44

Rosconway

Willie Holloway’s problem, as he explained to Tyrrell, Schultz and Carver, was that just when he had the greatest need for totally watertight security around the refinery, he actually had less capacity than usual to provide it. The four men were in Holloway’s office on the second floor of one of the bland, low-rise administrative blocks from which the plant was managed. A series of ground-floor conference rooms had been hurriedly commandeered to act as the working venues for the participants at the morning’s conference and the reporters who were covering the event.

‘Half my lads have become car park attendants,’ Holloway grumbled. ‘They’re all standing at the gates, checking IDs and getting everyone spaces.’

‘What about the local police?’ asked Tyrrell.

‘They’ve set up roadblocks. Nothing’s got closer than a mile to here since about eight this morning. As soon as it got light we were out patrolling the fields around the plant.’

‘So there is some kind of buffer-zone around the place?’

‘Sure. I’ll show you…’ Holloway walked to a wall of his office, on which was a large, framed Ordnance Survey map of the refinery and its surroundings. The plant had been sited on a headland. It was criss-crossed with streets whose names revealed the American origins of the refinery’s parent company: First, Second, Third and Fourth Avenues intersecting with Refinery Street, State Street and Ocean Drive.

‘As you can see,’ Holloway said, ‘almost two-thirds of the perimeter of the plant backs directly on to the sea, and we own all the land between the furthest storage tanks and the water. The coastline here is pretty rocky. There’s anywhere between thirty and fifty feet of cliff for most of the way around. I’ve got people patrolling the cliff tops, and there’s a couple of boats offshore, keeping an eye on things. Facing the other way, we’ve got all the land within around seven to eight hundred metres of the perimeter fence.’ He ran his finger around the limit of the refinery’s land. ‘Everything inside that line we searched earlier. If anyone’s there, all I can say is they’re bloody well hidden.’

For the first time since he’d arrived, Carver spoke: ‘But you didn’t patrol outside your actual property?’

Holloway gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Look, there’s a limit, you know? I’ve had this dumped on me from on high, and I’m doing the best I can.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit!.. The VIPs are due here any minute, and I’ve got to make sure we’ve got everything ready. One of the ministers wants to make an opening statement to the media, and his people say he has to stand right by the distillation columns. They want powerful pictures for the TV. So can I leave you gentlemen to get on with, well… whatever you want to do?’

‘I think we’ll tag along, if that’s all right with you,’ Tyrrell said. ‘Come on, Sergeant… and Jenkins?’

‘Give me a minute,’ said Carver. ‘I just want to take another look at this map.’

He watched the others leave the room, then turned his attention back to the refinery layout, and the land around it. Why was Zorn making such an issue of energy terrorism? Did he know something no one else did — did he have advance warning, perhaps, of a planned outrage? ‘Well, then,’ Carver thought, running with the idea. ‘Suppose he were attacking a refinery — this one, for example — what would he do?’

One option was to come in from the sea. Carver could get past Holloway’s boat and foot patrols without too much trouble. He’d once beaten the combined forces of the US Coast Guard and Secret Service to attack the President’s seaside holiday compound. But then the target had been a single individual, not a giant industrial installation. So how much damage could he do here? There was a limit to the amount of explosive anyone could haul up a cliff-face. A few well-placed C4 charges would certainly make a hell of a bang, but they’d struggle to do the kind of serious, long-term damage that sent a message no one would be able to ignore. For that you’d need a lot more explosive, and that meant some form of transport, either by land or by air.

Well, if anyone really wanted to recreate 9/11 with a death-dive into an oil refinery or nuclear power station there was not a lot Carver could do about it. So what about a truck-bomb? It would have to get past the roadblocks. And even though a truck could deliver a massive amount of explosive, it only delivered it to one place and made one very big hole. But the refinery covered a huge area. It could surely survive a single bomb, no matter how big.

No, the way to attack a place like this was to mount some kind of spectacular: hit it more than once. An image came to his mind of black and white film from the Second World War — Russian ‘Katyusha’ rocket launchers, mounted on the back of trucks, blasting a fusillade of projectiles at the German lines. Like so many Russian weapons, Katyushas were very basic, very brutal and very easy to copy.

He looked at the map again. If he had a rocket launcher, where would he put it?

There weren’t too many options. Anyone using home-made devices would want them as close as possible to the refinery, without actually getting on to its own, well-defended, regularly patrolled property. They’d also need cover behind which to hide: trees, walls, even low hills. But there didn’t look to be much of anything near the refinery. The land was flat, with only the odd copse of trees marked on the map, and virtually all the buildings in the area fell within the refinery’s property. There was just one farm close by whose buildings might fit the criteria Carver had set himself.

He walked around Holloway’s desk, sat by his computer, and called up a satellite picture of the area. He zoomed in on the farm, frowning as he peered at the screen. The buildings seemed unoccupied, even derelict. One was missing its roof. Even from the aerial shot it was obvious that the farmyard was overgrown, the stone or tarmac long since lost beneath a cover of vegetation. Well, if he were going to launch anything, Carver thought, that’s where he’d do it from. He looked at the broken-down buildings for a few more seconds. ‘Yes, that’s the place,’ he muttered to himself. And then he, too, left the room.

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