Death Echo

“Not as tsarist Russia, the U.S.S.R., or the new Russia,” Mac agreed. “Don’t get me wrong. Rosario’s immigrant community isn’t awash in old-country nationalists. They wear the ancestral costumes and cook the food and speak a dialect of the home languages, but all they really care about is the clan here and now in America.”

“So they don’t have much contact with the Old World?” Emma asked him.

“They’re still bringing over cousins and cousins of cousins, especially after the Wall fell, but if there are dodgy business contacts in the Old World, I don’t know about them.”

At the back of her mind Grace listened to the soft sound of the door to the other room closing. When Faroe’s big hands settled on her shoulders and began to work on knots, she sighed in relief. She hadn’t realized how tight she’d become.

But nothing showed on her face when she said to Mac, “Tommy was Blackbird’s transit captain. What are your chances of being tapped as his replacement?”

“Pretty good,” Mac said. “I do a lot of work for Blue Water Marine. So do a few other captains. I don’t know who’s in port now.”

“If they go with someone else, are you ready to follow Blackbird right now?” Faroe asked quietly.

Mac went through a mental checklist in his head. “Blackbird is fast for her size. If they run above fourteen knots, I’ll have to make it up at night.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll rent you a faster boat,” Grace said.

“Fuel tanks are full on my boat,” Mac continued. “Water tank is full. Engine is good. Oil is good. Electrical is solid. So is the generator. Rations are adequate for a week. I was going out if no new job turned up.”

“Adequate for two?” Emma asked.

“It won’t be fancy,” he said, looking at her.

“And here I was dreaming of fresh prawns and champagne.”

Grace smiled tiredly. “Emma will check out of her room immediately and move aboard. Joe will organize our watch times.”

Faroe stroked his hand over Grace’s head and said, “I’ll take it until six. You haven’t slept well since you met Alara.”

“Who could?” Grace asked under her breath.

Faroe looked at Mac. “You’ve signed on, so we can tell you why we’re after Blackbird. You can access Emma’s computer for facts, guesses, estimates, and updates about this whole nasty cluster, so I’ll give you the short form.”

Mac measured Faroe’s grim expression and braced himself.

“Blackbird is a dead ringer for Black Swan,” Faroe said. “That yacht went missing somewhere between Vladivostok and Portland a year ago. Yet Blackbird was built from the hull up in Singapore after that and shipped safely to Elliott Bay.”

Mac waited.

Faroe almost smiled. The more he was around Mac, the better he liked him.

“A woman who is no longer known as Alara,” Faroe said, “came to St. Kilda and requested in the most forceful possible way that we assist Uncle Sam in following Blackbird and finding out whether her hidden or intended cargo is biological, chemical, or fissionable.”

Mac closed his eyes as his breath hissed out in a savage curse. “So this Alara woman has a network full of leaks and a stinking rose she wants pinned somewhere else. She pass along any other helpful little hints?”

Grace smiled. “Ambassador Steele was right. You have a top quality, bottom line mind. She gave us seven days. This is day three.”

“And after seven?”

“We risk losing a major city,” Emma said.

Mac didn’t ask which one. No matter where this dirty deal went down, civilians would die. A lot of them. The fact that they were innocent wouldn’t make them any less dead.

Seven days? Christ. Seven months wouldn’t be enough.

But Mac didn’t say anything aloud. Complaining about the huge serving of shit on your plate just wasted time. All you could do was grab a spoon and start eating.

Fast.

“I’m going to be spending a lot of time with your computer,” Mac said to Emma.

“While you do,” Faroe said, “she can work on learning how to handle boat lines, fenders, and other matey stuff.”

Emma made a startled sound.

With a dark-eyed smile, Grace said, “If I can learn how to be a first mate to my snarling Captain Joe, you can learn from sweet, gentle Captain Mac.”

“Sweet? Gentle?” Emma glanced sideways at Mac.

He tried to look sweet and gentle. Given the information he’d just received, it wasn’t possible.

“Tell me lines aren’t as heavy as fuel hoses,” Emma said.

“They aren’t as heavy.” He lowered his eyelids to half mast. “And I can be very gentle.”

She shook her head. She’d walked right into that one.

“Emma has her cover story,” Grace said, no longer trying not to yawn. “Mac came with his intact. As for why you’re suddenly joined at the hip, I suggest going with the tried and true.”

“Sex,” Emma said, grimacing.

“Sex,” Grace agreed. “Start practicing snuggling and snogging in public.”

Mac and Emma looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Snogging?”

“Look it up,” Grace said. “It will grow on you.”

21

DAY THREE

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

8:05 A.M.

Timothy Harrow ignored the inbox marked Urgent on his desk. Pragmatically speaking, it was a low designation of priority. Everything that came across his desk was urgent. The only question was of degree.

At the moment, he was frowning over an email that was a good deal more than urgent. Somebody’s ass was going to get burned. His job was to make sure it didn’t belong to the Deputy Director of Operations, his immediate boss. Hopefully he could save his boss by putting the fire out. If that didn’t work, some serious finger-pointing was going down.

And if the op blew up…

Don’t think about it. Just make sure it doesn’t happen.

At the highest levels, politics was a blood sport.

Harrow hit the intercom button. “Duke? Got a minute?”

“Make it fast. I have to brief the DO over the mess in Caracas in five and then brief his boss on the uncivil war heating up between the narcos and elected Mexican politicians. You have anything that’s going to make my life easier?”

Harrow sincerely doubted it. “You told me to keep you current on anything coming out of Rosario, Washington, state of.”

“What’s up?”

“An Indian on the rez bought it, execution style. Half his head blown off and his trailer burned down around his dead ears.”

“So?”