Incendiary Dispatch

CHAPTER THREE

Northeastern Vermont

Abraham Clay liked New England. This wild and wooded spot in northern Vermont was beautiful. Especially in the autumn. He really loved it when the colors changed. But there were other places you could go to watch the change of season. There were only a few safe spots where you could go digging up the Portland-Montreal pipeline.

This spot was ideal. Twenty miles from any sizable towns. Unincorporated land meant little likelihood of state or federal rangers nosing around. Chances of being spotted were slim to none.

He’d come to this spot months ago with his ATV and yanked the warning signs out of the ground. If he’d been arrested then it would have been simple vandalism.

Nobody had noticed or bothered to replace the signs. If somebody caught him digging here now, they couldn’t exactly claim he was doing anything dangerous, because there were no markers visible in either direction to tell him that there was a crude oil pipeline not three feet below where he was standing.

So his ass was well covered in case he got caught. And he wasn’t going to get caught anyway.

He waited awhile, chomping a protein bar, which helped reinforce the image he was going for: casual hiker. He was in his North Face boots—cost him a cool $170—with a water bottle on his belt and a bright yellow Garmin geocaching GPS unit hung around his neck. Hell, the Garmin GPS had been cheaper than the damned boots.

If anybody caught him, he’d claim he was looking for the “Lewis’s Ninth” cache. The geocaching website gave it a Terrain Rating of 2 stars out of 5 and a Difficulty Rating of 5 out of 5. In other words, a reasonably easy hike to the spot, but once you got there you’d have a hell of a time actually finding the cache itself. And the coordinates led right here. And there was evidence of something being buried in this spot. That’s why he was digging here, Officer.

Abe Clay had come up with the strategy before he’d even started this project. It sounded reasonable. He’d posted the fake entries to the geocaching websites himself. And after several digs, he had never once had to use the excuse, because he had never once been caught.

After waiting a suitable interval, and hearing and seeing no signs of anyone in the vicinity, he checked his watch and got to work. He unfolded his shovel, scraped off the thin layer of vegetation, and dug into the rich earth. Eighteen inches down, he hit metal.

Another reason this spot was ideal: uncharacteristically aggressive erosion in this vicinity in the past few years had brought the pipeline much closer to the surface than it was supposed to be. Thank you, Hurricane Irene. Clay found it pretty easy to get the erosion reports from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. Overlay those with the publically available reports of the exact routes of the Portland-Montreal pipeline, look for population densities and scout the sites months in advance, including pulling up the warning signs that have been hastily staked after Irene washed away most of the original.

The same process had worked in Maine.

This was his final placement. He cleared the earth around the first pipe, the eighteen-inch pipe, and as he moved the dirt he found the bigger, twenty-four-inch pipe. He took a quick look around, found he was still in the clear and snatched the charges from his backpack. They were in small black plastic bags.

Inside was a device that was no bigger than his fist and looked like some sort of computer accessory. Black plastic, with a curved profile and a USB port inside. Clay flipped the switch on the device.

This was the only time he got nervous. He didn’t understand exactly how these things were engineered, but he did understand that the ignition power source was inside the device itself. What if there was a problem inside the device and powering it up caused premature ignition?

But, like all the times before, the device’s only response to the powerup was the glow of a yellow LED.

Next Clay turned on the cell phone. It was one of those prepaid cell phones. Not many bells and whistles. You couldn’t play Angry Birds on the thing. But one feature it did have was exceptional battery life—the longest standby-mode rating in its class.

Finally he attached the cell phone to the device with a short USB cable. To tell the truth, this part made him nervous, too. The phone was supposed to get the call, and that call would somehow send a signal through the USB cable telling the device to do its thing. What if the act of plugging in the cable somehow gave some sort of signal to the device that it should do its thing now?

But the only thing that happened was that the LED on the device changed from yellow to green. All systems go. He placed the phone and pushed the device with some force against the metal shell of the twenty-four-inch pipe, and poured on water.

After a few seconds he released his hold on the device. The foamy stuff on the bottom of the device reacted with the water and made it into a strong adhesive. The device wasn’t going to come off unless you cut it off.

He repeated the process with a second device. The phone powered up, the LED turned green, the device was adhered to the eighteen-inch pipe. Clay carefully filled in earth all around the plastic devices, not quite burying them completely. He jumped to his feet and looked at his watch.

Three minutes, fifty-eight seconds! His personal best. And now he was done. Devices buried in eight different locations along a hundred-mile stretch of the pipeline in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

He’d seen some really pretty scenery, too. And somehow, knowing he’d be one of the last people to see it in its pristine state for a long, long time, made him appreciate it that much more.

