Dead or Alive (80 page)

“It left the plant this afternoon. Transit time is four days. Ibrahim and his team are on the ground. Unless we send him the abort, they should be moving in”—Tariq checked his watch—“three hours. The ship is two days out; our people in Norfolk are ready. As it stands, the ship will probably have to overnight at anchor before being assigned a berth.”

“Good. And Mr. Nayoan’s men?”

“In place and ready. They will not move until you give the order. They’ll need twenty-four hours’ notice.” The Emir nodded, and Tariq asked, “What do you want to do with the girl?”

“Let her go. She knows nothing about us, and Beketov is dead. The link between us and her people is gone. Even if she’s picked up, the only leads she can offer will either go nowhere or go where we want them to go. She’s earned her money.”

“She knows about the facility.”

“What of it? She was hired by some fringe environmental group to dig up damaging information about the facility. That’s all. She’s a mercenary, Tariq. She’ll take her money and move on.”

Tariq considered this, then nodded. “Very well.”

“One last detail: I’ll be joining Musa on his mission.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’ll record a message before I leave. Once we’ve succeeded, you will make sure it reaches the right hands.” Tariq opened his mouth to speak, but the Emir waved him off. “Old friend, you know this is necessary. My death, and what we do here, will fuel our war for generations to come.”

“When did you decide this?”

“It’s been the plan from the start. Why else would we have come here—to this forsaken place?”

“Let me join you.”

The Emir shook his head. “It’s not your time. You must trust me on this. Promise me you’ll do as I ask.”

Tariq nodded.

P
ULLING INTO the town of Paulinia just after sunset, Shasif Hadi could see the lights of the refinery, still some four miles away, long before he could see the complex itself. Seventeen hundred acres of distillation columns, fractionation towers, and high-voltage wires, all festooned with blinking red lights designed to warn off low-flying aircraft, and all unnecessary, as far as Hadi was concerned. If any pilot managed to miss seeing the dozens of pole-mounted stadium lights illuminating the complex’s work areas, he deserved to crash.

The main highway from Campinas, the SP-332, wound along the northern outskirts of Paulinia before swinging back first to the west, then to the north, before finally passing the refinery complex on the left. Hadi drove past it and continued north for another mile before reaching his turnoff, a two-lane asphalt road heading due east. This he followed exactly one and a half miles to where the road curved yet again and the blacktop gave way to gravel. A hundred yards ahead, his headlights picked out what looked like a bridge spanning the road. Hadi felt his pulse quicken. This was not a bridge, he knew, but rather an ethanol pipeline. As he passed under the line, he glanced out his passenger window and could see a grass-covered clearing barricaded by a cattle gate. Sitting in front of the gate, hood facing out, was a white pickup truck. Hadi kept going, making one more turn, this time south, onto a dirt road. After fifty yards he slowed, scanning the tree line to his left. He spotted the gap between the trees and pulled in and shut off his headlights as he coasted to a stop. He checked his watch: on schedule.

He got out, locked the door, then walked out of the trees to the edge of the road. He looked right. A half-mile down the road a pair of headlights appeared around a corner. Ibrahim’s blue Volkswagen Fox slowed beside Hadi, its brakes squealing slightly.

“No trouble?” Ibrahim asked.

“None.”

Hadi climbed into the backseat. Fa’ad sat beside him, Ahmed in the front passenger seat. As part of their exfiltration plan, Fa’ad and Ahmed had parked their cars on back roads to the southeast and northeast of the refinery, where they were picked up by Ibrahim. If for some reason the group became separated, they would rendezvous at one of these cars and make their way back to the coast.

Ahmed handed Hadi a pistol, a 9-millimeter Glock 17 equipped with a noise suppressor. “The truck is there,” Hadi said. “I couldn’t be sure, but I think I saw two figures sitting in it.”

“Good. Ahmed, you will do it.”

Headlights off, Ibrahim put the car in gear and drove on, retracing Hadi’s inbound route. Fifty yards from the pipeline, he stopped the car. Ahmed climbed out, crossed behind the car, and walked into the trees. They sat in silence, Ibrahim keeping track of the time on his watch. After two minutes, he turned on the headlights and started out again. “Down in the back,” he told them. Hadi and Fa’ad hunched down below the windows. As the car drew even with the pickup truck, Ibrahim slowed the car and got out. He had a map in his right hand.

“Excuse me,” he called in Portuguese, as he walked toward the truck. “I’m lost. Can you give me directions back to Paulinia?”

No one responded.

“Excuse me, I need help. Can you—”

A hand appeared out of the driver’s-side window and waved him forward. Ibrahim walked up to the window. The decal on the door said PETROBRAS SECURITY. “I think I missed a turn somewhere. How far away is Paulinia?”

“Not far,” said the guard. “Follow this road west until it runs into the highway, then turn left.”

Through the truck’s open passenger window, Ibrahim could see Ahmed’s outline emerge from the trees and start toward the truck.

Ibrahim asked, “How far is it?”

Before the driver could answer, Ibrahim took a step back. The first muffled shot went into the temple of the passenger-side guard; the second went into the neck of the driver, who slumped sideways. The noise suppressor, made from steel soup cans and fiberglass insulation, had worked well. The shots had been no louder than a muted hand-clap.

“One more each,” Ibrahim ordered.

