Death Echo

by Elizabeth Lowell

  There wasn’t much light beneath the tank and sweat was running in her eyes. Impatiently she swiped her face against her arm. Blood and sweat. She’d hit her head again, but her eyes worked fine. The foil leaves danced on their threads like leaves in a breeze.

  Until they collapsed.

  Emma stared in horror, not wanting to believe. Deliberately she created more static with the comb, charged the leaves, and held the device beneath the engine again.

  The tinfoil squares fell together.

  She lunged to her feet and bolted up the machine room steps, slamming the hatch door behind her.

  “I’m clear!” she yelled into her mic.

  But she wasn’t.

  No one was.

  77

  DAY SIX

  WEST OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

  9:04 P.M.

  Before Emma careened up the stairs and slammed the hatch back down, the port engine had thundered to life again. Blackbird hesitated, shuddering under the blow of a big wave. Water squirted in where a salon window hadn’t been tightly closed, but the window itself stayed intact. Foam and black water sleeted across the deck.

  One-handed, able to rely on only one leg, Mac fought the wheel. It was better with both engines working together again, but it wasn’t easy. Blood mixed with sweat ran down his face. He glanced at her.

  “So it’s hot,” he said.

  She grabbed the overhead rail. “Yes.”

  The boat shifted as the wave it was climbing dropped. Lights shone through the rain and spray, filling up most of the view.

  “Mac, that’s—”

  “A big bastard,” he said, looking away from her. “We’re in its radar shadow. Not close enough to worry the captain. Just finding a bit of shelter from the wind, now that it has backed around.”

  Mac’s voice sounded like a stranger’s, rough and blurred. He cracked his splint against the wheel, shuddered, and came into focus.

  The motion of Blackbird had changed. It was more of a continuous climb and push from the stern. They weren’t quite riding the freighter’s bow wave, but it felt a bit like it.

  “What—”

  “…vessel out of Tofino, heading…”

  The static made it almost impossible to understand.

  “The Canadian Coasties didn’t spot us,” Mac said mechanically. “In a few minutes they’ll pass between the freighter and shore going north. We’re about half an hour from the border. If there’s anything you have to know about taking Blackbird home, ask now.”

  She could barely hear him. His voice was nothing but a harsh whisper.

  “I’m good,” she said, “but you—”

  Emma grabbed the wheel as Mac slumped back against the pilot seat. He kept on sliding, thumping down until he was stretched out on the wooden flooring between the sofa and dinette.

  Quickly she bent, found the pulse in his neck, yanked off a sofa cushion and wedged it beneath his feet. There was no time to do more. The motion of the ship had become erratic.

  Blackbird had fallen off the sweet spot.

  Clenching her teeth, she took the wheel and tried to hold the yacht on course. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t get the bow headed in the right direction at the right time. The ride became a brain-bashing, stomach-wringing, arm-yanking roll, lurch, climb, lurch, roll, fall, lurch, until the world was nothing but the scream of wind and hammering of waves.

  How did Mac do it with only one hand?

  Amphetamines were good, but not that good, especially when fighting injuries and blood loss. Mac had done what he had to so she could play Geiger games. Now he was paying the price.

  So was Emma. Even without the relentless throbbing of her headache, she simply didn’t have the skill to get enough speed out of Blackbird to cling to the freighter’s radar shadow longer than a few minutes. She turned up the volume on the radio and listened, listened, listened….

  The Coast Guard vessel she couldn’t see on the radar apparently couldn’t see her either. Nobody hailed her.

  Using every bit of her strength and concentration, she held to the freighter’s radar shadow as long as she could. Finally she was forced to cut speed a little, then a little more. It was the only way she could begin to control Blackbird’s stubborn wheel.

  She thought about the joystick and discarded the idea as quickly as it came. If it would have worked, Mac would have used it.

  The big freighter pulled away, leaving Blackbird alone on a lightless sea.

  She fumbled her cell phone out. The screen was cracked and the battery was low. It would have to do. She couldn’t leave the wheel long enough to get Mac’s. The ride was easier now that she had cut back speed, but it wasn’t that easy.