Maybe he would take up hiking for real.

After all, he had invested in these kick-ass hiking boots.

And with all the money he’d just earned for himself, he’d have lots of free time.

London

THOMAS HAMMIL WAS TAKING a risk and he knew it. But if he pulled it off, the payoff would be huge. And he’d be out of this stinking job and out of stinking London and they could all go to hell.

He’d given them a lot of his life and got nothing back.

He’d given to his country. He’d served in the Royal navy, but they’d tossed him out like he was garbage—no money and no rank.

His mates, the boys he’d known since his school days, looked down their noses at him ever since he’d come home from his military stint. They said they believed his version of the story, but they’d been cool toward him. Every once in a while they’d been into their pints and one of them would say something sort of snidelike, and then Hammil would know they really didn’t believe his side of the story at all.

Clara? He couldn’t even remember why he’d married her. She was a shrew, that one. He’d spent seventeen years living in the same disgusting little row house with that woman and he couldn’t take another day of it.

He hated them. The lot of them. He hated bloody England and he hated this bloody company. Been with this bloody company eighteen years and him doing the same job today as when he’d started. Hammil was bossed around by a bunch of little turds ten years younger than him. And just lately somebody had been passing around a printout of one of the little turd’s pay stubs. The little turd—his direct supervisor—was making twice what Hammil did.

BirnBari Expediting Services should have been paying Hammil that kind of money. Hammil should have been getting a check from the Royal Navy all these years. Hammil should have had a wife who wasn’t a sow and a home that wasn’t a pigsty and mates who didn’t call him Hammy to his face—and worse things behind his back.

One thing he had gotten for all his years with BirnBari Expediting Services was a lock on the head expediter position. Not that he got to tell any of the other expediters what to do. He wasn’t a boss. Just highest on the seniority list. What it boiled down to was his pick of the shifts and four thousand pounds per year more than the regular expediters. Not much.

And the company trusted him. He’d done his job right for eighteen years without any major screwups. Nobody watched him anymore. Nobody checked his work.

The whistle told the crew it was lunchtime and the young ones began wandering off of the floor.

“They’re buying us lunch today, Hammil,” reminded one of the other expediters.

“Not for me,” Hammil said, and patted his stomach. For weeks he had been complaining of stomach problems and he’d been skipping meals. His coworkers had been telling him to see a doctor. The playacting had worked. They were used to his skipping meals now. Nobody thought anything strange about it—even on the one day of the month when the company paid the food tab at the pub next door.

Hammil was alone in the large distribution room.

He kept working like normal for several minutes. Just in case somebody forgot something and came back for it. Or whatever. Nobody did. The big warehouse got a kind of feel to it when it was empty of people. The sounds became bigger, in a way.

Hammil darted to the rear, peered out the back and found the lot empty. It took him less than fifteen seconds to retrieve a cardboard box from the trunk of his old Nissan. Then he was back inside. He stopped and listened. No sound. He was still alone. He spent another thirty seconds stuffing items from the box onto the shelves, then he ripped up the box and crammed it into the trash.

He was doing it all the way it was supposed to be done. Exactly the way they had told him to do it.

Next he began making his rounds again. He drove his cart up and down the aisles, grabbing items off the shelves per the manifest in his hand. It was for a cargo flight to Istanbul, leaving at 6:05 in the evening. Hammil knew the flight times by heart, and he knew it was three hours, forty-five minutes to Istanbul.

He had been instructed to follow some very simple rules when choosing the flights. They had to have a scheduled takeoff between six and eight in the evening. They had to be nonstop flights. They had to be three hours or longer.

This one was perfect.

Next came another cargo flight. Departure: 6:45. To Moscow. Again, an ideal fit. One of the packages went into the shipping crate for the Moscow flight.

The packages were in BirnBari Expediting Services boxes. They had official BirnBari bar-coded labels. Inside each box was an identical set of items: a cell phone, nail clippers, an expensive electric toothbrush, two new white button-down shirts, two tasteful silk ties and a bulky tablet computer. It was the kind of package some well-to-do travelers preshipped when they went on a trip to save them time going through security at the airport. If somebody opened this package and glanced at the contents, he’d see nothing alarming.

But the tablet wasn’t what it seemed to be. And it was plugged into the cell phone. And both the cell phone and the tablet computer were in sleep mode. If one of the boxes was opened and the contents examined closely, it would definitely raise suspicion.

