Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath (23 page)

Fisher narrowed his gaze on her. “Did you ask him if he had any suspicions about this
man Chern?”

“I did. And he wouldn’t talk about that. He’s says the oligarchs on our list must’ve
been tipped off and fled, but all the intel assets in Asia and Europe have been alerted.
When I informed him about the neutron generator and Natanz, he flatly denied that
any Russian citizens would be involved. I told him that for a veteran politician he
was acting rather naïve.”

“I agree,” said Grim.

“Honestly, though, he’s not my biggest problem right now. Israel’s Knesset is debating
a preemptive air strike on the Natanz facility, and the country’s air force has already
slipped into our equivalent of DEFCON One. Now this whole thing could turn into a
Middle East powder keg.”

“Sounds like we’re going to Iran,” said Fisher.

Caldwell sighed in frustration, then finally nodded. “If I recall, you know your way
around there, at least Quds Force headquarters, anyway. You’ll have my help.”

Grim was at the SMI table. “If we fly into Baghdad, we’re still looking at an eleven-hour
road trip.”

“HALO jump?” Fisher asked.

Grim shook her head. “They’ve got some serious antiaircraft guns. There’s just no
good way to get there. It’s smack in the middle of the desert.”

“We’ll work it out,” Fisher assured the president.

But they were wasting their time—

Because not six hours later, as they cruised over the Atlantic, Grim heard back from
one of the Mossad ground agents assigned to be their eyes and ears on Natanz.

He breathlessly reported that one of his colleagues had been in a struggle with a
perimeter guard and that both men had died. Just before his death, the agent had photographed
traffic coming in and out of the facility—government cars, military vehicles, and
various delivery trucks.

Even more importantly, he’d moved in close to a loading dock and had captured something
large and draped in tarpaulins being transferred into a tractor trailer. The agent
died before he could transmit those images, which were found stored on his camera.

“That has to be it,” Grim said. “They couldn’t attach the neutron generator in the
field.”

“So they’ve built their bomb,” said Fisher.

Grim nodded. “And now it’s gone.”

31

FISHER
balled his hands into fists as he scanned the data passing across the SMI’s display.

“I’m doing everything I can,” Grim said, clutching the edge of the table. “It’s just
the photos weren’t very clear. We got no markings off the trailer. I talked to NCS,
and they’re willing to send in a drone, but it might be too late. Satellite was out
of range but it’s back up now. We’re still backtracking everything that came out of
Natanz. We’ve got eyes on all shipping out of Iranian ports, we’ve alerted field ops
on the ground there to provide HUMINT. I’ve just queried the SMI for primary targets,
calling up those sites that’ve already used neutron generators—”

“Which is pretty much every oil well in the entire Middle East,” Fisher said.

“Not all of them,” said Grim. “But it’s a long list. The SMI predicts that they’re
transporting the weapon south, toward Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”

“All right, let’s go with what Charlie said—biggest bang for the buck. What oil well
target would have the most repercussions on the American economy—because that’s what
this is about, right? The oligarchs are trying to weaken us through a virus, a dirty
bomb attack, and by taking out an oil target to jack up the price of their own crude
and destabilize the entire market.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Charlie said. “But we’ve finally received permission to land
in Dubai. That should put us within range of potential targets. I’ve notified the
flight deck.”

“What’s our ETA?”

“About twelve hours.”

“Damn, it’ll take them barely five hours to reach the coast,” said Fisher.

“And we’re not sure exactly when the tractor left Natanz, so it could be there already,”
said Grim. “One among hundreds of tractor trailers moving in and out.”

“Flight deck,” Fisher called. “I need you to fly so fast the wings melt off. Do you
read me?”

“Roger that, Sam. Best possible speed until the wings melt off.”

Fisher nodded and glanced to Grim. “Be right back.”

He headed to the infirmary, where he pulled Kasperov aside and spoke in Russian. “We
were
going to drop you off at Dulles, but time’s against us. We’re making a detour.”

“That’s all right. I assume I’m very safe here.”

“I guarantee that.”

“So it’s good we remain—but not for much longer. I do want to see my daughter. For
now let me know if I can help with anything else.”

“I will.”

“Mr. Fisher, I’m sorry it’s come to this. The oligarchs do not represent the Russian
people, only a tiny minority, like your so-called one percent.”

“I know. And the irony is, you and the rest of them, you got your money after the
Soviet Union collapsed, so you were free to pursue greed at any cost.”

“Just like America?” Kasperov asked. “As if to say your Congress isn’t controlled
by big businessmen?”

Fisher hesitated. “They’d never resort to this.”

“You don’t know that. Some men will do anything.”

“But not us, right? Not you. You did the right thing—and in my line of work, I don’t
run into many people who have a conscience.”