Ahmed fired another round into the first guard. He then extended the gun into the cab, took aim, and fired a round into the driver’s ear. Ibrahim turned and signaled to the Volkswagen. Hadi climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the car into the clearing. Ibrahim and Ahmed already had the guards’ bodies out of the truck.

“Key ring,” Ahmed said, and tossed it to Ibrahim.

They started dragging the bodies toward the tree line. Hadi pulled out a pair of white towels he’d taken from his hotel, tossed one to Fa’ad, and together they wiped down the cab. The Glock’s soft-nosed hollow-points had disintegrated inside the guards’ skulls, leaving no exit wounds, so there was more blood than brain matter. Once done, Hadi tossed his towel to Fa’ad, who jogged into the trees and tossed them away.

Ibrahim returned to the clearing, unlocked the cattle gate, then tossed the key ring to Hadi. He and Fa’ad got in and backed the truck through the gate, followed by Ibrahim and Ahmed in the Volkswagen. Hadi shut and locked the gate as Ibrahim pulled the Volkswagen into the trees and out of sight.

 

 

 

T
he service road ran alongside the pipeline, which sat atop five-foot support pylons, spaced every fifty feet or so. Bracketed on both sides by trees and heavily rutted, the road had been built to accommodate construction equipment during the pipeline’s construction and now served as an access road for the refinery’s maintenance and security staff.

After a mile, the road veered, going right as the pipeline went left. In the median stood a grove of trees, over the top of which the lights of the refinery were visible. Ibrahim stopped the truck, and they got out. “Change clothes,” he ordered.

The navy blue coveralls had been chosen not so much for stealth but for anonymity. Most of the refinery workers wore similar coveralls. If spotted, from a distance Ibrahim and his team would, they hoped, be mistaken for maintenance personnel. They were now less than a half-mile from the refinery’s perimeter road and fence.

Once in their coveralls, they walked through the grove to a clearing. Here the pipeline zigzagged before straightening again, crossing over the road, and then, after another five hundred yards, passing through the security fence and into the refinery itself.

The ethanol pipeline running above their heads was less than a year old and ran from Goiás, five hundred miles to the north, through Paulinia before continuing on to the Japeri Terminal in Rio de Janeiro two hundred miles to the northeast. Three-point-two billion gallons of ethanol per year through a pipeline spanning a quarter of Brazil’s breadth.

While the URC had been unable to discover the pipeline’s precise flow rate, the averages had been enough to convince the Emir that the plan was feasible. With a reported “up time” of eighty-five percent, the pipeline was pumping its 3.2 billion gallons over a span of 310 days, which in turn meant that for every operational day, 10.3 million gallons were flowing from Goiás to Rio. At any given hour of the day, in any given ten-mile stretch of pipeline, there was enough ethanol to fill twenty tanker trucks.

“Four ESD valves between here and the perimeter,” Ibrahim whispered. “One charge to disable each valve, one for the midpoint between the last pylons, and one for detonation. Those two I’ll handle myself. Ahmed, you have the first valve; Fa’ad, the second; Shasif, you have the third and fourth. When I’ve planted my charge, I’ll step out and scratch my head. Start your timers. Four minutes exactly. Remember: Walk back to the truck. Do not run. Anyone not back by the time the first charge goes off, they get left behind. Any questions?” There were none. “Allah be with us,” Ibrahim said.

 

 

 

T
hey took off together, walking casually and chatting, as would any maintenance crew trying to make the best of a night shift. Two hundred yards from the grove, they reached the first ESD. Ahmed peeled off and knelt down behind the barrel-sized valve, then Fa’ad, then finally Shasif.

“See you back at the truck,” Ibrahim said, and kept walking.

The perimeter road was fifty yards ahead. To the right, a white pickup truck appeared, moving slowly as the passenger-side guard shined a spotlight on the fence. Ibrahim checked his watch.
Early. Fifteen minutes early!
Their agent, Cassiano, had been sure of the facility’s security routes and schedules. He’d either been wrong or the security schedule had changed. If the latter, why? Routine, or something else? This security truck, Ibrahim knew, would make its way along this perimeter road, then exit through the facility’s west gate before swinging north again and eventually pass the cattle gate through which Ibrahim and the others had entered. When the guards saw no pickup truck there, how would they react? Ibrahim decided it was best not to find out.

They had twelve minutes. Say four more minutes to set the charges and eight minutes to run the mile back to the cattle gate. It would be very close. Or, he thought, there was another option.

Heart pounding, he slowed his pace. So did the truck, coming to a near halt. Ibrahim waved his arm in greeting and called out in Portuguese,
“Boa tarde!” Good evening.
He arched his back ever so slightly to check that the Glock was still in place.

After a long five seconds, the driver waved back. “How’s it going?” he asked.

Ibrahim shrugged.
“Bem.” Fine.
Casually, he began walking toward the truck.
How close?
he wondered. To kill both men before they had a chance to reach their radio, he would have to get within ten or twelve meters. Would they become suspicious of his face or uniform before then? Charge them and start firing?
No,
he decided. The truck would race away. Ibrahim stopped walking.

“What’re you up to?” the driver asked.

“Weld checks,” Ibrahim answered. “Our boss decided we needed something to do.”

The driver chuckled. “I know the feeling. See you later.”

The transmission shifted into gear, and the truck rolled forward. Then stopped. The reverse lights popped on, and the truck backed up until it was again even with Ibrahim. “You came in from the cattle gate?” the driver asked.