"It will be prudent to investigate the freighter with our full security force," the police chief announced with bluster. "Sergei, please round up the Listvyanka auxiliary security forces and have them report immediately to police headquarters."
Nearly another hour passed before the small contingent of local security forces marched toward the freighter's berth, the pompous chief leading the way. The first light of dawn was just breaking, casting a gray pall over a damp mist that floated just above the ground. Pitt and Giordino, with Gunn and Sarghov at their sides, followed the police force through the dock gate, which was now open and unguarded. The dock was completely deserted, and Pitt began to get a sick feeling in his stomach when he realized that all three trucks parked by the ship had now vanished.
The bossy police chief charged up the freighter's gangplank, calling out for the captain, but was met by only the sound of a humming generator. Pitt followed him to the empty bridge, where the ship's log and all other charts and maps were noticeably absent. Slowly and methodically, the police team searched the entire ship, finding an equally purloined and empty vessel. Not a shred of evidence was uncovered as to the ship's intent, nor a person around to tell its tale.
"Talk about abandoning ship," Giordino muttered, shaking his head. "Even the cabins are empty of personal effects. That was one quick getaway."
"Too quick to have been carried out unexpectedly in the short time we were gone. No, they had finished their work and were already sneaking out the door when we stopped by. I'll bet there weren't any personal effects or links to the crew brought aboard in the first place. They planned on walking away from an empty ship."
"With a kidnapped oil survey team," Giordino replied, his mind centered on Theresa. After a long silence, he returned to the bridge, hopeful to find some sort of clue as to where the departed trucks had gone.
Pitt stood on the bridge wing, staring down at the stern deck and its array of empty containers. His mind whirred with puzzlement over the motive for the abductions and the fate of the survey team. The pink glow of the rising sun bathed the ship in a dusky light and illuminated the gouge marks imbedded in the deck where the sunken derrick had stood the night before. Whatever secrets the ship possessed had departed with the crew and cargo that vanished quietly in the night. But the sunken derrick was something they had not been able to hide. The significance was lost on Pitt, but, deep inside, he suspected it was an important clue to a bigger mystery.
Part Two
The Road to Xanadu
-10-
Captain Steve Howard squinted through a scratched pair of binoculars and scanned the bright aqua blue waters of the Persian Gulf that glistened before him. The waterway was often a bustling hive of freighters, tankers, and warships jockeying for position, particularly around the narrow channel of the Strait of Hormuz. In the late afternoon off Qatar, however, he was glad to see that the shipping traffic had almost vanished. Ahead off his port bow, a large tanker approached, riding low in the water with a fresh load of crude oil in its belly. Off his stern, he noted a small black drill ship trailing a mile or two behind. Tanker traffic was all he was hoping to see and with a slight relief, he lowered the glasses down to the bow of his own ship.
He needed the binoculars to obtain a clear view of his own ship's prow, for the stodgy forepeak stood nearly eight hundred feet away. Looking forward, he noted rippling waves of heat shimmering off the white topside deck of the Marjan. The massive supertanker, known as a "Very Large Crude Carrier,"
was built to transport over two million barrels of oil. Larger than the Chrysler Building, and about as easy to maneuver, the big ship was en route to fill its cavernous holds with Saudi light crude oil pumped from the teeming oil fields of Ghawar.
Passing the Strait of Hormuz had flicked on an unconscious alarm in Howard. Though the American Navy had a visible presence in the gulf, they couldn't blanket every commercial ship that entered the busy waterway. With Iran sitting across the gulf and potential terrorists lurking in a half dozen countries along the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, there was reason to be concerned. Pacing the bridge and scanning the horizon, Howard knew he wouldn't relax until they had taken on their load of crude and reached the deep waters of the Arabian Sea.
Howard's eyes were drawn to a sudden movement on the deck and he adjusted the binoculars until they focused on a wiry man with shaggy blond hair who tore across the deck on a yellow moped. Ducking and weaving around the surface deck's assorted pipes and valves, the daredevil whizzed along at the moped's top speed. Howard tracked him as he rounded a bend and sprinted past a shirtless man stretched out on a lounge chair holding a stopwatch in one hand.
