HOUSTON, TEXAS
The Port of Houston, a strategic twenty-five-mile-long gateway to the American West and Midwest, ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne tonnage, U.S. imports, and U.S. exports. At an annual total tonnage of 240 million tons, it moved nearly twice the tonnage of the Port of New York and New Jersey.
At least as of yesterday, FBI ASAC Monica Cruz thought.
She sat in the rear of a conference room on the second floor of a warehouse designated by the Houston Port Authority to be used as temporary headquarters for the gathering task force. Teams from every conceivable local, state, and federal agency were present, from the FBI, Houston PD, Port Police, and state troopers, to the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the U.S. Navy, TSA, FEMA, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Even the local chapter of the International Longshoreman’s Union had sent a delegation. On top of that, due to the nature of the threat, there were also senior representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear Energy Division of the EPA, and even a couple of safety experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Every agency was under the coordination of the Department of Homeland Security. And to Monica all of that added up to one thing: a cluster fuck.
Monica frowned as she watched the lead of every agency jockeying for position in this massive illustration of government bureaucracy at work.
Everyone had an argument why a particular agency deserved more clout than others. U.S. Customs and Border Protection felt this was a border control issue. The Houston Port Police explained it was their port. The various Texas law enforcement organizations believed this was a Texas resident public safety issue. The Coast Guard tried to convince everyone that they were responsible for guarding the American coastline until a U.S. Navy admiral tried to set them straight. TSA proposed they were the most qualified. FEMA argued they were the most experienced. Each nuclear expert claimed to be more qualified than the others. And to make matters worse, the International Longshoreman’s Union rep wanted assurances from everyone that his people would be safe or he would pull them from the harbor. Homeland Security, which oversaw half of the agencies present, was officially in charge by presidential decree with the mission of rallying everyone into a unified team.
Unfortunately, the assigned DHS lead, a deputy undersecretary named Hollis Gallagher, lacked the leadership charisma, experience, and visceral fortitude to effectively manage the powerful egos of this male-dominated crowd. The man looked, smelled, talked, walked, and probably even screwed his neighbor like a typical Washington politician.
Gallagher had no business being here, and for that matter, neither did most of the people in this room.
And that reminded Monica of the goat rodeos in her hometown of Eagle Pass in South Texas. Each agency lead attempted to corral the rowdy herd during his assigned fifteen minutes of shame by parading his team’s experience and approach to the massive inspection problem facing Houston.
At the last count, there were close to two hundred merchant ships on hold, and each one would have to be thoroughly inspected before being allowed anywhere near the ship channel. They all had seen the images from New York, and the top goats were at least unified in making damn certain the chaos in that harbor would not be repeated here.
But there has to be a better way.
And the trick to finding it was connecting dots, linking seemingly unrelated observations to spark a working theory, and then adding more observations to either prove or disprove the theory. However, to even start to collect valuable observations, there was an underlying requirement that many FBI agents lacked, or for that matter most bucks in the room: You had to think like a terrorist. You had to ask yourself again and again not what “the manual” directed you to do, and certainly not what established protocols guided you to follow. But what a terrorist would do in any given scenario.
She had spent the past ten hours since arriving here at six in the evening putting herself in the shoes of a potential terrorist trying to enter the Port of Houston. And she tried damn hard to ignore each agency goat bleating on and on while pointing to those PowerPoint slides with those annoying little red lasers.
It was now just past four in the morning, and she suppressed a yawn while fingering her iPad, reviewing the long list of vessels on hold in the quarantine zone. Somewhere in the background the latest government agency presented the latest proposal to solving the gigantic inspection conundrum. It was a basic problem of not enough inspection resources to do a thorough and timely job given the large number of ships accumulating in the Gulf of Mexico. And a quarter of them hauled perishable goods from around the world—goods meant to be consumed by a hungry America, not left to rot a hundred miles offshore. The Port of Houston had some of the best inspectors in the business, and they had already been deployed via Houston Port Authority boats with assistance from the Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy to start tackling the incoming problem. But there simply weren’t enough of them to keep the merchant ships from piling up in the gulf.
