Sea of Fire

Chapter Fifty-One

"I blew it," Bob Herbert said over the phone.

"What do you mean?" Hood asked.

"I gave a world-class, standing-room-only performance of how not to gather information."

"You're being way too rough on yourself, Bob," Hood said. "You did the best you could under extremely adverse circumstances." He was speaking softly but firmly.

"Paul, I created the friggin' adverse circumstances!" Herbert went on. "You want a list of do-nots that I would have reamed a newbie for? I did not case the site. I went to the wrong phone. And I gave the subject an overview of what we know without getting anything back except a vague confirmation that our suspicions were correct."

"This isn't lab science," Hood pointed out. "You took a huge risk against staggering odds."

"That's what the best is supposed to do, and my job title says I'm supposed to be one of the best," Herbert replied. "The best are also supposed to do one thing more. They're supposed to succeed."

"This is just one battle in the war," Hood replied. "And I'm not so sure we lost it."

"I've won battles before," Herbert shot back. "This is not what victory feels like."

Herbert was calling from his cell phone in the Humvee. FNO Loh and Paul Leyland had found the koala. They met Herbert in front of the mansion where they helped him down the stairs. The group left the grounds after conferring with Jelbart by phone. Herbert agreed with the warrant officer's assessment. Jelbart felt that Darling's armed guards would be unusually aggressive after what happened. They unanimously decided that the best thing to do was return to the observation base and regroup. Herbert and Loh were sitting in the back. Leyland was driving. Little Maluka was asleep in the passenger's seat.

"Bob, right now it doesn't matter how we got here," Hood said. "Let's look at where we are and what we're up against."

"All right," Herbert said and took a breath. That seemed to calm him somewhat. "We're facing a world-class thug who knows he's been found out. He also knows that at least one of his partners has been identified. And he knows that we have someone who may be able to ID the boat they used to carry the stolen nuclear material. He cannot be happy with any of that information."

"Agreed. So what does he do?"

"First, he has to make his own involvement deniable," Herbert said. "His phone records and financial transactions are probably clean. I'm betting it's the same with bin Dahman and whoever else is involved. Darling has to assume the pirate is heavily guarded and that we already took from him whatever information we want. So he probably won't bother going after him. The only place our boy's immediately vulnerable is the boat."

"We haven't been able to find the other vessel involved in this transaction," Hood said. "What chance do we have of finding this one? It may already have been hidden."

"That's very possible," Herbert agreed. "But I want to find it. I really want to find it."

"You want to get Jervis Darling," Hood pointed out. "That isn't the same thing."

"It will be if we find the boat," Herbert said. "Damn, I wish that pirate had seen something. At least we'd know what we were looking for."

"You could have him hypnotized," Hood suggested, half in desperate jest. "Maybe he'll remember more."

"That's good for quitting smoking, not interrogation," Herbert said.

"There is one thing," Loh said.

"What's that?" Herbert asked. "Paul, can you hear FNO Loh?"

"Barely," Hood said.

Herbert held the cell phone between them. He asked the Singaporean to speak up.

"The pirates would not have attacked a much larger vessel," Loh said loudly. "It's night now. Small vessels tend to go to anchor."

"How does that help us?" Herbert said. "There are probably a lot of small boats on the open sea."

"This one would not be stopped," she said. "If it's out there, and Darling is afraid of being caught, he would have it running somewhere."

"Good point," Leyland contributed. "But that still leaves a lot of area to cover."

"Not as much as you might think," Herbert said. "Chances are pretty good the boat won't be going toward Cairns. Darling won't want that ship anywhere near him."

"What if he wanted to hide it?" Hood asked. "What better place than his own facility?"

"That was probably the game plan before we showed up," Herbert said. "Now, Darling would never risk it. If there is a hint of radioactivity on board that vessel, it's as good as a fingerprint. We could identify the source from just a particle of material. Darling has to imagine that someone will come looking."

"We should get our ships back out to sea," Loh said.

"I agree," Herbert said. "But we should also get the chopper in the air and run a zigzag search heading seaward. If the vessel is back, Darling may have to send it out again. Just so he isn't caught. If it's not back, it's going to be racing to a safe haven somewhere else."

"Is there any kind of electronic surveillance we can do from here?" Hood asked.

"I'm sure the transport vessel is in a silent running mode by now," Herbert said.

"We can do a GPS sweep," Loh said.

"Right," Herbert agreed.

"I didn't get that," Hood said.

"Ask Stephen Viens to do a read on the global positioning satellite beacons in the region," Herbert said.

"The satellites, not the receiver?" Hood asked.

"The receiver itself, on the boat, is a passive site. All it does is tap into a continuous beacon from three satellites — four if you're adding altitude to the mix, which we are not. We can't pinpoint the boat by looking for a specific ID number. What we can do, though, is watch for the beacons themselves and triangulate them. Viens will know what I mean. Have him run a scan every minute or so. If we've got someone who's running at twenty-five knots or more, that will be worth looking into. Especially if they're heading away from Cairns."

"I like it," Hood said.

Hood said he would have Viens's office look into the GPS as soon as possible.

Herbert thanked him and hung up. Then he reached back and put the phone in his wheelchair. He felt a little bit better than before. At least they had a plan. And there was one thing an intelligence officer could always count on. Night was when vermin tended to move about.

"From what I've been hearing, that boat was armed," Leyland said. "What if it has some kind of surface-to-air missiles? Your chopper has no defense. They won't believe that Little Maluka got lost on his boardie."

"His what?" Herbert asked.

"His board. Surfing."

"You're right," Herbert said. "But if they shoot at us, we'll know one thing for sure."

"What's that?" Leyland asked.

"We found the right boat."