Oil

by Jeff Nesbit

  The port of Aqaba was just beginning to disappear from view when an enormous explosion erupted from that direction. The blast was so loud that Truxton could feel the effects on board. There was a second, third, and then a fourth explosion immediately following the first blast.

  The reports came in to the operations center quickly. They’d been so close to Aqaba that some of the sailors on the upper decks had been able to see at least one of the explosions. For whatever reason, someone had chosen to destroy much of the tiny, sleepy port of Aqaba just as the American convoy was arriving.

  Even from here, they could see that part of Aqaba was in ruins.

  59

  Aqaba, Jordan

  The soldiers made no effort to conceal their identities as they worked their way through the streets of Aqaba. In fact, they came across civilians at least three times and, in all three instances, paused as if to make sure the civilians got a good look at their recognizable uniforms. There would be no question, in the aftermath, that the soldiers were IDF, and that they’d made the sprint across the Israeli border less than two miles away.

  Once the investigation had ensued, the soldiers also knew the people would find several abandoned trucks on the outskirts of town that had recently been driven out of the southernmost reaches of Israel. It would be further proof of those responsible for the day’s actions in Aqaba.

  The soldiers knew what they were doing. They’d drilled and trained for several weeks in a virtual setting that simulated the town of Aqaba.

  Still, it was child’s play. They met no resistance. Their target was unprotected, unarmed, and generally defenseless.

  Once they’d reached their final destination, the handful of soldiers chose a place in the shadows and waited for their signal. While it wasn’t crucial, they did want to time it closely.

  The first explosion from the Aqaba port was so loud that a few of the soldiers covered their ears. A couple of them smiled broadly as the second, third, and fourth charges went off. They all knew that parts of Aqaba’s port would be burning. It was time.

  The soldiers made their way up the steps to the top of one of the most expensive villas in Aqaba. They hesitated briefly outside their final destination, checked their location, and then stormed through the door.

  General Fahd had just finished his final audio broadcast before the Day of Anger protests that would sweep across a number of Saudi cities in the morning. He was pleased with the broadcast, his sixth. He’d gotten better with each one of the broadcasts. He’d actually begun to think of himself as an exiled leader of the mythical Free the Kingdom Army.

  He looked up, startled, as the commando soldiers burst through the front door of his villa. The door nearly split into two pieces. A shard of wood hurtled across the room, slamming against a table and spilling the cup of flavored coffee he’d kept by his side as he’d finished his broadcast.

  It never occurred to Fahd to defend himself. He didn’t even have a sidearm in the villa. There was no need. He was retired, and this was a vacation home.

  Fahd’s last thought as the hail of bullets tore through him was a question: Why had the Israelis come for him, and not the Saudis?

  60

  Jerusalem, Israel

  The memo sat on Judah Navon’s desk for nearly three days. Navon would glance over in its direction at odd times during the day. He wondered about the author who would craft such a memo. Who was Abe Zeffren, anyway?

  Israel’s prime minister was a careful, thoughtful steward of Israel’s heritage, its place in history, and its path forward.

  The country had faced one challenge to its survival after another over the years—the Six-Day War, the constant threats from neighbors near and far, and the threat of nuclear annihilation from Iran’s Shi’a theocracy.

  Israel’s citizens lived daily with the reminder that life was short, and that you’d better be passionate about your reason for walking the planet and your place on it.

  Nearly every person Navon encountered during his daily political life in Israel demanded that he defend and protect its right to exist in the face of constant threats to wipe it off the face of the earth.

  But after a generation of struggles, Israel was about to turn a corner for the first time in its history. Many of the same enemies that had fought against Israel early in its history had gone through regime changes in recent years. Still others were caught up in the Arab Spring revolts and had turned their attention inward.

  Israel was no longer at the top of their list of concerns.

  Meanwhile, bitter enemies like Iran were actively pursuing peace with them. A solution to the intractable Palestinian homeland problem was seemingly just over the horizon. And Israel’s woeful, constant search for energy appeared to be poised for a miraculous reversal of fortunes.

  Which is precisely why Abe Zeffren’s memo troubled Navon so, and why Zeffren was waiting patiently in the outer office.

  Navon had glanced casually at the deputy oil commissioner’s occasional memos over the years. None had ever been out of the ordinary—just reports on the comings and goings of various efforts to keep Israel from becoming too dependent on any one source of energy.

  But this memo from the deputy oil commissioner was different. At its conclusion, Zeffren had asked to meet with him privately to discuss it.

  Do not sign an agreement with Russia to finance oil exploration, Abe had written at the end. If you do, it will mean the end of Israel. We will lose control of our own destiny.

  But Zeffren had condemned the American efforts just as harshly:

  The refinery in the Negev, coupled with their earth-moving and peacekeeping efforts at Beersheba, is the proverbial nose under the camel’s tent. We should never have allowed them to embed themselves so deeply in the affairs of our national economy. For now, I fear, they will never leave.

