Death Echo

feel of the currents and wind, weight and momentum, the sound of line creaking as it took Blackbird ’s weight and brought the stern back to kiss the dock.
    â€œBeautiful,” she said.
    His grin was a flash of white against his dark skin. “Don’t forget the stern line.”
    â€œOops.” She sprinted to the stern, grabbed the line, and tied it off without losing her headset.
    Mac walked back to the stern and looked over the rail. “Good work.”
    â€œI just had a gut insight that Blackbird always lives at the intersection of two huge forces, water and atmosphere, and we hope to control it all with a third force called the engine. Plus momentum, did I mention that?”
    He gave her an unnecessary hand getting aboard.
    â€œKind of like us,” she said, “sliding around between forces we can’t really control, only staying afloat for as long as we can. And docking, coming to stasis with all those forces? Whole other thing entirely.”
    He looked at her, traced her mouth with his thumb, and said, “Stay aboard until you’re told otherwise.”
    She nodded.
    He switched off his headphones, handed them to her, and stepped onto the dock carrying various papers in his big hand. There was a short ramp up to a modular building that had suffered a severe outbreak of official signage. In its earnest desire not to favor the English language over French—which was spoken by a minority of citizensin the eastern provinces—Canada had doubled the paperwork of the government bureaucracy.
    Mac wondered if Canada would make the same accommodation for the big, and rapidly growing much bigger, population of Chinese in the western provinces. Somehow he doubted it. Forced parity seemed reserved for those of European descent living along the Atlantic Coast.
    The dark-skinned customs clerk walked past Mac and unlocked the door to the cramped modular. He stood behind the counter, looked at Mac with the dispassionate eyes of a loan officer or a hit man, and spoke English oddly mixed with a Bombay lilt and British precision.
    â€œPapers, please.”
    Mac presented his passport and Emma’s, along with the newly issued U.S. Coast Guard documentation for Blackbird .
    The clerk, whose nameplate said he was Singh, Edward, left the counter and went to a computer, whose screen was angled away from the counter. Singh’s fingers raced over the keyboard. He yanked the mouse across the desk like he was drilling down through a multilevel secured website.
    Singh read, then reread the screen message, then deliberately killed it and came back to the counter.
    â€œWhere is this boat, exactly?” he asked.
    â€œRight outside, sir, tied to the dock.”
    â€œSuperintendent!”
    Singh gathered up the documents like he was afraid Mac would snatch them back. The clerk marched stiffly toward an office beyond the end of the counter.
    A balding Caucasian male in a uniform shirt with epaulettes and extra patches appeared in the doorway of the office that had seemed empty from the dock. Singh briefed his boss in hushed tones. As he spoke, both men glanced over at Mac from time to time.
    Mac kept his game face on and cursed the flag that the FBI had tucked into the border-watch computers.
    After a moment, the boss issued a clipped set of orders and turned away. Singh walked back smartly, grabbed a uniform hat from beneath the counter, and came through the swinging gate.
    â€œYour boat must be inspected,” he told Mac without meeting his eyes. “Come with me now.”
    Like Mac had a choice. “Sure.”
    As he followed the small bureaucrat, Mac cursed the FBI’s middle-finger salute. Wasted time.
    They didn’t have it to waste.
    Deliberately Mac didn’t do the math in his head, the countdown to disaster that beat in his brain and blood and heart. He did the only thing he could do at the moment, which was to follow a Canadian border bureaucrat down the short ramp to Blackbird .
    Emma was standing in the cockpit, talking on Mac’s phone. She took one look and ended the call with a terse, “Later, babe.”
    â€œYou are the passenger?” the inspector demanded. He consulted the two passports in his hand. “Emma Cross?”
    Emma nodded. “Yes, is—”
    â€œCome with me,” he interrupted, leading the way off Blackbird and down the dock. When Mac started to follow, the inspector stopped him with one hand. “I wish