channel, in probably the narrowest part of the tanker route. On the bridge and on the bow, lookouts with high- powered night-vision binoculars were sweeping the sea, for’ard and aft, for any sign of an onrushing VLCC, its helmsman a hundred feet above them.
The night was cloudy and very dark, and the transfer from the boats was made in excellent time. The two Zodiacs were scuttled, but the
Right now there was thirty feet below the keel, and the CO decided to stay at PD, but to take down the mast, moving nor’nor’east up the outgoing channel at ten knots. That way nothing would gain on him from behind, and he would gain nothing on any ship up ahead. The ten-knot speed limit, and requirement, was strictly observed along Saudi tanker routes.
It was five hours running time to H hour. Five hours to 0400. Five hours to the temporary end to civilization as they knew it in the free world. The end of cheap oil on the global market.
The crew of the
After eight miles Captain Roudy ordered a course change to the northeast…
And twelve miles later he elected to leave the tanker lanes completely. With the main channel about to run due east, the CO ordered the helmsman to cross the lanes and exit to the north, making a wide sweep in deeper water for twenty-five miles to the missile launch area he had been allotted: 27.06N 50.54E.
They arrived at 0340, still fifty feet below the surface of the water, unobserved by anyone since first they went deep in the Red Sea south of the Gulf of Suez.
And for the last time, Lt. Cdr. Albert Paul illuminated the computerized screen that showed the targets and their numbers: Abqaiq Complex—25.56N 49.32E; eastern pipeline—25.56N 49.34E. The third barrage of four missiles would be aimed at 26.31N 50.01E, the Qatif Junction manifold complex, at four slightly different locations, hoping to blast the one area where the pipeline was custom-made, and would take months and months to repair.
Basically, hitting pipelines was not a great idea, nor was hitting oil wells, because both could be capped and repaired with standard equipment, which Aramco had in abundance. The trick was to hit the loading docks, the pumping stations, and, on the Red Sea coast, the refineries.
Captain Roudy’s targets had been supremely well selected. The Abqaiq station handled 70 percent of all the nation’s oil. It not only pumped from the enormous Ghawar field, over the mountains to the entire Red Sea coast, it also fed the entire east coast. This included the loading docks at Sea Island, Ras al Ju’aymah, and Ras Tannurah, from which Sea Island was fed.
The pipeline out of Abqaiq was plainly critical, and Prince Nasir had selected it as the only pipeline to be targeted. Alain Roudy’s final target, the Qatif Junction manifold complex, directed every last gallon of oil on the east coast.
Ten minutes later, o-three-fifty…
The first of the
It hit its flying speed of Mach 0.9, two hundred feet above the water, at which point the gas turbines cut in and extinguished the flames in its wake. In the warm air at sea level over the Gulf, Mach 0.9 was the equivalent of more than six hundred miles per hour, which meant that the missile would blast into the Abqaiq complex ten minutes from launch.
Before it had traveled twenty miles, there were three more missiles dead astern. The lead missile crossed the narrow peninsula of Ras Tannurah and swerved over the Saudi coastline at 0357. It rocketed over the coastal highway and changed course, flashing through the dark skies above the desert straight at the Abqaiq complex. With ten miles to go it made its final course change, coming in from the northeast on a line of approach that took it marginally north of the main complex.
At precisely 0400.01 it smashed with stupendous force straight into the middle of Pump Station Number One, buried itself in the main engineering system, and detonated with monstrous force—360 pounds of TNT in a blinding flash of savagery that would have blown an aircraft carrier apart.
No one working anywhere on the station’s night shift survived. All of the main machinery was obliterated by the explosion. Anyone standing a couple of miles away might have been staggered by the destruction and fires that began as soon as the oil ignited. But just a short distance from the remnants of the pumps, there was a fire to end all fires as Alain Roudy’s second missile slammed into the central area of Abqaiq’s petrochemical fractioning towers.
These huge steel cylinders, full of belting hot gases and liquids, were colossally flammable. And they did not just burn. They incinerated into a violet and orange inferno. Dante would have called the fire department. Heavy fuel oil, gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas, sulphur, and God knows what else blasted into the sky. And the heat was so intense it caused a chain reaction among these refining towers, which exploded one by one in the face of the searing fire.
Everything the towers contained was totally combustible, and years later Abqaiq would still be considered the world’s largest industrial calamity, greater even than the Texas City disaster in 1946, when a tanker full of ammonium nitrate blew up an entire south Texas town. Abqaiq now burned from end to end. Alain Roudy’s four missiles had all struck home. And he was not finished yet.
The next four smashed into the eastern pipeline on its way to the Qatif Junction manifold complex. Then that too exploded in a fireball. And out to the west the flames could actually be seen in the sky from the obliterated Sea Island Terminal, which seemed to blow itself to pieces at 0403 with about a square mile of oil on fire all around it.
The most spectacular fire was off Ras al Ju’aymah, where Ventura’s two high bombs had slammed the upper deck of the terminal a hundred feet into the air, blown to smithereens the valve system for the petroleum gas, and ignited the blowtorch from hell, as forecast six weeks previously by Gaston Savary. The fire was currently roaring across the water, an incinerating white gas flame two feet across at source and 150 feet long.
The actual jetty was in shreds in the water, but the causeway was more or less intact and the liquefied gas pipe was jutting at a ridiculous angle, forty-five degrees to the horizontal, feeding the giant flame with an unending rush of propane that no one could turn off.
Twenty minutes after the explosions had comprehensively destroyed the Saudi Arabian oil industry on the east coast, no one had yet connected them together. There was no one alive who had been working near any of the explosion sites. The administration blocks at Abqaiq and Qatif were flattened, and anyone who was awake even remotely close to the fires could only stand in awe of the gargantuan flames exploding into the sky every few minutes. Abqaiq was of course right in the middle of nowhere.
Indeed the first alarm was raised in the distant city of Yanbu al Bahr, where the loading jetties had been blown sky high by Garth Dupont’s bombs. But those jetties were close to the shore, and the explosion scarcely harmed any of the main parts of the town. The missiles fired by Commander Dreyfus had just hit the refinery, which stood a couple of miles beyond the Yanbu perimeters. And this meant that the Police Chief and several duty officers in Aramco’s high-security forces were definitely aware that something big had just blown up.
The Yanbu police phoned Rabigh, which was in much the same condition as they were — big flames, constant explosions from the burning refineries, jetties gone. In turn they both phoned Jiddah, which had, in the last few minutes, lost its own refinery, courtesy of another well-aimed cruise by Commander Dreyfus.
Everyone called the security headquarters in Riyadh, where they had now heard from the town of Ras al Ju’aymah that the LPG jetties four miles offshore had just blown up and taken a 200,000-ton tanker with them. It
