Beneath the soft brown leather jacket there was solid muscle.

“Sorry,” Mac said. “Just need to get this line.”

The man stared at him with blank, black eyes.

Lovich murmured something in the stranger’s language.

The man watched Mac.

Suddenly the night was quiet, only the gentle lapping of water against the boats and the faint ringing sound of a loose stay hitting the mast on a nearby sailboat.

The third man said something.

Lovich nodded. “Let’s go aboard,” Amanar said, looking at his partner.

Mac watched the third man move. Though he had an athlete’s coordination, slight hesitations and adjustments in balance told Mac that the man wasn’t used to the transition between land and water. Yet his confidence was superb. He catalogued his surroundings with a few sweeping glances.

“You’re working late,” Mac said, glancing at his watch. He still had plenty of time to go to Tommy’s place for the promised drink.