Sensitive New Age Spy (3 page)

‘I’ll bite,’ I said, and a few moments later wished I hadn’t.

‘Halifax, as in the city in Nova Scotia,’ Julie explained. ‘In December 1917 a freighter called the
Mont Blanc
caught fire following a collision and drifted into the main harbour after the crew abandoned ship. Even though she was crammed full of high explosives intended for the allied armies in France, she had no Dangerous Cargo flag flying. At about 9.20 in the morning, with the whole town standing around watching, she drifted up against the dock and blew herself to pieces, taking most of downtown Halifax with her. Close to two thousand people were killed, and thousands more were badly injured.’

‘Bugger me dead!’

I glanced across at Sturdee. ‘Couldn’t have put it better
myself,’ I said. So the guys on the ship were serious, but what the hell did they want? Was this a threat, a warning, part of a demand? But for what?

‘Then there’s the really bad news,’ Julie continued.

‘It gets worse?’ I asked.

‘She’s sitting low in the water, which means those LNG tanks are probably full. You need to talk to Emergency Services about the possibility of a blevy.’

‘A blevy? What the fuck’s a blevy?’

‘B-l-e-v-e: stands for boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion,’ Sturdee said quietly. ‘It’s what happens when a storage container holding flammable liquefied gas under pressure fails as a result of a leak or fire.’

And that couldn’t be good, I decided.

‘As the liquefied gas heats up,’ Sturdee went on, ‘it produces explosive vapour at a faster and faster rate. When it reaches the point where the tank can’t contain the pressure, it ruptures and all the remaining gas vaporises and ignites simultaneously —
ka-boom!
And we’re talking about one hell of a big
ka-boom
. Massive fireball, flying chunks of red-hot metal, and a huge pressure wave that flattens everything in its path. You can get a blevy from something as small as a barbecue gas bottle or as big as that.’

He indicated the tanker with a tilt of his head. ‘It was one of the scenarios in last year’s terrorist-attack exercise. Hijacked LPG road tanker set on fire in the CBD. The computer modeling of the blast on a blevy incident simulator
wasn’t real pretty. And given that each of those four domes there looks like it’d hold about five hundred of those road tankers…’

No one spoke for a very long minute.

Why hadn’t I taken my mate Armando up on his offer of spending the weekend on his farm? Rolling hills, acres of olive trees, a well-stocked larder, and a cellar full of wines that would make you bloody weep.

‘So what’s the difference between LNG and LPG?’ I asked Sturdee.

‘I’m a bit fuzzy on that one. We need to ask an expert.’

I looked up at the group on the Martello tower. ‘There’s no one from fire services here yet?’

Sturdee shook his head. ‘Three suspicious packages turned up at the oil refineries out at Moorebank a couple of hours ago, so the Major Incident bods are all out there.’

‘Can we call someone?’

‘Nope. The packages look like they’re wireless-linked, so they’re under radio silence at the site. They’ve promised to get back to us as soon as they can.’

‘But any fireman would be able to tell us what we’re dealing with here, wouldn’t they?’ I looked at Julie, who flipped open her mobile and hit a number.

Julie’s younger sister had a penchant for members of the fire brigade. If anyone could put their hands on a firefighter at short notice it was Michelle. Julie walked away and started talking as soon as the phone was answered.

Carter Lonergan ambled over and joined us. A lot of men seem to amble over and join me when I’m in Julie’s vicinity. I put my sunnies back on. A residual hangover, a wild ride in a cop car, bad coffee and Lonergan’s Hawaiian shirt were an unsettling combination.

‘Nice shirt, Carter,’ I said. ‘Gives the TV news crews something to focus on. Do they sell them in the gift shop at Langley?’

‘They do as a matter of fact, right beside the secret-agent radio cufflinks and the suicide pills.’

Crikey, a CIA agent with a sense of humour. What would they think of next?

‘So Alby,’ Lonergan said, glancing at his watch, ‘exactly what do we have on our hands here, any idea?’

The accent was Manhattan, Upper East Side, and the scar on the cheek Afghanistan, post-2001. Carter Lonergan was in his mid-thirties, around six feet, good-looking, I guess, with sandy-coloured, Ginger Meggs-ish hair. He was nowhere near as big a pain in the arse as his predecessor had been.

