Skeleton Coast

  “I can try again with Susan,” Linda offered. “I ended the interrogation after I learned what I needed to know about the attack on the oil terminal.”

  Juan regarded her with pride. She was giving up even more of her soul. And as much as he wanted to protect her from the toll questioning Susan Donleavy had on her, he knew that she would have to do it again.

  “There’s something there,” he said. “And I know you can find it.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Linda turned to go.

  “Keep me posted.”

  TEN miles north of where Tiny Gunderson sat in his plane at the Cabinda airport with a hundred eager soldiers, Daniel Singer was talking with General Samuel Makambo of the Congolese Army of Revolution. Dawn was two hours away and the jungle was finally quieting as the nocturnal insects and animals bedded down for the day. Though, with the glare of so many oil rigs burning off natural gas both offshore and along the coastline, it was a wonder how the creatures maintained their circadian rhythms. Around them in the lean-to were the most senior soldiers Makambo was willing to sacrifice for this mission. Leading the four-hundred-man expeditionary force was Colonel Raif Abala. He was here for two reasons: punishment for the debacle on the Congo River when he let the arms merchants get away with the diamonds, and because Makambo suspected the colonel was skimming stones from their blood diamond trade. He wouldn’t be too put out if Abala didn’t return.

  The rebels had been hiding in plain sight near the squatters’ camps that had sprung up around the facility belonging to the oil giant Petromax. They wore regular, albeit ragged, clothing and acted as though they were here seeking employment. Their weapons and outboard boats had been easily concealed in the mangroves, with guards posted nearby to dissuade fishermen or people looking for bush meat to stray too close.

  “Colonel,” Makambo said, “you know your duty.”

  With his sheer size, Samuel Makambo was a commanding presence. And while what had once been battle-hardened muscle was slowly jelling into fat, he still possessed incredible strength. He favored mirrored sunglasses like his mentor, Idi Amin, and carried a swagger stick called a sjambok made of plaited hippo hide. The pistols in his twin holsters were custom-made by Beretta; their gold inlays alone were worth a small fortune.

  “Yes, sir,” Abala replied at once. “A hundred men will use the boats to launch attacks on the offshore loading terminal and the rigs themselves while the bulk of my force will concentrate on securing the compound.”

  “It’s essential that you take control of the generating station as well as the pump control rooms,” Dan Singer, the architect of the attack, said. “And they must not be damaged.”

  “The attack on those two parts of the terminal will be carried out by my best men. They will take them as soon as we break through the perimeter fences.”

  “And your men are clear on how to work the controls?” Singer demanded.

  “Many of them were employed at this very facility until our government forbade members of our tribe from working in Congo’s oil industry,” Abala said. “As soon as the tanker that’s currently loading has been decoupled from the terminal they know to turn the pumps on full force and dump the oil into the sea.”

  “And on the rigs?”

  “They will destroy the undersea pipes that send crude to the storage tanks onshore.”

  Singer wished they could blow out the sides of the massive storage tanks, but they were situated in an earthen redoubt that would keep the oil contained. For the oil to properly evaporate he needed it spread over as large an area as possible. He turned to Makambo. “For every hour they hold the terminal and oil’s pouring into the sea, one million dollars will be automatically transferred into your Swiss bank account.”

  “That money will go a long way to funding my revolution and improving the quality of life of our people,” the guerilla leader said with a straight face. Singer knew the lion’s share of the cash would remain in Makambo’s account. “I made this bargain and call upon our soldiers to fight for the greater good of us all.”

  When searching for his mercenary force Singer had thoroughly investigated Makambo and his Congolese Army of Revolution. They were nothing more than savage butchers who used torture and the intimidation of defenseless civilians to keep themselves supplied. While there was a tribal element to the conflict, human rights groups estimated that the CAR had killed more of their own people than the government they opposed. Makambo was just another example of the despotic nature of African politics.

  “Very well,” Singer said. “Then it’s time for me to leave.”

