32

As he had for the last three days, Anwar Suleiman trundled out of his decrepit safe house carrying binoculars and a backpack. A three-room clapboard structure in a historically black area of Houston called Sunnyside, it was a step up from the trailer he’d left in Nevada, but the neighborhood was still less than stellar. He didn’t realize until after he’d moved in that it was one of the most crime-ridden areas in the United States. He wondered if his paymasters had known that and ignored it on purpose or had simply been cheap. It seemed every three days there was a phalanx of police cars in the area, yellow crime ribbon strewn about, and a body on the ground. The constant sirens made him jumpy. As would be expected given his past actions.

And his future one.

He loaded up into a ’75 Ford F-150 pickup and threaded through the neighborhood, heading out to his overlook as he had the last three days. Today would be different, though.

He passed by the sad houses, interspersed in the gaps between overgrown shrubs. They were all in some state of disrepair, with the driveways crumbling and the roofs sagging. It was a neighborhood that one would say had seen better days, but Anwar was pretty sure that wasn’t true. The people living in these houses had never seen a single good day, but they would. Once the caliphate came.

He drove by the Sunnyside community center, nothing more than a couple of ballparks and a defunct pool surrounded by acres of forest. The dense woods were littered with needles, beer cans, and other trash, revealing that it was used more than the ball field, but not for playing games.

He reached Interstate 610 and headed east, toward the Houston Ship Channel, one of the largest port facilities in the world. Stabbing inward from the Gulf of Mexico, it stretched like an out-of-control weed that grew to the outskirts of Houston itself. Close to fifty miles long, the narrow body of water had been dredged and widened multiple times as the ships had become bigger and bigger.

Once the channel left the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it became a greasy, turd-colored, oil-coated mess that passed by the largest collection of chemical and petroleum facilities in the United States. The ExxonMobil refinery on the east shore was one of the biggest in the world, with the Shell Deer Park facility across the bay a close second. Those two only scratched the surface of the other chemical, liquid natural gas, and crude oil facilities that littered the shores of the waterway.

A veritable mecca of targets.

He left the 610 and got onto the Pasadena Freeway, entering the wasteland of refineries, huge tank farms, and chemical plants that paralleled the ship channel. He drove the speed limit, feeling the anticipation build. Wondering if his ship had finally made it into port.

He exited onto the Sam Houston Tollway, heading north, reaching a bridge that crossed the channel. He’d realized on his first day that there was no way to tell from ground level if his ship had arrived, because he’d have to drive through the refinery to see the port, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. The bridge, however, had given him a vantage point.

When he reached the top, he slowed, putting on his hazard lights. He pulled over to the side of the road, blocking the right-hand lane and ignoring the bleating horns. Cars and trucks flew by him, none stopping to see what was wrong. He put the binoculars to his eyes and focused on four ships getting drained of their cargo on the north side of the channel.

He dismissed the nearest one as too small. He’d spent the days waiting for the arrival by doing research—a quirk of his inquisitive mind—and had learned that the ship known as the Dar Salwa was called a VLCC, or very large crude carrier. This class of ship had a lot of nicknames, such as Panamax or Suezmax—meaning it was the maximum dimension that either of those canals could handle—and its size was staggering, falling just short of the Empire State Building in length, with the capability to carry upward of 400,000 tons of crude oil. Today, it would be a floating weapon.

Anwar had no insider knowledge about the attack, as his contact hadn’t told him a thing. All he’d done was give Anwar a cell number and a date, with instructions to start looking three days before. But Anwar did have the Internet.

He’d researched the vessel, gaining insight into the evolution of the shipping of crude oil in the modern day, starting with the Exxon Valdez disaster. That ship was basically a floating bathtub full of crude, and it had run aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989, sparking one of the largest ecological disasters in history, the hull splitting apart and leaking out its enormous load of crude. Because of it, all crude containers coming into US ports were mandated to have a double hull—the container holding the crude effectively shielded from the hull slicing through the water. Anwar had seen instinctively that this was useful for natural disasters involving a wreck but played into the hands of anyone looking to split a ship apart by other means.

It would be near impossible to hide a bomb on a single hull, because you’d be trying to either attach it on the inside, underneath the surface of the crude oil, or attach it on the outside, where it could be seen. The double hull was different. Because it was built precisely to prevent a leak, and the sea was unforgiving with respect to corrosion, the gap between the two had to be large enough to allow for inspections. In essence, large enough for someone to place an explosive charge designed to breach both the hull toward the water and the tank inward.

He didn’t know any of this for sure, of course, but he assumed it to be so. It’s what he would have done.

He kept scanning with the binoculars, searching for his ship. He found it, three over from the others. An enormous, hulking thing with tentacles snaking to it, draining the crude. It was positioned perfectly. Blowing it there would shut down the entire ship channel, preventing entry of everything from grain carriers to container ships.

He dropped the binoculars and brought out his cell phone. He pulled up his contacts list and typed OIL. A number came up. He stared at it for a second, thinking he should say something profound. Instead, he just hit the talk button.

He dropped the phone onto the seat, still ringing, and started his truck. He turned off his flashers and began to pull away, but paused when nothing happened. He slammed the vehicle back into park, watching. Another car honked, and he put the hazards back on.