Gauntlet (21 page)

The lift platform on the
Mankial Star
rested on four small wheels, not dissimilar to miniature locomotive wheels (which is where Kumar had obtained his inspiration for it). The four wheels were locked by an ingenious locking mechanism, which, with the flip of a switch, retracted into the lift platform itself. Three men, pushing in unison, were able to push the platform with its first 1,500 kilos of Semtex off the lift, through the now-open gate on the
Mankial Star’s
deck, and across the twenty-some feet of rail. Two men on the
Haramosh Star
stopped the small railcar as it drifted, casually, into the aperture in the ship’s hull. The only noise that accompanied this exercise was the lapping of small waves against the hulls of the two ships, and the occasional forlorn cries of seagulls. The load of Semtex was detached from the transport system and disappeared into an internal compartment on the cargo ship. The other loads followed, all noiselessly and easily.

Yousseff and Vince walked together to the lower deck level, where the pallets of Semtex now sat. Yousseff looked at the volume of material that had arrived. “Are you sure it will fit in the PWS-12?” asked Yousseff.

“Well, I’m not,” replied Vince. “But some of those clever characters back in Karachi did the volume calculations, and they tell me that there is enough room. In fact, we could probably have handled another 500 kilos of it, according to their estimations. It should not be a problem.”

“Good,” said Yousseff. “I want you to personally supervise the transfer. When it is done, make sure the trapdoor is completely covered with junk. Hose down the deck, and the lower deck. In fact, hose it down several times. The Americans may come. They may already be on your tail. So long as they don’t find that,” he said, pointing to the pallets, “things will be fine.”

They hugged each other, feeling a pang of nostalgia at another parting. They both recalled too well Yousseff’s earlier trips on this very ship — the start of their long and very close history. Yousseff drew away and stepped out onto the rails that joined the two ships. “Oh, one last thing,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket. “Here’s a digital camera. If the Americans do come, take many pictures. We could have some fun with that.” He tossed the camera toward Vince, who pocketed it. “Goodbye, old friend,” he said, walking over the water to the
Mankial Star.

“Goodbye Youss,” said Vince, a lump in his throat. He didn’t know the full extent of the plan, but he knew full well that he might never see his friend again.

The sailors of the
Haramosh Star
returned to their positions as soon as Yousseff stepped onto the
Mankial Star.
They wondered who this so-called idiot relative of Vince’s was, who walked so boldly across the waters of the Indian Ocean, toward a stunningly beautiful yacht, complete with a helicopter attached to its rear deck. Most of them turned away, shaking their heads. They were paid extremely well not to ask questions of their captain, or the men with whom he saw fit to consort.

The process then reversed itself, as silently as it had been executed. The empty platform was pushed back to the
Mankial Star.
It locked in place on the scissors lift. The rails were detached from the lift, and the lift retracted into its lower storage berth. The two rails retracted into the hull of the cargo ship, and the large hatch closed. Crewmembers on the front and rear decks of Yousseff’s yacht unhooked the connecting arms, which also retracted into the hull of the larger ship. The two small hull hatches closed. The captain of the
Mankial Star
reversed his engines, while the
Haramosh Star
went forward. As soon as there was a safe distance between the two vessels, both proceeded at full speed. The
Haramosh Star
continued on a southerly route along the Malabar Coast, while the
Mankial Star
turned west, toward Yousseff’s retreat on the island of Socotra, just south of Yemen. The entire operation had taken less than 20 minutes. Silently, elegantly, and efficiently, thought Yousseff. It was the only way to do these things. He heaved a great sigh. Now he had a chance to rest in his own home before he was needed again. Thank Allah.

T
HE METALWORKERS at Karachi Drydock and Engineering had built two inner frames in the hull of the
Haramosh Star,
below the engine compartment. The first was for the storage of contraband — usually drugs, but in this case, explosives. The second acted as ventilation, to direct the fumes through the engine exhaust system. After this construction, Kumar’s sophisticated measurements had shown that, in spite of the precise manufacture and assembly of these inner floors, several parts per billion of chemical traces still leaked into the engine compartment itself. These traces could give them away, and destroy the mission. Yousseff had instructed Kumar to build a third compartment, on top of the other two, for further insulation and venting of fumes. A few parts per trillion of the fumes still escaped, but not enough to trigger detection equipment that might be brought onboard. The likelihood of detection was almost nil. The metalwork was so precise that there was no indication whatsoever that there were three layers of compartments beneath the engine room.

