To his credit, Turbee stood his ground against the cynicism. “Only two possibilities,” he answered quietly. “The first is that it’s stored in another container on the Haramosh Star. There may be a second hull, or a container completely independent of the ship. It would be impossible to find unless you knew to look for it.”
“And that’s why the SEALs missed it,” interrupted Rahlson, coming down firmly on Turbee’s side.
“Second possibility,” continued Turbee, ignoring Rahlson’s interruption, “is that it was transferred to another ship or perhaps a submarine, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, where we couldn’t see it.”
“Doubt it. That’s an unnecessary complication,” said Dan. “Do you have anything other than a hunch to support that?”
“Look, Dan,” said Turbee. “They — and as far as I know, we’re still not sure who ’they’ are — but they did it once, off the south coast of India. These guys are good. Incredibly good. If they did it once, why couldn’t they do it again? It wouldn’t be a complication; a transfer of a few tons of Semtex probably isn’t a big deal to anyone who can design and manufacture the lifts and arms we saw in the transfer from the Mankial Star to the Haramosh Star.”
“OK,” Rhodes stepped in. “Let’s be constructive. Let’s work this out. Suppose that happened, and they got or are on the verge of getting the stuff into British Columbia. It wouldn’t have come through Vancouver. I already spent a few hours on the phone with senior guys from the RCMP, the Vancouver City Police, and the Coast Guard. You’d have to be nuts to try and smuggle stuff like that in through that port. It’s under constant surveillance. They have thousands of cameras and hundreds of eyes. It would have to be somewhere else. I suggested Prince Rupert. It’s another option, but the cops there doubt it. Even the port of Prince Rupert is under incredibly tight surveillance right now. But suppose they found a way in? I think I know what they would do.” He paused, gathering his thoughts.
There was a short spell of silence. “We’re waiting with bated breath, Rhodes,” said Dan through his teeth. It didn’t sit well with him when anyone took Turbee’s side over his own. Right now, everyone was taking Turbee’s side over his.
“The people who are transporting the Semtex are drug smugglers,” continued Rhodes. “They’re from Afghanistan or Pakistan. They’ve been moving heroin around the globe for years. They’re a natural fit for transporting bricks of Semtex. It’s no different, really, from a large shipment of heroin.”
“So, where does that get you?” Dan interrupted again. “You’re wasting time, and we’re still no further ahead.”
Rhodes gave Dan a scathing glare. He bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that Dan had wasted days and hundreds of hours searching for nonexistent nukes. “Yes, we are,” he continued evenly. “There are apparently a couple of choice BC entry points into the US. If it’s the same crew, then they’ve obviously already developed their route across the border. They would also have a prearranged coastal location in BC, for getting things onto the continent in the first place.”
“Yes, but we don’t have a clue where or how, or even IF, the Semtex entered BC,” said Dan. “And there are a lot of ’if’s’ embedded in that theory.”
Turbee interrupted the conversation. He had been searching Canadian and American Coast Guard communications and had stumbled across a gem of information. “Liam,” he said, completely ignoring Dan, “we’ve just received information from the Canadian Coast Guard that the Haramosh Star has been spotted near the British Columbia port city of Prince Rupert, just south of the Alaskan Panhandle. The ship was apparently a bit off course. They didn’t know whether they were going to Prince Rupert or Vancouver. George,” he said turning to his friend, “can you put this point on the Atlas Screen?”
George looked at Turbee in surprise; the young mathematician seemed to have very suddenly come into his own. His orders were sharp and precise, and even the tone of his voice had changed. Standing up to Dan had been good for the boy, he noted with approval. Smiling at the thought, he brought the Atlas Screen online.
“Take a look,” Turbee continued, once the screen lit up. He pointed to the pulsing red dot that appeared just west of Prince Rupert.
“So what’s the point of that?” asked Dan scornfully. “We already knew that the Haramosh Star was heading for Vancouver. So now they’re a day away. They seem to be on schedule, and headed the right way.”
“Not exactly, Dan,” replied George. “Not quite. Take a look at this,” he added, changing the view of the Atlas Screen so that it depicted the Pacific Ocean, showing the Aleutians and Kamchatka Peninsula to the north, the west coast of North America along one edge, and Japan, the Philippines and the Indonesian archipelago along the opposite edge.
“Ocean-going ships, when traversing large bodies of water, obey the same rules airplanes do. They follow great circular routes. The closest distance between two points on a sphere is not a straight line, but a curve.”
“Yes, George. Thanks for that trip back to Math 101,” replied Dan, with his usual edge of disdain. “What’s your point?” Even though TTIC opinion, en masse, was beginning to lean toward Turbee, Dan saw no reason to be polite.
“Well, Danno,” replied George with equal sarcasm. “I’ve plotted the shortest route from the Philippines, where the Haramosh Star would have entered the Pacific Ocean, to Vancouver. And here it is.”
A red dot, pulling an ever-lengthening red line behind it, traveled from the Philippines northward, toward Alaska, and curved gradually south toward Vancouver.
“Nice animation, George,” said Dan. “But I still don’t see your point.”
“Just look over here, Dan,” snapped George as he enlarged the map west of the Alaskan Panhandle and Prince Rupert. “Can’t you see that, according to the path she must have taken, the Haramosh Star was more than 100 miles closer to Prince Rupert that she should have been? She should have been at least 150 miles west of Prince Rupert but was actually 10 miles northwest, well inside the Dixon Entrance between the Queen Charlotte Islands and Alaska. The Canadian Coast Guard had been following her closely, even when she was a good thousand miles out, because of what happened off the coast of India. She was so off course that the Coast Guard finally boarded the ship and talked to her captain, asking what the hell he was doing. The captain apparently said that the search by the SEALs had confused him, and somehow he thought they were going to Prince Rupert. They corrected their course and began heading directly south, to get to Vancouver, where she’s due in less than 12 hours.”
“Logically, then,” said Turbee, “the question becomes what was the closest port when the Haramosh Star was the most off course, which I guess would be the location of the red dot that George first put on the map. Can you put a circle around that point, George, and magnify that portion of the map a little more?”
“Sure can, little buddy,” smiled George, pleased that Turbee had figured out the issue he’d been driving at. He punched a few buttons, and the section around the glowing red dot was enlarged on the Atlas Screen. “The closest port is, of course, Prince Rupert, with its new container port and its deep-water coal port. Maybe the Semtex was off-loaded there, assuming that it was still on the Haramosh Star, somehow,” he suggested tentatively.
“Doubt it, George,” said Rahlson. “The Canadians are watching their ports as closely as we are. The new container port has literally hundreds of cameras on it. It’s probably being patrolled and monitored as extensively as our own deep-water ports. And the Haramosh Star was being watched. She couldn’t have gone into the port without someone seeing. And there’s no way that a speedboat could have approached her, taken on a four-ton cargo, and brought it ashore, without anyone noticing. No way.”