Divide and Conquer (20 page)
Read Divide and Conquer Online
Authors: Tom Clancy,Steve Pieczenik,Jeff Rovin
Tags: #Traitors, #Crisis Management in Government - United States, #Action & Adventure, #Intrigue, #Fiction - Espionage, #Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), #Fiction, #United States, #Espionage, #Suspense, #Adventure Fiction, #Executive Power, #General & Literary Fiction, #Men's Adventure, #Crisis Management in Government, #Thriller
The Iranians who were working with the Harpooner had made cell phone calls to one another during the past few days. They had discussed the attack on the oil rig and described the two pylons that had to be destroyed: “target one” and “target two.” The Iranians did not know that the Harpooner made certain those calls were monitored by the NSA. That the conversations were recorded and then digitally altered. Now, on those tapes, the targets the Iranians were discussing were embassy employees, not pylons.
In a phone call of his own, the Harpooner had added that the deaths would be a warning, designed to discourage Americans from pursuing any action against Iran in the coming oil wars. The Harpooner pointed out in the call that if Washington insisted on becoming involved, American officials would be assassinated worldwide.
Of course, that threat would backfire. After President Lawrence resigned, the new president of the United States would use the brutal murders as a rallying cry. He was not a live-and-let-live leader like the incumbent. Someone who was willing to cooperate with the United Nations to the detriment of his own nation. The assassinations, like the attacks on the oil rigs, would underscore that the United States had unfinished business from the previous century: the need to strike a decisive, fullscale blow against terrorist regimes and terrorist groups that were being protected by those regimes.
Friday entered his apartment. He saw the red light on his answering machine flashing. He walked over and played the message. There was only one, from Deputy Ambassador Williamson. She needed him to come to the embassy right away. She said that she had tried his cell phone but could not reach him.
Well, of course she could not. His cell phone had been in his jacket, and his jacket had been slung over a chair in another room. He had not heard the phone because he was in the bedroom of a woman he had met at the International Bar.
Friday called her back at the embassy. Williamson did not bother to ask where he had been. She just told him the bad news. Tom Moore had been shot and killed by a sniper outside the hospital. Pat Thomas’s throat had been cut by an assassin inside the hospital.
Friday allowed himself a small, contented smile. The Harpooner’s assassin had succeeded.
“Fortunately,” Williamson went on, “David Battat was able to stop the man who tried to kill him.”
Friday’s expression darkened. “How?”
“His throat was cut with his own knife,” she said.
“But Battat was ill—”
“I know,” said the deputy ambassador. “And either Battat was delirious or afraid. After he stopped the killer, he left the hospital by the window. The police are out looking for him now. So far, all they’ve found was the rifle used to kill Mr. Moore. Metal detectors picked it up in a pond.”
“I see,” Friday said. The assassin did not speak English. Even if Battat were lucid, he could not have learned anything from the killer. But Fenwick and the Harpooner would be furious if Battat were still alive. “I’d better go out and join the search,” Friday said.
“No,” Williamson said. “I need you here at the embassy. Someone has to liaise between the Baku police and Washington. I’ve got to deal with the political ramifications.”
“What political ramifications?” Friday asked innocently. This was going to be sweet. It was going to be very sweet.
“The police found the rifle they think was used in the attack on Moore,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this on an open line. I’ll tell you more when you get here.”
That was good news, at least. The deputy ambassador had concluded that the killings were political and not random.
“I’m on my way,” Friday said.
“Watch yourself,” Williamson said.
“I always do,” he replied. Friday hung up, turned around, and left the apartment. “I always do.”
THIRTY
Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 6:16 A.M.
The Harpooner and his team reached the oil rig just before dawn. The boat cut its engines one thousand feet from the nearest of the four columns. Then the Harpooner and four members of his Iranian team slipped into the water. They were all wearing wet suits and compressed air cylinders. Slipping beneath the dark surface of the sea, the men swam toward the rig.
Two of them carried waterproof pouches containing watergel high-energy explosives. The Harpooner had carefully injected the blue sticks with heat-sensitive pentanitroaniline. As the sun rose, the heat would cause the foil packet to warm. The sunlight itself would detonate the explosion.
Two other men carried an inflatable raft. This would allow them some stability underneath the platform. Many rigs had sensors on the columns and motion detectors along the sea line. Avoiding the columns and going under the motion detectors was the safest way to get inside the perimeter. Once the explosives were placed, it would be virtually impossible for the crew of the rig to get to them in time.
The Harpooner carried a spear gun and night-vision glasses. He would use the gun to fire the watergel packets around the support struts beneath the platform. The Harpooner had brought along only a dozen of the seven-eighths-inch sticks of explosive. He had learned long ago that the trick to destroying something big is not necessarily to hit it with something big. In hand-to-hand combat, a foe could be driven back with a powerful roundhouse punch. He can be debilitated faster, more efficiently, and with more control, with a finger pressed against his throat, just below the larynx and above the clavicle. Hooking the top of a foot behind the knee and then stepping down with the side of the foot will drop someone faster than hitting them with a baseball bat. Besides, all it takes to neutralize a bat attack is to move in close to the attacker.
The Iranian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea are mostly semisubmersible platforms. They rest on four thick legs with massive pontoons that sink below the waterline. There is a platform on top of the legs. The riser system—the underwater component, which includes the drill—descends from the derrick, which is mounted on the platform. The key to destroying a platform like that is not to take out the columns but to weaken the center of the platform. Once that has happened, the weight of the structures on top will do the rest. The Harpooner’s team had been able to get copies of the oil rig blueprints. He knew just where to place the watergel.