It was the recently added lower layer that was the most interesting. Nestled in this large bay was a PWS-12 submarine, built in Kumar’s Long Beach manufacturing facility and modified at Karachi Drydock and Engineering. A crew from the
Haramosh Star
immediately set to work, reloading the Semtex into the hold of the submersible.

T
HE AKAMINA-KISHININA, with Waterton Lakes Park to the immediate east, in Alberta, and Glacier National Park to the immediate south, in Montana, formed the crown of the continent. Here one could find a combination of biological, geological, and climatic factors that occurred nowhere else in North America. The three parks were home to the densest grizzly bear population on the continent. Together they formed a UNESCO World Heritage site, at the narrowest point of the Rocky Mountains. High and spacious alpine ridges, deep secluded valleys, and windswept passes provided terrain for the large grizzly population, as well as an abundance of goats, caribou, and big horn sheep. The trails and passes of the Akamina-Kishinina were used for millennia by aboriginal tribes to travel from the Flathead Basin to the Great Plains. The area was so isolated that fewer than 100 individuals made the Flathead-to-Waterton trek each year, and only a few hundred people braved the one-day bike tours. Because of the fragile ecosystem and international importance of the area, no motorized transportation of any sort was permitted in the park.

The mountains here were as unique as the wildlife, and the park featured the highest peaks in the Clark Range of the Rockies. Mount Starvation and Mount King Edward measured at 9,301 feet and 9,186 feet, respectively. The Akamina-Kishinina also protected some of the oldest mineral formations in the Canadian Rockies. Most of the rocks were varieties of limestone, deposited on the shallow floor and tidal flats of an ancient ocean that had existed there 1.5 billion years earlier. Nunatuk, an ancient rock formation in the center of the park, thrust its peaks sharply upward, soaring in jagged cliffs straight up for more than 2,000 feet.

In the early Twentieth Century, the area was explored by geologists, and a number of mines were started and then abandoned. A number of test oil drilling sites had also been created and deserted. There were numerous coal deposits in the area, and several attempts had been made to commercially extract coal, but these attempts were discontinued when larger, more commercially viable coal deposits were found to the west, in the Kootenay Valley — an area more accessible to railways.

Indy knew the history of the area, and now took note of the terrain and the homes as the Bluebird cruised southeast, approaching the park. Ramshackle trailers, mostly run-down and in various states of disrepair, were the predominant architecture. Most of these places were owned, he knew, by various constituents of the Hallett/Lestage clan. Behind the southernmost trailers rose a high granite flat-topped ridge that the locals referred to as Boundary Peak. A few miles before they hit the park border itself, Indy noticed an overgrown driveway that had seen recent traffic, given the tire marks through the grass. He wondered if that was Leon’s place.

The Bluebird Bus, engulfed in a cloud of diesel smoke, finally shuddered to a halt at a turnabout in front of the park gateway itself.

“The bus stops here, everybody,” said Dennis, who appeared to be in a relaxed and jovial frame of mind. “No motorized traffic permitted in the park. We have some maps here about trails you can take. Suggest you go uphill till about 2:30 or so, and then turn around. The bus leaves at 4:30.” He led the tourists out of the bus and started to undo the bungee cords that held the mountain bikes to the sides of the vehicle. Indy smiled to himself as he watched Dennis struggling to do the job one-handed, the other hand busy scratching various parts of his anatomy.

When he thought that Dennis was fully preoccupied with other matters, which seemed to be the case most of the time, he scooted behind the bus and took one of the bicycles. He headed down the road, back toward the Flathead Valley, instead of going up into the Akamina-Kishinina. The sky was overcast, but it was warm and pleasant. Indy caught himself relishing the spectacular scenery. Not a bad way to spend a day, he thought.

It didn’t take him long to arrive at the overgrown trail that led to what he suspected was Leon’s home. He had with him one of the high-resolution 11.2 megapixel Sony Cybershot cameras that were kept at the Heather Street complex. He already had pictures of the side of the bus, featuring the lengthy name of the corporation, which he would use to conduct other searches when he got back to his Dell. He had a picture of its license plate. He had a few pictures of Dennis, one of which showed him smoking his extra large fattie.

