“Depends on what?”
“Depends on how good the security of the Iraq bank is, depends on how long it takes me to identify the Farrar family’s account numbers, and most of all it depends on whether the bank will allow me to transfer funds out of the country, and one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“What am I going to get out of this?”
Mike hesitated. The boy was right. This was not part of his job description and was highly illegal to boot.
“What do you want?”
Mac pursed his lips, thinking for a moment. “Let me decide who gets the money I steal.”
Mike thought about that. It didn’t make any difference to him where the money went, as long as the Farrar family couldn’t get to it.
“Deal,” Mike said, sticking out his hand.
Instead of shaking it, Mac slapped his palm. “Deal.”
Mac turned back to his computer, the screen casting an eerie flickering glow throughout the room, like ghosts dancing on the walls.
“Now, get out of here and let me get to work.”
Buddy Raines made the deal with the delighted oil minister, and he and his team of SEALs were on the way across the world by supper time in a C-130 loaded with three state-of-the-art Bell Kiowas and one Boeing CH-47 Chinook. It would take the C-130 almost twenty hours for the flight, and it would take multiple in-air refuelings before it would land at Kuwait Airport the next day.
Captain Matt Stryker, leader of the SEAL team, sat next to Buddy on the metal benches along the wall of the cargo compartment of the C-130.
“Now that we’re airborne, you wanta tell me and my men what the mission is?” Stryker asked.
Buddy had not told anyone of their objective, lest the news somehow get to the Farrar family.
“We’re gonna take out an oil refinery in Iraq,” Buddy said, glancing at Stryker to see how he took the news.
“Any particular refinery or will any one do?” the captain asked.
“It’s one at Al Basrah, near the coast of the Persian Gulf,” Buddy answered.
“Airdrop or go in by water?”
“Water insertion, then a short trek across the desert until we get to the refinery.”
“Can we expect any help from the locals?”
“Nope. We’re on our own.”
“That figures,” Stryker said.
“Hey, if it was easy, I wouldn’t need the SEALs to do the job, would I?” Buddy asked, a grin on his face.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Stryker replied, a smile of pride on his face as he glanced down the cargo hold at his team of men, who were busy checking their equipment, over and over.
“Any chance of us getting out?” Stryker asked, as if it really didn’t matter much.
“Oh, there’s a chance,” Buddy replied. “All we have to do is sneak into Iraq without being detected, cross God knows how many miles of desert on foot, blow up the refinery without getting killed, walk back across the desert to the Gulf shore, and then cross fifty miles of the Persian Gulf in a twenty-foot Zodiac with the entire Iraqi Air Force looking for us.”
Stryker grinned. “Hey, sorry I asked.”
Forty
Johnny MacDougal grinned to himself after Mike Post left his lair. He’d deliberately made the task seem harder than it was. In fact, he already had most of the bank codes needed for international transfers of money committed to memory, something Mike didn’t need to know.
Mac booted up his computer and logged onto a personal program he’d encrypted with an unbreakable cipher-based code so no one else could ever read it. It contained all of the phone numbers of computer systems around the world that he’d gathered in almost three years of intense hacking.
He scrolled down the list and wrote several numbers down on a scratch pad he kept on his desk, and then he exited the program and logged onto his modem dialer.
Punching in the numbers for the Central Bank of Iraq’s computer, he hit enter.
Several various high-pitched tones sounded as Mac’s computer dialed the bank in Iraq. When the familiar squealing sound of a connection sounded, Mac glanced at his scratch pad and keyed in the proper number sequence to give him access to the computer program of the bank.
He’d found the number the previous year when he was hacked into the First National Bank of London. The London bank’s computer had a list of various codes it used to connect to other banks across the world, and so, of course, Mac had copied all of the numbers against the day when he might need them.
Mac had been in the London bank’s computer playing one of his favorite tricks. He’d hacked into the computers of several large corporations in England and changed their payroll programs. Usually, when the computers calculated payroll amounts, if the amount ended in a fraction of a cent, or shilling in England’s case, the computer rounded it off either up or down to the next cent. Mac had changed the payroll programs so that all fractions of pennies or shillings were sent instead to another account in the London bank. As the money accumulated, Mac had it then routed to various charities he was fond of, like Save the Whales, Boy Scouts, and his personal favorite, Computers for Schools, which bought used computers and donated them to schools that otherwise couldn’t afford them. The account was currently donating in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a year to the charities without any of the corporations realizing the good they were doing.
As the Iraq bank accepted his code, a menu appeared on Mac’s computer screen.
The first thing he had to do was acquire the account numbers and codes to access the accounts of the Farrar family members.
He went into the customer database and scrolled down until he’d collected account numbers for everyone with the last name Farrar.
Mike had told him the most important was a man named Abdullah El Farrar, so Mac started with that account.
He exited the database and went back to the main menu. He punched in the number for Account Services, and then plugged in Abdullah El Farrar’s account number and Personal Identification Number, or PIN.