And what every buck in the corral didn’t seem to get was that no amount of presentations or coffee or working into the wee hours was going to solve the fundamental physics of this rapidly growing supply-demand problem. They needed to elevate their thinking beyond business as usual.
Monica smiled while considering getting her old and trusty Elastrator band from her father’s ranch to turn these bucks into wethers. Maybe she could improve the herd’s collective IQ by separating them from their balls to get more blood where it really counted.
To the group’s credit, however, at least they had prioritized the merchant vessels carrying perishable food supplies. But even then there had been heated arguments for nearly an hour before Gallagher finally stepped in and made the call at around midnight.
But sitting through the presentations had not been completely in vain. A U.S. Navy admiral had shared the final words of SEAL Team Six.
What did you take from him?
A remote control detonator … probably Bluetooth.
That metallic trunk … is that what I think it is?
Oh, shit.
But besides that recording, which the admiral had played three times to make sure everyone remembered it, the briefings had been utterly useless, at least to her.
A representative from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had stepped up to the podium and droned on about the differences between plutonium and uranium, blah, blah, blah.
Monica scanned through the seemingly endless list of vessels peppering the waters of the gulf. There were dry bulk carriers hauling grain, ore, and other similar products in loose form. There were reefers—refrigerated ships—carrying perishable commodities, including meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, and many other foods. General cargo vessels, as the name implied, transported anything from furniture, building materials, and garments to machinery, chemicals, military equipment, electronics goods, and automobiles. Some of the above came aboard the flotillas of specialized cargo vessels like colossal container ships and bulk carriers. There were even a dozen cruise ships in the mix with a combined thirty thousand well-tanned vacationing passengers wondering how the hell they were going to get home. And then there were the oil tankers, over thirty of them from all over the world, though most from the Middle East, and all ordered to the back of the line because of the Seawise Goliath.
Monica frowned. She had argued with Porter earlier today that the terrorists wouldn’t be stupid enough to smuggle a second weapon aboard another tanker. That would be too obvious.
Unless …
She sat up straight and reviewed the list of oil tankers from the Middle East in the past twenty-four hours. It showed nineteen, including eight of the supertanker variety. But one of them, the Star of Oceania, had drifted south in the past ten hours.
Monica clicked on it and the satellite imagery software mapped its course from its point of origin at the Port of Karachi over ten days ago. It sailed around the tip of Africa, up the Atlantic Ocean, and into the Gulf of Mexico, before clearly backing away from the inspection zone shortly after the New York blast and heading south.
Where are you going?
She did a quick Internet check for seaports south of the Texas-Mexico border and was surprised by what she found. Next, she pulled up the ship manifests for both the Goliath and the Oceania and stared at them for a while.
And that’s when she read the name of the company contracted to provide security for the two supertankers. A quick Internet check on the history of the security company sent a chill down her spine.
Slowly sitting back, Monica hissed, “Son … of … a … bitch!”
The comment drew sideways glances from the half-dozen ASACs flanking their boss, FBI Special Agent in Charge Roman Dalton. He was a husky black man, as large as Porter, with salt-and-pepper hair trimmed short, and very intense gray eyes. Dalton had a military background with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marine Corps, before getting recruited by the Bureau.
“Cruz?” he whispered. “Anything you wish to share?”
“Can we step outside, sir?” she asked.
“I take it you’re not that into the NRC discourse?” Dalton said in a low voice while pointing at the white-haired man standing behind the podium at the other end of the long room aiming a laser pointer at one of several bullets on a PowerPoint slide.
“With all due respect, sir, I think we’re wasting our time in this room.”
The comment earned her frowns from the other ASACs.
“And why is that?” Dalton asked.
“Because I think this is precisely what the motherfuckers who barbecued New York would want us to do.”
“Which is?”
“Sit on our thumbs all night while gazing at PowerPoint presentations. I’d rather shoot myself … sir.”
While the ASACs showered her with wide-eyed stares, Dalton revealed two rows of glistening white teeth as he grinned. “Porter warned me about you … and so did John Wright.”
