| |
AMERICRUDE/WEST GULF OIL REFINERY. MARCH POINT, WASHINGTON:
Tony Mancuso has been a roving night watchman at the refinery for thirty years, and drives through a field of massive oil storage tanks. He parks near a large pipe, gets out and looks around, then grabs a whisky bottle hidden behind a concrete support. He tilts his head back, takes a long drink, and sees bright blue light coming out of the tanks. He skin suddenly feels warm and the whiskey bottle falls from his grip, shattering on the ground, then collapses onto the pieces of glass, dead.
***
REFINERY CONTROL ROOM.
Edgar Henley, the night manager for the oil tank farm, suddenly hears alarm horns screaming and leaps out of his chair in the office. He hurries into the control room and sees the young woman operator looking at flashing red lights on the control panel. He touches her on the shoulder to get her attention. “What just happened?”
Gail Sommers is nervous. This is her first alarm situation. “All the pumps are cavitating and there’s no pressure in the lines from the tanks to the refinery.”
“Shut everything down until we identify the problem.”
The lights on the panel return to green, and the alarm becomes silent. Henley looks at the computer monitor. “How can they all be empty?”
***
VALDEZ, ALASKA:
At 5:00 A.M, the cellphone on the nightstand rings and Bull fumbles for it. “Yeah?” he answers as he wipes his eyes and listens to the caller. “Okay, Herb, I’ll be there in a few minutes.
He turns to look at his wife, who is snoring softly. He rolls out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom. After splashing cold water on his face, he dresses and grabs his heavy orange parka, pulling it on as he walks out the door.
The sting of frigid air on his face helps him gather his senses as he walks in the half-light of morning toward the office. Bright light escapes through the windows in the entrance, and Bull sees someone moving around inside. When he walks through the doorway, Herb turns to greet him, a deep apprehension etched on his face.
Herb hands Bull three sheets of paper. “This is a copy of the report from the refinery at March Point.”
Bull reads the report and stares at Herb. “Has this been verified?”
Herb nods yes. “I just got off the phone. After the alarms went off, they sent a man into the tanks and he said the only thing in them was a little water.”
“Shit! That’s over ten million barrels.”
Herb nods in agreement. “They said there’s no oil in the harbor, and the retaining areas around the tanks haven’t been contaminated.”
“What about the night watchman? Have they questioned him yet?”
“They found him, but he was dead.”
Bull walks to the desk and sits down, then looks over at the clock and sees it’s after 11:00AM on the east coast. “This whole damn thing is getting ridiculous. I’m calling the company president to recommend we suspend transporting any more crude on the west coast until we find out what’s going on.”
Herb listens to Bull argue with the man on the other end of the conversation for several minutes. He’s shocked to hear Bull use such strong language with the president of the company.
Bull slams the receiver down. “Damn! That asshole has no idea what’s at stake here. He’s going to keep loading tankers from the Kenai Peninsula oil wells and the offshore rig at Cook Inlet. He wants us back online as soon as possible.”
Herb has an idea. “Maybe Alex can get someone in Washington D.C. to intervene?”
“I’ll ask him, but I doubt it. What’s the weather report, Herb?”
“The storm’s moving east. We should be able to get to the pumping station in a couple of hours. You won’t have much time, though. Another storm is supposed to be coming in.”
“I’d better wake Alex and Christa. Have you eaten yet?” Herb indicates no. “We’ll meet them for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I have a feeling it’s going to be a hectic day.”
***
In the restaurant, Bull explains what happened at the refinery. “Listen, Alex. Against my recommendation, they’re going to keep sending oil south. Do you know someone in Washington D.C. who can stop them until we find out what’s happening to the oil.”
“I’ll try, but let’s check out the pumping station first. Maybe it will give us more ammunition.”
“All right. I’ll round up a pilot. We have a small plane at the airport, and there’s a big landing area near the station.”
“I’m a pilot,” Alex informs him. “Mind if I fly us in?”
Bull shrugs. “Fine by me,” he says, and stands from the table.
“I’d like to go, too,” Christa tells them, and Bull indicates she can.
“I’ll monitor the radio from the office,” says Herb.
