Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The big stainless-steel boxes of the fuel tanks were painted white. They were equipped with brass fittings and sight gauges that gave a direct measure of the level inside. The starboard engine registered full. So did the port.

  He rapped his knuckles against the metal sides of each tank, but couldn’t be sure of anything through the ear protectors. He pushed against the metal of the starboard tank with his left hand. It gave ever so slightly, just as he expected.

  But the port tank was like trying to flex a steel girder.

  He dragged himself back to the manifold and studied its scheme again. It took him too long to figure out what was wrong because his eyesight kept going dark at the edges. But enough blinking and squinting told him that the lines that returned unburned diesel from the engines had been rearranged. The fuel return from the port engine had been rerouted to the starboard tank.

  No wonder it didn’t take them long to refuel.

  He limped heavily to the machine space, selected a wrench, and went to work on the inspection port welded to the top of the port fuel tank. By stretching and balancing on his good leg, he could peer into the tank just enough to see red diesel fuel sloshing around.

  And bang his head a few times, making it ring along with the insidious dizziness that kept trying to bring him down.

  With a savage curse he pulled the telescoping rod out of his sling. There was a magnet on one end for retrieving tools that fell into the bilge. He didn’t need the magnet, but he needed the extending rod. After a few misses thanks to waves rolling the deck beneath his feet, and his own eyesight taking holidays, he got one end of the rod in the inspection port. He hit the button that released the sections.

  The rod went only six inches below the level of the fuel in the “full” tank.

  Mac leaned against the tank while he closed the inspection port. Sweat made the wrench slippery. So did blood. A wave of dizziness nearly sent him to his knees.

  Got to check the wiring harness, he told himself.

  Another round of dizziness forced him to admit that he could check the wiring harness and pass out in the engine room, or he could climb back into the cabin and steer until he passed out.

  Wrong answers.

  He fumbled some pills from his pocket. He’d really hoped to delay taking them. The false energy of chemicals didn’t prevent blood loss, and had never worked long for him anyway, but he had no choice. He had to stay on his feet until they reached the border.

  He put the pills under his tongue and let them melt.

  In less than a minute, a wave of adrenaline roared through him, burning away the darkness that kept trying to shut him down. That was the good news. The bad news was that when the chemicals wore off, he would crash. Period. No exemption for emergencies.

  He was hoping he would last more than an hour.

  Experience told him it would be less than half that.

  Mac limped slowly toward the wiring harness. Like arteries, the wires took power from the fuel-driven heart of the ship. He wiped sweat out of his eyes, noted without interest that he must be bleeding somewhere on his head, and began tracing wires according to function. Knowing there had been modifications to the port tank made him distrust anything he couldn’t see for himself.

  Leaning heavily against any available support that didn’t burn him, he studied the reinforced blue rubber hosing and individual metal fittings of the fuel injection systems. Electronically controlled diesel engines operated at very high pressures. The connectors and hoses were notorious for leakage.

  These metal connectors were bright, shining in the hard fluorescent light. Just right for a new boat. Yet the longer he looked at the hoses, the more he thought something was wrong.

  Even with the chemicals sleeting through his blood, it took him several minutes to realize what his eyes were seeing. Two of the hoses were a lighter shade of blue than the others. It was a subtle difference, but real. Since the engines had been installed at the same time, the tubing should be precisely the same.

  Two of the hoses had been changed out.

  Mac wiped his eyes, cursed the scalp wound that bled like a faucet into his eyes, and followed the two hoses. One led from the fuel distribution manifold to the generator that was mounted on a platform between the big diesel propulsion engines. The second ran from the manifold around to the back of the starboard fuel tank.

  Why? There already are hoses in place for fuel supply and return on the generator.

  He forced himself to concentrate on each detail. The hoses looked like fuel lines but one of them was connected to the output line of the generator, not the fuel system. He squeezed the line. It didn’t feel right. No humming tension of fuel under pressure.

  Why?

  It made no sense.

