At first Mac thought she had been sick from the increasing roughness of the waves. Then he realized it was Temuri.
Some people didn’t adjust to big water. They got sick, then sicker, and kept throwing up even when their stomachs were empty of all but bile and nausea.
It smelled like Temuri had spent a lot of time puking.
Mac wanted to smile. Seasickness didn’t kill you, but it sure made you want to die. Being in the calm of Tofino harbor had revived Temuri. Enough bad water would put him down again.
Mac hoped it was soon.
“Seattle,” Temuri growled.
“Seattle,” Mac agreed.
“Move fast.”
“Whatever,” Mac said, pushing the throttles up. “Just keep that knife away from Emma’s throat.”
Temuri moved the blade maybe half an inch.
Mac knew it was as good as he’d get.
She took in air more deeply, no longer worried that a simple breath would slit her throat.
A burst of Russian.
“Temuri wants you to run for the international line,” Emma said.
“I am.”
“He wants a more direct course to Seattle. Closer to shore.”
“He’ll get it,” Mac promised.
The coastal route was indeed shorter in distance, if not in time. Closer to shore the ocean bottom came up hard, doubling the size of the swells. If you got too close, reverberation from waves that hit cliffs and washed back turned the water into a cauldron of triangular waves. Razor waves.
It would be hell on the passengers.
Silently Mac widened his stance, prepared to absorb the beating Blackbird would give anyone stupid enough to take the wrong course. He put the controls on autopilot.
And waited for a decent break.
73
DAY SIX
MANHATTAN
10:50 P.M.
Alara paced like a caged cat.
Steele wished he could join her.
Both of them listened to the open line Mac had left between himself and Faroe.
Nothing human, just the liquid hammering of water against glass, the skid and roll of loose equipment.
Alara’s cell phone hummed. She listened and broke the connection.
“Harrow and his teams are in place. They’re a thousand feet inside the international boundary line in Juan de Fuca Strait,” she said tightly. “The weather is growing ugly. Gale winds predicted.”
Silence. Then Alara’s hand smacked hard on Steele’s desk.
“Why doesn’t he make a move?” she snarled.
“He’s waiting for an opening that won’t kill Emma.”
“If Temuri is still in control when Blackbird crosses the line, Harrow’s teams will sink her.”
“I know.”
She looked at Steele. His eyes were gray, his mouth thin.
“We don’t have a choice,” she said.
Steele didn’t answer.
Alara didn’t speak again.
74
DAY SIX
SOUTH OF TOFINO
8:01 P.M.
A wave crashed hard over Blackbird’s starboard bow. Water foamed gray and silver in the thin moonlight that penetrated the massing clouds. Even though rain hadn’t begun, the ship’s three windshield wipers moved furiously to clear the forward windows after each wave broke. And they broke all the time.
Emma and Temuri lurched sideways, held from a fall only by her hand wrapped around the overhead handrail that ran down the center of the salon ceiling. She groaned and said something in Russian.
Temuri’s response was blunt. “Nyet.”
“I can’t hold both of us with one hand! My wrist…” She sagged and flinched.
Her fingers slipped.
The knife drew more blood.
“Watch it, Temuri,” snarled Mac. “Another cut like that and we’re all going to the bottom.”
Emma repeated it in Russian as she struggled to balance herself and Temuri’s much heavier weight.
Waves hit Blackbird one after another, sending the ship wallowing from side to side like an egg rolling in a bowl.
Even in the dim light of the computer screen, Mac could see that Temuri was turning green. He had a fine sheen of moisture on his face.
Cold sweat, Mac thought. It’s about time. If one of those big waves catches us wrong, the side windows will blow out.
And Mac would let it happen. He and Emma were wearing float harnesses. Temuri wasn’t. Those were better odds than they had right now.
Temuri said something guttural to Emma. She moaned as he freed her right hand. She shook out her arm. With agonizing slowness she raised her fingers toward the rail.