‘No threats or demands as yet,’ I said. ‘And as far as I know, no one is claiming responsibility. You have any leads?’

‘No, but it’s bad timing, what with our new cruiser there in port.’

Maybe I was wrong about the pain-in-the-arse thing.

‘Perhaps we can get them to hold off blowing up the city until after she leaves?’ Sturdee suggested. ‘If it’s going to be inconvenient for you.’

Lonergan held up his hands. ‘No offence meant.’

‘Heaps taken,’ Sturdee said with a cold smile.

I was impressed. Peter Sturdee was really shaping up as a special liaison officer.

‘So you haven’t considered the possibility that whatever the hell is going on here might be due to the presence of that ship, Carter?’ I said.

‘No radio chatter, no insider dope, no buzz about anything like this at all. And believe me, we’ve been watching and listening.’

Ever since an explosives-packed motorboat had rammed the guided missile destroyer USS
Cole
in Yemen’s Aden harbour in 2000, the Americans had been ultra-sensitive to the vulnerability of their warships in port. They kept both ears open for even the smallest hint that one of their vessels might be on a target list.

Julie snapped her phone shut and walked back to us. Lonergan, who had developed a severe and unreciprocated case of the hots for Julie as soon as he’d met her, was now smiling at her like a lovesick puppy. It was pathetic. I just hoped he wouldn’t make any sudden moves, since Julie held black belts in tae kwon do and karate, and her equivalent of a smack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper could be pretty awesome.

‘Good morning, Mr Lonergan,’ she said, smiling sweetly.

I was familiar with that smile. It meant ‘Not in a million years.’

‘Find out anything?’ I asked her.

‘We got lucky. Mish was entertaining an off-duty, Hazmat-qualified Instant Response Team officer.’

‘Instant response, eh?’

Julie narrowed her eyes at me and continued. ‘Natural gas is mostly methane, which is liquefied by chilling to minus 260 degrees centigrade then stored at around normal atmospheric pressure. Those domes are insulated, dual-layer high-nickel steel, designed to keep the gas cool.’

‘So what are the odds of a blevy with our mystery ship if things just happen to go pear-shaped?’ I asked.

‘Moot point,’ Julie said. ‘The good news is that oceangoing LNG tankers have an almost perfect safety record.’

Like a fool I asked if there was any bad news.

‘A worst case scenario would be like Armageddon, only hotter and nastier. The energy potential of your standard LNG tanker is equivalent to 700 000 tonnes of TNT.’

Sturdee stared at her. ‘Seven hundred
thousand
tonnes of TNT?’

‘Or putting it another way,’ she continued, ‘that ship holds the explosive power of around fifty Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.’

Peter Sturdee was looking decidedly pale.

‘How long before we can get an OAT in place?’ I asked.

OATs, or Offshore Assault Teams, are four-man SAS or Commando units specifically trained for operations against maritime targets. If anyone could sort out what was going on aboard the tanker, it would be the OAT bods. And if anyone on the tanker made the mistake of getting in their way then they’d live to regret it, but not for very long.

‘Well, it’s just dumb luck,’ Sturdee said, ‘but there were a couple of OAT units exercising on the Bass Strait offshore oil and gas platforms this weekend. They took off from Sale for Bankstown airport an hour ago.’ He checked his watch. ‘They’re due to touch down in ten minutes. A pair of Army Blackhawks, scrambled from Holsworthy Special Ops Base, are standing by to ferry them straight here.’

‘Who authorised that?’

‘Like I said, I was the only one out here, so…’

It was a ballsy move on Sturdee’s part, but at least now we had something in our favour – or we would have when the OATs arrived. I started down towards the Fort Denison flagpole, motioning to Julie to join me.

‘Technical question,’ I said when we were alone, ‘since you’ve been working in upper management a whole lot longer than I have. Who the hell is actually running this show?’

Julie shrugged. ‘Bit of a grey area, I’m afraid. It’s probably still a state police matter right at the moment. Officially, if Peter wants the OAT boys to board the tanker he’ll have to ask you.’

‘But do I have the authority to order an attack on that ship?’

‘You know how it works, Alby. If you order an assault and it all pans out okay, then the answer is yes, you do. And every other security-department head who took a three-day weekend will be seriously pissed off at their career blunder and will white-ant you for the rest of your life. But if it all goes pear-shaped, then the answer is no, you exceeded your authority, and those same departmental heads will be thanking their lucky stars they were smart enough to take the weekend off. And there’ll be an in-camera senate inquiry in Canberra and they’ll all merrily set about crucifying you.’

