Razing Beijing: A Thriller (78 page)

They drove to the pumping station of the refinery’s olefin
cracking facility. As an electrical engineer, Mousavi had fully indulged his
desire to understand the petrochemical fundamentals involved. Fifty meters
beyond the pumping station were two 45,000 gallon spheroid storage vessels. Contained
within one of these massive storage tanks was liquefied ethane, a volatile
distillate by-product of crude oil fractionating conducted elsewhere onsite. Through
a series of thick flanges and heavy valves, the ethane was piped from this
storage vessel through the pumping station, ultimately to be introduced as
feedstock to another distilling unit. With its network of tubular columns,
tanks, and heat exchangers, the distillery structure would, at the appropriate
time, serve to turbulate and accelerate the vapor cloud’s advancing
deflagration. Among the various distillates produced there was ethylene, yet
another flammable hydrocarbon, widely used in the synthesis of plastics,
fertilizers, and medical anesthetics. The highly volatile ethylene’s importance
to Mousavi was rooted in the fact that it was transported back along a parallel
pipeline through the pumping station, and finally introduced, under pressure,
to the second spheroid storage vessel. It would normally be pumped from there
through a boom into refrigerated tanker trucks and shipped to the big oil
company’s assorted customers. Today’s customers, Mousavi thought, were going to
be deeply disappointed.

Mousavi positioned the van in front of the pump house
according to precise coordinates forwarded to them, like all their
instructions, through the infidel woman cutout. Ehteshari refined the task with
the help of the hand-held GPS device retrieved from the vehicle glove box. “Close
enough,” he said, reading the pre-programmed waypoint on the display.

“Don’t give me close enough!” Mousavi snapped.

“What do you want? We’re only accurate within a few
meters.”

Several men wearing business suits and hard-hats strolled
past, their stares curiously regarding the van’s occupants and transponder
strobe sparking the morning air. Mousavi eyed the men and wondered if their
unidentified compatriot might be among them. Mousavi killed the engine and both
men climbed out of the van.

“Time remaining?” Mousavi asked.

“Twelve minutes, forty seconds.”

Mousavi slid open the van’s side door. With trembling hands
he removed the false aluminum housing clear of what would appear to any
knowledgeable individual a portable DC power inverter. Beneath the exterior
housing was another enclosure through which he had drilled several dozen
quarter-inch diameter holes, a conventional means of quenching electronic
components with ambient cooling air; Mousavi’s intent was much the same. He proceeded
to connect a high-voltage coaxial cable between the phony DC inverter and a
specially modified vapor detection unit. With the battery power source already
connected, Mousavi stood back with Ehteshari to examine the product of patient
preparation.

Eight minutes and ten seconds remained, all of which they
would need. The two Iranians donned their hard hats and, for good measure,
Ehteshari carried his portable vapor detector. They walked at a deliberate pace
toward the non-volatiles storage bunker located at the extreme northeast corner
of the refinery complex. If time and conditions permitted, they might decide to
scale the facility fence.

Meanwhile, the unattended van with its side door open
was unlikely to be disturbed. The transponder signal allowing plant security to
track their progress through the refinery gave no indication that the reps were
doing anything other than going about their work. Anyone could see by the
illuminated LED on the equipment inside that those responsible had only stepped
away for a moment.

9:25 A.M. Eastern Standard Time

IN THE BRIGHT MORNING
SUNLIGHT,
nobody noticed the flash when over one-half ton of stainless
steel flange and valve hardware instantly vanished. Both centrifugal pumps
suddenly unloaded. Heads turned throughout the refinery at the pop of the
compressor stall as the seventeen hundred horsepower turbine oversped before
automatically shutting down.

Inside the process information center, the assistant plant
manager tapped the old analog meters. “What’s this?” Not
two
Horton
tanks, not simultaneously.

The engineer to his right stirred. “Scott, did you hear something...
dammit!
We just had a turbine trip in Twelve!”

