Death Echo

34

DAY FOUR

SAN JUAN ISLANDS

MORNING

Emma sat in a swivel armchair on the flying bridge next to Mac. She watched the radar sweeping over the electronic chart on the computer’s wide screen. Nothing-land, boat, or seaplane-was close enough to worry about, yet Mac’s dark eyes kept probing the blue water ahead.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Floating debris, logs, deadheads, clumps of seaweed, anything that can put a dent in my day.”

She frowned and looked out at the water. “Is there a lot of that going around?”

“It’s worse in spring, when the melt comes and scours the riverbanks and vomits out dead forests to clutter up the sound. But we’ve been having big tides, the ones that lift centuries-old logs off beaches and send them out in the currents to play with anything else that floats.”

She glanced at the various boats within sight. “I can see why the ferry and the big freighter aren’t worried about a few random chunks of wood, but why are all those pleasure craft racing around? And I do mean racing.”

“Some of the captains are playing the odds. Most are watching as carefully as I am. Even then,” he shrugged, “shit happens. That’s why pleasure boats don’t run at night out here, unless they have a steel hull and skegs protecting their props. Pod drives like ours just have to take their chances.”

“No protection?”

“We have skegs, but no guarantees. Like commuting on a freeway-sooner or later there will be a wreck. You just hope it’s not yours, because you have to keep on driving to make a living.”

“The waterhole theory of life at work,” Emma said.

He looked at her in silent question.

“Think of grazers approaching a waterhole at the end of the day,” she said. “They know lions are lying in wait, but there’s no choice. Water is just behind oxygen in our drive for life. So the grazers sweat and snort and shy and sidle closer to the water, knowing an individual blood sacrifice must be paid so that the rest of the herd can drink. Can survive.”

Mac smiled like a hungry lion. “And everybody’s hoping it isn’t his turn to die.”

“Yeah.” She frowned and rubbed her hands over her arms. “I just wish I didn’t feel like Blackbird is a floating sacrifice for the good of the human herd.”

He didn’t argue with her, which didn’t make her feel better.

“So, we won’t be running at night?” Emma asked.

“Not unless we have to. Take the controls. Let’s see how much you learned. And be grateful you already knew how to plot a course on paper.”

“Basic training,” she said. “Like riding a bike. Never goes away.”

Unfortunately, knowing how to plot paper courses and run the boat’s computer and understanding the theory of throttle movements wasn’t the same as actually driving all those tons of yacht on a fluid, shifting, unmarked road.

“Pod drive?” she asked hopefully. She’d played more than her share of video games.

“Too easy. Better you learn the hard way so you can appreciate the easy way.”

She grimaced. “You sure? Theory is one thing…”

“You’d rather practice with me dead on the deck and bullets screaming around?”

“God, Mac. You should write a book on sweet talk.”

“Tell me that tomorrow morning.”

She looked at his dark, dark eyes and felt like she was soaring off a cliff, flying high, no land in sight.

She liked it.

He said something under his breath, gestured to the controls, and slid out of the wheel seat.

Steering the boat suddenly seemed safer than looking in Mac’s eyes. Emma took the controls and concentrated on something besides the unnerving pulse of heat in her blood.

He watched silently, letting her learn firsthand the difference between driving a car and a boat. Once she caught on to correcting for tide and currents, he told her to plot a point ahead and lock it into the autopilot. She touched the screen quickly, answered the computer’s prompts, and let go of the wheel.

Blackbird sailed on, correcting its course via satellite, uncaring whether it was under human or electronic control.

“You’re a quick study,” Mac said.

“I’ve had to be.” She smiled suddenly. “Besides, I like challenges.” Mac wished he could take this challenging woman down to the master suite and see what each could teach and learn.

Bad time.

Right woman.

“We’ll be crossing over the international line in an hour,” Mac said, looking at the computer.

“What’s our border protocol?”

“In the old days, we’d call Canadian customs, give them our stats, and hope the waterhole theory holds.”

“Meaning?” she asked.

“Meaning they would log Blackbird into their computers, give us an entry number to stick in the window by the pilot seat downstairs, and we would sail on without a pause.”

“Old days, huh? Would that be pre-9/11?”

“Pretty much.”

“And today?” she asked.

“The lion always pounces.”

“Meaning?”

“Technically we probably should go through the closest customs,” he said. “But what we’re going to do is take the protected run through the Gulf Islands to Nanaimo, and get inspected there. For going to Campbell River, it’s quicker.”

It definitely was a smoother ride. Until he knew more about how Emma’s stomach took rough water, he’d stick to the easy route.

“How detailed is the inspection?” she asked.

“Depends on how nice the U.S. is feeling toward Canada, and vice versa. If we’ve been giving Canadian yachties a special look-see at our border, we get the same in return. Or if the Canadians are miffed about a U.S. import tax on their lumber, they squeeze tourists. Same for our side. There can be any number of reasons for dicking with border crossings that have zero to do with anyone’s security-except the politicians’.”

“How unsurprising,” she said.

“Yeah. Humans.”

In silence Mac watched Emma handling the boat, altering course on instruction, entering waypoints into the plotter, checking tides in Nanaimo at various possible arrival times, watching gauges for problems, and doing all the other things that added up to driving a boat.

In return, Mac watched the radar screen that overlaid the charts, his eyes alert for anything that followed their course, random alterations included.

“And?” she asked after he had studied the radar a particularly long time.

“Nothing that makes my neck tingle.”

She watched Blackbird cut through blue water to the imaginary but very real international line in the water. When their radar showed the boat entering Canadian territory, Emma looked at Mac.

“How long does inspection take?” she asked.

“Normally it’s just a courtesy,” Mac said. “You show passports, get a number, put the number on both sides of the front cabin, throw out whatever fruits are in season, and you’re good to go. Fifteen minutes on a busy day.”

“Friendly, in a word.”

“Anything to grease the flow of commerce and tourism-as long as someone isn’t suffering from short dick syndrome.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll go back to learning to drive.”

To get a feel for manually steering the boat under different water conditions, Emma took off the automatic navigation and guided Blackbird through the choppy waters that marked the fluid boundary between sovereign nations. The motion of the boat changed and the speed dropped.

Tidal line, she thought, remembering Mac’s explanations. Or currents. Maybe both together.

Gently she nudged the throttles up until they were making about nineteen knots again.

Mac watched for a few moments, then said, “Push it to the max. Let’s find out what these big engines are really made of.”

And how Emma’s stomach was.