The men reached the underbelly of the rig without incident. Though it was dark in the water, the higher struts of the rig caught the first glint of dawn. As the Harpooner eyeballed the target, two men inflated the raft while the other two attached a pair of watergel sticks beneath the tip of three spears. The twelve-inch-long sticks were carefully taped belly-to-belly. This configuration allowed the spear to be fitted into the tube muzzle. It also made sure that the sticks of watergel would not upset the balance of the spear. Though it would have been easier to assemble the package on the boat, the Harpooner had wanted to keep the watergel packets as dry as possible. Though moisture would not harm the explosives, wet foil would take longer for the sun to warm. These packets would only be exposed to direct sunlight for a half hour. He had to make certain they were dry enough—and thus hot enough—to explode within that time.
The raft was a six-man hexagonal platform. The Harpooner did not need it to hold six men. He wanted the larger size for stability. Larger rafts tended to ignore the smaller waves. That was important when he lay on his back to fire. He had removed the canopy to make it lighter. The large case in which it had been carried was discarded. The Harpooner climbed on board while the other men hung onto the sides to steady the raft even more.
The speargun was made of stainless steel. It was painted matte black to minimize reflected sunlight. The spears were also black. The weapon was comprised of a forty-inch-long black tube and a yellow grip and trigger at the end. Only a foot of spear protruded from the end. Normally, a rope was attached to the spears so that prey could be hauled back to the spearman. The Harpooner had removed these back on the boat.
There were six-inch-thick acoustic dampeners beneath the platform. They were located fifty feet above the sea. The hard rubber pads had been placed there to muffle the sounds of activity. This was done so that people who lived on the rig would suffer as little noise pollution as possible. The Harpooner had chosen his targets from the blueprints. He would fire two harpoons. The first would go into the padded area below and to the northeast of the derrick. The derrick was in the southwest corner of the platform. When the detonation occurred, the derrick would fall toward the center of the platform. A second harpoon would be fired into the platform at the point where the heavy center of the derrick would land. The second explosion, plus the impact of the derrick, would shatter the platform and cause it to collapse inward. Everything would slide to the center and tumble into the sea.
The Harpooner would not need the third harpoon to destroy the rig, though he did not tell his people that.
The terrorist donned night-vision glasses and lay on his back. The speargun had terrific recoil, equivalent to a twelve-gauge shotgun. That would give him quite a bump. But his shoulder could take it. He aimed the weapon and fired. There was a sound like a metallic cough and the spear flew through the dark.
It hit the target with a faint thunk. The Harpooner quickly repositioned himself to fire the second shaft. It, too, struck its target. He motioned the men to start back. As soon as the others ducked underwater, the Harpooner pulled the tape from the spear, grabbed one of the equipment bags, and slipped the watergel sticks inside. Then he slid into the water and followed his men back to the boat.
Upon boarding the vessel, the men dropped the remains of Sergei Cherkassov into the sea. On the way over, they had burned the body. It would look as though he had been killed in the blast. The photographs that had been taken from the airplane were already in his pocket. As far as the Iranians on board knew, the Russians and the Azerbaijanis would be blamed for the attack.
The Harpooner knew differently.
When Cherkassov was in the water, the boat departed. They were nearly out of visual range when the oil rig exploded.
The Harpooner was watching through high-powered binoculars. He saw the puff of yellow red smoke under the platform. He saw the tower shudder and then do a slow pirouette drop toward the center. A moment later, the muted pop of the first explosion reached the boat.
The Iranians on the deck all cheered. Which was odd, the Harpooner thought. Even though they thought they were doing this for the national good, they were happy about the deaths of at least one hundred of their countrymen.
A moment before the derrick hit, the second watergel packet exploded. The Harpooner had positioned the two to go off nearly at the same time. It would not have done for the derrick to crash, knock the spear from the rubber padding, and drop it into the sea. A second cloud of red and yellow smoke began to form, but it was flattened and disbursed when the derrick struck the platform. It hit with a small-sounding crunch. Debris flew into the morning sky, chasing away the distant gulls.
The entire rig shuddered. The whole thing reminded the Harpooner of a vignette he had seen as a child. A poplar tree had been split during a storm and fell across power lines. It hit them, bounced, then hit them again. The lines hung there for a moment before sagging and then ripping from the poles on the left and right. That was what happened here. The platform stood for a moment after the derrick struck. Then, slowly, the steel and concrete sagged where the second blast had weakened them. The platform bent inward. Sheds, cranes, tanks, and even the helicopter began sliding toward the crease. Their weight caused additional strain. The Harpooner could hear the ugly collisions in the distance, see the smoke and shattered pieces of wood and metal fly into the air.
And then it happened. The added weight was too much for the platform to bear. It cracked and dumped everything into the sea. The boat was now too far away for the Harpooner to make everything out. The collapse looked like a waterfall from this distance, especially when the cascade of white and silver debris hit the sea, sending up waves and spray.
As the rig disappeared beyond the horizon, all the Harpooner could see was a large ball of mist hanging in the new day.
He turned away, accepting the congratulations of the team. They were treating him like a football hero, but he felt more like an artist. Using the medium of explosives and a canvas of steel and concrete, the Harpooner had created a perfect destruction.
He went below to wash up. He always needed to wash after creation. It was a symbolic act of completion and of getting ready for the next work. Which would be soon. Very soon.
When the boat reached the docks, the Harpooner told the crew he wanted to go ashore. He told the Iranians he wanted to make certain that the Azerbaijani police had not already learned of the blast. If they had, the police might be checking incoming vessels. They might be looking for possible terrorists and also for eyewitnesses to the explosion.
The men thought that was a good idea.
The Harpooner told them that if he did not come back in five minutes, they should leave the dock and head to the open sea. The Harpooner said that if the police were talking to people, stopping them from leaving the area, he would figure out a way to elude them.
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