  Mac staggered to the machine space and dragged a satchel of wrenches into the engine room. He fumbled out one wrench, found it didn’t fit, and tried another. By the fourth wrench he’d found a winner.

  Carefully, fighting dizziness and the constant lurch and roll of the deck beneath his feet, he went to work on the connector at the generator end of the circuit. After a minute it gave way. He unthreaded it and slid it back down the blue hose.

  It wasn’t a fuel line. It was a heavy-gauge electrical wire.

  With growing dread, he followed the wire. It was tied into the electrical circuit that ran from the generator to one of the starter batteries.

  A different kind of adrenaline slammed through Mac.

  Fear, pure and simple.

  76

  DAY SIX

  SOUTH OF TOFINO

  8:33 P.M.

  Emma worked to hold Blackbird close to the course Mac had laid out. It took more strength than she’d expected. The waves seemed bigger, steeper, pushed up rather than rounded. As Mac had warned her, the wind was backing toward southeast, changing everything.

  And the radar was getting flakey. Once in a while it returned an odd blip off to their stern, just at the edge of the radar’s reach. Sometimes the echo was there, more often it wasn’t, making it more a tease than a threat.

  Or maybe it was just the meds and the fact that a big freighter was closing with them that had her edgy. On the radar, the ship’s echo looked like an island. She hoped that Mac returned before Blackbird and the freighter collided, but she didn’t change course.

  The waves were all too real, too threatening. She didn’t need to search the radar for more trouble.

  Behind her the hatch door slammed down.

  “Mac?” she asked.

  “Minute.”

  His voice was harsh. He limped heavily back to Temuri’s body and began an awkward, one-handed search. When he was finished, he hadn’t discovered anything more sinister than money and an old black comb. The passport was Canadian, in a name that wasn’t Shurik Temuri.

  With a long, relieved breath, Mac pulled himself to his feet and limped heavily toward the stairs leading down to the staterooms and head. He paused only to check Blackbird’s speed, direction, and radar. The freighter was coming along nicely, soon to provide a moving screen.

  A bit of orange flashed at the most distant radar ring. Hanging on to the console, he stared at it.

  “Death echo,” he said.

  “What?”

  “One of my team…used to say that. Shouldn’t…be there.” Emma took one look at Mac’s face and said, “Lie down before you fall down. I can run Blackbird.”

  “Gotta search rooms.”

  She started to ask a question, then bit her lip. “There are small duffels in the cabins. Take the wheel. What am I searching for?”

  Instead of answering, Mac eased himself down the stairs. It wasn’t pretty, but he didn’t add to his injuries. He went through empty drawers like a kid looking for Christmas. Then he emptied out the small duffels. His breath hissed at a flash of silver in the dim light. Very delicately he began to take apart the small package.

  A ham sandwich.

  Wrapped in tinfoil.

  He didn’t kno
w whether to laugh or swear, but he did start breathing again. He sorted through the rest of the belongings. Like Temuri, the cousins hadn’t brought anything aboard that would raise a border guard’s interest.

  The effort made his hands clammy with sweat, but he climbed back into the salon. He tossed the partially unwrapped sandwich on the pilot seat.

  “At least we have food,” he said, breathing hard. “Lovich’s wife doesn’t believe in plastic.”

  “You’re weaving on your feet,” Emma said. “Lie down.”

  He tossed the ear protectors on the pilot seat and repositioned his headset. “Got a puzzle.”

  Her hands flexed hard on the wheel. Neither of them could afford to waste energy arguing. She concentrated on keeping Blackbird on the compass course he had given her.

  The freighter took up an unnerving amount of the radar screen.

  Mac leaned against the pilot seat. “The port fuel tank is bogus. Whatever is inside isn’t paper. Too heavy.”

  She didn’t question his conclusions. Ships were his expertise, not hers.

  “Two choices,” he said. “Solid gold. Lead shielding.”

  A chill swept over her, making goose flesh rise.

