“Hmm; I might have some friends that could probably bring you up to date.”
“Sitting at a keyboard hooked to a satellite — it is difficult to imagine how that could hijack a tanker.”
“Yes, it would take more than that. That is how they find you. Satellites hovering overhead spot your boats, then choppers descend upon your position before you can get near the target. Am I right?”
Yes he is right. I lost five good men this week. They find me often before I sight a ship and they turn us around. They are not falling for the fisherman ruse anymore. I should listen to the general as he has some good ideas. “You are right.”
“Let us imagine that you set up a command post in which you had all the equipment that the aircraft carriers possess. You would be able to see all the activity upon your waters.”
“I could imagine that.”
“Suppose you had stealth speedboats, submarines, helicopters — that your activities would be invisible to CENTCOM.”
“Then I imagine we could enjoy much success.”
“Forget about having bags of cash dropped to the tankers. You would have billions transferred to your accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands in the blink of an eye.”
“I see.” He ground out the cigarette and immediately lit another. “It would be much different than we handle it now. It is but a dream to do these things you speak of. ”
“Maybe — maybe not.” A dogged smile crossed his face. “I have heard of a warehouse that has all of these things right here in Bosaco. My country, as you may have heard, is supplying your country with supplies and manpower to get rid of the terrorists and rogue militias that roam here. Who is to say that a warehouse might be robbed from under our noses?”
“A warehouse—”
“I believe it is unguarded and a pair of lock cutters in the middle of the night could upset our plans to set up the navel command post. Inside, trucks are loaded with the equipment as our forces have been too busy to unload it all. Locations of unguarded helicopters, subs, boats — the list goes on. How unfortunate for me if we were to discover that everything was gone tomorrow. There would be all that paper work of ordering more supplies.”
“A warehouse?”
“And then I will soon be forced to hunt you down and hang all of you.”
“Hang us?”
“Unless of course I cannot find you because you have moved your operation out of the country, perhaps to Yemen or Oman.”
Mahdi blew twin jets of smoke out of his nostrils. His heart beat wildly out of control at these suggestions. He took a deep breath and felt his heart slow back down. “I am beginning to understand. I only wonder what you will get out of this…,” he muttered. His brow furrowed suddenly suspicious.
“My country has brought in a lot of oilfields in the last few years. If your activities should bring up the price of oil the tiniest bit we would do well. Anything that happens in the Indian Ocean has no bearing on our ability to deliver oil.”
“I see.” The sly dog. His country will make billions — perhaps more when I upset the oil markets. He needs someone who can do it and I am the logical choice. I’ll earn billions. It is a business arrangement. I wreck havoc and we all become wealthy beyond comprehension.
“The warehouse has a wealth of information for you including the passwords to the CENTCOM command post. You will know everything your pursuers are contemplating. You will see and hear their every move…”
“My God!” Allah is with me today. This is the day I have prepared for all my life.
“My only suggestion for you is to use your imagination and stay one step ahead at all times. When they think they have you figured out, they will discover you have changed your MO and left them in your wake.” He stood up. “Officially, we have never met, I was never here. My militia will raid this place in a few days and I suspect you will be long gone.”
“I will be gone. That is a certainty.” Dimochka offered a Russian bear hug then handed Mahdi a slip of paper with an address scribbled upon it.
The general had left.
The militia was gone.
Mahdi sat stunned among his lieutenants for nearly ten minutes gazing upon the ships passing through the port. He ground out his last cigarette in an opalescent ashtray.
Finally he spoke.
“What are we waiting for? We must leave this place forever, raid the warehouse,
then set up shop in Oman!
MOVE IT! WE HAVE MUCH WORK TO DO!”
Chapter Twelve
Kuznetsov felt the meeting was proceeding as well as could be expected.
The President of Transneft, Yuri Solyarsky, summed up the reports. “The Eastern Siberia — Pacific Ocean oil pipeline will deliver crude to our Asian-Pacific markets soon and is expected to be completed on time. The Duzhba pipeline, the South Stream, the Capsian, the Baltic and the others are on line now and we are beginning to serve the markets.”
“Thank you. That is good news indeed.”
“I respectfully must go on record that the upgrades to these systems appear to be capital intensive and was the reason for bringing in LukArco, Mobile Rosnef, Agip, Oryx, BG and the rest. Buying out their interests came at a high price that places a strain on our Russian endeavors.”
“Your observations are noted and I would respectfully agree that this has been an expensive proposition. I must say that I appreciate your wholehearted support in the light of the great burden placed upon our country. It is my feeling that the oil was given to us by our motherland and that we should reap the benefits in its entirety, not to share it as we have done in the past with foreigners.”
“We have borrowed heavily and at the current market prices I would….”
“Russia must look to the future. During the last decade we have built the most extensive pipelines in the world and have developed new oil fields in every region of our country. One could say we are ready to serve the world in a way that rivals the Middle East.”
Vissarionovich added, “We have only begun our work and will continue to explore our land for oil fields. We have recently decided to invest our resources in Somalia as that region is relatively unexplored. While we work to stabilize the government, we will make it an oil rich country and build strategically based airfields and ports to protect our interests against aggression from Iran, which is certain to come.”
Head of the Federal Energy Agency Lebedev inquired, “We have other resources such as gold, silver, and diamonds. Do you have any plans at all to mine any of these?”
“Much of this is in Siberia and these endeavors are labor intensive and climate is legendary for its severity. The South Africans pay their workers a pittance to mine their fields and it is best we leave these resources to explore in the far future.”
Kuznetsov concluded, “We anticipate that market prices will rise as time passes. China is expanding very quickly and it finds itself requiring oil as never before. It now relies upon us to supply it with nearly all of its imported oil and we are prepared to meet that demand.”
Unrest permeated the media.
A Newsweek article asked “Did They Know?” and went on to suggest that the president knew the Iranians were about to perform a nuclear test. It wondered, “How could they not know?” when nearly everyone one suspected as much. Did Washington believe that the Iranians were interested in nuclear energy to produce electricity as they claimed? Where was the CIA for the last decade when reports were arriving daily that Iran was purchasing FBR’s from the Russians to produce plutonium? And what about the hidden nuclear facilities exposed in September of ’09? How many more were undiscovered?