Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  “Not to remove the transponder,” Mousavi replied. “We remember.”

  “You’re cleared this morning for zones Twelve ‘A’ through ‘H.’ ” He handed Mousavi the color-coded map and a walkie-talkie, the accepted means for communicating within the refinery complex, and then subjected the visitors to the familiar tedium about obtaining clearance to additional areas should the need arise.

  Mousavi studied the pamphlet diagram with feigned displeasure. “How do I know you are not profiling me?”

  The guard looked at him, realized the humor and laughed. “Get out’a here!” He turned toward the guardhouse and signaled with a circular gesture of his hand. The ten-foot cyclone gate slid aside. Mousavi gunned the engine, and with a wave to the guard, he and his partner entered the premises.

  Mousavi tossed the facility map aside. Refinery personnel paid the men inside their van little notice as they entered a chasm formed on both sides by goliath manifolds and fractionating columns. Black-on-orange OSHA placards warned to extinguish all sources of flame; other signs designated the refinery zones where distillation cracked the crude oil into its various hydrocarbon fractions.

  Salman Ehteshari examined his watch. “We are nominally on schedule.”

  Mousavi appreciated the explicit time and location provided in their instructions, precise elements around which to anchor their planning and hone the procedures. During their three years preparing for today, such precision had not always been the case. Plans initially were such that he and Ehteshari would have had to prepare themselves for certain martyrdom, thanks to several hundred kilos of exotic explosives. For reasons unknown, those plans had evolved and now, like their contribution to the destruction of the George Washington Bridge, the hand of some other patriot would play a critical role.

  They drove to the pumping station of the refinery’s olefin cracking facility. As an electrical engineer, Mousavi had fully indulged his desire to understand the petrochemical fundamentals involved. Fifty meters beyond the pumping station were two 45,000 gallon spheroid storage vessels. Contained within one of these massive storage tanks was liquefied ethane, a volatile distillate by-product of crude oil fractionating conducted elsewhere onsite. Through a series of thick flanges and heavy valves, the ethane was piped from this storage vessel through the pumping station, ultimately to be introduced as feedstock to another distilling unit. With its network of tubular columns, tanks, and heat exchangers, the distillery structure would, at the appropriate time, serve to turbulate and accelerate the vapor cloud’s advancing deflagration. Among the various distillates produced there was ethylene, yet another flammable hydrocarbon, widely used in the synthesis of plastics, fertilizers, and medical anesthetics. The highly volatile ethylene’s importance to Mousavi was rooted in the fact that it was transported back along a parallel pipeline through the pumping station, and finally introduced, under pressure, to the second spheroid storage vessel. It would normally be pumped from there through a boom into refrigerated tanker trucks and shipped to the big oil company’s assorted customers. Today’s customers, Mousavi thought, were going to be deeply disappointed.

  Mousavi positioned the van in front of the pump house according to precise coordinates forwarded to them, like all their instructions, through the infidel woman cutout. Ehteshari refined the task with the help of the hand-held GPS device retrieved from the vehicle glove box. “Close enough,” he said, reading the pre-programmed waypoint on the display.

  “Don’t give me close enough!” Mousavi snapped.

  “What do you want? We’re only accurate within a few meters.”

  Several men wearing business suits and hard-hats strolled past, their stares curiously regarding the van’s occupants and transponder strobe sparking the morning air. Mousavi eyed the men and wondered if their unidentified compatriot might be among them. Mousavi killed the engine and both men climbed out of the van.

  “Time remaining?” Mousavi asked.

  “Twelve minutes, forty seconds.”

  Mousavi slid open the van’s side door. With trembling hands he removed the false aluminum housing clear of what would appear to any knowledgeable individual a portable DC power inverter. Beneath the exterior housing was another enclosure through which he had drilled several dozen quarter-inch diameter holes, a conventional means of quenching electronic components with ambient cooling air; Mousavi’s intent was much the same. He proceeded to connect a high-voltage coaxial cable between the phony DC inverter and a specially modified vapor detection unit. With the battery power source already connected, Mousavi stood back with Ehteshari to examine the product of patient preparation.

