“But these chemicals are closely guarded inside their manufacturing and storage base,” objected Gumienny “How do they get the cargo with no one noticing?” “And we were specifically told a ship would be the carrier,” said Seymour. “Any hijacking of such a cargo would bring immediate retaliation.” “Except in some parts of the Third World that are virtually lawless,” said Gumienny.
“But these ultralethal toxins are not made in such places anymore, not even for labor-cost savings, sir.”
“So, we are back to a ship?” said Hill. “Another exploding oil tanker?” “Crude oil does not explode,” Seymour pointed out. “When the Torrey Canyon was ripped open off the French coast, it took phosphorus bombs to persuade the oil to ignite and burn off. A vented oil tanker will only cause ecodamage, not mass murder. But a quite small gas tanker could do it. Liquid gas, massively concentrated for transportation.”
“Natural gas, liquid form?” asked Gumienny. He was trying to think how many ports in the USA imported concentrates of gas for industrial power, and the number was becoming unsettling. But surely these docking facilities were miles from massed humanity.
“Liquid natural gas, known as LNG, is hard to ignite,” Seymour countered. “It is stored at minus 256 Fahrenheit in special double-hulled vessels. Even if you took one over, the stuff would have to leak into the atmosphere for hours before it became combustible. But according to the eggheads, there is one that frightens the hell out of them. LPG Liquid petroleum gas. “It is so awful that a quite small tanker, if torched within ten minutes of catastrophic rupture, would unleash the power of thirty Hiroshima bombs, the biggest nonnuclear explosion on this planet.”
There was total silence in the room above the Thames. Steve Hill rose, strolled to the window and looked down at the river flowing past in the April sunshine. “In laymen’s language, what have you come here to say, Sam?” “I think we have been looking for the wrong ship in the wrong ocean. Our only break is that this is a tiny and very specialist market. But the biggest importer of LPG is the USA. I know there is a mood in Washington that all this may be a wild-goose chase. I think we should go the last mile. The USA can check out every LPG tanker expected in her waters, and not just from the Far East. And stop them until boarded. From Lloyd’s, I can check out every other LPG cargo worldwide, from any point on the compass.”
Marek Gumienny took the next flight back to Washington. He had conferences to attend and work to do. As he flew out of Heathrow, the Countess of Richmond came round Cape Agulhas, South Africa, and entered the Atlantic.
She had made good speed, and her navigator, one of the three Indonesians, estimated the Agulhas Current and the north-running Benguela Current would give her an extra day, and plenty of time to reach her intended destination. Farther out into the seas off the Cape, and on into the Atlantic, other ships were moving from the Indian Ocean to head for Europe or North America. Some were huge ore carriers, others general cargo ships bringing the ever-increasing amount of Asian manufactures to both Western continents as marketers “outsourced” manufacturing to the low-cost workshops of the East. Others still were supertankers too big even for the Suez Canal, their computers following the hundred-fathom line from the east to the west while their crews played cards. They were all noted. High above, out of sight and mind, the satellites drifted across inner space, their cameras relaying back to Washington every line of their structure and the names on their sterns. More, under recent legislation they all carried transponders emitting their individual call sign to the listening ears. Each identification was checked out, and that included the Countess of Richmond, vouched for by Lloyd’s and Siebart and Abercrombie as being a Liverpool-registered small freighter bringing a legitimate cargo on a foreseen route from Surabaya to Baltimore. For the USA, there was no point in probing deeper; she was thousands of miles from the American coast. Within hours of the return of Marek Gumienny to Washington, changes were made to the U.S. precautions. In the Pacific, the check-out-and-examine cordon was extended to a thousand-mile band off the coast. A similar cordon was established in the Atlantic from Labrador to Puerto Rico, and across the Caribbean Sea to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Without fuss or announcement, the emphasis abandoned the giant tankers and freighters, which by then had all been checked, and looked hard at the scores of smaller tankers that ply the seas from Venezuela to the Saint Lawrence River. Every EP-3 Orion available was pressed into coastal patrol, flying over hundreds of thousands of square miles of tropical and subtropical sea looking for small tankers, and especially for those bearing gas.
American industry cooperated to the full, supplying details of every cargo expected, where and when due. The data from industry was cross-indexed with the sightings at sea, and they all checked out. Gas tankers were permitted to arrive and dock, but only after taking on board a posse of U.S. Navy, Marine or Coast Guard personnel to escort them in, under guard, from a point two hundred miles out.
The Dona Maria was back in Port of Spain when the two terrorists she harbored in her crew saw the signal they had been briefed to expect. As instructed, when they saw it they acted.
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is a major supplier of petrochemical products across a wide spectrum to the United States. The Dona Maria was berthed at the offshore island, the tank farm where tankers large and small could approach, take cargo on board and leave without ever approaching the city itself.
The Dona Maria was one of the smaller tankers, a member of that fleet of vessels that service the islands whose facilities neither need nor can accommodate the giants. The big vessels are wont to bring in the Venezuelan crude, which is refined down to its various “fractions” at the onshore refinery, then piped out to the island for loading into the tankers.
Along with two other small tankers, the Dona Maria was at a specially remote section of the tank farm. Her cargo after all was liquefied petroleum gas, and no one wanted to be too close during the loading. It was late afternoon when she was finished and Captain Montalban prepared her for sea. There were still two hours of tropical daylight left when she slipped her mooring lines and eased away from the jetty. A mile offshore, she passed close to a rigid inflatable launch in which four men sat with fishing rods. It was the awaited sign.
The two Indians left their posts, ran below to their lockers and returned with handguns. One went amidships, where the scuppers were closest to the water and the men would board.
The other went to the bridge, and pointed his gun straight at the temple of Captain Montalban.
“Do nothing, please. Captain,” he said with great courtesy. “There is no need to slow down. My friends will board in a few minutes. Do not attempt to broadcast or I will have to shoot you.”
The captain was simply too amazed to fail to obey. As he recovered, he glanced at the radio at one side of the bridge, but the Indian caught his glance and shook his head. At that, all resistance was snuffed out. Minutes later, the four terrorists were aboard and opposition became futile. The last man out of the inflatable slashed it with a carving knife and it sank in the wake when the painter was released. The other three men had already hefted their canvas grips and stepped over the spaghetti mix of pipes, tubes and tank hatches that define a tanker’s foredeck as they made their way aft. They appeared on the bridge seconds later: two Algerians and two Moroccans, the ones Dr. al-Khattab had sent over a month earlier. They spoke only Moorish Arabic, but the two Indians, still courteous, translated. The four South American crewmen were to be summoned to the foredeck, and would wait there. A new course would be calculated and adhered to.