“George,” he said in a sharp tone of voice. “Put a red dot at the following coordinates, please.” He read out the latitude and longitude coordinates, and a red dot appeared on the northern tip of one of the many arms and bays of the gigantic Lake Powell reservoir.
“OK,” Turbee continued. “Now put a red line showing the shortest route that can be taken by water from that point to the Glen Canyon Dam.” George complied. Turbee looked at the Atlas Screen for another minute, then at one of his monitors, then at the Atlas Screen again. He suddenly became extremely agitated, jumping up and beginning to yell.
“It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wrong dam!” he babbled.
George looked over at him. “Keep it down, Turb. You’re pissing people off at the wrong time. We have major shit coming down the pipe.”
But Turbee was already waving frantically at Dan. “Wrong dam, Dan!” he yelled, when Dan wouldn’t come to him. “Wrong damn dam!”
“Turbee, shut up. We’re in the middle of a terrorist attack right now. Half of the world is calling, wanting to talk to us,” said an irritated Dan, nervously fidgeting with the keyboard before him.
“No, no. Dam, Dan, dammit! Wrong, Dan! Wrong Dam! Damn. Damn!”
Dan looked around the large control room. “Can somebody stuff a pill into the little bastard, or do I have to get him tasered again? Someone do something.”
Rahlson marched into the melee. “Dan, you almost got him killed ten days ago with the way you handled things. I think you owe him at least five minutes. I don’t give a rat’s ass what’s going on in Vegas or at the Hoover Dam. Shut the fuck up and listen to the kid. And if I hear you say anything else about tasering him I’m going to drop you down the elevator shaft. Got it, you pompous ass?”
When it looked as though Dan might continue to argue, Rahlson took a step closer, leaning in. “Have you got it asshole?”
Dan looked around the noisy control center, and could see that the tide was going with Rahlson. “OK, Turbee, five minutes. That’s all you’ve got.”
Turbee began slowly, halting and stuttering a bit. “It’s like this company in Pakistan. We’ve seen it before, like, we think it’s involved in drug trafficking, you know, Karachi Star Line. We’ve seen it lots of times before. There’s another company I found out about. It’s called KDEC, Karachi Drydock and Engineering. They build shipping parts. Looks like they’re owned by the same people as the shipping line. And a third company. A Californian company. It’s called Pacific Western Submersibles. These companies are all part of them.”
“Part of who?” Dan’s words were sharp and choppy.
“Them. The heroin smugglers. They’re related to them. They’re another arm. They are them.”
“Who the fuck is who?” Dan spat out the words.
“Nevermind the grammar, there, Dan,” said Rahlson. “Kid, you’re going to have to give the ass chapter and verse. Lives are at stake. How do you know that this Long Beach company is in league with this KDEC and the Karachi shipping line?”
“OK, yeah. OK. It’s like this.” Turbee felt his lips and tongue turn into sandpaper. He desperately looked around, and grabbed a cold cup of coffee from George’s desk.
“The banks. All three use financial institutions in the same three jurisdictions — Nigeria, Russia, and Lichtenstein.”
“That’s not—” began Dan, but one glance from Rahlson quashed the sentence before it was formed.
“Second point. Many of the parts and fittings used by PWS have been manufactured or machined by KDEC. I found that out be checking the RFID tags of containers of parts manufactured by KDEC and sent to the container facility at Long Beach.”
“So they buy parts from—” began Dan, but, at this stage, just the upward lift of one of Rahlson’s eyebrows stopped him.
“Third point. PWS makes small submarines. They’re used by the military, for scientific research, and for expensive tourist amusement toys at places like Cancun. Here’s a picture of their ’Model 12.’ If you look closely at it, and remember what Wharfdog Charlie had to say, you will see that—”
Dan interrupted. “Oh, so now Wharfdog Charlie is going to dictate tactics in—”
“Shut the fuck up and listen to him!” Rahlson roared.
“That they’re quite similar,” Turbee finished, glaring at Dan. “Fourth point. All of the KDEC shipments to PWS were done aboard container ships from the Karachi Star Line. All of them. And, more significantly, while there seem to be more than 30 ocean-going vessels flying Karachi Star colors, the ship that travels most often, according to the information that I’ve been able to get, is the Haramosh Star. You’ve heard of her before, I’m sure, Dan.” Turbee had to curtail a smile when he saw Dan’s reddening complexion.
“Fifth point.” Turbee could see that he had everyone’s attention. “PWS grew in the same way KDEC did — very rapidly, coming out of nowhere. Its competitors can’t match its research and development funding. Looking at it, there’s no way that the sale of a few subs can pay for an army of engineers and scientists like this.”
“Look, Turbee,” Dan broke in again, with a wary eye on Rahlson. “All of that is hopelessly circumstantial. None of it proves anything.”
“Yes, sir, that’s right. But it raises the index of suspicion over PWS, so a few hours ago I programmed a series of web-bots that scoured every particle of information on the net with respect to the company. And I found some real interesting stuff. Besides, you’re always saying you want ALL the facts before we make any moves.”
There was a moment or two of silence, punctuated by the odd snicker. “What?” asked Dan finally. “What what what?”
“PWS controls a very large number of holding companies, trusts, and various offshore entities. Lots of them. And tracking it the best I could, these entities seem to own or control, believe it or not, service stations and convenience stores. Like, there’s just piles of them. Dozens. All over California and north into Oregon and a couple in Washington.”
“What is the significance of that?” asked Dan, a little more cautiously.
“Couple of things. Most of the proprietors of those stores and service stations seem to be refugees from Afghanistan, mostly from northeastern Afghanistan. Pashtun country. But that’s not the clinker.”
“Clinker?” muttered George.
“Yeah. A number of these establishments have been under investigation by the DEA. Nothing obvious, it’s pretty covert. But they seem to be spinning off a very large amount of cash.”
“I know about that one,” said Lance, who was the DEA voice at TTIC. “It’s been going on for awhile. The investigation isn’t going anywhere, but there was, and is, a high degree of suspicion there. Are you saying that, one way or the other, PWS controls these stores and stations?”
“Yes,” responded Turbee. “It looks that way to me, though I can’t be 100 percent certain.”
“Fine,” said Dan. “PWS may be in the laundry business. How does this help us in dealing with the current terrorist threat?”
“You see the red dot on the Atlas Screen, on the Lake Powell reservoir? That’s a piece of property owned by one of those numbered companies. Turns out that PWS used that as a base when it took part in an underwater mapping project, along with a number of universities and government agencies.”