  “I’d like to go for gold,” he said, spacing his words for breath, “but I found some heavy wire cabling inside a fake fuel hose.”

  “Jesus,” she breathed. “A bomb. It’s already wired?”

  “Yeah.” Mac braced himself and frowned at the compass. Still on course, and too rough. The wind must be shifting.

  He started to fade, then felt the chemicals kick in again. They wouldn’t keep him on his feet much longer.

  “The good news,” he said, “is that I didn’t find a timer or a radio trigger. This could be a fancy head-fake. Show how easy it is. Humiliate Uncle Sam and the Georgians at the same time, and raise terrorist aspirations around the world.”

  “Or not.” Her voice was clipped.

  “Or not. I’d give my left nut for a Geiger counter. Until we know if the guts are in place, we can’t—”

  “Take the wheel.” She grabbed the med kit.

  Automatically Mac began steering. “What are you doing?”

  “That sandwich gave me an idea. Do you have a comb?”

  “Temuri does. Left rear pocket.”

  Emma grimaced. A minute later she came back with Temuri’s comb and a bundle of long, dark hairs clenched in her fist.

  Mac started to ask about the hair, then shut up. Sure as hell, Temuri didn’t have any more use for it.

  “I need your serrated knife,” she said.

  “Backpack.”

  She fished the knife out one-handed, snagged the foil-wrapped sandwich, and went the few steps to the galley. She unwrapped the sandwich, used it to hold down the long hairs, and set the foil in the sink. Then she went head-down in the trash. Metal clashed as she shook the container. She found several cans that were fairly round. Apparently one of the cousins didn’t need to exercise his manhood by crushing beer cans.

  Her belly pack yielded dental floss. The med kit had some thin tape.

  She attacked a beer can with the wicked, serrated edge of Mac’s knife, sawing off the top.

  “You’ll ruin the blade,” Mac said.

  “Better the blade than your left nut.”

  He opened his mouth, then decided to shut up. It was hard to disagree with her on that one.

  Mac concentrated on getting Blackbird into position to use the big ship as a radar shield. It was making good speed. Almost too good. The oddly laden yacht would be working hard to get into place and vanish into its radar shadow. But it had to be done. The closer they got to the populated southern portions of Vancouver Island, the more likely an encounter with Canadian Coasties became.

  Especially if Lovich and Amanar were too angry or stupid to take the out Emma had given them.

  Despite the boat’s roller-coaster ride, Emma cut herself only twice—once on the ragged edge of the can, once on Mac’s knife. Neither cut interfered with her work. Nor did the relentless throb of her headache. As she finished each piece, she put it in the galley sink for safekeeping.

  By the time she was ready to assemble her experiment, the sink held two one-inch squares of foil with a hole in the center, a length of dental floss, and the butchered beer can. Carefully she cut and laid out thin strips of tape from the med kit.

  Now came the finicky, time-eating part.

  She picked up a hair from beneath the sandwich and went to work. The motion of the boat didn’t make her job any easier. Neither did the pounding in her head that made her want to close her eyes. But she finally managed to tie a knot, then two, then two more. With grim intensity, she concentrated on assembling the unlikely device.

  Twice she had to start over.

  “Yes!” she said as the last bit of tape finally went on.

  Mac glanced over and didn’t see a reason for her cheer. Unless half of a beer can was something to howl over. Or maybe he just wasn’t thinking straight. His head felt like it belonged to someone else.

  I should put the steering on the joystick.

  Oh, yeah. Real bright, Mac told himself. You know the joystick so well, you’ll pitch-pole us first chance you get.

  And he was getting the chance about every five seconds.

  He felt reality begin to slide away from him. Deliberately he rapped his cast against the wheel. Not too hard. Just hard enough for the pain to clear his head. The wake-up trick wouldn’t work forever, but he didn’t need forever. Just long enough to get Blackbird home.

  Mac realized Emma had been calling his name. “What?”