  He had planned on leaving Cabinda a day before the attack, but he’d remained as long as he dared, hoping against hope that he’d get word from Nina Visser. She and the others hadn’t been at the rendezvous site when the plane arrived, although tire tracks next to the runway indicated someone had been there recently. The pilot managed to follow them from the air, but only for only a couple of miles. The relentless wind had scoured the desert floor. He’d circled the area until he had just enough fuel to return to Windhoek, failing to find any sign of them.

  Singer had ordered him back to Cabinda so they could fly to the port city of Nouakchott, Mauritania, where the aged hundred-thousand-ton tanker he’d secretly purchased from a Libyan company waited. She was named the Gulf of Sidra and had spent her career plying the Mediterranean, ferrying Libyan oil to Yugoslavia and Albania.

  When he’d toured her with Susan Donleavy she said the vessel’s tanks would make perfect incubators for her organic flocculent. The marine engineering firm Singer hired to inspect the ship signed off on her hull being able to withstand a sustained thermal load of a hundred and forty degrees, although they said in their report they were unaware of any oil terminals in the world where crude retained that much of the earth’s heat. Singer had closed the deal, obtained a Liberian registration for the ship, by far the easiest to get in the world, and hadn’t bothered to change her name.

  Susan had then overseen the initial seeding of her heat-generating goo and had checked in on it from time to time before her “abduction.” Her reports showed that everything was working perfectly, so Singer knew she didn’t need to be there when he released it. Still, something could come up that might require her expertise. The loss of Nina and her group was of little concern, he just wished Susan was with him. The flocculent had been her brainchild and when she’d contacted him about her discovery and its potential application she had wanted to be a part of the final act.

  And then there was Merrick. Singer had so wanted to see his smug face collapse when he witnessed the creation of the most destructive hurricane ever to hit the United States and realized he and polluters like him were at fault. Singer had told Merrick of his plan, so he was left with the hope his former partner was still alive and would know the truth about what was transpiring.

  Because of the specialized nature of running a supertanker, he couldn’t rely on a bunch of long-haired environmentalists, so he’d been forced to hire a professional crew, men whose silence could be bought. The captain was a Greek alcoholic who’d lost his master’s license after running a tanker aground in the Persian Gulf. The chief engineer was another Greek who couldn’t stay away from the bottle. He hadn’t worked since a steam pipe explosion in an engine room had killed four of his assistants. A board of inquiry cleared him, but rumors of negligence ruined his career.

  Those two made the rest of the crew look like saints.

  “You’ll make your attack at dawn?” Singer asked.

  “Yes. You have more than enough time to get to your plane,” Makambo said with a hint of derision. Not that he was going to be here for the fight. He had a fast boat waiting to whisk him down the coast and back up the Congo River.

  Singer let his tone pass. He stood. “Remember, every hour is a million dollars. If your men can hold off the security forces and Angola’s police when they get organized for forty-eight hours I’ll throw in a five-million-dollar bonus.” He was looking a
t Abala. “And another five for you, colonel.”

  “Then, cry havoc,” Makambo said using his favorite quote, “and let slip the dogs of war.”

  26

  JUAN stood on the bridge wing and watched the old school buses crawl across the causeway that led to Cabinda’s only pier, each painted in garish colors and belching oily exhaust as their old engines labored. They threaded their way around a string of shipping containers and some donated farm equipment that had just been unloaded from a Russian freighter berthed ahead of the Oregon.

  Because his ship was pumped dry of ballast in order to reach the relatively shallow anchorage, he had a good view of the city and the hills beyond. With dawn just breaking he noted that little of Angola’s oil wealth had been spent in the city nearest the fields.

  Down on the quay Max Hanley and Franklin Lincoln waited with a Customs official. Both were dressed like a couple of wharf rats in keeping with the Oregon’s decrepit appearance. Tiny Gunderson’s bush pilot friend was with them, too, to make sure everything went smoothly, as well as Mafana, Ndebele’s old sergeant. The Customs man had already given a briefcase to his wife, who’d come down to the docks for the specific reason of taking the bribe money back home with her.

