Death Echo

by harried techs.
    The bulkiest item Mac had was a box of paper charts that covered the Inside Passage all the way to southeast Alaska.
    The twelve thousand in cash was in St. Kilda’s care. Mac wouldn’t leave until he had a fresh eight thousand for his pocket. In Canada, fuel was priced like liquid gold. He wanted to be certain he had plenty of cash for the ride, no matter how fast he pushed Blackbird .
    The only thing lacking in their equipment was any kind of radiation detector, chemical sniffer, or even a bug detector. St. Kilda didn’t want to risk tipping off anyone that the transit captain suspected this was more than a somewhat dodgy delivery.
    Better to assume they were bugged and act accordingly.
    The radiation patches they had worn to the Blue Water office yesterday had showed zero exposure above the expected norm. No one in the Blue Water office had unusual exposure, so they hadn’t been handling fissionable material. Chemical and biological were still on the suspect list, and would stay there until there was a reason to cross them off.
    There weren’t any room lights on in any of the motels that serviced the marina. Emma didn’t need that kind of signal to be certain Faroe or Grace was watching.
    She had turned her gun over to Faroe. A girlie .22 purse pistol might have been explained away as a city girl’s paranoia, but the Glock? Way too much firepower. Illegal to carry in Canada, too.
    Mac had kept his knife. Male necessity, apparently, expected and accepted by all but the airlines.
    A restless night in separate beds hadn’t done either of them any good. Today Mac kept watching her, catching himself, and looking away.
    It will be even more fun aboard Blackbird, she thought. Sharing a bed. God. Never saw that one coming.
    Faroe had. So had Grace. They had told her—and Mac—to suck it up and do the job.
    Mac had made it clear he would rather do Emma.
    It was mutual.
    While she waited, he punched in Blue Water’s code at the gate. The techs were gone, but portable work lights set up on the dock still flooded the yacht. A cool breeze rose with the distant dawn, ruffling the marina’s polished black surface.
    Lovich waited for them at the bottom of the ramp. Silently he passed keys and a thick envelope to Mac, ignored Emma, then followed them aboard Blackbird. Heavy privacy screens shielded the salon. Light gleamed faintly through various cracks.
    Mac opened the stern door into the salon. When he saw that someone was waiting for them, he shouldered Emma aside and went in first.
    A blunt-faced man with dark shoulder-length hair and a darker mustache was seated on one of the salon sofas. Even in the filtered light, his black eyes glittered. He had no expression.
    â€œAre you going to introduce us,” Mac said to Amanar, “or should I just call him Stoneface?”
    The third man said something that sounded rude, crude, and insulting. Then he gestured bluntly toward the cargo they had carried aboard.
    Amanar’s face seemed to flatten, but he did as he was told. He searched everything Mac and Emma had carried onto the boat, including the seams of the duffels. He found nothing unexpected.
    Stoneface grunted and gestured.
    â€œSorry,” Lovich said in a low voice. “I have to search you. Mr. Paranoid over there thinks you might be wearing a wire.”
    Score one for Faroe’s own paranoia, Mac thought. A great big one.
    Without Faroe’s mandate that they go in as soft as possible, they would have brought along something that could detect bugs, radiation, and certain chemicals.
    And they would have been busted before they even left the dock.
    â€œNo problem,” Mac said calmly, holding out his arms. “But you touch her and you’ll be eating your own hands.”
    Amanar said something quickly to Stoneface.
    Stoneface looked at Emma and said something.
    â€œUm…” Amanar cleared his throat. “He says it’s not optional.”
    Calmly Emma began stripping.
    Four men stared at her, not knowing what she knew—she’d worn her string bikini under her clothes. Though there were cloudsracing across the stars, she had hopes of sitting on a sunny deck.
    When she was done removing clothes, she lifted her hair off her neck with both hands, pirouetted, and then stood with her hands on her hips in unsubtle female challenge.
    If she was wearing anything but skin, it would take more than a strip search to reveal