  All that was left, the deputy oil commissioner had written, was for China to show up at Israel’s door and demand a seat at the table. At that point, all three of the world’s most dangerous superpowers would be working and operating deeply inside Israel’s borders.

  Once that had occurred, he’d written, Israel no longer controlled its destiny. Any one of those three economic and military superpowers could decide to wage war against each other over one dispute or another in the Middle East—and Israel would likely be squarely in the crosshairs of the dispute.

  Navon had to wonder at Zeffren’s prescience on the China guess. China had, in fact, just approached Israel to supply nearly half of its oil and gas. Some would come from Eastern Europe, with the balance made from oil obtained at Shfela in partnership with both the Americans and the Russians. His foreign minister presently was negotiating with the Chinese on the terms.

  Navon buzzed his assistant. “Can you send the deputy oil commissioner in? I can see him now. But I only have a few minutes.”

  “I believe that’s all he requires,” the assistant said.

  Abe had seen the prime minister in public on occasion. He’d never met him, but Abe had always hoped for a chance to at least speak to him. He wasn’t nervous. Mostly, he wanted to say his piece and leave.

  “Prime Minister, thank you for agreeing to see me,” Abe said as he came through the door and took one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “My pleasure,” Navon said. “I enjoyed your memo. It was…”

  “Provocative?”

  “Yes, that’s as good a word as any,” Navon said. “And do you believe it, what you wrote?”

  Abe nodded. “I do, with every ounce of conviction that I can convey. I asked to see you because I wanted to make a simple request. Israel has never relied on anyone else—not the Americans, not the Soviets once upon a time, not the Chinese—for its destiny. Please don’t tie our country to those countries through these arrangements.”

  “You do realize that this is highly unorthodox for a bureaucrat to make such a plea? Your job is to provide background, not necessarily to offer advice,” Navon said evenly.

/>   “I understand. But I’ve been in my job for a considerable amount of time. We’ve always managed to make do with the meager natural resources at our disposal. Now, in a very short period of time, the world’s superpowers show up with offers of riches and gold? Why would we agree to tie our future to theirs?”

  “Because it offers us energy independence, for one,” Navon said. “And because it gives us resources we might not otherwise have at our disposal. It gives us options.”

  “Prime Minister, I beg to differ, but it does not give us options,” Abe said forcefully. “It binds us to them. And like an oxen team that pulls unevenly, we’re likely to veer off course when one pulls harder than the other.”

  “So you’re comparing us to oxen?”

  “If the analogy works, yes. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. We don’t need America, Russia, or China involved in our own economic affairs.”

  “And how would you develop the Shfela oil reserves or the natural gas finds off the coast of Haifa?” Navon asked.

  “We’ll find a way,” Abe said. “We always have.”

  “And if I tell you that the die has already been cast—that we must find a way to work with America, Russia, and China in our land and our national economy, what would you say to that?”

  “I would say that Israel had better prepare for a coming storm,” Abe said. “With great power come great expectations and inevitable conflict. Those three have a considerable amount of power. Now they will be wielding it within our borders and entangling Israel in their affairs.”

  61

  London, England

  The American embassy officials thought the cable was a joke. Drive over to some old flat to make sure an elderly, retired librarian named Mehmet Osman was still there? And what were they supposed to do about it if he wasn’t?

  The ambassador bucked the request to the public affairs attaché, who, in turn, sent an intern. The public affairs attaché had better things to do with his time than burn it up chasing after some old coot in London that someone, somewhere, wanted to track down.

  It took the intern the better part of an hour to get to the flat. It was in a fairly seedy part of London. He had to take the Tube and then a bus to get there.

  When he finally arrived, the door to the flat was locked. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He peered in the window, but it was dark inside, and he couldn’t see anything.

  He was about to head back to the embassy but thought better of it. He started knocking on neighbors’ doors.

  The first couple didn’t know much about the man. But the third neighbor knew Mehmet Osman. He said the man hadn’t been seen for the better part of a week. A fourth neighbor knew Osman quite well and often walked to the market with him to pass the time. He, too, had not seen Osman in nearly a week.

  But the fifth neighbor proved to be, by far, the most helpful. He’d been at home one morning and had just happened to see two men knock on Osman’s door. When he’d opened the door, the two men had entered quickly, closing the door behind them. This neighbor had never seen these two young men before.

  It all looked a bit suspicious, so this particular neighbor had kept an eye on the door to Osman’s flat. After nearly a half hour, the two men reemerged. Osman was with them.

  The neighbor had called out to Osman, asking him if everything was fine. Yes, Osman had called back. He was good, and everything was fine.

  But he had not looked fine, the neighbor said. He was leaving under his own power, but he’d appeared confused. This neighbor had not seen Osman since that day. He’d never returned to the flat. And no one knew where he might have gone.

  The intern thanked the neighbor, who asked him why the American embassy would be asking after Osman. The intern didn’t know why, he told the neighbor. He’d just been sent here to see whether the elderly, retired librarian was still in his flat.