Monica held his gaze while remembering Porter’s parting words. But before she could reply, Dalton tilted his head toward the exit.
She followed him under the half-surprised, half-puzzled gaze of the other ASACs, and under the clearly admonishing glare of Hollis Gallagher. Monica ignored him and followed Dalton out of the room.
He closed the door behind them and stood by the entrance to the conference room in a corner of the warehouse. The place bustled with activity, even at this predawn hour. At least two hundred people from too many government agencies forced to work together noisily shared a sea of white folding tables and chairs packed with laptops and printers.
Monica rolled her eyes at so many staff members preparing PowerPoint slides for their superiors inside the conference room.
Standing under the glare of a fluorescent light, Dalton crossed his massive arms. “Well?”
“This supertanker,” she said, pointing at her iPad. “The Star of Oceania … it left the Port of Karachi twenty-four hours after the Seawise Goliath but with Houston as its destination. Then it mysteriously headed south.”
“So it looks like they’re not a fan of the inspection zone? Who gives a shit?”
“That’s precisely what I thought,” she said. “Who gives a shit if a supertanker decides to change course? That’s one less damn ship for us to inspect, right? Besides, the terrorists wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to use the same delivery method twice. Would they?”
Dalton narrowed his eyes at her. “Continue.”
“But … what if the attacks were supposed to take place at the same time … like on September eleven? What if both supertankers were meant to reach their destinations and blow themselves up simultaneously? Unfortunately for them, we got the CIA intel from Islamabad while the Goliath was still outside New York Harbor, which forced their hand. And now the terrorists aboard the second supertanker realize they lost the element of surprise and are on the run, maybe looking for another way in.”
“I like the way you think, Cruz. What else do you have to support this theory of yours?”
She showed him the manifests. “The Karachi Shipping Security Company provided security for both vessels … and I have done a preliminary search and can’t seem to find that company providing security for any other vessel. Ever.”
“Damn,” he said, lowering his voice while leaning closer to her. “Don’t tell anyone, but so far this is more promising than anything I’ve heard since I got here.”
Not used to being complimented, Monica just stared back at him.
“So,” Dalton added. “What do you want?”
“Well, I want world peace, sir, but short of that I’ll settle for hopping on a chopper and checking out that tanker. Get eyes on it. Then we’ll know for sure.”
Dalton rubbed his square chin and said, “You understand you’re asking me to devote very valuable, and, as you’ve heard in there, very scarce resources to go chase a ship that’s actually cruising away from the United States? You realize how crazy that sounds given what we’re up against in there?”
“I get it, sir. But let me ask you this: Where is that supertanker with three hundred thousand tons of crude oil going? The only seaport of any significance in Mexico on the Atlantic side is Veracruz, and I just checked it out and guess what? They don’t have any oil refineries there. It’s a fucking container terminal. And besides, the Oceania’s current course isn’t even taking it there.”
She flipped the screen and pulled out the supertanker’s current route. “Look here. It’s headed somewhere off the Mexican coast … just south of the border with Texas. There’s nothing there, sir. Not a single port where it can even dock. So, why is it down there?”
“Damn. And if you’re right, then trying to contact them by radio wouldn’t be a good idea.”
She nodded. “It would just telegraph that we’re on to them.”
“All right,” he said. “Stay right here and give me a few minutes to make some calls. I’ll get you a chopper, probably Coast Guard, plus a few agents, some hardware, and a satellite phone. You fly over there, land on that ship, check it out, and report back to me. Understood?”
For the first time in a very, very long time, Monica liked her boss.
“But Cruz,” he added.
“Yes, sir?”
“Be very, very careful. It’ll probably be daylight by the time you get there, so no darkness to mask your approach. If you’re right and that ship has terrorists armed with a nuclear weapon … well…” He raised his brows at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “An incoming chopper isn’t going to get the warmest of receptions.”
Dalton headed outside to get out of earshot from everyone.
Monica stared at the goats walking about, typing on their laptops, talking on their cell phones, and cranking out more slides.
And that’s when it occurred to her that she had just signed up to become terrorist target practice.