The Alexandria Connection (27 page)

Captain Rogers, together with his crew, weapons controller Sergeant Michelle Brady, and CIA intelligence analyst Major Ryan Crowe, took their places in the Creech Air Force Base briefing room and waited for the commander of the 432nd Wing, Colonel Joe Stillwell, to begin.

‘The president has ordered an increased presence in the Persian Gulf,’ Stillwell began, ‘and as a result, the Fifth Fleet is being reinforced with the Harry S. Truman Carrier Group Ten,’ said Stillwell, throwing up real-time classified satellite imagery on to the screen. ‘Notwithstanding the progress being made on the Iranian nuclear issue, the second carrier is a response to the increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming out of Tehran, including their threats to close the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have a layered strategy,’ Stillwell continued, ‘and they base this on anti-ship cruise missiles, naval mines and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s fleet of fast attack craft.’ He flicked up a photograph of the small but deadly speedboats. ‘They’re armed with torpedoes and rocket launchers, and our ships are particularly vulnerable in this busy waterway. It’s not only narrow, but movement is restricted by up to twenty supertankers a day transiting the area. As a result, we now have an additional task, protecting the Fifth Fleet.

‘We’ll be operating our aircraft out of Qatar, providing twenty-four hour coverage over the Persian Gulf,’ Stillwell continued, pulling up a satellite overhead of the huge al-Udeid Air Base outside of Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Arab monarchy was located on a peninsula just to the south of Bahrain and the Ras Tanura oil refinery. With the third largest natural gas reserves in the world, the tiny country was the world’s richest. ‘Any questions?’

‘What’s the situation with the Iranians, sir?’ Sergeant Brady asked.

‘In terms of potential for a conflict to escalate out of control, the Persian Gulf is on a par with the Cuban missile crisis,’ said Stillwell. ‘The present standoff with Iran over nuclear weapons is only the latest in a long history of brinkmanship.’ Stillwell flashed up an image of the Iranian minelayer,
Iran Ajr
, the mines clearly visible on her decks. ‘Most of you guys are too young to remember, but in September 1987, we launched Operation Praying Mantis, tracking the
Iran Ajr
out of its home port in Iran into international waters where it started to lay mines in the shipping channels. Our Special Forces helicopters and a SEAL team attacked the ship and disabled it. Unfortunately, we were not able to recover all the mines and the guided missile frigate USS
Samuel B. Roberts
was holed the following year when it hit one. During Praying Mantis, we sank an Iranian frigate, a gunboat and six of their armed speedboats . . . so this area can blow out of control very quickly.

‘As to operations in the region’s airspace,’ Stillwell continued, ‘some of you who have joined us recently may not be aware that last year, Captain Rogers was conducting surveillance over international waters in the Persian Gulf, when his predator drone was engaged by two Iranian Su-25 fighters.’ Stillwell allowed himself a smile. ‘They’re not very good shots,’ he said, ‘but nevertheless, the Revolutionary Guard are aggressive, and they may try again.’ Stillwell paused, choosing his words carefully. ‘But they are playing a very dangerous game. It goes without saying that we are not, repeat not, to engage Iranian aircraft unless specifically authorised to do so.’

‘Ready to fire?’ Yousef called. The trucks were parked side on to the Strait, the launcher tubes for the gleaming white Taipan missiles now exposed, small portable radars humming. Number One missile launcher had already acquired the
Leila
at the relatively short range of 15 nautical miles, well inside its maximum of 75; and the number two launcher had locked on to the
Atlantic Giant,
in the closer inbound channel.

‘Ready One!’

‘Ready Two!’

Yousef made a final sweep with his binoculars. Apart from a small wooden fishing vessel, the seas adjacent to the coast of Iran were clear.

‘Fire One! Fire Two!’

The booster rockets on the state-of-the-art weapons propelled the missiles from the launch tubes in an explosion of fire and smoke, their guidance fins extending as they exited. A fraction of a second later, the booster rockets separated as the missile jet engines took over and the Taipans, each on a different course, quickly reached their cruising speeds, skimming across the sea at a staggering 900 kilometres an hour – 250 metres a second. With the active radar seekers locked on to their respective targets, the digital computers in the nose cones used a ‘three-axis’ attitude reference system and radar altimeter, sending signals to the four guidance fins to make minute adjustments to hold course. It took less than two minutes for the first missile to reach its target.

The specially designed penetrating warhead cut through the outer hull, blowing a massive hole in the side of the
Atlantic Giant.
In an instant, air from outside the hull combined with the inert gases in the tanks that were part-filled with light crude and the explosive mixture erupted in a massive fireball.

