Linda’s only reaction was to wipe her cheek. She stayed close to Susan and continued to whisper. “You must understand that I don’t want to have to do this. I really don’t. I know that saving the environment is important to you. Perhaps you’re even willing to die for your cause. But you have no idea what’s coming. You can’t comprehend the pain you are about to endure.”
Straightening, Linda motioned to Juan. “Mr. Smith, I apologize for asking you to leave your tools behind. I thought she would be more cooperative. I’ll give you a hand with the drills and the other equipment you need and then I’ll leave you two alone.” She looked back at Susan. “You realize that after today you will recoil in horror every time you look in a mirror.”
“There is nothing I won’t sacrifice for Dan Singer,” Susan said defiantly.
“Ask yourself this question—what is he willing to sacrifice for you?”
“This isn’t about me. This is about protecting the planet.”
Linda looked around the darkened hold as if searching for something. “I don’t see anyone else with us, Susan, so this is most definitely about you. Singer is off someplace safe while you are strapped to a table. Think about that for a moment. And then think about how long you will live with the consequences of your choice today. You are facing years in prison. You can serve them in a Namibian jail or a nice cushy cell in Europe with running water and a bunk that isn’t infested with fleas. We haven’t decided who to turn you over to.”
“If you hurt me I will make sure you pay,” Susan spat.
Linda arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me? Make us pay?” She chuckled. “You have no idea who we are, so how are you going to make us pay? You don’t get it yet. We own you, body and soul. We can do anything we want with total impunity. You no longer have free will. We took that from you the moment we picked you up, and the sooner you understand that the quicker all this is going to end.”
Susan Donleavy had no reply to that.
“How’s this? Tell me what Dan Singer has planned and I will make sure you are turned over to Swiss authorities on accessory to kidnapping charges. I will convince Geoffrey Merrick to forgo an attempted murder rap.” Linda had been hitting her with the stick, now it was time to show her the carrot. “You don’t even need to tell me where he is, all right? Just lay out the bare outline of what he intends to do and your life is going to be unimaginably easier.”
Linda made a hand gesture like an out-of-balance scale and said, “Two or three years in a Swiss prison or decades rotting in a Third World jail. Come on, Susan, make it easier on yourself. Tell me what he’s planning.”
As part of her technique Linda kept hammering home the point about how easy it would be, how Susan had everything to gain and nothing to lose by telling her. Had Juan not wanted the information so quickly Linda would have chosen a different question, one that really had no consequences, just to get the dialogue open. Still, she was making progress. The defiance that had hardened Susan Donleavy’s features moments before was giving way to uncertainty.
“No one will ever know,” Linda persisted. “Tell me what he wants to do. I assume it’s going to be a demonstration of some kind, something he wants Merrick to witness. Is that it, Susan? Just nod your head if I’m right.”
Susan’s head remained immobile but her eyes dipped slightly.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Linda cooed, as if to a child who’d just swallowed her medicine. “What kind of demonstration? We know it has something to do with warming the Benguela Current.”
A look of shock ran across Susan’s face and her mouth gaped.
“That’s right. We found the wave-powered generators and the undersea heaters. They were shut down some time ago. Part of Singer’s plan has already unraveled but that isn’t important right now. All that’s important is you tell me the rest.”
When Susan didn’t say anything, Linda threw up her hands. “This is a waste of my time! I’m trying to do you a favor and you won’t help yourself. Fine. If that’s the way you want it then that’s the way it’s going to be. Mr. Smith.” With that Linda strode from the hold with Juan right behind. He closed the hold’s door and spun the lock.
“Jesus, you can be scary,” Juan said.
Linda was checking the camera feed on her BlackBerry and didn’t look up when she said, “Apparently not scary enough. I thought she’d crack.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Trying not to wet herself.”
“So now we wait her out?”
“I’ll go back in a half hour,” Linda said. “That’ll give her enough time to think about what’s coming.”
“And if she still won’t talk?”
“Without enough time to properly soften her up I have no choice but to use drugs, which I hate by the way. It’s too easy to get the subject to tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth.” Linda looked back at the little screen. “On second thought…” She held up a hand with her fingers splayed and ticked them off silently. When the last digit curled into her palm Susan Donleavy began screaming from the other side of the closed hatch.
“Come back! Please! I’ll tell you what he’s going to try to do!”
A shadow crossed Linda’s eyes. Rather than satisfied with her work she appeared sad.
“What is it?” Juan asked.
“Nothing.”
“Talk to me. What’s the matter?”
She looked up at him. “I hate doing this. Breaking people, I mean. Lying to them to get what I want. It leaves me, I don’t know, dead inside. I climb into someone else’s mind to ferret out information and in the end I end up knowing everything about them—how they think, what their hopes and dreams are, every secret they thought they’d never tell. In a couple of hours I will know more about Susan Donleavy than anyone else in the world. But it’s not like having a friend confide in you. It’s like I’m stealing that information. I hate doing it, Juan.”
“I had no idea,” he said softly. “If I did I wouldn’t have asked you to do this.”
