Death Echo

said.
    â€œHe’s got a sound boat underneath him, for a yacht.” The owner stepped away for a moment to flip on a fuel pump. “They figured to run close to twenty knots, be home in eighteen hours. I looked at the numbers on a big chart and it came to seven hundred kilometers, give or take.”
    â€œHe’s shooting for Seattle?” Mac asked. “All at once?”
    The owner laughed. “Yeah, his wife must have put fire up his butt. He wasn’t entirely stupid, though. He listened when I told him to head two-hundred-seventy degrees for twenty minutes, long enough to miss the big reef out there, before he headed south.”
    Mac remembered the reef. Just one of the many treacherous features of the beautiful, wild stretch of ocean that thundered along the west side of Vancouver Island.
    â€œI saw him make the turn a little later,” the owner said, tugging her cap down with an automatic gesture. “He was throwing a bow wave like a customs cutter on a hot run. Made my kidneys ache to look at it.” She sighed. “That’s why I got out of the crabbing business in Alaska. Didn’t have the kidneys for it.”
    â€œSeattle in eighteen hours. Wow,” Emma said. It will take an airplane to catch them.
    â€œBig storm coming, too,” the owner added absently, looking around the fuel dock. “Guess he plans to beat it to Seattle. Hope he makes it.”
    Mac and Emma looked at each other, wondering the same thing.
    Would it be good or bad if Blackbird ’s twin sinks?
    Suddenly the owner loped off to help an old yacht that was making hard work of landing at the fuel dock. Apparently the captain was single-handing the boat.
    Mac took Emma’s arm and urged her back to the seaplane. She hurried along beside him.
    â€œDid I understand that correctly?” she asked in a low voice.
    â€œLovich and Amanar are taking the outside route. Stupid bastards.”
    â€œWhy? It fooled us.”
    â€œBlackbird wasn’t built for ocean storms,” Mac said simply. “She can take swells in decent weather, even lousy weather, but without a stabilizer, the crew will get hammered real good. A big enough wave over the beam could blow out all her side windows and sink her.”
    â€œGod.” Emma swallowed. “Is that likely?”
    â€œShe’s well built. Lovich and Amanar may be greedy, but they’re good captains on the water. Their spines will hate them, and their stomachs will be slamming against their brains, but without bad luck they’ll get through.”
    â€œWhat is Tofino?” she asked.
    â€œA port about three-quarters of the way down the west side of Vancouver Island.”
    â€œReliable fuel?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” Mac said.
    â€œCan our plane reach Tofino before Lovich and Amanar refuel?”
    â€œThat’s the easy part.”
    Emma didn’t ask about the hard part. She already knew.

67
    DAY SIX
WEST SIDE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND
5:12 P.M.
    E mma searched the Pacific Ocean beneath her through binoculars. The slanting light and broken clouds—and her weary eyes—made shadows that looked like black-hulled ships.
    At her side, Mac searched between the plane and the ragged black line of shore. Waves that surged rather than broke against cliffs flashed white against the darkening land.
    She saw a shadowy black hull, lifted the glasses enough to rub her eyes, and focused again. The hull was still there.
    Then it wasn’t.
    With fingers that wanted to tremble, she refined the focus. The silhouette of a ship settled into the clear viewing field of her binoculars. She wanted to use the computerized zoom feature, but was afraid to lose contact with the shadow in any way.
    â€œMac.”
    The huskiness of her voice brought every nerve alive in him. “Here.”
    â€œAbout two-thirty. Out to sea. When you find it, zoom in.”
    He found the ship quickly, zoomed in. “Hello, Blackbird . Or Black Swan . Aren’t you a beauty.”
    â€œID positive?” she asked.
    â€œUnless someone built a triplet, that’s our baby.”
    The certainty in his voice was as unmistakable as the elegant silhouette sliding down the side of a wave.
    â€œWant me to circle?” the pilot asked.
    â€œNo,” Emma and Mac said as one.
    â€œJust keep on like you’re flying in to one of the remote resorts on the west side,” Mac said.
    â€œWhen we’re out of sight of the