Blood Oil

by James Phelan

  “I will not let it get to that,” Godswill said. “We are strong, and for every man who falls we have two more waiting to pick up his gun and carry on.”

  “Sometimes one has to go that extra step, I understand,” Rollins said. His hand was on the MEND leader’s shoulder in friendship and support. He looked at Fox. “We all have to do what we can to make things right. Maybe for us that means that sometimes we have to go beyond reporting. Intervene, make the story something other than history. Shape it. Change it.”

  Outside the tent they came to a small clearing in the overgrown canopy and the very last rays of sunlight licked through. The sound of birds here was astounding, the noise from the flocks that converged and darted at insects over the water.

  A corrugated-tin roof covered about twenty people working around trestle tables. This was a production-line bomb-making unit. Fox counted dozens of IEDs being built. Improvised Explosive Devices, the weapon of choice in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They evened out the odds somewhat for militia fighting an enemy in armoured vehicles. Old artillery shells were being wired with remote or timed detonators. Small quantities of off-white C4 were moulded into old food tins, in turn placed in large paint cans full of shrapnel. Wooden boxes held nuts, bolts, screws, nails, scraps of metal and short lengths of steel pipe. Firearms and machetes lay in disordered heaps.

  Fox watched kids helping out too. Teenage boys hefted the tins of shrapnel their spindly arms could hardly carry. Younger kids loaded bullets into rifle magazines. There were women of all ages too, doing the most archetypal of tasks while cleaning down firearms and arranging uniforms for their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons to go into the fight. This was more than just family-run operations, more than neighbourhood protection, Fox thought. This was a people fighting over the right to life that their forefathers had enjoyed in this place for centuries. This was the last push for survival before their once-fertile delta region was lost out to pollution for good. These people didn’t have to worry about climate change—they wouldn’t have a habitat soon. It was the Alamo in an open expanse of waterways that stretched for hundreds of kilometres of coastline. Sheer back-to-the-wall desperation.

  “We move this camp and others like it every few days,” Godswill said. He took in the scene as if seeing it for the first time like his four guests. “These people are here because they want a better life.”

  He went to a table and picked up a briefcase, handed it over to Rollins.

  “This is what I spoke to you about over the phone,” Godswill said. “It was taken from a Russian courier, one of the security contractors. Some of it’s in Russian—maybe this will be all the evidence you need?”

  Rollins nodded, tucked it under his arm.

  At the end of this speech Fox noted the sunlight finally blinking out. Before anyone switched to the power-generated lights, the Adhan sounded from an amplified muezzin atop a mosque’s minaret calling for the Maghrib. The fourth of the five daily salat and offered at sunset, about half the militants went to prayer. The remainder took a brief rest in waiting for their comrades.

  “Why not the rest?” Fox asked Javens.

  “Pretty good representation of this area,” Javens said. “These people are about fifty–fifty Christian and Muslim. They work together, they live together, they fight together. And, as he said, this fight is not about religion. It’s about basic standards of living. They want what any people would want and expect from a government.”

  Rollins took an offered rug, then knelt into prayer position too. Fox and Gammaldi didn’t react but Fox noticed that Javens was surprised. They watched and listened in silence. The MI6 agent looked to Rollins after he got up, a look that said that’s new.

  Before anyone said a word, and in the instant that the bare light-bulbs hanging from the tin roof and from tree branches came alight, gunfire ripped through the air. The deep staccato of heavy-calibre machine-guns.

  Fox and the others ducked for cover as tracer rounds shredded into the compound, zapping laser-like through the tin roof. They punched through the tree canopy like hail. The thunder of two Eurocopter Super Puma helicopters raced close to the water straight towards them. In seconds they were overhead and the reverberation from the rotors thumped in Fox’s chest.

  41

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  “A nurse?” McCorkell said, reading over the personnel record on his way down the stairs to the West Wing basement level. “Jack McFarland. Jesus…”

  “FBI took him to Bethesda Naval Hospital,” O’Keeffe said. “He’s still unconscious, apparent OD. Deceased has been IDed by the neighbours as his boyfriend. Single stab wound is the likely cause of death, looks like it could have been a domestic dispute.”