When the account information appeared on the screen, Mac whistled through his lips. The man had over a billion and a half dollars in the account.
“Jesus, this is one heavy dude,” Mac whispered to himself.
He looked at the menu of services at the top of the screen and found one saying, “Transfer of Funds.”
When he keyed that in, he was presented with another menu listing various banks. Most of the banks listed were either in Iraq or one of the other Arab emirate states. The only bank not in the Middle East was Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank that Mac had never been able to hack into because of its strict security measures.
He leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. It wouldn’t do much good to transfer Farrar’s money to another Arab bank because with his power he’d be able to get it back without too much trouble.
Mac had an idea. He exited the Iraq bank’s program and dialed into the non-secure public portion of Credit Suisse’s on-line banking service.
While there, he opened an account under the name Abdullah El Farrar, and was assigned an account number and then asked to pick a PIN for the account. Mac did so, and was rewarded with all the information needed to wire-transfer funds into the account.
Exiting the Swiss bank’s program, he again dialed into the Iraq bank and accessed Farrar’s account. He transferred all but a hundred thousand dollars into the Swiss bank account he’d just opened. He didn’t want to completely bottom out the account because that would set off alarms and Farrar would be notified of the account activity.
After that, Mac entered the other Farrar accounts and transferred at least eighty percent of the monies in each of the accounts to the one in the Swiss bank under Abdullah El Farrar’s name.
“Boy, they’re gonna really be pissed when they think old Abdullah took all their money,” Mac chuckled to himself.
When he was done, he sat back, popped the top on one of his caffeine-laden drinks,
and sipped it thoughtfully. He had to figure out something to do with all that money in the new account before anyone got wise and started to trace it.
He leaned forward and re-accessed the Swiss bank and opened five more accounts under fictitious names. The Swiss bank would cooperate with Iraq and Farrar as far as information about the original transfer, but once the money left that account, the Swiss wouldn’t divulge its whereabouts to anyone.
Using his original Farrar PIN, Mac transferred the money from the Farrar account into the other five accounts, dividing it up equally. Each of those accounts were then instructed to wire the money to an account Mac had set up in the Cayman Islands the previous year.
He’d set up the Cayman Islands account with no real purpose in mind, but just to have in case another scheme presented itself to him.
Now, the Farrars and the Iraq bank would have to penetrate two of the most secretive banking systems in the world to track the money, a feat he didn’t think was possible.
Now, what was he going to do with over three billion dollars he had sitting in a Cayman Islands bank?
Finally, he laughed when the idea came to him. He turned his computer back on and accessed the payroll accounts of the Army. This was going to be a hoot!
Buddy Raines and the SEALs got the choppers unloaded and reassembled without any trouble. He’d thought to bring along several real aviation technicians who did the majority of the work while Stryker and his SEALs tried to look like they knew what they were doing.
Inside the Chinook, the jet-powered Zodiac and all of the equipment the SEAL team would need was neatly tied down under tarps so it couldn’t be recognized.
After a gourmet lunch with the oil minister of Kuwait, Buddy said he and the technicians were going to take the Chinook for a test ride.
When the oil minister asked why, Buddy told him the engine was having some hydraulic problems and they wanted to check it out under the conditions it would be operating in.
By the time Buddy and two technicians climbed up into the Chinook, the SEAL team was already hidden aboard down in the cargo space with the boat and their weapons and explosives.
“We’ll just take it for a spin out over the Gulf,” Buddy called down to the minister, who grinned and waved good-bye.
As the Chinook hovered fifteen feet above the choppy waves of the Persian Gulf ten miles offshore, the SEALs shoved the Zodiac out the door. It splashed down without any problems, followed in short order by several waterproof packets of weapons and explosives and then by the SEALs themselves.
Once they were all safely aboard, the Chinook’s pilot waved through the Plexiglas and veered off back toward the base.
The jet engine, powered by two powerful marine batteries, made its customary whooshing sound and the Zodiac took off at thirty miles an hour toward shore, handling the waves like a racehorse.
Buddy had timed their arrival so as to reach shore just after sundown. He had with him satellite maps of the region, a compass, and a satellite-tracking device called a GPS that would tell them their position within fifty feet at all times. It was all he needed to make his way across several miles of desert to the refinery at Al Basrah.
Glancing at his watch, he said to Stryker, “We’ve got twelve hours to cross the desert, kill the refinery, and get back here before dawn.”
“That’s cutting it awfully close, especially if we meet with any significant resistance at the refinery,” Stryker said.
“That’s not the hard part,” Buddy said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The tough part’s gonna be crossing fifty miles of the Gulf in that dinghy without being spotted by the Iraqi Air Force if we don’t get back before sunrise.”
“In that case, let’s get a move on!” Stryker said.
He looked over at his men to make sure they’d pulled the Zodiac up on the bank past the high-tide mark, covered it with a sand-colored canvas sheet, and were loaded up and ready to go.
