His hands were secured behind his back. He could barely feel them; they were lumps of meat. He tried to wriggle his fingers to see if he could; they responded, producing agonizing sensations that wrung a groan from him.
A voice said, "Don't bother shamming; I know you're awake." A familiar voice, crisp, well-modulated, slightly accented. The speaker had to speak loud to be heard from the rain drumming on the rooftop.
Jack's eyes came into focus; he looked around. He was in a different part of the building, a corner square that had been partitioned off into a sizable office space.
The partitions were ten feet tall; the top had not been roofed over but left open.
Overhead, a cable dangled down from a rafter beam, terminating in a half-shaded lamp suspended about ten feet above the floor.
The partitions were old, too, made of age-darkened wood; starting at shoulder height, their upper halves were made of frosted, translucent glass, no doubt to let some light into the space.
There was a rectangular wooden desk, as dark and scarred as the partition walls; it contrasted with the layout of computer towers and monitor screens arrayed on the desktop. Some filing cabinets stood in the corners where partition walls met.
The office space had no door, only a door-shaped opening that served as an entryway, set in a partition opposite the rear wall, one of the walls of the building. The office looked like it dated back to the 1950s; the high-tech equipment assembled there was brand-new.
To one side of the entryway stood an old wooden table; atop it were a number of glass cases, terrarium-style, each containing its own set of nasty nature specimens.
One case held a mess of wriggling coral snakes, brightly colored with their bands of red, black, and yellow. They were incredibly venomous; a bite could easily kill a full-grown man. Another held several water moccasins, entwined among one another — black snakes, the inside of whose mouths showed white when they bared their long, curved, poison-dripping fangs, a distinguishing mark that had given rise to their nickname of cottonmouths. A third was stocked with foot-long black centipedes, each of whose bite could make a human limb blacken and swell to elephantine proportions; a fourth was chock-full of tarantulas, black and hairy eight-leggers with bodies the size of silver dollars.
A set of two-legged venomous creatures stood grouped around the chair where Jack sat. Two were known to him: Major Marc Vollard and Rex de Groot, one of Vollard's lieutenants.
The third was the blue-eyed, bronze-tanned shooter who'd killed Pete Malo.
De Groot held the bucket, which he'd just emptied into Jack's face to bring him around.
Vollard was of medium height, compactly made, well-knit. His spade-shaped face showed long green eyes, a snub nose, and a pointy chin. His upper lip was so thin as to be almost nonexistent; above it he wore a neatly trimmed pencil mustache, iron-gray.
He was outfitted in a safari jacket, light blue T-shirt, khaki pants worn tucked into the tops of a pair of combat boots. A thin, lightweight red scarf knotted around his neck added a flash of color. A black patent leather Sam Browne belt was fitted around his torso, holding a holstered sidearm at his hip.
De Groot was big, fleshy, built like an old-time wrestler from pre-steroid days, with sloping shoulders and thick arms, a barrel chest and a big gut. A mop of unruly, silver-gray hair covered his ears and the back of his collar, framing a ruddy, jowly, thick-featured face. He was outfitted in hunter's camouflage-style fatigues; a gun belt worn below his sagging gut held a holstered, long-barreled .44 magnum revolver.
The third member of the trio, the ace gunman, was slim, straight, and athletic, with a swimmer's build; long-limbed and lean-torsoed. He wore a shoulder holster; the gun holstered under his arm was the weapon that had killed Pete Malo.
* * *
Vollard's eyes turned up at the corners, giving them a merry aspect; he smiled thinly with his lips. He said, "Of all the people in the world, it had to be you who found me, Jack. Truly, it is a small world after all."
Jack remained silent, eyes in motion, scanning the room, looking for something, anything he could turn to his advantage. Nothing suggested itself on that score.
Vollard went on, "I'm sure you're wondering where you slipped up, so allow me to enlighten you on that score. Every door and window in the place is covered by electric eye beams. When you and your associate entered, you triggered a silent alarm.
