Dimochka pulled a phone from his pocket and instructed the Mil Mi-24’s and Super Cobras that had been hovering overhead to transport the Red Cross trucks back to camp. Some of the workers would be transported in the Super Cobras and some in the massive Hind-Flarge. Robinson held Turner close while the pair watched the helicopters lift the trucks into the air and sail out of sight. She did not resist and appeared to welcome the more than casual closeness. Feelings began to stir within. How does one begin? Is it God that has finally brought us together?
Dimochka looked at the pair and he knew. “It is kismet my comrade. Some things are meant to be.”
Robinson gathered some wild lilacs and gave them to Turner and Wagner. Carol removed her cap and the silky strands spilled down her shoulders while she fixed a flower in her hair. “How does that look?” she asked.
“You look like an angel to me.” Robinson knew it was cornball, but he didn’t care. He gave her a kiss on the lips.
A minute later everyone boarded the Hind-Flarge and left Ethiopia behind forever.
Chapter Thirty
Bad news travels fast.
The New York Stock Exchange opened at 9:30 a.m. and there was an imbalance of orders. Many stocks did not open for hours as there were no buyers. Orders had been given to sell at any price. And they did. The Dow opened down 1512 points and dropped off from there. By the time of the press conference it was down 2,897 points. The Chicago Exchange and the NASDAQ followed everything into the toilet. The MSNBC reporters talked to the floor traders who declared there was “no hope” all confidence in the market was gone. Of course others said it was a buying opportunity. China and the EU markets had collapsed and trading was halted. Countries that were exporters of oil did well. Russia and Venezuela were up eight and a half and nine percent respectively. The dollar was extremely weak. Gold jumped a hundred points and traded over fourteen-hundred for the first time in the last two years.
The oil futures pits went on a buying rampage. Governments were jumping into the mix working banking deals behind closed doors with the oil companies to lock in the scarce contracts. Crude at $2 hundred a barrel suddenly looked cheap. By eleven o’clock it had climbed to $527.50 and the market froze up. The SEC declared that they would keep the market open and lifted the restrictions. The SecEn declared the oil was too important to close the pits. “We are a capitalist nation and cannot restrict the fair trading of commodities simply because the markets are irrational.” Clearly something was going on behind the scenes.
The value of the dollar dropped dramatically and suddenly the Russian ruble became the currency of choice. There was no warning. The Chinese began dumping dollars and buying the Russian coin. They declared that they would raise the interest rate by a full percentage point as contracts expired. When this was picked up by the traders, there was an international stampede
The EU began buying Bolívar fuerte from Venezuela where gasoline sold to its citizens for fifteen cents a gallon. “They use sugar cane to power their vehicles” according to a news report from CNN and FOX. They went on to explain that the ’73 oil crisis set the energy policy into high gear and that nothing had run on gasoline for the last decade. There was a “spillover effect.” Money began pouring into the Baltic States, Bolivia and Columbia. Everyone agreed the smart money was now on the ruble and the Bolívar fuerte.
Whittman read the official statement from the teleprompter promptly at eleven that morning. “Welcome ladies and gentlemen of the press. It is possible you may have heard that the tankers in the Somalia oil hostage crisis have been destroyed. This is most unfortunate and we can only guess as to its cause at this time so I cannot elaborate on this until further information is secured. I can report that the president had ordered Operation OMAN and that as it was about to commence when the supertankers were destroyed by forces unknown to us. The mission was to secure the tankers and to return the hostages back to their families. Personally I think the president is to be commended for the bold initiative of ordering the mission since the UN had reached a stalemate. With the deadline looming it was agreed unanimously by the SecDef and the entire Cabinet that such action was prudent.
As you all know the president believes in the free market system and has no plans to order any changes in the way business is transacted. If there are any modifications to be made it will be done by the free market, not by any government mandate.
As of this moment we have no information as to the situation with the hostages or crew members that were aboard the tankers. The president as you may well expect is hopeful that the hostages are alive and well. I will now take any questions that you may have.”
He glanced at his watch and drank water from a Styrofoam cup. “I have another appointment in a few minutes so I must set a limit of three questions this morning.”
The reporter from WorldNetDaily asked the first question. “I wonder how there can be so little information on the hostages. Do we not have satellite surveillance that would detect if hostages were removed before the explosions?”
“Yes, we do Chip. We can only hope that the hostages were removed without detection from our surveillance. We can report that we did not have any evidence that they were removed. As you know the pirates have dramatically stepped up their efforts to use stealth technology and we have no way to countermeasure this.”
“Were SEALS teams involved in Operation OMAN?”
“Yes, they were a part of the operation.”
“Would you say that the explosions would not have taken place if Operation OMAN was not underway?” asked CNBC’s Michelle Curtis. “Isn’t it probable that the threat of the SEALS teams were the reason the tankers were destroyed?”
“We would need to ask that very question to the leader of the pirates Admiral Mahdi. We do know our forces had nothing to do with it. Our mission was to secure the ships and remove the hostages — nothing more. There was no indication from any of our teams that the tankers were booby trapped and that their presence set off the explosions.”
“Were any pirates on board when the explosions occurred?”
“We may know the answer to that at a later date. To the best of my knowledge no pirates were reported by the SEALS teams to be on board. The SEALS teams were on board for only a few seconds, as I understand it, and the mission was aborted the moment the first explosion occurred. It is entirely possible pirates were somewhere in the ship, however we cannot imagine why, since it would have been suicidal. None of the tankers were explored beyond the upper deck.”
He glanced at his watch. “That is the last question. As you would imagine the president is quite concerned about this ongoing situation and is working with the Pentagon and his Cabinet around the clock to determine what our next move may be in this unfortunate crisis. He was exhausted after a forty-eight hour stretch in preparation for Operation OMAN, and did get a good night’s rest. I did see him this morning and he was fully rested and ready to tackle anything that might require his attention.”
The President of Iran addressed the Majlis in the newer legislative building in central Tehran. The members had the power to set policy, make laws and such, in a muddled bureaucracy in which anything it did could be nullified by various councils, and assorted higher up bric-a-brac, mainly the Supreme Leader.
Khalilullah 'Abd al-Wahhab began, “I come here today to tell you of a great injustice that has befallen our country. The Americans have chosen to poison our shores with crude oil and have performed this evil act in the guise of releasing hostages. They will undoubtedly claim that it was an ‘unfortunate accident’ that they ‘apologize’ for any inconvenience this may cause. It has been reported to me that the crude will grow with each passing day until it completely engulfs our shores. We will be landlocked. There will be no way we will be able to export our oil. The Straight of Hormuz which is critical to our export will very likely never be passable again. It will cost billions to clean it up. I SAY IT IS THE AMERICAN’S RESPONIBILITY TO CLEAN UP THIS ACT OF WAR!”