  “And the deceased’s ID?”

  They entered the Situation Room and O’Keeffe pointed to one of the large OLED flat-panel screens on the western wall.

  “He’s our man,” O’Keeffe said. “Part of an IMU cell we thought we saw the last of in Afghanistan.”

  “What are the chances that Jack McFarland knew who his boyfriend was?” McCorkell asked. “Did he know he was telling a terrorist the health condition of POTUS?”

  “It is possible. FBI and my guys are at Bethesda, ready to talk to him as soon as he comes to,” O’Keeffe said. “But at this stage my cop gut is telling me that this was an open-shut domestic.”

  “Lucky break for us,” McCorkell said. “So who is he?”

  “The deceased is Tahir Massoud,” O’Keeffe said. “Saudi born. Suspected of the murder of five foreign aide workers and a BBC journalist in Afghanistan. Entered the US three months ago under a false name and Israeli passport.”

  “He enter alone?” McCorkell asked.

  “No,” O’Keeffe said, grim-faced. “There were three other men travelling with the same nationality passports and work visas for a dead-end address in Atlanta.” The Secret Service agent got all four immigration photos up on the screens.

  “Wait—what’s that? That Al Jazeera?” McCorkell asked, indicating the news image displayed on a section of the massive screen at one end of the room. An aide worked the controls and the image and sound now took up half the space.

  “Al Jazeera is running the story now!” the DHS agent replied. “IMU cell have claimed the attack. Two men from Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, names and pics, as pilots of the boats that struck the LOOP.”

  “Run it through the facial—”

  “That’s them,” O’Keeffe said, pointing to two of the faces who had entered the US. “I don’t need facial rec to put this together—they are two of the guys Massoud entered the country with.”

  McCorkell watched the footage. The image of the smouldering LOOP structure was shown in the background along with the names and photos of the two Afghani-born martyrs.

  “Tell me the NSA is tracking that Al Jazeera tip-off,” McCorkell asked an agent on the phone—receiving a nod in the affirmative in reply.

  “We’re tilting the earth to find the fourth guy,” Mark Kipling, Director of National Intelligence, said. “We’re tracking names, faces—”

  “We’ve got three of them kicked out of a Tampa strip-bar four nights ago,” the FBI agent said. “Got a bit touchy-feely during amateur hour.”

  “Looks like they wanted a sneak peek of what lay ahead for them in the afterlife. Someone get that shit to Al Jazeera and CNN, see how their sympathisers view their martyrs now,” McCorkell said. He turned to the FBI agent. “Anyone see them arrive or leave the bar? Surveillance of the area, car park, door cams?”

  “Working through it now,” the FBI agent said. He was the mouthpiece for the FBI in the room, a direct line of access for the White House to the massive workforce of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “Got a hit on the passport alias. Car rental company in Miami. Matches a vehicle that left the club in Tampa—yep, here’s the image now, Ford Escape with four occupants, security footage from car park.”

  McCorkell
considered the grainy footage.

  “I got a traffic camera which clocked that vehicle speeding later that night—make it early the next morning—on Highway One,” the FBI agent said. “Southbound, just before the Keys’ Overseas Highway.”

  “Get FBI CT teams in the area, alert Miami SWAT, have anyone with serious firepower ready to move,” McCorkell said.

  Fullop entered the Situation Room with the Acting President.

  “SPR draw-downs?” McCorkell asked. The pair had come from the Cabinet meeting in the Executive Briefing Room under the East Wing.

  “The Cabinet’s with me. We’re sitting firm for now,” Fullop said, taking a seat next to the Acting President.

  “Mr Vice President, the LOOP will be out of action for days,” McCorkell said. “That’s a big disruption to a big percentage of our oil imports. I’ve just learned that the Nigerian political landscape may change real fast. If we don’t release the Strategic Petroleum Reserve right now, we’ll see gas prices at the pump rising a couple of dollars over the next few days.”

