Jihad

“It was a job.”

The pilot had to answer a radio call. Dean tightened his arms around his chest. He had liked being a sniper. He liked the simplicity of it. Not like now.

“I have a sharpshooter’s badge myself,” said the pilot. “I’m pretty good. Every marine, a rifleman.”

“That’s right.” said Dean. But inside he was thinking that there was a world of difference between doing some shooting and being a sniper. Shooting was the least of it.

“We practice insertions, do a lot of work with some recon guys,” continued the pilot. “It’s good work.”

“Yeah?” said Dean, feigning interest, thinking about Kenan and how he hoped he was wrong that he’d met a ship.

CHAPTER 133

Unable to see the O’s for the O’s, Gallo had printed a dump of the storage files on the drive belonging to Kenan Conkel’s college roommate. He hoped that looking at the data on paper might put it into a new light, but all it did was cover the lab with paper. He had piles and piles of printouts, showing files in every conceivable format.

Most had to do with chemistry and hockey. The roommate seemed to have a perverse need to follow the Red Wings; the remains of web pages pertaining to the hockey team were strewn across the drive.

“Paper, Mr. Gallo?” Johnny Bib was standing in the doorway.

“You told me to go back to the roommate’s drive to look for clues.”

“Paper?” said Johnny Bib again, as if it were a foreign substance.

“I thought it would, like, let me see things more clearly. I was here all night, and I figured, you know, get a different look at things.”

“Did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Mmmmmmm,” said Johnny Bib. He walked into the room, surveying the different piles. “Chemistry?”

“Organics.”

“Mmmmmmmm.” Johnny Bib leaned down and picked a solitary piece of paper from the floor. “Why the boat?”

“Um, like, got me. It’s the only one on the drive.” Gallo turned to his computer and pulled up the file, displaying the contents in HTML, a common web page language, as well as in the machine language. “Looked odd, you know, the only one there, so I checked it for encryptions, odd fractals, the works.”

“Coast guard,” said Johnny Bib.

“Well, yeah, it’s a cutter or something.”

“Coast guard.”

Gallo stared at Bib, trying to puzzle out exactly what he was saying.

“Coast guard,” repeated Bib.

“You think it’s important?”

“It’s different! Different!” Johnny Bib practically screamed. “We like different! We love different!”

“I’ll see what I can figure out.”

* * *

Rubens had just arrived at Crypto City after two hours of fitful sleep when Johnny Bib flew at him in the main hallway.

Literally flew at him, his hands spread wide.

“Sturgeon,” said the head of the Desk Three research team. “Sturgeon!”

“Are you planning on catching some?” asked Rubens.

Johnny slid to a halt, arms still extended. “It’s a ship. A U.S. Coast Guard cutter.”

“Actually, they call it a coastal patrol boat, officially,” said Robert Gallo, coming up behind Johnny Bib.

“I trust this is significant?”

“I think Kenan Conkel was interested in this ship,” said Gallo. “There was this picture on his friend’s hard drive, and I’ve recovered bits of queries about its capability and where it berths, coast guard routines I think. The queries were all right before he went to Mexico in September — and according to the time stamp, his roommate would have been in organic chemistry class.”

“It guards the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port,” said Johnny Bib. “The biggest port of entry for oil in the United States.”

“Come down to the Art Room with me,” said Rubens.

* * *

It made much more sense. He should have realized it from the start.

Rubens stared at the screen at the front of the Art Room. A picture of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, better known as LOOP, was displayed as one of the analysts quickly summarized the port’s assets and importance. All of Asad’s major targets had been aimed at the energy infrastructure — the Saudi oil fields, the major refinery in Germany. LOOP was their equivalent, much more important than a single chemical plant.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port had been built because many supertankers couldn’t get close enough to U.S. ports to unload. The process was fairly simple — a tanker would moor at an oversized floating gas pump called a single-point mooring base, referred to as an SPM. Raw petroleum was pumped through LOOP into a massive pipeline that brought it to Port Fourchon onshore. There it was stored in underground salt caverns before being shipped to refineries. Besides the mooring base and the onshore facilities, there were several vulnerable points — most notably the pumping and control platform, eighteen miles from shore.

LOOP had survived Hurricane Katrina when the worst part of the hurricane veered eastward; it was back in operation within a week. But drive a ship with several hundred or more tons of explosives into it, and the pumps, pipes, and mechanisms that had withstood the wind and waves would be shattered. Given the already fragile state of the Gulf Coast oil infrastructure, the result would be catastrophic — worse than the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. would lose between a third and half of its oil for years, not months.

That had to be their target.

It was a guess — but one with evidence.

“Tell the coast guard to shut LOOP down,” Rubens said. “Order all ships out of the area. Evacuate the control platform. Keep working on that list of ships coming up from Mexico, validating them — expand it to include the area near LOOP.”

Telach frowned. “All we have is Johnny Bib’s hunch on this cutter.”

“That’s enough for me. Where’s Charlie Dean?”

CHAPTER 134

“Charlie, can you change course and get north to Port Fourchon?”

Marie Telach’s voice over the Deep Black communications system felt like a spike in Dean’s brain. He pulled his headset off of his right ear and reached into his pocket and pulled out his satphone, pretending to use it.

“This is Dean,” he said.

“We need you to go to Port Fourchon,” repeated Telach. “It’s south of New Orleans.”

“How far from New Orleans are we?” Dean asked the pilot.

“Twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen. Why?”

“There’s a deep-water port called LOOP out there, south of Port Fourchon,” Telach told Dean. “Johnny Bib has a theory Kenan may be heading there.”