"I see the first mate is still trying to top the track record," Howard said with a grin.
The tanker's executive officer, hunched over a colored navigation chart of the gulf, nodded without looking up.
"I'm sure your record will remain safe for another day, sir," he replied.
Howard laughed to himself. The thirty-man crew of the supertanker was constantly creating ways to stave off boredom during the long transatlantic voyages or the slack periods when oil was being pumped on or off the ship. A rickety moped, used to traverse the enormous deck during inspections, was suddenly seized upon as a competitive instrument of battle. A makeshift oval course was laid out on the deck, complete with jumps and a hairpin turn. One by one, the crew took turns at the course like qualifying drivers for the Indy 500. To the crew's chagrin, the ship's amiable captain had ended up clocking the best time. None had any idea that Howard had raced motocross while growing up in South Carolina.
"Coming up on Dhahran, sir," said the exec, a soft-spoken African American from Houston named Jensen. "Ras Tanura is twenty-five miles ahead. Shall I disengage the auto pilot?"
"Yes, let's go to manual controls and reduce speed at the ten-mile mark. Notify the berthing master that we'll be ready to take tugs in approximately two hours."
Everything about sailing the supertanker had to be done with foresight, especially when it came to stopping the mammoth vessel. With its oil tanks empty and riding high on the water, the tanker was somewhat more nimble, but, to the men on the bridge, it was still like moving a mountain.
Along the western shoreline, the dusty brown desert gave way to the city of Dhahran, a company town, home to the oil conglomerate Saudi Aramco. Steering past the city and its neighboring port of Dammam, the tanker edged toward a thin peninsula that stretched into the gulf from the north. Sprawled across the peninsula was the huge oil facility of Ras Tanura.
Ras Tanura is the Grand Central Station of the Saudi oil industry. More than half of Saudi Arabia's total crude oil exports flow through the government-owned complex, which is linked by a maze of pipelines to the rich oil fields of the interior desert. At the tip of the peninsula, dozens of huge storage tanks stockpile the valuable black liquid next to liquid natural gas tanks and other refined petroleum products awaiting shipment to Asia and the West. Farther up the coast, the largest refinery in the world processes the raw crude oil into a slew of petroleum offshoots. But perhaps the most impressive feature of Ras Tanura is barely visible at all.
On the bridge of the Marjan, Howard ignored the tanks and pipelines ashore and focused on a half dozen supertankers lined up in pairs off the peninsula. The ships were moored to a fixed terminal called Sea Island, which stretched beamlike across the water for more than a mile. Like an oasis nourishing a heard of thirsty camels, the Sea Island terminal quenched the empty supertankers with a high-powered flow of crude oil pumped from the storage tanks ashore. Unseen beneath the waves, a network of thirty-inch supply pipes fed the black liquid two miles across the floor of the gulf to the deepwater filling station.
As the Marjan crept closer, Howard watched a trio of tugboats align a Greek tanker against the Sea Island before turning toward his own vessel. The Marjan's pilot took control of the supertanker and eased the vessel broadside to an empty berth at the end of the loading terminal, just opposite of the G
reek tanker. As they waited for the tugs to push them in, Howard admired the sight of the other seven supertankers parked nearby. All over a thousand feet long, easily exceeding the length of the Titanic, they were truly marvels of ship construction. Though he had seen hundreds of tankers in his day and served on several supertankers before the Marjan, the sight of a VLCC still filled him with awe.
The dirty white sail of an Arab dhow caught his eye in the distance and he turned toward the peninsula to admire the local sailing vessel. The small boat skirted the coastline, sailing north past the black drill ship that had tailed the Marjan earlier and was now positioned near the shoreline.
"Tugs are in position portside, sir," interrupted the voice of the pilot.
Howard simply nodded, and soon the massive ship was pushed into its slot on the Sea Island terminal. A series of large transfer lines began pumping black crude into the ship's empty storage tanks, little by little settling the tanker lower in the water. Secured at the terminal, Howard allowed himself to relax slightly, knowing that his responsibilities were through for at least the next several hours.