They leave the restaurant, and Alex and Bull shove the airplane out of the metal hanger at the airport. The single engine craft is equipped with huge skis, which can be locked down over the tires for landing on snow. Alex climbs into the pilot seat and begins his preflight check, while Bull helps Christa into the rear seat before climbing in front next to Alex.
Fifteen minutes later, they are airborne, headed north up the southern slopes of the Alaskan Mountain range. Blue skies and sunshine enhance the spectacular view of the desolate, snow-covered mountains, as they follow the route of the pipeline. Small areas of the huge pipe are exposed occasionally, but most of it is underground or covered with snow.
As they near the summit, Bull points to a pass in the mountain range, and a large, snow covered meadow just below it. As they circle the clearing to assess the landing area, Bull suddenly leans forward in his seat and stares out the side window. “Shit! There’s a section of the pipeline missing! Take us around again.”
Alex does as instructed, and Bull points out the window. “See that shadowed area? That’s the entrance to the underground pumping station. There is supposed to be fifty-feet of pipe coming out of the building before it drops underground, but it’s not there.”
“Maybe it’s buried under the snow?” Christa offers.
“Not possible. That section of pipe is twenty-feet above the ground. It’s gone, I tell you! Take us down, Alex, and we’ll find out what happened.”
Alex brings the plane down in a smooth landing and taxies to the northern edge of the meadow before shutting down the engine. One-hundred-feet directly ahead, a large shadowed arch rises above the snow, the entrance to the underground facility.
“The snow shoes are in the rear compartment,” Bull tells them. “Stay on the plane’s skis until you put them on or you’ll sink to your waist in the snow.” Alex and Christa do as instructed.
“We’d better find the crew first,” Bull tells them, “then we’ll take check out what happened to the pipeline.”
Bull leads them to the covered entrance, where a flat cement wall separates the entrance chamber from the interior of the facility. White light illuminates the windows built into large double doors in the center of the wall.
“At least the generator is still working,” Bull says, as they remove their snowshoes and lean them against the wall. “It runs off a natural gas fired turbine.”
Bull leads them through one side of the doors, and they feel the warmth of the interior walkway, which runs to their left and right.
“Anybody here?” Bull yells down the concrete tunnel as he removes his gloves and unzips his parka. No one answers, so he waves a hand to the right. “Down there are the pumps and the generator.” He turns left. “Let’s check out the living quarters.”
The first room they enter is the dining and recreation area, with cooking equipment along one wall. Several plates of partially eaten food are on the table, and the air has an acrid, burnt smell.
Bull immediately spots the large pot on the stove and grabs a dishtowel to slide it into the sink. Steam hisses and billows from inside as he turns on the water to fill the pot. “Shit! This doesn’t look good.”
Bull walks across the room to another opening in the concrete wall. “There are six bedrooms down this corridor, three on each side, and a bathroom at the end. Let’s check them out.”
Bull opens the door to the first room on the right and looks into the bedroom, while Christa and Alex look into the open doorway of the room across from it. The furnishings consist of two beds, one on either side of a single desk in the center of the wall directly ahead. Both rooms are unoccupied, as are the rest of the bedrooms and the bathroom.
“Come on,” Bull tells them. “Let’s check out the rest of this place.”
They walk back down the main tunnel past a door directly across from the exit, and Christa stops. “What’s in here?”
“Just a storage room,” Bull tells her before entering the pumping facility. The muffled whine of the gas turbine driven generator fills the massive room. In the center, two gigantic pumps rise above the floor. At both ends of the room, the forty-eight inch pipeline enters through the wall into the pumps, and exits through the opposite wall. The pumps are motionless and quiet, and the large control panel appears dead.
“Where the hell are the engineers?” Bull mumbles. “Come on, let’s go back to the living quarters and call Herb.”
Bull leads the way back through the tunnel. Out of curiosity, Christa opens the small door to the storage room across from the main entrance to see what’s inside. She flips on the switch and gasps in surprise. “In here!” she shouts and rushes through the opening.
Alex and Bull run back and step inside. Christa is kneeling next to a man huddled against a stack of cardboard boxes. The man is shaking uncontrollably, his face a mask of terror and his eyes stare straight ahead, as if no one else was in the room with him. The room is frigid, and the man is wearing jeans and a tee shirt.