  She punched a button.

  “What’s up?” Faroe’s voice demanded.

  “Blackbird’s hot, wired to blow,” she said tersely. “Mac is alive, but down. Amphetamine crash and blood loss. I’m going to head straight out to sea, deepest water I can find, and—”

  The sudden crackle of the radio overrode her words. “Black Swan, Black Swan, switch to six-four.”

  The call repeated several times.

  “It has to be Demidov,” she said to Faroe. “No one else knows about Blackbird’s twin.”

  “Find out what he wants.”

  Numbly Emma fumbled with the radio until she had switched channels. “Black Swan here. Who are you?”

  “Someone who understands the radiant core of your problem,” Demidov said.

  Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful.

  She hissed out her breath between her teeth, then put an edge of hysteria in her voice.

  “You do? Then help me! Mac slipped and knocked himself out and the water’s awful and I keep throwing up and I have to steer and I don’t know how!”

  The last words were a definite wail.

  “Be calm,” Demidov said. “Angle the bow east, toward shore. I’ll meet you and bring you in. Everything will be fine. Just do as I tell you. In fifteen minutes you’ll see me.”

  “R-really?” Emma asked, throwing in a sniff.

  “Of course. You’re only fifteen minutes from safety. Come to me. I will help you.”

  “Oh, God. Thank you, I’m so—” She banged her fist against a window, yelped, and bashed the radio on the wheel. “Damn this cord! It keeps—”

  Emma switched to an inactive channel and let the microphone dangle from its cord. “Okay, we’re alone again.”

  “Do you believe Demidov?” Faroe asked.

  “Do I have a choice other than going toward shore?” she asked in her normal voice. “Obviously Demidov has a locator bug aboard Blackbird. We have to assume that he also has a radio trigger for the bomb.”

  Silence, a curse. “Agreed.”

  “I can’t outrun a radio signal,” she said. “If I head for deeper water and Demidov hits the button, likely at least one freighter will be taken out with us. Same thing if you call in the Coasties who almost caught us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But if I go toward shore, there’s at least a chance I can catch Demidov off guard. Each time we’ve been in contact with him, I’ve been in arm-candy mode. He thinks I’m dumber than tofu.”

  Faroe grunted.

  “If I can’t get the job done,” Emma said, “you and Harrow will have time to set up an ambush and take Blackbird out before Demidov gets to Seattle.”

  “What makes you think Demidov will wait until then to pull the trigger?”

  “He wants a big American city to hold hostage, not a nameless hunk of Canadian coast. Publicity is the whole point of ops like this.”

  “Can you disarm the bomb?” Faroe asked.

  She laughed a little wildly. “Can you beam bomb techs aboard?”

  “Do you know how to sink Blackbird?”

  “Hit a big rock. No rocks around here. I’m miles offshore.”

  “Can you launch the dinghy?” he asked.

  “Alone? In this water?” She laughed again, then stopped. She r
eally didn’t like the sound of it. “Even if I could, and I somehow managed to drag Mac aboard, my fifteen minutes would be more than gone. Then Mac and I would get one hell of a sendoff.”

  “How long has Mac been out?”

  “Not long enough to recover,” she said flatly. “He’s lost too much blood. If he hasn’t already gone into shock, he’s headed there on a fast train. I’ve done what I can, but somebody has to be at the wheel all the time.”

  Faroe said something blistering.

  She laughed oddly. “Good-bye, Faroe. It was fun while it lasted.”

  “Wait! What are you going to do?”

  “Find out if Demidov is a soldier or a mercenary.”

  And scream.

  She really wanted to do that. But if she started, she didn’t think she would stop.

  78

  DAY SIX

  SOUTHWEST OF PORT RENFREW

  9:57 P.M.

  Emma strained into the darkness. If there were any lights out there, she couldn’t see them through the hammering rain.