Hammil had to hope and pray that wouldn’t happen. And there was no reason it should. BirnBari Expediting Services had a stellar security reputation. Hammil had never been considered a security risk.

The next flight on the manifest was to Paris. Too short. He loaded the cargo crate without adding one of his special packages. The next one was to Glasgow. No way.

The next was to Delhi. It was a passenger jet. A nine-hour flight departing at 7:30 p.m. Christ, it was an A380. You could cram more than five hundred passengers into one of those monsters. He swallowed hard. For the very first time, Hammil began thinking about the true repercussions of what he was doing.

But he loaded up the shipping crate anyway, adding his own special package, and carted the crate to the loading dock, sealed and ready for the aircraft.

Hammil packed nine more crates by the time the day shift began returning from lunch. Six crates had his special packages. Three of those were for passenger flights.

Which left at least six of his special packages still on the shelves in the big warehouse at BirnBari Expediting Services.

Hammil had been instructed carefully. He had been informed that there would almost certainly be more packages than he could ship out. As long as he shipped out most of them, he shouldn’t worry about it.

But now he was worried about it.

“Hammil!” It was one of the young guys on the day crew. Just some brainless bloke with a girlfriend and a bad complexion. “You look like hell! You feel okay?”

Hammil got off the cart and leaned with his hands on his knees. He was supposed to act sick. But he didn’t need to act at all.

“Hey, you want a drink of water or something?”

They were gathering around him now. The blokes on the day crew. Including the young turd who managed the shift.

“Your stomach acting up again, Hammil?” The shift manager, in his tie and jacket, was crouched next to him, looking at him worriedly. “You need a doctor.”

“I’m okay.” But his arms were shaking. That wasn’t a part of his act. “Need to lie down.”

“Take the rest of the day, but only promise me you’ll set up an appointment with a doctor already.”

“Yeah. All right.” He stood. He wavered a little. They were all gathered around him. There were thirteen of them. There were still six of his packages left on the shelves in this very room.

“You need to go to the hospital,” said one of the faces.

“I’m okay. Really.”

“How about I drive him home?”

“Fine,” said the shift manager.

“No. I’ll drive myself. I’m not that bad off.” The thought occurred to him that this lot would be gone in the late afternoon. An entirely different bunch of guys would be working this evening, in the room with the packages. These guys would be at home or at the pub or—somewhere else.

Which did make him feel just a bit better.

The shift manager was still walking with him as he got into his car. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call for an appointment.”

He drove away, and the more distance he put between himself and BirnBari Expediting Services the less awful he felt. Everything had gone smoothly, except for a brief case of nerves. If only he had time to stop for a pint—but that would have to wait until later.

He didn’t go home. He would never see his pigsty row house or his miserable Clara again.

He took the M11 out of London and never looked back.

* * *

LEWIS CHARD HAD NEVER earned so much money for so little work.

Fourteen devices placed on six cars and eight homes, all belonging to employees of BirnBari Expediting Services.

The homes were no problem. He didn’t need to break into them, just get close enough to deliver the device. A few miserable dogs yapped at him when he crept up in the middle of the night. If the miserable dogs woke any of the homeowners, they’d find nothing suspicious. Chard was away in seconds.

Putting the devices on the cars was riskier, but his contacts had told him exactly when the cars would be unattended. Apparently lunch would be paid for by the company today. Chard was told to wait for the shift to go to lunch, and then wait for one last bloke to step outside to get something out of his car. Chard didn’t ask questions, although it seemed an odd bit of staging.

So, sure enough, the shift workers went to the pub next door, then one fellow darted out the back door and grabbed something from the back of his car. After that, Chard put a device on all six cars without delay. The devices were magnetized. They were primed. The LEDs were green.

Lewis Chard was driving away from London before the lunch shift was half done.

He considered the fact that one of the cars he had rigged belonged to the man who had ducked out the back. The car had also been parked at one of the row houses that he had rigged with a device the night before.

Whoever had arranged this whole affair really wanted that one guy dead.

Qingdao, China

ZHANG JEI DUCKED into the park off of Xilingxia Road and sprinted through the darkness. The night was black. There was no reason for security this far away from the city center, the seaports or the airports.

His reef walker shoes were in his pants’ pocket. He pulled them on, then removed his slacks and shirt. He was wearing a wetsuit underneath. He stuffed his clothing and city shoes into his backpack and stepped into the cold waters of the bay.

The backpack floated behind as he paddled patiently into the blackness. There was no water traffic in this area. Too many rocks this close to the shore.