  Eight minutes and ten seconds remained, all of which they would need. The two Iranians donned their hard hats and, for good measure, Ehteshari carried his portable vapor detector. They walked at a deliberate pace toward the non-volatiles storage bunker located at the extreme northeast corner of the refinery complex. If time and conditions permitted, they might decide to scale the facility fence.

  Meanwhile, the unattended van with its side door open was unlikely to be disturbed. The transponder signal allowing plant security to track their progress through the refinery gave no indication that the reps were doing anything other than going about their work. Anyone could see by the illuminated LED on the equipment inside that those responsible had only stepped away for a moment.

  9:25 A.M. Eastern Standard Time

  IN THE BRIGHT MORNING SUNLIGHT, nobody noticed the flash when over one-half ton of stainless steel flange and valve hardware instantly vanished. Both centrifugal pumps suddenly unloaded. Heads turned throughout the refinery at the pop of the compressor stall as the seventeen hundred horsepower turbine oversped before automatically shutting down.

  Inside the process information center, the assistant plant manager tapped the old analog meters. “What’s this?” Not two Horton tanks, not simultaneously.

  The engineer to his right stirred. “Scott, did you hear something...dammit! We just had a turbine trip in Twelve!”

  The assistant plant manager’s fingers closed around the microphone as the alarm sounded—two red panel lights, followed quickly by four, then in rapid succession a dozen vapor detectors all indicated that twenty percent of their lower explosive limit had just been exceeded. That triggered the release of fire suppression water and foam. “Emergency response team to Twelve-Foxtrot,” he announced into the microphone. “ERT, report immediately to Twelve-Foxtrot!”

  Three olefin plant technicians changing out a line filter paused from their work to see what the problem was. A field engineer raced out of the pump house to join them. All four men froze. Monstrous jets of boiling fog were billowing their way, the sweet smell of ethylene already stinging the inside of their noses. There was no doubt what was happening; OSHA 1910 guidelines in the wake of the infamous 1991 Philips explosion stipulated the steps to be taken in the event of a hazardous spill. Spaced every fifty feet throughout the complex was a red-colored panic button mounted atop a sealed electrical box. Two men lunged for the nearest one and brought their hands down onto it—everywhere throughout the refinery complex fire alarms sounded, turbines and furnaces shut down, inert gas purges deployed, pipeline valves and blast-proof doors slammed shut.

  “Sweet Jesus...” The main gate security guard noted the origin of the evacuation alert and brought his mobile radio to his lips. “Security Solutions personnel, this is plant security. You must evacuate the plant immediately. Do you copy?”

  There was no answer. He repeated himself...still no response. “ERT dispatched to zone Twelve-Foxtrot, be advised you have two contractor personnel at large. Locate and escort them to plant security. Copy that?”

  Overhearing the security guard’s alert, two technicians turned and rushed through shoulder-deep fog toward the van. “There’s nobody here!” one announced into his radio, the fog now burning his eyes. “Don’t they have a mobile radio? Over.”

  “I can’t raise them! They’re supposed to be servicing vapor de
tectors.”

  The technicians sloshed through ankle-deep water and foam to search the vicinity of the van. Finding no one, they looked anxiously at one another through the thickening fog and relayed their findings to plant security.

  Behind them in the van, an activated platinum filament inside Mousavi’s modified vapor detector oxidized a sample of flammable atmosphere. The catalytic heating raised the temperature of the filament, reducing its conductivity, unbalancing voltage across a Wheatstone bridge circuit to trigger an alarm. But instead of an alarm, two hundred eighty-eight volts discharged a current through the coaxial cable attached to the phony inverter. Inside the inverter’s perforated housing, the first of four bare light bulb filaments, quenched by the flammable atmosphere, burned intensely for several seconds—and broke. Whether due to a purging breath of air, or disparities in the stoichiometry of the flammable fog, the filament failed to become incendiary. This was not altogether unexpected; Mousavi had designed three more attempts into his ignition source. Thirty seconds later, the cycle would repeat itself.