  The radar didn’t have a problem. It showed an endless gold mass stretching across the western half of the screen. Occasionally, just at the edge of the inlet where the waves weren’t nearly as big, she saw a separate flicker that was Demidov’s boat.

  Death echo.

  “Okay, Mac. We’re going to see if we can’t make that name come true.”

  She picked up the dangling microphone and switched to 64.

  “Hello?” she asked raggedly. “Anyone there?”

  “Black Swan?” came the instant answer.

  Demidov.

  “Here,” Emma said. “What s-should I d-do? The waves are b-big and the rain and Mac—” Her voice broke. It wasn’t difficult to sound shaky, a woman in over her head, at the edge of drowning.

  “Turn the wheel toward the light I’ll show you.”

  “S-sure…”

  After a few moments, she saw a faint flicker, like a flashlight whose illumination was being blotted out between waves.

  “I s-see you,” she said in relief.

  “Very good. Be calm. You will be safe. When you get close, we’ll go farther into the harbor, where it isn’t as rough.”

  Emma made a panicked sound and let the hand microphone drop and dangle noisily, banging against the console.

  She’d heard all she needed to.

  “This is it, Mac. Wish us luck.”

  Silence answered her.

  Waves humped up beneath Blackbird’s stern, but rarely came apart in a thunder of foam anymore. The swells pushed the boat toward shore with a surge and a swoosh, almost like surfing. She kept Blackbird’s speed up, but was careful not to overrun the waves. Childhood boating on the Great Lakes had taught her the dangers of dropping off a wave too fast and burying the bow in the water. It was a sure way to flip a craft end over end.

  Kayaks could recover.

  Blackbird wouldn’t.

  Mac lay on the varnished teak floor, half-wedged beneath the dinette, unmoving except for the boat’s motions.

  “Mac?”

  In the past thirteen minutes she’d called his name many times. He hadn’t answered then. He didn’t answer now.

  The only way she knew he was still alive was the continued, slow ooze of blood onto the polished teak floor.

  She talked to him anyway.

  “Faroe keeps calling. I suppose I should answer, but really, what is there to say? It either works or it doesn’t. If it does, he can fire me at his leisure. If it doesn’t…well, it won’t be my problem anymore. Or yours. That’s all I’m really sorry about. You didn’t get a vote. You deserve at least that. You’re a good man, MacKenzie Durand. The best. I waited a lifetime to find you.”

  Mac didn’t answer.

  She didn’t expect him to.

  Windshield wipers kept the glass clear for about one second. She looked down at the radar screen that overlaid the nav chart.

  “Won’t be long now. That echo is less than half a mile away. No lights showing but for the flashlight popping in and out. We don’t even have that. We’re an accident waiting to happen.”

  She laughed.

  The sound made her skin crawl. She swallowed hard, fighting to keep it together for a few more minutes.

  A wave began breaking sooner than she’d expected. She pulled back on the throttles, then speeded up as another swell arrived. This close to shore the waves were losing any rhythm. Rollers slammed into cliffs, reverberated, and sent part of their force back out to sea, meeting incoming waves. Sometimes this had the effect of smoothing the water. Sometimes it made everything worse. Most of the time it was just an unpredictable mess of conflicting forces.

  The echo on the screen came closer, closer, closer.

  “Black Swan! Black Swan! Steer to the right of us!” Demidov yelled through the radio. “And slow down!”

  Emma jerked the wheel as though to avoid the boat she still couldn’t see with her eyes. Abruptly she pulled back on the throttles. That should make whoever was aboard the other boat feel better.

  For about five seconds. Four. Three.

  Two.

  “Turn more!” the radio screamed.

  One.

  Now.

  She jerked the wheel back toward the other boat and slammed the throttles to the max. Blackbird heeled, then roared forward. The radar echo leaped closer. On the next sweep it would merge with Blackbird.

  “So what are you made of, Demidov?” she asked. “Will you die with your bomb like a soldier or jump and swim like a mercenary?”

  Blackbird lurched, a horrible sound came from the bow, and something holding a flashlight spun aside, then vanished beneath the wild water.

