Death Echo Read Free

going to be splat on ground zero. He’d been there, done that, and vowed never to be there again. He’d been the lucky one who survived.
    At least he had been told that he was the lucky one. After a few years, he even believed it. During daylight.
    At night, well, night was always there, waiting with the kind of dreams he woke from cold, sweating, biting back howls of fury and betrayal.
    Long ago and far away,
Mac told himself savagely.
Pay attention to what’s happening now.
    When he was satisfied with the position of the lifting strap, he signaled the crane operator to pick up cable. The frame went from slack to loaded. The aft strap was in front of the propellers and the forward strap was even with the front windshield. Both straps visibly stretched as the overhead cable tightened.
    Just before
Blackbird
lifted out of its cradle, Mac clenched his fist overhead. Instantly the crane operator stopped bringing in cable.
    Mac checked everything again before he scrambled up the ten-foot ladder that stood against the swim step at the stern of the yacht. When he was aboard
Blackbird,
he gave the crane operator a palm-out hand signal with fingers spread.
    Take a break, five minutes.
    The operator nodded and reached for a cigarette.
    A
Lotus
deckhand appeared and took the ladder away from the yacht’s swim step.
    Mac opened the salon door and went inside. He had been a professional transport skipper for five years. He was regularly dropped on the deck of a boat he had never seen before and was expected to take command of immediately. Since he didn’t plan on going down with any ship, he had developed a mental checklist as rigorous and detailed as an airline captain’s.
    He liked the idea that if he died, it was his own screwup, not someone else’s.
    The engine hatch was on the main deck, just behind the pilot seat and the galley. He opened the heavy, sound-proofed hatch and secured it.
    The engines were at the stern, leaving an open area below waiting to be used for storage of extra equipment, parts, whatever—a real luxury on a forty-one-foot boat. He walked quickly through the anteroom to the engines. He had to duck a bit, but it was a lot easier access to the engines than he was accustomed to.
    The first thing on his mental list was the big batteries. He snapped on their switches and checked the output. They had kept enough charge on the ten-day trip from Singapore to start the yacht’s engines and operate its various systems.
    Next, he opened the seacocks that supplied saltwater to the cooling systems of the two shiny new diesel engines that drove the boat. Oversized engines, a special order that made for a cramped engine room.
    Gotta love those yachties with more money than sense,
Mac told himself.
    Quickly but thoroughly, he checked the hose clamps on the through-hull fittings to make sure none had vibrated loose at sea. Cooling water was required. Gushers of saltwater in the bilge weren’t.
    The through-hull fitting that normally supplied cooling water to the generator had been left open to drain rainwater or ocean spray out of the yacht during the voyage. Mac closed the seacock so the yacht wouldn’t sink minutes after it touched the waters of Elliott Bay.
    He checked the through-hull fittings for the septic and water-maker systems, then the fuel lines that fed the two six-cylinder diesel engines. He had been assured there was enough fuel aboard to make Rosario, sixty miles to the north, but he was suspicious by nature.
    It had saved his life more than once.
    A shipping crew in Singapore, where the yacht had begun its voyage, could make hundreds of dollars by shorting the fuel tanks. Mac didn’t want to come into the Rosario rigging yard at the end of a tow line.
    The sight gauges for both fuel tanks showed less than an inch of fuel.
    Ah, human nature. All for me and screw you.
    The good news was that the diesel fuel in the feed lines from the tanks looked clear. The bad news was that he would be visiting the fuel