Death Echo

single look at Temuri and come to a quivering point.
    That was one stone killer.
    â€œWonder why Bob and Stan got in bed with someone like that,” Mac said.
    Tommy went to the window, stood to the side, and looked out. “Money, dude. What else?”
    â€œAre they hurting?”
    â€œIsn’t everyone?” Tommy kept squinting out the window, searching the dim forest. “Besides, I heard Stan talking about it in the inner office with Bob. The Temuri dude is a prick, but he’s some kind of family.”
    Mac shrugged. “So long as they pay.”
    â€œOh yeah. Half up front. Half on delivery. Forty big ones. Supposed to go tomorrow. Having trouble with some of the electronics. Wrong size or some such crap.”
    â€œForty thousand American?” Mac asked, black eyes narrowed. That was a lot for the kind of short-haul transit the other man did.
    Tommy nodded, making his lank hair jerk.
    â€œSweet,” Mac said. “Want another hand aboard?”
    Tommy turned on him with a snarl. “No. And you never heard of the job, hear me?”
    â€œSure,” Mac said easily. Unless Tommy was taking the boat across the ocean to Vladivostok, it was an outrageous payday. “Long trip, huh?”
    Tommy took a hard drag before he ground the cigarette out under his shoe. “Don’t know.”
    Mac didn’t push it anymore. “You hear anything from Jeremy?” he said, asking after the last of the wild ones who once had run together as a teenage pack.
    â€œWhat do you care?”
    â€œShove the attitude. It’s me, Mac, the dude you used to steal crabs and boost beer with. Sometimes Jeremy went along, remember?”
    Tommy blinked, seemed to refocus. “Sorry, man. I’m a little tweaked, waiting for this job. I really need it.”
    â€œI get that.”
    â€œJeremy’s pulling pots for some white guy.”
    â€œThought crabbing was closed.”
    Tommy lit another cigarette. “The white guy’s a sport crabber.”
    Mac didn’t need to hear the details. If Jeremy got caught—unlikely, given that the fish cops couldn’t afford to put gas in their boat—he played the Indian card. White courts couldn’t touch him. Tribal courts wouldn’t.
    â€œIt’s a living,” Mac said.
    â€œPays shit.”
    â€œAnd all the crab you can eat or sell on the side.”
    With a jerky movement, Tommy flicked ash onto the floor of the trailer. “It’s still shit. That’s all we ever get. Fucking whites.”
    â€œPresent company excepted,” Mac said neutrally.
    â€œHuh?” Tommy blinked, focused again. “You know I don’t think of you as white.”
    â€œAnd I don’t think of you as not white. Ain’t we the rainbow pair.”
    Reluctantly Tommy smiled, then laughed, the kind of laugh that reminded Mac of all the good times they’d had as kids, running wild in a ragged land. They hadn’t been innocent, but they hadn’t believed in death.
    If that isn’t innocence, what is?
    He and Tommy had come a long way since then. They hadn’t ended up at the same place.

16
    DAY TWO
NEAR ROSARIO
4:10 P.M .
    T he Learjet turned in the late afternoon sunlight and lined up for its final approach to the asphalt strip at the Lopez County Airport. The co-pilot stuck his head through the open cockpit doorway.
    â€œShort-runway landing coming up,” he called back into the cabin. “Come and get this sweet little thing before she ends up as part of the electronics.”
    â€œI’m on it,” Joe Faroe said before his wife could get up.
    He put aside his laptop and went forward to grab his daughter, who was examining every ripple and shadow on the plane’s floor. He swung her up easily into the crook of one long arm.
    â€œDid you find any yummy cigarette butts or globs of things better left unidentified?” he asked her.
    She drooled and patted his mouth.
    â€œHaven’t you ever heard of don’t ask, don’t tell?” Grace said without looking up from the computer on her lap.
    â€œDon’t you listen to her, sweetie,” Faroe said. He lowered Annalise into the special airline seat and fastened her restraint. “You always want to come to Daddy and tell all, especially about boys.”
    Grace shook her head. “You just keep dreaming, darling. You’re cute.”
    Faroe stretched, then sat in the seat next to Annalise and