Troubleshooters (Jackson Chase Novella Book 2) by Connor Black Read Free Book Online Page A

think we all know that darling woman is innocent. She did, however, leave very sad after hearing about the scene at the boys’ house.”
    “I can imagine. They wanted to set up their own bakery one day, and Mrs. Asha had taken them under her wing. Quite a kind thing to do,” Sterba said. “They don’t have anything to do with this.”
    “Agreed. Only half a million more suspects to go,” I said as I took a seat at Chen’s desk. “I hope you can help us narrow it down.”
    “Afraid I can’t narrow it down, but I did find something interesting.”
    “What’ve you got?” asked Sterba, taking a seat on the edge of Chen’s desk. It gave a slight creaking sound. The desk might not have been made for the man—or perhaps I should say Chief—of steel.
    “The NSA computers have been churning on the SIM card IDs I sent. Take a look at this.” She pressed a few keys and turned her computer so that we could see a map of eastern Africa, from Ethiopia down to the northern half of Mozambique, shown in black, with gray coastal lines and darker gray national borders.
    “OK,” she continued, tapping away on her keyboard, “now I will add in some date parameters—let’s say, the past month—and then query our SIM card batch.”
    She hit the return key, and instantly the black map was flooded with yellow dots.
    “Jesus,” Sterba said. “How many of those things were stolen off the ship?”
    “25,000,” replied Chen.
    “It looks like the path of a river, or an epidemic.”
    Sterba was exactly right. The greatest density of dots was around Mogadishu, and from there they distributed inland. Paths of stray dots meandered north, south, and west, clumping in cities as they progressed.
    There were small clusters in Ethiopia. To the south, dots packed around cities in southern Somalia, and down to Mombasa and Nairobi in Kenya. The path wove down to Tanzania, and showed high density in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam.
    And, as we suspected, a group appeared right here in Arusha.
    “The NSA computers have only been able to run these in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and part of Ethiopia,” Chen said. “It’s a huge amount of data to gain access to and then query. Given the spread, I’ve had them broaden the region. But it will take time.”
    “Good,” I replied. “This is great intel that will be useful to someone down the road.”
    “Can you zoom in on Arusha?” Sterba asked Chen.
    “I can. But what you’ll see are tower locations, not precise locations of specific calls.”
    She tapped some keys and used the trackpad to zoom in on Arusha. Yellow dots were scattered throughout the city.
    “What happens when you narrow the time range down to the morning of the attack?”
    Again, she tapped the keyboard, adjusting the parameters of her query. A dozen dots remained on the screen.
    Tapping one of the dots near the Meru Grand Hotel, I said, “So this one is the detonator, and one of the others is our triggerman.”
    Chen nodded.
    “Can you get more precise locations than the call towers? Like GPS coordinates?”
    “The Utah data center is compiling it now and working on giving me direct access to sort the data,” Chen replied. “I can use their computing power, but the connection here is terrible. Tanzitel is the local provider, and they said I could use their office to get closer to the trunk.”
    “Can’t do it here?” Sterba asked.
    “I could, but it would be better to do it there.”
    I nodded. “While you’re doing that, I’d like to go back to the scene. Naseeb can take one of us, and one of the Lieutenant’s men can take the other.”
    “Lieutenant Kahembe’s also given us keys to one of the old police vehicles in the yard. Number 56,” Chen said after a quick glance at the key fob.
    I turned to see that Sterba was already dialing Naseeb to give us a lift to the Meru Grand Hotel. He waited a moment, and then spoke briefly, leaving a message.
    “No answer,” he said.
    Chen slid the keys across the desk.