* * *

ELEVEN
hours and fifty-eight minutes later they landed at Dubai International Airport.

Fisher had barely slept, and Grim had refused to leave the SMI table, even as dark
circles had formed under her eyes and a pot of coffee had slowly emptied behind her.

More tractor trailers had been followed, shipments examined. Three different helicopters
that had left Natanz had also been tracked. Keyhole satellites, drones, and ground
assets had come up empty. Fisher decided he had nothing to lose by calling on Kobin.

“Hey, asshole.”

Kobin snorted. “I thought we loved each other now.”

“I filed for divorce.”

“Nice.”

Fisher lifted his chin. “I need information.”

“What else is new?”

“Your guy find out anything on the Snow Maiden yet?”

“Still waiting on him.”

“Follow up. Right now we got a shipment out of Natanz we need to find.”

“Don’t be coy, Fisher. I know what you’re looking for. I eavesdrop on everything.”

“Then you already got something for me.”

“What the fuck? You think I got a guy in every city? A guy in Iran for God’s sake?”

“Why not? You sold weapons to the Blacklist Engineers. You didn’t care about that.”
Fisher scowled.

Kobin took a step back, thought it over, opened his mouth, hesitated, then finally
stammered and said, “Look, I got one guy down in Bandar Abbas, but that port’s pretty
far south. Not sure why they’d send the container all the way down there. I’ll give
him a call, but listen, I don’t think I have shit on this one. Wish I did.”

“Make the call.”

“Okay. And hey, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

Fisher almost smiled. “You actually have brain cells left?”

“Seriously, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Fisher frowned.

“You know. For everything. The past is the past. I think we make a great team.”

Fisher took a step toward Kobin, staring him down. “You know what I think? I think
it’s all about you. You’re not sorry. You’re just saving your ass here. What you’ve
done for us is good. You helped us find Kasperov. Thank you. But let’s agree to just
use each other and keep the apologies and this fantasy you have about joining our
team out of the equation. Right now you’re a consultant—and that seems to work. Okay?”

“Damn, I’m just trying to make nice over here. Not exactly in a good mood, are we?”

“You make nice by calling your buddy.”

Fisher left the man standing there by the servers. Yes, Kobin had been a great help,
but his abduction of Sarah and desire to have Fisher killed meant that no amount of
“making amends,” “earning his keep,” or anything else could fix what he’d done. Ever.

Before returning to the control room, Fisher took a moment to calm himself. That bastard
had set his blood to boil, and he knew he’d take it out on the team if he didn’t let
go.

After a deep breath, he started forward. “Hey, Charlie, we get anything?”

“Perfect timing, because, yeah, I found a link I’ve been looking for.” The kid swung
around in his chair, rubbed his eyes, then waved his peanut butter spoon like Excalibur.
“Come see this.”

Grim and Briggs joined Fisher at Charlie’s station.

“If this is another dead end . . .” Grim warned.

“Hell, no, boss,” Charlie answered, pointing to satellite photos of a seaport labeled
King Abdulaziz.

The port was in the city of Dammam along Saudi Arabia’s east coast and about halfway
down the Persian Gulf, between Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi. Fisher recalled that it
was one of the largest in the entire gulf. A data window beside one image indicated
that the port was a main gateway through which cargo entered the Eastern Province
and moved on into the central provinces of Saudi Arabia and was strategically placed
to service the oil industry. The port had its own administration offices; mechanical
and marine workshops; electrical, telephone, and marine communication networks; and
water treatment plants. A clinic, a fire department, and housing complex for employees
with nearby mosques and supermarkets helped classify the surrounding harborage as
a city within a city.

Was this the oligarchs’ third target?

“Given our timetable, it’s possible that our device could’ve been transported down
to the southern coast like Sam said, then put on a ship—because three different Iranian
ships called on the port within the last four hours.”

“So they want to blow up the port?” Fisher asked.

Charlie shrugged. “The generator’s a booster, yeah, but I’m thinking these guys are
bolder than that. They’ll bury it within a bigger shipment and try to slip it past
security. They wouldn’t worry about that if they wanted to blow the port. Hell, they
could leave it on the ship and just detonate it there.”

“Come over here,” said Grim, crossing back to the SMI. “Great work, Charlie. You finally
got something that points to Abqaiq. I’ll take it now.”

Charlie grinned. “I knew you would.”

Grim zoomed in on a map of Saudi Arabia, the vast plains of desert stretching out
across the display like a piece of tanned leather. She narrowed the image toward a
splotch of gray, a birthmark on an otherwise unbroken flesh-colored stretch sixty
miles southwest of the port. The image came into focus to detail a cookie-cutter community
with adjacent industrial facility to the east. Photos popped up in a gallery to the
left, along with more data bars that identified the region as Abqaiq—pronounced “Ab-cake.”