  No more sounds came from the radio.

  She slowed Blackbird, turned back toward the open sea, and searched the radar and the water as she retraced her course. All she saw was the pale outline of a boat.

  Upside down.

  She firewalled the throttles and headed back out to sea, angling so that she could meet the waves and still put Vancouver Island behind her, racing for the international boundary, expecting each second to be her last.

  Just a few miles.

  Just a few.

  After several miles she relaxed her grip on the wheel; if Demidov had carried a radio trigger, he wasn’t using it. There were no ships in sight, no one else at immediate risk. The international boundary was close.

  Fingers shaking, she punched in St. Kilda’s number.

  “Emma?” Faroe asked, a prayer in his voice.

  “I sideswiped Demidov’s boat. It flipped. I didn’t look for survivors. I firewalled it. Now I’m several miles west of something called Port Renfrew. If you can’t reach me, call the Canadians. Mac needs help now.”

  “Keep on your course. We’re closer than any Canadian boat. You’ll hear a helicopter real soon. Stay on the phone. Someone will give you instructions.”

  “Send a medic down the rope first. Mac needs…needs…”

  “We’re coming, Emma. We have you on radar. Hang on.”

  Emma wrapped her hands more tightly around the wheel.

  And hung on.

  79

  THREE DAYS LATER

  ROSARIO

  1:08 P.M.

  Emma put her hand on Mac’s forehead as though reassuring herself that he was still alive. He put his good hand over hers and gently squeezed. She was sitting on a long couch in his small home. He was stretched out, his head in her lap. Her hand went back to stroking his hair, soothing both of them.

  A gun was stuck muzzle down between her hip and the couch.

  A knock came from the front door. Emma lifted her hand and reached for the gun.

  “Heads up mice,” Faroe called, “the cat is back.”

  “It’s open,” Mac called.

  “I have company,” Faroe warned.

  Emma flipped the safety off. “And I have my Glock. Come in soft.”

  Alara entered first, her hands visible. Empty.
r />   Faroe followed and closed the door behind him, shooting the deadbolt from habit.

  Emma put the safety on and shoved the gun back in the sofa.

  Alara’s dark eyes went from Emma’s vividly bruised face to the splint on Mac’s wrist. His stitches were hidden beneath his loose pants, his bruises largely concealed by his beard.

  Neither agent looked good.

  “Even though you were cleared for any radiation problems, you should have stayed in the hospital,” she said to Mac.

  “Don’t like them.”

  Alara nodded. “So I’ve heard.” She looked at Emma. “You were as smart as your mouth. You have my gratitude.”

  Emma’s lips tightened. “I’d rather have answers.”

  “Ask.”

  “Is Demidov alive?”

  “His body was recovered this morning,” Alara said. “He died in a boating accident caused by stupidity—he shouldn’t have been out on the water in bad conditions.”

  “Was he driving the boat that flipped?” Mac asked.

  “Lina Fredric, born Galina Federova, was the captain. Thanks to the survival gear she wore, she lives,” Alara said. “She is being debriefed by Canadian and American interrogators. She claims that she was forced by threat of death to help Demidov. I believe her.”

  “Lovich and Amanar?” Mac asked.

  “Back in the U.S. We are still debriefing the man who was holding the families hostage.” She looked at Faroe. “St. Kilda barely left enough of him intact to question.”

  Faroe smiled thinly. “Don’t terrorize children on my watch.”

  “Where is Blackbird?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alara said.

  “Bullshit,” Mac said.

  “I do know that the experts quickly dismantled the standard explosive part of the bomb,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Mac was correct. The initiator was wired through the fake fuel hose to very powerful conventional explosives, which would have in turn scattered the fissionable materials. It was crude, effective, dirty, and would have detonated.”

  “I’d rather have been wrong,” Mac said.

  She looked at him for a long moment, nodded, and said, “The radioactive part of the bomb is taking longer to deal with. Our people did find the locator bugs that were installed within the very hull at the time the ship was built.”