  Fifty meters away, sixty-five thousand gallons of liquefied ethylene and ethane had already vaporized into the atmosphere. With none of the emergency valves to stop the decompressing flow escaping from inside the Horton storage vessels, the heavier-than-air cloud billowed over an area of several acres.

  “They must already be gone!” the technician shouted into his radio. “We’ll swing past the cracking tower to look for them there. We’re out’a here!”

  96

  THACKERAY TURNED FROM his monitor toward Emily, eyelids drooping so wearily they reminded her of a bloodhound. “Strike forty-three,” he said, still disgruntled they hadn’t nailed the code on their third or fourth trial.

  Emily let out a deep breath, wondering if she looked as exhausted as Thackeray did. They had done nothing but write code, morning and night, while juggling the ongoing demands of the Project. It was tedious work but mostly it was frustrating work, and now they were driven by the gnawing recognition that the transmission Thackeray had snagged was in fact related to the bridge’s destruction. The death toll had settled at four hundred fifty-eight and the media was calling it a terrorist attack. Stu for his part had been singularly unhelpful in shedding light on the matter. The only thing clear was that they wouldn’t speak again until his return—from wherever and whenever that happened to be, a point the condescending man at Langley had repeatedly made as if Emily could not understand English.

  In Emily’s fondest dreams, their efforts would lead to the release of her father from prison, and her mother’s treatment by American doctors. That is, if her mother happened to be alive, if she and Thack could hack their way into the satellite, if she played her cards properly with the American government and...the parade of ‘ifs’ seemed depressingly long. Focus on what you are able to control. With each failed simulation we are converging on success.

  Emily turned her attention to the mosaic of characters on her computer monitor, when their attention was suddenly disrupted by an alarm from Thackeray’s satellite communications terminal. Thackeray spun his chair around and stared, disbelieving, before crossing the room to the terminal where the monitor was scrolling through screens full of unintelligible data. He typed several commands into the keyboard and then turned his head to look at Emily. “You have to look at this.”

  They then heard someone outside attempt to push open the security door—the door hung up on the electrically activated deadbolt, the wrong access code having been entered. There was a pause while whoever it was re-entered the code, and the door swung open.

  “There you are,” said Christine Lowell. For once the office manager appeared concerned with something other than the gall displayed by people too self-absorbed to drop everything whenever she entered a room. “You won’t believe what’s happening!”

  Thackeray saw who it was and hunkered over his keyboard.

  “It’s horrible upstairs. They’re, like, shutting us down!”

  The pronouncement hung in the air amidst the hum of refrigeration fans. Emily shook the cobwebs away. “What are you talking about? Who is ‘they?’ ”

  Christine explained in a quivering voice that Ralph Perry had just called his secretary, apparently from a courthouse and fit to be tied. He reportedly asked her to assemble the entire Project staff in the lobby for his arrival that afternoon. Standing there in the doorway, Christine stared daggers at the back of Thackeray’s intransigent head. “I heard Linda ask him what on earth for, and I guess Mr. Perry replied that Congress had cut our funding. We have to send everyone home! Can you believe it?” Tears welled in her eyes. “They’re going to lay us off, I just know it.”

  Emily was stunned by the words; it hadn’t been all that long since hearing them uttered at Thanatech. Thackeray swiveled his head toward her. The look in his eyes, and his fingers trembling as they hovered over his keyboard, suggested something of greater urgency than the woman’s discouraging news.

  “Is this the result of the hearing?” Emily asked.

  The secretary removed her hands from her mouth. “Yes—and that bitch Lewis never even showed up!”

  Thackeray popped his briefcase open on the floor. He started tossing in pages of notes and every computer storage cartridge within reach.

  Steve Reedy’s frown appeared in the doorway as he edged himself past Christine. “What’s going on?” he asked while shifting accusing eyes between the two engineers. “Thack?”

