All Necessary Force

staged.

He pulled in the English speaker, reiterating what he had said before. “Nobody fires until I initiate. When you hear my explosion, start tearing it up. You understand?”

“Yes, yes. We will wait. Where will you go?”

“I’m going to cross the fence. You guys wait out here. Whatever you do, don’t initiate. Got it?”

“Yes. We are lions too. We will wait.”

Brett smiled and patted him on the shoulder, thinking he was about to take his life into his own hands. He turned and scaled the chain-link fence, then scampered into the first area of darkness he could find.

He put on his NODs and scanned the refinery one hundred meters away. He’d learned all sorts of terms when studying the critical components of the average refinery — from atmospheric and vacuum fractionating towers to fluid catalytic crackers — but the key wasn’t learning how they worked, only what they looked like. He had determined that the fractionating towers were the components to attack, given the parameters of the device he intended to use.

He saw a row of narrow columns to his front, four in a parallel line perpendicular to him, hissing steam out of the top. The target.

All he needed was to take out one, and the refinery would be put off-line for weeks. The end state would be a rebel success against a government facility, which would cause the Chinese to rethink their tepid efforts at stopping the civil war. Rethink their support for the Sudanese government because their own bottom line would now be affected with the loss of oil imports. They couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t a precursor to another successful attack by the rebels.

Brett gave no thought to whether the strategy would work, only about the tactical method of engagement. The device he had brought was a test item. Something that should take out a tower with little effort, but he had no real idea if it would work. One thing was for sure: If it didn’t, the clowns he was with would get nothing done.

He low-crawled forward until he was within eighty meters of the first column, then opened his rucksack. He pulled out a tripod and a device that was the same size as a gallon stewpot. He was preparing it for initiation when he heard gunfire outside the fence.

Dumb-ass bastards.

He frantically began aiming the device as the gunfire grew in volume. He saw men spilling out of buildings next to the columns, thankfully drawn to the sound of the guns. He rose up to check his aim and was caught in the headlights of a vehicle screaming down the perimeter fence, just to the right of the columns.

He hit the ground, breathing hard, wondering if he’d been seen. He glanced up and saw the headlights swerve toward him.

Holy shit….

He grabbed the initiation device and rolled away, frantically jabbing the button. The device exploded, sending its deadly payload toward the column.

He looked up and saw the first tower buckle. Then the second. And the third. All spewed out an enormous amount of vaporized fuel in various stages of distillation. A split second later, the gaseous cloud erupted in a violent explosion, the shock wave slamming him to the earth.

He rolled around, his ears ringing, his conscious brain screaming at him to find the truck. Eliminate the threat.

He rose to his knees and saw the truck on its side, burning furiously, knocked out by the fuel-air explosion. The entire refinery was on fire, the battle to his rear now silent.

What the hell did I just use? What did they give me?

He began running flat out to the perimeter fence and his exfil to the south.

Two days later, Han Wanchun studied the reports on the demise of the oil refinery. As a partner in the Great Wall Industry Corporation, purportedly a Chinese technology consortium, there was no reason for him to be privy to the secret satellite data showing the destruction wrought by the rebel band. No reason for him to be allowed to read the sensitive firsthand reporting from the Chinese workers on the ground. But as a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, Han had access to whatever information he needed to conduct his mission, which, unlike the false statement propagated by the Great Wall corporation, wasn’t to develop technology. It was to steal it.

Reading the reports, Han realized that something more than a motley band of rebels was involved. There was no way the tribal members could wreak the havoc shown with small arms alone. He cared not a whit about the genocide occurring in Darfur, or about the loss of the refinery. Not his job to do so. But whatever had caused the damage was something to be concerned about. Maybe something to covet.

The strike on the oil refinery was designed to get Chinese attention. As often happened in the hazy world of covert operations, it had accomplished the task, but not in the way the United States intended.

Han put the reports back into the classified sleeve on his desk, the germ of an idea beginning to form.

3

Present Day

Jennifer Cahill noticed her speedometer had crept past seventy miles an hour, causing her to reflexively glance into the rearview mirror and pull her foot off the gas. It wouldn’t do to get pulled over by some North Carolina redneck sheriff after all she had been through.

Too close to finishing. No need to rush. Plenty of time.

No cops appeared out of the tree line. The only thing she saw on the desolate road behind her was a pickup truck. It was a monster four-by-four, and gaining fast. She felt a little spike of concern but quelled it when she remembered all of the other trucks she had seen driving around the outskirts of Boone over the past seven days. Way to go. You’ve fully converted into a paranoid. Even farmers cause you to flinch.

The adrenaline subsiding, she felt the weariness seeping back through her like waves rolling into a beach. She had been operating on little sleep for days, and she knew she would either finish this today or she wouldn’t finish it at all. No way was she going back to The Hole again. No way on earth. For the thousandth time, she wondered why she was stupid enough to agree to this. I could be on a dig in South America. Or in grad school, sleeping all I want. Instead, I’m out here playing Jane Bond.

The pickup had gained considerably in her rearview mirror, appearing behind her after every second bend or so. She knew that like every other local, he’d pass her in a cloud of dust, daring anyone to appear in the blind spot around the curve. She decided to let him pass, then track behind at his speed. Let him get the ticket.

The truck drew close enough to allow her to see the farmer behind the wheel. A great big bear of a man with a full beard and the ubiquitous baseball cap. He pinned up right behind her bumper, apparently waiting on the road to straighten out long enough to allow him to test his luck. When it did, Jennifer slowed down and pulled a little to the right to let him to pass. She saw him signal and veer out, then returned her eyes to the road. A second later, she knew something was wrong.

He should have shot right by her. Instead, he was matching her speed in the oncoming lane. The benevolent farmer was gone, replaced by a scowl that was concentrating intently on the rear of her car. Shit. He’s going to PIT me. She knew the truck was about to slam into her rear quarter panel and push her sideways, spinning her into the ditch. The minute she lost traction on her rear tires, she was done. She knew this because she had just learned to do it a month ago.

She looked for an out, and saw nothing but trees blurring by on her right. She was trapped. And I helped him do it. Idiot. She seized the initiative, jerking the wheel to the left and slamming broadside into the truck in an attempt to get him out of position. Her little sedan did nothing to alter the truck’s trajectory. Instead, she ricocheted back into her lane, weaving left and right, making her manhandle the steering wheel to regain control. She felt the truck kiss the rear of her car and saw the driver crank the wheel to the right, forcing her rear end to begin to slide. She turned into the spin in a last desperate attempt to break the skid. She failed. A split second later, her car was rotating out of control. In a blur, she saw the truck rocket past and disappear as her car continued to spin into the right-side ditch. Her travel was brought to an abrupt halt when the front of the sedan hammered into a tree, causing her to crack her head into the driver’s-side window.

Woozy, she fumbled with the door latch, desperate to get the package from the rear seat and run. She had