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Dahran, Saudi Arabia

Very few people had seen the nerve center of Saudi Aramco. To get to it, a visitor had to pass through three checkpoints and by dozens of armed guards, complete with electronic screens to check for concealed weapons. For this reason, only people with a need to visit the center had seen it.

The actual Operations Coordination Center was at the center of the huge compound in Dahran. There were no windows in the highsecurity room, but a massive, curved wall extended more than two hundred feet with a digital screen displaying maps and visual shots of various points in the compound.

About twenty or so engineers kept a careful eye on the numbers and maps on the big screen. When something happened, the numbers on the screen reflected it.

And something had just happened. The engineers started scrambling long before the first phone call came in. Numbers started dropping on the big screen—first in one location and then another. After a few minutes, it was apparent that many different locations of the Aramco complex were involved.

“Find me a camera shot!” one of the engineers called across the room.

An instant later, a live video feed showed up on one corner of the massive screen. What they saw stunned them. An oil fire had erupted in a field near one of their seven refineries.

“Send a truck there!” the engineer ordered. But even as a truck was dispatched, they received news of four more oil fires that had erupted almost at the same time.

The engineers watched in growing horror as fires and explosions occurred in and around four of their refineries. More than half of their capacity would likely be affected, the engineers calculated. Numbers careened wildly on the big screen.

“Can we contain the fires?” asked one engineer.

“Do we even know what started them? And are they connected?”

Some scrambled for answers at their computer consoles. Phones started to ring. Chaos descended. No one could guess what might have happened at Aramco. It all seemed surreal.

But it was even worse than that, the engineers learned moments later. Monitors at one of the sites had detected traces of radiation. Where it might have come from was hard to imagine, but it was definitely contamination and radiation.

The chief engineer placed a call to Riyadh and asked to speak with one of the members of the royal family. He knew he’d likely be blamed for the events at the Aramco complex. But he had to let them know.

The political consequences were hard to imagine or calculate, the chief engineer knew. It depended on what, precisely, was behind the events. But clearly, they would alter the balance of power. Someone was orchestrating the chaos erupting at the Saudi Aramco complex, for whatever reason.