Now he took a few shots of the driveway, with the granite walls of Boundary Peak rising less than half a mile beyond. Inhaling deeply, he started to walk down the narrow lane. He had done undercover work for more than a decade, and had 25 years of service with the Force. Walking into a potential criminal’s driveway was really nothing new. He looked around, clearing his mind and concentrating on finding anything that might strengthen his case. There were fresh tire marks, probably from a pickup truck. He took a few photographs of them, then kept walking. He had walked close to two miles, and was almost at the vertical walls of Boundary Peak, when the trail opened into a small grassy area, with an older mobile home standing forlornly in the center. There were no signs of habitation; no smoke from the chimney, no barking dog, and no vehicle in the driveway, although he could see a couple up on blocks behind the small home. His heart rate sped up, and his blood pressure increased. Was this the place where it all happened? Slowly he walked right up to the mobile home, snapping a few more pictures on his approach. There appeared to be a large blue Harley parked in the living room. He saw now that there was an old Ford pickup parked behind the trailer. The road continued on past the trailer, heading, judging from the bearing of the sun, due south. He snapped some pictures of the rear of the home, and then a few more of the trail leading past it. There were further fresh tire marks in the grass, indicating the passage of a vehicle, probably in the past 24 hours. He was about to move forward when he heard a chilling “click” behind him.

“Right there, bastard. Hold it right there. Turn slowly or you’re toast,” came a voice from behind him.

T
HE TTIC CONTROL ROOM had an eerie glow about it after hours. George had created a screen saver for the Atlas Screen that randomly illuminated different countries, with light fading in and out, cycling through a random pattern. The large 101’s at the front of the room were displaying current network news feeds. The 101 closest to Turbee was playing an Elmer Fudd cartoon. The large workstations surrounding the Atlas Screen were empty. Here and there a screen or an on/off switch on a computer glowed. It was 1:30AM. Turbee was the only inhabitant in the large room. He was hunched over, mumbling to himself. He had adopted a few of the digital screens from surrounding workstations and now had, in total, seven flat panel displays in front of him — one 30 inch, three at 21 inches, and three 19 inchers. All showed windows of scrolling numbers. Complex formulae were splashed across the largest screen. He was attempting to find correlations in dozens of databases, mostly databases that contained electronic information relating to the residents of Pakistan.

T
HE “WEST” was often guilty of smugness, and an arrogant certainty that their system functioned better than any other, and that their way of life was better and more sophisticated than anyone else’s. The popularly held misconception in the Western world was that Pakistan was a desert-bound Third World country, with more camels than people. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Other than some lawless areas to the northwest and adjacent to the Karakorum Highway, Pakistan could actually be classified as a country with considerable sophistication. While there were poverty-ridden areas and shantytowns, there were also numerous universities within its borders and a high literacy rate. Pakistan had shared in its neighbor India’s recent computer hardware and software revolution. America’s Silicon Valley jobs were not only exported to Mumbai, but also to Karachi. Most citizens had debit cards. Electronic banking was comfortably entrenched in the country. There was a well-developed cellular network, and in the larger cities everyone seemed to possess a cell phone. Water and power were commodities parceled out by computer. Foreign exchange was reconciled electronically. Wages were automatically deposited into bank accounts by all but the smallest of companies. Pakistan even possessed nuclear weaponry.

All this technology meant that there existed, within the borders of Pakistan, a rich broth of electronic information for Turbee and Blue Gene to sample and tease. As was often the case with Turbee, once he was able to focus his formidable intellectual resources, he lost track of time and place. It had taken only a brief, highly productive tutorial session with Rhodes, Lance, and Khasha to get him on the right track. Even Rahlson had chipped in once he saw where it was going. Turbee had needed to learn about the chemistry and economics of the drug trade.

“OK. OK. Where is this stuff grown?” Turbee had asked Lance and Khasha. “Where are these poppy fields?”

“Mostly in the high desert of Afghanistan. Some in Pakistan, but the local police seem to have done a good job of controlling it on that side of the border,” said Khasha.

“How do you make opium from poppy plants?” he continued.

Lance explained to him the process of scoring the bulbs of the plants during the harvest season, and the collection of the brown resin a few days later. He described the cooking and refining process in more detail.

“Fine, OK. But no one talks about smuggling opium. Everyone talks about smuggling heroin. How much more valuable is heroin than opium?”

Lance saw this as an open invitation. He had a captive audience, even if it was only Turbee, Rhodes, and Khasha. “Depends on where it is, Turbee,” he said. “Heroin is one of those commodities whose price varies profoundly depending on its location. A kilogram of heroin in Peshawar can be purchased for under $2,000. By the time it reaches Karachi, its value has quintupled to $10,000. Once it reaches a major marketplace, like Los Angeles, London, or New York, its wholesale value is over $100,000 a kilo, with a retail value three or four times that. It’s a remarkable industry, really. The value is added, once it’s refined, simply by transporting it.”