The assistant plant manager’s fingers closed around the
microphone as the alarm sounded—two red panel lights, followed quickly by four,
then in rapid succession a dozen vapor detectors all indicated that twenty
percent of their lower explosive limit had just been exceeded. That triggered
the release of fire suppression water and foam. “Emergency response team to
Twelve-Foxtrot,” he announced into the microphone. “ERT, report
immediately
to
Twelve-Foxtrot!”

Three olefin plant technicians changing out a line filter
paused from their work to see what the problem was. A field engineer raced out
of the pump house to join them. All four men froze. Monstrous jets of boiling
fog were billowing their way, the sweet smell of ethylene already stinging the
inside of their noses. There was no doubt what was happening; OSHA 1910
guidelines in the wake of the infamous 1991 Philips explosion stipulated the
steps to be taken in the event of a hazardous spill. Spaced every fifty feet
throughout the complex was a red-colored panic button mounted atop a sealed
electrical box. Two men lunged for the nearest one and brought their hands down
onto it—everywhere throughout the refinery complex fire alarms sounded,
turbines and furnaces shut down, inert gas purges deployed, pipeline valves and
blast-proof doors slammed shut.

“Sweet Jesus...” The main gate security guard noted the
origin of the evacuation alert and brought his mobile radio to his lips. “Security
Solutions personnel, this is plant security. You must evacuate the plant
immediately. Do you copy?”

There was no answer. He repeated himself...still no
response. “ERT dispatched to zone Twelve-Foxtrot, be advised you have two
contractor personnel at large. Locate and escort them to plant security. Copy
that?”

Overhearing the security guard’s alert, two technicians
turned and rushed through shoulder-deep fog toward the van. “There’s nobody
here!” one announced into his radio, the fog now burning his eyes. “Don’t they
have a mobile radio? Over.”

“I can’t raise them! They’re supposed to be servicing vapor
detectors.”

The technicians sloshed through ankle-deep water and foam
to search the vicinity of the van. Finding no one, they looked anxiously at one
another through the thickening fog and relayed their findings to plant
security.

Behind them in the van, an activated platinum filament
inside Mousavi’s modified vapor detector oxidized a sample of flammable
atmosphere. The catalytic heating raised the temperature of the filament,
reducing its conductivity, unbalancing voltage across a Wheatstone bridge
circuit to trigger an alarm. But instead of an alarm, two hundred eighty-eight
volts discharged a current through the coaxial cable attached to the phony
inverter. Inside the inverter’s perforated housing, the first of four bare
light bulb filaments, quenched by the flammable atmosphere, burned intensely
for several seconds—and broke. Whether due to a purging breath of air, or
disparities in the stoichiometry of the flammable fog, the filament failed to
become incendiary. This was not altogether unexpected; Mousavi had designed
three more attempts into his ignition source. Thirty seconds later, the cycle
would repeat itself.

Fifty meters away, sixty-five thousand gallons of liquefied
ethylene and ethane had already vaporized into the atmosphere. With none of the
emergency valves to stop the decompressing flow escaping from inside the Horton
storage vessels, the heavier-than-air cloud billowed over an area of several
acres.

“They must already be gone!” the technician shouted into
his radio. “We’ll swing past the cracking tower to look for them there. We’re
out’a here!”

THACKERAY TURNED FROM
his monitor toward Emily, eyelids drooping so wearily they reminded her of a
bloodhound. “Strike forty-three,” he said, still disgruntled they hadn’t nailed
the code on their third or fourth trial.

Emily let out a deep breath, wondering if she looked as
exhausted as Thackeray did. They had done nothing but write code, morning and
night, while juggling the ongoing demands of the Project. It was tedious work
but mostly it was frustrating work, and now they were driven by the gnawing
recognition that the transmission Thackeray had snagged was in fact related to
the bridge’s destruction. The death toll had settled at four hundred fifty-eight
and the media was calling it a terrorist attack. Stu for his part had been
singularly unhelpful in shedding light on the matter. The only thing clear was
that they wouldn’t speak again until his return—from wherever and whenever that
happened to be, a point the condescending man at Langley had repeatedly made as
if Emily could not understand English.

