Harsh beauty, harsh life. Mind-numbingly hard, dangerous work. His kind of place, possibly. Mac realized he'd gotten distracted. "So this local radio station—a woman was broadcasting." He lobbed a chunk of bait, which Michael deftly caught, frustrating the sea gull that dove in anticipation. The bird screamed and arced over the water, disappearing into wisps of fog. "Some kind of Northwest legend about a coyote, fire, shit like that."
"Got your attention did she?" Kaz Jorgensen, Michael's fiancée, popped her head out of the engine house, a teasing grin on her face.
"Just curious, is all." The woman's voice had stayed with him, popping back into his head at odd moments since that evening, but he wasn't about to admit as much. "Who is she?"
"Most likely, Jo Henderson," Kaz replied. "I've known Jo all my life. She's our only female river bar pilot, and she moonlights as a disc jockey on our new community radio station."
Mac frowned at this surprising bit of news. A detective down at the station had told him all about Astoria's river bar pilots, professional daredevils who risked their lives to bring the big freighters through the mouth of the Columbia.
He refocused the binoculars, searching for the helicopter he'd seen earlier. Somehow, he was having trouble reconciling the sultry voice echoing through his dreams with the kind of woman who was willing to scramble up flimsy rope ladders hung over the sides of rusting container ships. Or drop onto a listing deck from a helicopter.
Moving the binoculars in a slow scan, he caught sight of the helo as it dipped down low over the water. Too low. He'd seen a lot of that kind of flying in Iraq. "You guys hire hotdog helicopter pilots in this neck of the woods?"
"That would be Tim Carter, flying the Seahawk," Kaz said drily, tracking its progress. "He flew Blackhawks in the military."
"Anyone point out to him that he isn't flying them anymore?"
#
The helicopter shuddered, as if protesting the sudden drop in altitude. Jo tensed, and Tim frowned, rapping the instrument panel with his knuckles.
Erik stood to lock open the door and position the harness. Once they were hovering over the freighter, he would hold the helicopter steady and lower her to the pitching deck.
Both men acted unconcerned. Jo chastised herself and focused on preparing for her descent onto the freighter. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she stood awkwardly in the encased booties of her dry suit.
As she zipped up the suit, she carefully tucked her clothes inside the rubber seals at her neck and wrists, then shrugged on her bulky flotation vest. Given the current weather conditions, she'd be dealing with an icy deck. But she had to admit Tim was right—the surge didn't look bad. No hard landings this time out. Relaxing a bit, she dealt with the harness while she hummed the Celtic tune she'd broadcast last night.
A loud pop had her jolting.
The helicopter swung wildly, and Tim started swearing. Erik's face went slack.
Jo's first reaction—even as the helicopter canted onto its side—was that she was making it up, that her imagination had created a Technicolor version of her paranoid thoughts.
But then they fell out of Coyote's Sky World.
#
"Hey!" On the Kasmira B, Mac lowered the binoculars, stared at the horizon, then quickly put them back up to his face. He watched as the helicopter rolled onto its side and plunged, disappearing behind the swells.
"Hey!"
The sound of the explosion ricocheted across the water.
Copyright ©2006 by P.J. Alderman
All rights reserved.
A Killing Tide is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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