Elizabeth Lowell - Death Echo

Was I that young once?

Yeah, I must have been. Scary thought. You can make some shockingly dumb, entirely legal decisions at that age.

I sure did.

Josh must have, too. His eyes are a lot older than his body.

She had seen too many men like him while she worked as a case officer in places where local wars made headlines half a world away, innocents were blown to bloody rags, and nothing really changed.

Except her. She’d finally gotten out. Tribal wars had been burning along before she joined the CIA. The wars were still burning just fine without her. World without end, amen.

Until Alara had dropped into St. Kilda’s life.

She has to be wrong, Emma told herself. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time intel was bad.

But if she’s right…

The thought sent a chill through Emma that had nothing do with the cold water just inches away.

Seven days.

Automatically she hung on as the Zodiac bounced and skidded on the wake of a ship that was already miles behind them, headed for Elliott Bay’s muscular waterfront. She pulled her thoughts away from what she couldn’t change to what she might change.

Emma tapped the driver and shouted over the roar of the huge outboard engines. “Shut it down.”

He eased off the throttle. The boat slid down off plane and settled deeply in the steel-colored water. Like a skittish cat, the inflatable moved without warning in unexpected directions.

“You okay?” Josh asked.

“As in not wanting to hurl?”

He smiled crookedly. “Yeah.”

“I’m good.”

He gave her a slow onceover filled with obvious male appreciation and nodded. “Sure are.”

She laughed. “Thanks, darlin’, but no thanks.”

Josh looked at her eyes for a moment, nodded, and waited for his next order. No harm, no foul.

Emma wished she could say the same about her own job. Shading her eyes against the bright afternoon overcast, she looked west, toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Swells from the distant Pacific Ocean, plus choppy wind waves, batted at the twenty-foot-long Zodiac, lifting and dropping the rubber boat without warning. Some of the waves had white crests that streaked the gray water.

“We good?” she asked. “That wind’s kicking up.”

“We can take three times the blow, easy.”

Land looked real far away to her, but she’d learned to trust expert judgment. For all the pilot’s fresh-faced looks, he was utterly at home with the inflatable and Puget Sound.

“Let me know if that changes,” she said.

Even as Josh nodded, she switched her attention back to the western horizon. Ten minutes earlier, she’d spotted her target when it was only a dark blob squeezed between the shimmering gray sky and the darker gray sound.

Now the target was a huge ship plowing toward them like a falling mountain. Dark engine smoke boiled up from funnels behind the bridge deck. The deck cargo was a colorful collage of steel shipping containers stacked seven high. The boat was close enough that she could make out its white bow wave.

“That her?” Josh asked.

She lifted binoculars, spun the focus wheel, and scanned quickly. On the Zodiac’s shifting, uncertain platform, staring through unstabilized binoculars was a fast way to get seasick.

The collage of colors leaped forward and became a random checkerboard of blue and white and yellow and red and green, toy blocks for giants playing an unknown game.

“Meet the container ship Shinhua Lotus, ” Emma said, lowering the glasses. “Standard cruising speed close to thirty knots. One hundred and eighty thousand horsepower. Her hull is steel, a thousand feet long. She’s stacked with more than fifteen thousand steel freight containers. One hundred and sixty thousand tons of international commerce at work.”

“Gotta be the most boring job in the world.”

She glanced quickly at him. “What?”

“Driving that pig between ports. Tugs do all the fun bits close in. The ship’s captain mostly just talks on the radio.”

She looked at the little boat that had carried her out to meet the Lotus . Twenty feet long, six feet wide and powered by two outboard engines. She touched the fabric of the Zodiac’s inflated side tube. It was only slightly thicker than the rubberized off-shore suit she wore. All that supported the boat was the breath of life, twenty pounds per square inch of air pressure.

And one of the biggest ships ever built was bearing down on them, carrying bad news in the shape of a yacht called Blackbird .

She lifted the binoculars again. The huge ship overwhelmed her field of view. Everything was a fast-forward slide show. Stacks of shipping containers in various company colors. The windshield of the bridge deck. The hammerhead crane next to the forward mast.

The black-hulled yacht perched in a cradle on top of stacks of steel boxes.

Hello, Blackbird. So you made it.

If that’s really you.

“How close can you get to the Lotus ?” she asked.

“How close do you need?”

She pulled a camera from the waterproof bag at her feet. Unlike the binoculars, the camera had a computerized system to keep the field of view from dancing with every motion of the boat.

“I have to be able to see detail on a yacht sitting on top of the containers. A two-hundred-millimeter lens is the longest I have.”

That and intel satellite photos, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Too bad I don’t really trust Alara.

For all Emma could prove, the photos St. Kilda had been given could have been taken on the other side of the world a year ago. Or three years. Or twelve. Not that she was paranoid. It was just that she preferred facts that she’d checked out herself. Thoroughly. Recently.

“Two-hundred-millimeter lens.” Josh whistled through his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “And the lady wants details.”

“What’s the problem?”

He held up one finger. “That great pig up ahead is throwing a ten-foot bow wave.” A second finger uncurled. “The Coast Guard patrol boats would be on us like stink on a cat box. After 9/11, they lost their sense of humor about bending the rules.”

No news there for Emma. “You saying it can’t be done?”

“Depends. How bad do you want to swim or go to jail?”

“Not so much, thanks.” She let out a long breath and reminded herself that impatience was a quick way to die, and she was chasing nothing more dangerous than luxury yachts.

At least she had been, until Alara appeared like a puff of darkness.

“I can wait until the tugs are nudging that ‘great pig’ against a dock,” Emma said.

“If you’re working on a really short clock,” Josh said, “I’ll be glad to take a run at the Lotus right now.” He grinned suddenly. “It beats my usual gig-hauling seasick tourists out to chase whales.”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “It’s not life or death.”

I wish.

She laughed silently, bitterly. That was why she’d quit the CIA and taken an assignment from St. Kilda to investigate yacht thefts. No alarms with this job. No adrenaline exploding through her body.

No blood.

No guilt.

And best of all, no corrupt politics.

Guess again, she told herself. Then get over it.

“Back to shore?” Josh asked. “Not yet. Keep the Lotus in sight while you give me a sightseeing tour of the famous and beautiful Elliott Bay.”

“Legal distance maintained at all times?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

DAY ONE

ELLIOTT BAY

AFTERNOON

Standing on top of seventy-foot-high stacks of containers, with only the unforgiving steel deck below to catch him, MacKenzie Durand wrestled with the cargo sling that would lift the yacht off Shinhua Lotus . He looked up to the glassed-in cab of the deck crane, where the operator was waiting for directions.