“That’s why I’ve never told you. You hired me because I have a certain background, and skills that no one in the crew possesses. Just because I hate part of my job doesn’t mean I don’t have to do it.”
Juan gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah. I’m going to let her scream for a few more minutes and then go back in. I’ll find you when I’m done. Then I’m going to have a glass of wine too many and try to get Susan Donleavy out of my head. Go get some rest. You look terrible.”
“Best suggestion I’ve heard all day.”
He turned to go, wondering how much each of them was sacrificing of themselves to the Corporation. They were always mindful of the physical dangers they faced when they accepted a mission, but there was a hidden cost, too. To fight from the shadows meant the justifications for their actions had to come from within each person. They weren’t soldiers who could merely say they were taking orders. They’d chosen to be here and do the things necessary to guarantee a free society even if they themselves operated outside of societal boundaries.
Juan himself had felt that burden on more than one occasion. And while the Corporation regularly flouted international law in order to achieve their perfect record of success, there were gray areas that they had skirted that made him more than a little uncomfortable.
As he walked back toward his cabin, he knew there were no alternatives. The enemies he’d faced when he’d been with the CIA played by the rules for the most part. But the rulebook went out the window when slamming airplanes into skyscrapers became a legitimate form of attack. Wars were no longer fought between armies in the field. They were being fought in subways and mosques, nightclubs and market squares. It seemed that in today’s world anyone and anything was fair game.
He reached his suite of rooms and pulled the curtains over his cabin portholes. Now, with his bed no more than a couple of feet away, the wave of fatigue that hit Cabrillo made him stagger. He un
dressed and slid between a set of cool sheets.
Despite his exhaustion sleep was a long time coming.
24
JUAN knew by how the diffused sunlight seeping around the drapes was the color of blood that he’d been asleep for only a couple of hours when the phone rang. He shimmied up against the headboard, feeling as if he’d just gone fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world. And lost.
“Hello,” he said, working his tongue around his mouth to loosen the gummy saliva.
“Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.” It was Max. If anything, he sounded as though he was enjoying waking the chairman. “We’ve got some major developments. I’ve called a meeting in the boardroom. Fifteen minutes.”
“Whet my appetite.” Juan threw aside his sheets. The skin around his stump was red and swollen. One of Julia’s orderlies was a professional masseuse, and he knew he’d need the leg tended to if he was going to function.
“Daniel Singer plans to cause the biggest oil slick in history and helping him is a mercenary army that we provided the weapons to.”
The news shocked any vestiges of sleep from Cabrillo’s brain.
He reached the boardroom in fourteen minutes, his hair still wet from the shower. Maurice had coffee waiting for him and an omelet bursting with sausage and onions. His first thought was for Linda Ross. The diminutive intelligence officer was at her customary seat with a laptop opened in front of her. Her face had the pale brittle look of a porcelain doll, and her normally bright eyes were as dull as old coins. Though only a few hours had passed since she began interrogating Susan Donleavy, Linda seemed to have aged a decade. She tried to smile at Juan but it died on her lips. He gave her a nod of understanding.
Franklin Lincoln and Mike Trono were also present, to make up for Eric Stone’s and Mark Murphy’s absence.
Max was the last to arrive and he was talking on a phone when he entered the room. “That’s right. A coastal oil facility. I don’t know exactly where, but your pilot must have some ideas.” He paused a beat while he listened. “I know some of the radio tags must have failed by now. I also know that you overbuilt them enough so a couple are still transmitting. You’ll just have to get closer to find them.”
“Murph?” Juan asked after hastily swallowing a bite of his omelet.
“I want him focusing on the coast. I did a little research and found there’s a long string of offshore oil production platforms at the mouth of the Congo River that arc north to Angola’s Cabinda province.”
“Angola’s to the south of the Congo,” Eddie said.
“That’s what I thought, too.” Max eased himself into his chair. “But there is an enclave north of the river and it’s sitting on a couple billion barrels of oil. For what it’s worth, I actually found out the U.S. gets more crude from Angola than it does from Kuwait, which pretty much negates the war for oil rant of a couple years ago.”
Juan turned to Linda. “Want to fill us in?”
She straightened her shoulders. “As you all know, Daniel Singer forced Geoffrey Merrick to buy him out of the company. Since then Singer’s used his money to fund environmental groups—rain-forest preservation in South America, antipoaching efforts in Africa, and a lot of the best lobbyists money could buy in capitals all over the world. Then he began to realize that all the money he’d spent had done very little to change people’s attitudes. Yes, he was saving a couple of animals and some tracts of land, but he hadn’t made an impact on the fundamental problem. That problem being that while people say they care about the environment, when it comes down to dollars and cents no one is willing to sacrifice their lifestyle in order to effect change.”
“So Singer decided to get more radical?” Juan asked.
“Fanatical is more like it.” Linda checked her computer for a second. “According to Susan he became active with groups that burned down luxury homes under construction in Colorado, Utah, and Vermont, as well as destroying SUVs sitting on dealers’ lots. She claims he used to put golf balls in the fuel tanks of logging trucks as well as sand in the oil filler tubes.”
“Golf balls?” Linc asked.
