Yet the car was moving.
The tires had been blown to shreds, Quinn realized, but the run-flat system made the Cadillac roll forward until the car smashed against an obstacle and came to a stop.
Jolted by the final impact, Quinn turned to see that sitting next to him, Richter was unconscious. A trickle of blood was streaming down the businessman’s face from a gash in his forehead. Quinn didn’t know if Richter was dead, but he didn’t care. He had to think about himself now. The car was burning; soon he would be trapped inside. Luckily, the gas tank had remained intact, but it could blow up at any moment.
Quinn reached for the door and yanked the handle. Pushing the door open, he crawled out of the car desperately. Dashing a few yards away, he felt his knees buckle. His vision blurred and he tumbled down onto the road. He couldn’t pick himself up, his limbs wobbly, so he gathered all his strength to turn around and check his surroundings.
He saw mayhem.
The car of the suicide bomber was a charred frame devoured by fire. Black smoke billowed from the wreckage of the Toyota. Anguished cries filled the street, passersby fleeing the area in a frantic commotion. Shards of glass covered the road, strewn from the other vehicles hit by the blast. All the cars in the vicinity had suffered damage — either hit by fragments, catching fire, or crashing into each other. There was blood on the asphalt, motorists and pedestrians injured or killed.
Swerving into the opposite lane, the Cadillac itself had hit a car parked at the curb, blocking traffic. The ambassador could hardly believe the destruction his car had taken.
Nothing lighter than a tank would survive a similar attack. The entire front of the car had been destroyed, the radiator and the engine gone. The crumpled hood was reaching the roof. Only the additional shell protecting the passengers had saved Quinn’s life, or else he would have been mutilated like the DS driver. Absorbing the fragments, the side of the car was peppered with dents and holes. A mesh of cracks netted the windows.
The smoke and blaze was intensifying.
Then, out of nowhere, two running figures appeared, heading for the wreckage. Both were dressed in military fatigues and carried Kalashnikov rifles, but they were no soldiers. In lieu of insignia, they wore green headbands with Arabic lettering. Black bandannas concealed their faces.
One of them rammed a foot into Quinn’s gut. He gagged from the pain.
Eyes watering, he saw the man’s partner approach the ambassadorial car. The masked guerilla aimed his Kalashnikov at Richter, still lying prone inside.
“Allahu akbar!”
The Kalashnikov rattled, the gunfire cracking like thunder. Hitting Clayton Richter, the bullets tore up geysers of blood that streaked on the leather upholstery.
Without warning, another volley sounded, fired by the man standing over Quinn. The ambassador felt hot slugs corkscrewing through his body in a split-second.
Quinn gaped.
Blood sprouted from him.
His murderer yelled a command at the second terrorist and they ran away.
As he lay dying, their voices haunted him. They were young, still in their teens.
He could not imagine a death more stupid than being killed by some damned brats.
William Underhill was accustomed to long sleepless nights. Langley lived with no regard to time zones. As Director of Central Intelligence, he had learned long ago that the worst contingencies always broke out at night. Bombings in the Middle East, assassinations in Europe, hostilities in Asia all caught the world’s strongest country sleeping. It was broad daylight everywhere else, and disaster seemed eager to strike just in time to be fresh for America’s morning headlines. Clayton Richter was killed eleven hours ahead of midnight in Virginia.
Heading for an emergency briefing at the White House, Underhill felt that the last few hours had been more frantic than any he could remember.
He was ushered to the Oval Office, the President expecting him to deliver the full details. As much as he would have liked to, Richter’s death was not something he could conceal from the President. But the DCI’s report carried omissions even at Top Secret level. The whole truth did not always benefit national security. Underhill had no intention of telling the President that Richter had been a CIA man, or divulging his agenda in Kazakhstan.
The walls of the Oval Office converged in a domed ceiling fifteen feet above the President, who was sitting behind his massive oak desk. The panoramic windows behind him were adorned with velvet olive-green curtains, identical in color to those originally chosen a century earlier.
The President belonged to the Oval Office. He matched the grandeur of his position; he was a leader that this country deserved to have. Over his three years in office, he had united the American public at a time of hardship.
Yet the burden of leading the nation was taking its toll. Challenged by the problems the previous administrations had left him, each victory was harder to claim. He now was a different man compared to the energetic Governor of Iowa who had won the election by a landslide. Even the outward change was notable. At fifty-eight, his blond hair had tinged with grey, and his face had acquired stress lines.
Accepting the classified folder from Underhill, the President placed it on his desk for later study.
“This,” he said jabbing his finger at the folder, “is a full-blown catastrophe.”
He failed to contain his frustration.
“We have only begun climbing out of recession,” the President continued. “Our economy is still a few years from returning to growth, and even then I doubt our recovery will be full, with the strain of our trade and budget deficits. You know as well as I do how much we need the Caspian oil. Every extra dollar per barrel of crude increases our debt. And once the economy has bounced back, the oil prices will soar again. If that happens, we will plunge into a deeper abyss than we’ve ever encountered. And now we’re staring at a very real possibility of that happening.”
“I understand your concern, Mr. President. It appears we have lost the Caspian.”
With ten percent of the world’s total oil reserve, the Caspian Sea was an untouched treasure trove. Development of oil sites has remained deadlocked because of the power struggle among the Caspian states. Essentially, the Caspian Sea used to be the Soviets’ inner lake, but after the breakup everyone wanted a slice of the oil pie. For years, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan had been going for each other’s throats over territorial claims.
Everybody had their own way of dividing the seabed in their favor. Russia insisted on what was known as Modified Median Line — meaning that the shares would be proportionate to the countries’ respective coastlines. That proved completely unacceptable for Iran and the smaller nations; they wanted equal twenty percent shares. Others added to the confusion by offering their own dubious calculations. Nobody wanted to lose, but the inability to resolve the dispute paralyzed oil production. Time is money, so the negotiations resumed. A compromise was about to be reached.
“I want to know who’s responsible for this attack, Bill. The Russians? The Iranians and the Chinese?”
“I doubt the Russians are behind it. Russia, of course, is the world’s number one oil and natural gas exporter. They’d never let us into the Caspian. For them, it’s a matter of national security. They still consider the Caspian Sea as their private property. But their initiative of the Median Line method is all but accepted. Their share is secure and they don’t have to worry about losing it.”