“Let’s get him into the living quarters,” Bull tells them and kneels next to the man. He cradles him in his arms and stands as if the man is light as a feather. Bull carries him into the first bedroom and lays him on the bed. Christa strips two blankets off the other bed and spreads them over the man, who continues to shake uncontrollably, his eyes wide with fear, and still staring into space.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Christa tells Bull. She turns to leave the room and notices Alex isn’t with them. When she enters the kitchen, she still doesn’t see Alex. She digs through the cupboards until she finds the coffee and filters, then fills the pot with water from the sink.
Alex remains in the storage room, staring at the stacks of cardboard boxes lining three walls directly ahead and to both sides of the doorway. Something bothers him about the way they are stacked. He steps forward, grabs the top box in the center, and pulls it down. There is a wide gap between the stack and the back wall, so he sets the box to the side and drags the next box down from between the others and sets it on the floor. When he bends behind the bottom box, two faces stare up at him through open, sightless eyes. They lay head to head on their backs, and below them are two more bodies.
Christa sees Alex returning to the living quarters. “I was wondering where you went.”
“I’ve found the other engineers. They’re all dead.”
“Oh, my! How?”
“I don’t know. How’s this one doing? Has he said anything?”
“No, he’s still in shock.”
“Christa! Alex! Come quick!” Bull shouts from the bedroom.
Christa and Alex run into the room and Bull is leaning over the engineer. “He’s coming around.”
When Christa and Alex kneel next to Bull, they hear the engineer mumbling, the light! Stay away from the blue light!
“What’s his name?” Alex asks.
“I don’t know. These guys rotate through, and I rarely get to meet them.”
“See if he’s got any ID.”
Bull rolls the man onto his side and feels the back pockets of his jeans, but there’s no wallet. He lets him back down.
Christa pulls on a thin chain around the man’s neck and a small medallion slides out from the collar of his tee shirt. She leans close to read the inscription on the back. “His name’s Mike Broden, and he’s allergic to penicillin.”
Alex leans closer to Broden. “What happened, Mike?”
“I can’t let them find me!” Broden mutters in fear and tries to get out of bed.
Bull and Alex hold him down. “It’s all right,” Alex assures him. “This is very important, Mike. Do you understand?”
Alex watches Broden’s eyes spread wide with fear and he thrashes like a madman. It takes Bull’s help to hold Broden down for several moments before passing out.
“Shit!” Bull mumbles.
“I think we’d better take him out of here,” Christa tells them. “He needs to be in a hospital.”
Alex stands. “I agree. Let’s get him into the plane.”
“We’d better tie him up,” Bull warns. “If he starts thrashing like that in the plane, we won’t be able to control him.”
Alex remembers seeing a stretcher in the pumping room, and while Bull tries to call the office in Valdez, Alex goes to get it.
“The lines are dead,” Bull tells Alex when he returns with the stretcher. “So is the radio. We’ll have to use the one in the plane.”
After they wrap Broden in several blankets and tie him securely into the stretcher, Alex and Bull carry him out to the entrance area and put on their snowshoes. Christa leads the way over the snowdrift at the entrance out to the airplane. She removes one of the rear seats, then Bull and Alex slid the stretcher inside.
“What should I do with the seat?”
“Leave it,” says Bull. “We don’t have room for it.”
Christa tosses the seat onto the snow, and everyone turns and stares when it makes a loud thud.
“That seat should have sunk out of sight!” Bull tells them.
Alex slips his foot out of one of his snowshoes and gently steps onto the snow. His foot sinks through the small white flakes for two inches before it’s stopped by a solid surface. He kneels down, brushes the surface snow away, then looks up at the others. “It’s solid ice.”
Alex stands and looks around the meadow. “Christa, you stay here with Broden. Let’s take a walk, Bull. I’d like to know how big this sheet of ice is.”
“Okay. Let’s split up so we can cover more area.”
