Death Echo (42 page)

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.

ROSARIO

1:08 P.M.

E
mma 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.

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.”

“Bugs? Plural?” Emma asked.

“Identical, too,” Faroe said. “Russian. Bulky, tough, and long lived. They only transmitted every twelve hours.”

“My head hurts,” Emma said. “Make it easy on me.”

Alara laughed. “Ah, if only. Like most covert disasters, the postmortems on the
Blackbird
affair have barely begun. I do know that the op was old. It began years ago when we doubled an agent. The man was well connected with the Russian government as well as the
mafiya
. Originally it was a currency sting.”

“Still hurting, here,” Emma said.

Mac took her hand from his hair and kissed her palm. “So Harrow was telling a form of the truth.”

“‘A form of the truth.’” Alara smiled. “I will remember that. The currency in question was used to buy the contents of an orphan nuclear source—an abandoned lighthouse in Kamchatka. As the op evolved in Russia, it became a game of embarrassing the Georgians. We informed the Georgians, who decided to let the op go—and then swoop in at the last minute and embarrass the Russians.”

“How did the U.S. feel about it?” Mac asked.

“We collected intel every step of the way,” Alara said.

“You could have stopped it at any point.”

“I? No. I wasn’t informed until the last minute, when
Blackbird
was identified as the twin of
Black Swan,
the primary pawn in the op.”

Silence.

“Eventually,” Alara continued, “Grigori Sidorov took over the Russian end of the op. He decided he’d rather destroy an American city and blame it on the Georgians. After all, the Georgians had left a nuclear calling card—a rudimentary dirty bomb—in Moscow once, simply as a warning. Why would anyone doubt that they would do it again as payback to the U.S. for not supporting their government more boldly?”

“What was in it for Sidorov?” Emma asked.

“Power, of course. And a kind of patriotism. According to our intel, Sidorov wasn’t entirely sane.”

“No shit,” Faroe said under his breath.

“He grew up in the ruins of the former empire and was obsessed with making Russia powerful again, with himself as a kind of peasant tsar,” Alara said. “Demidov was his employee.”

“Grigori Sidorov,” Emma said. “Last night, I saw that name in an online blog where present and former State Department types weigh in.”

Mac nodded. “You read the blog to me. Something about a
mafiya
style execution
-no head, no hands, lots of torture. Heavy betting on who would come into power now.”

“I heard that, too,” Alara said blandly.

“Just somebody sending a message,” Faroe said. “Break the nuclear rules and die the hard way.”

“Who dropped the hammer on Tommy?” Mac asked.

“According to Lina, it was Demidov,” Alara said.

“Why?” Mac asked.

“Our best guess is that Sidorov wanted to delay the op long enough for an important enemy to arrive in Seattle on international business. The man couldn’t be killed in Russia. Sidorov had tried several times.”

“Take out a city, take out an enemy. A twofer,” Mac said. “Son of a bitch.”

“Some people should have been killed at birth,” Emma said.

“Unfortunately,” Alara said, “we don’t know which ones until it is too late.”

Silence expanded.

Emma looked at Mac. He shook his head.

“No more questions on our end,” she said.

Alara nodded and turned to leave.

“You okay?” Faroe asked Mac and Emma.

Mac took her hand again. “We’re good.”

“I’ll check back in a few hours,” Faroe said.

“We’re fine,” Emma said.

“Tell it to Grace.”

The door shut behind Alara and Faroe. Emma let out a long breath. So did Mac. He rubbed his cheek against her palm.

“Did I thank you for saving my life?” he asked.

“You saved mine first. No way I could have taken Temuri down.”

“You know what they say about saving a life….”

“What?” she asked.

“That life belongs to you.”

“So we belong to each other?” she asked.

“Sure do.”

Emma touched Mac’s lips with their intertwined fingers and smiled.

“Works for me.”

ELIZABETH
LOWELL
is the author of many remarkable
New York Times
bestselling historical and contemporary novels. She lives in Washington with her husband with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.

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