  “We’re staying put for now,” Jackson said. “Let’s not knee-jerk here. Now, what we got here—who’re the Arabs on screen?”

  McCorkell motioned for an aide to update them, then he led O’Keeffe outside the room.

  “What’s the status of POTUS?”

  “Just out of recovery, doing fine. He’s spending tonight at Washington Hospital Center, we got it locked down good,” O’Keeffe said, misreading McCorkell’s concern. “No one’s getting near him.”

  Bill McCorkell weighed up some options. The wheels were grinding again.

  “Have a car ready to take me to see the President in—” McCorkell checked his watch, “twenty minutes.”

  O’Keeffe nodded and relayed the order into his sleeve mic. McCorkell entered the Situation Room again and moved to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  “What’s that squid gut of yours telling you, Don?” McCorkell asked the Admiral.

  “We’ve had over eight groups claim the attack so far,” Vanzet said. “Al Qaeda or ICU seem more legit. These IMU boys can’t punch this hard and they’re far from home without serious help.”

  “Al Qaeda…” McCorkell said. “Massoud’s the right pedigree … The IMU may be a smokescreen to make it clear these guys weren’t Saudi backed?”

  Vanzet and O’Keeffe nodded. McCorkell turned to address the room:

  “I want to know everything about these guys.” McCorkell pointed at the screen as he spoke. “Where they sleep when they’re not on our soil, where they eat, who wiped their asses when they were kids. Everything.”

  “Agency rap sheets are here,” the CIA liaison said. He opened the computer files on a wall-mounted screen. “Their known activities include every Islamist hot spot of the past fifteen years—Chechnya, ‘Stan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Indonesia—”

  “Massoud was not far out of the FBI’s Most Wanted,” the FBI agent said. “He has several documented travels in Indonesia, confirmed as having provided materiel support to Jemaah Islamiyah.”

  “Might have met his Afghani play friends over there,” McCorkell said. “Call up the agency team heading this—”

  “On line three,” the CIA rep said.

  “Have them put everything on these guys, press every humint asset they can to see if we can find out who they’ve been playing with.”

  The agency rep motioned to speak.

  “Yep?” McCorkell said.

  “Last known IMU cell activity was Kabul ‘04, where their senior leadership was declared dead as killed by a missile strike from an Agency Predator UAV.”

  “Whose op was that?” McCorkell asked. He waited a few seconds for the reply, then repeated himself to the clean-cut analyst in the light grey suit. “Whose op, and who declared them dead?”

  “CIA High Value Target hunting team called in the strike after a tip-off of location and confirmation by Grey Wolf operators. Lead agent was a Steve Mendes.”

  “Steve Mendes?”

  “He was a senior Agency NOC agent in—”

  “Now freelance in Nigeria,” McCorkell said.

  “That’s right…” The young Agency guy looked surprised.

  “Have everything you can get on Mendes sent through to my office, and cc in the DDCIA of Operations—sorry, of NCS,” McCorkell said. “Mark, I’ll need you to clear some locked files on Mendes from Boxcell’s days and have them sent to me too.”

  The DNI nodded and spoke to a staffer.

  “Don,” McCorkell said, “I’ll be on the cell if you need me.”

  “I got it,” Vanzet said. “We hauling anything into Nigeria besides the Wasp?”

  McCorkell looked to Jackson, the Chief of Staff whispering in his ear with running commentary.

  “You’re the acting Commander-in-Chief right now,” McCorkell said. “As your National Security Advisor, I’m telling you this: we need security ready to roll to help stabilise the government in Nigeria.”

  “They asked for our help?” Fullop queried, acting point-guard on his man.

  “It’s likely their president doesn’t know how close the coup is,” McCorkell said. “We can have the State Department send someone in to tell him.”

  “A small element of the 10th Mountain’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is already headed to Abuja to ensure the security of the US embassy there,” Vanzet said. “The rest of their squadron is en route to Darfur. They’re in V-22s and C-17s, the latter refuelling in Rota, Spain. They can re-route.”