“Apparently the diesel will dissolve them, allowing the rubber strings inside to unravel. Does more damage than sugar or salt. Singer bragged that he’d caused at least fifty million dollars’ worth of damage, but that still wasn’t enough. He thought about sending bombs through the mail to top executives in the oil industry but knew they would just end up killing some poor mailroom clerk. He also knew that it wouldn’t change anyone’s life.
“That’s when he heard how the hurricane seasons over the next couple of years are going to be particularly brutal. While it’s part of a natural cycle, he figured the media would try to link it with global warming and he wondered if he could make the storms even worse.”
“So we were right about the undersea heaters installed off the coast of Namibia.” It was more a question than a statement from Cabrillo.
“He cut off all ties with the environmental movement and set his plan in motion. He hired some top-flight climatologists and oceanographers to lay out the heaters’ size and location, though Susan says they were led to believe it was purely a research question and not something that would actually be built. They are designed to shift the Benguela Current just enough so the temperature of the waters off West Africa rises a couple of degrees. And as we talked about before, more heat means more evaporation and a bigger and more powerful storm.
“It’s impossible to change a hurricane once it’s formed,” Linda went on. “Even a nuclear detonation wouldn’t alter the eye structure, wind speed, or the storm’s direction. However, by affecting what causes the storms in the first place, Singer believes he can create what he calls hypercanes, storms that register above Category Five on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.”
“What’s this have to do with blowing up oil facilities?” Eddie asked, helping himself to a cup of coffee from Juan’s service.
“Here’s where he’s playing into media fears in a big way. The crude that’s pumped from the waters near the Congo River has the highest percentage of benzene in the world. Alaska crude runs roughly one part per thousand. Oil from some of the newest fields off Angola and the Congo is a hundred times that and higher. The crude is also contaminated with arsenic. This is removed at refineries, but when it comes out of the ground it’s a fairly caustic blend of oil and something called benzene arsonic acid, a known and tightly controlled carcinogen.”
“He wants to sicken a bunch of West Africans?” Linc asked, disgusted by the idea.
“Not exactly, although there will be some injuries here. No, what he’s after is to get the slick to disperse long enough so some of the oil evaporates.”
“And once it becomes airborne,” Juan concluded, “the westerly winds will carry the toxic vapors across the ocean to the Eastern Seaboard.”
“The levels won’t be high enough to sicken people in the United States,” Linda said. “But Singer’s banking on the panic caused by a toxic hurricane bearing down on the coast to get his point across.”
“Say he succeeds in dumping a lot of oil,” Mike interjected. “Can’t it just get cleaned up before it becomes a hazard?”
“Two things would make that difficult,” Juan said. “Number one is that regulations concerning oil spills are pretty lax in this part of the world. They wouldn’t have enough oil skimmer ships or containment boom. The second thing, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that Singer plans on causing enough damage to enough rigs that even with sufficient equipment, cleanup crews would simply be overwhelmed.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Linda agreed. “Local workers can contain an accidental spill from a tanker being improperly loaded and maybe even if a ship was holed, but with Singer’s army there preventing them from getting to work and oil continually flowing from damaged rigs and pipelines there’s nothing they could do.”
“How long after the oil is spilled would it take for the vapors to enter the atmosphere??
?? Max asked.
“Immediately,” Linda said. “But it would be a week or so before it could potentially get carried across the Atlantic. It’s Singer’s mercenaries’ job to hold those rigs for as long as they can. If they can hold out for a couple of days we’re talking a spill a hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster.”
Juan’s eyes scanned the faces around him and said, “So then it’s going to be our job to prevent them from storming the rigs, and if we’re too late then we’re going to take the damn things back again.”
“There might be a problem with that,” Eddie said. He folded his hands on the table. “Linda, you told Max that Singer has hired Samuel Makambo to storm the oil facilities?”
“Susan Donleavy mentioned him by name as well as his Congolese Army of Revolution. It’s a straight pay-to-fight deal. Makambo has no political stake in any of this. For few million of Singer’s dollars Makambo’s willing to send in some cannon fodder.”
“Nice guy,” Linc said sarcastically. “His men follow him because of their political beliefs and he hires them out to die for someone else’s. I hate Africa.”
“I don’t blame you,” Eddie agreed. “But can you see our problem? We supplied him with enough AK-47s, RPGs, and ammunition to outfit a couple hundred men.”
Juan understood immediately. “The Oregon has the firepower to take on half the navies in the world, but it won’t do us much good against individual terrorists aboard oil rigs who are using workers as shields.”
“Precisely.” Eddie leaned forward. “Retaking the production platforms is going to require individual combat. Everyone on this crew is a capable fighter, but if Makambo takes over just five rigs and puts a hundred men on each we’re not going to take them back without losing at least two thirds to three quarters of our own people.
“And don’t think Angola’s army or police force is going to be much help,” he added. “It’ll take them a couple of days just to get organized. By that time Singer will have turned the entire Congo Delta into a stinking oil slick and sabotaged the rigs so the flow may never be shut off. If we can’t prevent him from storming the platforms then we have a day at most to take them back.”