The illuminated face of his TomTom waterproof GPS unit led him effortlessly to the Farallon MK-8. The neutrally buoyant DPV—diver propulsion vehicle—was fully charged.

It started with a touch and hummed with power, like a sea snake. It was black aluminum and weighed almost 130 pounds with the battery.

The battery was key. Zhang had a lot of distance to cover before sunrise. The MK-8 had fantastic range—three miles. That was more than enough.

Silently, in darkness, he let the DPV pull him through the waters of Jiaozhou Bay, toward Berth 62.

Zhang Jei considered himself to be an extremely lucky man. He had been at the right place at the right time with the rare combination of attributes needed for this particular task. They’d needed someone skilled in stealth diving and DPV use. Someone who didn’t have qualms about a long-distance solo operation. Someone who had demonstrated a certain degree of ruthlessness.

Zhang Jei was all those things. Trained by the People’s Liberation Army navy for out-of-area operations, he had been part of the insertion teams on the Somalia shores that had successfully taken out a group of pirates preying on Chinese cargo ships. He’d earned a medal for it.

Then came the operation in North Korea. He’d been part of a three-man nighttime insertion—two divers and an army sniper. To this day Zhang Jei didn’t know the identity of the North Korean official they were supposed to have killed, or why—only that the man had somehow become a severe hindrance to effective Chinese/North Korean relations.

But the mission went all to hell. The sniper missed. Twice. The man was just sitting there in a parked military jeep and still the sniper missed.

Before a third shot could be fired the North Korean target had been hustled into hiding and twenty North Korean special forces operatives were in pursuit of the Chinese sniper team.

The sniper surrendered to the North Koreans. Maybe he thought the People’s Republic would negotiate his return. The other diver found himself surrounded by special forces operatives and shot himself in the head. It was a wise choice, in Zhang’s opinion, knowing that sniper would have endured months of torture and questioning before ending up just as dead.

Zhang had made it back to the shore and into the water and then he’d just swam. He’d come ashore at dawn and collapsed in a stand of vegetation near a noisy little factory village. Throughout the daylight hours he’d been roused from unconsciousness by the occasional screech of bending metal. That night he’d stolen into a shabby building and eaten putrid food, then taken to the ocean again.

It had taken him days to work his way up the coast, moving ever slower as his energy waned. He’d spent his last two nights on a makeshift float and kicked relentlessly across the tide.

The North Koreans patrolled the waters, but one man, in the water at night, could sneak through their guard. When the virtual wall of North Korean ships was behind him, Zhang Jei knew he was back in China.

But as far as China was concerned, he was dead. They had abandoned him. He would abandon them, as well. They had trained him to survive and thrive in darkness and secrecy, and he would make the most of it.

By the time he had wandered into Qingdao he had murdered three men and stolen their identities, as well as enough cash to live a comfortable lifestyle. His fourth victim was the most carefully chosen. A traveling man, recently widowed, no family, with a little inherited money. Nobody would miss him. That man had been the real Zhang Jei, but now the corpse of the real Zhang Jei was disintegrating in the East China Sea.

He had operated in the vicinity, taking on some dirty jobs for local officials and local drug organizations. Just enough to provide a comfortable income without making any unwanted alliances. It was learned that he was skilled at killing.

The job tonight was his biggest paycheck yet. He could live on the profits for a year or more.

If the man who now went by the name Zhang Jei was afraid of ghosts, he would have been worried about the decomposing corpse of the real Zhang Jei coming up and snatching him by the ankle.

But the man now known as Zhang Jei didn’t care about ghosts. Even if they did exist, no animated corpse could move as fast as the DPV.

* * *

BERTH 62 WAS FAR OUT into Jiaozhou Bay. It was a mechanical island large enough to dock an oil tanker up to 280,000 deadweight tonnage. It had four off-loading arms and pumped out huge volumes of crude oil. Still, for a ship like the Northern Aurora, it could take days to get in, get unloaded and get out of port.

She was a VLCC, a Very Large Crude Carrier. She was unexceptional in her class, one of about five hundred VLCCs plowing the world’s oceans. Still, any vessel capable of carrying two million barrels of oil was impressively large when seen from the waterline.

The massive shape loomed over Zhang Jei, but he couldn’t afford to admire it. He had a job to do. He floated on his back and removed the first device, placing it against the hull of the Northern Aurora. He dipped the device in the ocean to wet the foam backing, then pressed the foam to the hull and applied pressure. The foam cells burst and the encapsulated cyanoacrylate adhesive reacted with the water. In seconds, it was stuck in place. And it was never coming off.