While the overhead image showed circular storage tanks and rectangular buildings,
the photos revealed an even vaster network of pipes—like the exposed bowels of some
metallic beast—along with huge columns of smoke backlit by flames shooting skyward
in long, thin tongues.

This wasn’t just an oil well. This was an oil processing facility, and it was located
within a gated community of thirty thousand owned by Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian
national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran.

“You’re looking at one of the largest oil processors in the world,” said Grim. “This
facility handles more than half of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil exports. It’s a key node
in the global energy pipeline. The main thing they do here is remove hydrogen sulfide
from the crude oil so it doesn’t spontaneously explode during shipping.”

Grim tapped one data window to bring up a list of news stories. “Al-Qaeda launched
an attack on Abqaiq back in 2006. They tried to get two cars carrying a ton of ammonium
nitrate close to the processing plants, but the Saudis shut that down pretty quickly.
They have security and entrances set up like an old medieval castle, where after you
cross the gate, there’s a wide open area nearly a mile long that allows the second
tier of forces to take you out. Since then, there have been hundreds more attempts,
all of them small and barely worth mentioning. The Saudis have increased security—higher
fences, electronic surveillance, and a garrison of over thirty-five thousand troops.
They have operators from the Special Security Forces, Special Emergency Forces, the
General Security Service, as well as local reps from fire and police. The bigger players
include specialized brigades of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the Royal Saudi
Navy, and even the Coast Guard. They have a contingency plan for hijacked aircraft
being flown into the plant, with F-15s from their nearest base on continual standby.”

“Tighter than Fort Knox,” said Briggs.

“And the Russians know it,” Charlie added.

“So what’re you thinking, Grim?” asked Fisher. “They’re smuggling the device into
the processing plant?”

“There are two equipment warehouses on the east side in an area called Material Supply.”
Grim spread her thumb and forefinger apart, coming in tight on the buildings. “The
device could be hidden within some larger shipment and move through security. Some
of those neutron generators—not all of them but some—emit radiation, and they’re expected
to do so. I’m not sure the fluctuations or increase in readings would be picked up
by those security teams when they’re already expecting some radiation—and I think
that’s what the oligarchs are counting on.”

Fisher snickered. “So we won’t find a nose-cone-shaped warhead with a ticking clock
on it, huh?”

Grim rolled her eyes and typed something on the touch keyboard. The screens faded
to expose another map of the region with concentric circles of devastation flashing
in crimson red, along with data bars popping up all over the screen to detail the
destruction. “A fifteen kiloton nuclear explosion—about the size of the detonation
in Hiroshima—would kill everyone at the plant and surrounding community, some 65,000
in all, including many American engineers.” She flicked her glance between Fisher
and the SMI. “Within the first two to four months of the bombing, the acute effects
of Hiroshima killed 90,000 to 166,000 people, with roughly half of the deaths occurring
on the first day. The Hiroshima prefecture health department estimated that, of the
people who died on the day of the explosion, sixty percent died from flash or flame
burns, thirty percent from falling debris, and ten percent from other causes. Now
take a look at this.” Grim brought up another series of windows with charts, graphs,
and tables. “This data comes from conflicting sources, and the Saudis are always giving
us the best-case scenario and boast that they’ve got enough backup supplies, reserves,
facilities, and personnel to take a major blow like this and come out unaffected.”

“No way,” Briggs said.

“Yeah, I know,” said Grim. “Shutting down Abqaiq could take up to fifty percent of
Saudi oil off the market for years and with it, much of the world’s spare capacity.”

“To hell with the oil. There are too many lives at stake—including Americans,” Fisher
said. “And we lose credibility if the world learns assets were in place and we didn’t
act. Let’s get on the horn right now.”

Grim’s expression grew tentative. “We need to be careful. We can’t run in there and
cry wolf.”

“I know,” Fisher said. “But the Saudis need to suck it up and understand what’s at
stake here.”

“I agree, Sam, but we can’t forget that the Saudis are a very proud people. We lose
credibility as an organization and as a nation if we’re not absolutely sure about
this. We know Abqaiq is a likely target. We have three Iranian ships that ported at
Dammam within our time frame . . . but I’m concerned that’s not enough for us to impose
our will on them. We can alert them, sure, we’ll do that, but I know you’ll want to
go in, and I know they’ll want to handle this themselves.”

Fisher looked at Charlie, who shrugged.

Briggs pursed his lips. “Iranian ships stop at that port all the time.”

“We only need to be wrong once,” said Fisher. “And that’s not good enough for me.
I’d rather piss off the Saudis and cry wolf than play games. We need to be there.
We need to inspect anything that goes through there ourselves.”