Alex agrees, so they step out of their snowshoes and set off in opposite directions. Both men take slow, careful steps, testing the snow ahead as they walk. About two-hundred-feet out, Alex’s foot suddenly drops off the ice into deep snow. He turns to see where Bull is, and sees him kneeling in the snow, about one-hundred-feet away. When Bull stands and looks at him, Alex indicates they should follow the edge.
Bull waves acknowledgement and follows in one direction, Alex the other, and it’s a huge circle. Bull waves him over, and both men walk to the area where the pipeline comes out of the pumping station.
“Good grief!” Bull says when they are standing at the open hole of the forty-eight-inch pipe. “What the hell happened to it?”
Alex removes his glove and touches the outer edge of the metal pipe. “This was melted.”
“Yeah, but what could have done it? And where’s the rest of it?”
Alex notices a small amount of clear liquid in the bottom of the pipe. He reaches in and touches it, wetting his fingers, then sniffs the liquid on his fingertips. “It smells like salt water. It must have a heavy mineral content or it would have frozen by now.”
“Now how in the hell can there be salt water way up here?”
“I don’t know, but maybe Broden can tell us. Let’s go.”
Bull walks beside Alex back to the airplane. “Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“We’ll need to do an autopsy on the four men hidden in the storeroom,” Alex says as they arrive at the plane.
Bull stops at the side entrance. “There should have been five men in there. Where the hell’s the sixth man?”
“This is too much of a coincidence. There has to be a connection with the missing men from the tankers.”
***
Fifteen minutes later, they are airborne again and Bull stares out the window, watching the snow-covered mountain range pass below them. He keeps searching for the missing section of the pipeline, though he knows it’s useless. The mountain range turns to foothills, then to valleys, as the city of Anchorage appears against the deep blue water.
Alex radios the hospital as soon as they are within range, and an ambulance is waiting at the airport when they arrive. Christa and Bull wait at the air terminal while Alex rides with Broden in the ambulance until they arrive at the emergency room. Alex shows his identification to the hospital’s director, then explains that Broden is a government witness, and is not to leave the hospital without his approval. Alex gives him his phone number, asks to be called the moment Broden regains consciousness, then takes a cab back to the airport.
When Alex walks into the air terminal, he sees Bull pacing the floor, a scowl distorting his features. “What’s going on?”
Bull stops pacing. “I got a call from Herb while you were gone. Those assholes on the board of directors went ahead and sent two more tankers of oil down to the refinery in Washington. Now they’re missing. They pay me to run this end of the business for them, damnit, then ignore my advice. They just don’t realize lives are at stake here. All they care about is the almighty dollar!”
“Let’s go. I’ll see what I can do about it.”
***
Herb Bell is waiting at the airport in Valdez when they arrive. “The two tankers left early this morning from Cook Inlet,” Herb explains as they walk toward the SUV. “I just got word a Japanese fishing trawler found one of the tankers. They reported it’s running in a circle out in the Pacific Ocean. Nobody’s seen the second tanker. All we know is we can’t raise either of them on the radio.”
“Have you sent a new crew out to the tanker the Japanese reported?” Alex asks as they drive to the office.
“Yeah, they called and said the tanker is empty and the crew is missing. The Coast Guard said it would be blind luck if they find the second tanker. It’s a big area to search.”
When the group enters the office, Alex uses his phone while the others shrug out of their parkas, and explains the situation to Martin. He listens for several minutes before hanging up. When he looks up, Christa, Bull, and Herb are staring at him.
“Director Donner is ordering the Navy to help with the search. He’s asking for the P-3 Orion submarine hunter aircraft from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station to assist us. It appears we’re not the only country losing crude oil.”
Alex sees the stunned expressions of his colleagues. “There’s more bad news. Our witness in Texas died this morning. It looks like Broden is our only hope of finding out what’s going on.”
Alex looks at Christa. “I’m wanted in D.C. as soon as possible for a briefing. It’s crucial you talk to Broden the moment he comes around. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
***
Christa is standing on the bridge of the Defiance, talking to one of the engineers working on the ship’s control panel which appears dead. “Were the instruments damaged when the ship was attacked in Washington?” she asks the young technician.
“Yes.”
“What caused the damage?”