Then she twisted and slammed her elbow into Temuri’s neck. He managed to take most of it on his jaw, but lost his balance. He yanked savagely on her hair. The knife jerked.
Mac’s kick deflected the knife before Temuri could cut Emma’s throat. As she rolled free and came up on her feet, Temuri shifted the knife to his other hand and lunged for her. The hard side of Mac’s hand slammed against Temuri’s shoulder. Mac had been aiming for the neck, but a wave had interfered.
With a grunt, Temuri sliced the knife toward Mac.
He fell, scissoring his legs, and took Temuri down. In seconds they became a grunting, cursing, kicking, slashing pile of intent to kill. Being knocked around by the boat and each other didn’t leave any room for finesse. Biting, kicking, gouging, they grappled under the dinette for control of the knife, which had become slippery with blood.
Another wave sent both men rolling between the sofa and the dinette.
Emma dragged herself to her feet, braced herself, and watched the straining men like a snake waiting for a chance to strike. She managed a hard kick to Temuri’s kidneys before the melee moved out of her reach.
It wasn’t enough.
Mac was losing the battle. His right wrist and hand weren’t working. Adrenaline had suppressed Temuri’s seasickness. In a few minutes Emma would be left alone to deal with an assassin and a gale-force storm.
With a desperate heave, Mac changed positions with Temuri and locked his thighs around the man’s thick neck. Pain slashed across Mac’s left thigh and hip. He tightened his hold and wrenched with every bit of his body.
Mac felt as much as heard Temuri’s neck snap.
Emma grabbed the bloody knife as it skidded over the floor. Automatically she closed the weapon and stuck it in the pouch she wore around her waist. She didn’t need to check Temuri for a pulse. She had heard the crack of bone and tendon.
Her headset lay on the floor. Mac’s headset wasn’t far away. She grabbed for them while he kicked Temuri’s body to the side and staggered to his feet.
“You—okay?” Mac asked, breathing hard.
“Some cuts,” she said, pulling on a headset. “You?”
He ignored her question. “Take the wheel off auto. Steer into the waves.”
He locked his left hand into Temuri’s hair and dragged the body to the back of the salon. As he let go of Temuri, a big wave slammed into the boat, sending Blackbird reeling. Reflexively Mac tried to brace himself and nearly passed out when his injured wrist smacked the edge of the dinette. He tried to bite back a hoarse sound of pain, but wasn’t entirely successful.
Temuri might have been slowed by seasickness, but he had been as vicious a fighter as Mac had ever gone against.
“You’re hurt!” Emma cried.
“Keep on my intersection course for that tanker,” he said, pointing to the radar overlay on the chart.
Every breath was a fight for Mac. Every heartbeat was a stab of pain. He had to take advantage of adrenaline while he had it in his system. Bracing himself with his legs and wedging his back into a corner behind the pilot seat, he used his good hand to yank out the cell phone that was gnawing on his neck.
“Temuri’s dead,” he told Faroe. “We’re banged up, but nothing fatal. I’m heading out into the shipping zone miles offshore, but something�
��s wrong with Blackbird. I’ll see if I can find out and get back to you.”
“Anything useful on Temuri’s body?” Faroe asked.
“Haven’t had time for treasure hunting.”
“Don’t throw him overboard until you do.”
The sound Mac made was too cold to be a laugh. “Wasn’t planning to. As soon as I wrap my wrist, I’m going to the engine room to check some things.”
“You can’t use your right hand,” Emma called out, loud enough for Faroe to overhear.
“If I find anything,” Mac said into the phone, “Emma will call.”
“What happened to you?” Faroe demanded.
“Broken wrist.”
“Shit.”
“The left one works fine.”
Mac disconnected. He didn’t need Faroe to add to the distraction of the pain pulsing through his arm with every heartbeat. Adrenaline was a primo painkiller until it wore off.
It was wearing off.
