Death Echo

like to do. Doubt that they’re in the protocol manual.”
    â€œYou’d be surprised. The manual is very…thorough.”
    â€œSome day you’re going to read it to me,” he said. “Thoroughly.”
    Emma thought of all the dreary paragraphs and subparagraphs. “You’d fall asleep.”
    â€œTry me.”
    She wanted to. Really wanted to.
    â€œBorder protocol,” she said.
    â€œNothing we haven’t covered. You help me dock—”
    â€œThat’s a whole different thing we haven’t talked much about.”
    â€œâ€”then get back aboard immediately,” Mac said, ignoring her interruption. “I take our passports and Blackbird ’s papers to the official on duty. He runs them through the computer, asks a few questions, and decides to search the boat or not. Either way, you don’t set foot on the dock again until the official tells you to, or I have an entry number, or we’re told to take our ugly American selves back south.”
    She nodded.
    â€œAre you worried that we won’t get the magic number?” he asked.
    â€œI’d be surprised if we got turned back,” Emma said. “The FBI isn’t stupid. They’ll get in the CIA’s knickers just to remind everyone to play nice, but they won’t intentionally blow an op.”
    â€œUnintentionally?”
    â€œIt happens. Too many agencies. Too many secrets. Too little real cooperation, because budgets depend on delivering departmental success stories. Partial gold stars for taking part in joint operations doesn’t get you as many points as getting a job done within your own department.”
    â€œSounds like branches of the military fighting over whose elite ops get used in a high-profile rescue,” Mac said, disgust clear in his voice. “None of the brass cares about the poor sucks caught behind enemy lines, just who gets the glory for saving the day.”
    â€œThe really good news is that our enemies are the same.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œOh, yeah. Petty, jealous, kiss-up, shit-down humans.”
    â€œHuh,” he said. “Never looked at it that way.”
    â€œFeel better?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    She smiled rather grimly.
    â€œMakes the amount of cooperation between Canadian and American border guards all the more impressive,” Mac said. “And I don’t mean the tit for tat of international politics. I mean that the Canadians and the U.S. exchange information on boats crossing the border. The entry number you get from Canada is logged in right next to your return number when you check back into the States.”
    â€œI’m guessing that’s post-9/11,” she said.
    He nodded. “Even with ‘heightened security,’ most of the yacht traffic between countries doesn’t get more of a look-over than a car full of tourists at the land border crossings.”
    â€œProbably because the terrorists everyone is worried about don’t use expensive yachts for transport. Neither do smugglers. If you’re caught with contraband, it’s not worth the price of losing a multimillion-dollar yacht. Not cost effective.”
    â€œBut yutzes with small, fast boats and smaller brains…real cost effective,” Mac said.
    â€œCannon fodder.”
    â€œWhat would a barbecue be without hot dogs?” Mac asked bitterly.
    Emma remembered the reservation and wished she’d kept her smart mouth shut.

37
    DAY FOUR
NEAR NANOOSE BAY
12:00 P.M .
    D emidov looked at the lower set of latitude and longitude numbers on his cell phone, the ones that were direct from the locator aboard Blackbird. Reassured, he turned back to the charts of the water between Vancouver Island and the mainland of Canada. He had the charts spread over Lina’s small living room floor. Every time the breeze shifted the window curtains, the big charts fluttered.
    â€œI’m surprised this isn’t all on a computer,” he said.
    In the daylight pouring through the front windows, Lina’s red hair was younger than her skin. She tossed stray locks behind her shoulder with the practiced moves of the flirt she’d once been. But her blue eyes didn’t tease. Their color was a bit faded and a whole lot harder than it had been back when she was an untried agent assigned to Taras Demidov.
    â€œI have a chart plotter and sonar on my boat,” she said. “It’s all I need for