“You guys said to me yesterday,” responded Turbee, “that this is a cash business. No visa. No debit cards. No checks. All cash. So what happens to all that cash?”

“That,” said Rhodes, “is the central, number one problem the drug industry faces. What to do with all that cash. The Colombian drug lords, in the ’90s, made regular visits to the Caribbean banks with planeloads of cash. Huge suitcases and duffle bags full of cash. The USA has put a lot of pressure on the offshore banking community to halt that practice. But it’s still going on.”

“How much money are we looking at?” asked Turbee.

“No one is really sure, but the order of magnitude, worldwide, is in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” answered Rhodes.

“Are you telling me that every year hundreds of billions of dollars of cash circulates through the world’s financial systems illegally?”

“Yup,” said Lance and Rhodes as one.

“So if someone in Pakistan is involved in the heroin trade in a large way, he has a problem dealing with large amounts of illegal cash, right?”

“Yes,” said Rhodes. “Especially in Pakistan. We believe that most of the heroin shipped out through Pakistan eventually ends up in the United States. Hence, most of the money would be in American dollars, rather than something like Euros or pounds.”

“How do you hide large amounts of cash?” Turbee mused aloud.

“Well,” said Rhodes, “there are a lot of ways to do it. You can hide it in the balance sheets of companies. Take a simple example. You own a little taxi company. It takes in $300 in a night. But you’re selling some dope on the side. Making the odd trip to the odd client. You just add it to the take. You’re now making $600 a night. All you say, if anyone asks, is that you believe in work ethic. You work twice as hard as anyone else, or much more efficiently, or something. Or you can send out armies of smurfs...”

Lance and Rhodes spent an hour educating Turbee on the various ways to hide, place, layer, and reintegrate illegal cash. By the end of the discussion, he had a good idea which digital seas he and Blue Gene would be sailing.

“What about the chemicals that are used to turn opium into heroin?” he asked, seeking to explore another vein.

“We call those precursor chemicals,” explained Lance. “Ammonium chloride, Lysol, calcium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, and acetic anhydride, plus a few others. Some of these precursor chemicals are quite valuable, and there’s an underground trade of sorts for them too.”

“Hold on a bit,” said Turbee, struggling to keep up with Lance’s rapid speech. “Have to get all this straight in my head.” He was furiously clicking away on his keyboard.

By the time they were through, Turbee had the ABC’s of the drug trade down pat, and had a plan set out for where to go with his research. That had been almost 12 hours ago. Now his mind was working at a fever pitch. Precursor chemicals. Foreign exchange accounts. Balance sheets of import/ export firms. Police records. Felons. Neighbors of felons. Smurfs. Precursor smurfs. Foreign exchange accounts of precursor smurfs...

Khasha had been tapping on his shoulder for a good 30 seconds by the time he finally noticed. He gave her a long, uncomprehending stare. Consecutively opened accounts at successive banks of...

“Turbee. You get that crazy look in your eye, don’t you know?” she said. “It’s me. Khasha.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, eventually.

“I live ten blocks away. I couldn’t sleep. I saw the fourth-floor lights on in the building, so I walked over. Crazy thing to do in DC at this time of night. But here you are. What on earth are you doing here?”

“I’m working, Khasha. I’m trying to help Lance and Rhodes. I think I’m onto something. A few more hours, and I may have it.”

“Turbee, in a few more hours it’ll be dawn.”

“So?” he responded. Khasha didn’t know his habits. She didn’t understand how his condition, and the many drugs he was taking for it, played havoc with his behavior. His mind would race and focus, and then fragment and turn sluggish. When he was racing, as he was now, it was almost impossible for him to stop. In elementary school, before he had been properly diagnosed, he would literally bounce off the walls of the classroom in the morning and, in the afternoon, stick his head inside his oversized sweater and fall asleep. There was one famous story of him falling asleep inside the large lower drawer of his Second Grade teacher’s desk.

He explained a bit of it to her. “Khasha, I’m not completely comfortable talking about it, but I’m autistic. I can’t control these things sometimes. You are very pretty and I want to talk, but I can’t right now. I have to do this. I have to do it now, or it will escape. I would be very poor company — I can’t sit still and I would end up embarrassing myself. I need to finish this.”

“That’s OK, Turbee. I understand. I have a cousin who has Asperger syndrome. It’s pretty much the same. I brought you some coffee, although in hindsight, maybe water would have been better.”