  The elevator from the op center suddenly rose up from the bridge floor. Linda Ross didn’t wait until it had come even with the deck before jumping off and rushing toward Cabrillo.

  “Juan, you don’t have your phone on,” she said hotly. “The attack’s started. Hali’s intercepting calls from the Petromax facility to their headquarters in Delaware. They estimate at least four hundred armed men have stormed the gates. And the platforms are reporting a large number of small boats are heading their way. Security is being completely overrun.”

  He had hoped and prayed that they’d have a day at least to work with Moses Ndebele’s troops, but somehow he’d known he wasn’t going to get it. He would have to trust that time hadn’t dulled the skills they’d honed in their bitter civil war nearly three decades ago.

  Cabrillo cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted Max’s name. When Hanley glanced up Juan made a motion with his arm to hurry things along. Max said something to Mafana just as the first of the buses screeched to a halt at the foot of the gangplank. The side door opened and a string of men emerged. The first went to give Mafana a congratulatory hug for rescuing Moses Ndebele, but the African rebel must have told him to get aboard quickly. The men started up to the main deck as the other buses pulled alongside the ship.

  Juan activated his phone and dialed down to the hangar where he knew George “Gomez” Adams would be with his chopper. The pilot answered on the second ring.

  “Fly By Night Airlines.”

  “George, Juan.”

  “What’s up, Chairman?”

  “Singer’s men have launched their attack. As soon as we clear the harbor I want to send up one of our UAVs.” The unmanned aerial vehicles were essentially commercial model airplanes outfitted with miniature cameras and infrared detectors.

  “I’ll get it prepped,” Adams said. “But I can’t fly both if you need the chopper.”

  “Tiny’s coming aboard with Ndebele’s men. He’ll fly it. I just want you to get it ready.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Cabrillo glanced over the rail again. Two lines of men were marching up the gangway. None of them were overweight, which didn’t surprise him since they lived in a refugee camp, but there were a few giants among them. He saw more gray hair than he had hoped, but the former freedom fighters looked capable. These weren’t bowed old men, but lean, hungry soldiers who knew their duty.

  He called Eddie Seng to tell him to meet the new arrivals, but his Shore Operations Director was already at the head of the gangway directing the soldiers to one of the ship’s holds where Moses Ndebele was waiting to address them. It was there that they would be outfitted with assault rifles, ammunition, and other gear.

  Pressed by the urgency of the attack being under way, Juan’s people seemed to have found new heights of efficiency. He expected no less.

  Eric Stone had been watching the procession over the closed circuit television system from the op center; as soon as Max and Linc followed the last soldier up the gangplank it immediately began to rise. Juan looked up to see a dense cloud of smoke boil from the Oregon’s funnel. The busted looking intercom mounted just inside the bridge wing door chimed.

  “We’re ready,” Eric said when Juan answered. He looked down the length of the ship where a stevedore was waiting by the aft line. He threw the man a signal and he heaved the heavy rope off the bollard and let it slide into the water. A capstan immediately started reeling it into the ship. Juan repeated the motion to the longshoremen waiting near the bows. Before he could tell Stone they were free he saw water boil between the Oregon and the dock as the athwartship thrusters came online. When they cleared the stern of the Russian freighter Eric powered up the magnetohydrodynamics, keeping the speed down so her forward momentum wouldn’t cause the hull to squat, or settle deeper in the water. It was only when they were a mile from the shallow harbor that he started pouring on the power.

  Juan waited on the flying bridge for another couple of moments, knowing it would be his last seconds of peace until the mission was over. The slide of dread he’d felt when Linda told him the attack had begun was giving way to a new sensation, one he knew too well. It was the first feeling of adrenaline being pumped into his body. It was almost as though he could detect each time his adrenal glands secreted a dose into his bloodstream.

