COLEMAN AND THE O’ROURKES STAYED AT THE CABIN UNTIL ALMOST
10 A.M. , talking about which course of action to take with Arthur. After the O’Rourkes left for D.C Coleman spent most of the afternoon checking out the neighborhood where
Arthur lived. From his SEAL training, Coleman had developed a knack for memorizing maps. He drove down every street within five miles of Arthur’s estate, checking for unmarked service drives and paths that led from the road down to the water, making mental notes of anything and everything that might be useful.
Before taking any action against Arthur he wanted to be completely familiar with the neighborhood. The closer he got to Arthur’s estate the more details he took in: which houses had security cameras, which ones had Beware of Dog signs, and which ones had
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guardhouses. He only drove past Arthur’s gate once. Anything more than that might arouse some suspicion. Besides, he was more worried about the houses that bordered
Arthur’s. Augie’s file stated that neither had high-tech security systems. Both had security company signs at the end of the driveway, but neither had gates or fences, which probably meant the houses were wired but not the grounds. After his sight-seeing tour, Coleman drove out to Sparrows Point, just south of Baltimore on the Patapsco River. The large industrial yard was once entirely occupied by Bethlehem Steel, but with the decline of the U.S. steel industry it was now partitioned into extremely cheap warehouse and waterfront dock space. The SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation was located in a dirty, dank building that faced Old Road Bay on the east end of the point. The lease was a meager one thousand dollars a month for one thousand square feet of finished office space and another ten thousand square feet of bulk warehouse. Coleman pulled his Ford
Explorer into the large warehouse and got out. Earlier in the day he had called his only two employees and told them to meet him at the office around 4 P.M. They were standing next to the office checking diving equipment when he arrived. Dan Stroble and Kevin
Hackett were also former SEALS.
They had served on Coleman’s SEAL team for three years and had left the Navy about six months after their commander. Since the inception of the SEAL Demolition and
Salvage Corporation four months earlier, they had only done one job, for British
Petroleum. BP had quietly contracted to have one of their abandoned oil rigs in the North
Atlantic demolished.
Somehow, word had leaked out, and Greenpeace was mobilizing a group of protesters to occupy the rig and prevent the demolition. They wanted BP to dismantle the rig girder by girder. To the executives at BP the decision was simple: demolish the rig at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars or dismantle it piece by piece at an estimated cost of $5
million. BP scrambled to put together the demolition team and blow the rig before
Greenpeace could mobilize. BP’s best estimate was that they could have all of the charges in place and ready to go within forty-eight hours. They found out that a boat loaded with Greenpeace activists was docked in Reykjavik, Iceland, and set to leave port the following morning. The activists would arrive at the rig by noon the next day and storm the platform, creating an international media event that would bring public and political pressure down on BP to dismantle the rig. BP needed to slow the protesters down so they would have enough time to blow the rig. The vice President of operations at
BP was told to find a way to stop the activists from reaching the rig without making it look as if BP had had a hand in it. The executive made several calls to his contacts in
America and Britain and found out that a new, upstart company in Maryland might be perfect for the job.
The man called Coleman and explained the situation to him. He had twenty hours to get to Reykjavik and stop the boat from leaving the harbor. The man didn’t care how it was done, just so long as no one was hurt. Coleman had a rough idea of how much it would cost BP if they had to dismantle the rig, so he said he’d do the job for three hundred thousand dollars. The BP exec agreed, and Coleman, Stroble, and Hackett were on the next flight out of Dulles with their diving gear. They landed in Reykjavik just
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before sundown and were down at the pier by eleven that evening. During their tenure as
SEALS, they had spent countless hours swimming around dirty harbors attaching explosives to hulls and disabling propellers and rudders. The only thing that was difficult about the mission was the temperature of the water. Even with their neoprene wet suits they could stay in the water for no more than fifteen minutes at a time. They took turns swimming over to the ship from a berth about two hundred feet away. Using an acetylene torch, they cut away at the U-joint where the driveshaft met the propeller. The boat would be able to maintain steerage and prop speed up to about ten knots. Anything more than that and the laws of physics would take effect. The increased torque on the propeller would cause the sabotaged joint that connected the driveshaft to the prop to snap. They sat at a cafe the next morning and wagered on whether the ship would make it out of the harbor. Coleman didn’t feel guilty about the job. He’d been around the ocean his whole life and had a deep respect for and healthy fear of it. Sending a couple thousand tons of steel to the ocean floor wouldn’t harm it a bit. As they drank coffee and waited for their 8
A.M. flight back to Washington, a tug moved in and towed the ship out to the main channel. The lines were released and the ship was under way. A white froth churned up behind the stern of the boat as it headed for the open sea. It had just cleared the seawall when the frothy wake subsided and the ship stalled, turning sideways in the middle of the channel. An hour later, Coleman, Stroble, and Hackett were on their way back to
Washington. Over the last month they had received two more offers for jobs, but they had told the prospective clients they were too busy to take the work.
Coleman slammed the door of his car and walked over to Stroble and Hackett. “How are you guys doing?”
“Great, sir. How about you?”
“Fine. Have you checked the messages?”
“Yep,” answered Stroble. “There was nothing on the machine.”
