Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [250]
“Yeah, I see it,” said Rick Bell. He walked to the television and pointed to a spot along the complex’s northern perimeter. Just short of the fence, the pipeline was ripped open, emitting a geyser of flaming ethanol.
“Yeah,” Clark said. “They would have had to knock out some shutdown valves. …” He traced his finger north along the pipeline until he reached an isolated pocket of flame. “That’s one.”
“And three more back down the line,” Granger added. “How much pipeline is that?”
“Half-mile, give or take,” Clark replied.
“About ten thousand gallons,” Jack said, looking up from his laptop.
“What?” said Chavez.
“That pipeline puts through over three billion gallons a year. Break down the math and that section probably contained about ten thousand gallons—call it enough to fill a tanker truck. Some of it’ll get soaked up by the soil, but you gotta figure seven, maybe eight thousand gallons were dumped into the complex.”
“The whole thing’ll go,” Clark said. “The blending and storage tanks … the towers. They’ll start to cook off.”
Even as Clark said the words, the helicopter’s camera caught a trio of explosions, each one sending a mushroom cloud of flames and black smoke a mile into the sky.
“They’re going to have to evacuate the whole damned region,” Sam Granger said. “So we’re agreed: This is no accident.”
Clark said, “No chance. A lot of planning went into this. A lot of groundwork and intelligence.”
“URC,” Chavez speculated.
“Why Brazil?” Hendley asked.
“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with Brazil,” Jack said. “That’s meant for us. Kealty just signed a deal with Petrobras. Sub-OPEC-priced oil from Brazil. They’ve got it coming out of their ears—the Lara and Tupi block fields alone could put Brazil’s reserves at around twenty-five billion barrels. That’s part of the equation. The other part is how far behind Petrobras is in building refineries. Paulinia was their workhorse. The new complex up in Maranhão will run at six hundred thousand barrels, but it’s not coming online for another year.”
“So Brazil’s got the oil but no way to process it,” Hendley said. “Which means our deal is down the tubes.”
“For a year at least. Maybe two.”
Jack’s e-mail chimed. He scanned the message. “Biery got facial-recognition hits on a couple of Sinaga’s passport photos. Two are Indonesians that came into Norfolk two weeks ago—Citra and Purnoma Salim.”
“Citra’s a female name,” Rick Bell said. “Husband and wife?”
“Brother and sister. Nineteen and twenty years old, respectively. According to their ICE forms, they’re here on vacation. The third is none other than our mystery courier: Shasif Hadi. He’s traveling as Yaseen Qudus. Two days after we lost him on the way to Vegas, Hadi caught a United flight from San Francisco to São Paulo.”
“Hell of a coincidence,” Sam Granger said.
“Don’t believe in them,” Hendley replied. “Mr. Chavez, how do you feel about a trip down there?”
“Fine by me.”
“You okay with taking Dom?”
Chavez thought about this. He’d seen plenty of men in Dominic’s condition: stunned, guilty, playing the “What could I have done differently?” game … Feeling guilty that the other guy’s dead, and guilty for being glad you’re still alive … It was a shitty place to be, but Chavez had looked into the former FBI man’s eyes: Dominic was wound up and looking for payback but still under control.
“Sure,” Chavez said. “If he’s up for it, I am. One question, though: What do we do when we get down there? It’s a big country, and Hadi and whoever he’s with probably already went to ground.”
“Or slipped out of the country,” Clark added.
“Let’s assume they’re still there,” Hendley replied. “Jack, let’s get back to Rick’s question: Assuming you’re onto something with this online file-storage stuff. What do we do with it?”
“We do an end run,” Jack replied. “Right now, Hadi’s the biggest URC player we’ve got a bead on, correct?”
“Yep,” Chavez said.
“And we know he went from Vegas to San Francisco before heading to São Paulo, probably to get his Qudus passport from Agong Nayoan, which means