With a small sigh, Rozek settled in to wade through the pile of maintenance reports, time sheets, and union grievances waiting for him. Paperwork was the one constant in his working day. And he loathed it.
Alarm bells shattered his concentration.
“We’ve got gas pressure falling rapidly on both One and Two! Down to one thousand p.s.i.!”
Mother of God. Rozek whirled toward the window, fully expecting to see a pillar of flame streaming skyward somewhere close by. Nothing. The break must be further up the pipeline. But how the hell had anyone cut through both lines simultaneously? They were buried several meters apart as a precaution against just that kind of accident.
“Pressure at nine hundred and still falling!”
The chief engineer jumped to his feet and ran for the control console. Suddenly his back didn’t hurt at all.
He leaned over the senior technician’s shoulder, squinting to read the old-fashioned dial meters. They’d been hoping to put in more modern digital readout equipment, but the government hadn’t been able to afford it yet. The indicators were still plunging, plummeting past 850 pounds per square inch.
In the shed outside the control room door, the regular, chugging roar from the compressors was changing, speeding up as they ran faster with less natural gas flowing through them. The sound sent a chill down Rozek’s spine. The engines were overrevving. Much more of that and they were likely to tear themselves apart, slashing through piping still filled with highly flammable gas.
He reached past the technician and slapped down switches controlling the first pair of compressors, turning them off. “Knock ’em down! Shut everything down! Now!”
His men hurried to obey the order while he grabbed the phone connecting Przemysl to the next station up the pipeline — two hundred miles to the northeast, on the border between Belarus and Ukraine.
A technician, an ethnic Russian by his clear diction, answered on the first ring. “Compressor Station Six.”
“This is the chief engineer at Przemysl.” Rozek fumbled for the right Russian words. He’d learned the language out of necessity, not because he liked it. “I think we’ve got a line break somewhere between us. We’re closing down right away.”
“There is no accident, chief engineer.” The Russian technician’s voice was guarded.
“No? Then what in God’s name is going on?”
“Please hold for a moment.”
Rozek could hear clicking sounds as the man switched him to another line.
A new voice came on, colder and more precise. “You are the engineer in charge at Przemysl?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Colonel Viktor Polyakov. As the Commonwealth military representative for this district, I now command this station. I suggest you put your facility on permanent standby.” The Russian Army officer delivered his next bombshell bluntly. “My orders are to inform you that all oil and gas deliveries to your country are being stopped. Effective immediately.”
Rozek gripped the phone tighter. “Orders? From where?”
“From Moscow, chief engineer.” The phone line went dead.
Rozek stood clutching the phone for several seconds as his mind sorted through the implications of what he’d just been told. “Oh, shit.”
He slammed the red emergency phone down and reached for the black phone next to it. This one was a dedicated line to Poland’s Ministry of Mining and Power. “This is Rozek. I need to speak with the minister. We have a problem.”
The senior members of the National Security Council filled the White House Cabinet Room. They were meeting here because the basement Situation Room they ordinarily used was being given a multimillion-dollar face-lift. Work crews were busy installing the latest computer-driven displays and secure communications gear, including equipment intended to allow real-time teleconferences with military commanders and other leaders around the globe during some hypothetical future emergency. Naturally, now that they were facing a real crisis, the timing couldn’t possibly have been any worse.
It was the first time Ross Huntington had ever been invited to sit in on such a high-level administration gathering. He felt distinctly uncomfortable.
The men and women seated around the long rectangular table eyed him from time to time, some with frank curiosity, others with open envy. His reputation as the President’s unofficial right-hand man was spreading. Huntington tried not to let their stares bother him. There were plenty of top officials who resented his easy access to the Oval Office. Nothing would bring their PR knives and malicious press leaks out sooner than any sign of uncertainty on his part. Politicians, like other finned scavengers, homed in on the first taste of blood in the water.
He forced himself to pay close attention to the handsome, red-haired man giving the preliminary briefing.
“Basically, Mr. President, the Poles are up shit’s creek, and the Czechs and Slovaks aren’t much better.” Clinton Scofield, the Secretary of Energy, was a former South Carolina governor who lived up to his tough-talking reputation. The Washington rumor mill said the forty-five-year-old widower liked betting on fast horses and dating even faster women. He was also known as a knowledgeable, hardworking, and completely loyal cabinet officer. In Huntington’s eyes that made up for a multitude of real and imagined sins. “Poland imports better than ninety-eight percent of its crude oil — ninety percent from one source, Russia. They’re a little better off when it comes to natural gas supplies, but not by much. Siberian gas met sixty percent of their needs last year. The two other countries are in pretty much the same position.”
“What about stockpiles?” Harris Thurman, the Secretary of State, asked his question around the stem of a pipe he wasn’t allowed to light. “Don’t they have strategic reserves?”
Scofield shook his head. “They do. But not a lot. Two weeks at normal consumption. Maybe thirty days’ worth under the emergency rationing program they’re implementing. If they’re lucky. They sure won’t make it through the winter without suffering a complete economic collapse.”
Most of those around the table looked astonished by the Energy Secretary’s dire assessment. The United States held enough oil in its SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to meet all domestic needs for at least three full months. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that other, poorer nations operated closer to the margin.
“Can’t they just find other suppliers?” The dark-haired woman who headed the Treasury had done some homework. She held up one of the weekly reports prepared by DOE’s Energy Information Administration. “Your own department keeps saying there’s no worldwide shortage of oil or natural gas. If that’s true, I think we should simply urge them to look elsewhere and be done with it.”
Several cabinet officers murmured their agreement. Even inside the administration there were deep divisions over fundamental policy. A strong minority opposed any moves to increase America’s overseas commitments. Domestic initiatives were closer to their hearts and departmental budgets. They were backed by isolationist sentiment in the Congress.
“It’s not that simple.” Scofield cleared his throat. “You can’t buy on the spot market without hard currency — real dollars — and that’s something else the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks are short on. They were paying the Russians in kind, trading iron, steel, chemicals, computers, and the like for crude oil and gas. No OPEC country’s going to cut the same kinds of deals with them.”