  “Direct them to the airport in Abuja?” McCorkell said. “Send them in as a security force for the Nigerian President?”

  “If this coup happens and there’s trouble that could be a hot LZ,” Vanzet said. “C-17s are big targets. I say wait and hear what the lead element in the V-22s report in.”

  “The lead element of the 1st BCT is a single platoon from their reinforced RSTA squadron, designated chalks one through four,” the Air Force aide said. “Current location over southern Algeria.”

  “They can secure the airfield if need be?”

  “We’ll need to wait and see what the initial force report in,” Vanzet said. “But make no mistake: a full 10th Mountain BCT could defend DC from the devil.”

  McCorkell looked to Vanzet, who nodded his consent. He turned to Jackson who’d been taking it all in—military actions 101.

  “Bill, Don,” Jackson said. “This has to be done?”

  “If you want to secure the government, yes, sir,” Vanzet said. “And if this coup becomes a threat to our national security, it means we can have a more flexible military option available to us.”

  McCorkell nodded.

  “Sir,” Fullop said to the Vice President. “I think if we are talking about sending in troops, we should talk about forces heading for the coastal areas. Wait for the two-thousand-strong Marine force aboard the Wasp; secure the delta region, that’s where the oil’s at.”

  “Don, how many troops would it take to secure the Niger Delta?” McCorkell asked. They’d had this discussion before and it was the sort of thing that the Pentagon war-gamed at constantly.

  “A hundred thousand, give or take,” Vanzet said. “And that’s just in the major cities. If we have to police a civil conflict in Nigeria as well as protect oil infrastructure, at least double that number.”

  McCorkell looked at Peter Larter, Secretary of Defense, eyebrows raised: You got that many shooters available?

  “Mr Vice President, a security force of that size can’t be assembled inside a month,” Larter said. “And even then, we’d be stretched. I’m talking we’d have to pull most of our boots out of South Korea and expand our stop-loss program.”

  “If Nigeria goes down, our economy goes down,” McCorkell said, a last ditch at getting the men he knew were needed onto the ground. “An attack on oil production there is an attack on the American way of life. Put it this way—if no oil gets to us from Nigeria, we’ll lose those three m
illion American jobs the Cabinet just heard about, and that’s just the ramifications this week. We add this so soon on the back of the credit crisis, we’re talking the deepest recession we’ve felt in our time.”

  “Jesus…” Jackson said.

  “No, not even He can help us—but you can,” Fullop said. “I say, do a national broadcast, prime-time tonight, assuring the nation—and the markets—that following the attack at the LOOP we have everything under control. Ask for international help in calming political unrest in Nigeria.”

  Jackson tapped his fingers on the table. The decision was close. McCorkell could see that Fullop’s proposition of a TV spot was alluring to a man who wanted public perception to associate him with the Oval Office.

  “How about the UN?” Jackson asked. “Could they send in a force?”

  “Give them twelve months, maybe,” McCorkell said.

  “Having a few boots on the ground to safeguard the Nigerian presidency is not enough,” Fullop said. “Oil flow can still be cut off and a stalemate for power will ensue for God knows how long. You want to secure it, wait for the power shift and support the new guy. Show him we mean business by a show of power. Lead with an MEU and carrier group, follow up with an armoured division, and have the entire airborne corps fall in from the sky. Shock and awe tactics, in and out, and leave no doubt that we can be back in hours. We can have the hundred-K boots there within a month and ensure the new government sees things our way.”

  “We are stretched too thin to police their delta region,” Larter said. “Nigeria has nearly ten times the population of Iraq. You really sure you want to put an occupying force into that? I know I don’t.”

  “Then we work on gaining command of their own army to police it,” Fullop said.

  There was silence as the room considered all that had just been discussed, just the hum of air-conditioning and the aides tapping away at laptops.

  “The Abuja airlift of 10th Mountain is a good first action, Mr Vice President,” McCorkell said. “Within a day our boys will secure the elected Nigerian government. They will have air cover, and their transport will stay on the ground ready to bug them out if need be.”