Dangerous Desire

14

Tabby says, “The Landsat 8 has a higher orbit than the CYGNSS-6, so we won’t have the same clarity.”

“So it’ll basically be useless.” The earth is crumbling beneath my feet.

“Correct. Unless you know exactly where to look, the resolution is too low to spot a ship.”

“What about marine radar satellites?” asks Connor. “They comb the sea in big chunks. Every vessel captured would be a blip on the radar screen.”

Tabby swivels around to her console and hits a few buttons. “Good thinking, honey, except for one thing.”

A big two-dimensional map of the East Coast of the US appears on-screen. Thousands of small multicolored dots forest the blue area of the Atlantic off the Eastern Seaboard.

“None of this is real time. The automatic identification satellites functioning as part of the international maritime systems weren’t cutting edge to begin with, but budget cuts from the last administration made things worse. So this tanker here, for instance”—she clicks on a green dot and a small screen pops up—“isn’t actually here. This was its position three hours ago.”

“For f**k’s sake!” I can’t stand still anymore, so back to pacing I go. “We have their last known coordinates. It won’t take us that long to reach them. Let’s just get in a bird and head out!”

Connor keeps an eye on me as I stalk back and forth, my limp getting more pronounced by the second. “They’d see us coming a mile away.”

“That was an interesting sound, Nasir,” says Tabby after a moment. “Very bear-with-a-thorn-in-his-paw-ish.”

“Oh, I’ve got a thorn all right,” I mutter, clenching and unclenching my hands. “I’ve got a thermonuclear thorn I’m gonna shove right up that bastard’s—”

“Soldier!” says Connor loudly. “Focus!”

“Would this be a cool time to tell you the good news?” Tabby says calmly, examining her nails.

Connor and I stare at her. “What good news?”

She looks up at me and smiles. “The owner of the Silver Shadow is a wealthy French businessman by the name of Raphael Bergé.”

I don’t even bother to ask how she knows that. The woman puts the Oracle at Delphi to shame. “And?”

“And he has really good GPS on his LEO phone.”

A LEO phone is the only kind of cellular phone that provides worldwide coverage with no gaps. The system works through low earth orbit satellites, hence the acronym.

More importantly, the LEO system can track a unit’s precise location anywhere on the planet.

My relief is indescribable. “He’s on the ship, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

With quiet wonder, Connor says, “You discovered all that in the time it took me and Naz to walk down the hall and back?”

She bats her eyelashes at him, the picture of innocence. Then she spins around in her chair, grinning. “Shazam, bitches!”

I could kiss her, but I’d be dead within seconds. Connor’s standing less than an arm’s length away. “So let’s call this motherfucker!”

Tabby stops spinning and looks at me like I’m nuts. “Call him?”

In a tone like you’d tell your kid to knock off the crying or you’ll give him something to really cry about, Connor says flatly, “We’re not calling him.”

I growl, “Fine. Send Frenchy a text. Tell him if Eva’s in anything other than perfect health when I get there, I’ll cut off his arms and legs and hang him on the wall and name him Art. And then I’ll kill his entire family, all his friends, his pets, and everyone he’s ever worked with. And then I’ll burn down his house and take a rocket launcher to that f*****g ship and send it to the bottom of the ocean with him lashed to the mast, and his bloody stumps will attract all kinds of hungry sea creatures who will eat his goddamn guts out and lay their eggs inside his skull and gnaw on his bones. And then I’ll drag up his picked-over carcass and cremate it and make urinal cakes from his ashes and piss on his remains every day for the rest of my life.”

Without missing a beat, Tabby says, “Do you want that all in one text, or . . .”

Connor looks at the ceiling, shakes his head, and sighs. “It’s like feeding hour at the zoo around here.”

I’ve had enough of this. “Let’s look at what we know so far. First, we know that Eva made an untraceable international collect call while I was in surgery. Right?”

Tabby nods. Connor says, “Right.”

“Second, we know that Eva was on board the Silver Shadow when it left New York.”

Connor agrees again.

“Third, we know at least two men were on board—one of whom got physical with Eva. Fourth, we know someone disabled both the marine satellite and the port registry, but failed to wipe the surveillance footage from the Port Authority security cameras covering the harbor.”

“Ookaay,” says Tabby, looking unsure of the direction I’m headed.

“Fifth, and most importantly, we’ve wasted precious minutes talking about this while Tabby could’ve hacked into Frenchy’s sat phone account and figured out who this guy’s been talking to and, from there, hopefully, found out who we’re really dealing with. And from there—possibly—where the Silver Shadow might be headed.”