His second in command, Sam Little, gave a thumbs-up and the men walked over to join Matt and Buddy.
Buddy keyed their present position into the GPS’s memory so they’d have no trouble finding the hidden Zodiac if and when they made it back from their mission.
Then, holding the GPS pointed north and south by the compass, he keyed in the coordinates of the refinery that was their goal. On the tiny screen of the GPS, a map appeared with directions on how to get there from their present position.
Matt shook his head at the wonders of the new technology. “Kinda takes all the fun out of exploring, doesn’t it?” he asked with a grin.
“Not if somebody’s shooting at you and you have to make tracks in a hurry,” Buddy said as he glanced at the map and started off across the desert sand.
Forty-one
The moon over the desert of Iraq was half full, which was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Buddy Raines and the SEALs could see where they were walking, and there was enough light to read the dial of the GPS and not lose their way, but on the other hand, when it came time to infiltrate the security of the refinery, the light would be a distinct disadvantage.
Luckily, soon after starting on their way, Raines and his men came upon a road crossing the desert sands. It was little more than a pair of ruts in the dirt, but it was hard-packed and made for easier walking than the sand did. It even went in the right direction.
A little over an hour and a half after setting out, they began to see lights on the horizon. Soon, the refinery itself came into view. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, with thousands of lights covering every part of the structure, which spread out over half a mile in each direction.
“Jesus,” Stryker said to Buddy as they stood there staring at the well-lighted refinery. “Here I was cussing the moonlight and it turns out it didn’t matter a bit. That place is brighter than a whore’s eyes when you pull out your wallet.”
“I wonder if it’s always that lit up or if they were warned we’re coming,” Raines mused, almost to himself.
Stryker shrugged. “Well, if they’re expecting us, it’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight.”
“Come on,” Buddy said, crouching a little though they were still a couple of miles from the refinery. “Let’s get a little closer and see what the situation is.”
Stryker spoke over his shoulder. “Spread out, men. We’re going in. Keep a sharp lookout for guards and sentries.”
Raines and the SEALs were wearing their black night-ops fatigues and had their faces blackened, which made them all but invisible from more than a few yards away, which was all that saved them when they came suddenly upon a sentry post five hundred yards from the perimeter of the refinery.
They would have walked right up on the men had one of the sentries not decided it was time for a cigarette.
Alerted by the flare of the match and the strong smell of Arabian tobacco, Stryker put out his hand to signal his men and went down to the ground.
The SEALs carried Uzis and Berettas, all fitted with silencers, as well as K-Bar assault knives in scabbards on their calves.
Stryker signaled his men to stay put, and he crawled forward until he was a dozen yards from the sentries. There were two men sitting on folding stools, smoking and talking in low voices.
They weren’t speaking in English, so Stryker couldn’t understand what they were saying. He slipped his knife from its scabbard and was about to take them out, when the harsh sound of static and a tinny voice erupted from a small transceiver on the ground next to the men.
One of them picked it up and spoke a few words into it, then keyed it off and laughed as he said something to his companion.
This was bad news. Evidently the sentries surrounding the refinery all were equipped with two-way radios and were made to check in periodically. If Stryker took them out, it would alert their commanders the next time they failed to answer their call on the radio.
He backed up until he could turn around, and then he went back to his group and expla
ined the situation to them.
“What do we do?” Raines asked. “If we leave the sentries out here, it’s gonna be tough to get past them after we blow the refinery.”
“Can’t be helped,” Stryker said with a shake of his head. “Better to be tough to get out than alerting them to our presence and making it harder to get in.”
Moving slower now that they knew there were sentries on the outskirts of the perimeter, Stryker led his team in a circular approach to the vast lighted structure up ahead.
They passed two more guard outposts, but the men evidently weren’t really expecting to see anyone because they were either sleeping or talking and smoking and not really paying too much attention to what they were supposed to be doing.
Finally they made their way to the southeast corner, and came up against a ten-foot-high chain-link fence that looked as if it had been erected in the last few days.
Stryker pointed at the fresh dirt around the posts. “This is new. Guess they are expecting company.”
Raines spread out a drawing of the refinery on the ground and pointed at some structures at one end.
“This is the cracking plant,” he said. “According to the experts, this is what we want to hit.”
“What’s a cracking plant?” Stryker asked as he peered at the drawing and then at the refinery, trying to pick out the structures in the plant.
“It’s where the crude oil is heated up to various temperatures in a staged sequence,” Raines explained. “The various compounds that make up crude oil all have different boiling and vaporization temperatures, so as the oil is heated, different chemical compounds are taken off and stored in these tanks,” he said, pointing to circles on the drawing.
Stryker pointed off to one end of the refinery where a series of tall, vertical towers or tanks could be seen. “That look kinda like what we’re after?” he asked.
Raines nodded, checking the drawing against what they were looking at.
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