  She held up the half of the beer can she had worked on. He squinted, blinked, and saw that she had used Temuri’s hair to tie two squares of tinfoil to the strand of dental floss she had stretched over the open end of the can.

  “What…is that?” he managed.

  “A backcountry Geiger counter.”

  “One of us is crazy.”

  “Wait,” she said.

  Quickly she rubbed Temuri’s comb over the cloth on her leg, then touched each foil square. The pieces of foil jumped apart and dangled separately on nearly invisible tethers of human hair.

  “Static electricity,” Emma explained. “If we introduce a source of radiation, the squares will lose their charge and fall back together.”

  He stared at her in confusion.

  “Do you think I went through Temuri’s pocket and yanked some hair for kicks and giggles?” she asked. “We had a field course in nuclear physics at the Farm. A senior scientist from Oak Ridge taught us how to make a radiation counter. I never really thought much about it again until I saw that sandwich.”

  Mac shook his head hard, trying to clear it. For a few moments the world came back into something like focus.

  “We can look for radiation…with tinfoil, hair, and a comb?” he asked.

  “Don’t forget the floss and tape.”

  “Judas H. Priest.”

  Emma ignored him, put on the ear protectors, and opened the hatch. She fell as much as used the steps to get down, but landed on her feet, head ringing like a fire alarm. She lurched into the engine room. The first pipe she tried to use as a handhold was burning hot. She patted around until she found one that wasn’t.

  Crouching low, she moved the makeshift Geiger counter slowly back and forth over the port fuel tank. The foil squares didn’t fall together. She leaned in and ran her crude detector in back of the tank as well as around the sides.

  Nothing.

  Either the tank is clean or my cut-and-tape toy isn’t working.

  Both engines revved hard. Blackbird lurched sideways, ripping the pipe out of her hands and throwing her off balance. She went down on her hands and knees, barely avoiding the hot exhaust stack next to the port fuel tank.

  The detector fell in the bilge.

  “You okay?” Mac asked through her headphones.

  “Who knew that yachting was a full-contact sport?” she groaned.


  “The radio is full of official chatter. Coasties are out. We have to get to the freighter before we show on anyone’s radar.”

  She heard the strain in his voice as he wrestled with the wheel, trying to hold his course and still meet the oncoming waves safely.

  The engines made a continuous avalanche of sound.

  Carefully she fumbled beneath the port fuel tank for the detector. Despite the spinning of the shaft leading to the propeller, she managed to grope around until she found the can. Gently she pulled it toward her. But not gently enough. The two pieces of foil had touched, releasing their charge. They hung limply on their tethers. Useless.

  She reached into her belly bag for the comb and began rubbing it fiercely over her clothes.

  The engines thundered around her, working harder than ever.

  “It’s a Canadian Coastie,” Mac said. “Looking for a yacht that called in with engine failure. At least that’s what they’re putting out for the public. Hang on!”

  Mac was yelling into his mic. He knew what an engine room was like, especially at full throttle.

  “No,” she said loudly. “Cut power. Cut power! Go out of gear. I might have something, but I have to go beneath the port propeller shaft to be sure. We’ve got to be sure!”

  At first she thought that Mac hadn’t heard her. Or was ignoring her. She started to call out to him, to explain.

  The port engine’s RPMs fell off fast. The starboard engine revved to the top of its range. Mac was compromising—she could crawl around the port side without being beaten up by moving parts, but the starboard side was working flat out.

  Above her, Mac battled the ocean. “Go!” he yelled into his mic. “If Blackbird doesn’t meet these waves right, the salon windows will blow out. Tell me when you’re clear. Hurry!”

  “Copy that.”

  Emma clawed her way into position with the newly charged detector in one hand. The propeller shaft leading from the port engine was no longer spinning, but she would be thrown against a burning hot engine if she lost her footing. Completely at the mercy of chance, balance, and Mac’s skill, she bent lower. Breath held, she edged the beer-can device into the space beneath the port fuel tank, careful to avoid touching the metal bottom.