Over in the outgoing lane, there was nothing Hadid could have done to save his ship. Seconds later, the other Taipan found its deadly mark, just above the water line. The
Leila
shuddered as the mid-ship tanks erupted, spewing blazing crude into the sea and on to the decks above.

‘What the fuck!’ Captain Rogers stared in disbelief at the control screens and the carnage erupting 10 000 feet below the Predator drone he was flying above the Persian Gulf. ‘I have one – two tankers on fire in the shipping lanes . . . one outbound, one inbound, and they’re big mothers, both of them. That’s not mines, that has to be an attack . . . get the boss in here!’

Sergeant Brady reached for one of the handsets on her console. ‘Sir, there’s been an attack on shipping in the Persian Gulf. Could you come down here immediately?’ She put the handset down. ‘I can’t see any other vessels in the area, other than tankers to the west and south, all in the shipping lanes.’

‘Carrier Group Ten?’

‘Currently to the west, abeam Az-Zubãrah on the Qatar peninsula and on course to dock in Bahrain.’

CIA analyst Major Ryan Crowe stared intently at the images being relayed through the drone’s cameras. As darkness fell over the gulf, Brady had switched to infrared, but the images were still very clear. ‘It might be mines, but I think you’re right,’ said Crowe, ‘it’s too much of a coincidence for both ships to hit mines at the same instant, and we’ve been watching those Iranian motherfuckers for months. If they’d laid fresh mines, we’d have picked up on it.’

‘
Lone Warrior
’s launching,’ said Brady, focusing a camera on the deck of the big Nimitz-class nuclear carrier. Truman had often been referred to as ‘the lone warrior’, so the carrier’s callsign was a perfect match. ‘CENTCOM and NAVCENT are on to this,’ she said, monitoring the increasing traffic on the headquarters command net. ‘CENTCOM’s asking for an update . . . designated FLASH.’ It was the highest precedence any report could be given, and was to be handled in front of all other traffic. Central Command or CENTCOM was headquartered out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, with a forward headquarters in Qatar, and it was the next superior headquarters to Navy’s Central Command or NAVCENT in Bahrain, taking in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

It took only seconds for the edge-deck elevators on the
Truman
to raise two aircraft from the ship’s vast hangars to the 1.8-hectare deck, and each of the four steam-powered catapults were able to lock into a T-bar on the jets’ nose gear, flinging the aircraft down the catapult’s shuttle. The pilots found themselves catapulted from zero to 165 miles per hour in two seconds, and the heat plumes from the afterburners of the F/A-18 Super Hornets were clearly visible on Brady’s screens. Brady had spent time on the carrier, and she could picture the flight deck crews, almost in the prone position on the deck, thumbs in the air, to indicate all clear as the aircraft roared past only metres from their positions.

‘What’ve we got?’ Colonel Stillwell demanded as he raced into the room. He listened quietly and attentively while Major Crowe brought him up to speed, leaving Rogers free to pilot the drone.

‘But there are no Iranian vessels near these tankers, and we’ve ruled out mines,’ Crowe concluded.

‘Submarines?’ Stillwell mused.

‘The Iranians have three Kilo-class Russian submarines, but they’re all in port,’ said Crowe, pulling up the latest satellite imagery of the Iranian navy dispositions on a separate screen. ‘They also have fifteen Ghadir-class midget submarines, but Carrier Group Ten and her own subs would almost certainly have picked them up. They make enough noise to drown out conversation in Tehran.’

‘DEFCON 3!’ Brady advised.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Stillwell muttered. ‘That’s come from the president himself.’ Standing for ‘Defense Readiness Condition’, the alerts ranged from DEFCON 5, for normal readiness, up to DEFCON 1, which had never been used and was reserved for imminent nuclear war.

‘The entire US Air Force is coming to fifteen minutes notice to move . . . that’s only been used three times in history,’ Stillwell said, ‘the Cuban missile crisis, the Arab attacks on Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and 9/11.’

‘Look, sir – on the coast.’ Rogers and Brady had switched their attention to the Iranian coastline just to the east of the now furiously blazing tankers. The Taipan missile tubes showed up clearly on the infrared scan.

‘Two trucks, and look at the heat signature – those missile launchers have just been fired!’ said Rogers, circling over the Bedfords.

‘Take them out, sir?’ Brady asked.

‘Not unless you want to start a nuclear war, Sergeant.’ Stillwell turned to Crowe. ‘Feed this into the system – FLASH precedence, and request instructions. In the meantime, stay focused on that area of the coastline. What’s the traffic on the roads?’

