This was, of course, the problem. Turbee did not read the newspapers. He didn’t watch CNN. He rarely communicated with anyone outside his small group of acquaintances. He very rarely knew what was going on in the world outside of his small circle. Now he looked around the large central control room. He heard the snorts of laughter.
Rhodes saw their wunderkind ready to dissolve into tears, and came to the rescue. “OK, people, we need to get on track here. What did you expect? You put him on a project by himself, totally unassociated with what the rest of the team is doing. And you ask him to answer a question most of us could have answered already, based on everyday knowledge. Why’re we doubling up on things like this? We’re not working together. Yes, Turbee used a few quadrillion computing cycles to figure out that the world is not flat, but look how he did it,” he pointed out. “He used Blue Gene to find out who is staying in which hotel rooms, who traveled where, on what airplane, bought which weapons, and used them in whatever location. He got from there to the information he just shared, by himself. It shows the power of our computing resources.
“You asked him yesterday to find out what he could about the PSG-1’s,” he continued. “And from that and that alone, he gave us the correct answer. He told us which terrorist group pulled off this heist, and that they were affiliated with al-Qaeda. Just imagine what he could do if you put him on something important.”
“You’re not getting paid to make speeches, Rhodes,” snapped Dan. “The kid was late. He ignores the rules. And on top of that, he’s giving us information we already fucking had.”
“What do you know about rules anyway, Danny?” Rhodes retorted sharply. He’d done his research before coming to TTIC, and knew a thing or two about Dan’s privileged but shortcut-filled life. There were already a few employees in the room who thought that Dan should be replaced by someone who knew something — anything — about the Intelligence Community. So far their opinions had come to nothing. But the knowledge of Dan’s background gave Rhodes, and a few others, what they considered to be a responsibility to argue with their commander when it came to issues of importance.
Dan hadn’t yet realized that his team knew anything about his past indiscretions. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked slowly, his tone low and dangerously quiet.
“Just forget it,” said Rhodes, quickly deciding that now wasn’t the time to take a stand against their commander.
“Why don’t you just remember your place, Rhodes,” Dan snapped. “Let me handle Turbee how I choose to. He’s not your son. If you want to stand up for a kid, why don’t you go home and practice on your own? You have a couple, don’t you?”
Rhodes’ face grew dark at the underhanded reference to his family. “Excuse me?” he thundered, rising to his feet.
Rahlson stood and interrupted before it got out of hand, stepping in front of Rhodes, who showed every intention of going after Dan. “He’s not worth it, Liam,” he murmured quietly, taking the other man’s arm. “Let it go.”
Rhodes gave Rahlson a long, level stare, then nodded slowly. He turned and strode out of the room, taking care to give Dan a large berth, and closing the main door quietly behind him. Dan turned back to his work, shrugging to himself and gloating at what he saw as Rhodes’ disgrace in front of the team.
Back at the cluster of desks that housed Turbee, Rhodes, Rahlson, Khasha, and himself, George watched his friend’s exit in amazement. “Jeez, what’s eating him?” he asked in shock. “I thought I was the only person here with an anger management problem.”
“He’s carrying some personal crap around,” Rahlson told him. “Evidently Dan knows about it. Or he just has the worst timing in the world.”
Khasha looked up at the older man. She was equally concerned about what had just happened. “What kind of personal crap?” she asked.
“It happened about a year and a half ago,” Rahlson explained. “Car accident. He and his wife lost a couple of kids. He went a bit mental for a while, went to an institution of some kind. Saw piles of psychiatrists, got prescriptions for every kind of antidepressant out there. He got straightened out, eventually. For the most part.”
“You mean the shrinks actually helped him?” George asked slowly.
“Apparently so.”
“Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” George said dryly. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t keep him from concentrating on important stuff.”
14
Thousands of miles to the southwest, across the Arabian Sea, Mustafa was giving staccato orders to the deck hands of the Mankial Star, Yousseff’s private yacht. A portion of the aft deck of the yacht, between the helicopter pad and the rear cabin, was opened to reveal a small cargo hold. An ingenious scissors lift system could be raised, so that cargo transported by helicopter onto the ship could be unloaded onto the lift deck and then lowered. The recessed decking then slid back into place to hide the hold. Special fittings attached to both the helicopter and the lift system made transferring cargo simple and quick. Mustafa’s DC-3 had traveled from Bazemah to Yarim-Dhar, and, after being refueled by the Janjawiid, on to Socotra, a small island just south of Yemen. There the Semtex had been unloaded and repackaged into 23 pallets containing around 200 kilos of Semtex each. The chopper they were using had a carrying capacity of only 1,500 pounds, and it had taken six trips to deliver all of the explosive to the yacht. Transferring loads from the helicopter to the scissors lift had been the phase that Yousseff was particularly concerned about. “There are satellites,” he had said. “If one passes overhead at the time of the reload, they might see.” Mustafa had thought the chances were remote, but Yousseff was not one to be second-guessed. Hence, the reloading was undertaken with great speed and efficiency, planned down to the smallest move. For added safety, a tarp was stretched from the aft cabin to the rotor blades of the chopper to cover the path. The transfer ended up taking ten minutes per load.
The Mankial Star had already been fully fueled and stocked. As soon as the scissors lift receded for the last time, the captain pointed her on a southeastern course. They had a day to get to their rendezvous, and there was little time to waste. In a different part of the ocean, Captain Vince Ramballa was standing on the bridge of the Haramosh Star, shouting directions out for her speedy southern voyage. The two ships had an appointment to meet at the southern edge of the Malabar Coast of India for the next step of the plan.
At that moment, in the TTIC control room, Turbee was striving to gain a better understanding of the drug and terrorist connection. Khasha, the only member of the team who took him seriously, was leaning over his desk helping him.
“OK,” he said in a tremulous voice, speaking for the first time since the argument with Dan. “I have a question. The gun order from H&K. It included a lot more than the PSG-1’s. In fact, it was a truly massive order, for many, many different types of weapons and ammunition. Here’s the invoice.” He motioned to one of the large 101’s at the front of the control room. “As you can see, it’s for more than 400,000 Euros. The question is, where did they get that kind of money? And I think it may have been in cash, because I can’t find a check for that amount anywhere. Blue Gene could have found it if it existed, but after hours of searching thousands of databases and financial institution records, I still drew a blank. If Blue Gene can’t find it, it’s not there. So where do you get that kind of money in cash?”