“Thanks again.” She tapped her screen and looked up, her eyes awash with a mixture of concern and excitement. “There you have it. Confirmation of where I went that afternoon and why.”
Mack turned to Cam. “We need to get on this right away.”
“Already on it.” Cam looked up from his computer. “Found the cable map.”
“One quick question about the CCTV first,” she said. “What about cars that were behind mine on the way back? Did you catch any plates?”
Cam shook his head. “Therewasa black Honda Accord a few miles back from you on the drive over, but it didn’t turn into Rob’s parking lot. A black Accord tailed you on the way backtoo. Not sure if it was the same vehicle or not. And I couldn’t get a clear look at the driver, but it was a guy. I sent the video off to our lab to see if they can clear up the image.”
“Let me know what you find out,” she said, looking even more uncomfortable than she had earlier. “And I’ll follow up with Rob to see if his company has parking-lot cameras.”
Cam nodded. “Also, you should know you were swerving on the road for most of the drive.”
Mack tried not to respond, but he grimaced over the thought of her driving under the influence.
“I was roofied,” she said.
“Ah,” Cam said. “That explains it.”
“What do we do next on the cable issue?” she asked, looking happy to change the subject.
“Put the map up on the TV, Cam,” Mack directed, and when Cam did, Mack studied the world map with red, green, blue, and orange lines running from continent to continent, and in some cases just hugging a country’s coastline.
Mack frowned. “Way more cables than I imagined.”
“Looks like there’re nearly four hundred submarine cables in service around the world.” Cam looked at Addy. “You know much about oceanic cables?”
“Some. I know that most people think internet connections are all wireless. Not so. Huge fiber-optic cables run across the ocean floor, essentially hardwiring continents and firing data over these connections.”
“Well, duh.” He leaned back. “I didn’t think you’d get that basic.”
She rolled her eyes. “I also know the cables fail all the time and are even accidentally cut or taken out by natural disasters. And there’s been some sabotage too, but very little. Mostly because there’s no point in it.”
“Exactly.” His expression brightened as if he was starting to get into the subject. “Companies that seriously depend onundersea cables distribute their data across multiple routes, all of which they own. That way, if one fails, customers aren’t cut off and don’t suffer any downtime.”
“But that’s not true of all companies who use the cables, right?” she asked.
“Right.” Cam crossed one leg over the other and shifted his computer. “Mostly we’re talking about the big data users like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. Usually companies with heavy cloud storage use. But when the bubble burst in the early 2000s, operators unloaded cables for pennies on the dollar, so there are some smaller companies who own them.”
“We need to figure out if any of our border agencies bought up these cables or are leasing them,” she said.
Mack had to play the devil’s advocate here. “Razo cutting cables sounds like a long shot to me.”
“Yeah.” Cam crossed his arms. “But possible.”
“Sure ... yeah, possible,” Mack said. “But think about it. After it was sliced a few times, I would think security would get suspicious.”
Addy faced Cam. “Could he do it in a way to make it look like he didn’t just slice through the cable? Like it was an accident?”
Cam tilted his head. “Run a boat motor over the cable and let the propeller cut it. Or use a ship anchor. Something along those lines. Maybe change up the method and location so it varied.” Cam tapped his chin. “But still, even after he takes out the X-ray machines, he still needs to get past border patrol.”
“He’s been concealing drugs for so long,” Addy said. “I have no doubt he knows how to do that. Is there a way to track cable outages?”
Cam rested his hands on his keyboard. “I’ll get started on locating recent cable failures that have been made public, but I’m going to need a location to narrow it down.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know if I had that information when I talked to Rob, and now? I don’t know a thing.”
Cam kept his focus on her. “Okay, how about dates?”