***
It was nearly midnight when Howard awoke from a short nap and stretched his legs with a stroll about the forward deck of the tanker. The crude oil loading was nearly complete, and the Marjan would easily meet its three a.m. departure schedule, allowing the next empty supertanker in line to take its turn at the filling depot. The distant blast from a tug's horn told him that a tanker further down the quay had completed its fill-up and was preparing to be pulled away from Sea Island.
Gazing at the lights twinkling along the Saudi Arabian shoreline, Howard was jolted by a sudden banging of the "dolphins" against the tanker's hull. Large cushioned supports mounted along the Sea Island berths, the breasting dolphins supported the lateral force of the ships while being loaded at the terminal. The clanging blows from the dolphins weren't just coming from below, he realized, but echoed all along the terminal. Stepping to the side rail, he leaned his head over and looked down along the loading quay.
Sea Island at night, like the supertankers themselves, was lit up like a Christmas tree. Under the battery of overhead lights, Howard could see that it was the terminal itself that was pulsing back and forth against the sides of the tankers. It didn't make sense, he thought. The terminal was grounded into the seabed.
Any movement ought to come from the ships drifting against the berths. Yet peering down the distant length of the terminal, he could see it waver like a serpent, striking one side of tankers and then the other.
The banging of the bumpers grew louder and louder until they hammered against the ships like thunder.
Howard gripped the rail until his knuckles turned white, not comprehending what was happening. Staring in shock, he watched as one after another of the four twenty-four-inch loading arms broke free of the ship, spewing a river of crude oil in all directions. A nearby shout creased the air as Howard spotted a platform engineer clinging for life aboard the swaying terminal.
As far as the eye could see, the steel terminal rocked and swayed like a giant snake, battering itself against the huge ships. Alarm bells rang out as the oil transfer lines were torn away from the other tankers by the rippling force, bathing the sides of the ships in a flowing sea of black. Farther down the quay, a chorus of unseen voices cried for help. Howard peered down to see a pair of men in yellow hard hats sprinting down the terminal, shouting as they ran. Behind them, the lights of the terminal began disappearing in a slow succession. Howard stood unblinking for a second before realizing with horror that the entire Sea Island terminal was sinking beneath their feet.
The clanging of the terminal against the Marjan intensified, the mooring dolphins physically mashing the side of the tanker. For the first time, Howard noticed a deep rumble that seemed to emanate from far beneath his feet. The rumble grew in intensity, roaring for several seconds before silencing just as quickly.
In its place came the desperate cries of men, running along the terminal.
A tumbling house of cards came to Howard's mind as the footings of the terminal gave way in succession and the mile-long island vanished under the waves in an orderly progression. When he heard the cries of the men in the water, his horror was replaced by a newfound fear for the safety of his ship. Tearing off across the deck, he pulled a handheld radio from his belt and shouted orders to the bridge as he ran.
"Cut the mooring lines! For God's sake, cut the mooring lines," he gasped. A rush of adrenaline surged through his body, the fear pushing him to race across the deck at breakneck speed. He was still a hundred meters from the bridge house when his legs began to throb, but his pace never slowed, even as he hurtled past a river of slippery crude oil that had splashed across the deck.
"Tell ... the chief ... engineer ... we need ... full power ... immediately," he rasped over the radio, his lungs burning for oxygen.
Reaching the tanker's stern superstructure, he headed for the nearest stairwell, bypassing an elevator located a few corridors away. Clambering up the eight levels to the bridge, he was heartened to feel the throb of the ship's engines suddenly vibrate beneath his feet. As he staggered onto the bridge and rushed to the forward window, his worst fears were realized.
In front of the Marjan, eight other supertankers lay in paired tandems, divided minutes before by the Sea Island terminal. But now the terminal was gone, plunging toward the Gulf floor ninety feet beneath the surface. The supertankers' mooring lines were still attached, and the force of the sinking terminal was drawing the paired tankers toward one another. In the midnight darkness, Howard could see the lights on the two tankers in front of him meld together, followed by the screeching cry of metal on metal as the sides of the ships scraped together.