‘Not much,’ Brady replied. ‘A tanker moving south on Route 91, toward Sirik, three cars and two Toyota pickups moving north on 91 toward Bondãrãn.’

Suddenly all the screens went blank. ‘We’ve lost control,’ Rogers said. ‘Nothing’s responding.’

S
heldon Crowley and Rachel Bannister sat in Crowley’s penthouse office, glued to CNC’s coverage of the unfolding events in the Persian Gulf. Rachel watched with mounting horror, puzzled by the almost detached interest on the part of Crowley.

The mellifluous, but serious tones of Walter Cronkwell filled the airwaves. ‘The president is calling for calm until the facts of what has happened can be ascertained. Here’s the president a few moments ago.’

The coverage cut to a grave-looking President McGovern in the press briefing room on the first floor of the West Wing of the White House. It had once been just a space over the White House indoor swimming pool, located around the corner from the cabinet room and the Oval Office, but in 1969, President Nixon had the pool covered and the space above it converted to accommodate an increased White House press corps. Today, flanked by the stars and stripes on one side and the blue flag embossed with the president’s coat of arms on the other, the president addressed the packed room of journalists and photographers.

‘Today at approximately six-thirty p.m. local time, two supertankers were sunk in the shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf . . . the
Atlantic Giant,
an ultra large crude carrier, in the northern inbound lane, and the
Leila,
a very large crude carrier in the southern outbound shipping lane, effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz to the flow of oil. Neither the how nor the why of these sinkings is yet clear, and they pose a grave, but
manageable
threat to oil supplies in this country and the world,’ the president emphasised. As he spoke, the shot switched to queues two and three kilometres long forming at gas stations across the country, where prices had soared to more than US $12 a gallon. Rachel stared in disbelief at the fights breaking out in the queues as demand quickly outstripped supply, and some stations ran dry. The shot switched to Berlin, and then to Paris where prices had crashed through the €6 a litre barrier. In the United Kingdom fuel had reached a staggering 552 pence per litre, and in Australia, at the end of a much longer supply chain, the vision showed similar queues of angry motorists, confronted with upwards of A $6 a litre. Hundreds of millions of families around the world were suddenly facing fuel prices that were well outside their budget.

‘And,’ the president continued, the shot cutting back to his press conference, ‘it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions here. I’ve called for an urgent report, and I’ve scheduled a meeting of the National Security Council immediately after this media conference, but I want the American people to know we are taking this very, very seriously, and I will ensure they are kept fully informed of developments. Now . . . I have time for just a few questions.’

The president smiled grimly as a dozen voices shouted questions at him. ‘One at a time. Michelle?’ he said, pointing to the political correspondent for the
New York Times.

‘There are reports that either mines or missiles are responsible, but either way, the general consensus is that Iran is behind this. Your views on that, Mr President?’

‘Those reports are pure speculation, so we should avoid jumping to conclusions here.’

‘Mr President, some analysts are comparing this to the Yom Kippur War,’ said another reporter. ‘Given that 35 per cent of the world’s oil flows through this strait, those same analysts are predicting a rise to US $400 a barrel, which would mean pump prices that would wreck the world’s economy. Your —’

‘That’s precisely the sort of irrational analysis that I’m talking about.’ The president struggled to keep his voice free of frustration. ‘For a start, the Strait of Hormuz carries 35 per cent of the world’s
seaborne
oil trade, which equates to just 18 per cent of the ninety million barrels the world uses each day. Now granted, that’s still a sizeable amount, but there’s no need for this panic buying. Here in the United States we hold a strategic petroleum reserve of some 700 million barrels as a buffer against exactly this sort of situation.’

The camera cut back to Cronkwell in the studio. ‘That’s a little of what the president had to say at the White House a few moments ago, and we cross now to our political correspondent, Susan Murkowski, at the New York Stock Exchange. Not only have gas prices soared on the back of news of this attack, Susan, but oil stocks have soared while the rest of the stock market has gone in the opposite direction.’

‘That’s right, Walter. The Dow Jones has crashed to a new low, not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008. Back then, the market fell 54 per cent, but today’s panic selling has well and truly surpassed that, with the market falling a massive 62 per cent almost overnight.’

Crowley salivated. Across the Atlantic, the head of Crédit Group was moving on the decimated markets. René du Bois ordered his stock analysts into a furious series of massive ‘buy’ orders on the biggest of the world’s stock exchanges in New York, London, Deutsche Börse, Tokyo, Sydney and Shanghai. He focused on the Fortune 500 companies, buying hundreds of millions of shares at a fraction of their worth.