"By the way, I didn't recognize your partner. Ex-partner, I should say. No familiar face from the good old days in the Balkans, not like you and me. Who was he?"
Jack said nothing. Vollard's smile widened, showing his teeth. White, gleaming, they were beautifully capped and bleached.
He said, "Standard doctrine: say nothing to your captors. The slightest word or reply holds the danger of loosening the tongue; once you start talking, it's hard to stop."
The ace gunman said, "The other was a brave man; at least he died fighting. Not like this coward."
Vollard shook his head. "No, Arno, make no mistake. Jack doesn't lack for bravery; he's smart enough to know the futility of throwing away his life to no purpose. Stay alive as long as you can; there's always the chance that circumstances will change in your favor, or that fate will take a hand and deliver a last-minute reprieve from the gallows. Where there's life, there's hope. That's the cruel hoax of it all."
The left side of Jack's face, where Arno had pistol-whipped him with the flat of the gun, was swollen and numb. Jack worked his jaws around, trying to estimate the damage. He switched tactics, abandoning the silent treatment. He said, "What's the plan, Vollard? Where do you figure in all this... "
De Groot stepped forward, delivering a vicious backhand to Jack's face that sent him rocking backward, nearly knocking him out of the chair. The impact caused the roller-mounted chair to glide backward for several feet before bouncing up against a wall.
De Groot said, "That's Major Vollard to you, scum!"
Vollard tsk-tsked. "Control yourself, Lieutenant, there's no need for that now. At least, not yet. No need to stand on formality; Jack and I go way back, as you may recall."
De Groot said, "Bah! We should have killed him back in the Balkans!"
Vollard said, "Here he is now, so it's all worked out for the best after all. What's the plan? I don't mind telling you, Jack; you're a dead man, and dead men tell no tales. Besides, frankly, it's rare that I get the chance to converse with someone who has the mentality to appreciate my genius."
Jack spat some blood out of his mouth. "Like that botched hit on Paz?"
De Groot raised a heavy hand to deliver another blow, but a sharp look from Vollard was enough to freeze him in his tracks.
Indicating with a tilt of his head the glass boxes full of spiders, snakes, and centipedes, Jack said, "I see you've brought your relatives along for the mission, Major."
That was enough to set off de Groot again; forestalling him, Vollard said, "He's just trying to bait you, Rex. Anger you so that you forget yourself and give him a quick death."
De Groot said, "No chance of that." The thought seemed to cheer him. His face was red and swollen, as though he wore a collar several sizes too small; he was wearing an open-neck shirt.
Vollard gestured toward the glass boxes and said," How do you like my little menagerie, Jack? Nature itself has always been my school. One can only admire the purity and perfection of these single-purpose predators, evolved over the ages into a murderous symmetry of form and function. I find inspiration in such creatures of destruction."
Arno, perhaps not liking that crack about Vollard's lack of opportunity to converse with someone with the mentality to appreciate him, scowled. "He's stalling for time, to keep himself alive a little longer," he said.
Vollard said, "Can you blame him? Let him go to hell knowing the full extent of the disaster that's about to befall the 'good old U.S.A.'; his last thoughts will be devoted to contemplating the catastrophe and regretting his inability to prevent it."
He turned to Jack. "
As for the failure of the assassination attempt on Colonel Paz, that was Beltran's responsibility. I assure you that if I had been handling it, the results would have been quite different."
Jack shrugged, the movement sent renewed agony shooting through his bound hands. He fought to keep his face expressionless, but there was nothing he could do about the cold sweat beading up on his pale face. Fighting to keep his tone casual, he said, "So what's the master plan, genius?"
Vollard warmed to the subject. "You'll appreciate this, Jack. Within a few short hours, New Orleans is about to go out of business as America's primary locale for receiving imported oil. Operation Petro Surge — of which you've no doubt heard, with your high level of security clearance — will be over before it's begun.
