Death Echo

she’d checked out herself. Thoroughly. Recently.

“Two-hundred-millimeter lens.” Josh whistled through his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “And the lady wants details.”

“What’s the problem?”

He held up one finger. “That great pig up ahead is throwing a ten-foot bow wave.” A second finger uncurled. “The Coast Guard patrol boats would be on us like stink on a cat box. After 9/11, they lost their sense of humor about bending the rules.”

No news there for Emma. “You saying it can’t be done?”

“Depends. How bad do you want to swim or go to jail?”

“Not so much, thanks.” She let out a long breath and reminded herself that impatience was a quick way to die, and she was chasing nothing more dangerous than luxury yachts.

At least she had been, until Alara appeared like a puff of darkness.

“I can wait until the tugs are nudging that ‘great pig’ against a dock,” Emma said.

“If you’re working on a really short clock,” Josh said, “I’ll be glad to take a run at the Lotus right now.” He grinned suddenly. “It beats my usual gig-hauling seasick tourists out to chase whales.”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “It’s not life or death.”

I wish.

She laughed silently, bitterly. That was why she’d quit the CIA and taken an assignment from St. Kilda to investigate yacht thefts. No alarms with this job. No adrenaline exploding through her body.

No blood.

No guilt.

And best of all, no corrupt politics.

Guess again, she told herself. Then get over it.

“Back to shore?” Josh asked. “Not yet. Keep the Lotus in sight while you give me a sightseeing tour of the famous and beautiful Elliott Bay.”

“Legal distance maintained at all times?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

2

DAY ONE

ELLIOTT BAY

AFTERNOON

Standing on top of seventy-foot-high stacks of containers, with only the unforgiving steel deck below to catch him, MacKenzie Durand wrestled with the cargo sling that would lift the yacht off Shinhua Lotus. He looked up to the glassed-in cab of the deck crane, where the operator was waiting for directions.

Hope he knows what he’s doing, Mac thought as he held up his right hand and made a small circle in the air. Sign language for giving more slack to the cable that held the lifting frame.

The operator dropped the frame six inches at a time until Mac’s hand clenched into a fist.

The cable stopped instantly.

Damn, but it’s sweet to work with professionals, Mac thought as he began positioning the sling on the yacht’s black, salt-streaked hull. The man in the cab might be a miserable son of a bitch who beat his wife and was an officer in the most corrupt labor union on the waterfront, but when he was at the controls of his pet hammerhead crane, he could be as sure and gentle as a mother cradling a newborn.

Mac manhandled a wide strap into position just ahead of the spot on the hull where twin prop housings on Blackbird thrust out like eggbeaters. Lift points were crucial in controlling a vessel that weighed almost thirty tons.

Besides, if anything went wrong, he was going to be splat on ground zero. He’d been there, done that, and vowed never to be there again. He’d been the lucky one who survived.

At least he had been told that he was the lucky one. After a few years, he even believed it. During daylight.

At night, well, night was always there, waiting with the kind of dreams he woke from cold, sweating, biting back howls of fury and betrayal.

Long ago and far away, Mac told himself savagely. Pay attention to what’s happening now.

When he was satisfied with the position of the lifting strap, he signaled the crane operator to pick up cable. The frame went from slack to loaded. The aft strap was in front of the propellers and the forward strap was even with the front windshield. Both straps visibly stretched as the overhead cable tightened.

Just before Blackbird lifted out of its cradle, Mac clenched his fist overhead. Instantly the crane operator stopped bringing in cable.

Mac checked everything again before he scrambled up the ten-foot ladder that stood against the swim step at the stern of the yacht. When he was aboard Blackbird, he gave the crane operator a palm-out hand signal with fingers spread.

Take a break, five minutes.

The operator nodded and reached for a cigarette.

A Lotus deckhand appeared and took the ladder away from the yacht’s swim step.

Mac opened the salon door and went inside. He had been a professional transport skipper for five years. He was regularly dropped on the deck of a boat he had never seen before and was expected to take command of immediately. Since he didn’t plan on going down with any ship, he had developed a mental checklist as rigorous and detailed as an airline captain’s.

He liked the idea that if he died, it was his own screwup, not someone else’s.

The engine hatch was on the main deck, just behind the pilot seat and the galley. He opened the heavy, sound-proofed hatch and secured it.

The engines were at the stern, leaving an open area below waiting to be used for storage of extra equipment, parts, whatever-a real luxury on a forty-one-foot boat. He walked quickly through the anteroom to the engines. He had to duck a bit, but it was a lot easier access to the engines than he was accustomed to.

The first thing on his mental list was the big batteries. He snapped on their switches and checked the output. They had kept enough charge on the ten-day trip from Singapore to start the yacht’s engines and operate its various systems.

Next, he opened the seacocks that supplied saltwater to the cooling systems of the two shiny new diesel engines that drove the boat. Oversized engines, a special order that made for a cramped engine room.

Gotta love those yachties with more money than sense, Mac told himself.

Quickly but thoroughly, he checked the hose clamps on the through-hull fittings to make sure none had vibrated loose at sea. Cooling water was required. Gushers of saltwater in the bilge weren’t.

The through-hull fitting that normally supplied cooling water to the generator had been left open to drain rainwater or ocean spray out of the yacht during the voyage. Mac closed the seacock so the yacht wouldn’t sink minutes after it touched the waters of Elliott Bay.

He checked the through-hull fittings for the septic and water-maker systems, then the fuel lines that fed the two six-cylinder diesel engines. He had been assured there was enough fuel aboard to make Rosario, sixty miles to the north, but he was suspicious by nature.

It had saved his life more than once.

A shipping crew in Singapore, where the yacht had begun its voyage, could make hundreds of dollars by shorting the fuel tanks. Mac didn’t want to come into the Rosario rigging yard at the end of a tow line.