He didn’t argue with her, which didn’t make her feel better.
“So, we won’t be running at night?” Emma asked.
“Not unless we have to. Take the controls. Let’s see how much you learned. And be grateful you already knew how to plot a course on paper.”
“Basic training,” she said. “Like riding a bike. Never goes away.”
Unfortunately, knowing how to plot paper courses and run the boat’s computer and understanding the theory of throttle movements wasn’t the same as actually driving all those tons of yacht on a fluid, shifting, unmarked road.
“Pod drive?” she asked hopefully. She’d played more than her share of video games.
“Too easy. Better you learn the hard way so you can appreciate the easy way.”
She grimaced. “You sure? Theory is one thing…”
“You’d rather practice with me dead on the deck and bullets screaming around?”
“God, Mac. You should write a book on sweet talk.”
“Tell me that tomorrow morning.”
She looked at his dark, dark eyes and felt like she was soaring off a cliff, flying high, no land in sight.
She liked it.
He said something under his breath, gestured to the controls, and slid out of the wheel seat.
Steering the boat suddenly seemed safer than looking in Mac’s eyes. Emma took the controls and concentrated on something besides the unnerving pulse of heat in her blood.
He watched silently, letting her learn firsthand the difference between driving a car and a boat. Once she caught on to correcting for tide and currents, he told her to plot a point ahead and lock it into the autopilot. She touched the screen quickly, answered the computer’s prompts, and let go of the wheel.
“You’re a quick study,” Mac said.
“I’ve had to be.” She smiled suddenly. “Besides, I like challenges.” Mac wished he could take this challenging woman down to the master suite and see what each could teach and learn.
“We’ll be crossing over the international line in an hour,” Mac said, looking at the computer.
“What’s our border protocol?”
“In the old days, we’d call Canadian customs, give them our stats, and hope the waterhole theory holds.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Meaning they would log
“Old days, huh? Would that be pre-9/11?”
“Pretty much.”
“And today?” she asked.
“The lion always pounces.”
“Meaning?”
“Technically we probably should go through the closest customs,” he said. “But what we’re going to do is take the protected run through the Gulf Islands to Nanaimo, and get inspected there. For going to Campbell River, it’s quicker.”
It definitely was a smoother ride. Until he knew more about how Emma’s stomach took rough water, he’d stick to the easy route.
“How detailed is the inspection?” she asked.
“Depends on how nice the U.S. is feeling toward Canada, and vice versa. If we’ve been giving Canadian yachties a special look-see at our border, we get the same in return. Or if the Canadians are miffed about a U.S. import tax on their lumber, they squeeze tourists. Same for our side. There can be any number of reasons for dicking with border crossings that have zero to do with anyone’s security-except the politicians’.”
“How unsurprising,” she said.
“Yeah. Humans.”
In silence Mac watched Emma handling the boat, altering course on instruction, entering waypoints into the plotter, checking tides in Nanaimo at various possible arrival times, watching gauges for problems, and doing all the other things that added up to driving a boat.
In return, Mac watched the radar screen that overlaid the charts, his eyes alert for anything that followed their course, random alterations included.
“And?” she asked after he had studied the radar a particularly long time.
“Nothing that makes my neck tingle.”
She watched
“How long does inspection take?” she asked.
“Normally it’s just a courtesy,” Mac said. “You show passports, get a number, put the number on both sides of the front cabin, throw out whatever fruits are in season, and you’re good to go. Fifteen minutes on a busy day.”
“Friendly, in a word.”
“Anything to grease the flow of commerce and tourism-as long as someone isn’t suffering from short dick syndrome.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll go back to learning to drive.”
To get a feel for manually steering the boat under different water conditions, Emma took off the automatic navigation and guided
Gently she nudged the throttles up until they were making about nineteen knots again.
Mac watched for a few moments, then said, “Push it to the max. Let’s find out what these big engines are really made of.”
And how Emma’s stomach was.
35
DAY FOUR
MANHATTAN
1:15 P.M.
Ambassador Steele rolled his chair from one workstation to another, talking through his headset the whole time. He stopped rolling long enough for his fingers to fly over a computer keyboard. One of the wall screens blinked and showed a close-up of a dirty village whose open sewers festered among glorious mountain peaks.
Dwayne glanced over. The name on the bottom of the screen was Ecuador. But for that, the village could have been in any mountainous country where poverty and villages prevailed.
“The op is compromised,” Steele said. “Evac is on the way to primary location. You have less than ninety minutes to extraction.” He paused. “Good. And if you see that lying toad on the way out, step on him.”
Dwayne winced. Steele was at his most lethal when his voice was neutral. A click told Dwayne that his boss had disconnected.
