“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.”