“That you know of,” Emma said crisply.
“I hear you five by five, but Alara is the only card in our hole right now.”
“Now
Faroe ignored her. “Our system didn’t detect any calls to you or Mac last night,” he said.
“Correct.”
“Chatty, aren’t you,” Faroe muttered. “Anyone there but Mac?”
“No.”
“Demidov’s account number went back to accounts used by the KGB.”
“Which no longer exists,” Emma pointed out.
“Same people, same accounts, new organization name. Information and extortion are very profitable. Ask the former KGB/present oligarchs who do it for a high-flying living in Russia.”
“Shocked here. Just shocked.”
Faroe laughed, a sound as weary as she was beginning to feel. The clock in her mind never stopped running, even when she lay tangled up with Mac. A look at Mac’s face told her that his clock was counting down along with hers.
They understood each other too well for such a short time together.
“Lovich and Amanar didn’t turn up for work at Blue Water Marine today,” Faroe continued. “As they’re usually unlocking the door bright and early, at six-thirty or no later than seven, Grace called the Blue Water office at official opening time. She was told a ‘family emergency’ would be keeping them busy for ‘an unknown amount of time.’”
“If those boys are smart, they’re headed for Ecuador,” Emma said.
“We’re checking outgoing passports. Rather, Alara is. She can do it faster than St. Kilda.”
“At last, something she’s good for.”
Faroe grunted. “St. Kilda will be picking the wheat out of her chaff for a long time. It will work out to our benefit.”
“If you’re lucky.”
“Make us lucky.”
The line went dead.
“Well, he’s in a sweet mood,” Emma said, putting the phone back in her pocket.
“Waiting is the hardest part of the game,” Mac said. “It’s the first thing a sniper learns and the last thing he forgets. First to flinch eats the first bullet.”
“You talk sweeter in bed.”
“That’s because you taste…” Mac’s voice faded as he listened. Somewhere close by, a seaplane droned toward landing. The sound grew closer, changed direction, went away, then started getting louder and louder.
A shadow flashed over
Mac and Emma grabbed for the binoculars at the same time. He was closer. He went outside and stood deep in the shadows thrown by the cabin in the morning sun. Swiftly he put the glasses to his eyes and focused.
“Single-engine DeHavilland Beaver,” he said over the waning engine noise. “It’s flying out over the forest, turning…damn, that’s not a downwind leg setting up for landing. They’re coming back over the harbor for a better look.”
“Get under cover!”
“No need,” he said. But he stepped back into the cabin without losing the plane in the binoculars. “Anyone who cares enough to kill me would know that Faroe could be up here, running
“Sweet-talking man,” she said through her teeth.
Mac smiled beneath the binoculars, watching the plane grow bigger and bigger.
A quarter mile away and closing fast, the aircraft leveled off at about one hundred feet above the forest. Even without binoculars, Emma could see a man in the co-pilot’s seat. His face was turned toward them, but his eyes were concealed behind what looked like a camera with a telephoto lens.
Mac tracked the plane like the trained sniper he was. He read off a single letter followed by the five-digit registration number he could see on the tail of the plane.
Emma scribbled down the identification code and read it back to him.
The plane wagged its wings at them.
Without removing the binoculars, Mac flipped off the aircraft.
“Friends of yours?” Emma asked.
“More like yours.”
“Agency?”
“I’d take money on it.”
She grimaced. “I wonder why they waited until now? They must have known about us before we did.”
“Good question,” Mac said.
“Maybe. And maybe we’re wrong in our assumptions, they just discovered us, and are here to help.”
“That would make life easier, which means it ain’t gonna happen.”
Emma hoped Mac was wrong, but didn’t think he was. She flipped open her phone, hit Faroe’s speed-dial number, and began talking, knowing that every call was automatically recorded. She started with the plane’s tail numbers.
“Type of plane?” Grace asked when Emma was finished.
“Single engine, dry-and water-landing gear, DeHavilland Beaver. Don’t know the age. White plane, with a blue-green wavy stripe on a diagonal over the fuselage. They made two passes and wagged their wings at us. Mac flipped them off.”
“One hand or two?” Grace asked absently.
“One. The other was busy holding binoculars.”
“Your man is reminding me more and more of Joe. Stand by.”
“Standing by,” Emma said. Then, to herself,
It was a heady thought.
Grace wasn’t gone long. There weren’t nearly as many aircraft registrations as there were for land vehicles.
“As my husband would say, oh shit, oh, dear,” Grace muttered. “You sure about that tail number?”
“Repeat, please,” Emma said, switching the phone to its external speaker.
“Was the tail number real or a guesstimate?” Grace said.
“Real,” Mac said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing good,” Grace said. “The registration comes back to a company called Greentree Aviation at Boeing Field in Seattle.”
Emma looked at Mac, wondering if he understood. The look on his face told her that he did.
“Back when I was in special ops,” he said, “I rode Greentree aircraft a time or two. Those pilots have balls.”
“The CIA has never been short on
“They’re certainly hanging them out for God and man to see,” Emma said. “That’s unusual.”
“Inevitable,” Mac said. “From the moment Demidov showed up.”
“Yeah,” Emma agreed, disgusted. She’d really been hoping to be left alone to answer questions for St. Kilda and the razor-tongued Alara. “Well, at least we know who three of the locator bugs you found belong to.”
“St. Kilda put two on
“Then I’m betting the CIA did, too,” Emma said.
“That takes care of the five we found,” Mac said. “Two St. Kilda, two CIA, one Russian.”
“I’ll call the instant I have anything more,” Grace said.