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, specialist traders at their kiosks were looking aghast, as were the brokers in their distinctive blue overalls embossed with their number in white and the US flag. Many were glued to the sea of red on banks of screens with their electronic pullthroughs; others were on the phone, dealing with desperate clients, and making an electronic record of orders to sell. The camera cut back to Susan Murkowski.

‘Here’s what George Sallis told me earlier in the day.’ The chairman of Sallis Fund Management, the internationally renowned and respected George Sallis appeared, speaking from his penthouse office in Chicago. ‘Today’s stock market crash is unprecedented,’ Sallis began. ‘We would have to go back to 1929 to find something comparable in its ferocity and suddenness . . . but it might have been even worse were it not for some very big buyers that we’re now seeing come into the market.’

‘Do we know who those buyers are?’ Murkowski asked.

Sallis let out a deep breath and his shoulders sagged, the strain of the past twenty-four hours clearly showing on his craggy face. ‘There are unconfirmed reports that the big banks and financial houses of Crédit Group are buying billions of dollars of a wide range of equities that most are offloading in panic selling. Under the circumstances this might seem quite odd, but a huge percentage of stocks are drastically undervalued, so perhaps it makes sense to the analysts in Crédit Group.’

‘So if Crédit Group are right, this financial crisis might be over relatively quickly,’ Murkowski suggested.

‘I’d like to share your optimism, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has wide-ranging ramifications. Japan, with the third largest economy in the world, imports 75 per cent of its oil through the Strait, and this will not only devastate the Japanese economy, but China too will be severely affected. That will have a flow-on impact on European economies that are already under stress, and it will affect economies like Australia, where large quantities of iron ore and other minerals are exported to the Chinese manufacturing sector. It’s about as serious as it gets, and recovery is going to be slow and painful, and that will depend very much on how soon the Strait of Hormuz can be re-opened.’

‘A very grim picture, Walter.’

‘Indeed,’ said Cronkwell. ‘That was our political correspondent, Susan Murkowski. And now to other news. The crisis in the Persian Gulf has meant President McGovern has cancelled a scheduled visit to Islamabad, designed to rebuild relationships between the US and Pakistan, a White House spokesman said today . . .’

The power of Pharos surged through Crowley’s veins as he flicked off the coverage. In 1776, the great economist, Adam Smith, wrote
The Wealth of Nations,
in which he introduced the concept of a ‘hidden hand’ in the market – the notion that the market would regulate itself as a result of competition between buyers and sellers. But Pharos had taken the ‘hidden hand’ concept to a far more sinister level, and under Pharos’s massive manipulation of a contrived ‘boom and bust’, eventually all the banks and the big multinationals would be owned by Pharos as part of the New World Order.

‘You don’t seem overly concerned, Sheldon?’ Rachel ventured.

‘There are two types of investors in the stock market, Rachel. Those who follow the herd, and those who know what they’re doing. Freud, Jung, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, economists like Thorstien Veblen . . . they’ve all written extensively about the herd mentality, and we’ve seen that manifest itself in spades over the last twenty-four hours. These people are driven by emotion. When there’s a bubble, they’re driven by greed.’

Rachel maintained a straight face. She had never known anyone more driven by greed than Crowley. She enjoyed what his wealth could buy, but hers was not so much an attraction to wealth as an attraction to the extraordinary power that came with it. She’d watched Crowley make hundreds of millions – actions that, if they became public, would have attracted a lengthy gaol term for insider trading. And she had watched him make a lot of money during the global financial crisis, but this time it was different. It was almost as if he was privy to information that no one else had.

‘Right now, the herd is driven by gut-wrenching fear, a frenzied “Sell! Sell!” mentality that feeds on itself, driving the market still lower.’ Crowley stood up and looked down at the streets below, many of them choked with the queues at the gas stations. ‘Like those idiots down there who are driving the price of gasoline still higher. Their counterparts in the stock market have forgotten the basic lesson of Wall Street . . . we strike contrary to the masses.’ He turned to the bank of screens on a side desk, secured by Area 15’s encryption system. His eyes narrowed and he nodded almost imperceptively. Crédit Group banks were executing a massive attack, buying up blue chip stocks across the top ten stock exchanges in the world. Billions of dollars were being poured into the market, but such was the panic that the attack was doing little more than arresting an even more catastrophic slide.

One of the cable television channels was screening an interview with a self-funded retiree couple who had just watched their life savings disappear. The wife was quietly sobbing and the man wiped away a tear.

‘The further it falls the better,’ said Crowley.