The young man scratches his head and looks bewildered as he stares down at the panel. “Near as I can figure, it was an electrical short or a sudden power surge or something.” He looks over at her. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear somebody waved a giant magnet over the control panel. Every gauge is magnetized.”
“Then how did the new crew drive it back here to Valdez?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be too hard. The compass is still working, and the speed selector has a mechanical backup. Same with the steering. All the electronic gear was added three years ago.”
“I see. Thanks for the help.”
Christa makes her way back down to the main deck and sees Bull getting ready to climb down through the inspection hatch into a section of the oil hold. “Mind if I come along?”
“Not at all,” Bull tells her and disappears down through the hatch.
Christa steps over the electrical cable and climbs down the ladder after Bull. The interior of the hold is dark and gloomy until she’s about halfway down, and suddenly the area is filled with bright light. She stops, looks down, and sees Bull adjusting a large spotlight mounted to a tripod. She continues down the ladder and stands next to him as they look around the vast hold.
Bull shakes his head in wonder. “It’s hard to believe this room was full of crude oil only a few days ago.”
“So what are you looking for?”
“Just curious, I guess. We pumped all the salt water out this morning.”
Bull and Christa slowly walk along the port side of the hold between the massive baffling plates, concentrating their attention on the steel deck. When they reach the far end, they continue to the starboard side and follow it back.
As they move past the last baffle, Christa happens to look up. Something is sparkling high up on the side of it, and she stops. “What’s that?” She points at the sparkle.
Bull is a few paces past her and turns to look at where she’s pointing. “I don’t see anything.”
Christa moves beside him, but the angle of the light changes and she can’t see the sparkle. She moves back a few paces until she sees it again. “Move over here.”
Bull moves behind her and looks up. “Beats the hell out of me.”
“Let’s get a ladder so I can take a closer look.”
“Here. Stand on my shoulders,” Bull tells her and leans his back against the steel baffle.
Christa stands on his knee, then steps into his laced fingers as Bull lifts her in the air as if she weighs nothing at all.
She steps onto his shoulders and the sparkle is just above her head. It’s coming from an object about the size of a silver dollar. “It’s some type of crystal,” she informs Bull and reaches up to touch it. Her fingers barely graze the surface when the crystal suddenly falls free. As she reaches out to catch it, she loses her balance.
Bull feels Christa’s weight shift on his shoulders. He reaches up to steady her, but is too late. The motion makes him lean too far out and he topples face-first to the deck.
Christa hears a loud swoosh of air as she lands on something softer than the steel deck and hears Bull moan beneath her. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry!” she says and rolls off him. “Are you all right?”
Bull grunts softly as he rolls onto his back. “Yeah,” he says between deep gulps of air. “Just knocked the wind out of me for a second.”
Christa sits up, leans against the baffle, and realizes she is clutching something in her right hand. She opens her fist and sees the crystal. “I got it!”
Bull rolls to a sitting position and stares at the crystal in Christa’s hand. “What do you think it is?”
Christa places the crystal on edge between her thumb and finger and holds it toward the spotlight. It’s nearly transparent, with a multitude of cracks running through it. “I’m not sure. I’ll know more when I put it under a microscope.”
Bull gets up and helps her stand. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
They leave the ship and walk along the pier. “Thanks, Bull. I could have broken my neck.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ve been carrying this extra weight around for years. Glad it was finally useful for something.”
They stop at a small cinderblock building, and Christa uses a key to unlock a door. She turns on the lights and steps inside. Two small tables sit in the center of the single room, and laboratory equipment is set up on a long table fastened to the far wall. This is Christa’s laboratory, where she tests the oil from the pipeline for contaminates.
Christa gently places the crystal under the microscope. At first, she thinks the light is affecting what she sees, so she moves the optic lens to a lower position and looks into the microscope again. “This is incredible!” she whispers. She looks up at Bull and sees his puzzled expression. “Look at this.”
Bull places his eyes over the lens and sees thousands of minuscule cracks, but they are not cracks, he realizes, because they are changing shape inside the crystal. “Damn!” he mumbles. “It’s moving!” When he looks up, Christa is staring at him. “What the hell is it?”
Christa shakes her head in dismay. “I have no idea, but I’m going to stay here until I find out.”