"Simply put, we are going to smash New Orleans. The Petroleum Receiving Point will be turned into an inferno, and the Mississippi River Bridge will be sunk at the same time, ensuring that the port will be closed to all traffic for months to come — years, considering how you Yanks seem to have lost the ability to repair your crumbling infrastructure, or even keep it from falling apart of its own accord.
"We're just going to give it a good, hard push in that direction."
* * *
Imported oil doesn't unload itself; it has to be unloaded. The petro-laden supertankers come to port in the United States, completing their long transoceanic trips from the Persian Gulf — or for that matter, Venezuela's Maracaibo Bay. Their leviathan dimensions, as long as several football fields put together, require specialized receiving facilities.
The Port of New Orleans is the nation's number one destination for such massive shipments of imported oil. Its primary facility is the Petroleum Receiving Point.
Located several miles downriver from the Mississippi River Bridge, the PRP, or Point, is located on a spit of land that thrusts out for a fifth of a mile from the mainland into the harbor.
It holds an intricate maritime infrastructure designed to handle the docking of supertankers and the emptying of their vast stocks of oil, through a network of pumps and pipelines extending along the point to the mainland, where a sprawling field of titanic oil storage tanks and petroleum processing plants and refineries awaits.
Scattered in different places in the harbor and upriver are a handful of similar sites, though of far lesser magnitude, but the PRP was the Big One, the league leader, handling the most traffic and processing the greatest volume of imported crude, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil per year.
Making it a big, fat target for destruction by Major Marc Vollard and his mercenary squad. Unlike his Saudi backers, Vollard was apolitical, a true mercenary. He went where the money was.
It just so happened that the money, the real money, now lay in the oil-rich Middle East. Dogmatic to the ultimate degree on doctrinal points of faith, the radical fundamentalist imams, mullahs, and their acolytes in the ruling class were pragmatic enough when it came to launching a hammer blow at the Great Satan, U.S.A.
The destruction of New Orleans's Petroleum Receiving Point would be a hammer blow indeed. With the PRP down for the months required to make even the most minimal repairs, the flow of imported oil would be checked at the moment it was needed most. Right at the height of what Washington planners called Operation Petro Surge and the Saudi royals called Cloak of Night.
By any name, both the White House and the current power holders in the House of Saud were counting on the successful delivery of that oil. With it, Washington could continue to maintain its guardianship of the vital sea-lanes in the Persian Gulf and protect the kingdom from Iranian aggression.
If the PRP were out of commission, all those oil-filled supertankers would have no place to go. Oh, there were other port facilities in the United States, but none of them had the massive infrastructure needed to process, store, refine, and distribute the Petro Surge oil influx.
They were already backed up and unable to process their current quota.
Oil was the nation's lifeblood, yet the politicians had dithered year after year, building no new refineries and leaving the ones in operation virtually defenseless against sabotage and terror strikes.
America was wide open for a sucker punch, and Major Marc Vollard was about to deliver it.
The target itself allowed him to make a maxi-strike with minimal forces. The silvery globes that were oil storage tanks massed on the mainland at the PRP were giant incendiary devices just waiting for a pyro with a pack of matches.
No great amount of explosives was needed to touch them off; it would take only the blocks of C-4 and Semtex plastic explosives and a handful of thermite bombs that his twelve-man merc squad could tote in on their backs.
The explosives would be placed at carefully plotted nodal points on the oil storage tank farm grid where they could do the most damage. Once they were planted, the bombs' mechanical timing devices would be set, allowing the merc force to make its getaway.
The plastic explosives would rupture and breach the shells; if they didn't touch off the massive stores of oil, the thermite bombs surely would.
The tanks would become a massive string of firebombs, each blast touching off similar explosions in nearby tanks that hadn't been mined; they in turn would set off other tanks, until the entire field was a blazing inferno, a literal Hell on Earth.
That was the Big Hit, the major component, but the strike was designed to be a one-two punch. The second half was the destruction of the Mississippi River Bridge.
