Dan was about to make an acerbic remark, but before he could say anything, Turbee took off his glasses. That made things even worse, since it showed the dark circles beneath his eyes. Dan muttered to the man next to him that this had to be what drugs looked like.
“Dan, I’ve found the Semtex. I know exactly where it is.”
“Yes, well, let’s see where it is this time,” Dan muttered sarcastically.
“OK. It was on the Mankial Star. I am positive. It got transferred.”
“Aw for Chrissakes—” began Dan.
“No, Dan. He’s a bit of a wunderkind,” said Rahlson. “He hears a different drummer. Maybe he’s figured something out. Let’s hear what he’s got.”
There was a short argument about that, involving several different members of the team. At the conclusion, Turbee was given the floor.
“OK. OK. Well it’s like this. OK.” It had been a hard few days, and he’d taken a lot of bad publicity within the agency. With all the attention suddenly focused on him again, Turbee’s thoughts started to spin out of control, becoming circular and repetitive, in the same way that his right forearm sometimes flexed uncontrollably. He panicked, and his mouth became dry. His lips turned to cardboard, and his tongue felt glued to the top of his mouth. Desperately looking around for something to help, he grabbed a cup of coffee from Rahlson’s desk and drank half of it in a single swig. Rahlson knew that particular cup to be at least four hours old. He raised one eyebrow in amazement.
“OK. It’s like this. OK. You see, I took the… uhh… the Office of Intelligence of Navy stuff and I fed it to the web-bot and then—”
“Jesus, Turbee. Most of us are looking for lost nukes, and you’re over there blathering away about God knows what,” said Dan. “Get to the fucking point.”
“Dan,” said Rahlson sharply. “Hear him out.” He turned back to Turbee. “Go on, boy. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
Turbee’s nerves settled somewhat. The panic subsided. “OK. I know the dimensions of the Mankial Star. I created a web-bot to go through the millions of pages of data left by the Keyhole satellites, and by the ORION’s—”
“How the hell did you know about ORION? No one knows about that,” shouted an Air Force Intelligence wonk from the other side of the room. “You got clearance for that, kid?”
“Don’t know what you mean about clearance, but when I was looking through the NRO image database, one of the streams of data was 128 bit and couldn’t be parsed by the standard decryption algorithms that are commonly used at Fort Mead, so I hacked into a—”
“Nevermind, Turbee. Just go on,” Rahlson urged.
“OK. OK. So I found all of the images that we had of the Mankial Star from the various satellites, and I was able to put them together. When I had the first few positions of the Mankial Star and by the way, holy cow, you have no idea how fast that boat was going, but anyway, I was able to get to within a few miles of the spot where she turned around. Then I got lucky.” He paused for a few seconds and grabbed another slurp of cold coffee, this time from Khasha’s desk, to his left. “Real lucky. At the perimeter of one of the ORION shots we got the following three pictures. Have a look,” he said, motioning to the 101’s.
The first photograph showed the Mankial Star and a second, much larger ship, in close proximity; they were parallel to one another, but unconnected. The second photograph showed the same two ships connected by two fuzzy, but discernable, rails. The third photograph showed the two ships connected by the initial two rails and by what appeared to be third and fourth connecting devices of some sort.
Turbee continued. “The second, larger ship is the Haramosh Star — one of the older, smaller ships in the Karachi Star Line. She came from Karachi earlier that day. I ran her dimensions through the ONI database to find her name. I ran it through the Keyhole and ORION image database to determine that she had come from Karachi that day. I also did something else.”
Turbee had an irritating habit. Someone had to ask, or he wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, go on, given his peculiar brain wiring. It had become a sly insider’s joke at TTIC. Everyone waited for Dan to say it, just because his reaction was the most entertaining. The seconds ticked by.
“Oh fuck it, Hamilton. WHAT?” Dan finally snapped.
“Yes. OK. I took the time/space coordinates and fed them into the subsystem that powers the Atlas Screen. George showed me how to use it a week ago.”
George cast his eyes skyward. Now they were all going to blame him for giving Turbee another huge computer and the largest screen on the planet to play with.
“Look at the Atlas Screen people.” Turbee fiddled with a few commands on the keyboard before him. “You should see two red lines. The first starts from Socotra and heads east, toward the rendezvous point you’re seeing on the 101’s. It begins when the Mankial Star started to head in that direction. You’ll see a second red line heading south from Karachi to the rendezvous point. That line traces the Haramosh Star’s route. Watch what happens.”
Turbee had found a way to control the house lights from his workstation, and now he brought them down a little, while increasing the luminescence of the Atlas Screen.
“The kid may be weird, but he does have a sense of theater, doesn’t he?” Lance whispered to Rahlson.
The overall impact of the presentation was powerful. The two red lines slowly approached the rendezvous point, with the Mankial Star line moving at about twice the speed of the Haramosh Star line. When the ships reached their destination, a melodic “ping” was emitted by the system. After the meeting, the Mankial Star reversed its direction, while the Haramosh Star continued southward along the Malahat Coast. Turbee allowed the simulation to cycle continuously as he raised the house lights.
“Dan, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Mankial Star was on a return voyage from the rendezvous when she was intercepted. You have photographic evidence of that rendezvous on the screens behind you. You have the routes of the ships on the screen before you. When the USS Cushing intercepted her, the Semtex had already been transferred to the Haramosh Star. In fact, there were some indications that trace amounts of Semtex were found in the hull of the Mankial Star, but they were attributed to false positives. The Semtex is on the Haramosh Star, right now.”
“Where is this ship heading?” asked Rahlson.
“I’ve checked that on the Net. Shipping schedules are pretty much public information these days. She’s heading to Vancouver, Canada,” replied Turbee.
It didn’t take long for this particular piece of information to be passed up the chain. There were the usual phone calls, emails, and electronic messages of various sorts sent to various important people. After 15 minutes Dan had an announcement to make.
“The DDCI, the Deputy Director, and the Secretary of Defense are all in Washington, and are all on their way over here. They want to see the demonstration that you just gave us, Turbee. This is a moment of critical… Turbee?”