  Neither the intern nor the neighbor knew, of course, that Mehmet Osman was the last descendant of the line of caliphs who had ruled the Ottoman Empire. Osman had never mentioned this to his neighbors. The intern didn’t know who Osman was or why anyone would care. But he would file his report when he got back to the embassy. Not that anyone would care, he figured.

  62

  Al Qirh, Saudi Arabia

  It would be a glorious day. It had been a cloudless night, so the sun’s light was already beginning to illuminate the eastern horizon.

  Nouradeen had considered that, perhaps, they might be challenged at some point on their way to Mecca—either by the Americans at sea or, more likely, by members of the Saudi National Guard once they’d made it inland.

  Nouradeen’s plan had been simple. They’d brought a considerable amount of weapons with them on board the ship and, now, in the trucks. If challenged, they’d engage in a firefight to the death. But once they were near Mecca, they would ditch the trucks and the weapons. They would ride to Mecca with nothing more than white flags and Zulfiqars.

  Al Qirh was a very small town within a day’s ride of Mecca. No one would be up in Al Qirh at this time of day. There were no cafés or retail establishments to speak of there and very little in the way of buildings. Nouradeen had chosen a small knoll to the north of the small town. It was a perfect location.

  “We’ll stop here,” Nouradeen ordered. “Pull the trucks well into the trees in the knoll. Tell the men to unload the trailers and line up the trucks to each other.”

  “Yes, Yamani,” his driver said.

  All of the men, al Qaeda and Houthi alike, had begun to call him Yamani from their days at the camp in Yemen. Nouradeen had neither encouraged it nor responded to it. But he also did not tell them not to use the title.

  Once the horses had been unloaded, some of the men began to prepare the horses for the long ride to Mecca. Nouradeen directed the others to salt the trucks and trailers with explosives. No one questioned the action or the order. They’d been told this was a one-way mission. They would not be returning to this spot.

  “Are we ready?” Nouradeen asked.

  The men who’d prepared the horses chose their own mounts. Those who’d prepared the trucks set them ablaze. There was a series of muffled explosions. The trucks and trailers were on fire an instant later. Black smoke billowed briefly skyward.

  Now that they were here, and they had not been challenged, Nouradeen knew with certainty that Bahadur had been right. They clearly had a guardian angel of one sort or another inside the White Army. No one had been sent to find them or challenge them.

  Bahadur had been confident that they would, in fact, make it to Mecca without intervention. Nouradeen had a difficult time understanding how that was possible. The Saudis were known for crushing dissent with an iron fist. They were more than willing to gas students who even gathered for mild protests at universities.

  Granted, they had their hands full with the student protests at cities all across the kingdom that day. Still, it seemed curious.

  But he’d also learned to trust Bahadur and General Zhubin over the years. They always seemed one step ahead of their enemies. Predictions became reality. And it was true here yet again. They were not challenged. There was no White Army ready to stop their ride into Mecca.

  Bahadur had also promised that there would be other surprises along the way in their journey, and they were not to worry about the final outcome of the battle for Mecca.

  “Your job is to get to Mecca,” Bahadur had told him in their final call. “We will take care of the rest. Many events will transpire on this Day of Anger. You must play your part and allow history to unfold as it will.”

  Nouradeen looked over the mob of Houthi and al Qaeda fighters who’d banded together and were now loyal to him—the Yamani who would ride to Mecca in advance of the coming of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam and successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

  Nouradeen smiled. It was crazy, psychotic, wildly irrational, and ridiculous beyond reason. He loved it. This was his sort of day.

  “We ride,” he said and c
harged north toward Mecca.

  63

  The King’s Palace

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Prince Abdul was stunned when they gave him the news. It hardly seemed possible. But there were many things beyond his grasp today. This was merely one of many. The world seemed to have lost its bearings.

  “The White Army took Nashua Lee to the king’s palace—against his will? A prominent American citizen, whose father is close to the US president?” Abdul asked.

  “Yes, sir, that’s correct,” said his closest aide, who’d arrived at his private quarters to give him the stunning news. “He is still there, in one of the king’s private conference rooms.”

  Abdul was already dressed for the day. In fact, he’d been up two hours before dawn reading the reports of unrest from all over the Middle East.

  There had been a horrific explosion in Aqaba, Jordan, that had decimated the port. The reports were sketchy, but the Israelis were being blamed. They were moving into a position to export oil to China and every other country in the Far East from the northern end of the Red Sea. The oil arrived there from a previously secret oil pipeline that ran the length of the Negev. It connected the Haifa port on the Mediterranean, and then to Europe.

  The Israelis wanted control over the northern end of the Red Sea, and they intended to expand their territory. Aqaba was a casualty in that effort, the initial reports said. Jordan wasn’t in much of a position to object or get in the way, the reports said, and the Israelis were just expanding territory and settlements, as they always did.

  Abdul knew the reports were utter fabrications. There was no way the Israelis, in their wildest imagination, would ever go after a sleepy port like Aqaba. Yes, the Israelis fiercely defended themselves and aggressively pursued settlements and expansions.