‘Well, that certainly helped clarify things, Jules,’ I said, ‘thanks a heap.’

‘My pleasure,’ she smiled. ‘That’s what I’m here for. But
look on the bright side, mate, if this whole thing does blow up in our faces we really won’t give a rat’s anyway. Not if we’re standing right here.’

She had a point. I looked at my watch. I had maybe twenty-five minutes before I had to make up my mind about ordering an assault on the ship.

Sturdee joined us. ‘I’ve got a police chopper on its way to do a reconnaissance sweep over the tanker. And the boys on shore are doing a breakfast run.’

‘That sounds like an excellent plan, Pete. I’ll have a bacon and egg roll,’ I said. ‘And the part about the chopper is good too.’

‘It’s nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of proportion, Alby. The city is gridlocked, the hospitals are gearing up for a level-one disaster, all emergency services are on full alert, we’re on standby to evacuate every building with water views on both sides of the harbour, and you’re worried about breakfast.’

What I was really worried about was being the one who had to order eight men in Kevlar helmets and bulletproof vests to do a freefall rappel down ropes from helicopters onto a floating bomb.

Ten minutes later, we heard the
whop whop whop
of rotor blades from over towards Lavender Bay. The police chopper dropped down to a couple of hundred feet above Luna Park and then raced straight towards us, right under the harbour bridge.

Sturdee gave instructions on his two-way radio and the chopper began a slow circuit of the tanker, hovering about fifty metres out, and around deck height. It was moving in our direction, towards the front of the ship, when Sturdee’s radio crackled with a message from the pilot.

‘Movement on the ship,’ Sturdee yelled. ‘Two men carrying some sort of tube.’

I lifted my camera and focused on two figures moving along the deck, partly silhouetted against the sky. They stopped and one of them knelt down, and when he stood up again I could see a long thin cylindrical shape on his shoulder.

I snatched the radio from Sturdee’s hand and before he could react I was speaking as calmly and clearly as I could into the mouthpiece. ‘Abort! Abort! Abort! Subjects onboard are armed with anti-aircraft missile. Clear the area immediately. I repeat, clear the area immediately.’

The chopper’s nose went up at the words ‘anti-aircraft missile’ and then it dropped straight down to water level and scooted towards the stern of the ship. The pilot was good – putting the bulk of the tanker between himself and the missile was exactly the right thing to do, as surface-to-air missiles need a rough visual fix so that the infrared tracking can lock on. The chopper made a straight run up the harbour, towards Point Piper, still using the hull of the tanker as shelter. It zoomed up over the trees and then ducked down out of sight on the other side of the headland.

When I looked back at the deck of the tanker the two men had disappeared. I put my camera in my bag and handed Sturdee his radio.

‘You sure that was what you thought it was?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Grail. Russian surface-to-air missile. Popular black-market item for people who like that sort of thing.’

Sturdee took a slow deep breath. ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’ His mobile rang and he answered it quickly. It was a long conversation, which mostly involved Sturdee nodding his head in agreement with whoever was on the other end.

‘Incident room at HQ,’ he said when the call ended. ‘They monitored your radio message about the missile and reckon this puts the whole thing squarely in federal hands. Alby, over to you, mate. What do you think we should do next?’

‘We need to shut down all air traffic. Close Kingsford Smith and Bankstown airports immediately. The only things I want flying are the Blackhawks with the OATs.’

‘Gotcha. They’ve just left Bankstown. ETA fifteen minutes.’ Sturdee punched the buttons on his phone.

I looked over at Lonergan, who was on his mobile. He finished the call, glanced at his watch and walked across.

‘CNN picked up the story of a mystery tanker moored off the Sydney Opera House,’ he said. ‘They’ve been running it live in the UK, and some Scottish insomniac just rang CNN’s London office to say he recognised the ship. Says she was Clyde-built and then laid up in a deepwater bay opposite his house for the last six or seven years.’

‘Did he know why she was laid up?’

‘Apparently she failed certification to carry LNG. The stuff kept leaking out of a couple of badly built tanks. She was too expensive to repair so they mothballed her. Then she disappeared one night a couple of months back.’