Page 61 of Tin God
Moments later, the screen flickered and the arrows moved slightly.
“This is the overhead view.” Brigid glanced at Tenzin. “Look familiar?”
“No. This is… kind of useless,” Tenzin said. “When you get out over the water at night, you can’t see anything this clearly until you’re really close. This map greatly underestimates the distance.”
Brigid frowned. “But these are live trackers.”
“And if this map was to scale, those arrows you see right in front of you would be grains of sand, not flashing colored arrows.” Tenzin shook her head. “The only thing this helps with is seeing routes.”
“Routes?” Brigid knew almost nothing about ship traffic even though she’d spent half her immortal life working for a shipping magnate in the North Atlantic.
Lee spoke again. “Yeah, I think she means that most of these boats, to get from port A to port B, would use roughly the same routes. The captains are going to know where the best channels are closer in to land. The currents are probably going to affect that.”
“But it’s also possible that a ship could be on this map and we would never see it,” Tenzin said. “How likely do you think it’s going to be that Zasha and their hunters are using a satellite?”
“Maybe it’s not far-fetched,” Lee said. “Remember that they’re going to have to head closer toward land at some point. They’ll need to get fuel. Need to resupply. If they don’t have any kind of call number or signature, that might be more noticeable than having one.”
“We don’t even know what kind of boat they’re on,” Brigid said. “But Lee, let’s eliminate anything that’s a freighter. Big and expensive to fuel, right?”
“Oh yeah.” There was a tapping sound, and then all the orange arrows disappeared. “We can do that. Narrows it down some.”
“Cargo ships could be adapted to carry passengers,” Tenzin said. “But maybe take out the biggest ones?”
“I can try.”
More arrows disappeared, but there were still dozens dotting the board.
“Small fishing boats?” Brigid suggested. “Unless the small boats are the ones that have the satellites and the larger boat is flying under the radar.”
It was something her old boss would do, mask a larger vessel with the signature and information of a small one.
“That’s quite clever,” Tenzin said.
“Taking notes?”
Tenzin shrugged. “I don’t want any boats at the moment, but that could change.”
“Lee, is there a way that you can isolate the smaller boats—ones that could go in shallower waters—and see if any of them might be way out in the middle of the ocean?”
“I can.” More tapping. “You realize that all these signatures could be completely legitimate vessels, right?”
“I know, but it might narrow it down.” Brigid braced her arm on the table and stared at the screen. It flickered and a bunch of arrows disappeared. “Okay.” She nodded. “That’s more manageable.”
“More over by Ketchikan than out on the open ocean,” Tenzin said. “Staying closer to the shore because of the time of year.”
“Start there, Lee. Can you run profiles of all the names and whatever info we have about the boats around and near the Alexander Archipelago?”
“Absolutely, boss.” Lee started tapping away. “I’ll do that tonight and see if I can write some kind of program that will track the boats over a period of time too.”
“Good thinking.”
Tenzin was staring at the wall. Not the one that was illuminated, just a random wall. “Ignore anything that has a regular route. Zasha won’t be on a schedule.”
“Uh-huh. Got it.”
Lee’s voice was starting to sound distracted, and Brigid knew they were losing him to his computers.
“Okay, call us with your progress before you go to sleep,” Brigid said. “Send us what you have, and we’ll see if we can get any information from Oleg’s and Katya’s people.”