Ahmed handed Hadi a pistol, a 9-millimeter Glock 17 equipped with a noise suppressor. “The truck is there,” Hadi said. “I couldn’t be sure, but I think I saw two figures sitting in it.”
“Good. Ahmed, you will do it.”
Headlights off, Ibrahim put the car in gear and drove on, retracing Hadi’s inbound route. Fifty yards from the pipeline, he stopped the car. Ahmed climbed out, crossed behind the car, and walked into the trees. They sat in silence, Ibrahim keeping track of the time on his watch. After two minutes, he turned on the headlights and started out again. “Down in the back,” he told them. Hadi and Fa’ad hunched down below the windows. As the car drew even with the pickup truck, Ibrahim slowed the car and got out. He had a map in his right hand.
“Excuse me,” he called in Portuguese, as he walked toward the truck. “I’m lost. Can you give me directions back to Paulinia?”
No one responded.
“Excuse me, I need help. Can you-”
A hand appeared out of the driver’s-side window and waved him forward. Ibrahim walked up to the window. The decal on the door said PETROBRAS SECURITY. “I think I missed a turn somewhere. How far away is Paulinia?”
“Not far,” said the guard. “Follow this road west until it runs into the highway, then turn left.”
Through the truck’s open passenger window, Ibrahim could see Ahmed’s outline emerge from the trees and start toward the truck.
Ibrahim asked, “How far is it?”
Before the driver could answer, Ibrahim took a step back. The first muffled shot went into the temple of the passenger-side guard; the second went into the neck of the driver, who slumped sideways. The noise suppressor, made from steel soup cans and fiberglass insulation, had worked well. The shots had been no louder than a muted hand-clap.
“One more each,” Ibrahim ordered.
Ahmed fired another round into the first guard. He then extended the gun into the cab, took aim, and fired a round into the driver’s ear. Ibrahim turned and signaled to the Volkswagen. Hadi climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the car into the clearing. Ibrahim and Ahmed already had the guards’ bodies out of the truck.
“Key ring,” Ahmed said, and tossed it to Ibrahim.
They started dragging the bodies toward the tree line. Hadi pulled out a pair of white towels he’d taken from his hotel, tossed one to Fa’ad, and together they wiped down the cab. The Glock’s soft-nosed hollow-points had disintegrated inside the guards’ skulls, leaving no exit wounds, so there was more blood than brain matter. Once done, Hadi tossed his towel to Fa’ad, who jogged into the trees and tossed them away.
Ibrahim returned to the clearing, unlocked the cattle gate, then tossed the key ring to Hadi. He and Fa’ad got in and backed the truck through the gate, followed by Ibrahim and Ahmed in the Volkswagen. Hadi shut and locked the gate as Ibrahim pulled the Volkswagen into the trees and out of sight.
The service road ran alongside the pipeline, which sat atop five-foot support pylons, spaced every fifty feet or so. Bracketed on both sides by trees and heavily rutted, the road had been built to accommodate construction equipment during the pipeline’s construction and now served as an access road for the refinery’s maintenance and security staff.
After a mile, the road veered, going right as the pipeline went left. In the median stood a grove of trees, over the top of which the lights of the refinery were visible. Ibrahim stopped the truck, and they got out. “Change clothes,” he ordered.
The navy blue coveralls had been chosen not so much for stealth but for anonymity. Most of the refinery workers wore similar coveralls. If spotted, from a distance Ibrahim and his team would, they hoped, be mistaken for maintenance personnel. They were now less than a half-mile from the refinery’s perimeter road and fence.
Once in their coveralls, they walked through the grove to a clearing. Here the pipeline zigzagged before straightening again, crossing over the road, and then, after another five hundred yards, passing through the security fence and into the refinery itself.
The ethanol pipeline running above their heads was less than a year old and ran from Goias, five hundred miles to the north, through Paulinia before continuing on to the Japeri Terminal in Rio de Janeiro two hundred miles to the northeast. Three-point-two billion gallons of ethanol per year through a pipeline spanning a quarter of Brazil’s breadth.
While the URC had been unable to discover the pipeline’s precise flow rate, the averages had been enough to convince the Emir that the plan was feasible. With a reported “up time” of eighty-five percent, the pipeline was pumping its 3.2 billion gallons over a span of 310 days, which in turn meant that for every operational day, 10.3 million gallons were flowing from Goias to Rio. At any given hour of the day, in any given ten-mile stretch of pipeline, there was enough ethanol to fill twenty tanker trucks.
“Four ESD valves between here and the perimeter,” Ibrahim whispered. “One charge to disable each valve, one for the midpoint between the last pylons, and one for detonation. Those two I’ll handle myself. Ahmed, you have the first valve; Fa’ad, the second; Shasif, you have the third and fourth. When I’ve planted my charge, I’ll step out and scratch my head. Start your timers. Four minutes exactly. Remember: Walk back to the truck. Do not run. Anyone not back by the time the first charge goes off, they get left behind. Any questions?” There were none. “Allah be with us,” Ibrahim said.
They took off together, walking casually and chatting, as would any maintenance crew trying to make the best of a night shift. Two hundred yards from the grove, they reached the first ESD. Ahmed peeled off and knelt down behind the barrel-sized valve, then Fa’ad, then finally Shasif.
“See you back at the truck,” Ibrahim said, and kept walking.
The perimeter road was fifty yards ahead. To the right, a white pickup truck appeared, moving slowly as the passenger-side guard shined a spotlight on the fence. Ibrahim checked his watch.
They had twelve minutes. Say four more minutes to set the charges and eight minutes to run the mile back to the cattle gate. It would be very close. Or, he thought, there was another option.
Heart pounding, he slowed his pace. So did the truck, coming to a near halt. Ibrahim waved his arm in greeting and called out in Portuguese,
After a long five seconds, the driver waved back. “How’s it going?” he asked.
Ibrahim shrugged.
“What’re you up to?” the driver asked.
“Weld checks,” Ibrahim answered. “Our boss decided we needed something to do.”
The driver chuckled. “I know the feeling. See you later.”
The transmission shifted into gear, and the truck rolled forward. Then stopped. The reverse lights popped on, and the truck backed up until it was again even with Ibrahim. “You came in from the cattle gate?” the driver asked.
Heart in his throat, Ibrahim nodded.
“Was there a truck there?”
“Didn’t see one. What’s the problem?”
“Paiva and Cabral aren’t answering their radio.”