75
DAY SIX
WEST OF VANCOUVER ISLAND
8:09 P.M.
We’ve got to splint that wrist,” Emma said.
“Steer.”
“Splint. You’re no good to anyone if you pass out from pain.”
Mac couldn’t argue with that. There were bones grinding in his wrist, and each time it happened, the pain wrenched his stomach and blurred his vision. He’d had compound fractures before, so he knew it would get worse. A lot worse.
The stab wounds in his left thigh had joined the chorus. Temuri hadn’t gone down without exacting a blood payment. Mac was still paying, and would until he could get stitches.
That was one son of a bitch who lived up to his advance publicity, he thought unhappily. And I’ve lost more of my edge than I realized.
But his willpower was still intact.
He eased out of his small backpack, yet still almost blacked out when one of the straps snagged his wrist. He hissed a savage word between his teeth.
“I’m putting the wheel on auto,” Emma said.
“Not yet.”
“At least wear these so we don’t have to yell.” She slid his fragile-looking headset into place and spoke softly. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
It was more a rasp of sound than a word.
Mac’s backpack made a small thump when it hit the floor. He put his foot on it and yanked at the waterproof opening with his good hand. After a few moments he threw a med kit and a roll of duct tape on the pilot seat.
“Remember the machine space?” Mac asked.
“Where the tools were on the first Blackbird?”
He breathed through clenched teeth and ignored the agony that was his wrist. “See if there are tools down there now.”
“If I’m looking for splints, I’ll be happy to do it. If you’re planning a spot of boat repair, forget it.”
“Splints,” he agreed finally, and reached for the wheel. “If you see ear protectors lying around, put them on.”
Emma slid out of the way, pulled a small flashlight from her belly pack, and went to the middle of the salon. She held on to the overhead rail while a wave of dizziness surged through her. Her head felt like it had been slammed into an anvil.
Think about something else. Like getting home.
She hesitated, then left the tiny headset in place. If the noise bothered Mac, he could take off his own.
Temuri’s body lay at the far edge of the hatch. She could open it without having to touch him. She bent, tugged the hatch up, and was almost blown back by the unbridled thunder of the diesels. If the door had been installed between the machine space and engine room, obviously the cousins had left it open. With a grimace, she secured the hatch and eased down the steep, built-in stairway, clinging to something every inch of the way.
At the bottom she saw ear protectors dangling from a clip, grabbed them, and shoved them on over her smaller headset like oversized earmuffs. The bruise on her forehead rewarded her carelessness with blinding pain, but the assault of sound diminished to a bearable roar.
Sacks and satchels of tools lay scattered around. Either the cousins were messy, or the Blackbird’s wallowing had tossed things about. Probably both.
Staggered by the occasional jagged spurts of pain from having had her head banged against the sink, she began crawling carefully from bag to bag. Soon she had a selection of tools that might serve as splints. She emptied a small satchel into a larger one, filled the smaller one with her choices, and headed upstairs.
By the time she scrambled out of the space and closed the large hatch, Mac had found the best line for taking the waves and cut the speed back a few knots. As a result, the boat had settled down into something resembling the other Blackbird’s usual grace.
Mac was pale, sweaty, drawn. Somehow he had put a compression bandage around his thigh. The heavy elastic was already dark with blood.
Emma knew he was going to feel worse before it got better, but there was no help for that. The wrist had to be splinted. She peeled off the heavy ear protectors and set them on the pilot seat.
“There’s a shot of something like Novocain in the kit,” Mac said hoarsely.
Emma reached for the small red zipper case. It was already open and messy, like Mac had been sorting through it. Despite the surging waves and her throbbing skull, she found and set up the numbing shot quickly.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
Before she could argue, he grabbed the syringe and shoved the needle into his broken wrist. She braced him when his body shuddered in pain, then took the empty syringe when he was finished.
Sweat ran down his face.