In Emily’s fondest dreams, their efforts would lead to the
release of her father from prison, and her mother’s treatment by American
doctors. That is,
if
her mother happened to be alive,
if
she and
Thack could hack their way into the satellite,
if
she played her cards
properly with the American government and...the parade of ‘ifs’ seemed
depressingly long.
Focus on what you are able to control. With each failed simulation
we are converging on success.

Emily turned her attention to the mosaic of characters on
her computer monitor, when their attention was suddenly disrupted by an alarm
from Thackeray’s satellite communications terminal. Thackeray spun his chair
around and stared, disbelieving, before crossing the room to the terminal where
the monitor was scrolling through screens full of unintelligible data. He typed
several commands into the keyboard and then turned his head to look at Emily. “You
have to look at this.”

They then heard someone outside attempt to push open the
security door—the door hung up on the electrically activated deadbolt, the
wrong access code having been entered. There was a pause while whoever it was
re-entered the code, and the door swung open.

“There you are,” said Christine Lowell. For once the office
manager appeared concerned with something other than the gall displayed by
people too self-absorbed to drop everything whenever she entered a room. “You won’t
believe what’s happening!”

Thackeray saw who it was and hunkered over his keyboard.

“It’s horrible upstairs. They’re, like, shutting us down!”

The pronouncement hung in the air amidst the hum of
refrigeration fans. Emily shook the cobwebs away. “What are you talking about? Who
is ‘they?’ ”

Christine explained in a quivering voice that Ralph Perry
had just called his secretary, apparently from a courthouse and fit to be tied.
He reportedly asked her to assemble the entire Project staff in the lobby for
his arrival that afternoon. Standing there in the doorway, Christine stared
daggers at the back of Thackeray’s intransigent head. “I heard Linda ask him
what on earth for, and I guess Mr. Perry replied that Congress had cut our
funding. We have to send everyone home! Can you believe it?” Tears welled in
her eyes. “They’re going to lay us off, I just know it.”

Emily was stunned by the words; it hadn’t been all that
long since hearing them uttered at Thanatech. Thackeray swiveled his head
toward her. The look in his eyes, and his fingers trembling as they hovered
over his keyboard, suggested something of greater urgency than the woman’s
discouraging news.

“Is this the result of the hearing?” Emily asked.

The secretary removed her hands from her mouth. “Yes—and
that bitch Lewis never even showed up!”

Thackeray popped his briefcase open on the floor. He
started tossing in pages of notes and every computer storage cartridge within
reach.

Steve Reedy’s frown appeared in the doorway as he edged
himself past Christine. “What’s going on?” he asked while shifting accusing
eyes between the two engineers. “Thack?”

“Huh?” Thack stopped and looked up from his briefcase. “What?”

“What are you doing? We have to prepare to vacate the
facility.”

“We just heard.”

“What’s going on in here?”

“Work. What the hell business is it of yours?”

“No reason to be hostile. It’s a simple question.”

“No question of yours is ever simple.” Thackeray smiled.

Reedy eyed the briefcase. “You’re not authorized to remove
those items. Under these conditions, you might find yourself under arrest.”

“I work for Stuart now. You’re welcome to try and stop me.”

Reedy avoided Emily’s stare. “There’s a meeting at two. That’s
less than an hour.”

“Christine already told us.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Vacating.” Thackeray struggled with that for a moment. “Emily,
we can work from my place.”

“But—”

“But we’ll be at your candy-ass meeting.” Thackeray snapped
the briefcase shut and stood in order to leave. “Step aside, Steve. Some of us
still have work to do.”

Friday, July 10

EACH TIME MCBURNEY
gazed upon the closed-circuit television image of Stuart slumped in his chair,
he relived Lester Burns’s angry explosion which probably had ruptured another
blood vessel in the whites of the Director’s eyes. By contrast and to their
credit, his staff had refrained from expressing resentment over his having
ignored their advice not to send a mere civilian to do the job of a seasoned
professional. Operationally speaking, so far as Beijing station was concerned,
they were essentially flying blind.