  His stump was still sore, but he no longer felt it. His back still ached, but it no longer bothered him. He no longer missed the sleep he hadn’t gotten. His mind became focused on the task at hand and his body responded, willing to do whatever he asked of it.

  He turned to Linda. “Ready?”

  “Aye.”

  On the elevator down to the op center he asked her about Susan Donleavy.

  “I had planned on talking to her today, but, well…”

  “No problem,” Juan said. The elevator doors whisked open. “Hali? What’s the latest?”

  “Petromax is trying to reach the provisional authorities to tell them about the attack, but so far the government hasn’t responded. Nothing’s happening in the workers’ compound. The assault is focused solely on the terminal and the offshore rigs. It seems two platforms are under terrorist control while two more are trying to defend themselves using firefighting water cannons. One of the rig’s tool pushers radioed that he’s lost a couple of men to small arms fire and that he doesn’t think they can hold out much longer.”

  “Eric, what’s our ETA?”

  “An hour.”

  “Murph, weapons status?”

  Mark Murphy craned around to look at Juan. “We’re loaded for bear, Chairman.”

  “Okay, good. Oh, and guys, nice job finding the radio tagged guns. God knows how much worse things would get if we’d been floundering around the Congo River.”

  Cabrillo turned to head for his cabin and noted Chuck “Tiny” Gunderson seated at a work station at the back of the room. In front of him was a computer monitor. On-screen was an image of George Adams cleaning the lens of the camera mounted in the nose of the aerial drone.

  “Looks good,” Tiny said into his mike. He moved his hands over the computer keyboard. “Step back; I’m firing the engine now.”

  The camera began to vibrate as the plane’s little motor caught.

  “Okay, green across the board. Up, up, and away.”

  The image began to move as the plane sped down a launch ramp, past the Oregon’s forward derricks and then over the railing. Tiny brought its nose down with a joystick, exchanging altitude for speed and then eased back on the stick to send it into the sky.

  Juan went to his cabin to get ready. Before changing into his newly refurbished combat leg and dark fatigues, he turned on his computer to get the live feed from the UAV’s cameras. He kept one eye on the monitor as he readied his arsena
l of weapons.

  The four-foot-long airplane was at about a thousand feet and flying over the large peninsula that the Oregon had to go around in order to reach the Petromax oil terminal. A more powerful transmitter aboard had allowed them to expand the drone’s range from fifteen miles up to forty so it no longer had to stay so close to the ship. It flashed over farmland and jungle and finally the area of mangrove swamps that effectively cut off the port from the rest of Cabinda save for a single road.

  Tiny dropped the plane down so it was five hundred feet off the haul road. A few miles from the entrance to the terminal a line of trucks sat idle. Juan guessed why, and in a moment the camera revealed the road had been blocked by felled trees. Because the ground just off the road was so soft the big tanker trucks couldn’t turn around. It would take giant earthmovers or a week of chain-sawing to remove the obstacle. If the Angolan government did send troops they would have to abandon any fighting vehicles well short of their target.

  Having studied satellite pictures of the remote port, Cabrillo had anticipated this move because it was exactly what he would have done had he been in charge of the assault.

  He watched as Tiny made the model plane gain altitude again as it neared the terminal. From a thousand feet everything looked normal at first. The two-hundred-acre facility sprawled along the coast, with a massive tank farm at its southernmost point and a separate compound for workers’ dormitories and recreational facilities to the north. Between them were miles of pipes in a hundred different sizes twisting and bending together in a maze only its designers could understand. There were warehouses as large as anything Cabrillo had ever seen, as well as a harbor for the tenders and workboats that took personnel to and from the offshore rigs. Shooting off from the facility was a mile-long causeway that led to the loading berths for the supertankers that took the crude to markets all over the globe. A thousand-foot tanker was tied to one, her tanks empty if Juan were to judge by the amount of red antifouling paint he could see above her waterline.