“Tell me when it’s numb,” she said roughly. “I’ll steer.”
“Splint it now or I’ll do it without your help.”
Emma choked back her protests. Mac knew more about field medicine and the engine room of any ship than she did. If what they both feared was true, there was no time to educate her. He had to do the work himself.
Teeth clenched until they ached in time with her pulse, she measured the tools against his injured wrist. She selected two wrenches and wrapped them into place. Duct tape was good for more than handcuffs.
He kept steering. And sweating.
She was sweating, too.
“I’ll make a sling,” she said, turning away.
She pulled Temuri’s knife out of her belly bag as she went to the back of the salon and turned her little flashlight on. She knew that she’d probably have nightmares about Temuri’s open eyes staring at death, glassy in the cone of her flashlight, but that was for later.
Right now she needed his shirt for a sling. She leaned down and went to work with the already bloody knife.
As the worst of Mac’s wrist pain let up, the knife wounds in his left side felt like they were on fire. He’d already put a compression bandage on the thigh wound. The other one was on his hip, too high for anything close to a tourniquet. He knew that the steady blood loss from the wounds would bring him down, but he didn’t know when.
Mac forced himself to concentrate on the readouts and settings on the console behind the wheel. It didn’t take him long to confirm that the starboard trim tab was locked down on maximum. The port tab wasn’t being used at all, which meant that something on the port side of the boat was heavy enough to require a lot of compensating with the opposite trim tab.
He fought a wave of dizziness and nausea. He would rather have been wrong about Blackbird’s bad trim.
But he wasn’t, so he went through the tools remaining in the little satchel by touch. As he’d hoped, a telescoping rod had caught Emma’s eye. Holding the wheel on course with his right thigh, he put the rod between his teeth and clamped down.
Emma reappeared with stinking strips of Temuri’s shirt. Silently she knotted them into a rough sling. She arranged it on Mac and eased his wrist into place. Since he didn’t pass out during the process, she figured the numbing shot was working. Or maybe it was the steel tool clenched betwee
n his teeth.
He spat out the rod, caught it, then placed it carefully in the sling.
“Take the wheel,” he said, grabbing the big ear protectors from the seat. One-handed, he fumbled them into place. Like Emma, he didn’t bother removing his own communications headset first. “Keep the same angle into the waves.”
She slid by him and took over steering. She didn’t have his instinctive understanding of waves and bow angles, but she could keep Blackbird keel side down.
She hoped.
“I could use some headlights to see what’s coming,” she said.
“Why not call the Canadian Coasties while you’re at it? I don’t even have the running lights on.”
Whatever she might have said in reply was drowned out by the blast of engine noise as Mac heaved the hatch open and secured it. He put all his weight on his left hand and dropped into the machine space. Taking a chance, he flicked on the engine-room light.
On his left thigh, blood gleamed against his black waterproof gear and ran down his leg to the floor. More blood than he’d hoped, less than he’d feared. Either way, it was what it was.
He limped down the passageway between the two diesel engines that were identical to the ones he’d checked out in the other Blackbird.
One-handed, it took him three times as long to go over the engines. The fact that they were hot didn’t help, but being below waterline at least minimized the boat’s motion. Not that he didn’t burn himself more than once. Compared to what he’d already been through, the burns were nothing.
There was a slight leak from one of the packing boxes connecting the starboard engine with the pod drive. He caught a drop of the fluid, smelled it, tasted it. Saltwater from the cooling system. It was the kind of minor leak that came with new engines and usually fixed itself.
He went to the bulkhead wall and inspected the fuel manifold, a complicated set of high-pressure lines, gauges, and switches. Diesel engines weren’t as simple as gasoline, since diesels had a constant return flow of unused fuel. The gauges and levers told him that everything was working as expected.
There were no big blocks of lead or gold or anything else heavy strapped along the port side of the engine room. The extra weight had to be in the port fuel tank itself.
Death Echo Page 31