  “Huh?” Thack stopped and looked up from his briefcase. “What?”

  “What are you doing? We have to prepare to vacate the facility.”

  “We just heard.”

  “What’s going on in here?”

  “Work. What the hell business is it of yours?”

  “No reason to be hostile. It’s a simple question.”

  “No question of yours is ever simple.” Thackeray smiled.

  Reedy eyed the briefcase. “You’re not authorized to remove those items. Under these conditions, you might find yourself under arrest.”

  “I work for Stuart now. You’re welcome to try and stop me.”

  Reedy avoided Emily’s stare. “There’s a meeting at two. That’s less than an hour.”

  “Christine already told us.”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “Vacating.” Thackeray struggled with that for a moment. “Emily, we can work from my place.”

  “But—”

  “But we’ll be at your candy-ass meeting.” Thackeray snapped the briefcase shut and stood in order to leave. “Step aside, Steve. Some of us still have work to do.”

  97

  Friday, July 10

  EACH TIME MCBURNEY gazed upon the closed-circuit television image of Stuart slumped in his chair, he relived Lester Burns’s angry explosion which probably had ruptured another blood vessel in the whites of the Director’s eyes. By contrast and to their credit, his staff had refrained from expressing resentment over his having ignored their advice not to send a mere civilian to do the job of a seasoned professional. Operationally speaking, so far as Beijing station was concerned, they were essentially flying blind.

  Carolyn Ross flipped through the notes they had accumulated over the past thirty-six hours. At length, she dropped them onto the kitchen counter-top.

  “Did he know we’d wired him?”

  “The guy isn’t stupid. Aren’t too many places to bury a wire.”

  Stuart’s brief had been simple enough. Establish rapport, deliver the assassin’s identity, extend the offer to become an operative, glean whatever technical facts he could about the satellite weapon—in precisely that order of priority.

  In addition to denying him sleep and regular meals, their primary tactic was to jump randomly from subject to subject, confusing any attempt by Stuart to consistently parse his responses. There were more rigorous techniques available to pin Stuart down. All they could really do was threaten to use them.

  It was Ross’s turn in the interrogat
or’s seat. “Round four?” she asked.

  “Why not.” McBurney closed the cupboard door that concealed the various monitoring displays.

  The safe house used by the Agency’s Tokyo station was nestled in the northwestern outskirts and offered the bare minimum; three tiny bedrooms adjoined a single bathroom, a dining salon, sitting room, and kitchenette. There had been extensive modifications, of course. A small microwave antenna located in the attic was directed toward a similar one atop the U.S. embassy eight miles away. Low-density sound isolation foam had been injected into enlarged interior wall and floor structures. Each room was fitted with concealed listening and fiber-optic video devices; laser and infrared scanning devices were presently trained on Stuart for monitoring his telltale biological indicators.

  Stuart eyed his inquisitors as they strolled into the room and sat in the opposite sofa.

  “This is actually pretty ridiculous,” McBurney began once again. “You seem determined to make this difficult.”

  Stuart looked away. “I volunteered for this job thinking we Americans stuck together.”

  “What did you expect, when you took it upon yourself to tamper with national security?” McBurney asked. “A twenty-one gun salute? If I had my druthers, I’d drag you home and try you for treason. Perhaps I will.”

  “You assume that what I talked about with Deng was treasonous.”

  “Well, unless and until I understand what motivated you to evade our surveillance, what choice do you give me?”

  “I reject on basic principle your right to eavesdrop without my permission.”

  “You’re lying, and I sense you’re lying in order to somehow play for time. But you’re really bad at this, Stuart. I mean, a civil liberties passion somehow doesn’t fit your corporatist, ex-Marine profile.” McBurney smiled. “Show me your ACLU membership card.”

  Stuart rubbed his hands over his face before dropping them to his lap. “Deng confirmed that the weapon exists. Apparently, there are more in the works.”