“I’ll take the coffee, thanks. Thanks for dropping by. Really. Thanks.” He dropped his eyes and went back to his small armada of screens. He felt himself flushing; he wanted badly to talk to her, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he concentrated on the foreign exchange account of a particular shipping company that he’d hacked into. He didn’t hear her leave.

F
OR ONCE Turbee was at work before anyone else, but the circumstances greatly displeased Dan. The youth had found his answer by 6AM, and once he had accomplished his task, he was overwhelmed by fatigue. He had a larger workstation than anyone else, and thought he could probably just fit on the working surface of his desk. He pushed aside the many empty Styrofoam coffee cups, the candy wrappers, and the half-empty containers of Chinese food, lay down, and closed his eyes. Just for a few minutes, he thought. Just a short nap.

Eight AM came quickly. This was the hour Dan had scheduled to collectively review the PDB, an exercise that Turbee almost never attended. It was the official start of the workday, although most of the TTIC staff were “keeners,” and it was a badge of honor to be early; the earlier, the better. No one woke Turbee when they came in. The scene was too comical. There were a few sniggers. Someone had a digital camera, and most had camera phones, so a few photographs were taken. The cartons, cups, and wrappers were brought in a little closer to the sleeping Turbee to add to the effect.

“Aww Jesus Christ,” cursed Dan when he arrived. “Will someone please whack the poor bastard a few times and clean up that sorry mess? Why we keep him I don’t know.”

One of the Army captains on staff, never known for subtlety, walked to within a foot of Turbee, and yelled directly into his ear. “It’s ROLL CALL, Turbee!” he howled. “Wakee WAKEE!”

Turbee stirred. The man had no sense whatsoever of Turbee’s condition, or even that he had a condition. It was a simple matter of discipline, he thought. Hell, nothing Army Basic Training wouldn’t fix. “YO, BOY! Up and at ’em! NOW!”

“Go away,” was all Turbee could manage. A wake-up call of this sort would leave most people disoriented, but it made Turbee physically ill. Abrupt, loud noises never went well with his particular brand of autism. He fought the urge to vomit and covered his ears with his hands. The captain persisted, much to Dan’s glee, and Turbee slumped down from his desk and looked around, perplexed and confused, from the floor.

“Oh God, Turbee. Major-league raccoon eyes,” Dan exclaimed sarcastically. “You’d better have been doing some productive work to justify this.”

“Umm. Yeah. Sort of. If you give me a sec, I’ll tell you. I know who organized the Semtex heist, and how to find it,” Turbee responded through his teeth.

“What was that?” exclaimed Dan. “What did he say?”

“Look, I’m sorry for the mess and all, and I’m sorry I fell asleep on my desk, but Blue Gene and I worked all night on this. I think I’ve got it figured out.”

“OK, Turbee,” Dan said in a softer tone. “That might make this worthwhile. What’ve you got?”

Turbee took a deep breath, pressed his thumbs to his eyelids, and gathered himself. “It’s a company called the Karachi Star Line. They started with an inland ferry service, shipping people and cargo up and down the Indus. About 15 years ago they bought a few tramp ships, and converted them into small container ships. They expanded rapidly, and now own about 30 oceangoing ships, some container, some dry cargo, and 50 large ferries, running between Islamabad and Hyderabad, and up the Indus River, mostly.”

“How do you get from there to terrorist drug smuggler?” prompted Dan.

“OK. OK. They started as a cash business. They paid all their employees in cash, usually American dollars, for the first few years of their existence.”

“How do you know that?”

“There were a few newspaper articles about it 12 or 15 years ago. Also, payment for cargos went through unusual offshore banks, first in the Caymans, and more recently, St. Vincent, in the Caribbean. The transactions are very complex — unnecessarily so, if you ask me. In the last couple of years, they used obscure banks in Russia, and a couple of financial institutions in, of all places, Nigeria.”

“And?”

“Those precursor chemicals that we’ve talked about. This company buys a significant quantity of them. Those transactions are also cloaked, but some of the same financial institutions are involved. And they’re in the transportation business.”

“Why would that be important?” asked Dan.

“Well, I don’t know much about the heroin business,” said Turbee, somewhat tentatively. “But Lance explained some of it to me yesterday. He said that in the heroin trade, and the illicit drug trade generally, the unique thing is that you add all the value to it by transporting it from one point to another around the globe. So I ranked transportation companies higher than non-transportation companies in my search parameters.”

“That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it,” Turbee responded. “Their rate of growth is absolutely astounding.”