"Emergency full astern," Howard barked at his executive officer. "What's the status of the mooring lines?"
"The stern lines are clear," replied Jensen, looking gaunt. "I'm still awaiting word on the bowlines, but it appears that at least two lines are still secure," he added, gazing through binoculars at a pair of taut ropes that stretched from the starboard bow.
"The Ascona is drawing onto us," the helmsman said, jerking his head to the right.
Howard followed the motion, eyeing the Greek-flagged ship berthed alongside, a black-and-red supertanker that matched the Marjan's length of three hundred thirty-three meters. Originally moored sixty feet apart, the two ships were slowly moving laterally together as if drawn by a magnet.
The men on the Marjan's bridge stood and stared helplessly, Howard's labored breathing matched by the quickened heartbeats of the others. Beneath their feet, the huge propellers finally began clawing the water in a desperate fury as the tanker's engines were rapidly brought up to high revs by the frantic engineer.
The initial movement astern was imperceptible, then, slowly, the huge ship began to creep backward at a sluggish clip. The momentum slowed for a second as the bow mooring line drew taut, then suddenly the line broke free and the ship resumed its rearward crawl. Along her starboard side, the Ascona drew closer. The Korean-built tanker had nearly a full load of crude and rode a dozen feet lower in the water than the Marjan. From Howard's perspective, it looked as if he could step right off the side of his ship and onto the deck of the neighboring tanker.
"Starboard twenty," he ordered the helmsman, trying to angle the bow away from the drifting tanker.
Howard had managed to back the Marjan three hundred feet away from the sunken terminal, but it was not enough to escape the adjacent ship.
The impact was gentler than Howard had expected, not even felt in the wheelhouse. Just an extended low-pitched screech of metal signaled the collision. The Marjan's bow was almost amidships of the Ascona when the two ships met, but the rearward motion of Howard's ship had deflected much of the force at impact. For half a minute, the Marjan's bow scraped along the other tanker's port rail, and then suddenly the two ships were clear.
Howard immediately cut his engines and lowered a pair of
lifeboats over the side to search for any dockworkers in the water. Then he gingerly backed his ship another thousand feet away from the melee and watched the carnage.
All ten of the supertankers were damaged. Two of the big ships had locked decks and were so intertwined that it took two days before an army of welders could cut them free. Three of the ships had their double-hulled plates bashed though, leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil freely into the gulf as the ships listed to one side. But the Marjan had escaped with minimal damage, none of her tanks compromised in the collision thanks to Howard's fast action. His relief at saving his ship was short-lived, however, when a series of muffled explosions echoed across the gulf waters.
"Sir, it's the refinery," the helmsman noted, pointing toward the western shoreline. An orange glow appeared on the horizon, which grew like the rising sun as a series of additional explosions rocked across the water. Howard and his crew watched the spectacle for hours as the pyre marched along the shoreline. It wasn't long before thick plumes of black smoke mixed with the odor of burned petroleum wafted over the ship.
"How could they do it?" the executive officer blurted. "How could terrorists have gotten in there with explosives? It's one of the most secure facilities in the world."
Howard shook his head in silence. Jensen was right. A private army guarded the whole complex in a tight web of security. It must have been a masterful infiltration to take out the Sea Island terminal as well, he thought, though there were no apparent offshore explosions. Thankfully, his ship and crew were safe, and he intended to keep it that way. Once the search for survivors in the water was completed, Howard moved the tanker several miles out into the gulf, where he circled the big ship slowly until dawn.
By daylight, the full extent of the damage became apparent as emergency response teams from around the region converged on the scene. The Ras Tanura refinery, one of the largest in the world, was a smoldering ruin, nearly completely destroyed by the raging fires. The Sea Island offshore terminal, capable of feeding eighteen supertankers at a time with raw crude oil, had completely vanished beneath the gulf. The nearby tank farm, providing storage for nearly thirty million barrels of petroleum products, was mired in a waist-deep sea of black ooze from dozens of cracked and fractured tanks. Farther into the desert, countless oil supply pipelines were broken in two like twigs, soaking the surrounding sands black with thick pools of crude oil.
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