Downed, it would block virtually all major river traffic, barring the route to all but the lightest of small craft vessels. That would prevent upriver refineries from taking up any of the slack from the downed PRP.
More, it would present a major headache in its own right, impeding repairs to the PRP and adding extra months to a rebuilding effort that was sure to take a year if not more. The recent Minnesota bridge collapse had shown the kind of damage such an event could do in the way of impeding river traffic.
The Mississippi River Bridge downfall would make that one look sick by comparison.
Vollard handled most of that operation, obtaining the barge now berthed at Pelican Pier, stocking it with explosives and rigging it for its last voyage. He'd handled every part of it but the recruitment of the actual boat handlers.
It was a suicide run, and that was out of Vollard's line; such strikes were for fanatics, true believers, not mercenaries. Mercs were true believers only in money, and expected to live to enjoy their hard-won loot.
The actual kamikaze run itself would be handled by Ahmed and Rashid, a pair of Yemenite boat pilots who'd been supplied by his Saudi backers, Prince Tariq serving as go-between. The Yemeni mariners were skilled boat handlers, having captained vessels in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Red Sea.
They craved holy martyrdom; money to them was just so much trash; their goal was beyond: Paradise.
That element had been a bit tricky, since the purpose of using mercenaries to carry out the strike was to go outside the usual box and use personnel generally not subject to the scrutiny that American authorities focused on the usual suspects from the Middle East.
The Yemenis had flown to Mexico and then been smuggled into New Orleans by boat. Vollard had installed numerous safeguards and double-checks along the way; he was satisfied that they had come in under the radar.
All was now ready to go, and tonight was the night.
* * *
Vollard didn't bother going into any detail; he told Jack only that the PRP and the Mississippi River Bridge were targets. Jack was a professional who knew the score, he could figure out the details and fill in the blanks in the short time left for him to live.
Vollard couldn't resist one parting shot, though, a final turn of the knife. He said, "Operation Petro Surge will never happen again; an incredible opportunity that will be lost to America forever. The prime mover and shaker of the surge, Minister Fedallah, will be assassinated at a council meeting in a few hours by another would-be marty
r on a pathway to Paradise. With Fedallah gone, the surge will cease to exist.
"Who knows? Perhaps future historians will date the beginning of the final downfall of the American empire from this night.
"Take that thought to hell with you, Jack. And now, I bid you not au revoir, but... goodbye."
Vollard turned to Rex de Groot. "You can have him now. You know what to do. Make him talk — though I doubt he has much to offer — and kill him. Make it quick; if CTU was really closing in, they'd be here in force already. The fact that they sent just two agents shows it was more of a recon job.
"Still, no point in lingering here longer than we have to. When the agents don't report, CTU might move in. We'll accelerate the timetable, launching the boat and moving out now, ahead of schedule."
Vollard turned, with parade ground snap, and exited the office, Arno trailing after him. Leaving Jack alone with de Groot.
21
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 A.M. AND 2 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
A man entered the partitioned office. Short, stocky, middle-aged, he had a headful of iron-gray, curly hair; bushy eyebrows; and a short, gray-white beard.
De Groot glanced at him, said, "What do you want, Silva?"
Silva said, "I want to be in on the fun." He smiled, a broad, sloppy, loose-mouthed smile with a gleam of drool in the corners.
"Don't you have something better to do?"
Silva shrugged. "The SUVs are all loaded up, the barge is ready to cast off, the chores are all done. Besides, what's better than torturing a Yanqui spy?"
De Groot snickered. "You might be of some use at that. Come over here and give me a hand. I need him standing up."
He and Silva flanked Jack, sitting in the chair. De Groot was on Jack's left, Silva on his right. De Groot leaned down, sticking his face in Jack's, breathing on him. His breath was hot.
De Groot said, "Let's see how tough you are when you've got a black centipede biting you on the scrotum." He nodded toward the glass boxes, which were on his side of the room. He turned to Silva. "Help me lift him up."
24 Declassified: 07 - Storm Force Page 30
