“That’s all right. I assume I’m very safe here.”
“I guarantee that.”
“So it’s good we remain—but not for much longer. I do want to see my daughter. For now let me know if I can help with anything else.”
“I will.”
“Mr. Fisher, I’m sorry it’s come to this. The oligarchs do not represent the Russian people, only a tiny minority, like your so-called one percent.”
“I know. And the irony is, you and the rest of them, you got your money after the Soviet Union collapsed, so you were free to pursue greed at any cost.”
“Just like America?” Kasperov asked. “As if to say your Congress isn’t controlled by big businessmen?”
Fisher hesitated. “They’d never resort to this.”
“You don’t know that. Some men will do anything.”
“But not us, right? Not you. You did the right thing—and in my line of work, I don’t run into many people who have a conscience.”
* * *
ELEVEN hours and fifty-eight minutes later they landed at Dubai International Airport.
Fisher had barely slept, and Grim had refused to leave the SMI table, even as dark circles had formed under her eyes and a pot of coffee had slowly emptied behind her.
More tractor trailers had been followed, shipments examined. Three different helicopters that had left Natanz had also been tracked. Keyhole satellites, drones, and ground assets had come up empty. Fisher decided he had nothing to lose by calling on Kobin.
“Hey, asshole.”
Kobin snorted. “I thought we loved each other now.”
“I filed for divorce.”
“Nice.”
Fisher lifted his chin. “I need information.”
“What else is new?”
“Your guy find out anything on the Snow Maiden yet?”
“Still waiting on him.”
“Follow up. Right now we got a shipment out of Natanz we need to find.”
“Don’t be coy, Fisher. I know what you’re looking for. I eavesdrop on everything.”
“Then you already got something for me.”
“What the fuck? You think I got a guy in every city? A guy in Iran for God’s sake?”
“Why not? You sold weapons to the Blacklist Engineers. You didn’t care about that.” Fisher scowled.
Kobin took a step back, thought it over, opened his mouth, hesitated, then finally stammered and said, “Look, I got one guy down in Bandar Abbas, but that port’s pretty far south. Not sure why they’d send the container all the way down there. I’ll give him a call, but listen, I don’t think I have shit on this one. Wish I did.”
“Make the call.”
“Okay. And hey, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
Fisher almost smiled. “You actually have brain cells left?”
“Seriously, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Fisher frowned.
“You know. For everything. The past is the past. I think we make a great team.”
Fisher took a step toward Kobin, staring him down. “You know what I think? I think it’s all about you. You’re not sorry. You’re just saving your ass here. What you’ve done for us is good. You helped us find Kasperov. Thank you. But let’s agree to just use each other and keep the apologies and this fantasy you have about joining our team out of the equation. Right now you’re a consultant—and that seems to work. Okay?”
“Damn, I’m just trying to make nice over here. Not exactly in a good mood, are we?”
“You make nice by calling your buddy.”
Fisher left the man standing there by the servers. Yes, Kobin had been a great help, but his abduction of Sarah and desire to have Fisher killed meant that no amount of “making amends,” “earning his keep,” or anything else could fix what he’d done. Ever.
Before returning to the control room, Fisher took a moment to calm himself. That bastard had set his blood to boil, and he knew he’d take it out on the team if he didn’t let go.
After a deep breath, he started forward. “Hey, Charlie, we get anything?”
“Perfect timing, because, yeah, I found a link I’ve been looking for.” The kid swung around in his chair, rubbed his eyes, then waved his peanut butter spoon like Excalibur. “Come see this.”
Grim and Briggs joined Fisher at Charlie’s station.
“If this is another dead end . . .” Grim warned.
“Hell, no, boss,” Charlie answered, pointing to satellite photos of a seaport labeled King Abdulaziz.
The port was in the city of Dammam along Saudi Arabia’s east coast and about halfway down the Persian Gulf, between Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi. Fisher recalled that it was one of the largest in the entire gulf. A data window beside one image indicated that the port was a main gateway through which cargo entered the Eastern Province and moved on into the central provinces of Saudi Arabia and was strategically placed to service the oil industry. The port had its own administration offices; mechanical and marine workshops; electrical, telephone, and marine communication networks; and water treatment plants. A clinic, a fire department, and housing complex for employees with nearby mosques and supermarkets helped classify the surrounding harborage as a city within a city.
Was this the oligarchs’ third target?
“Given our timetable, it’s possible that our device could’ve been transported down to the southern coast like Sam said, then put on a ship—because three different Iranian ships called on the port within the last four hours.”
“So they want to blow up the port?” Fisher asked.
Charlie shrugged. “The generator’s a booster, yeah, but I’m thinking these guys are bolder than that. They’ll bury it within a bigger shipment and try to slip it past security. They wouldn’t worry about that if they wanted to blow the port. Hell, they could leave it on the ship and just detonate it there.”
“Come over here,” said Grim, crossing back to the SMI. “Great work, Charlie. You finally got something that points to Abqaiq. I’ll take it now.”
Charlie grinned. “I knew you would.”
Grim zoomed in on a map of Saudi Arabia, the vast plains of desert stretching out across the display like a piece of tanned leather. She narrowed the image toward a splotch of gray, a birthmark on an otherwise unbroken flesh-colored stretch sixty miles southwest of the port. The image came into focus to detail a cookie-cutter community with adjacent industrial facility to the east. Photos popped up in a gallery to the left, along with more data bars that identified the region as Abqaiq—pronounced “Ab-cake.”
While the overhead image showed circular storage tanks and rectangular buildings, the photos revealed an even vaster network of pipes—like the exposed bowels of some metallic beast—along with huge columns of smoke backlit by flames shooting skyward in long, thin tongues.
This wasn’t just an oil well. This was an oil processing facility, and it was located within a gated community of thirty thousand owned by Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran.
“You’re looking at one of the largest oil processors in the world,” said Grim. “This facility handles more than half of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil exports. It’s a key node in the global energy pipeline. The main thing they do here is remove hydrogen sulfide from the crude oil so it doesn’t spontaneously explode during shipping.”
Grim tapped one data window to bring up a list of news stories. “Al-Qaeda launched an attack on Abqaiq back in 2006. They tried to get two cars carrying a ton of ammonium nitrate close to the processing plants, but the Saudis shut that down pretty quickly. They have security and entrances set up like an old medieval castle, where after you cross the gate, there’s a wide open area nearly a mile long that allows the second tier of forces to take you out. Since then, there have been hundreds more attempts, all of them small and barely worth mentioning. The Saudis have increased security—higher fences, electronic surveillance, and a garrison of over thirty-five thousand troops. They have operators from the Special Security Forces, Special Emergency Forces, the General Security Service, as well as local reps from fire and police. The bigger players include specialized brigades of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the Royal Saudi Navy, and even the Coast Guard. They have a contingency plan for hijacked aircraft being flown into the plant, with F-15s from their nearest base on continual standby.”